IN & OZ: A Novel (11 page)

“She’s not the type to brag,” he answered cryptically. “But it’s good you’ve come. I don’t know where Composer is. . . .”

Composer, Mechanic thought heavily.

“. . .it’s the last book she created before she took up dirt as her medium. The publisher—a small experimental press—brought it out two years late,” Photographer explained, “so it’s important we support her. She was supposed to go on a book tour, but this was the only store that would have her. And they only did it because she works here.”

Watching her silently read from her work, her lips moving, Mechanic began to understand how Photographer communicated so easily with her, how his own parents had found the need to speak lessen as their fifty-year marriage wore on until finally all they had to do to let the other know what they were thinking was to be in the same room. Somehow, sitting there before her, not expected to speak, under no pressure to carry his end, or both ends of a conversation, it was easier to listen. Or rather, an understanding of what she was saying would come over him though she spoke no words, the wrinkle of her forehead speaking volumes, as did the arch of an eyebrow, a frown, or twitch so subtle that he would never have even seen it before, looking down at his shoes as he struggled to come up with something to say.

Afterwards, the two men went up to congratulate her, and Mechanic thought that at least now he knew that she was a poet. But her book,
The Machine That Never Works: A Manual
, was thick as his fist, and shaped like a schematic symbol for—what? A valve? A heart? That is, it was a sculpture, and opening it he expected its inside to be blank: for if what she read resulted in silence, what she read must have been blank. She wasn’t mute. He had asked Photographer about that after meeting her and according to him she actually had a beautiful reading/singing voice. It’s just that after taking up dirt as her medium, she wouldn’t use it any longer. Unless there was something really worth saying. And her silence
did
point out how trite, how unnecessary most, if not all, conversation actually was. But this book
was
her work, after all, so if she didn’t speak it, what else could she possibly consider worth saying?

But the book wasn’t blank at all. When he opened it up, visual poems poured out: warranty cards, blueprints; a wiring-harness diagram folded out into a geodesic dome the size of a breadbox: a book of poetry that was a sculpture, or a sculpture in the form of a book that was poetry? Thumbing through its pages, trying to imagine what machine all the documents and drawings could refer to, he began to wonder if by “works” she meant “works right.”

Photographer grabbed the book from his hands, then handed it to her for an autograph.

“I would like to buy a copy also,” Mechanic said, drawing out his wallet, miffed by the way Photographer had snatched the book away.

Poet (Sculptor) pretended as if she hadn’t heard him, her tongue stuck out in concentration as she fashioned a dedication to Photographer in the book’s flyleaf—more of a drawing than a signature.

“Are you sure?” Photographer asked. “Each book is twenty-five thousand dollars, you know.”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars?” Mechanic repeated, looking at the two limp bills in his billfold.

“And it’s sold. As in ‘Sold out.’ The entire print run has sold out.”

“Your book has sold out?” Mechanic repeated, incredulous. And not a little relieved. “That’s fantastic!”

Poet (Sculptor) shrugged.

“Of course there was only one copy,” Photographer said, making Mechanic afraid that he had accidentally slighted her again, that she had shrugged out of embarrassment for having such a small print run. “Mine.”

Or was she embarrassed for him, shrugging to minimize her victory because she was a good sport, a good winner, having sold every copy while she knew the difficulty he was having in getting an audience for his work. She looked back down into the elaborate signature/dedication she was drawing for Photographer.

“When the philistine publisher who held her manuscript hostage learned how much the book would cost to produce,” Photographer was explaining, “they tried to back out. They claimed that the special dies and plates that were needed to make her manuscript into the three-dimensional book she wanted would bankrupt their little kitchen-table operation. But she had a contract, and if she eliminated the sculptural nature that made her book her book it wouldn’t be her book. It would be nothing, so what would be the point? It was difficult, very difficult, huh?” he asked Poet (Sculptor). Her smile twisted into a wry look as though remembering a war story, or a story of a mass migration that had turned out well, though it was nonetheless still painful. “Many times she nearly gave in but I wouldn’t let her eliminate a single Braille dot,” he said, winking happily at Poet (Sculptor). “Unfortunately, its production costs did consume all of the publisher’s assets, and in the end, the strain to bring out this one copy cost them their office, that is their kitchen, along with the rest of the business, that is their house.

“But the true bottom line is that the book came into the world in the form it was meant to be, I was able to buy it, and since the publishers put such a high price on the book, they will be sure to reopen their doors. Or at least open a new kitchen-table operation under a different name. So you see, it was a win-win situation!”

Mechanic said nothing, remembering how his own mechanic’s business had gone under. Would he have been better off compromising? What would that even mean? Making every other repair regular? Repairing every car half way?. . . He sighed heavily, wishing he had looked harder for a way to stay out of the tollbooth. . . .

“Don’t look so disappointed,” Photographer said, turning the book to look when she had finished the dedication, “now that the book has sold out, there’s sure to be a second printing. We are in negotiations with the publisher right now. Or at least will be once they return my calls, isn’t that right?” Photographer didn’t allow her to release the book as he took it from her, though. Instead, he took Mechanic’s hand and placed it on top of hers. “Now that the publishers realize what they should have thought of before they even went into publishing,” he said, bobbing the book in cadence with their hands upon it. “Your art, your life, your love is not the place to be timid.” He pronounced the words solemnly, looking directly at her as though he was some kind of judge, or minister conducting a ceremony with the book between them, and the emotionless mask that her face became, the way her eyes refused to meet Mechanic’s was as meaningful as some secret handshake he had been allowed to participate in, if not understand.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“When I took my job at the tollbooth,” Mechanic lamented to Photographer, back in Photographer’s camera-house after the reading, after the two of them had labored for the rest of the day to get his broken car back to Mechanic’s garage, “I thought I would enjoy swimming in a sea of cars.” The oceanic hiss and rush of cars on the bridge continued its accompaniment beneath their feet. “But I didn’t figure on how depressing the drivers could be, only concerned with getting from point A to point B, never giving their vehicles a thought unless it was to gild these lilies by the addition of fuzzy dice, or toy dogs whose heads bob up and down.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Photographer sighed sympathetically. “Perhaps you would be happier in a less people-oriented line of work, like gravedigger.” He poured Mechanic another cup of tea.

“Sometimes I feel like such a fool.” He pointed to his name stitched over his shirt pocket. “The toll-road uniform is exactly the same as my old mechanic’s uniform. I didn’t even have to change clothes.”

“Ach, don’t be so hard on yourself,” Photographer scoffed, hearing none of it. “What else were you to do?—Go on making ‘
repairs’
? Only a werewolf can write like a court reporter all day and howl poems at the moon by night. That’s why I quit making photographs with film entirely.”

“But even if I take off this uniform,” Mechanic said, trying to make his point clearer, “under my clothes my body is still the same.”

Photographer pulled his chair closer. “Listen my friend, let me tell you a story. At my darkest moment, when all the world told me that I was crazy for wanting to change the world with my movies—
Ha!
—I began—like you—to wonder if in fact black was white and white, like they said, black. But chance, or Zeus, or fate or whatever it is that sends to us what we most need in our hour of need, sent to me a story from my youth, the story of Adam’s Peak: the highest point on earth, protruding from The Garden of Eden to a height halfway between the strife of the earth’s surface and the serenity of the lowest sphere of heaven, the moon. From this peak, it was said, Adam could hold the entire world in one, unframed view—and I clung to this story as if my life depended on it. This is why I moved to this house atop the toll bridge. At the time, it was the highest point around, even higher than OZ. A person could see all the way to the sea from this spot. But then, of course, OZ grew like a new mountain range, blocking the view. No matter, that was also about the time I realized I was losing my sight.”

“What do you mean you’re losing your sight?” Mechanic asked, recalling a creeping stiffness in his own fingers that made it increasingly difficult to hold a wrench.

Photographer nodded. “I am going blind.”

“No!”

“All those years of standing in the place of film, focusing light on my eyes, is making them useless. So I practice by closing my eyes. And I discovered that if the essence of photography is seeing, the essence of seeing is the mind.”

“You mean you are actually losing your sight?”

“From that day on, I determined to make a genre of photography no one else could see, one that when I died, would die with me—and that, my friend, is the essence of art. And of life.” He paused a moment, then added, “And that is also why she has feelings for you.”

“She?” A wild hope went through Mechanic, thinking for a minute that Photographer had meant Designer. But seeing him nod solemnly, it became clear why Photographer had insisted he attend the meeting of the Anti-Billboardistas; why he had called him a blockhead that night after the concert; why he had been agitated at Mechanic for nearly missing a reading. All of these instances had one common denominator. “She told you that?” he asked.

“Not in words, of course.” He pulled something out from under his chair. A bicycle chain. One of its links was missing. And Mechanic came to know that it was from her bicycle and that she wanted him to fix it.

Only a few short months ago, he would have known what to do with a clarity that he had never had before or since. A friend who would ask him to make a repair could be no friend. Could be only an enemy, a brute without the slightest understanding of him or his work. And Photographer would have agreed. But now, looking at the rusted chain draped between Photographer’s two fists, its stiff links bowed into the outline of a valentine, Mechanic was so confused he wanted to cry.

So Photographer couldn’t see the emotion coming over him, he pushed his face in his hands.

“Let me explain with another story,” Photographer said. “For different stories are meaningful to us at different times in our lives. Isn’t that right? The Sur myth for an artist is not the story of Adam’s Peak, I, now wiser, understand, but The Tower of Babel, though the tower gets far too much attention in most retellings of the story. For you see, God’s wrath wasn’t over the tower, the presumption of man making an artificial Adam’s peak out of brick. As it says in the Bible, the people of Babel only set out on this project because they wanted to make a name for themselves. In other words, take possession of language, what made humans human. And God, being the ironic comedian that He is, always gets even with His challengers by giving them what they want. In spades. ‘You want language, then here’s language!’ He thundered, His Voice so powerful that its sound shattered the one tongue they spoke into many—making them even more human.

“Yet, therein lies the first of two lessons any artist can live by: to resolve yourself to an earnestness of such intensity that you will succeed gloriously—or fail so tragically that your failure will become as legendary as success—the inevitable fate of a mortal who challenges the gods. For you see, though God knocked down their tower, scattered their tongue, the people of Babel did make a name for themselves, as we prove each time we retell the story of their failure. And that name is ‘people,’ i.e., all of us.”

“And the other lesson?” Mechanic asked.

“Live where you work,” Photographer said, tapping his skull. He closed his eyes. “Work where you live,” he added, tapping his skull as he continued, “Pracuj tam, kde žiješ,” and “Vive donde trabajas,” and “Leofa flær flu wyrcst,” and
and “Tinggallah dimana saudara bekerja,” and “Vivez où vous travaillez,” and “Ni zhai na ni gong zuo jiu zhai na ni sheng huo,” and “Hataraku tokoro wa seikatsu no ba de aru,” and “Vive ubi laboras,” and “Mieszkaj gdzie pracujesz.,” and “Woon waar je werkt,” and
and “Vivi dove lavori,” and “Woon waar jy werk,” and
and “Lebe wo du arbeitest,” and “Auskon aeina tashtaghel,” and
and “Viva onde trabalha,” and “Bo hvor du arbeider,” and “Goor aeifo ta’vod.” He opened his mouth to an ‘O’ and popped it with the flat of his hand to sound “.-. . . . . . .-./.--. . . . . .-. ./-.-----. .-/.-----.-. -.-.-.-.-.” He continued tapping his skull, saying, “Menya okhola mirimo,” and
and “Dz
vo tur, kur tu strādā,” and “Zhivi, gde rabotaesh’,” and “Yoo tee tum ngahn,” and
and “Hidup dimana kamu bekerja,” and “Hidup lah dimana anda bertugas,” and
and “Bo hvor du arbeider.” Turning his hands into a language, he signed:
Then he said,
and “Elä, missä työskentelet,” and “Bo där du arbetar,” and
and
and “Živi tamo gdje radis,” and “Gyvenk ten, kur dirbi,” and “Manum operi qua vixi,” and