Authors: Paul Metcalf
or like Melville’s Benito Cereno, a man trapped . . .
We walked down alleys and across vacant lots, pausing with grandiose watchfulness at the corners . . . more than once we doubled back on ourselves . . . at the corner of a narrow street, among warehouses, we stopped, smoked a cigarette, appeared casual . . . then moved slowly down the street, turned into an alley, and knocked at a lighted door. A man—short, bald-headed—opened after a moment, recognized and admitted Carl, and stared hard at me. I was passed, on Carl’s word, and we moved through a long corridor, down some stairs, and, opening another door, entered a large, low-ceilinged room, filled with men, mostly middle-aged and beyond. Packing cases were set up at one side, serving as a bar, and there was a rudimentary stage, a raised platform, with overhead lighting, at the far end of the room. Nearby, a man beat notes out of a decrepit piano. Tables and chairs were scattered about, facing the stage. A few whores circulated among the men. We took a table, and I waited, looked around, while Carl went to the bar for drinks. The place had a familiar aspect, and I recognized it, from movies and
TV
, as a duplicate of the old western music hall and saloon—bar along the side, tables and chairs in the middle, stage across the end of the room. The girls were in character.
Carl picked up a girl at the bar, brought her back with him, sat her between us. She was a gorgeous negress. The lights in the room flashed and went out, leaving only the stage lights. The men applauded, took their seats . . .
In a moment, a girl appeared on the stage. Tall, blonde, she wore a green evening dress, covered with tiny spangles, and her equipment included various accessories—gloves, scarves, fake fur, a jacket—to be handled, manipulated, shifted, and disposed of. She came to the front of the stage, so the light fell directly on her head and shoulders, creating shadows under her curves; she was still, hands held before her, her eyes, not calculating, not innocent, taking in the room.
The piano began to thump . . . the girl tapped her foot, her knee shaking the vertical lines of the gown . . . finger by finger, she removed one glove . . .
I sat back, the liquor, the closeness of the room, the people, the negress at my side, filling me. Carl and I lit cigars. There was satisfaction in the show, in the girl’s presence on the stage, and I realized that in the flat gray of movies and television I had built up a hunger for just this: whatever the medium, just the flesh, here, in the room . . .
(I recall, now, that, here in Indianapolis, the one burlesque theatre has been closed, to be converted into a revival hall . . .
(as, in England, the Puritans closed the Elizabethan theatres, before getting to that other menace, the naked American Indian . . .
One by one the girl’s accessories were removed and tossed aside. She stood in the strapless gown, at the very front of the stage, the light slanting on her from behind. There was, in her erect figure, an illusion of beauty, dignity, judgment, wisdom—of all desirable and satisfying values . . .
She turned, ambled upstage, and her hand went to the zipper in the small of her back . . .
(and I thought that this was as intimate, as naughty as A Peep At Polynesian Life, Melville’s T
YPEE
. . .
Turning again, she held the now unsupported gown with her fingers, cupping her breasts, practicing all manner of delay and ruse, before revealing herself.
Carl leaned in front of the negress to speak to me, and I tilted toward him, so that our heads met over her breasts . . . the liquor had gone to his voice, as well as to my head, and I couldn’t make out all that he said, but his manner was professorial, instructive—something about the importance of revelation, as opposed to objective study—the loss, in a society with a scientific bias, of the art of discovery . . . the negress remained immobile, her eyes flashing, a smile rich on her face . . .
Little by little, the performer’s gown came off, to the applause of the hard-breathing men . . . she stood, displayed herself, in a g-string . . . the applause grew harder,
and my body froze: a negro, full black, appeared on the stage, stripped to the waist—the girl went to him, stood before him, facing front, and in the white light, his large, magnificent hands moved over her . . .
The quality of breathing in the room, the girl’s eyes, all changed . . . I couldn’t look at the dark girl beside me . . .
(Daggoo, in
M
OBY
-D
ICK
:
“Who’s afraid of black’s afraid of me! I’m quarried out of it!”
(and Melville, elsewhere: “. . . as though a white man were anything more dignified than a white-washed negro.”
I turned to Carl, just to see him rise, move to the back of the room, and the door . . . following him, I reached the door after he was already gone . . . I paused, glanced once more at the stage . . .
the girl was naked . . . the negro dropped to his knees before her, clutched her buttocks with his hands, and drew her toward him . . .
I found Carl on the sidewalk, his feet shifting, almost dancing, his eyes wild . . . as soon as I came up, he took off, and I struggled to keep up with him, following his back as fast as I could, down deserted streets and alleys . . . I ran as I had not run in years, perhaps never before, the light and heavy beat of my stride echoing from the buildings, the cold air burning in my lungs . . .
When I woke up, it was early morning, and I was sprawled across Carl’s bed, hat and overcoat still on, my head hanging between bed and wall. I sat up, discovered Carl sitting on the floor, his head propped against the wall. He was surrounded by books and comic books, smoking a cigar, and reading
SUPERMAN
in startling
3-D,
holding to his face the 3-dimensional glasses that come with the book—a bit of green cellophane before the left eye, and red before the right . . . turning the pages, laughing. Beside him, open at various places, were the volumes of Sappho, Homer, and Crane that I had seen before, a good many more comic books . . . and a copy of Melville’s C
LAREL
.
Seeing me awake, he lit another cigar, handed it to me. I smoked, held my head in my hands, tried to reconstruct the evening. Carl finished S
UPERMAN
, picked up C
LAREL
, and
Seeing me awake, he lit another cigar, handed it to me. I smoked, held my head in my hands, tried to reconstruct the evening. Carl finished S
UPERMAN
, picked up C
LAREL
, and
Seeing me awake, he lit another cigar, handed it to me. I smoked, held my head in my hands, tried to reconstruct the evening. Carl finished S
UPERMAN
, picked up C
LAREL
, and
all at once, the tobacco went to my stomach . . . I made a rush to the hand basin, was violently ill . . .
(Melville: “While for him who would fain revel in tobacco, but cannot, it is a thing at which philanthropists must weep, to see such an one, again and again, madly returning to the cigar, which, for his incompetent stomach, he cannot enjoy, while still, after each shameful repulse, the sweet dream of the impossible good goads him on to his fierce misery once more—poor eunuch!”
Staggering to the bed, I was galled to see Carl unmoved, reading. Shifting himself, expanding his diaphragm, holding C
LAREL
before him, he read aloud:
“And he, the quaffer of the brine,
Puckered with that heart-wizening wine
Of bitterness, among them sate
Upon a camel’s skull, late dragged
From forth the wave, the eye-pits slagged
With crusted salt.”
I made it to the basin just in time, hung over it a long time . . . there was nothing in me. When I got back to the bed, Carl had changed: not considerate, or even interested, he was watchful . . . then his eyes went back to C
LAREL
, and he read:
“. . . Sequel may ensue,
Indeed, whose germs one now may view:
Myriads playing pygmy parts—
Debased into equality:
In glut of all material arts
A civic barbarism may be:
Man disennobled—brutalized
By popular science—”
. . . he was declaiming, posturing outlandishly . . . and he threw down the book, picked up S
UPERMAN
again, with the little red and green glasses . . .
Squeezing my head in my hands, I closed my eyes. When I looked up, all color had vanished. Carl, the furniture, the room appeared in shades of gray. . . I blinked several times, my eyelids serving as the shutter of a movie camera, then closed my eyes . . .
and behind the closed lids, I saw the room in color, but in disconnected, monocular images, one for each eye . . . in addition, there was a partition, a wall, reaching from the wall of the room to the vertical center of my face, separating the two images . . .
I opened my eyes again, and was at once dizzy: everything that I saw was inverted, upside down . . . rolling onto the bed, I buried my face in the pillow . . .
I slept through most of the day . . . when I got up again, it was late afternoon, and I was alone. Though weak and hungry, I was slept out . . . my body was quiet. I stood by the bed for some moments . . . emptiness and loneliness—the loneliness of public rooms, of personal things used and not loved—entered me. Books were put away, basin washed, ashtrays clean . . . Carl had erased himself from the room . . .
I found him at the shop—busy, loquacious, crisp—with no sign of fatigue. But his manner to me had changed . . . the warmth, the cordiality were gone, not deliberately, but in spite of himself, against his own will . . . I sat for some minutes, listening, chatting with him, trying to find what was there when I had first arrived, the morning before . . . but it was gone, the episode finished.
When he was between customers, I got up, prepared to leave. He followed me to the sidewalk, and we stood for some time at the corner, looking at the curb, at the street, at the gray darkening sky. It was already early evening, another night beginning—the streetlights and neon signs flickered on. Once more I tried to reach him, if only in a direct look from his eyes . . . he held my glance for an instant, and then changed—his posture, his manner, the very structure of his face—something kin to the look of poverty that I had seen before, but not quite the same . . . his shoulders collapsed inward, his eyes were downcast, his face troubled, his head moved restlessly . . .
I thought of the purpose of this visit, of my coming to St. Louis: that I was trying only to reach him, to open a channel . . . of how I had failed, how he had swept me into his own condition, and I had permitted it, allowed myself to become a part of all that he was caught in . . .
(Melville: “From being cast away with a brother, good God deliver me!”
I thought of Melville, separated from Hawthorne . . . and of Columbus, at Valladolid, no longer able to reach the court . . .
I thought of China, the
POW
camp, of California and Joey: . . . I thought that what is more terrible, even, than all that Carl had done, was the original misery of his being, of his coming to be in a condition that made it possible . . .
Melville: “So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affection; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill.”
I remembered the letter Carl had sent me, from the institution, announcing his complete cure . . .
“So far may even the best men err, in judging the conduct of one with the recesses of whose condition he is not acquainted” . . . Melville
I put a hand on his shoulder, took his hand into my other . . . he looked up, raised a smile, a little warmth . . . but it was not Carl . . .
The wind swept around the east corner . . . he looked cold . . . I gave him a squeeze, he slapped me on the shoulder, his chest expanding once more, and we parted . . .