Category: ~ New Stories of Mexico and Elsewhere

La Contrefaçon

Posted on by sterlingbennett

(Another attempt at translating one of my short pieces into French, as a language learning exercise, with much help from my tutor, whose name I will not mention—to protect him from scandal if the translation is just too horrible, to the extent that, if exposed, French cows would fall over dead.)

 

La Contrefaçon (Forgery)

J’espère que je ne vous induirai pas en erreur sur le sujet de votre recherche. Êtes-vous prêt à enregistrer? Alors, j’essaie de me rappeler quand cela a commencé. Probablement avec les choses habituelles, comme d’imiter la voix et le style de mon père dans une note au directeur de l’école, un document qui m’a excusé de la classe de gym, puis de l’arithmétique à cause de ma tumeur au cerveau et puis de la période du déjeuner, pour que je puisse aller derrière le grillage de baseball et de là me glisser dans la forêt, où je fumerais des cigarrettes Philip Morris et rencontrerais des filles trop hanidcapées mentalement pour aller à l’école.

Comment les ai-je persuadées d’y aller? En imitant l’ecriture du directeur sur des invitations à se joindre à une équipe de softball qui serait de manière égal composée des élèves de l’école élémentaire, sans souci du dévelopment mental.

Plus tard, alors que j’étais à l’école secondaire, j’étudierais, puis présenterais—sans adresse d’expéditeur—des oeuvres inconnues par Hemingway, Emily Dickenson et les soeurs Brontë. Je les ai soumises à des éditeurs, pretendant qu’elles avaient été découvertes dans telle ou telle archive, coin ou bibliothèque de livres rares.

Au début, il n’y eut que des rejets. Puis, progressivement, des experts ont commencé à leur accorder de l’attention. Une fois un conte, une autre fois un poème, et même un mince roman resté jusqu’ici inconnu. Revues littéraires et bibliothèques n’ont pas pu résister au fait que des oeuvres de valeur inestimable aient été découvertes, et elles ont commencé à les publier et à les attribuer aux les Brontë, Emily Dickenson et autres Ernest Hemingway.

J’ai étudié d’autres langues et j’ai avec les années reussi à placer des essais écrits par Camus et Thomas Mann imprimés dans un poussièreux caractère Courier. Mêne une fois une pièce pornographique par Richard Wagner. Les soumissions étaient toujours anonymes mais écrites avec une telle habileté—sur des pages blanches, déchirées de vieux livres—que des revues académiques se sont battues les unes avec les autres sur aquelle qui présenterait les meilleurs arguments pour leur authenticité. En même temps je travaillais comme discret bibliothécaire à Orange, New Jersey.

Avec le temps, je me suis ennuyé de ces manigances et j’ai commencé à soumettre mes propres oeuvres, après quoi j’ai été accusé de plagier, c’est-à-dire d’emprunter le style et le vocabulaire des auteurs bien connus.

J’ai eu quelques succès avec de petites revues littéraires, dont les gardiens—généralement sévèrement mâles—ont été tellement éduqués dans le mimétisme et où tant de leurs contributions étaient juvénilement naïves, que ma propre tromperie persistante est passait inaperçue.

Je me suis marié et j’ai eu une fille—une enfant qui avait les mêmes généreuses proportions de l’intelligence et du coeur. Quand elle allait en campement, je lui écrivais des nouvelles et des histoires que j’inventais. Au collège, elle a commencé à se plaindre à sa mère—nous n’étions plus ensemble—qu’elle ne me connaissais plus et—plus perturbant—qu’il y avait quelque chose d’inauthentique en moi.

Quand mon ex-épouse m’a dit celà, avec une expression qui balançait entre jubilation malveillante et reprimande, j’ai passé le reste de la journée à boire assez de whisky pour tuer un éléphant.

Je ne savais pas quoi faire. Je suis allé consulter un psychiatre, qui m’a dit d’explorer ma relation avec mes parents, dont les deux avaient passé leur carrière à convaincre d’autres personnes de leur faire confiance. Mon père, un conseiller financier, avait été averti par son enterprise sur des irrégularités. Ma mère avait été une peintre aux modestes talents, qui peignait ouvertement des copies de Breughel, Rembrandt et des Impressionistes pour des clients à Santa Monica, California, qui avaient les cheveux bleus et des chambres à décorer.

Après quelques années de traitement, j’ai rejoint un ashram pour apprendre à méditer et pour abandonner les besoins du monde matériel. J’ai passé du temps avec un certain nombre de belles apôtres de la vie spirituelle promise, en pratiquant les arts de la défense et de l’abandon. Alors que ma fille, toujours polie, s’éloignait de plus en plus de moi.

Quand ma petite-fille est née, ma fille s’est radoucie et m’a autorisé à jouer mon rôle de grand-père. Elle a même permis que je raconte à celle-ci des histoires du soir. Au fil du temps quelque chose s’est passé et j’ai commencé à raconter des histoires qui étaient différentes des précédentes et qui adhéraient plus aux questions que ma petite-fille m’a posées—si les ours pouvaient parler avec les enfants, et si j’avais jamais parlé avec un ours ou avec un éléphant.

Je ne voulais pas lui mentir, alors je lui ai dit que non. Elle avait deux ou trois ans, alors elle a suggéré que nous allions au zoo essayer de parler avec un ours et peut-être avec un éléphant.

Et donc, nous sommes allés au zoo. Une fois, une fois encore. Nous avons essayé d’autres animaux aussi. Aucun d’entre eux n’a parlé avec nous, mais nous avons inventé des histoires sur ce qu’ils nous ont dit et nous avons ri, parce que certaines de ces histoires étaien drôles. Et d’ailleurs, nous étions contents l’un de l’autre.

J’ai commencé à y retourner seul; et quand d’autres personnes n’étaient pas là, j’ai parlé aux animaux tout seul; alors quelque chose a changé et j’ai appris celà qui semble banal à dire, mais que je vais vous dire: il n’y a jamais aucune raison de dissimuler qui vous êtes. Ma petite-fille et les éléphants étaient ce qu’ils étaient et ne prétendaient être rien de plus.

Mon heure de quitter la terre est venue, comme vous pouvez voir par vous-même. À la dernière visite, ma charmante épouse m’a pris par la main et m’a dit que c’était dommage que nous n’ayons pas passé—a tous égards—plus de temps ensemble au cours des 20 ou 30 dernières années. Ma fille pleure de façon incontrôlable pendant ses visites. Et ma petite-fille—aujourd’hui une merveilleuse écrivaine âgé de 25 ans—s’assoit à côté de mon lit et me parle sur tous les tons de quels animaux je dois visiter et ce que je dois leur dire quand je les rejoindrai. Bon, c’est mon histoire sur la contrefaçon. Ce n’est peut-être pas ce que vous vouliez. Mais c’est comme ça.

Un Conte de Noël, A Christmas Story

Posted on by sterlingbennett

(My second attempt at translating one of my short pieces into French, as a language learning exercise, with much help from my tutor, whose name I will not mention—to protect him from scandal if the translation is just too horrible, to the extent that it would make French cows fall over dead.)

~

Dans un conte de Noël, il s’agit parfois d’un respect pour la neige, de joues froides jusqu’à une sensation de brûlure, de chausettes mouillées, de l’odeur de punch à la goyave, avec aussi des pommes et de la cannelle, de la chaleur du poêle à bois qui se mêle à l’odeur de pain d’epice qui cuit dans le four, des poignées en tissu à moitié brûlées, avec des corbeaux imprimés, pour protéger les doigts, d’une tante qui joue des chansons françaises au phonographe et, se pâmant à moitié, qui se couche ses mains écartées juste au-dessus sa poitrine semblable à celle d’une colombe, poitrine qui sent un tant soit peu la poudre de talc et la naphtaline.

Elle était catholique, moi protestant dilué, et c’était à cause de l’Eglise qu’elle restait seule, disait-t-elle, parce que les hommes d’Irlande n’avaient jamais appris à aimer les femmes, seulement la Vierge, et avaient tendance à s’abuser d’elles, et d’eux memes aussi, à cause de la mise en garde des religieuses de ne toucher personne, même pas avec le coeur.

Je n’avais aucune idée de ce dont elle parlait, sauf que je me demandais comment cela serait de la toucher, peut-être quand elle dormirait et ne serait pas si triste. J’avais 15 ans et j’étais curieux des corps, pas le moins du monde du mien. Dans un moment de confiance discutable, j’ai dit à mon père que je me interrogeais sur le corps des femmes. Il ôta sa pipe de sa bouche y me dit que c’était bien et assez naturel comme ça, et puis il grommela que je ne devrait pas mettre personne enceinte.

Cette remarque m’a causé un certain embaras et je crois que je rougis beaucoup—ce qui faisait qu’il était plus difficile de me voir comme l’homme qu’était mon père, ce que je voulais être. Il avait percé sans effort mon secret le plus profound, qui avait massivement à voir avec la conspiration de la nature pour susciter des bébés.

Le nom de ma tante était Georgina, et je suppose qu’elle n’avait pas plus de 25 ans à ce moment. Elle avait déjà une réputation dans notre famillie de ne pas être responsable de soi-même ou de toute autre chose. Avec régularité, elle oubliait de retirer des choses du poêle, ou de reserrer les couvercles des pots. On devait veiller à ce que le contenu—des flocons d’avoine, par example, ou du pop-corn—maintenu par son couvercle, ne glisse ni ne s’écrase sur le plancher de la cuisine, un sol en pin douglas à grain droit, créant ainsi deux gâchis au lieu d’un.

Georgina aimait le punch à la goyave de ma mère—un fruit qui était expédié de Floride chaque hiver par son frère Antonio et qui arrivait à moitié pourri. Georgina aportait sa tasse vers notre salon non chauffé et la-bàs y ajoutait du Sherry. Elle me laissait le goûter et je pensais qu’il avait un goût horrible, sauf qu’il la rendrait moins préoccupée pour les jeunes hommes d’Irlande qui à leurs 40 ans vivaient encore avec leurs mères et passaient trop de temps dans les pubs en buvant de la Guinness et en écoutant les violoneux torturer leurs cordes avec des gigues et des reels pleins de colère, se plaignant tout le temps que l’Irlande devrait se battre aux côtes les Allemands.

Un soir, vers Noël, à travers la neige qui tombait, mes parents ont conduit leur Ford break 1943 à un cocktail à la fin d’une route sombre de Nouvelle-Angleterre, où vivaient deux célibataires allemands, Herbie et Hans Wanders, qui ne parlaient jamais allemand en public à cause de la guerre. Cela nous laissa, Georgina et moi, seuls dans la maison. Un pot de punch à la goyave était posé, pensif, au borde du poêle. Georgina le poussa avec une poignée aux corbeaux brûlés là où il se réchaufferait, pendant que je la regardais. Puis elle se versa une tasse et se dirigea vers la salle de séjour. Je la suivis, parce que à bien des égards elle était mon guide. Elle cliqua le phonographe, dont l’oeil d’orange s’illumina, le bras plastique prit vie et laissa tomber l’aiguille sur “C’est lui que mon Coeur a choisi” d’Edith Piaf.

Je ne comprenais pas un seul mot de cela et j‘en suis assez sûr, elle non plus. Nous étions assis à côté l’un de l’autre, à la lumière d’un réverbère lointain, sur un petit canapé couvert de fleurs pâles, si proches que nos hanches se touchaient presque et la tasse faisait le va-et-vient entre nous, maintenant enrichis avec le Sherry bon marché de ma mère et j’essayais de ne pas regarder les genoux de ma tante, qui d’une certaine manière s’étaient glissés vers l’avant à partir du bord de la jupe et je pense que je me souviens qu’ils brillaient comme touchés par le clair de lune.

Plus je buvais le breuvage terrible, plus je pensais à des choses—que moi aussi je vivais encore avec ma mère, ainsi qu’ avec mon père, et qu’il était en quelque sorte mal d’être attiré par les genoux exposés de ma tante. Le punch m’avait donné chaud partout, en même temps je me sentais perché sur le bord de la nausée. La chanson était une valse et très sentimental, et juste à ce moment elle m’a pris par le menton, m’a tourné vers elle et m’a donné ce qui a dû être un baiser très anti-catholique directement sur les lèvres.

Sous le choc, je l’ai regardée dans les yeux qui à ce moment ont été illuminés par les phares de la Ford de mes parents, leur voiture qui, revenant plus tôt, faisait crisser la neige et s’arrêta devant la maison. Le pont sur Prospect Creek vers chez les Wanders s’était effondré et mes parents avaient vu le trou béant juste à temps et ils étaient restés assez longtemps pour trainer des branches sur la rue, pour mettre en garde les autres automobilistes qui viendraient. De retour dans la cuisine, tandis que ma mére nous a étudiait, soupçonnant possiblement des couvercles desserrés, mon père a marché vers le téléphone accroché au mur, a dit aux voisines indiscrètes de racrocher leur putain de téléphone et a appelé la police a propos du pont écroulé.

Il s’est fait, que Georgina est partie à New York par le train du matin et est retournée en Irlande par bateau, qui a zigzagué tout le chemin, écrivit-elle, afin d’éviter les torpilles des sous-marins allemands. Et je suis allé vers une vie seulement de temps en temps attirée vers le Sherry et plus souvent vers les goyaves sous toutes les formes à cause de leur odeur enivrante. Je ne vis plus avec ma mère et j’ai souvent pensé à Georgina et à ses genoux, jusqu’au moment où j’ai rencontré mon premier amour et puis, comme les hommes de l’Irlande, je l’ai oubliée.

Putting Down Me and the Dog

Posted on by sterlingbennett

When my dog died—how many stories start that way?—I put off trying to discover new ways to market my novel. I cried in waves, as I dug the hole, a place where an old orange tree had lived for as many years as my sons are old. I wrapped the old fellow in my favorite Harris Tweed and eased him into his grave.

I thought I would have learned something about dying from him, but it is very hard when you’re not the dog that’s dying. I stroked his head and spoke to him, telling him how much I was going to miss him. I held his head when the vet approached from behind, touching him gently on his upward shoulder, looking for the spot for the needle. My friend’s eyes were warm and full of confidence, even as the needle entered, and for a few seconds afterward.

His gaze stayed on me, even though he had already left.

The man I sit across from, my writing partner, is experimenting with the various sounds his cell phone can make when calls and messages come in. My late friend doesn’t call me. Neither do my mother or father. Age, not the needle, put them down. But I can see the advantage of the pointy thing. Your love caresses you your forehead with a hand that is no longer young, but still as warm and smooth as when you met her when she was thirty-four.

“Are you ready?” she asks.

“No,” I say, with a spoiled, irritated whine, at the idea of being extinguished forever.

Her eyes are wet. I have increased my breathing, tightened my stomach for the exertion that is coming.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” she asks.

“No,” I say, in the same snotty tone. “It’s an impossible decision.”

I sob once, then try to smile. I love her and life equally. I am too smart to not know what’s about to happen.

“Then stay,” she says.

“How long?” I ask.

“As long as you want.”

Her smile is warm, her eyes, brown. As deep as my old dog’s.

“A few days, a week at the most. The point comes eventually,” I say.

She looks at me.

“Both points,” I say.

We have always had our little jokes. A doctor friend has brought the needle and the treacle. He will approach from behind, the upper shoulder. All I have to do is give the signal.

We have reached the point two times already. And each time I have taken the reprieve, unable to leave everything and step into obliteration.

My old friend wagged his tail and trusted me. Perhaps knowing what was happening—perhaps not. He could not tell me how to do it. If acceptance is a kind of intelligence, then I do not have it. I think it was Karl Gustav Jung that said the unconscious cannot imagine its own extinction. He may have been right concerning my dog. Perhaps that is a good reason for waiting until the unconscious—the sea from which we came—has crept closer. Or we have ebbed back toward it.

In writing this, at about where I wrote Perhaps that is a good reason for waiting, the brown-eyed love I have referred to came up the stairs to the second floor of this wreck of a café, where we write—something she has never done in the ten years I’ve been meeting with my writing partner—to whom I will soon read this free write, as per custom.

I am someone that believes—to a certain extent—in synchronicity, the theory that things happen in coordination with each other, i.e. not entirely by chance.

“I need money,” she said.

I reached for my wallet.

“I don’t have a lot,” I said, noting matter-of-factly that neither of us might have enough.

“I need just enough for D,” she said. D is our personal trainer. We say those words with irony each time—aware of their pretentious ring. Instead of shrinking and withering away, my love and I have decided to buff up and work on balance.

“And for the gym,” she said. “Thirty pesos each.”

I hand over my money. My writing partner holds out his hand. He wants in on the dispensation. The mood has changed; the ocean, receded. I don’t have to mourn for my imaginary dog any longer, at least not right now. He has trotted out ahead, through my field of autumn thoughts. And I am glad enough if he does not come back right away. My love is walking toward the gym, a place as rickety as the café I am writing in. I am still here, on my own.

Still not ready.

The Youngest Parisian

Posted on by sterlingbennett

V. had been visiting us, along with her mother and father. Her mother is Mexican, her father French. V. is a baby of six months. We last saw her three months ago—half her life time ago. She lives in Paris, and that is where we visit her and her parents. It is better that way, because then we are not tourists. We are unofficial visiting grandparents and, not being tourists, our activities are more satisfying. V. lives near the Bibliothèque Mitterand, not far from the Seine. Three important places, side by side—V. and the other two.

We are all in love with V. As she throws things on the floor, we all hop to pick them up and set them on her highchair table again. All of us, her lovers, we swoon looking at her, focusing on her eyes, each of us making faces that we hope will make her smile. The house is in chaos—in more chaos than usual. Her things are everywhere: toys, commercial and improvised—she prefers the latter—parts of her bottles, her powdered organic French lait, plastic spoons the width of a baby’s mouth in red and green, jars of Blédina—sans additif—without additives—baby food unopened, opened, emptied, unwashed, washed, gooey remnants hardening from exposure to high desert Mexican air. Little baby jars carried all the way from Paris.

There are blankets on the kitchen floor for her to wriggle around on. Nearby dishes and food containers have been relocated. We pick up her chupón—pacifier—for the thirtieth time, and wonder each time whether we should rinse it off with filtered water. Her father, the French banker, rubs it against his shirt, then pops it back in her mouth. I pour whatever I’m drinking over it, over my glass, hand the chupón back to her, then drink from my glass.

She spits the chupón back out, or keeps it, depending on her mood, of which there are three main ones. First, buoyant, flirting—after waking up from a good nap, being washed, changed and dressed, the fewer clothes the better for her preferred sense of freedom. Second, fussing, writhing in the arms that happen to be holding her. This means she’s hungry, not hungry, tired, unchanged or teething, which is happening right now. She already has two lower front teeth. They are as sharp as razors. Do not put your finger in her mouth. All kinds of French teething potions stand on the kitchen counter, to lessen the discomfort. And three, not getting what she wants, which usually is the right to stand up or, failing that, being carried around in a place where there are interesting things to see, like human faces and cats. We have two of them, cats, and when V. arrives, being plopped down on our bed, they slink away, insulted by and wary of anything that looks like a child that might chase or replace them.

This afternoon, V’s mother’s friends gathered for a last visit at the local French restaurant in Guanajuato. In attendance around a table were a French artist-sculptor, a Belgian jewelry maker, a French film maker, a Texas book keeper, my love who is a community organizer, French student, architect and writer—myself, also a student of French, and the writer of this deathless prose, and V—all women, except for myself and a young man whose connection at first I couldn’t quite ascertain. Because of his light skin and red hair, I didn’t know whether he was French, American or something else. He appeared to be speaking a native Spanish, but I suspect one of his parents was French. Conversation occurred in Spanish, French, some English and V’s exclamations—upper register grunts that are designed to make her admirers jump in feigned surprise.

V’s mother was leaving in the morning for Aguascalientes on Primera Plus—a bus line—taking V. from us, abducting her as far as we were concerned. V’s father had flown back to Charles De Gaulle the night before—in-people don’t have to mention the name of the city, Paris. This was the last chance to see V’s mother, a former model of mine (painting), and—of course most important of all—V.

I don’t know how to describe it. It was as if we had all come to see and be in attendance to the baby Jesus—except, in this case, it was the baby V—and, for some reason, no less worshiped. Not in the religious sense, but more in the spiritual—as if we were celebrating the crown princess of our futures, an heir apparent, a child as innocent and sweet as her mother was funny, ironic, irreverent, smart and good-natured. It is hard to explain what V. means to us that we coo so much over her. While there are natural reservations and boundaries between friends—and even more between friends of friends—there are none around V. And we fall all over each other trying to make her respond to us, to make her smile or, better yet, laugh—to gain her recognition. And perhaps acceptance and trust. All of us united in this one purpose, to make her happy and protect her.

And to make us happy.

I have since done some research and found there is a part of the human brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex. We react quickly to visual information with that part of the brain. Apparently, when looking at a baby, the reaction is accelerated and the cooing impulse starts in one seventh of a second. In addition, even the smell of a baby, even at a distance, can activate brain waves associated with good feelings of the kind we have around food we want to eat. Fortunately, the reward-pleasure impulse overrides the impulse to eat—thus sparing the child from being a meal.

While we were waiting with V and her mother for their bus to Aguascalientes at the central—bus station, three young middle class Mexican women sat across from us in the waiting room. They made faces, bobbed their heads and played hid and seek in various ways, all directed toward V. She was tired and a little squirmy, but she indulged them and brought out their smiles and delight with her proportionally large eyes, fat cheeks and Rubens-like mouth, granting them the connection they sought. Unknown to them, with the youngest Parisian in Guanajuato.

The Victim of Words

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I don’t know how many of you can say this, but I spent a week in a famous psychiatric ward in Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital called Bulfinch Seven, a restricted area that was also sometimes reserved for the victims of words.

I had parked my rental car on a hill while visiting from Mexico, and I had neglected to turn my front wheels left and then roll back, anchoring the back of the wheels against the curb. A policeman had pulled up beside my car, a Toyota Prius, and asked me my name as he wrote out the ticket. I thought it a good moment to make a point about his more than likely monoligualism and I said to him, “You mean, Cómo te llamas, come lagañas! don’t you?”—What’s your name, go eat eye boogers!”

The policeman said, ” You can tell me in English, or I can increase the fine—for civic insolence.”

I doubted that there was a law having to do with “civic insolence,” and so I said. “Qué te importa, Mr. Policeman, tu hermana, la gordota!”—What’s it to you, Mr. Policeman, your sister, the great big fat one?

What started out as irritation on his face changed and became a detached, even scientific look. And so I thought it wise to inquire, “Qué te pasa, naranjada?”—What’s up, orangeade?

I had noticed—I admit, too slowly—the man’s complexion, and thought he might be Sicilian from the North End, or a Sikh from the South. And as my fortunes would have it, he answered me in—of all things—Spanish.

“Nada, nada, limonada.—Nothing, nothing, lemonade!” he said, with a perfect accent.

He was smiling, but still looked detached—a fact that gave me pause.

“I’m going to ask you to get into my pinche patrulla,” he said—in a reasonable tone—get into the goddamn patrol car.

Hard to explain, but I gave him one more blast. Plus, I didn’t intend to get into his pinche patrulla. After all, I was on my way to a reading—therefore, by implication, a writer of possibly some note. And so I gave him my cleverest shot.

“Güero, güerumbo, de un pedo te tumbo, de dos te levanto y de tres te retumbo!”—Pale face güerumbo (gware-rumbo, a nonsense word that gives sound and cadence), I can drop you with one fart, pick you up with the second and put you on the ground again with the third.

Not exactly the most delicate school boy taunt, but I was, I suppose, much worked up about reading from my novel and about the fawning looks I hoped to elicit from exciting young women half my age.

Before I knew it, he had cuffed my hands behind me and had me—the real güero güerumbo—in the back seat of his patrol car. And that is how I landed in Bulfinch Seven.

But it so happened that my agent—that’s literary agent—had driven up behind us and then followed us to the Bulfinch looney bin where they gave me a small pink pill. With a few calls on his iPhone my agent, one Henry Salisbury, arranged to have my waiting audience of twelve people shifted to the hospital, where I—now a calmer self—read to them and to the rest of the patients from my novel about a modern detective sent north into the United States to try to retrieve territories stolen by that country. Though their applause was not as strong as I would have liked, and everyone in my original audience was at least sixty, one unofficial attendee sitting in the back of the ward clapped with some enthusiasm—who was none other than my arresting officer, who later told me he was a distant relative of Santa Ana, the president-general that lost one leg to the French in the Pastry War of 1838, called himself His Most Serene Highness, blocked American invaders at Saltillo in 1847, delayed obese General Winfield Scott’s advance on Mexico City from Veracruz and, in the end, essentially lost half of Mexico to the Americans with the Treaty of Guadalupe in 1848—for fifteen million dollars.

Kaliman and the Madness of Writers

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Kaliman is a walking wreck, with hair like a bush, swarthy from complexion, some of it dirt, and of this I’m sure, he has identified me as a writer—since he is one, too—and is trying to infect me with all his insanity. His eyes are squinty from too much thinking. My mother would have faulted him for his dirty ankles, more for his lack of socks. “Were you brought up in a barn?” she would have said with her gentle scold. I’ve known him for thirteen years. He was brought up on the street, and apart from cows.

Today he spoke to me for the first time. I was sitting in a local wreck of a café, sipping moras y yoghurt, blueberries and yogurt, a berry-like tea for Mexican yuppies. The window was open to the street, and I sat behind an iron railing, thank god, a little below the slanted callejón where he was standing. He brandished some writing at me and said some unwritten words. I ignored him, like a dessert we’re wise to decline. So little separates us from Kaliman and, as much as I would like to have broken our thirteen-year silence, I did not. There are traditions to uphold. Plus, dementia often waits for us down the line. A little preview baked by Kaliman might have been ahead-of-time contagious. One bite of him could have been enough. One glance at his scribbling bereft of words as we know them could have destroyed my own—all part of his plan to induct me into the Hall of Insane.

Clearly, someone had told him I was a writer like him. And now he wanted to change that as well, infect it, so that my words collapsed into kuneiformed rubble like his own? But, hold on. I could be just as devious and put an end to harassment of this sort. I stood up, collected my Apple things and beckoned with my index digit to coax him into a cyber café, where I plopped him down in front of a computer—not that I cared one way or another whether he knew what one was. I showed him how to touch the keys, my account, meaboutme@gmail.com—to an old and unresponsive friend, and only inserted a few words of my own. Camel, Allah, NSA-Great Satan. The rest of it looked like rat droppings fonted in pungent rows.

Some time passed while the words flitted through Our Coaxial Who Art in Heaven, and then the FBI visited me—its Mexican cell. The snoop cartel.

“Did you write this?” they asked, at my mesquite door, showing me a stamped and dated official copy of the time-sensitive drivel.

“No, my friend Kaliman did,” I replied—as truthfully as truth allowed.

“Who is Kaliman?” they asked—taking notes.

I described Taliban—I mean Kaliman—and where to find him, near the Museo de Leyendas, description enough—little visited repository of legends. An institution I thought would list him eventually, once things had passed.

They returned.

“He’s not sane,” they said.

“Who is these days?” I answered, palms outstretched.

“He doesn’t understand the words camel, Allah, USA or Great Satan.”

They looked at me with suspicion, looking for guilt.

“That should be ‘NSA-Great Satan.’ Not ‘USA-Great Satan.’ And written together,” I said, precise from my training as unionized teacher-citizen, California.

“Whatever,” said the less amused of the two.

The seat of his pants was shiny. I could see he is on his way to being Kalimanized. I wondered whether I should tell him, or what.

“You need to be careful,” I say. “He can infect your thinking.”

“Perhaps you’ve infected his,” says Agent Less Amused. “Adding words to his.”

“I have never spoken with him,” I said.

At that moment, Kaliman showed up. Not surprisingly, he had found out where I lived. He brandished a scribble. We were all in danger.

“He’s a writer like me,” I said. “And doesn’t wear socks.”

They tried to examine the page, but Kaliman clutched it, like a raccoon with an egg, and looked at me for help. I smiled at him and told him—breaking my vow of silence—he could trust me and that I would read it for him, without cracking the egg. His eyes brightened, one of them wept a cleansing line down his cheek. I had won his confidence. That much was clear.

I struggle with the first word. “Ben—gha—zi,” I read. “Benghazi,” I said. translating from Kalimandarin to English. “Al…al….al…,” I read.

“Al Qaida?” barked Agent Grouch, with a professional tone and ready to pounce.

“Al—lah,” I completed, nodding and pleased at my code breaker talents.

“It’s clearer now,” I continued. “Allah…be praised…my camel…Benghazi…knows more…about…Libya…than…Obama’s whole Stasi.”

I looked up at them, their darkened Homeric brows.

“That’s what it says, the rest is gibberish,” I said. And then, “I appreciate your trouble….”

“What does it mean?” they asked.

“Who knows?” I said. “The man is mad, as mad as a hatter—without doubt it’s a thing of no substance—of little matter.”

I often rhyme when it’s least appropriate.

Just then, Kaliman did me a favor, plucked the page out of my hands and stuffed it into his gob and, with shark-like pressure of grinding enamel, re-encrypted the code beyond all reach. He picked at his tooth where a phrase had got suck, spit out a glob of something penciled and strutted away, I supposed to re-establish the silence that he had broken between us.

“His brain is limited,” I said, “unlike our own. He must read the paper, AM or Correo or Corazón—all reliable rags. He’s like a parrot and repeats whatever he’s told. Nothing to worry about. Thank god there’s surveillance. I’ll keep you informed if I learn any more. Things that begin with ‘al…’—and words of like clout.”

The FBI said I would be hearing from them, but I never did. It’s possible they read my blog and tap my everything Google or Apple—looking for things like “NSA-Great Satan” and equivalent babble.

As for Kaliman, he avoids me with care, I suspect smelling treachery. And all has returned to its former quiet. I am still un-demented, my writing as well, don’t you think? Everything is good, everything swell. And so, Happy New Year everywhere, there’s nothing more to this, as there wasn’t before. But should more come up, you’ll be able to tell.

The Alpha and Omega of Yoga

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The day before Christmas, I got up early, put on at least three layers and went off through the cold city to attend my yoga class on the exposed roof of an old colonial building. I say old, since you might think that colonial was the name of a modern style. At first, it was just me and the teacher, T., a young woman of thirty-something. T. is a modern dancer, as in modern dance, and the strongest woman I have ever met. Plus, an accomplished yoga and Pilates teacher. She is also a beauty, smart and kind. My only lament is that I am not a better student. Younger, stronger, more flexible and better at yoga. More Cirque du Soleil.

At first, I thought T. would justifiably beg off teaching just one person. But then another young woman came, with her son A.—a five year old. I wondered what the boy was going to do the whole time after the teacher decided two was enough to justify giving a class. But the boy settled down on one of the woven reed mats, and T. brought him a yoga matt to lay on top of it.

When we began, A. began as well, throwing himself into each posture. His mother is very good at yoga, so he must have seen her do the asanas before. He stuck with it for nearly an hour, never seeming to lose interest. Once his mother took him off to go to the bathroom, a small journey that took precedence over yoga class protocol, where adults simply do not get up and go looking for a bathroom.

A’s little body was supple, willing and contained. Mine, stiff, willing but sometimes a little too ponderous to lever and bend. Still, I found A. an inspiration. After all, as T. says over and over, it is the intent that matters, and the boy was my refreshing guide in that.

All in all, I would say on the spiritual level, A. was also further along than me. He did not worry about keeping up, doing it right—or doing it at, since at times he simply stopped, turned around and looked at his mother or—with curiosity—over at me. T. made frequent visits to his mat and, with the skill and delight of a kind mother, adjusted his leg forward or back, and said, “This hand” or “Other leg! And: “Eso es!” “That’s it!” That in itself was worth the price of admission.

A. could do the bridge—a kind of back bend—with the top of his head on the mat. I think it should be called the crab pose. I could just barely do it. His mother, like T., can do it with her head far above the mat, forearms extended—a full wonderful upward bow.

Still, I admired A’s attitude, his participation, his interest in doing what his mother did. I knew very little about him, and so afterwards, in that lingering moment of camaraderie, I approached his mother to ask about him.

She asked me where I came from. I said I lived there in the city.

She said, “But before, where did you live?”

“California,” I said.

She took that in. I asked about her child. She is Mexican, the boy’s father, English. I asked the boy’s age and mentioned that I wasn’t sure whether he was a boy or a girl.

“A lot of people have that trouble,” she said.

“He’s a handsome lad,” I said. And a joy to be in a yoga class with, though I did not say that.

A. and I—I realized—might be to some extent exceptional, in the sense that, well, we might be exceptions. How many five-year old’s do yoga? How many seventy-five year old’s? Oh, all right, in the spirit of yoga’s purity, I confess to being seventy-six.

Actually, seventy-six and a half.

His skin is smooth and baby-like, mine more like that of a baby elephant—or rhinoceros. I had been hanging out with a five-year old—he beginning his life, me delaying the end with every trick I can think of. He was mildly curious about me. I delighted in his naturally yogic frame of mind: playful, determined, persistent, unafraid.

What other class have I been in with such an age difference? Alston Chase, at that prep school on a hill, near tears over Ruskin’s descriptions of classical Italian or Greek landscapes, Wendell Clausen, Professor of Latin and Comparative Literature, teaching Catullus’ poems at that college along the Charles. Andrew Jaszi teaching 19th Century German short stories in his Hungarian-accented German. Egon Schwartz doing the same, at the same place, but in German with an Austrian accent. It was shock enough when women from the neighboring famous women’s college joined our classes. But they were roughly my age. Once I heard about a twelve-year old genius studying at the college. But a five-year old? Unheard of.

But this yoga is a different matter. You don’t have to know German or Latin. You just have to have a somewhat in tact spine and a few willing muscles, and joints that haven’t been too neglected over the years. With Latin and German, about poetry and story, the teaching came from the professor. One’s own insights came later, little by little. But with yoga the information comes from one’s body, from inside. It’s as if the teacher says, open this book, read inside it. Loosen this joint, stretch this tendon—incrementally—tighten the stomach and the thighs. Look at the end of your nose—no straining allowed. This is what I can do now, your body says, and if you think about your breathing, it makes it easier for me.

“Be mindful of your intention,” T. says over and over.

A. ponders none of this. He just does it—with varying degrees attention, as is true for all of us.

Regretfully, just do it sounds something like a corporate slogan, by definition devoid of spirituality, subtlety or any real substance—nonsense, like that devilishly good brew that is called “the real thing.”

Except that A. is really the real thing, and me, too. All of us in the class are really the real thing. Our bending and twisting and breathing—most of all the breathing—and I suppose the constant awareness of age. A’s age and my age. He the alpha, me the omega. Contrasts exist, and the trick is—little by little—to accept them and therewith loosen the grip of their significance.

A Christmas Story

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Sometimes a Christmas story is about a reverence for snow, cold cheeks almost burning, wet socks, the smell of guava punch with apples and cinnamon, the heat of a wood stove with gingerbread baking in its oven, half burnt potholders with crows to protect the fingers, an Aunt that plays French songs on the phonograph and, half swooning, lays her hands splayed across her chest, just above her dove-like bosom that smells ever so slightly of mothballs and talcum powder.

She was a Catholic—me a diluted Protestant—and it was the Church, she said, that had kept her single because the men of Ireland had never learned to love women, only the Virgin, and tended to abuse them—not to mention themselves—because of the nuns’ warning not to touch. Not even with the heart.

I had no idea what she was talking about, except that I wondered now and then what it would be like to touch her, perhaps when she was asleep and not so sad. I was almost fifteen and curious about bodies, not the least about my own. In a moment of questionable trust, I told my father I found myself wondering about women’s bodies. He took his pipe out of his mouth and told me that was all right and natural enough, and then said with a humpf that I shouldn’t get anyone pregnant.

That remark caused me embarrassment, and I think I blushed—which made it harder for me to see myself as the man my father was. He had seen straight into my deepest secret, which, when I look back on it, overwhelmingly had to do with Nature’s plot to make babies.

My Aunt’s name was Georgina, and I suppose she wasn’t much older than twenty-five at the time. She already had a reputation in our family for not being responsible, for herself or anything else. She forgot to take things off the stove and didn’t tighten the tops of jars, so you had to be careful that the contents—oatmeal, for example, or popcorn—gripped  by their lids, didn’t slip away and crash on the straight-grained fir floor of our kitchen, creating two messes, not just one.

Georgina loved my mother’s guava punch—a fruit that was shipped from Florida each winter by her brother Antonio, and that arrived only half rotten. Georgina would carry her cup into the unheated front parlor and add sherry to it. She let me try it, and I thought it was awful, except that it made her a little less concerned about the young men in Ireland that still, at age forty, lived with their mothers and spent too much time in the pubs drinking Guinness and listening to fiddlers rattle their strings with angry jigs and reels, all the while complaining that Ireland should be fighting on the side of the Germans.

One evening near Christmas, my parents drove away in their 1943 Ford station wagon through falling snow to a cocktail party at the end of a dark New England road, to the house of two German bachelors, Herbie and Hans Wanders, who never spoke German, because of the war. That left me and Georgina alone in the house. A pot of guava punch sat thinking at the edge of the stove top. Georgina pushed it with one of the burnt crows to where it would heat up—with me watching her. Then she poured herself a cup and headed for the front parlor. I followed since, in many regards, she was my leader. She clicked on the phonograph, its orange eye lit up and, with another click, the plastic arm came alive and dropped the needle onto Edith Piaf’s “C’est lui que mon Coeur a choisi”—He’s the One My Heart Has Chosen.

I didn’t understand a word of it, and I’m pretty sure she didn’t either. We sat next to each other, with just the light of a distant street light, on the small settee upholstered in pale flowers, with our hips practically touching, and passed the cup—now fortified with my mother’s cheap sherry—back and forth, and I tried not to stare at my Aunt’s knees, which had somehow glided forward from the edge of her corduroy skirt and, at least to my memory, gleamed as if touched by moonlight.

The more I drank of the awful brew, the more I thought about things. How I too was still living with my mother—as well as my father—and how it was somehow wrong to be drawn to my aunt’s exposed knees. The punch made me warm all over, at the same time that I felt perched on the edge of nausea. The song was a walz and very emotional, and right then Georgina took hold of my jaw, brought my head up and around toward hers, and gave me what I think must have been a very un-Catholic kiss square on my lips.

I stared shocked into her eyes, at that moment lit up by the headlights of my parent’s Ford which, returning early, crunched to a halt the front of the house. The bridge over Prospect Creek, on the way to the Wanders, had collapsed, and my parents had seen the gaping black hole just in time and had stayed only long enough to drag brush across the road to warn motorists coming from the same direction. Back in the kitchen, while my mother studied us with a curious expression—possibly suspecting loose lids, my father marched to the phone on the wall, told all the listening busybodies to get off the goddam line and called the police about the fallen bridge.

Georgina, as it turned out, left for New York on the morning train and returned by ship to Ireland, which zigzagged all the way, she wrote, to avoid the torpedoes of German U-Boats. And I went on to lead a life only occasionally drawn to sherry, and more often to guava in any form—for its intoxicating smell. I no longer live with my mother, and I often thought of Georgina and her knees, until I met my first love—and then, like the men of Ireland, I forgot her.

Kafka’s Dreidel ~ “Der Kreisel”

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From his Nachlass (literary effects) 1904 – 1924

(English translation below)

Ein Philosoph trieb sich immer dort herum, wo Kinder spielten. Und sah er einen Jungen, der einen Kreisel hatte, so lauerte er schon. Kaum war der Kreisel in Drehung, verfolgte ihn der Philosoph, um ihn zu fangen. Dass die Kinder lärmten und ihn von ihrem Spielzeug abzuhalten suchten, kümmerte ihn nicht, hatte er den Kreisel, solange er sich noch drehte, gefangen, war er glücklich, aber nur einen Augenblick, dann warf er ihn zu Boden und ging fort. Er glaubte nämlich, die Erkenntnis jeder Kleinigkeit, also zum Beispiel auch eines sich drehenden Kreisels, genüge zur Erkenntnis des Allgemeinen. Darum beschäftigte er sich nicht mit den großen Problemen, das schien ihm unökonomisch. War die kleinste Kleinigkeit wirklich erkannt, dann war alles erkannt, deshalb beschäftigte er sich nur mit dem sich drehenden Kreisel. Und immer wenn die Vorbereitungen zum Drehen des Kreisels gemacht wurden, hatte er Hoffnung, nun werde es gelingen, und drehte sich der Kreisel, wurde ihm im atemlosen Laufen nach ihm die Hoffnung zur Gewissheit, hielt er aber dann das dumme Holzstück in der Hand, wurde ihm übel und das Geschrei der Kinder, das er bisher nicht gehört hatte und das ihm jetzt plötzlich in die Ohren fuhr, jagte ihn fort, er taumelte wie ein Kreisel unter einer ungeschickten Peitsche.

A philosopher always used to hang around places where children played, and if he saw a boy with a top, he lay in wait. The moment the top began to spin he followed it, ready to grab it. That the children cried out in alarm and tried to keep him away from their top, that didn’t seem to bother him. If he plucked up the toy while it was still spinning, then he was happy—but only for a moment, and then he threw it on the ground and went off. The truth was, he believed that insight into the smallest things was enough to allow him insight into the bigger ones. It seemed too hard to approach the big concepts directly. Knowing the microcosm meant, at the same time, knowledge of the macrocosm. And so, whenever children got ready to spin a top, each time new hope rose in him and became breathless certainty that this time his enterprise would succeed. But each time he held the dumb wood in his hand, a dark mood fell upon him. And the disapproval of the children—which he had not taken in before and now did—drove him away stumbling and wobbling, as if he were a top himself, lashed by the children’s whip. — Translation by me, SB.

The Dreidel

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Two renowned artists appeared in our kitchen. My love had met them down in the center of this old colonial city in the middle of Mexico. She is not afraid of celebrity status, in the art world or any other world. She told them she had not expected to see them still in town. They said they were between engagements, and our small city was charming. They mentioned that the practice room they had been using was locked. My love said they could practice at our house, and they—deciding to trust her—followed her the 203 steps up through the allies to our barrio.

The first thing I knew about it was an astounding riff on our grand piano. Because of my love’s enthusiastic report on their concert performance with our Symphony, I had looked them up, as the good cultural voyeur that I am. She is a beauty, he is just as much a genius as she is, both of them astonishingly talented. And then they were standing in front of me, in our kitchen. That’s the moment when you pretend you don’t recognize and know anything about the famous people who perform all over the world with the finest orchestras. You’re disowning all knowledge, and this cost some energy, not to behave like a star-struck fool.

My love prepared food and drink. The husband said he would practice for a half an hour first, before eating and drinking. I did manage to show him the view from the roof first, looking down on the old city, almost as if flying over it. He seemed mildly interested, even less so in who I was. That was okay; after all, he had come in off the street with his family to practice, not to get to know me.

He was soon back at the piano. His wife attended to their child, a handsome boy of about three. She played with him, conversed with him and seemed to enter his world completely. He had found a dreidel (Yiddish dredl, from German drehen, to turn) among the toys my love keeps in shelves at a three-year old’s eye level.

A dreidel is a simple top made from two pieces of wood. The point is rounded, but the sides are flat. A short piece of dowel, attached above, serves as the spinner. There are four painted Hebrew letters, one on each of the four sides: Nun, Gimel, Hei, and Shin—which form the acronym for Nes Gadol Hayah Sham, “a great miracle has happened there.” I suppose the sentence referred to what has happened in Israel. Palestinians might not have the same sentiment, but that is not the responsibility of this three-year old.

His mother spun the dreidel. When it stopped and fell on its side, it showed a painted letter. “Nun!” she exclaimed, as if astounded by what had been revealed. Then he spun it. “Shin!” she cried—at what he had accomplished. He spun again, and the little game continued.

On the adult level, the letters also serve as a mnemonic device for remembering the rules of a gambling game. There is a kitty in the middle (raisins, candy, coins, anything), the players spin the dreidel, Nun stands for Nothing (you get nothing), Hei stands for Half (you take half of the kitty), Gimel means All (you take it all) and Shin means you have to put money into the kitty, or whatever you’re betting with. All of which also did not concern this three-year old.

We were off to a Thanksgiving potluck, hosted by the first bassoon player from the Symphony. My love was giving instructions on how our guests should feed themselves and how to leave the house, locked, when they left—not a simple matter. And very important, since we live in a conflicted zone ourselves.

The boy’s mother—a beauty and goddess on stage—was down to earth and as uncomplicated as her professional performing was complicated. They memorize everything, and so it was not hard to absorb and carry out my love’s simple instructions—which they rehearsed, just to be sure everything went all right.

In the meantime, the boy had moved to a spot in the last of the afternoon sun. He sat on the tile floor with his legs splayed out and back—frog pose. In front, he spun the dreidel. Over and over. Watching for the letter that came up. I do not know whether he said the letters to himself, though I’m sure he knew them by now. The dreidel fascinated him. There were all kinds of other toys he could have drifted to, but he stayed with the dreidel—something so simple.

Except that it was not so simple. It meant something to him. I do not know what, but he was his parents’ son, and three years old or not, something held him fixed. If I had asked about it, I think my question would not have aroused much interest among the adults. I will never know, because I didn’t ask. It is possible he had some other previous knowledge that he joined with the toy. I remember thinking it had to do with the genius in his parents and that he was simply applying a three-year old genius of his own. It is also possible he had seen his cousins playing the game during Hanukkah, betting chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil, for example. But it could have been something all together different, like the magic of chance bringing up the letter—the letters his mother had found significant.

I told his mother I wanted the boy to have the dreidel. She protested, as if I were giving away something that was precious. I insisted. It was small, he could carrying with him and play with it whenever he wanted. I said it meant far more to her son than to any child that had so far come through our kitchen.

As we left, I remember joking with my love that we had just turned our house over to complete strangers and that, while famous and talented, wouldn’t it be a joke on us, if they turned out to be some kind of kleptomaniacs and we would return to find an empty house.

That did not occur. She left a sweet note thanking us for everything and saying they would leave a CD for us at the front desk of the hotel where they were staying. My love, who is kind, generous and outgoing, has continued to correspond with them. The piano is here for them when they return in two years, should they need it. I suppose I’ll have to look for another dreidel, in case the boy, in the meantime, has lost his. I did look through the kitchen toys just to see if for some reason his mother had not taken it along, but it was gone—and hopefully, in this very moment, is in the little fellow’s pocket for when he needs it.