Ice And Fire

landlord to be called, and the windows were open, and congestion in the chest, and shopping to do, and noises on the roof, and some strange sounds from below: and so it was

impossible to sleep. The drip under the sink would mean calling

the super: and this meant no sleep: because he was a small,

mean, angry man, aloof but radiating hot cruelty, one little

man knotted into one fist of a man. His wife, having no English, would answer the phone and in terror stammer out

“ asleep” or “ not here” or “ no, no. ” Once she begged me in

splatters of languages I did not speak: do not make me get

him, miss, he will hurt me. The sink would be stopped up

beyond help, or there would be no heat or no hot water, for us

in this cold place a disaster of unparalleled dimensions, and

she would whisper in chokes: do not make me get him, miss,

he will hurt me. I knew the sound of the swollen larynx waiting

to burst.

The day would be solidly established, that graceless light,

and the people of the day would begin moving on the street,

the buses would come one after another, the traffic would rev

up for the day ahead, the smoke from all the motor engines

would begin escalating up, the noise would become fearsome,

the chatter from the street would become loud and busy, the

click click click of shoes and boots would swallow up the

cement, the voices would become various and in many languages: and I would make my way down the hall to the small 112

room with the broken springs in the mattress under the open

window and try to sleep.

I dreamed, for instance, of being in a tropical place. It was all

green, that same steady bright unchanging green under too

much light that one finds in the steamy tropics, that too-lush

green that hurts the eyes with its awful brightness, only it was

duller because it seemed to know it was in a dream. And in the

steaming heat of this too-green jungle with its long thin sharp

leaves and branches resembling each other, more like hungry

animals than plants, stretched out sideways not up, growing

out wide not up, but still taller than me, there was a clearing,

a sort of burnt-out, brown-yellow clearing, short grass, flat, a

circle surrounded by the wild green bush. There were chairs,

like the kinds used in auditoriums, folding chairs set up, about

eight of them in a circle like for a consciousness-raising group

or a small seminar. The sun burned down. I was standing.

Others were sitting in the chairs, easy, relaxed, men and

women, I knew them but I don’t know who they were by

name, now or then, and I have a big knife, a huge sharp knife,

and very slowly I walked up to the first one and I slowly slit

her throat. No one moves or notices and I walk to the next

one and I slit her throat, and I walk to the next one and I slit

his throat, and slowly I walked around the circle of sitting

people and I slit each throat slowly and purposefully. I wake

up shaking and screaming, burning hot, in terror. In the dream

I was truly happy.

Or I dream the dream I hate most, that I am awake, I see

the room, someone is in it, I hear him, he has a knife, I wake

up, I try to scream, I can’t scream, I am awake, I believe I am

awake, but I cannot scream and I cannot move, my eyes are

open, I can see and hear everything but I cannot do anything, I

keep trying to scream but I make no sound, I cannot move, so

I think I must not be awake, and I force myself to wake up

and it turns out that I wasn’t awake before but I am now, and

I hear the man in the room, and I can see him moving around,

and I am awake, and I try to scream but no sound comes out

and I try to move but I cannot move, but I am awake, and I

see everything and I hear everything, every detail of the room I

know I am in, every sound that I know is there, every detail of

reality, the time, the sounds of the neighbors, I know where I

i i 3

am and who I am and that I am awake and still I can’t say

anything, I try to scream but I can’t, the vocal cords do not

work, the voice does not work, my mouth works but no sound

comes out, and I try to force myself to get up but my body

does not move, and then I realize that even though I think I

am awake I must not be awake and so I force myself to wake

up, I fight and I fight to wake up, and then I wake up, and I

hear the man in the room, I see him, I see his face, I see him

and see every detail of who he is and how he is dressed and

how he moves and where he goes and I see myself and I know

I am in bed and he is in the room and I hear every sound and I

try to scream but I cannot and I try to move but I cannot and

so I try to force myself again to wake because I know I must

be asleep and I am so terrified I cannot move from fear and I

cannot scream from fear: and by the time I wake up I am half

dead. Drenched in sweat, I try to sleep some more.

I hear my love, my friend, moving around, awake, alive. I

am relieved. The night is over. I can begin to try to sleep. I

hear him turn on the water, he is there if it floods. I have left

him a note, probably two pages long, filled with worries and

admonitions: what must be done to get through this day

coming up, the vivid imperatives that came to press in on my

brain as night ended and I knew I would have to sleep, the

dread demands of uncompromising daylight: more calls to the

city, more calls to the landlord, more calls to the lawyers,

more calls to the super: and buy cat litter: and remember the

laundry, to take it in or to pick it up and I have left money,

five dollars: and I love you, have a good day, I hope it goes

well. I can’t sleep in his bed because in the day his room has

fumes, even with the windows open. So I am down in this

little closet under an open window to sleep. Somehow my

friend comes home at night, it is a surprise always, and I am

always, inevitably, without fail, a cold coiled spring ready to

snap and kill, a minefield of small, deadly explosions. Dinner

is eaten in front of partially opened windows. I cannot live

through this one more day, I say, each and every night, sometimes trying to smile and be pleasant, sometimes my face twisted in grief or rage. I am going to: kill the landlord. Today I almost

threw a rock through the windows of the hamburger place.

Today I almost went up to the man who runs it and spit at