The Magician touches my shoulder, "Watch this, Helen," he demands, and sets a playing card in front of me. He moves it around on the table, lifts both his hands, and, in that instant, the card disappears. His sleeves are up, they're well above his bony elbows, often an unattractive part of the body, often plastered with elephant skin, psoriasis is frequently found there, and the card has vanished.
— Thanks, that's terrific, just what I needed, I say.
He looks into my eyes, nakedly taking my measure, and it's a little weird, as if he has imperceptible sightlines into me, but it's not creepy, because his eyes are warm, like the friendly dog's up the street.
— I'm glad, Helen, because the truth is, I'm not going to be here long, it's a pit stop, so to speak.
The Magician continues to look at me but in an especially kindly way and appears to have reached a decision.
— You know, I have a feeling about you, I'd like to get to know you better, as a friend, he explains, with some urgency.
While this is unnerving, it is also pleasant and a surprise, since he has seen something in me that I don't see in myself, I'm sure, but instantly I hope he isn't going to compromise me in some way or make my time here more complicated than it already is, become too demanding, or like a rejected suitor be disappointed and want to harm me. We all saunter into the main lounge for after-dinner talk and drinks, offered by the staff, who serve us with a casual propriety, and then the Turkish poet bundles my arm in his, whisks me away, and asks, "You are truly all right?" because he's nervous for me, since people don't faint "hugely in these times," and, while patting my back solicitously, observes, "You are 19,h century woman in trousers." It's a funny idea, he's wrong, I feel no kinship to the 19,h century, except that it preceded and fomented reaction in the 20th, whose difficult progeny I am, but then I remember my Polish cosmetician, who wouldn't say that, and instead would repeat in her thudding English, "Your skin is very sensitive," then she'd slather cream on my face and tell me to close my eyes, while moving her fingertips lightly across my cheeks, forehead, and chin, never touching the thin skin beneath my eyes, which is too fragile even for her trained touch. "A sexual act is perforce and perchance a fainting," the Turkish poet stage-whispers dramatically, as we are joined by Spike and the Count who sit close to us. The fire rages. The Count hears the Turkish poet's commentary, and, from his store of knowledge, pulls out, like a rabbit, the word faineant, an adjective, which means given to doing nothing, of which I am frequently guilty, but it's also close to feigning, faignant, from the French for idler, he explains, and faindre, to feign. "It's the word closest to fainting in most good dictionaries," the Count says, after which Spike adds that John Cage became an expert in mushrooms, since it was the word in the dictionary closest to music, so Cage kept seeing it, became intrigued and maintained an interest for life. Spike, too, may often look at the M's because she is a mathematician. The Count strolled along the Seine and saw an antique blue watch, fell in love with it, and still loves and collects timepieces, Contesa read Kafka's Amerika and, because he hadn't visited it, she fell in love with his writing and mind, next with his brilliant cat-and-mouse letters to Felice, who may be Contesa's Amerika, because she couldn't visit her even in letters, whose symmetry she might enjoy, but I don't remain faithful long to my person, others, and my interests, except I have habits, but I resent them.
The present into which I've landed from my swoon might be a fine one, I feel this maybe illogically, having just returned from the oneiric empire and been released here, so I can listen to other voices, while the fire throws heat on my sensitive skin, it prickles, but I want more, sensation of any kind. I don't actually mind fainting, except for the feeling of added pressure or weight on my heart, fainting is a habit about which I have no choice, when I lose consciousness, which relieves me in the moment from worse sensations or in short consciousness. But the Count takes out his Breguet and announces, "It's time." Even where our days and nights are relatively unstructured, it's always time for something, with too much or too little of it, everyone complains, then asserts, it may be my time, or I had my time, but what would that have been, yet it's said people live beyond their time, which seems on the face of it a worthless idea, I don't know what it serves, like a cheap design. A neurotic often realizes it is better to live in time, and some of the residents cajole each other, Be present to your experience, get over it, get past it, or just move on, metaphorical phrases that proselytize a physical approach to static mental conditions, practical if mostly useless. The staff encourages the residents similarly with ambiguous regulations and rules that rest on flexibility, except no one knows when that relaxation will occur: for instance, the inventor was allowed to be with his dog when I couldn't bring my young wild cat, and they probably know he dropped his jeans and exposed his rosy ass, and nothing happened, but if the demanding man did it, his act might incur a negative reaction from the administration. Certain fellows' complaints are handled by the staff but others they expect the residents to sort out among themselves, but none of us knows exactly why, since their reasons and rationales are their own, and while we are encouraged also to be ourselves and to be inquisitive, there are some things we must accept, because that is the way things are, it is life. If I could cleanse myself of memory, I would, if I could abandon the sensible or rational world, I would, I'd like to, I think I'd like to. I'd also like to be unafraid and full of faith, like Samantha, who was here two years ago, who followed various teachers to the ends of the earth and never again returned to our ordinary one. Instead she wanders, untethered from any single person or place, in a dayto-day existence of happenstance. If I could, I might be able to pretend that our cat and my dog had found good homes, that beloved dead friends hover like guardian angels or are alive, which happens in dreams, and that I'm not alone and without purpose, subject to forces bigger than myself, about which I have no choice. At my mother's grand age, with her damaged brain, whose irascibility none can predict, her memory's extraction occurs daily, but she forgets and remembers the same things, so even loss has a pattern. She never forgets her husband, my father, only that he is dead and not waiting for her in his car, she forgets she killed our cat and my dog, she forgets my brother or remembers him as a child, she remembers her mother, whom she believes was perfect, and when she awakens from a dream, she's believes she's in prison, trapped in an apartment that is not hers, and nothing reassures her.
Longing to be sure but without the cunning for certain kinds of pretending, which allow for ecstatic drifting or dour certainty, I can imagine and fantasize, I can even will myself toward something like hope when I'm doing and undoing things, which is why Contesa appeals to me, also the Count, both of whom dwell in made-up elsewheres, my dinner partners, also, with their resilience, will, or fortitude, like the Magician, who, though a new resident, responded so graciously to a stranger, me. My incapacities and limits must be internal truths, which is why I do what I do and don't do. I can't unring the bell, I can remove the clangor, I will take apart a hell tomorrow, I can see it, the clangor lying on its side, useless, but if I set many clangors on their sides, and have many, many bowls on a table or on the floor, the patterns could achieve something. A staggering number strewn on the floor, so many inert, disentangled, disconnected objects might become something, or only things on a floor taking up space, but that is what everything does, take up space, all things need room, so I might try the experiment, since nothing succeeds without failure, failure has many charms, a mistake might bear a thrilling offspring. I want sensation, even though I don't know what I'm looking for, while scientists, whom I admire, know what they seek, so their experiments are conducted with an aim, an order, a logic, purpose, as they are interested in outcomes and in proofs. I am mostly interested in ways to the end, processes closer to living, whose outcome is always the same, a reliable fact of life, so there's reason to be curious only about when it comes, and for most there will be no proof of anything, another reason to follow, yet also question, science, with its assurance of repeatable outcomes. History repeats itself, but differently, people repeat themselves, there is a compulsion to repeat, which is not chosen, and few actually appreciate conscious repetition, except psychoanalysts, scientists, salespeople, and shopkeepers, who depend on regular customers, and artists, who might find elegance or beauty in it. Many repetitions are numbing, some might be propitious mistakes, or just useless error, though eating the same meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner has a certain beauty or intelligence because you could have more time for other thoughts, though they may be plaintive and less sensual than deliberating about food, when, and only if, it is plentiful. The abundance of recipes and menus can be a bounty or a burden, but it can be stupid to hold the same position toward things, because you have always held it, or as a principle. I ruefully acknowledge mistakes, as well as episodes of stupidity, as Contesa called them, which aren't only sexual, but some have been and continue to be, and wrongness lumbers on in a range from pathetic, poorly conceived, or subtly incorrect acts or thoughts, to indifferent, crude, and manipulative ones, sometimes similar to cruelty, whose sting is worse than being struck dumb, or being incapable of knowing what to do or why. The sprites who forgive and forget taunt me, and some obsessive thinking is disheartening, while most is a mistake.