Run With the Hunted (26 page)

gone by like Socrates, gone by like Lorca,

like Chatterton …

I'd rather imagine our death will not matter too much

except as a matter of disposal, a problem,

like dumping the garbage,

and although I have saved the young poet's letters,

I do not believe them

but like at the

diseased palm trees

and the end of the sun,

I sometimes look.

a symphony orchestra.

there is a thunderstorm,

they are playing a Wagner overture

and the people leave their seats under the trees

and run inside to the pavilion

the women giggling, the men pretending calm,

wet cigarettes being thrown away,

Wagner plays on, and then they are all under the

pavilion. the birds even come in from the trees

and enter the pavilion and then it is the Hungarian

Rhapsody #2 by Lizst, and it still rains, but look,

one man sits alone in the rain

listening. the audience notices him. they turn

and look. the orchestra goes about its

business. the man sits in the night in the rain,

listening. there is something wrong with him,

isn't there?

he came to hear the

music.

it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street

I used to get drunk

and throw the radio through the window

while it was playing, and, of course,

it would break the glass in the window

and the radio would sit out there on the roof

still playing

and I'd tell my woman,

“Ah, what a marvelous radio!”

the next morning I'd take the window

off the hinges

and carry it down the street

to the glass man

who would put in another pane.

I kept throwing that radio through the window

each time I got drunk

and it would sit out there on the roof

still playing—

a magic radio

a radio with guts,

and each morning I'd take the window

back to the glass man.

I don't remember how it ended exactly

though I do remember

we finally moved out.

there was a woman downstairs who worked in

the garden in her bathing suit

and her husband complained he couldn't sleep nights

because of me

so we moved out

and in the next place

I either forgot to throw the radio out the window

or I didn't feel like it

anymore.

I do remember missing the woman who worked in the

garden in her bathing suit,

she really dug with that trowel

and she put her behind up in the air

and I used to sit in the window

and watch the sun shine all over that tiling

while the music played.

Making love in the sun, in the morning sun

in a hotel room

above the alley

where poor men poke for bottles;

making love in the sun

making love by a carpet redder than our blood,

making love while the boys sell headlines

and Cadillacs,

making love by a photograph of Paris

and an open pack of Chesterfields,

making love while other men—poor fools—

work.

That moment—to this …

may be years in the way they measure,

but it's only one sentence back in my mind—

there are so many days

when living stops and pulls up and sits

and waits like a train on the rails.

I pass the hotel at 8

and at 5; there are cats in the alleys

and bottles and bums,

and I look up at the window and think,

I no longer know where you are
,

and I walk on and wonder where

the living goes

when it stops.

night has come like something crawling

up the bannister, sticking out its tongue

of fire, and I remember the

missionaries up to their knees in muck

retreating across the beautiful blue river

and the machine gun slugs flicking spots of

fountain and Jones drunk on the shore

saying shit shit these Indians

where'd they get the fire power?

and I went in to see Maria

and she said, do you think they'll attack,

do you think they'll come across the river?

afraid to die? I asked her, and she said

who isn't?

and I went to the medicine cabinet

and poured a tall glassful, and I said

we've made 22,000 dollars in 3 months building roads

for Jones and you have to die a little

to make it that fast … Do you think the communists

started this? she asked, do you think it's the communists?

and I said, will you stop being a neurotic bitch.

these small countries rise because they are getting

their pockets filled from
both
sides … and she

looked at me with that beautiful schoolgirl idiocy

and she walked out, it was getting dark but I let her go,

you've got to know when to let a woman go if you want to keep her,

and if you don't want to keep her you let her go anyhow,

so it's always a process of letting go, one way or the other,

so I sat there and put the drink down and made another

and I thought, whoever thought an engineering course at Old Miss

would bring you where the lamps swing slowly

in the green of some far night?

and Jones came in with his arm around her blue waist

and she had been drinking too, and I walked up and said,

man and wife? and that made her angry for if a woman can't

get you by the nuts and squeeze, she's done,

and I poured another tall one, and

I said, you 2 may not realize it

but we're not going to get out of here alive.

we drank the rest of the night.

you could hear, if you were real still,

the water coming down between the god trees,

and the roads we had built

you could hear animals crossing them

and the Indians, savage fools with some savage cross to bear.

and finally there was the last look in the mirror

as the drunken lovers hugged

and I walked out and lifted a piece of straw

from the roof of the hut

then snapped the lighter, and I

watched the flames crawl, like hungry mice

up the thin brown stalks, it was slow but it was

real, and then not real, something like an opera,

and then I walked down toward the machine gun sounds,

the same river, and the moon looked across at me

and in the path I saw a small snake, just a small one,

looked like a rattler, but it couldn't be a rattler,

and it was scared seeing me, and I grabbed it behind the neck

before it could coil and I held it then

its little body curled around my wrist

like a finger of love and all the trees looked with eyes

and I put my mouth to its mouth

and love was lightning and remembrance,

dead communists, dead fascists, dead democrats, dead gods and

back in what was left of the hut Jones

had his dead black arm around her dead blue waist.

It had gotten extensive press coverage and T.V. coverage and the lady was to write a book about it. The lady's name was Hester Adams, twice divorced, two children. She was 35 and one guessed that it was her last fling. The wrinkles were appearing, the breasts had been sagging for some time, the ankles and calves were thickening, there were signs of a belly. America had been taught that beauty only resided in youth, especially in the female. But Hester Adams had the dark beauty of frustration and upcoming loss; it crawled all over her, the upcoming loss, and it gave her a sexual something, like a desperate and fading woman sitting in a bar full of men. Hester had looked around, seen few signs of help from the American male, and had gotten onto a plane for South America. She had entered the jungle with her camera, her portable typewriter, her thickening ankles and her white skin and had gotten herself a cannibal, a black cannibal: Maja Thurup. Maja Thurup had a good look to his face. His face appeared to be written over with one thousand hangovers and one thousand tragedies. And it was true—he had had one thousand hangovers, but the tragedies all came from the same root: Maja Thurup was overhung, vastly overhung. No girl in the village would accept him. He had torn two girls to death with his instrument. One had been entered from the front, the other from the rear. No matter.

Maja was a lonely man and he drank and brooded over his loneliness until Hester Adams had come with guide and white skin and camera. After formal introductions and a few drinks by the fire, Hester had entered Maja's hut and taken all Maja Thurup could muster and had asked for more. It was a miracle for both of them and they were married in a three-day tribal ceremony, during which captured enemy tribesmen were roasted and consumed amid dancing, incantation, and drunkenness. It was after the ceremony, after the hangovers had cleared away that trouble began. The medicine man, having noted that Hester did not partake of the flesh of the roasted enemy tribesmen (garnished with pineapple, olives, and nuts) announced to one and all that this was not a white goddess, but one of the daughters of the evil god Ritikan. (Centuries ago Ritikan had been expelled from the tribal heaven for his refusal to eat anything but vegetables, fruits, and nuts.) This announcement caused dissension in the tribe and two friends of Maja Thurup were promptly murdered for suggesting that Hester's handling of Maja's overhang was a miracle in itself and the fact that she didn't ingest other forms of human meat could be forgiven—temporarily, at least.

Hester and Maja fled to America, to North Hollywood to be precise, where Hester began proceedings to have Maja Thurup become an American citizen. A former schoolteacher, Hester began instructing Maja in the use of clothing, the English language, California beer and wines, television, and foods purchased at the nearby Safeway market. Maja not only looked at television, he appeared on it along with Hester and they declared their love publicly. Then they went back to their North Hollywood apartment and made love. Afterwards Maja sat in the middle of the rug with his English grammar books, drinking beer and wine, and singing native chants and playing the bongo. Hester worked on her book about Maja and Hester. A major publisher was waiting. All Hester had to do was get it down.

One morning I was in bed about 8:00 a.m. The day before I had lost $40 at Santa Anita, my savings account at California Federal was getting dangerously low, and I hadn't written a decent story in a month. The phone rang. I woke up, gagged, coughed, picked it up.

“Chinaski?”

“Yeah?”

“This is Dan Hudson.”

Dan ran the magazine
Flare
out of Chicago. He paid well. He was the editor and publisher.

“Hello, Dan, mother.”

“Look, I've got just the thing for you.”

“Sure, Dan. What is it?”

“I want you to interview this bitch who married the cannibal. Make the sex BIG. Mix love with horror, you know?”

“I know. I've been doing it all my life.”

“There's $500 in it for you if you beat the March 27 deadline.”

“Dan, for $500, I can make Burt Reynolds into a lesbian.”

Dan gave me the address and phone number. I got up, threw water on my face, had two Alka-Seltzers, opened a bottle of beer and phoned Hester Adams. I told her that I wanted to publicize her relationship with Maja Thurup as one of the great love stories of the 20th century. For the readers of
Flare
magazine. I assured her that it would help Maja obtain his American citizenship. She agreed to an interview at 1:00 p.m.