Personal Matter Read online

  Winter—the word splashed into the pool of Bird’s whisky-weakened memory.

  “That’s right—I spread it on the wet ground in that lumberyard the night we made it together. The next morning it was caked with mud and wood shavings. I could never wear it again: the cleaners wouldn’t take buckskin coats in those days. I think I rolled it up in a closet and later I must have thrown it away.”

  As he spoke, Bird remembered that dark night in the middle of winter and the incident that seemed already in the distant past. It was their sophomore year at college. Bird and Himiko had been drinking together, and they were very drunk. Bird walked Himiko home; he grabbed her in the darkness in the lumberyard behind her boarding house. They faced each other in the cold, shivering, and their caresses were simple until Bird’s hand, as though by accident, touched Himiko’s vagina. Agitated, Bird pressed Himiko against some lumber that was stacked against a board fence and labored to insert himself in her. Himiko did her best to help but she gave up at last and softly laughed. Though both of them were in a frenzy, the embrace was still in the domain of play. Nonetheless, when he realized he would not be able to insert his penis as long as they were standing, Bird felt humiliatedby circumstance, which made him dogged. He spread his buckskin coat on the ground and lay Himiko down on top of it—laughing still. Himiko was a tall girl: her head and her legs below the knee rested on the bare ground. After a while the laughing stopped and Bird supposed she was approaching orgasm. But a little later he inquired, and Himiko replied that she was merely cold. Bird interrupted their lovemaking.

  “I was a real savage in those days,” Bird said reflectively, like an octogenarian.

  “I was a savage, too.”

  “I wonder why we never tried again somewhere else.”

  “What happened in the lumberyard seemed so accidental, I had a feeling the next morning that it could never be repeated.”

  “It was extraordinary, all right. An incident. Almost a rape,” Bird said uncomfortably.

  “Almost? It was rape,” Himiko corrected.

  “But was there really no pleasure at all for you? I mean, you were nowhere near coming?” Bird sounded resentful.

  “What did you expect—after all, that was my first time.”

  Bird stared at Himiko in amazement. She wasn’t, he knew, a person to tell that variety of lie or joke. He was dumbfounded, and then a sense of ridiculousness a hair’s breadth away from fear drove a short laugh past his lips. The laughter infected Himiko, too.

  “Life is full of wonder,” Bird said, turning a fierce red that wasn’t entirely the whisky’s fault.

  “Bird, don’t sound so crushed. The fact that I had never had sex before can only have been significant for me, if it had any meaning at all—it had nothing to do with you.”

  Bird filled a cup instead of a glass and drank the whisky down in a single breath. He wanted to remember the incident in the lumberyard more accurately. It was true that his penis had been repelled again and again by something hard and stretched like a drawn lip. But he had assumed that the cold had simply shriveled Himiko. Then what about the bloodstains on the bottom of his shirt the next morning? Why hadn’t that made him suspect? he wondered: and like a whim, desire seized him. Bird bit his lips closed as if he were fighting pain, and gripped his whisky cup. At the very center of his body a tumor of knotted pain and apprehension was engendered, unmistakably desire itself. Desire that resembled the pain and anxiety that seize a patient behind the ribs in a cardiac attack. What Bird felt now was not that meek desire, hardly a mole on the slack face of daily life, the polar opposite of the African dream that glinted high in the skies of his mind, that was demeaned once or twice a week even while it was eliminated when he dug into his wife, not that homey desire which sank in the mud of lugubrious fatigue with one lewd, listless grunt. This was desire that could not be assuaged by a thousand repetitions of the act, not a ticket you relinquished after one trip around on the toy train. Desire you could satisfy once and never again, perilous desire that made you wonder uneasily when the sating moment came if Death weren’t stealing up behind your naked, sweating back. This was desire Bird might have satisfied late one winter night in a lumberyard if he had known for certain that he was raping a virgin.

  Bird willed his throbbing, whisky-heated eyes to dart a weasel glance at Himiko. His brain ballooned, pulsing with blood. Cigarette smoke circled the room like a school of trapped sardines: Himiko seemed adrift on a sea of mist. She was watching Bird, her face in a funny, rapt, too simple smile, but her eyes were perceiving nothing. Himiko was lost in a whisky dream and her body seemed softer and rounder all over, particularly her red, fervid face. If only, Bird thought ruefully, I could repeat that winter night rape scene with Himiko. But he knew there wasn’t a chance. What if they did make it again sometime, their intercourse would evoke the ravaged sparrow of a penis Bird had glimpsed this morning when he dressed and would evoke his wife’s distended genitals sluggishly contracting after the agony of childbirth. Sex for Bird and Himiko would be linked to the dying baby, linked to all of mankind’s miseries, to the wretchedness so loathsome that people unafflicted pretended not to see it, an attitude they called humanism. The sublimation of desire? This was scrapping it entirely. Bird gulped his whisky and his tepid insides shuddered. If he wanted to re-create in all its marvelous tension the sexual moment he had ruined that winter night, he would probably have no choice but to strangle the girl to death. The voice flapped out of the nest of desire inside him: Butcher her and fuck the corpse! But Bird knew he would never undertake that kind of adventure in his present state. I’m just feeling wistful and deprived because I learned Himiko was a virgin. Bird was disdainful of his own confusion and he tried to repudiate that part of himself. But the sea urchin of disquiet and black-hot desire would not swim away. If you can’t slaughter her and rape the corpse, find something that can evoke a situation just as taut and volatile! But Bird was helpless; he could only stand in wonderment before his ignorance of peril and perversion. Bird drained his cup like a basketball player taking a drink of water after he has been ordered off the court for too many errors: peevishly, with self-disdain and evident distaste. The whisky had lost its bite now, and its bouquet; it wasn’t even bitter anymore.

  “Bird—do you always gulp your whisky by the glassful? As if it were tea? I can’t even drink tea that fast if it’s still hot.”

  “Always, it’s always this way, when I drink,” Bird mumbled.

  “Even when you’re with your wife?”

  “Why?”

  “You couldn’t possibly satisfy a woman when you’ve been drinking that way. What’s more important, I doubt that you could bring it off yourself, no matter how hard you tried. You’d end up with a whacky heart like a prostrate distance swimmer—and leave an alcohol slick like a rainbow next to the woman’s head!”

  “Are you thinking of going to bed with me now?”

  “I wouldn’t sleep with you when you’ve had this much to drink; it would be meaningless for both of us.”

  Bird worked a finger through a hole inside his pocket and explored something warm and soft: a silly, drowsing mouse. And withered, in perfect opposition to the sea urchin flaming in his chest.

  “Nothing doing there, is there, Bird!” Confidently, Himiko challenged the slight movement.

  “I may not be able to come myself but I can certainly carry on like a Chinese Monkey and boost you over the wall!”

  “It’s not that simple, you know—for me to have an orgasm. Bird, you don’t seem to remember very clearly what happened when we lay on the ground in that lumberyard. There’s no reason why you should. But for me, that was an initiation rite. It was a cold, squalid rite, ridiculous and pathetic, too. Since then I’ve been running a longdistance race and it’s been a battle all the way, Bird!”

  “Did I make you frigid?”

  “If you mean the ordinary orgasm, I discovered that for myself right away. I had help from some of the guys in my class, almost b
efore the mud under my nails from the lumberyard had dried. But ever since then I’ve been chasing a better orgasm, and then one better still—like climbing a flight of stairs!”

  “And that’s all you’ve done since you graduated from college?”

  “Since before I graduated. I can see now that’s been my real work since I was a student.”

  “You must be plenty sick of it.”

  “No, that’s not true, Bird. One of these days I’ll prove it to you—unless you want your only sexual memory of me to be that incident in the lumberyard. Bird?”

  “And I’ll teach you what I’ve picked up during my own long-distance race,” Bird said. “Let’s stop pecking at each other with our beaks like a pair of frustrated chicks; let’s go to bed!”

  “You’ve had too much to drink, Bird.”

  “You think a penis is the only organ that has anything to do with sex? I’d say that’s pretty crude for an explorer in search of the supreme orgasm.”

  “Would you use fingers, then? Or lips? Or maybe some organ too freaky to believe, like an appendix? Sorry, that’s not for me; it’s too much like masturbation.”

  “You’re certainly frank,” Bird winced.

  “Besides, Bird, you’re not really looking for anything sexual today. You look to me as if sex would disgust you. Let’s say we did go to bed together, you’d have all you could do to crumple between my legs and vomit. Your disgust would overwhelm you, and you’d smear my belly with brown whisky and yellow bile. You would, Bird! That happened to me once and it was awful.”

  “I guess we do learn from experience sometimes; your observations are correct,” Bird said dejectedly.

  “There’s no hurry,” Himiko consoled.

  “No. No hurry. Seems like a hell of a long time since I was in a situation where I had to hurry. I was always in a hurry when I was a kid. I wonder why.”

  “Maybe because one has so little time as a child. I mean, you grow up so fast.”

  “I grew up fast, all right. And now I’m old enough to be a father. Only I wasn’t adequately prepared as a father so I couldn’t come up with a proper child. You think I’ll ever become the father of a normal child? I have no confidence.”

  “No one is confident about that kind of thing, Bird. When your next baby has turned out to be perfectly healthy then you’ll know for certain that you’re a normal father. And you’ll feel confident in retrospect.”

  “You’ve really become wise about life.” Bird was heartened. “Himiko, I’d like to ask you—” The sleep anemone was engulfing him in waves and Bird knew he wouldn’t be able to resist for more than a minute. He peered at the empty glass wavering in his field of vision and shook his head, wondering whether to have another drink; finally he conceded that his body could not accept another drop of whisky. The glass slipped through his fingers, struck his lap, and rolled onto the floor.

  “Himiko, I’d like to ask you one more thing,” Bird said, trying a little weight on his legs to see if he could stand, “—what kind of world after death do you go to when you die as an infant?”

  “If there is such a world, it must be very simple, Bird. But can’t you believe in my pluralistic universe? Your baby will live to the ripe old age of ninety in his final universe!”

  “Ah yes,” Bird said. “Well. I’m going to sleep. Himiko! Is it night yet? Would you take a peek through the curtains, please.”

  “It’s the middle of the day, Bird. If you want to sleep, you can use my bed; I’ll be going out as soon as it’s dark.”

  “You’d abandon a pitiful friend for a red sports car?”

  “When a pitiful friend is drunk, the best thing to do is to leave him alone. Otherwise we might both regret it later.”

  “Absolutely right! You have a hold on all the best of mankind’s wisdom. So you drive around in that MG all night? Until dawn?”

  “Sometimes, Bird. I have rounds to make—like a sandman looking for children who can’t sleep!”

  When Bird finally hoisted himself out of the rattan chair, limp and heavy as another man’s body, he wrapped an arm around Himiko’s sturdy shoulders and headed for the bedroom. A funny dwarf was dancing around inside the fiery sun that was his head, scattering powdered light like the fairy he had seen in Peter Pan. Bird laughed, tickled by the hallucination. As he collapsed on the bed, he managed one grateful exclamation: “Himiko! You’re like a kind great-aunt!”

  Bird slept. Across the twilight square in his dream a scaly man moved with dark, sad eyes and a terrifying gash of a salamander mouth: but soon he was enfolded in the eddying, reddish-black dusk. The sound of a sports car pulling away; deep, comprehensive sleep.

  Twice during the night Bird woke up, and neither time was Himiko there. He was awakened by restrained but persistent voices calling from outside the window: “Himiko! Himiko!”

  In the first voice there was still an adolescent ring. The next time Bird opened his eyes, he heard the voice of a middle-aged man. He got out of bed, lifted the curtains where they met just as Himiko had done to look at him, and peered down at the night visitor. In the pale moonlight Bird saw a small gentleman in a linen tuxedo that looked too tight, as though it had shrunk; his round, eggish head lifted to the window, the little man was calling Himiko’s name with a clouded expression that seemed to be a compound of embarrassment and mild self-disgust. Bird dropped the curtains and went into the next room to get the whisky bottle. In one swallow he drank what remained, burrowed back into his girlfriend’s bed, and instantly fell asleep.

  5

  AGAIN and again the moaning invaded his sleep until, reluctantly, Bird woke up. At first he thought he was moaning himself; indeed, as he opened his eyes, the numberless devils spawning in his belly pierced his innards with their tiny arrows and forced a moan from his own lips. But now he heard again a moan that wasn’t coming from himself. Gingerly, without disturbing the position of his body, Bird lifted his head only and looked down at the side of the bed. Himiko was asleep on the bare floor, wedged between the bed and the television set. And she was moaning like a strong animal, transmitting moans as if they were signals from the world of her dream. The signals indicated fear.

  Through the dim mesh of air in the room Bird watched Himiko’s young, round, ashen face stiffen as though in pain and go stupidly slack. The blanket had slipped to her waist; Bird scrutinized her chest and sides. Her breasts were perfect hemispheres but they drooped unnaturally to either side, avoiding one another. The region between her breasts was broad and flat and somehow stolid. Bird sensed a familiarity with this immature chest: he must have seen it in the lumberyard that winter night. But Himiko’s sides and the swell of her belly, almost hidden under the blanket, did not evoke nostalgia. There was a suggestion there of the fat which age was beginning to plant in her body. And that hint of flabbiness was a part of Himiko’s new life; it had nothing to do with Bird. The fatty roots beneath her skin would probably spread like fire and transform completely the shape of her body. Her breasts, too, would lose the little youth and freshness they retained.

  Himiko again moaned and her eyes shuttered open as though she had been startled. Bird pretended to be asleep. When a minute later he opened his eyes, Himiko was asleep again. Now she lay still as a mummy, wrapped to her throat in the blankets, sleeping a silent, expressionless insect’s sleep. She must have managed to reach an agreement with the ogres in her dream. Bird closed his eyes in relief and turned back to his threatening blackmailer of a stomach. Suddenly his stomach inflated until it filled his body and crowded the entire world of his consciousness. Fragments of thought tried to penetrate to the center of his mind: when did Himiko get back?—had the baby been carried to the dissection table with its head in bandages like Apollinaire?—would he make it through class today without accident?—but one by one they were repulsed by the pressure his stomach applied. Bird knew he would vomit any minute and fear chilled the skin on his face.

  What will she think of me if I filthy this bed with vomit? When I wa
s good and drunk I took her virginity in what amounted to a rape, outdoors, in the middle of winter, and I didn’t even realize what I was doing! Years later, when I spend the night in her room, I get drunk all over and wake up ready to spill my guts. How lousy can you be! Bird brought up in quick succession ten reeking burps and sat upright in bed, groaning with the pain in his head. The first step away from the bed was fraught with difficulty but finally Bird was on his way to the bathroom. He discovered to his surprise that he was wearing only his underwear.

  When Bird closed the ill-fitting glass door and found himself secluded in the bathroom, he tasted the joy of an unanticipated possibility: he might just succeed in emptying his stomach without being caught by Himiko. If he could vomit as delicately as a grasshopper …

  Kneeling, Bird rested his elbows on the modern toilet bowl, lowered his head, and waited in an attitude of pious prayer for the tension in his stomach to explode. His face had been thoroughly chilled, but now it was flushed with an unnatural heat, and then abruptly numb and icy again. Peering into it from this position, the toilet was like a large, white throat, the more so because of the clear water in the narrowed bottom of the bowl.

  The first wave of nausea hit. Bird barked, his neck stiffened, and his belly heaved. Smarting water filled his nose and tears dribbled down his cheeks to the bits of vomited food that stuck to his upper lip. Again Bird gagged and weakly vomited up what remained in his esophagus. Yellow sparks whirled in his head—time for a short reprieve. Straightening like a plumber who has just finished up a job, Bird wiped his face with toilet paper and loudly blew his nose. Ah, he sighed. But it wasn’t over yet; not a chance. Once Bird was sick to his stomach he threw up at least twice; it was always the same. And he couldn’t rely the second time on the muscles in his stomach; the second time he had to force the spasm by twisting a finger in the slime of his throat. Bird sighed again in anticipation of the agony, and lowered his head. The inside of the toilet bowl, filthy now, was desolating. Bird closed his eyes in an excess of disgust, groped above his head, and pulled the chain. A flood of water roared and a small whirlwind coolly grazed his forehead. When he opened his eyes, the large white throat gaped at him again pristinely. Bird thrust a finger into his own red and paltry throat, and forced himself to vomit. Groans and meaningless tears, the yellow sparks inside his head, membranes smarting in his nose. Finishing, he wiped his soiled fingers and mouth and his tear-streaked cheeks and slumped against the toilet bowl. Would this amount at least to partial restitution for the baby’s suffering? Bird wondered, and then he blushed at his own impudence. If any suffering was fruitless it was the agony of a hangover; what he suffered now could not expiate suffering of any other kind.