PART FOUR. The Prodigal's Tide
Last night I had a visit from Marietta. She brought me some cocaine, which she said she'd acquired in Miami and was of the very best quality. She also brought me a bottle of Benedictine, along with instructions on how to dissolve the drug in the liquor, so as to make, she promised, a potent concoction. It was time we went out adventuring together, she said; and this would put me in the perfect mood. I told her I couldn't go anywhere. There were too many ideas in my head; threads of my story which I had to keep from becoming knotted up.
"You'll work better after a little play," she pointed out.
"I'm sure you're right, but I'm still going to say no."
"What's the real reason?" she demanded.
"Well," I said, "the fact is… I'm about to start writing about Galilee. And I'm afraid if I stop now-before I face the challenge-I may not want to start again."
"I don't understand why," Marietta remarked. "I would have thought it would be something wonderful to write about him."
"Well I find the prospect intimidating."
"Why?"
"He's been so many people in his life. He's done so much. I'm afraid I won't capture him. He'll just become a cluster of contradictions."
"Then maybe that's what he is," she remarked, sensibly enough.
"People will still think the error's mine," I protested.
"Oh Eddie, it's only a book."
"It is not… only a book. It's my book. And it's a chance to tell something nobody else has ever told."
"All right, all right," she said, showing her palms in surrender, "don't get yourself stirred up. I'm sure it's going to be brilliant. There."
"I don't want to hear that. You'll make me self-conscious."
"Oh Lord. Well then what can I say?"
"Absolutely nothing. You can just leave me to get on with it."
Even then I had not told her everything. Yes, I was fearful of the subject that lay before me-of Galilee-and was nervous that if I once lost the flow of my story I would not find it easy to return to it with the prospect of his appearance looming. But I was more fearful still of accompanying Marietta out beyond the perimeters of the house; of going back into the world after so many years. I was afraid, I suppose, of finding whatever lay out there now so overwhelming that I'd be like a lost child. I'd weep, I'd shake, I'd wet my pants. God knows, ridiculous as all these thoughts must seem to you, who live out there in the midst of things and presumably take all you see and experience for granted, they were very real concerns to me. I had been, you must remember, a kind of willing prisoner of L'Enfant for so long that I had become like a man who has passed the bulk of his life in a tiny cell, and when he is released-though he has dreamed of the open sky for decades-cowers at the sight of it, in terror of being unconcealed by his prison walls.
In short, Marietta left me in a foul mood, feeling as though there was no comfort anywhere tonight. If I stayed, I faced Galilee. If I went, I faced the world. (Which implies, now I read it back, that Galilee is all the world is not, and vice versa. Unintentionally, I may have said something true about him there.)
As much to put off the moment when I had to return to the text I decided to experiment with the makings of the aphrodisiac Marietta had left me. Just as she had instructed, I poured out a measure of Benedictine into a cordial glass, and then, opening the little bag of cocaine, some of which was powdery, some of which was lumpen, I selected a sizeable nugget and dropped it into the liquor, stirring it around with my pen. It didn't entirely dissolve; the result was a slightly cloudy liquor. I toasted my text, there on the desk before me, and downed the mixture. It burned my throat, and I instantly thought I'd made an error. I sat down, my eyes watering. I could feel the track of the liquor all the way down my esophagus, or so I imagined, then seeping over the wall of my stomach, still burning.
"Marietta …" I growled. Why did I ever listen to a word that damn dyke said? She was a liability. But I'd no sooner uttered her name than the drug began to take its effect. I felt a welcome enlivening of my limbs; and a kind of brightening of my thoughts, a quickening.
I got up from my desk, feeling a rush of strength in my lower limbs. I needed to get out of my room for a while, out into the balmy evening. I needed to stride awhile beneath the chestnut trees; fill my head with the scents of dusk. Then I could come back to my desk refreshed, ready to tackle the task of Galilee.
Before I went I mixed myself another cordial glass to brimming, with a somewhat larger pebble of cocaine dissolved therein. Rather than drink it down then and there I took it with me, down the stairs and out, via a side door, onto the lawn. It was a beautiful evening-calm and sweet. The mosquitoes were out in force, but the coke and brandy had rendered me indifferent to their assaults. I wandered through the trees to the place where the cultivation of the grounds is relinquished to the glorious disorder of the swamp. The honeyed smells of garden flowers give way here to ranker scents: to the mingled fragrances of rot and stagnancy.
My eyes gradually became better accustomed to the starlight and by the glitter of those distant suns I was able to see some considerable distance between the trees. I watched the alligators on the banks, or moving through the laval waters; I watched the bats passing overhead, weaving their way between the branches in great multitudes.
Please realize that the pleasure I took in all this-the night animals, the rotted trees, the general miasma-had nothing to do with the cocaine. I have always enjoyed sights and species that the common throng would think of as unsavory, even signs of evil. Some of this enjoyment is aesthetic; but part comes out of the kinship I feel with unprettified nature, being as I am, a good example of same. I smell more rank than sweet, I look more degenerate than newly budded.
So, anyway; there I was, wandering at the edge of the lawn, surveying the swamp before me, and taking no little pleasure in the sight. I had carried my cordial glass down thus far without sipping a drop from it (sometimes the best of a drug-as with so much else-lies not in the consumption, but in the anticipation of the consumption). Now I took a mouthful, and swallowed it down. It was quite considerably stronger than the first draught. Even as it slid down my throat I seemed to feel my body responding to its presence: the same agitation in my limbs as I'd felt before, the same quickening of my thoughts. I've heard it said that this quickening is purely an illusion; that all the cocaine is doing is tricking the mind into believing it's performing mental gymnastics, when all it's doing is tripping over itself. I beg to differ. I've enjoyed some fine intellectual sport riding the white powder, and I've come away from the exercise with ruminations that stood the test of straight study.
But tonight I could not have had an intellectual exchange with someone if my life had depended upon it. Perhaps it was the potent mixture of cocaine and Benedictine; perhaps it was the fact of being out here in the wilderness alone; perhaps it was simply a readiness in me, but I found myself aroused. My head throbbed pleasantly, my heart beat hard in my breast, as though preparing itself for something, and my cock, which, excepting the visit from Cesaria, had been quiescent for several months, had risen up in my baggy pants, and was nuzzling at my fly in the hope of release.
My desire had no object, let me say; real or imagined. Marietta's concoction had simply given my body a wake-up call, and its first thoughts, now that it was awake, were sexual. I laughed out loud, perfectly happy with my lot at that moment; not desiring anything more than what I had: the stars, the swamp, the glass in my hand; my heart, and a hard-on. All lovely; and laughable.