|
From Romania to France via America Novels ¥ La Traversee du Styx (Recrossing the
Styx) Plays: a Tragedy, a Comedy, a Farce &
a Highly Controversial Sequel ¥ Flush Game, or the Gospel According to
Henry Miller ¥ Beyond The Styx Nightingales DonÕt Sing |
Recrossing the
Styx/La TraversŽe du Styx: First chapter Stilted Prologue with Librarian and Flushed Manifesto Nothing can get you down like a drizzling June
Saturday morning in Seattle. You dream all night about sunbathing on a
secluded beach with your boss' secretary, whose lush lips will get you fired
some day, and just when she's about to strip, the telephone rings. You crack
the shutters and spit an obscenity to the gray sky that drips into your
loins. After the fourth ring, you long for some corner of the universe with no
phones, no bosses, no neighbors, and no pissing rain on a summer day. Just
you and his secretary. And a few good
books to keep you company. "I stayed up all night proofreading your
novel," she complained. "I am so sleepy I called in sick." "You better get some z's," I said.
"On a day like this one can sleep forever." "As soon as you hear me out." "Fire away. Imagine me tied to a chair with a
white patch over my pounding heart and a cigarette butt dangling from my
mug." "You could have written a terrific
mysteryÉ" ThatÕs how I started the summer solstice in the
city of jumbo jets and filthy billionaires, compliments of the skinny
librarian I'd met in one of those new age coffee joints that sells company
stock on top of beans. She had taken a shine to me in the name of several
Olympian muses, although our tastes were galaxies apart. I couldn't help but fancy her girlish appearance
copied from Exotica, a recent Canadian
movie hit that had made a lot of thumbs go up. She featured twin black
braids, no lipstick, white silk shirt, black miniskirt, knee length white
socks, black shoes, and a purple leather backpack big enough to carry a soda
pop. Her round olive face with darting brown eyes suited my drama-seeking
alter ego. All my efforts to convert my ego from conspicuous consumer to
passionless voyeur had been as futile as succumbing to vegetarianism. The day before the morning in question, during the
early caffeine buzz, she asked me apropos of nothing at all if she could
proofread my novel. I welcomed her altruism. A fresh pair of eyes with a
master's degree in comparative literature from the University of Washington,
sweeping like beacons over the treacherous shores of Proper English, could
catch orthographic mistakes and syntax blunders that usually escaped me. You
see, I am a political refugee of the eighties who had quit my mother tongue
cold turkey and adopted English for my literary delusions. "You could have written a terrific
mysteryÉ" kept echoing in my ears as if she had shouted it from the
bottom of the Grand Canyon. Though she was getting temperamental for no
apparent reason, her quavering voice sent pleasurable tingles down my spine.
ÒI woke up my housemates with my giggles. I even wept, damn you! But why are
you treating your novel unfairly? Some chapters make me want to embrace you,
others—torture you! You digress to high heavens. You jump the tracks of
the genre with your flights of fancy, your raunchy exploits." "Blame it on my moody style," I replied.
"I am a literary monkey who swings from farcical to tragic, from terse
to loquacious, from sober to erotic. I only care for sex that's revealing,
touching, and funny. Anything else is not worth the price of the condom."
"What's the point of your moody
literature?" she asked severely. "Make it snappy. I haven't got all
day." I took a deep breath like Custer must have taken
before his last stand. "We are the Prozac generation, living in a world
that's choking itself to death with private tragedies and psycho-dramas. The
diseased soul will soon top all the charts. Mood management will be taught in
the fifth grade along with grammar, so the pupils won't ambush schools with
machine guns. Say hello to a new apocalyptic beast. The noise of progress is
the neighing of his horse. Its hooves raise the mental maelstrom; his whip
frightens the babies in their sleep. I map out my fleeting joy, my sad
libido, my riotous laughter, my frustrations, my rage, so I don't have to
drive off a cliff or kiss the Viennese quackÕs ass." "Shit!Ó she exclaimed. ÒI spilled my soy
milk!Ó ÒTo make a long manifesto short, moodism offers a
cornucopia of freedom of expression, an acrobatic style that captures the
idiosyncrasies of oneÕs genetic baggage better than any formalistic approach." "I still don't buy your moodism when it comes
to writing mysteries or any other popular genre. It's a hard pill for you
readers to swallow. They want a potboiler, something they are familiar
with." "It's a general misconception to give people
what they want. They always want something more. Whether it's supersized
burgers, zanier entertainment, gorier news, kinkier sex, they want full value
for their money plus compensation for inflation. As long as I hold their interest
and make them laugh and even cry in the bargain, they can swallow anything.
It's only those with degrees in comparative literature I worry about.
Oops!" A toilet flush terrorized the background at the end
of her line. Oh, the beauty of having a cordless phone! One can talk to the
President of the United States or swear love everlasting to one's sweetheart
while stinking up the place. Progress, the mortals salute you! "What's that supposed to mean?" she fired
at me with a tone that no longer soothed my spine. It felt like electric
jolts intermingled with the obscene ditties one gets in the dungeons of a
police state. "I don't have to take your shit. I stayed up all night
proofreading your manuscript. And here
I am, still awake, trying to help you make it publishable. Show some fucking
gratitude, will you!" Ouch! That was an unexpected kick in the pants. I
felt a severe pain in my groin, as if a testicle had been surgically removed
and discarded on a golf course. She was a determined 18 holer and, like
Chaplin, the leisure golfer, she only took a swing at other people's balls. "Hello, are you still there?" Her tone
had magically improved. I smiled to myself, and my spine was soothed once
more. Thank God, I wouldnÕt have to choke on apologies or praise her altruism
to the sky. It's a known fact that too much gratitude causes insanity in some
people. Ask a panhandler. "Sorry for the slip of my wicked tongue,Ó I
said. ÒPlease forgive me." "That's gonna cost you." "Name your price." "How much of your story is true? Is she for real?" ÒWho?Ó "Don't play games with me." "Why do you want me to spoil a badly written
mystery?" "Female curiosity." "All in due time. What's the rush?" She
didnÕt answer. "I am looking forward to the candlelight feast," I
added, hoping to change the subject. (For her proofreading services, I
offered to wine and dine her at an exotic herb farm, famous among vegetarians
with appetites of goats let loose in a field of alfalfa.) "I hope you choke on your artichoke!"
came her reply. The phone company's tone felt like a heavy flat
line stretching into Monday with no end. I looked through the window, and the
buzzing of the street had ceased. People, cars, rain stood still. Only the
mailman wheeled his bag overflowing with daily disasters and quiet misery. I needed to use the bathroom pronto. That's another
disadvantage of being economically challenged. You have to hold it during
phone conversations. But a disaster never comes alone. I was out of toilet
paper. Dumb ass! I really hated myself for shopping without a list. It just
happened that my manifesto was lying on the floor. I get inspired while responding
to the call of nature. I wiped myself with it, one page at a time. The damn
thing didn't go down without a fight. It almost plugged the crapper. The last
rewrite! About a week later the phone ruined another dream
for me. My proofreader asked me in a tone bordering on the seductive if our
herb dinner was still on. She'd forgotten her charming wordplay, as if she
had hit the delete key on her fancy voice-activated laptop that sounded like
a neurotic secretary in bad need of a raise and romance. I was just about to say that I wasn't fond of
artichokes, when, jerking up the shutters, a burst of light fried my eyes
like a welding torch. I reeled, almost losing my balance. I slammed the window
open. I bent over, as if I were about to jump. I didn't want to miss a wink's
worth of basking my lumen-depleted carcass, which was dying for a tan after
six months of wet and gray misery. When the sun comes out, the waterlogged-'n-slugged
Pacific Northwest becomes God's backyard. It's like turning the lights on in
paradise. The Cascades shine like frosted diamonds, the Sound reverberates symphonies
in blue, the Space Needle longs for a spin around the intergalactic bin, the
traffic comes to a complete halt. One's repressed fantasies soar like a
weather balloon, causing unrest and distress to oneÕs needy corpse. "Of course dinner's still on," I said. People rub shoulders and what not, and there comes
a day when it's no fun anymore, when there is hardly anything worth saying to
each other. The nine-to-five grind, the traffic, the bills, the planning
ahead, other people's malice disguised as solicitude numbs our passions and
feelings. We get louder and louder for no particular reason; we become as
trivial as museum guards who have been standing on the same floor for
twenty-five years. Something is gnawing at our vitals, and we are at loss to
kill the beast. Whether it's fear, quiet desperation, missed opportunities,
wasted effort, futility, emptiness, we rush to the makers of Prozac for a little
help. Small comfort. We're just inches away from riding in the apocalyptic
saddleÉ But that's another novel, if it ever gets written.
Reader, let's follow Doru to Romania for a different kind of love story. |