INSTALLMENT VIII

BEGINNINGS AND ENDS

CHAPTER 29

Though I was back in the company of the Object of My Devotion and back also in the place we then both called home, with porcelain bowls in my corner of the kitchen, and furniture on which I might recline as I pleased, our orderly life was not resumed in the way it had once been. Though we rose before sunrise for a walk followed by scribbling and napping, the rest of our schedule remained unfixed. The Object of My Devotion was disoriented, his rhythm at odds. He slept at odd hours, left home for odd intervals, returned in odd moods, as brooding at dawn as Lilly’s mother and smelling much the same.

While I had been schooled in hardship at the House of the Begetters, the Object of My Devotion had caught a cold, and who knew what else in those antipodes where July meant winter. He lay weak and wan without the will to ignore the telephone, which rang out at all times, day and night. I have always considered the telephone a rival of mine, now its influence swelled until it grew to be the ruin of all routine. Even the morning’s sacrosanct spells of scribbling were permitted to be disturbed.

Curled tight on his lap, I could feel his stomach buckle at the onset of every call. The editors of History's Mysteries Magazine, who had funded his foray to Patagonia, were asking when he might share with their readers what he was writing about the place. With surprising artistry, he spoke of his scanty hours in Punta Arenas in such detail each second seemed stuffed with substance, so much so he had had to rush home to record nuances before they were lost to posterity. I noticed, however, he put little on paper

Despite what he told others, or wrote about later, in truth the Object of My Devotion had spent most of his waking hours in Southest America buying souvenirs in airports. At his Buenos Aires stopover he had picked up a boxed set of Bandoneon Hits and played the lovesick recordings incessantly to buoy his sinking heart. I was induced to learn to tango. Unlike the hula, which I had endured passively, allowing him to wiggle my hips, this dance required more active participation. To do it properly I need learn sharp turns, slow passes, and dips.

By satisfying his new caprices, I hoped to improve his mood. He remained pensive, braced for blows from those whose unseen voices on the telephone reduced him to whispers, tones I understood to mean he would leave home immediately for unknown places, often returning just before sunrise.

Though he was gone, the bandoneon played on. As best I could alone I reviewed the tricky steps of the tango.

CHAPTER 30

A plague of photography broke out at this time. The nuisance of posing for snapshots dated back to my youth even before my ears had risen, when, attracted by the blinking flash, I acquired the habit of staring directly at a camera lens. This innocent instinct was exhaustively exploited. Paparazzi demons took possession of the Object of My Devotion. Demands for my portrait were perpetual. Candid snaps were taken of me sleeping, eating, lolling, frolicking, sulking.

From the onset, photo-taking struck me as parasitical; the Object of My Devotion fed off the wholeness of my life even as the order of his own was crumbling. I was sickened to see he had purchased an album, pink and plastic. Into its transparent cover he slid a portrait of myself: eyes closed, tip of tongue ever so slightly visible, my body curled on a lacy pillow as if on a fluffy cloud. He took great care to select other photos for this album. It disappeared one day, and I was not sorry to see it go.

I was sorry to see him go. Scribble, scribble, scribble! And to what end, I thought, when every phone call interrupts the efforts from which our food derives ? Besides his minute by minute memoir of Punta Arenas, the Object of My Devotion was trying to peddle a book proposal. The results of his efforts were reflected in the surface of my dish, bare but for the kibble I ate under protest. Each crunch, I knew increased his guilt; aping his begetters, I chomped harder and louder to spur his efforts. Let me say, however, that at this time, no publisher was persuaded that there was a market for a history of Guam.

On a day when the weather cooled enough for sweaters to be taken out of the closet, though there were not yet funds to dry clean them, the Object of My Devotion sat heavily in a chair neither writing nor reading. The phone rang. He picked it up. From a glance in my direction I realized the call concerned me. Call over, my travelling bag, which I had not seen for some time, was taken out for me to board. It had been altered with some gauzy stuff. I could still see out the mesh side-panels, but now I was concealed when transported.

To a taxi, to a building through revolving doors, past a paradise of cut flowers and toy animals, into an elevator and up to a floor tiled with vinyl, where carried in secret I peered behind the gauze down towards a squadron of shoes resembling those worn by Lilly’s mother: white with rubber soles.

CHAPTER 31

I remember the song of sharp high beeps I mistook for frogs nesting in the passageways. We were on a trail, following the scent that left traces on the Object of My Devotion when he returned from his sudden and unexplained departures. Through the savory blood and unsavory disinfectant seeped a distinctive musk I now recognized lingered in the comforter beneath which I slept and perfumed the sweaters taken down from the closet for the fall.

Down a hallway, through a door, we tracked the spoor to its source. Inside a circle of belly-white curtains I emerged from my bag knowing I had been brought in to view That Which Had Been In My Bed Before Me.

Neither male nor female but both and neither, the body lay sweating, swaddled in damp sheets. The skull could be seen emerging from the skin of the head, the cheekbones were a skeleton’s, the brow the brow of the pirate flag. On either side of a high bed, the song of the frogs chirped from bags dripping blood or salt water into the thinning skin stretched tight over the bones of the arms. There was a strong smell of the fluid used to clean shears at the Groomerama.

“Solace! Solace!” My name had been forgotten already, but I forgot myself as I was being petted in the most extraordinary manner, with a touch like a feather tickling my head, my flanks.

“Solace Solace,” now whispered, now spoken. “No, Spot,” now remembering with a laugh. In this place I had a laughing name: Spot, and a whispered name: Solace.

Next to the bed a metal nightstand displayed a glass of water, odd-shaped tablets, and the pink photo album with my picture on its cover, curled as if I lay on a cloud.

CHAPTER 32

The question of where the Object of My Devotion had been going was now answered. The curtains around the bed were pulled aside to admit a circle of humanity. I could see and smell these were no kin, but a self-selected pack, aiding one another in a wilderness.

Within the circle around the bed, the Object of My Devotion was given respect, but also held at a distance. His was not an official liaison, I learned. There were others with more recognized claims to intimacy who did not wish to see him there. He left before they arrived; he arrived when they had gone. Among the circle there were whispering sympathizers who informed the Object of My Devotion when he might come, which was, often as not, through the night until dawn, when that which had been in my bed before me lay insensible.

I found my own place in the circle around the bed where I was held in respect for doing nothing. This was as it should be, for that is what I am best at: doing nothing. Let me repeat: I do nothing. I don’t guide the blind, I don’t fetch balls, I don’t bring brandy in flasks to stranded mountain climbers. I don’t herd sheep. Though the Manchester Terriers from which I descend were bred to be mighty ratters, I hunt no vermin. Though my Whippet forefathers passed on their toes to me, I run no races. Though English Black and Tan Terriers bequeathed to me a black hood, and to Princess a chocolate saddle, and loaded our eyes with apricot tints, I have not inherited the Black and Tan urge to lock my jaws on a bear. Though these legacies might in future be put to use, I chose at this time to do nothing.

The Begetters expected me to live up to my heritage fetching balls, chasing mice, biting on a sock as if it were a bunny. They were disappointed when I showed no interest in doing any of these things and, as with the Object of My Devotion, when I failed to do what they expected, they had difficulty extending the circle of their interest to include disobedience.

Within the circle around the bed, however, I was valued for what I was, not for what I might do, or not do. I was valued for eating my food heartily, and drinking my water happily, living my life joyfully, frisky and flourishing. As a reminder to himself that he be that way, too, the Object of My Devotion kept me with him at all times, at home, and wherever he went, and he went often to sit by the curtained bed from night til dawn. We never separated: our life together had, for now, a new routine.

 

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