The Tent

LIFE STORIES

Why the hunger for these? If it is a hunger. Maybe it’s more like bossiness. Maybe we just want to be in charge, of the life, no matter who lived it.

It helps if there are photos. No more choices for the people in them—pick this one, dump that one. The livers of the lives in question had their chances, most of which they blew. They should have spotted the photographer in the bushes, they shouldn’t have chewed with their mouths open, they shouldn’t have worn the strapless top, they shouldn’t have yawned, they shouldn’t have laughed: so unattractive, the candid denture. So that’s what she looked like, we say, connecting the snapshot to the year of the torrid affair. Face like a half-eaten pizza, and is that him, gaping down her front? What did he see in her, besides cheap lunch? He was already going bald. What was all the fuss about?

I’m working on my own life story. I don’t mean I’m putting it together; no, I’m taking it apart. It’s mostly a question of editing. If you’d wanted the narrative line you should have asked earlier, when I still knew everything and was more than willing to tell. That was before I discovered the virtues of scissors, the virtues of matches.

I was born, I would have begun, once. But snip, snip, away go mother and father, white ribbons of paper blown by the wind, with grandparents tossed out for good measure. I spent my childhood. Enough of that as well. Goodbye dirty little dresses, goodbye scuffed shoes that caused me such anguish, goodbye well-thumbed tears and scabby knees, and sadness worn at the edges.

Adolescence can be discarded too, with its salty tanned skin, its fecklessness and bad romance and leakages of seasonal blood. What was it like to breathe so heavily, as if drugged, while rubbing up against strange leather coats in alleyways? I can’t remember.

Once you get started it’s fun. So much free space opens up. Rip, crumple, up in flames, out the window. I was born, I grew up, I studied, I loved, I married, I procreated, I said, I wrote, all gone now. I went, I saw, I did. Farewell crumbling turrets of historic interest, farewell icebergs and war monuments, all those young stone men with eyes upturned, and risky voyages teeming with germs, and dubious hotels, and doorways opening both in and out. Farewell friends and lovers, you’ve slipped from view, erased, defaced: I know you once had hairdos and told jokes, but I can’t recall them. Into the ground with you, my tender fur-brained cats and dogs, and horses and mice as well: I adored you, dozens of you, but what were your names?

I’m getting somewhere now, I’m feeling lighter. I’m coming unstuck from scrapbooks, from albums, from diaries and journals, from space, from time. Only a paragraph left, only a sentence or two, only a whisper.

I was born.

I was.

I.

CLOTHING DREAMS

Oh no. Not this again. It’s the clothing dream. I’ve been having it for fifty years. Aisle after aisle, closetful after closetful, metal rack after metal rack of clothing, stretching into the distance under the glare of the fluorescent tubing—as gaudy and ornate and confusing, and finally as glum and oppressive, as the dreams of a long-time opium smoker. Why am I compelled to riffle through these outfits, tangling up the hangers, tripping on the ribbons, snagging myself on a hook or button while feathers and sequins and fake pearls drop to the floor like ants from a burning tree? What is the occasion? Who do I need to impress?

There’s a smell of stale underarms. Everything’s been worn before. Nothing fits. Too small, too big, too magenta. These flounces, hoops, ruffles, wired collars, cut-velvet capes—none of these disguises is mine. How old am I in this dream? Do I have tits? Whose life am I living? Whose life am I failing to live?

BOTTLE

— I only want to be like everyone else, I said.

— You’re not, though, was what he told me. You’re not like them.

— Why not? I said. I was inclined to listen to him. He had a persuasive manner.

— Because I love you.

— Is that all?

— I’m not just anyone, he said.

— Nobody is, I said.

— You see, he said, that’s what I mean, you’re not like everyone else. You notice the details, you take the distinguishing characteristics into account, you pick out the tendencies. These are the qualities I’m looking for.

— Is this a seduction? I said.

— No. The seduction took place a while ago; you didn’t even notice it. We’re past that. We’re at the hiring stage. We’ve come to the bargaining.

— What do I have to do? I said.

— Sleep with me, that goes without saying. I’ll make it worth your while.

— What else?

— I value loyalty. Remember, you’re not a lawyer: don’t fuck the clients.

— I wouldn’t anyway. They always have bad karma. What else?

— Just what you’re already doing, he said. Some routine chores. Inhale some smoke, chew selected plant materials, tell a couple of riddles, write things on leaves. Do the odd incantation; lead a few sightseeing tours of hell. Keep up the tone of the establishment.

— No fooling around with snakes? I can’t, if there’s snakes. I have a phobia.

— Snakes were last year.

— Good. Where do I sign? Just a minute—what do I get in return?

— Women are so mercenary.

— No, but seriously?

— You’ll get wise. Wiser than you are, I mean.

— It’s not enough.

— All right: you can have some immortality. Here it is. It’s inside this bottle. See it?

— That little heap of dust?

— Look harder.

— Oh. Yes. Does it always sparkle like that?

— Only at first.

— Are you sure this is immortality?

— Trust me. With some of this, you’ll always have a voice.

— Have a voice, or be a voice?

— One or the other.

— Well, okay, thanks a lot then.

— Don’t drop the bottle. Be careful with it. You have to watch those things, they have a habit of getting bigger. They can get as big as the sky. You can be sucked into them before you know it. It’s the vacuum effect. Now set it down, over there in the corner, dump that bulky mantle, and put your arms…

— I feel dizzy. This is getting a little intense. I ate too much at lunch. I think I should go home and lie down.

— Lie down right here! You owe me, remember? No time like the present. Slit a throat, pour a libation, empty your mind, close your eyes, clear a space for me, think about caves…

— Ouch. Let go! I need to breathe. I can’t, right now. How about next week?

— Don’t you love me?

— It’s not that. It’s just—are you really who you say you are?

— I am what I am. I’m also who you say I am. That’s the way it is with gods, and I’m a god, after all.

— So there’s nothing to you. You’re only in my head. You’re just a—you’re nothing.

— More or less.

— That’s what I thought. Wait, come back!

— I’m not stupid, I recognize no when I hear it.

— I didn’t mean to be abrupt. Let’s talk.

— You can’t talk with nothing.

— But—

IMPENETRABLE FOREST

The person you have in mind is lost. That’s the picture I’m getting. He believes he is lost in the middle of an impenetrable forest. His head is full of trees. Branches he’s bumping into. Brambles he’s tangled up in. Paths that lead nowhere. Animals that jeer at him and run away. Here and there the glimpse of an elusive maiden, wearing a dress of what appears to be white cheesecloth. I’m getting some insects too, the stinging variety. This is not pleasant. The sun is sinking. The shadows are darkening. Things could hardly be worse.

Then there’s you. Where do you come into it? You’re not one to resist an opportunity, the sort of opportunity he presents. Some would call it meddling, but you think of it as helpfulness. I apologize for being so frank but I’m just the messenger. Here you come, descending in our pinkish cloud, glowing like a low-wattage light bulb or an aquarium in a chintzy bar. Feathers sprout from your shoulders, rays of light shoot out from you, silver-and-gold confetti wafts down from you like metallic dandruff. It does not occur to you that your dress is covered with tiny fish hooks. On some of them scraps of bait are still hanging: cricket wings, worm torsos, old bank deposit slips.

There there, you say. A whisk here, a flick there, with your magic wand—transparent plastic, with a miniature motorcar in it that slides up and down in a sparkly fluid when shaken—and the brambles vanish. The sun reverses direction, the paths straighten out, dawn occurs.

Voilŕ! you say. Your debts are paid, your emotional problems are solved, your illnesses are cured. Not only that, but your childhood sorrows—the ones that held you back and bogged you down—they’ve been erased. Now you can get on with it.

He looks at you without gratitude. What is this it I’m supposed to be getting on with? he says.

You don’t know? you ask, with an irritation you try to conceal. I’ve come down into this stupid woodlot, gone to major trouble, cleared away a lifetime of junk for you, and you still don’t know?

You don’t understand much, he says. Why do you think I was lost in the impenetrable forest in the first place?

ENCOURAGING THE YOUNG

I have decided to encourage the young. Once I wouldn’t have done this, but now I have nothing to lose. The young are not my rivals. Fish are not the rivals of stones.

So I will encourage them open-handedly, I will encourage them en masse. I’ll fling encouragement over them like rice at a wedding. They are_ the young,_ a collective noun, like the electorate. I’ll encourage them indiscriminately, whether they deserve it or not. Anyway, I can’t tell them apart.

So I will stand cheering generally, like a blind person at a football game: noise is what is required, waves of it, invigorating yelps to inspire them to greater efforts, and who cares on what side and to what ends?

I don’t mean the very young, those who can still display their midriffs without attracting derision. Boredom’s their armour: to them I’m a voice balloon with nothing in it.

No. It’s the newly conscious young I mean, the ones with ambition and fresh diffidence, those who’ve learned the hard way that reach exceeds grasp nine times out of ten. How disappointed they are! And if and when they succeed for the first time, how anxious it makes them! They develop insomnia, or claustrophobia, or bulimia, or fear of heights. Now they will have to live up to themselves. Bummer.

Here I am, happy to help! I’ll pass round the encouragement, a cookie’s worth for each. There you are, young! What is a big, stupid, clumsy mess like the one you just made—let me rephrase that—what is an understandable human error, but a learning experience? Try again! Follow your dream! You can do it!

What a fine and shining person I am, so much kinder than when I’d just finished being young myself. I was severe then; my standards were exacting. The young—I felt—were allowed to get away with far too much, as I had been. But now I’m generosity itself. Affably I smile and dole.

On second thought, my motives are less pure than they appear. They are murkier. They are lurkier. I catch sight of myself, in that inward eye that is not always the bliss of solitude, and I see that I am dubious. I scuttle from bush to bush, at the edge of the dark woods, peering out. Yoo hoo! Young! Over here! I call, beckoning with my increasingly knobbly forefinger. That’s it! Now, here’s a lavish gingerbread house, decorated with your name in lights. Wouldn’t you like to walk into it, claim it as your own, stuff your face on sugary fame? Of course you would!

I won’t fatten them in cages, though. I won’t ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won’t change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won’t drain out their life’s blood. They can do all those things for themselves.

VOICE

I was given a voice. That’s what people said about me. I cultivated my voice, because it would be a shame to waste such a gift. I pictured this voice as a hothouse plant, something luxuriant, with glossy foliage and the word tuberous in the name, and a musky scent at night. I made sure the voice was provided with the right temperature, the right degree of humidity, the right ambience. I soothed its fears; I told it not to tremble. I nurtured it, I trained it, I watched it climb up inside my neck like a vine.

The voice bloomed. People said I had grown into my voice. Soon I was sought after, or rather my voice was. We went everywhere together. What people saw was me, what I saw was my voice, ballooning out in front of me like the translucent greenish membrane of a frog in full trill.

My voice was courted. Bouquets were thrown to it. Money was bestowed on it. Men fell on their knees before it. Applause flew around it like flocks of red birds.

Invitations to perform cascaded over us. All the best places wanted us, and all at once, for, as people said—though not to me—my voice would thrive only for a certain term. Then, as voices do, it would begin to shrivel. Finally it would drop off, and I would be left alone, denuded—a dead shrub, a footnote.

It’s begun to happen, the shrivelling, Only I have noticed it so far. There’s the barest pucker in my voice, the barest wrinkle. Fear has entered me, a needleful of ether, constricting what in someone else would be my heart.

Now it’s evening; the neon lights come on, excitement quickens in the streets. We sit in this hotel room, my voice and I; or rather in this hotel suite, because it’s still nothing but the best for us. We’re gathering our strength together. How much of my life do I have left? Left over, that is: my voice has used up most of it. I’ve given it all my love, but it’s only a voice, it can never love me in return.

Although it’s begun to decay, my voice is still as greedy as ever. Greedier: it wants more, more and more, more of everything it’s had so far. It won’t let go of me easily.

Soon it will be time for us to go out. We’ll attend a luminous occasion, the two of us, chained together as always. I’ll put on its favourite dress, its favourite necklace. I’ll wind a fur around it, to protect it from the drafts. Then we’ll descend to the foyer, glittering like ice, my voice attached like an invisible vampire to my throat.

NO MORE PHOTOS

No more photos. Surely there are enough. No more shadows of myself thrown by light onto pieces of paper, onto squares of plastic. No more of my eyes, mouths, noses, moods, bad angles. No more yawns, teeth, wrinkles. I suffer from my own multiplicity. Two or three images would have been enough, or four, or five. That would have allowed for a firm idea: This is she. As it is, I’m watery, I ripple, from moment to moment I dissolve into my other selves. Turn the page: you, looking, are newly confused. You know me too well to know me. Or not too well: too much.

ORPHAN STORIES

i) How swiftly the orphans set sail! No sooner does the starting gun fire than they’re flying! Their yachts are slimmer, their lines trimmer than ours—than our stodgy barges. They drag no anchors, they haul no ballast, they toss all baggage overboard, and the one flag they ever hoist is blank. No wonder they pull out of the bay ahead of the rest, no wonder they round the cape so briskly! But what now? They won’t stay on course, they won’t play by the well-wrought rules, they despise the prize. They’re headed for the open sea. They’re sailing into the sun. They’re gone.

ii) Orphans have bad experiences: in barns, in cellars, in automobiles, in woodsheds, in vacant fields, in empty classrooms. It’s because they’re so tempting. It’s because they’re so damaged. It’s because they’re so scrawny. It’s because they’re so easily broken. It’s because they’re so available. It’s because they’re so erotic. It’s because no one will believe what they say.

iii) The orphans line up for their gruel. All kinds of orphans—car-crash orphans, boat-accident orphans, heart-attack orphans, unwed-mother orphans, war orphans—for all of these gruel is provided, out of the goodness of our hearts. They don’t get much, a dollop here, a dollop there, but such is the way, in orphanages. They wait for their dollops, standing quietly in their cheap grey uniforms, provided by us as well. How kind we are, how virtuous we feel! One day the orphans start banging with their cheap tin spoons, on their cheap tin plates. They’ve been told to be thankful, to be grateful, not to be greedy, but they want more. They want more and more and more. They want what we have! How dare they? How dare they brandish their hunger at us like a sword?

iv) What are their names? Names are arbitrary, but orphans’ names are more arbitrary than most. They make up their names as they go along. Call me Ishmael, they say. Or else: Call me Ishmael, but call me often. Or else: Don’t call me Ishmael, call me Anonymous. Call me No-name. Call me In Vain. Orphans are such flirts, they’ll hook up with anyone, then they tear up their phone books, they discard at random. They show no mercy.

v) You’re not my real parents, every child has thought. I’m not your real child. But with orphans, it’s true. What freedom, to thumb your nose authentically! For orphans, all roads are open. For orphans, all roads are the one not chosen. For orphans, all roads are necessary. How can they be kicked out of home? They’re out of home already. They hitch through life, one casual ride after another. Their rule is the rule of thumb.

vi) On the other hand how sad, to make your way like a snail, a very fast snail but a snail nonetheless, with no home but the one on your back, and that home an empty shell. A home filled with nothing but yourself. It’s heavy, that lightness. It’s crushing, that emptiness.

vii) But what love they inspire, these orphans! Little orphan babies left in shopping bags, on doorsteps, in the cold. Little orphan babies left in baskets, under cabbage leaves, by birds, by cupids, by gnomes. Folks line up for them, cross-eyed with pity, money in their pockets, damp handkerchiefs in their fists, rescue in their minds, blankets in their knapsacks, warm arms open, waiting to gather them in. Where did you come from, baby dear? Out of the darkness. Out of the fear.

viii) Nevertheless, we’re warned against them, these orphans. They’re sly, they’re shifty. How do you know anything about them? Who were their people? Bar the doors, hide the silver! If you find a baby in the bulrushes, leave it there! Don’t invite the orphans over your threshold! They’ll cut your throat for a penny, they’ll run off with your daughter, they’ll seduce your son, they’ll wreck your home, because home is where the heart is and the orphans are heartless.

ix) No, you’ve got it wrong. It’s the other way around. The orphans are not the stealers but the stolen; they are not the killers but the killed. You can tell where the orphans have wandered by the trails they leave: breadcrumbs in the forest, drops of blood, tears that have turned into small white mushrooms, small piles of fragile bones among the roots and moss.

Read the statistics: their chances are not good. Their stepmothers demand their tongues on a plate; their fathers have skipped town; their uncles send villains with pillows to smother them in their sleep. It’s only in books—and only some books—that a generous benefactor appears in the nick of time to save the orphans from the forces of malice ranged against them. What are those forces? Look into the magic mirror, sweet reader. Look into the deep still wishing well. Ask yourself.

x) It’s a good excuse, though, orphanhood. It explains everything—every mistake and wrong turn. As Sherlock Holmes declared, She had no mother to advise her. How we long for it, that lack of advice! Imprudence could have been ours. Passionate affairs. Reckless adventures. Of course we’re grateful for our stable upbringings, our hordes of informative relatives, our fleece-lined advantages, our lack of dramatic plots. But there’s a corner of envy in us all the same. Why doesn’t anything of interest happen to us, coddled as we are? Why do the orphans get all the good lines?

xi) Now the letters will arrive, from orphans. How could you treat orphanhood so lightly! they will say. You don’t understand what it’s like to be an orphan. You are the sort of person who jeers at those with no legs. You are frivolous and cruel. You are harsh.

Ah yes, dear orphans, I can see how you would feel that way. But to note is not to disparage. All observations of life are harsh, because life is. I lament that fact, but I cannot change it.

(And consider: It is loss to which everything flows, absence in which everything flowers. It is you, not we, who have always been the children of the gods.)

GATEWAY

You were led to expect a road, a river, a boat, a gate, a guardian. All were supplied, though none was what you’d imagined. The road was indistinguishable from many of the sidewalks you’d so often trudged along: poured concrete, dirty in the usual way—weathered chewing gum, fresh spit, the odd dog dropping. Your feet were tired—whose shoes were you wearing?—but there was no place to sit down. The river, when you came to it, was a canal, stagnant with algae and floating plastic bags. A shabby houseboat was moored there, but no path led down to it. Instead the sidewalk took you across a massive iron bridge, painted grey. After that came a red brick wall that went on for a long time. It had posters stuck onto it—a play was being advertised, or else a film—the same poster, over and over. They showed a woman’s face with a surprised expression, her hand raised as if in self-protection, with big lettering in blue and orange and lines of smaller print: favourable quotations from the newspapers, no doubt, but somehow you couldn’t read them. In addition to the posters there were names spray-painted on the brick—no one you knew—and hot-pink symbol-writing that suggested the twisted-balloon animals made by clowns at children’s parties.

At last came the gate. It had a door, a steel door set into the brick wall. It was dented, as if people had been kicking at it with heavy boots. The guardian was leaning against it. He had the look of a man who’d been sleeping rough for some time. Old jeans, stubbled face, broken sandals; a torn rucksack by his feet.

You got here at last, he said. These are your things. I’ve kept them for you.

My things? you said. You inspected the rucksack. It didn’t look familiar. What did he mean by things? A toothbrush, underwear?

Things you saved up, he said. For this occasion.

You lifted the rucksack. It was very light. You wondered if there was a sandwich in it. You weren’t hungry, but you might be later. You examined the door. There were no windows in it. There was no lock.

I’m supposed to go in here? you said.

I have to ask you some questions first, he said. Think carefully before you answer.

All right, you said. You had an idea about the questions: you’d be asked to give a good account of yourself, and to admit to your misdeeds, such as they were. You thought you were ready. You hadn’t been perfect, but then, perfection wouldn’t be expected. Surely not, or who would ever get in?

Here are the questions, he said. What is your favourite colour? Did you love your cat? Did you ever find a coin on the pavement? Were you happy?

Suddenly it’s the present tense. The first question baffles you. Do you have a favourite colour or not? You can’t remember. Everything you’ve been meaning to say in your own defence has gone right out of your head. Now a wind has begun to blow: ripped posters whirl along the street, open mouths, hands, eyes. Perhaps you should open the rucksack. You never had a cat. What do coins have to do with it? There must be some mistake.

BOTTLE II

Bring your ear down closer. Put your hand over the other ear. Think of seashells. There. Now you can hear me.

It must be a surprise for you, the discovery that there’s a voice inside this bottle. You thought you were buying a curio, which is what most people would call a round-bodied glass object, ornate, dusty, out of date, filled with layers of coloured sand, purple-pink-orange-green-beige. A sort of ornament. A sort of souvenir, from a place you haven’t in fact ever visited.

Then you saw the sand moving, in a bottle with the cork in. At first you thought it might be an earthquake, a small one, the kind that rattles teacups. But no. You watched closely. You were not mistaken: yes, there was a rippling, a shivering, a wavelet of purple sand. Some sort of insect life, perhaps. You took out the cork.

That was when you heard the voice. My voice, to be precise. It was a small sibilant voice, like the rustling of old corn husks in a breeze, or of dried leaves kept for eons in a cave. It was a hissing, like steam escaping fitfully from a fissure in damp mud. An underground sound, hinting of unknown pressures, of unknown powers. It was an enticing whisper.

Ask me what you need to know, this voice—my voice—promised. Ask and I’ll tell you. Your car keys? They’re under the bed. Your stock holdings? I see gold, but is it yours? Your death, when and where? This voice offered you knowledge, but also fear. Fear is synonymous with the future, and the future consists of forked roads, I should say forking roads, because the roads are forking all the time, like slow lightning. A road is a process, not a location. I can put my fingertips on this road, on these roads, on this trembling branchwork, my fingertips that are now so fine and spidery.

How did it come to this? My present arachnid state. I was young once, I was beautiful, I was sought after, I had picturesque robes and exceptional talents. I uttered portents in caves: there were lineups, there were waiting lists for them. How did I come to be so tiny, so translucent, so wispy, so whispery? How did I come to be shut up inside this bottle? It’s an unusual story, an incredible story, a story that could not take place today. I’m not sure I still believe it myself, though I’ll tell it to anyone who’ll lend an ear.

Right now that means you. I am not a curio, my friend. Or rather I am a curio, but you’d have to say the curio, the best one of all. Only the very curious acquire curios like this. And you are a curious person, you look into the medicine cabinets in the bathrooms of people you hardly know, you’re an avid listener, you’re driven to listen, you’ll listen to anything. I understand you: I too was curious once, like you. We are both the kind of person who takes the corks out of bottles. Not bottles of wine: bottles of sand.