Onion Songs

THE MULTIPLES OF SORROW

Malcolm had gone from London to Paris after the end of the First World War. His few remaining friends in England speculated it must have been a desperate move to escape some unhappiness. What they had not grasped was that desperation required a certain emotional investment Malcolm had not budgeted for during his remaining years on the planet. He had no intention of feeling desperation or any other strong emotion. He could see no point. If he was going to waste his time, there were activities far more interesting for his thoughtless consumption.

If anything, he’d left for aesthetic reasons. Not because Paris during that time promised so much in terms of freedom, beauty, art—he had no illusions of access to such things—but because London promised so little. Despite the post-war appearance of palatial department stores and great business houses, jobs were few and the divide between rich and poor intraversible. He’d grown tired of the slums of the east end and the architecture of ruin and rust, surfaces silky with a moist dust of unknown content, unidentifiable insects disassembling on the edges of vision. Worse than the bombs dropped by the German Zeppelins had been this devastating fusillade of failed commerce.

Of course the aesthetic background of Paris was no richer, only different: a stacked mess of darkened brick, spider-veined by wet, depthless streets where broken beggars stumbled and died. Upon reaching Paris he was possessed of few funds and he had no considered plan for their replenishment. Now and then he would work a menial restaurant job for the privilege of some laughable underpayment and the dubious benefit of glimpsing such luminaries as Picasso and Ford Madox Ford. He lived in the worst possible places, attic rooms where he could not walk upright, the ceilings decorated with the long, looping signatures of marching insects. If he grew tired of the wriggling creatures falling into his small store of food he’d burn a bit of sulphur to drive them into the next room, separated from his by the thinnest possible layer of paper and board.

“Monstre!” boomed the voice on the other side of his flimsy door, followed by a rain of fists on wood that shook the room. “Meurtrier!”

But instead of hiding like a child he rolled out of his bed and jerked open the door. “Oui!”

The large bearded man hunched in the doorway, his head lowered as he peered inside. Malcolm noticed several gray insects crawling in and out of his hair, thin black legs slipping on the oily strands.

“Degaré?” Malcolm asked, recognizing him as a man he sometimes washed dishes with in the restaurants.

“Mon Dieu! Malcolm!” He suddenly grinned. “I have bread, if you have the wine to wash it down!”

For a time they had an arrangement, but nights when Degaré had too much to drink Malcolm would always leave.

Malcolm sold some of his clothing and most of his other belongings for rent, with a few sou left over for bread and margarine, wine, cheese, some potatoes, a little coffee. The price of food had increased so drastically the past few years, bread almost three times, an egg at least five, he’d been reduced to the occasional theft and killing pigeons in the park. This was always an awkward task—having no skill with a slingshot he had to bludgeon the birds with a stick or a decaying shoe and sneak them into his apartment under his coat where he would fry and rapidly eat them. On those nights it was Degaré who left, in disgust.

He supposed he was starving himself, but frankly found the prospect more interesting than frightening. Starvation and poverty served as acute catalysts for breaking down the usual sensory boundaries. He saw things more deeply than he had in years. He only wished this new vision were of a finer resolution.

“Animal!” Degaré would cry, whenever he saw Malcolm with a pigeon on a plate, referring to both. Malcolm thought that at least it was a clean plate, but did not present this detail in his defense. He simply took a larger bite.

Perhaps this exchange was what initially triggered the idea. Man’s dual nature: the spirit and the beast. It was a lot to chew on. It took Malcolm some months developing a theory, refining his understanding of his own impulses.

He spent most of his days in bed to preserve his strength, preferring to go out at night when Degaré was sleeping and the details of the city’s decay were somewhat wrapped in romantic shadow. He accepted that decay but did not want to be constantly exposed to it. The daylight made the city’s deterioration abundantly clear. There was no excuse for surprise, of course. A building material hadn’t been invented that would last forever— most fell far short of the mark. If all the wealth in France were focused on the single purpose of maintaining Paris in pristine condition there still would not be sufficient funds. No nation had the resources necessary to maintain a major city in such a manner. Buildings do fall apart, eventually, and it seemed to Malcolm that most of the major cities—London, Paris, New York—were failing at approximately the same time.

He felt the inevitability of the decline most obviously during late afternoon strolls through insistent rain. The Paris sky boiled down into a spoiled soup. He clamped his mouth to keep out any taste of the foul French precipitation. All around him the brick walls melted, sliding into the streets. It happened too slowly for most of its denizens to notice but Malcolm had grown acutely sensitive to the world’s steady transformation into mud. Certainly human beings were little more than that—animated mud, however they might dress themselves up. Their condition stunned them. Everywhere he looked he could see Parisians staring at him, or staring off into space. Consumption ravaged their tired flesh. They smiled at one with a smear of blood. They stared out of illness, out of insanity, out of death.

It was hardly surprising their city was maintained so poorly.

Degaré did his wanderings during the day. Sometimes they would pass each other on the disastrous stairs leading to the attic room they now shared. Malcolm’s roommate occasionally growled at him, little more. He did not know what Degaré did during the day, although he suspected criminal activity was involved, as the man returned every evening with his enormous carcass swollen even further with hidden cheeses and breads under his coat, as well as wrapped packages whose contents obviously surprised Degaré when he ripped them open.

One evening Malcolm found a few drops of blood on one of the bread loaves. Their eyes found each other, Degaré’s swollen and angry. “Do you wish to make une réflexion, Monsieur?”

In answer Malcolm stared and began eating the bloodied area.

Sometimes after an extended period in bed Malcolm felt very much the philosopher. What better place to construct his theories? His father might have said this was no way to make one’s way in the world, to which he might reply that neither the way nor the world was very clear. One invention of meaning was as near the truth as any other as far as Malcolm was concerned. There was no sense having a heart attack over such questions, which his father, indeed, had.

Lying in bed he had the opportunity and the will to review and reflect upon his life, something which even the wealthy could not always afford. It gradually came clear to him that a single human being could not have possibly felt and done all the things he had felt and done in such a relatively short time. One being could not possibly contain such conflicts of feeling. He was a man of some education and yet he had eaten bread soiled with a stranger’s blood. And the repugnant Degaré? Sometimes his roommate recited French love poetry in his sleep, with very few mistakes. Such conflicts of spirituality and bestiality! The usual explanations for such contradictions made less sense the longer Malcolm remained in bed. He himself hated the ugliness and falseness of the world, and yet loved the heightened sensibility his hatred brought him. He had absolutely no hope or optimism for his own future, and yet it was a future he looked forward to with great anticipation.

The true mystery was why more did not go mad when forced to endure these conditions. Malcolm concluded there must be a surfeit of souls in heaven (or whatever one chose to call that astral realm) and a shortage of flesh in the mundane world to serve as their vessels. Even when madness was not the immediate result, to live with such internal warfare had to lead inevitably to the vilest sort of illnesses.

In one sense these were merely the idle speculations of a man with no other pressing chores. But Malcolm was taken aback to discover that these ideas triggered emotions he had not experienced in years. Of course he had no one reputable to bear witness to these recent enlightenments. He had no real acquaintances, actually, other than the disreputable Degaré. And so it was that one late evening while engaged in one of their increasingly rare shared dishwashing jobs, the kitchen explosive with heat and argument, a porridge of loose food underfoot, he pulled the giant Frenchmen out into the alley and told him all that he had surmised on the subject.

To Malcolm’s somewhat uncomfortable surprise Degaré actually appeared interested, nodding and sucking in his cheeks, periodically staring at Malcolm with a sympathetic look on his face. Finally, when Malcolm was not yet finished but too exhausted to go on, Degaré turned to him with a dripping ladle raised like a wand and spoke. “I may know just the man who can help you with this problem. He’s a German. He comes to Paris from time to time for various studies, experiments, and God knows what. He dresses very finely, oriental robes, silk scarves, even when he is renting the poorest of hovels to preserve his privacy. You might think he was simply some sharp-tongued dandy, but he is educated, a writer, or so I’ve been told—he certainly weaves magic with his words—who knows deeply the issues of mind and spirit.”

“What is his name?”

“Oh! He has so many! When I first met him he was Meyer, but I have heard others call him Dagobert, and Ruben-Juda. He is quite fluid, let us say, in his allegiances. He joins associations only to tear them down it would seem. I can never tell if the man is serious! But that is simply a symptom of his brilliance, I think.”

“You would seem to know him well.”

“Un peu. I have done the occasional odd job. I have acquired a particular ingredient he has desired, now and then. What can I say? The man talks, I listen, I have learned a bit of his situation. Perhaps he can help you. He is known among certain, say, circles impopulaire for—hmmm—le processus de arrachage?”

“I don’t understand.”

“How do you say? An extraction process?”

“Is that dentistry you’re referring to?”

Degaré laughed. “Non! Ne dentiste! Surely there cannot be a physical process for such a thing. It is philosophical, spiritual. No danger, or so I am told. How could there be? You can have my spirit, Monsieur, I give it gladly, if you will only feed my belly, and other things.”

Malcolm shuddered at what he thought the Frenchman might be suggesting. “Where do I find this magician?”

“Why, only a short stroll to the east, I think you know it? The Rue D’âmes Vidées? I will give you the precise address, for, say, a bit of innocuous cheese?”

As Degaré had promised, the Rue D’âmes Vidées was a short stump of a lane a few minutes stumble toward the river. Malcolm had not been familiar with this particular segment of pavement, although he was aware of other parts of this street from the conversations of others. It had once been one of the longest streets in Paris, a north-south slash through the city’s heart, but over the centuries it had been broken up, blocked by one project or other, canals or public buildings, or occasionally when some housing development was extended across its surface like a dam across a stream. Streets required advocates if they were to remain intact, but this street had none. Now its longest segments were only a few blocks—Rue Abattue D’enfant was one of the siblings, he believed, as well as the Rue des Veuves Aveugles, and the petite route des fenêtres chuchotantes—and here and there, at least according to rumor, a section would be completely enclosed on all four sides, becoming a cour, a courtyard, or forgotten completely on the other side of windowless walls.

Malcolm could not escape the perception of mytaphore, metaphor, in the history of this road and his theory regarding developments in the human personality. Isolated, diverted, and segmented all came to mind when he contemplated the nature of the human spirit.

The door to No. 56 Rue D’âmes Vidées, if that sunken slab of wood could be called such, was dragged open with surprising ease by a handsome man in a fine robe. Malcolm felt immediate intimidation—there was a piercing, electric quality to the man’s eyes as they gazed, unblinking.

“Excusez-moi, Monsieur. I was told, I believe, there is a, arrachage?” He knew he must sound like a fool, but how do you ask about such things?

The man on the other side of the door said nothing, those eyes examining Malcolm up and down with unsettling calm. He made a little wrinkle with his mouth and stepped out of the way.

They moved through the darkness before settling into a sour-smelling room, lit only by a blazing fire. Even though Malcolm was accustomed to working in the hottest of Parisian kitchens, he found the heat in this room almost too much to bear but his host appeared unperturbed, his high forehead dry, unwrinkled. But not undamaged. Closer up, the man’s face appeared scraped, flaking, as if there might be layers of skin missing. “Tell me your story, if you would,” he said.

“Do you mean my theories? Or would you like some sort of introduction?”

The man said nothing for a time, then replied, “Tell me what you would tell me.”

Malcolm worried over this, then asked, “How shall I address you?”

“You may call me Professeur. I think I would like that. At least that will suffice for now.”

Given the professeur’s lack of precise direction, Malcolm had no idea how to begin. Seeking to avoid an extended and laborious back-and-forth, he started with his somewhat disorganized and impulsive decision to move to Paris, his struggles in the city to feed and shelter himself, his relationship with Degaré, finally culminating with the reason he had knocked on the man’s door: his bed-facilitated speculations regarding the problem of the human personality and its inherent conflicts.

Along the way Malcolm became progressively more aware of the increase of light in the room. He supposed it his eyes’ natural ability to acclimate to the ambient gloom, but the fire did appear brighter, fuller, more intense. With the heightened illumination came an abundance of raw detail: the shelves collapsing under the weight of oversized jars and mysterious machinery, the frightening cracks in the ancient beams high overhead, the litter of decaying documents and scrolls in the corners, the small piles of half-eaten food, the constant fall of cinnamony dust, the scattering of indecipherable taxidermy, the stain mark that ran along the walls at an identical height, a sign of some past flood survived. And with that increase in visual detail came a corresponding heightening of olfactory sensation, a blend of acrid and acidic aromas that tickled the nose, then burned. The state of the room seemed dramatically at odds with the elegance of the man who lived here, even if it was for only some short stay. Was this perhaps some Germanic trial of the spirit? Malcolm’s eyes began to weep involuntarily, and soon the entirety of him appeared to be leaking.

Perhaps these various elements led to a distortion in his senses, because Malcolm became convinced the professeur had been amused by his narration, the man’s finely sculpted features gradually warping under the pressure of an ill-fitting grin. However it was not an impression he felt comfortable commenting upon. Ne réflexion.

Finally the professeur spoke, an unmistakable smile dancing across his lips. “We will require several vessels for your various aspects, suitable bodies to contain the release of spiritual energy. Not too many as it is possible to spread the sauce too thin, as it were.”

“Vessels?”

“They need not be informed volunteers. Tell them I will feed them, pay them, whatever. I will recruit a few, but if one might acquire at least one, as assurance?”

“I do not wish to hurt anyone.”

“How might you hurt them? Paris is full of aimless foreigners now. Czechs, Poles, Asians, uncountable young Brits such as yourself. You yourself say that one meaning is as good as any other. We live in a time in which the world is full of wandering spirits. How do you know you will not be providing them with a better meaning? You might do them a favor! Bring whoever you may find here tomorrow. A similar time.”

It would be no exaggeration to say Malcolm felt qualms, although they were not of the moral kind, since he did not believe in that sort of thing. He did believe, however, in survival of the fittest, and the imperative of doing what was required by the environment you were in, which all seemed to add up to a rough sort of justice, and this particular activity, this collecting of vessels, seemed somehow less than just. Of course he did not relate all of this to Degaré, but Degaré was, indeed, his confessor, and so he did manage to cover the bare outlines of the problem.

“Merde.” Degaré spat into the restaurant’s dishwater. “I would give you myself if I could, for the price we discussed, but pardonnez moi, I find I am not yet prepared for such a major life change.” He thought for a moment, rubbing soapsuds through his greasy locks. “Have you thought of Zajic?”

“The kitchen slops man? The Czech?”

“The very one. He broke up with another girlfriend. He mopes all day, he cries. Get him out of here, I say, before I kill him.”

Malcolm found Zajic sitting out in the alley behind the kitchen, weeping. He crouched beside him and commiserated. It was not an entirely false commiseration—he had a few memories of his own, but he had lost his belief in romance long before he had lost his belief in religion. Neither was of any practical use to him.

He offered Zajic some food. The Czech smiled, his hard, slabbed, clay-like face splitting in unused directions. Malcolm offered him a job, and was suddenly swallowed by the slop man’s unwelcome embrace.

In the same gloomy chamber Malcolm lay on a low bed made up of straw and planks and the thinnest of blankets. Zajic lay on a similar arrangement beside him, nearly unconscious from heavy drink. Malcolm had drunk a small amount of wine but wanted to be relatively clear-headed for this procedure, this extraction.

But he was being constantly distracted by a commotion behind the door in a generally left direction, behind his line of sight. He hadn’t noticed a door there before, but he could hear it creaking, opening now and then, shutting with a soft bang, and the people behind it, murmuring drunkenly, possibly weeping.

“Pay no attention to them.” Meyer, the professeur, was suddenly above him, and unless Malcolm misapprehended, gazing down at them as if they were babies in their cribs. “They will come in later during the process. We start with one, we expand to two, as many vessels as are needed. The mathematics are inexact—I will know only after we have begun.”

“But they seem distressed.”

“Distressed? Oh, non, I assure you. They are simply anxious to be a part of this great expérimentent. We are surrounded by a surfeit of life force—surely you can feel it? Yours, our volunteers’, the spirits of all the soldiers who died in the war? So much to channel, to redirect, to sort! I must ask you to simply relax. I have something more for you to drink. It will go well with your wine.”

The taste was strong and bitter, but the bitterness went away immediately, replaced by an overpowering sweetness. The professor smiled broadly and danced around the room, his arms above his head, loose and waving, rubbery. But then he was back close again, a moldering book in his hands, whispering, but Malcolm could not hear him. The anxious people behind the door were too loud.

The professor caressed Malcolm’s side, and his fingertip came away bloody, and there was a knife in his hand, dripping. Malcolm watched as the professor used the knife to carve shreds out of the book, then stuffed those shreds into the wound in Zajic’s side. He had a moment’s anticipation of a different, simpler life to come, fewer complications and conflicts, an avoidance of misunderstandings. And then the professor strolled over to him, grinning widely, his hands full of those shreds, those fragments of ancient narratives, and then the professor’s hands went inside Malcolm, where they stayed, and became busy as insects.

He had been in Paris for decades, it seemed. He could not recall the year he had arrived from Prague, or the look of Prague in even the most general of detail. He could not recall why he had ever left, but he was sure it could not be desperation. It could not be desperation.

There would be no point. Worlds were coming to an end and there was no point. The cities were all failing at the same time. Had no one else noticed this? Could he be the only one?

Some days he would wander the lanes, searching the short streets, the forgotten streets, for nothing. The Rue Abattue D’enfant, the Rue des Veuves Aveugles, the Rue D’âmes Vidées. Some days he would walk to the river, and watch there. He could not remember the river’s name, but thought it might be the Seine, the Thames, the Vltava.

Some nights he climbed the shaking steps to his attic room. But Degaré now lived there. He said he had always lived there. “Monstre!” the burly Frenchmen shouted. “Meurtrier! Can you not leave me alone? You do not live here!”

Some nights he slept where he could. Some nights he wandered without sleeping.

Was he starving? Did it matter?

Everywhere he went people stared. They did not stare just at him—they stared at everything.

He himself stared, he was always staring. He did not want to miss any vanishing detail. In this at least they were brothers and sisters.

There was much he had forgotten, and yet there was much he still knew. Every idea in him had its own voice, every stray thought its own head. In him there were multitudes. He thought perhaps that particular idea might be from the Bible, but he did not know for sure.

He might be sad, he thought. He very well might be. But he could not be sure. He waited for all these other voices to tell him.