The Cry of the Sloth (8 page)

During the past several months I have moved my bowels once every day with clockwork regularity. I mention this because the ai shits and pisses only once a week—a remarkable achievement for what seems otherwise a rather stupid animal. It does it at the base of its tree. It feeds on leaves and pawpaws. Studying the photos in my book, however, it seems to me its head is too small for its body, and not just because it appears to have no ears. We seem to have here a violation of some sort of universal law of proportions. Curiously, this is something I have thought about myself as well, that my head seems to be less than normal size. Did I never tell you that? I am not the only one to have thought this. At school they called me BB head. My head is, in fact, not exceptionally small, or only slightly smaller than the norm, as I have verified with statistics at my doctor’s. Do you remember it as being smaller than the norm? It only looks that way because my neck is unusually large, and in the absence of contrast the head appears smaller. A simple case of optical illusion. Nevertheless, I’m still self-conscious in this regard—the wounds of childhood never really heal, do they? I prefer winter for that reason, as it permits me to hide my neck in two turns of woolen scarf. Did you ever notice this about me?

You are thinking, aren’t you, how he does go on? And you are right, for I have not yet disposed of the ai. Perhaps you are not interested. Fortunately for me I can’t discern that from here. Poor Harold, you were always such a wonderful listener. In college I made jokes about the “agricultural engineer” I had for a roommate, amusing my friends with tales of your ineptness and bucolic ignorance, and your comical mispronunciations of unusual words. I still smile when I think how you would accent “plethora” and “amorous” on the second syllable. Marcus Quiller and I used to compete to see which of us could maneuver you into saying one of them in conversation. While in fact just being able to sit on my bed at night, and talk, and have you, in your bed, listen, were among the happiest moments of my college years, the only moments in which I felt I could be myself. I am sorry about the jokes now, perhaps because I have a feeling something similar is happening to me.

The ai (pronounced “I”) gets its name from the Portuguese in imitation of the whistling sound the baby of the species makes through its nostrils when it fears it has been abandoned by its mother. “Aie,” as you might know, is also the sound a French person makes when slightly wounded, equivalent to the English “ow.” Isn’t it wonderful how even something as natural as a cry of pain requires a listing in the dictionary? I was thinking someone should do a little booklet containing a list of those words from all the languages of the world, An International Dictionary of Pain. I think I’ll do that next. Meanwhile, I have been practicing, and I believe I have learned to do a pretty good imitation of the sloth’s cry. I place my thumbs firmly against the openings of my nostrils, blocking them completely. I then give a vigorous snort and at the same time fling both thumbs away from the nostrils in a decisive forward motion. The result is a woofling whistle which I imagine is quite close to what a young ai must sound like. I did it at the post office the other day when the clerk told me I had insufficient postage on my package. She was a mousy creature, so you can imagine the effect when I flung my thumbs from my nose in her direction and fired that noise at her. I could hear them all buzzing behind me as I was leaving the building. In the future I’ll always use this device when I want to express contempt, though that’s probably not what the baby ai does with it. Do your children imitate barnyard animals or is that something only city children do?

I see this letter is much too long. I wonder if you are still reading. Maybe you got fed up halfway through, and all this time I’ve been talking to nobody. Imagine a man in a room talking about himself, perhaps in a very boring way, while looking down at the floor. And while he goes on with his monologue, which as I said is of interest only to himself, one by one the other people in the room tiptoe away until he is all alone, the last one shutting the door silently behind him. Finally the man looks up and sees what has happened, and of course he is overcome by feelings of ridicule and shame. Maybe this letter is now at the bottom of your wastepaper basket, a tiny trivial voice in the depths of a tin well, rattling on and on. Is your wastepaper basket made of tin? How unbearably sad. If you have come with me this far, I want to say that I appreciate your company, and also your letters, and would like to have more of those, if you feel like writing again.

Andy

¶

Dear Mr. Watts,

I did receive the notice about the trash. I do understand that you cannot gather up any items that are not bagged, binned, or otherwise confined in approved receptacles. And yes, I am aware that this has happened before. I do not, however, feel that this justifies your use of the phrase “repeat offender.” Each time it has happened I have gone over there myself and picked it all up. If you drive by now you will find more than a sufficient number of trash cans; three, to be exact, unless one has been stolen already. It is really not my fault that they don’t use them.

Sincerely.

Andrew Whittaker

¶

Ahoy, Willy,

I have had no word from you about the April thing. I know it has been less than three weeks since I wrote, but I had assumed you would jump at the chance for that kind of exposure. Maybe your teaching job lets you feel secure enough that you can turn your back on the larger public, and even your old friends, if that’s what you are doing. I envy you the luxury of both. I myself have to descend every day into the pit and battle for a living, and I have been cursed with a dogged loyalty to anyone who has ever given me a pat on the head or a shake to my furry paw. After a month of tropical heat, it has been raining here for weeks. The newspaper is full of pictures of flooded farms. I am getting quite moldy. Moldy and morose. Morose and wondering why I am not hearing from Willy. I have at last begun work on the big novel I had been putting off for so long. I have bided my time, I have practiced my craft, I have collected experiences. And now the words are coming out perfect; I excrete them almost without effort. They land on the page and stay there. I envisage an oddly musical structure: a groaning basso profundo of despair broken by burlesque interludes and periodic shrieks of hysteria. I am especially fond of the shrieks—they strike me as just so
typical
. I think by next April I’ll have enough to be able to read a chapter or two at the gala. A lot of people around here have got used to thinking that I’ll never produce anything, and so that’s sure to make a splash.

Along with the novel, which is the really important thing, I have in the works a very funny parody of that bastard Troy Sokal, set in Wisconsin farm country, same place he puts his novels. Until you’ve tried it you can’t imagine how hard it is to write badly well. And I have ideas for a series of prose poems, little existential parables of tedium and despair, set in Africa probably.

I’d like to tell you more about everything, especially about what the last couple of years have been like, but right now my brand-new maid is turning the house upside down around my ears. I requested an experienced cleaning woman and they sent me a Mexican girl who has to ask how to turn on the vacuum. Charmingly shy, but a little too Aztec for my taste. From the neck down, though, she’s what people used to call a tomato.

Let me hear from you soon, as I’ll have to invite someone else if you really can’t make it.

All the best,

Andy

¶

Dear Peg,

Thank you for your note. I was already aware that I was a great disappointment to Papa and that you were a little princess. You are so disagreeable that I am sorry I ever wrote. Prior to reading your charming note, with its references to my intellectual capacities and my physique, there existed a large number of delightful pictures of you at all stages of childhood, including one on a pony. If you’d like me to send you a box with all the itty-bitty pieces, just let me know.

Your brother,

Andy

¶

The scene: a wide river, sluggish, muddy, some kind of estuary. It is in Africa probably. On both sides of the river, or estuary, a sandy desert stretches away as far as the eye can see. No trees, not even palm trees, dot the landscape. In the beginning, a group of children, boys and girls, dressed in sailor suits and pinafores, are playing, or attempting to play, in the sand. But the sand is extremely fine and dry, almost a dry powder, and they are able to construct only formless piles like anthills. In the face of repeated failures, sweating in their city clothes, the children become quarrelsome and listless, some one and some the other, the quarrelsome ones striking the listless ones sharply in the face or dumping handfuls of hot sand down their shirts, the listless ones lying down in the sand, weeping softly. (They will remember this later.) The grown-ups, meanwhile, men and women whose children these presumably are, also dressed in dark city clothes, the men with top hats and canes, the women with parasols and bustles and exaggerated bosoms, stand in little clusters on the bank, cluster in little stands there, like trees in a landscape without any, and discuss whether the darkish things they see far out in the river are logs, almost submerged after months in the water, or crocodiles. The discussion is tedious, anfractuous, inconclusive. In their heart of hearts, they all, adults and children, would like just to dive in and get it over with.

¶

Dear Anita,

What a terrible misunderstanding. I feel like a complete fool. You can well believe I had no idea you and Rick were back together. But if that’s really what you want, what can I do except wish you both all the best? I had meant to write a letter of tender reminiscence about a time that I foolishly thought was important to us both. It hurts me that you say it made you feel pawed. I’ll not write again.

Andy

¶

paint thinner

tile mastic

ant poison

garbage can

interior white

I write like my mother

post office

light bill

courthouse

pills

stay home

read

go somewhere

so. comfort

food

¶

Dear Dahlberg,

First you accuse me of rejecting your work out of anti-Canadian prejudice, and now you tell me that thanks to being published in
Soap
you were finally able to get laid. What do you expect me to do with this information?

Andy

¶

GET READY TO BOAST TO YOUR FRIENDS! 125 S. Spalding St. Three-story five-unit traditional style bldng. Two units available. Each unit 2 bdrm 1 bath. Distinctive arched doorways. Some new wndows. New paint last year. Conveniently located in quiet neighborhood near Interstate. Lighted parking. LIVE FIRST MONTH RENT FREE wth 1 yr lease. $110 + utils.

¶

Dear Jolie,

I have been having some kind of trouble with my eyes. They are bloodshot, and the slightest glare is painful. It seems to me the whites have acquired a yellow cast that makes me look like a drunk.

*

The sun has finally reappeared, having used its two weeks absence to move farther to the south than when we last saw it. With the elm tree gone, there is now nothing to prevent it blazing in through the living room windows for the better part of the day. See above.

*

I don’t talk to anyone for days on end. At the grocery store this morning, when I reached the checkout counter and asked the girl for a pack of cigarettes, my voice cracked. I tried to make a joke about it, but she backed away. So I just left.

*

Nixon was on television, performing. With the sound turned off, he might have been anyone.

*

I went around the house with the maid, pointing out what I wanted her to do. I talked constantly, even though she did not understand two words of what I was saying, while she smiled blankly.

*

Someone says, “I know I talk too much, please forgive me,” and then goes on and on about that.

*

I am astonished by your suggestion that I “suspend” the magazine for—I think you said—“a couple of years.”

*

I have nothing to say, really. Strange, isn’t it.

Love,

Andy

¶

Dear Mrs. Brud:

I have your letter. I don’t know how long ago you wrote it, as there is no date. When you write in pencil on the back of a flyer advertising gutter repairs and stick it under a person’s door, do not expect prompt replies, for it may happen, as it did in fact happen, that the person will take it for an advertising flyer, as in most respects it still is, and if he also is not feeling well and does not like to bend over, because of a noise he hears when he does that, along with a slight breathlessness, he might not pick it up immediately but might instead walk on it for several days before his cleaning woman, who comes for only an hour once a week and who is inexperienced and worried that she might throw away some valuable document, shows it to him while asking “O.K. I toss this?” at which point he looks. I don’t care what you told Mr. Brud. I did not try to push you into the bedroom. I was doing my best to maneuver you away from the front windows, for your sake as much as for mine. And I was saying “please,” not “squeeze.” Furthermore, I am
not
hiding. I was not home when you came and so could not have been “peeking out.” I am not afraid of Mr. Brud. And I do not want you to forgive me. I want you to pay your rent.

Andrew Whittaker

The Whittaker Company

¶

Dear Vikki,

I think publicity is the first thing, or one of the first things. It seems to me important to give people the impression that something is happening, even if nothing is happening. What do you think of this?

Andy

PRESS RELEASE

Soap,
the nationally acclaimed literary journal, has made public its plans for an annual literary festival. Though rumors of such a festival have been bandied about in literary circles for several months, this is the first official statement from the magazine itself.