Worlds

19. A Few Words from Benny

This is the 15th of October. No entries for the past several weeks, old Journal, because I’ve been trying to sort out my feelings toward Marianne O’Hara; trying to divine her feelings toward me.

The second part, I fear, is easier. She sees me as a friend whom she can help. Little more. (Surprising how difficult this is to write!) She is accustomed to being casual about sex and, I suspect, enjoys showing off her expertise.

All of which confounds and delights me. To discover passion so late, and through such a bizarre vehicle. I am obsessed with her. But I dare not put the name “love” to it. Even if the first sight of her in the morning makes my heart stammer.

It’s strangely appropriate that she isn’t beautiful. She has a more rare quality, concentrated in her expression: striking, magnetic, charismatic. The first time I met her I found it difficult to keep from staring; I’ve seen that struggle a thousand times since, with friends and strangers. She is aware of this quality, of course, but will not discuss it. For me it seems most intense when she is off guard, reading or watching something distant. Her face then takes on (bad pun) an otherworldly calm, which I only yesterday identified with a painting: Botticelli’s Venus. And she Benny’s Aphrodite.

She was attacked, and badly injured, three weeks ago. I visited her several times in the hospital. The first time she was brusque, almost rude; later she said she was trying to get rid of me so I wouldn’t see her crying. I would give a great deal to see her cry. Or do anything that showed a break in control. She has the soul of a compassionate machine. Bitter Benny. You know she isn’t like that with everyone. I wonder what she is to Daniel, the man she left up in New New York? Or to that Devonite she says she loved so terribly. I don’t even know what she is to me, not honestly. All I know is that I haven’t written a poem in weeks that I didn’t tear up immediately.There once was a harlot from spaceWith a very remarkable face,Whose nethermore partCould break a man’s heartWith a taste of its tiny embrace.

Still haven’t. Can’t tear this page out, though, or years from now I’ll wonder what I had to hide from myself.

Trying to be honest: the bitterness is a predictable refraction of thankfulness, indebtedness that can never be discharged. I could have gone through life a eunuch. She gave me new life and all I can do is amuse her.

(She does laugh well. Last night I caught her off guard, juggling two of her shoes and a piece of candy. When I got them going good and fast I told her “Watch closely… I’m going to eat one of these.”)

Maybe there’s no room in my life right now for poetry, dominated as it is on one side by this nervous passion for Marianne, and on the other side by ever more complicated politics. I have felt for some time that the Grapeseed Revenge was more than simply a watering hole for hairy grumblers. Now I know for sure.

There’s been a great deal of angry rhetoric over the Lobbies’ boycott of the Worlds. As if the threat of starvation were not a time-honored aspect of American foreign trade policy. I got so weary of hearing the same things shouted over and over that I began playing devil’s advocate, defending the Senate’s righteous actions against those piratical colonies (that’s not a popular word at the Grapeseed). Marianne was entertained by my ranting, but we had to make a hasty exit, or leave aerially.

Throughout my act, the strange fellow who calls himself Will—that’s metonymy, not contraction—sat impassively, with a tired smile. Later that night he called. He said he had enjoyed my bit of comedy, and from it had deduced that I might be one who preferred action to empty argumentation. If so, would I meet him and some friends at such-and-so corner; please repeat it and don’t write it down.

It happens that I do prefer words to action, of course, but I couldn’t help being intrigued. I went to the place at the time specified. After waiting twenty minutes I gave up and walked away. A woman I’d never seen before caught up with me and asked me to follow her. After a confusing subway ride, we wound up on the other side of town. She left me at the door of a tenement and asked me to wait a few minutes, then knock. She left. I was beginning to enjoy it, the comic-opera aspect, but almost walked away myself; if they had a realistic reason for all the mystery, I would just as soon not get involved. Some great poetry has been written in prison, but I don’t think I want to put my own skills to that test.

Before I could knock or not-knock, the door opened of its own accord. A soft voice bade me come in. It was a large room with only one person in it, standing behind the door. He (I say for convenience) led me wordlessly to a table in the middle of the room. He was hooded and wore shapeless black fatigues. His tenor voice could have been male or female. He sat me down on a hard chair and sat himself across from me, then from a drawer took a polygraph plate and a clipboard. Did I mind being asked a few questions? I asked him what would happen if I gave the wrong answers. He said I’d given him one already. I was suddenly comforted by the weight of the knife on my belt; glad I’d unsnapped the retaining strap when we’d gone down to the subway.

I put my hand on the plate and he asked me a number of remarkable questions, to calibrate it. They all had to do with my private life over the past couple of days: trivial things like what I’d had for lunch, whom I’d met when, and so forth. So I’d been under surveillance.

Then he quizzed me about possible government affiliation (except for a couple of months in the Boy Scouts, I was clean) and then about my political beliefs. I don’t think he liked all of my answers; he wanted a reflex radical.

After a few minutes of this he got up and led me—reluctantly, I thought—up a flight of stairs, where he rapped on a door and left without a word.

The man who answered the door startled me. He was blind, with a bugeye prosthesis. Not many people are born blind and rich. He asked me if I was Benny, and shook hands, smiling.

There were three other people inside, all about my age, sitting around on shabby hotel furniture. The blind man said his name was James, and he introduced the others: Katherine, Damon, and Ray. Offered me tea. When I asked where Will was, he stiffened and said that some of these people didn’t know Will.

We talked for a while about generalities, uncomfortably, people pointedly avoiding any talk that had to do with their personal lives. James noticed my puzzlement and said they were waiting for one more.

There was a knock at the door and James sat for a few seconds, then got up and answered it. It was Marianne….