The Big Why (30 page)

Me: I would count you, Gerald, amongst my allies if I ever waged a war on mediocrity.

Your letters make you sound like Saint Sebastian. But I dont see the arrow wounds.

The arrows didnt kill Sebastian. He was still alive, so they beat him up.

What kind of man would it take to beat up a saint with a chestful of arrows.

He wasnt a saint at the time of the beating.

A window behind us was open. I leaned over and closed it.

That’s something the younger generation doesnt have, Kent — that ability to do something.

Close a window?

Not only the ability but the gumption.

Youre too easily impressed, Gerald.

All we’re doing, Kent. Is assembling the dark and light. That woman of mine, she will divorce well.

Is that what they say of Alma?

That’s what I’m saying.

I got up to piss. There were pitchers full of lime and lemon wedges sitting in a sink of crushed ice. A coal heater glowing orange. When I returned, Gerald: How could you urinate and wash your hands so fast?

His hands locked, and then he looked into his hands. The palms. Where the fingers lock in that ladder of knuckles.

Gerald: My father’s book. Do you know theyre using it now?

Who’s using it.

Our beautiful war department.

Theyre going to make our boys look like animals?

They’ll have dark spots on top and light on the bottom.

Little fuzzy ears would be excellent camouflage.

My father is now — do you know where he is? He is in the West Indies. Abbott Thayer is looking for a flamingo. He wants to lie in a marsh at dusk and see if it disappears against the setting sun.

Your father is pretending he is an alligator.

He wants to go unnoticed.

Well, may he blend in. I certainly havent.

You dont get it. For him it’s all to do with blending in. But the flamingo, he’s trying to find a mate. It’s all about sex.

I stared hard at Gerald. Is that, I said, what the world boils down to? Camouflage and flare?

We raised our glasses to camouflage and flare.

Gerald: I got drunk so fast I’m gonna shit my bed tonight.

Me: Do you think we drink too much?

It’s not a problem, yet. And if we drank this beer all the time we wouldnt drink so much.

The beer you’ll end up sipping like scotch.

It’s not very good, but it’ll get you drunk.

Another round. But I could see that Gerald was losing it. He was concerned with his weight.

Me: If youre heavy stay heavy.

So you think consistency is the plan.

You shouldnt change your body, Gerald. If you put on weight then lose it then put it on again, that’s worse than maintaining the weight. That’s how you live a long life.

You live a long life, Gerald said, by achieving a poise.

And we drank to that.

That woman over there, he said. She’s got that baby fat and a want.

Youre married, Gerald.

He wheeled to me: Dont fuck with me, Kent, or I’ll put on more weight.

He said theyre close to separating. Alma’s alienation is on a deep level. Gerald: Am I building up the alienation, or is it as serious as all that.

Me: That’s a pretty damn unhappy thought.

I’ve had a lot of difficulty with the children, Kent. I think they came too soon. My work is so important and it takes up a lot of time.

You guys dont spend time well together.

I smoke cigarettes, one every other day.

We both looked at the woman. We were reminded of Jenny.

Me: Dont you love getting your asshole licked?

It’s nice. It’s been a while. But I’ll tell you what’s nicer, Kent. And that’s the spot between your asshole and the bag of your balls. To have a woman’s tongue lick you there. Lick you like a cat.

Me: The thing most people have trouble with is loving themselves.

No, it’s not, he said. It’s allowing love to move them. Accepting the risk.

He wanted to bicycle home. He wanted to steal a bicycle.

Me: Youre gonna perambulate.

That’s not a word you hear very often in here. You hear paramedic, but. Jesus, let’s get out of here.

As we passed the woman he said this: Your earrings remind me of the lamps in Barcelona.

On our way back to his house he said, I think I might have syphilis.

I looked at the gleam on his coat buttons.

The rim of my foreskin. It has a puckered-eyelid look to it. I can’t remember if it always looked like that.

Me: Do you want me to look at it.

I’d like you, yeah. Let’s dart in here.

I watched his hands unbuckle his pants. The weather was growing worse. He heaved out a generous cock.

Jesus that’s some bit of dangle.

Just look at the crown.

I think that’s the way it looks, but my God youre a horse.

He said his legs had got skinny since he’d stopped bicycling.

We walked back to Gerald’s as a snow began to blow. It quickly turned into a blizzard. In the cold of winter, Gerald said, the buildings in a city are like hardwood trees that have lost their leaves.

Then we were sunk into a heavy dark. We had gone blind.

The power grid, Gerald said. The power’s out. The whole damn city. Look at Brooklyn. Come on, let’s walk down to the Hudson.

We walked to the river and out onto a wooden pier where large ferries stood moored and lit up. We witnessed the snow melt into the dark water. I admire, Gerald said, these bright ships with their independent light.

Theyre like floating towns.

We appreciated these city-states, and Brooklyn joyfully lit in the distance, while at our back the cold buildings stood mouthless, black, perplexed.

I was thinking about Jesus, he said, and if he ever asked for help. And there is one time. He asks this woman for a glass of water.

Because he’s thirsty?

He’s parched. But with Jesus you have to watch it. Because he’s cunning. He’s always looking for moments to preach.

Yes he never really talks except with an ulterior motive.

Living water. He tells her about the living water.

When we got back to Gerald’s I took a bath. I bent my knees at the faucets and let my ears sink under the suds. The sizzle of suds. I listened for the subway. For the shunk of heavy steel shuttling through underground passages. It comforted me, that intelligent transportation. Then I crashed on his couch. In the morning I saw him on his bed. His shoes still on. Alma was not around. I made coffee. The children came downstairs and I made them eggs. When Gerald got up, it was like a shell of him. His eyes opening up, his lips a crease. Barely alive. He grabbed a tin of oatmeal. Keeps me regular, he said. Then brightened. It’s not a dump, it’s an event.

There was a note on the table. His eyes blinking back flashes of wet. He was holding the note.

I hate it when my wife asks mechanical engineers to go to California with her. Tell me, last night, were there white tablecloths?

What?

At the Aloha.

Yes Gerald.

That’s me, isnt it, five-star. I’m so fucking five-star.

The children went to school and we had lunch in the restau-rant we’d first met Jenny Starling in. You cannot love without hating, Gerald said. And hating hard. It has to do with someone you love leaving you.

He was thinking of Alma. I wondered who was leaving me. My father had left. And since then I had done the leaving. Everything that had happened to me was because of my choosing. And now this rebellion in Brigus. It was beyond my control, and it made me resentful.

I had a rosebud from my mother’s greenhouse. To bring back to Kathleen, I said. My mother had picked it. She pulverized the stem to allow it to preserve better. To retain water. She loved Kathleen.

I told this to Gerald and he said, I can’t understand the lack of repercussions youre facing. You seem to be getting away with it.

With what, I said.

With willing your life and hang the consequences.

I told him, then, of how it had come to be that I was considered a German spy. It all began, I said, with my attempt to blame the wrong man for the seal hunt. Then there’s been suspicion about the coal I bought. They seriously think that I have tools to make a bomb. That I’m supplying a German submarine. That I’m painting war maps. That I have money.

I said, But why do repercussions have to be negative? Why can’t I enjoy the positive fallout.

Pause.

You know, Gerald said. And you havent been at all deceitful. I think that’s an interesting point.

The one thing I havent mentioned, I said, is a woman.

He liked to hear this.

I said her name. Emily.

Yes, I know her, Gerald said. It was as if it didnt interest him. She loves your work.

You dont know her.

I know the type. Yeah. And I can tell from your eyes that youve slept with her.

I have not slept with her.

He laughed at me. I hated this laugh. His laugh knew that I was trying to be a greater man than I was. His laugh said, You will sleep with her.

Our job, Gerald said, is to marry our selfishness with our goodness. Poise. You hurt people, Kent, you betray them. Not because you want to, but because of an abundance of desire.

Which is another word for joy. How can that be wrong?

You have curiosity.

I dont want to be a hypocrite. I dont want to value art over life.

Gerald: Or the other way around.

Exactly.

If they were separate, then you could justify your struggle of conscience.

Me: I wouldnt
have
a struggle of conscience.

This whole discussion, this lifelong thing you have, it’s all about you being at pains to justify the betrayals youve committed in the name of art.

But I havent separated them.

Maybe not, but the very curiosity that makes your art good is what gets you into trouble domestically.

Art does not justify personal betrayal.

So theyre separate. Or the personal wins out.

I’m trying to find a balance.

You make it sound like some equilibrium between joy and joylessness.

Well, that’s my character, Gerald.

Your character, not your art, is what has burdened you with having to cope with your own betrayal.

Thank you, Gerald, for that rationalization.

Well, someone without your sexual drive doesnt have to deal with it.

Are you saying that I am passionate and sensual?

I’m stressing the reverse: if Kathleen is congratulating herself on having more restraint than you, then that’s false. Her fidelity doesnt mean she has more willpower. Just less drive.

I dont think she’s congratulating herself. I think she’s hurt.

You want to live your life well, Kent. So that you dont have to be discreet. So youre not racked with guilt.

Discretion is a vain pursuit.

There’s no need for secrets when youre a man with a clear conscience. All of this worry about doing the right thing becomes irrelevant when there’s nothing to hamper the free expression of yourself.

I met up with Rufus Weeks. Let’s meet, he said, at the Bankers Club.

I’ll wear my cufflinks, I said.

The Bankers Club is on Broadway. It’s the hub of the world’s finances. I took the elevator to the thirty-fourth floor. Rufus dining at a corner window. He was a runt of a man with a lot of contempt. His contempt was his fuel. It made him unlikeable. Even though his argument was just (avoid war), his motives were not mine. He had investments, he was an internationalist. Rufus Weeks did not want his countries ruined, either by war or by freedom: his businesses prospered because they was no competition. Yes, you stared at this man’s small, expensive coat and smelt a meanness. Who would want to be run by a man like Rufus Weeks. It was a shame that a good cause (revolution) had to be ruined because of a man like him. But the truth is, the cause would never have had motion without a man like him. Look at me. What had budged in Newfoundland because of me.

Kent, he said. He smiled, but he did not get up. His smile was a lifting of lips from his teeth.

I took the
Glencoe
back to St John’s. I realized I was living in the age of the shift from sail to steam. I was witnessing the decline of a way of life. Brigus was an old seaport that had promised to dominate but was losing out to St John’s.

St John’s. It was Valentine’s Day when I arrived. I was alone in the world of love. At least, I felt alone. I delivered a copy of my birth certificate to James Benedict, the U.S. consul. When you carry your birth certificate you feel alone. The thing is, we’re all very much alike in the core of our bones. We’re alone and it’s Valentine’s Day. At least, that’s how you feel if you have the luxury to feel it. It’s true that all my life I’ve given myself the space to think that thought. It’s a brave thought and I’ve always admired courage.