My Amputations (Fiction collective ;) (20 page)

How did he get into a red rooster suit? Couldn't remember. Must have been three in the morning and festivities were still up. Shrove Tuesday? Nice? He'd lost track of who was who: Jean-Paul was possibly that stupid ibex dancing with a gazelle. The gazelle? Perhaps Chantal! or Monique! Thousands, it seemed, were moving, jumping, dancing, shouting, to music—which was loud, brassy, headache-causer. Night sky at Place Messina was a turkey turned upside down full of Old Norse noise and bursting up in it were trees—Catalpa Paluownia Horse-Chestnut—in full bloom. His mood was
curved
and his senses out of focus, yet he continued to flap his big wings. He beat them with a lusty power. Mason did the Camel Walk, he strutted, he pranced, he got behind the gazelle and said, “
Cocka-doodle-doo!”
She responded with a squeak. Looking over her shoulder, she hissed and cried out these words,
“I'm Asahel!
Solomon
sang
for me! You're crude! Don't
touch
me!” Mason didn't take the rebuff too hard: he went after a wild ass—called The Onager. It looked like a donkey, with thin, thin legs. But he couldn't catch
it.
Its love for freedom was too great! Weren't there any
hens
around? There
was
a camel and
Gauguin
had come back from the South Seas! Mason was sweating myrrh resin. He wanted to rest, but where—at Place Messina—do you go. (The spirit of carnival didn't provide seats other than those paid for.) Roosters needed to rest when defeated. Besides, whoever said a rooster could mount anything other than a chicken? Answer me that. So poor Mason found himself sitting on the curb between two wine-drinkers with tin cups, just to rest. While there, he hummed then sang. They laughed at his accent, his voice, his bad French. Then joined him. He loved them for this: thought they probably didn't deserve his love. The vocal burst went out: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,/ That saved a wretch like me,/ I once was lost, but now I'm found,/ Was blind but now I see.” The others, his friends, danced on. They were happy, he was not. When “Amazing Grace” ended he threw himself stupidly into another song with them: “Run sinners, run,/ Run sinners, run, run,/ Run sinners,/ Won't you run?/ Cause you house is on fire,/ Cause you
house is on fire,/ On fire . . . ” One guy, an Arab, leaned over and whispered in Mason's ear: “This song is like the wall of Jericho, the Wall of Tell Beit Mirsim!” Mason gave him a dumb grin. From his retreat he could see his friends still cutting loose. There was Christ in the Garden of Olives. He was a little out of character: pretending to be A Still-Life with Fan. And The Fat-tailed Sheep, trying to become a sacrifice, was digging her nose in the hide of the mule. The mule, clearly, gave every sign of cautious approval: this donkey belonged to King David and was proud of its ancestry—which went back to Ezekiel and the people of Togarmah. Mason, dazed, was impressed. He climbed to his feet as a float, escaped from a day-time parade, started moving in the circular pattern around Place Messina. It was lighted like a star fallen from some larger-than-life acacia-bearing Saint-John's-bread-tree! On the float, punk rock stars were strumming, crying, shouting. A stripper ate candlesticks as they worked out. Mason fell over Japanese Symbolist, Yellow Christs, Breton Girls, Old Women of Arles, clowns from Martinique, tough guys dressed as Nudes, Easels, Seasides, in his effort to reach the moving float. He
recognized
among them friends up there! Through his own particular haze, he cried, he shouted, “
Cocka-doodle-do!”
Literally, he
barked
it! He trotted behind the float. The winos trailed him. So did the cops. The spectators (mostly old folks) in the review-stands around the plaza cackled, enjoying what they (apparently) believed to be a
planned
part of mardi gras. When a spotted dog started following Mason, snapping at his heels, Mason stopped. Turned. Stooped. And
bit
the animal on the neck! Man's best friend skipped off yelping like a hyrax that lost the cow trail! Stumbling, fumbling and falling in the shadow of Sebastian, Tamara Polese, Etta Schnabel and the group Hot Hips, Mason finally grabbed the tail-end of the float. But fell on his face, clutching crepe-paper! The chicken feathers against his skin felt like rat-tails.

Mason drove down to San Remo to buy himself an Italian suit, a belt, a new shoulder bag. Going back he picked up the hitchhiker at Ventimiglia. The boy's sign said: “Nice.” André-something spoke only French; was returning home after attending his grandfather's funeral in Rome. He'd hitched this far in two days. Their conversation of course was difficult. But Mason thought he understood the boy to say that his poppa left to a museum the family replicas of ancient Frankish icons and purity-symbols. As they approached the toll-gate at San Isidore, André made it clear he wanted to exit here. Sporadic shelling behind his eyes? Mason was relieved. He took the old narrow road up through the hills. When he got there the villa was quiet. Afternoon shadows lay to the west of its trees. Somebody had stuck a Telex message from Schnitzler in his door crack.

Greece in the middle of April? Driving into Athens from the airport was hectic in crazy laneless rush-hour traffic. Hotel Corinth on Safokleous and Klisthenous became a place of sleeplessness. In Greece Mason could go searching darkly and secretly for . . . for answers? . . . Morning light was a gift from the gods. Before noon he was drinking scotch on a roof top: the only customer in the restaurant till a group of noisy men and women came in around noon chattering away in English. All had Greek accents except one. Yellow Eyes was surely American. The guys certainly had talent for supporting roles . . . Later, Mason wandered around as the shops began opening. Saturday night shoppers were out. He was observer, spectator—not participant. He felt no different from what he'd always felt . . . The next morning Mason was at the National Museum trying to provoke Cycladic. From her stern place as mother goddess and model for modern sculpture she refused to respond. Mason was unworthy? Insulted, he rushed on. Goddess Hygieia? She would not heal
him. Her mission was set—as fixed as his. Kikori too didn't even consider responding from her Fourth Century B.C. perch in the Temple of Artemis. He beat at her stone. A guard threatened to arrest him. He shook the guard's hand off his arm. Then Mason met his lover: that beastly deadly ungodly unworldly feathered creature (with lice under her wings): Sepulchral, the sad-faced holder of the death-crying lyre. O Siren!
His
lost wings . . . ? No, it wasn't that simple: something more complex. He moved silently through the gravestones. No smells here. Burning hair? Fried pig ears—as odor? Nothing of the sort. Tar? Dyed leather/ Perfume? The feel of the tongue against okra? This was a more elusive—cerebral—reality. He looked suspiciously at the black figure found at Antikytera. That shipwreck rang a bell. Then the comic mask of a slave found near Dipylon in the second century B.C., hit a raw nerve. The answer surely was not that: it was part of the problem. And there she was again: the winged one with her bird feet and woman breasts! Mason slapped her. No blood dripped from her eye. Her primitive lyre didn't bang to the marble floor. He kissed her. She did not respond. He arrived in a remote gallery just in time to help Aphrodite in a vicious struggle with Pan: she had her sandal raised threateningly against him as he tugged at her arm. A shorter figure, he was a mean fucker. But it was hard to know exactly what the cupid figure—on Aphrodite's shoulder grasping one of Pan's horns—meant. A cupidic bridge between . . . He moved on, still with confidence: nobody else was around except for an occasional guard. Unusual. Soon there was Hermes carrying a lamb. Mason felt the Roman weight of it. Picasso's man with goat? To slaughter? Surely part of the answer was hidden there, in the slit down the belly, in the expert removal of the testicles? Music for every occasion: the kythera with seven strings. Seven and one? Play please. Bronze cymbals he thought surely served to reach into the classic depths beneath, say, jazz: sacrifice: aulos; funeral: anlos; drama: lyra (solo). The more removed from earthly concerns the more permanent in their stone and static insistence were the resistant figures. Even mortals sat as dead weight on thrones of, say, six hundred-thirty
B.C., like Egyptian gods. But they were goddesses weren't they? “Heroized.” Mason touched the rims of their blunt eyelids. The gesture was sexual. Yes? Sexual and moody. In the geometric period he missed whatever clues were hidden in the duck the horse the . . . Even his spiritual forefather: Satyr was useless, in a way: his music did not give the bird woman the rhythm she needed to fly! Something was deadly wrong in their relationship. With his flute strapped to his head—allowing freedom for both hands—he was still not the receiver of total benefits. Mason stroked her bronze skull. She smiled. Ah! ( . . . 
and
he knew the brain changed when the body was turned upside-down: in the fourth stage they turned the figures, inverted the models in a kiln and fired them, causing the quick wax to melt . . . but there were five stages!) If this museum was a cool sanctuary then Kabeiroi near Thebes in the sixth century was even more so: Mason scratched under her wings. Griffins nearby cackled. A bird-snake of Argos said, “Polly wanta . . . ” It was at this point that he realized he wasn't going to get the answers—the way he wanted them—here! On the way out, out of friendliness, he scratched the belly of the pregnant toad-person.

He woke in a furious sweat. Leaped out of bed. The signing of that contract? hadn't he begun the long surrender of the Self? in signing that MRF agreement—to God knows what—in the name
Ellis
hadn't he in effect ended his own potential? He would go on, wouldn't he: vanishing and resurfacing alternately till he achieved his identity or disappeared forever. Then the dream cleared. He'd been trapped on a tribal set. Surrounded by strangers, he was told to pee into a clay pot. He hesitated. Was there some deep authority in hesitation? No. It was simply that the Self did not vanish quite so fast if one paused before . . . Passively, he pissed in the pot. A scientist in a
handsome lion's skin took the pot into sunlight and examined the liquid. In ten minutes he returned with his report. “This man, rough, and in need of revision, better focus, cutting, pasting, more action and less telling, is faced with a monumental decision. In his urine the sign of his desperation is clear.” The village chief stood and placed a firm hand on Mason's shoulder. “My son, you are about to discover how to pull it all together. Do not—” but here the dreamer gives up the . . . 

Who formulates the questions? It's noon and Mason's at Restaurant Europa. His table is on the sidewalk. The wine is simple Domestica. The moussaka is two or three days old—made with stale potatoes. Better to have ordered the shish kebob or lamb and potatoes? Hardly. He is stuck with his bad decision. He sits, drinking too fast, and watches the old prostitutes hustling on the mall: this is a particularly sleezy area—Omonia Square—where drunks or young boys can—and do—pick up fat, run-down whores for two to three hundred drachmas. It is lunch time and the whores are not having much luck. Mason watches their pacing with something like interest. Their bodies are swollen like the bellies of toads. He cannot level a question against their presence. Their comic and frantic movements—back and forth—give him no usable clue. Across the mall at another restaurant sit five Greek men drinking beer. By one they are singing Greek songs and toasting each other with more suds. Mason broods. Then pays seven hundred drachmas for his awful lunch. He wanders about the streets. He is not feeling drunk or spaced when he realizes that his shoulder bag has been snatched. He's walking along Stadiou toward the Sintagma when these two kids hit him and a third one grabs his bag. Mason responds like Bat Man: kicking and punching in reflex time. The one with the bag is running. Mason takes off after him. Bumping
into side-walkers, peddlers, hawkers. He leaps over a table (where a man's having after-lunch coffee) to avoid a cluster of people at a narrow point. The kid's tiny and fast: he's taking the street
and
the side—even leaping cars. Mason's losing ground. He feels his age. Then he sees the boy run into a woman: she falls, the kid falls. A crowd gathers. Mason's bag is on the ground in the scramble. When he gets there—elbowing his way through—he dives for his bag. Gets it. The woman is shouting in American English at the boy. She calls him a little snot, an asshole, a rude son-of-a-bitch. She is helped up by two Greek men. A woman hands her her purse. She bangs the boy over the head with it. The boy is looking for a way to exit through the thicket of bodies. She whacks him again. Mason grabs him. A cop pushes his way through the crowd. Mason explains what has happened. The cop takes the boy by the ear and marches him away. Everybody laughs. Then Mason realizes that the American woman is Yellow Eyes.

She had a Greek name: Melina Karamanlis. They went to a cafe just a block away on Georgiou; ordered Dymphe, a decent Volos blanc sec. She told him she remembered him from the rooftop restaurant. As it turned out she knew his name. It gave him a funny feeling about her. She was a journalist, a film critic, here visiting her sister, Sophia Papadopoulos who was married to Nikos. Sophia was American too; Nikos, no. Melina was interested in the avant garde theatre and had come to this work through friends in New York. He had mixed feelings about her pretty smile. She
was
pretty: very. Although she presently lived and worked in Albuquerque—and liked it—she was a
born
New Yorker. She had the accent down. Gestures too. She seemed delighted to meet a fiction writer whose work she'd read. “Normally,” she said, “I read Joyce Carol Oates, ye know, but
I'm happy to say, I'm also interested in what
other
people are doing.” Impulsively and cheerily she invited him to dinner at her sister's. He hesitated. She tickled his funnybone: “I promise you
I
won't do the cooking: my brother-in-law is a genius in the kitchen. You'll get a sample of real Greek home-cooking.” She was obviously impressed to learn he was here to lecture next week at the university. She'd bring all the relatives she could round up. He didn't especially like her joke. Just before she left Melina said the boy who angered her so by knocking her down might actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise and a catalyst. Mason didn't respond and didn't know how to translate that. He was expected at seven-thirty that night. She gave him the address. The taxi driver would know. She then took his hand and shook it. She swished off leaving a whiff of Mycenean Rose—if there's such a thing. Why'd he get himself into these jams? Did he really expect to find any part of the puzzle there tonight? Or was he just looking for an angle on another piece of leg? He now felt keenly alone: on the way back he smoked his last coffin nail, courtesy R.J. Reynolds. Made a mental note to replenish. He parked the Ford in the underground lot beneath the hotel. Went up. In the lobby there was a Neolithic female figure with winged-arms lifted as though conducting lobby traffic. Holy red mullet! He gave her a close inspection. Something deadly in her stance. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was though. Anyway, all through dinner he'd found difficulty refraining from staring at Nikos'eye-patch: around its edge there seemed to be a rim of light: it was like being on a dark street and gazing at the closed window to a lighted room. Nikos and Sophia were a handsome couple! She was jaunty and talkative. The chicken and rice with garlic sauce earned an A-plus. Conversation was mundane: ranging from Onassis and Jackie, Maria Callas, the island Skorpios to Jason's state of mind as he was about to set forth from Volos in search of the Golden Fleece.