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From Romania to France via America Novels La Traversee du Styx (Crossing the Styx) |
Crossing the Styx
(La Traverse du Styx) Everything is a matter of
moods with me. Dostoevsky, Notes from
Underground I have stripped off my dress;
must I put it back on? Song of Solomon 5:3 CONTENTS Stilted Life
with Librarian and Flushed Manifesto The Green
Grass from Home Is a Woman Radu and the
Ballad of the Vanished Captain Lily The Idiot Prelude to
an Unforgettable Weekend Simina Makes
her Entrance Radu's Journal (I) Chewing the
Chekhovian Cud in the Pub Lily Takes
Center Stage but her Performance Is yet to Come A Venice of
the Mind Home Sweet
Home Radu's Journal
(II) A Lucky
Twist of Fate Tte--tte
with Simina If I Hear
One More Word about Hamlet, I'll Scream! Radu's Journal
(III) Godot almost Got Us Arrested Vacation
With Stomping Grapes The
Kafkaesque Nightmare The News Is
Out Farewell,
Lily, Adieu The Oath Phallus
Impudicus Turning Back
Simina's
Unexpected Farewell Radu's Journal (IV) E[scape]-Day
Letters Radu's Journal
(V) Black
Journey Styx
Revisited White
Journey Black Sea,
Black Mood Sights
Recaptured Tears in Cismigiu 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
leaden sky that drips into your loins like Chinese torture. 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." "Go
ahead, 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 mystery" Thats 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 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 mystery" 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. I 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 said. "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 quacks
ass." "Shit!
she exclaimed. I spilled my soy milk! To make a
long manifesto short, moodism offers a cornucopia of freedom of expression,
an acrobatic style that captures the idiosyncrasies of ones 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 almost 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. Thank God, I wouldnt 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, I said. Please forgive me." "That's
gonna cost you." "Name
your price." "How
much of your story is true? Is she for
real?" Who? "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 didnt 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 ones 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 saddle But that's
another novel, if it ever gets written. Reader, let's follow Doru to Romania
for a different kind of love story. |