Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
Jesse stared at Monk and could think of no reply.
Monk said vaguely, as he looked out the window, “I met her or someone like her at the Tupperware Corner, where I give poetry readings. I read them my Nixon sonnet a dozen times. They always ask for it, it’s an audience-pleaser. I am working on another poem about the President. But I have trouble keeping track of my notebook. People are anxious to see what I’m doing, so they borrow it. They don’t steal, they don’t mean harm. But the notebook is not here now, I notice. Are you
sitting on it? I have a problem with the central image. I want the scene to be the Washington Easter-egg roll, and I want a giant egg that will crack open so that the President can step out of it, but at the same time … I have this disturbing, maddening image of a baked potato … yes … a very American baked potato that is cut open, and it too will reveal the President.… Art is hallucinatory, it comes up out of the depths and cannot be explained. It is instinctive. I must follow my instincts and I can’t decide between these two images.”
“You gave a poetry reading,” Jesse said. “That was last week, wasn’t it? And my daughter somehow met you, talked with you at that time …?”
“The Tupperware Corner, a coffeehouse. I’m their star. They have my picture on the wall next to Mae West and Calvin Coolidge. It was the picture that ran in the
New York Times
two years ago, did you happen to see it? A professor at Columbia put together an anthology of antiwar poems and he asked me for a poem. Well, I didn’t have anything about Vietnam or any other war, but everyone really wanted me in this anthology because of my reputation in the Village here, they wanted to spread me across the nation … they are so kind … well, I had a poem on the central nervous system, four pages long, so I retitled it ‘Vietnam’ and somehow it became the star of the anthology … the
New York Times
singled it out to discuss.… Here, I have the picture handy. Don’t think I’m aggressive about this, really I am only part of a national movement and in advancing myself I am advancing all my brothers and sisters. See, here.…” He searched through the pockets of his tight-fitting trousers. Jesse watched him with apprehension. But Monk did have a wallet, made of imitation reptile skin, and he took from it a news clipping that had been covered carefully with transparent adhesive tape. Just the look of this—the care that had gone into its preservation—made Jesse realize suddenly that there might be some truth to what Monk was saying.
Monk handed him the clipping and stood at the window self-consciously. He began to hum and clap his hands lightly together.
The clipping was several inches long. A photograph of Monk, just as bald as he was today, with a shy beatific grin and pouched eyes; the caption read “T. W. Monk.” Jesse skimmed the review:
… the increasing irony of the distance between the object as
perceived
and the object as
conceived
in American society has given rise to a new
school of tragic-minded poets … for whom the tactile is the only measure of historical value.… One of the poets in this shocking little anthology declares that “Paisley print is a Braille of love/but our fingers must be sanctified”—and the reader comes away immensely shaken, immensely changed. The most original poet of all, T. W. Monk, seems to sum up an entire decade—perhaps an entire era—of our apocalyptic American experience, in his cool, brilliant denunciation of the Vietnam tragedy. His poems, which I wish I could quote in full, contain these lines: “fed fed fed by small arteries/an epilepsy unpetals/it is electric in the discs/the brain heaving like a penis/oh unleash us! un-teach us! carcinoma of/the brain hail/full/of grace/now and at the hour of our birth/Amen.”
This made little sense to Jesse, who was extremely nervous anyway, so he handed it back to Monk. Monk said quickly, “I despise exhibitionists and I only offered this to you as a gesture, so that we might meet as equals. I want to spare you the embarrassment of not knowing that I … I am … well, I am … a kind of equivalent of yours, Dr. Vogel, though not,” he said hastily, “not in the world of reality, only in the world of poetry. This reviewer was perceptive and kind, don’t you think? The other review … which I seem to have misplaced, unless someone borrowed it … is kind also, but seems to have misunderstood my stand on President Nixon. The reviewer seems to think that I am attacking our President. But really he is a kind of hero to me … he is a cult down here actually, America’s attempt to create the
Übermensch
.… When I shoot myself up I ask only to be transformed into him, for that lovely split second of radiance, you know … or don’t you know? At any rate I would never attack our President.”
“And your life is … it consists of writing and reading poetry now?” Jesse said, baffled. “Can you make a living that way?”
“I have consecrated myself to purity of all kinds,” Monk said. “My only grossness is a craving for Milky Way candy bars. Do you like them? Excuse all these wrappers,” he said, embarrassed, as the papers crackled beneath his feet like leaves. “I have come a long way, Jesse, since the last time we saw each other. Utterly transformed. I can’t remember much except a series of hospitals after Ann Arbor … and then my freedom, my apotheosis. You see before you not a man but an abstraction, an essence. My only grossness is chocolate candy. I have to take care of my head, you know, and the only way is by tending the
stalk that leads up. I am very speedy even without shooting. There’s a joke in the Village, that T. W. Monk should be put in the nearest refrigerator when he is high, but I cherish my metabolism because it is the metabolism of a poet. No artist wishes to be cured.”
“You’re taking drugs?—speed?”
“I handle one-third of a gram nicely,” Monk said with a large smile. “I’m the original T. W. Monk. You should see me in my own environment. Give me another chance, you might become affectionate after all,” he said wistfully. “But … but … I have consecrated myself to purity … I can’t let my audience down.… What did you want to see me about? I know you’re a doctor now, are you doing a routine examination?”
At this moment the banging on the other side of the wall began.
“What is that?” Jesse said, alarmed.
The door opened, kicked inward. It slammed back against the wall. Monk crouched and put his arms over his head.
A boy in his early twenties stood in the doorway, staring at Jesse.
“Just checking!” he cried.
He turned and ran away. Monk shut the door.
“What was … what was that?” Jesse asked faintly.
“Conrad. He must have seen you come up. I don’t blame him, you look so prepared and so dangerous,” Monk whispered. “When you walk through us, the crowd shivers and ripples. Dr. Vogel, my dear Jesse, you don’t understand. You want to kill us. Don’t kill us. Don’t look at us like that,” Monk said. He had begun to cry. “I can feel it in you, the desire to do something—to dissect us, or operate on us—to snip our nerves—to clean us out with a scouring pad—Oh yes! We sense it! Conrad is like my own son. He gets off and everywhere he goes I accompany him, in my soul. Don’t hurt us, don’t kill us.…”
“But why are you crying?” Jesse asked, amazed. “I’m not going to hurt you. I explained my reason for looking you up.…”
Monk shook his head sorrowfully, as if he could not believe this.
“You want to walk through us and part us, like parting the sea. Your shoes hurt us. Look at my poor chest … my arms, the inside of my arms.…” He held out his arms for Jesse to inspect: a mess of scarry tissue, bruises and welts, veins that must have been like leather. “You want to dissect us with your special instruments, but to us they feel like ice picks. Believe me. I know you are a surgeon. But have mercy. More
patients die under anesthetic than under the tracks of a steamroller.…”
“My daughter,” Jesse said. “The girl you were talking to. Try to remember her, please.”
“Your daughter.…”
“A very pretty girl. You should have noticed her, anyone would notice her. She has red hair, she’s about five foot four, she wrote me a letter and said she had met you. She’s been missing from home for several months. Evidently, the two of you talked about me. Did that happen? Or didn’t it?” Jesse said wildly. He was beginning to doubt everything. “Please, Trick, please help me … I have to find her.… I love her and I have to bring her back home; please, you could help me if you’d just remember, remember.…”
“A girl. Last name Vogel. Yes,” Monk muttered. “I have all that straight. A long time ago. Vogel. Vogel. Jesse. You wouldn’t accept my poems, you tried to murder me. A boy of passion who tried to murder me,” Monk said, beginning to weep again so that tears gathered in creases in his face. “A girl. But I need money. My head is clean today and I can plan for the future, except for my notebook, but they’ll tell me where it is if I can get out on the street. I feel very clean today. I need money.”
“Money …?”
“Yes, money. Money.”
Jesse took out his wallet. He fumbled, opening it, and took out a hundred-dollar bill.
“Thank you,” Monk whispered.
He sighed. His head was smoothly shining, his eyes sunken but oddly sweet, even innocent, frank as a child’s. “I don’t see very well. But I thank you for whatever you’ve given me. I know you’re generous.”
“It’s a hundred dollars.…” Jesse said uncertainly.
“I don’t see too well, there’s no point to it,” Monk said. He folded the bill carefully and put it in his pocket and sat down on the floor. He sighed heavily. He no longer seemed to be aware of Jesse.
“But … but what about Shelley?” Jesse said after a few seconds.
Monk leaned his head back against the wall. His pouchy eyes went slowly out of focus.
“Trick? Trick? Aren’t you well?” Jesse cried. “Wait, don’t fall asleep, I need your help. Please. I need your help.…”
Trick waved him away. “A baked potato … would destroy life inside it … cracked and puffed open.… An Easter egg is our approximation of the divinity. Out of the egg comes new life. Out of the potato … sprouts.…” He shook his head as if besieged by fears, doubts, complexities. “No. No. Don’t keep after me.”
Jesse got to his feet. “I didn’t try to murder you—I don’t remember it that way—I was only trying to defend myself, I tried to push you away from me—that was all—I didn’t—”
He watched as Monk fell asleep, or fell into a state of semi-consciousness. Then it seemed to him that he was alone in the room. He was alone. Monk sat with his stomach grotesquely squeezed together, in long lardy ridges, his head back against the wall, his eyes partly closed. Jesse understood that he was alone.
After three or four days in New York City, looking for Shelley, he gave up and went back home.
Dear Dr. Vogel:
Ancient here & ruined. The sun has done its work, you can see that. The land is all one giant body. We were in San Angelo for a few days, they wanted us to leave. The sun is still cold. It gets on the inside of your head and worries you. Went to places I wrote down to save for you—Best, the Glass Mountains, the Christmas Mountains. They wouldn’t let us over the Rio Grande. Are you surprised I came so far? Found a name on a map I wanted to get to—the Caverns of Sonora. But we never got there. Noel wants to get to California to meet up with someone. Best, Texas. That is a town. We went in and out again. Luth who is our friend and giving us a ride all across the country took me off to the side & told me to go back home. Said he would give me money for a bus ticket himself. He got sunburned in the desert even though it isn’t warm yet. It’s still winter.
Noel went under the name Judge Roy Bean for a while in Texas. I’m afraid of the sun. It makes my eyes water. I’m afraid I will crawl out into the desert sometime and die there. Something drains out of me—like pus. It is clear and smells fresh. Should I rub some on a piece of paper
and mail it to you, Father, for a test? Either I should have a baby or I should start to bleed again, I don’t know which, the insides of me should swell up with a baby or they should thin out and bleed again, but they don’t. Noel says not to worry about it. He is the superior mind. Luth doesn’t understand us.
I dream about you flying in the air around my head, a beak & claws & wings beating. If you would just forget me I could be free.
Love,
Shelley
Dear Dr. Vogel:
Venice Beach was rough. Hard to find a place to sleep. Noel was away for a week & I stayed with some wonderful people. He says for you to burn all snapshots of me & certificates; he says this is a time of bad magic.
Lost oh maybe a cup of blood altogether—ran out of me one day, then nothing more. Adri, a girl out here, says I should do something for myself, I told her my father was a famous doctor & all I had to do was write home for a free diagnosis. Pus gets on my clothes.
Don’t come to Venice Beach because I am gone from there & still moving. Has it been a year I’ve been gone? Out here you can’t tell the seasons. I never know the day of the week or the month. I think it is March already.
Did you burn things like I told you?
My head hurts from the sun all these months & seeing men like you, like I saw this morning out on the street. It wasn’t you. Or was it you. Noel goes away because I am dragging him down but I can’t help it. He says he loves me but I drag him down. He loves my hair & washes it for me, rubs it with a towel. I saw someone walking in the street, thought it was you. You. Not you. I don’t know. Wanted to run after him and yell at him to leave me alone. They all ask me what you did to make me hate you and I tried to tell them how I was the evil one of the family, the bad magic is in me, not you or Mother. I am the evil one with the people walking through my head. I can’t stop thinking. I was high for eight days & couldn’t come down, then crashed down flat.
My belly is hollow, where the baby should be. How exactly is there room, Father, for a baby to grow in there. Noel lies with his head
against my stomach listening but he doesn’t hear anything. I am not the Fetish now. He says all that is drained out of me. Don’t come after me because Noel will kill you.
Love,
Shelley
Dear Dr. Vogel:
Did you wonder where I was for so long? Dead?