Tor Ulven
Replacement
REPLACEMENT
A twitch, a nervous tic, so to speak, in the light (or the dark), an occasional spasm, a breeze fingering the gap between the curtains, letting in a faint hint of the summer night, creating a narrow slit that gapes for a moment and then vanishes, leaving behind a provisional darkness, before a new twitch and a new darkness; this happens every time the wind (he’s purposefully left the window open on account of the heat) parts the gap between the curtains, which ripple and bulge (like curtains on stage when actors or stagehands bustle by behind them) before settling again into relatively still, skirtlike folds. A skirt with a high slit and the whole world hidden behind it. In theory, you just have to open the door and go to find everything, absolutely everything.
It’s dark. He’s lying almost motionless in the dark, he’s motionlessly heading toward rest and sleep. He’s used to it, he’s friends with it, he’s darkness’s friend, the short dark period, that is, after the curtains have been drawn, but before he turns on the reading lamp. So long as everything’s in its usual place, he can make his way, like he’s just done, across the room from the window to the bed. Besides, it’s not completely dark, but only halfway dark; the sun, after all, is still a bright, burning reflection on the high-rise’s topmost windows, while darkness, or half-darkness, or shadow thickens below and slowly rises (he knows) from floor to floor, like water up a ruler: soon to be submerged. In the evening he entered into the apartment’s odors as a stranger might, but now he recognizes the comforting, metallic scent of gun oil again; it’s within reach of the bed as usual, loaded as usual. He’s ready. Of course, the ammunition is half his age, so around forty-something years old. Maybe he should just give in and buy new bullets. Still, if he’s never going to fire them, they’ll bring him no pleasure, and the money will have just been wasted.
The night inside is as muggy as the day outside. He could’ve gone to the beach. Does he regret it? He doesn’t know. He could’ve bought a package of cookies (they just need a little softening up in the mouth) and a bottle of soda before negotiating the difficult path down to the beach, where he could’ve sat in the grass, jacket and cane to one side, his sleeves rolled up, eating his cookies and drinking his soda slowly and with relish as he watched the waves roll in and felt the wind in his hair, or rather, across his bald pate, and tasted the scent of salt, iodine, and rotten seaweed. He remembers the last time he went to the beach, it must’ve been around ten years ago, when he saw something (as if sharp eyesight could somehow compensate for his missing voice), something that at first looked like a bottle (with a message?), and then a cigar case the wind blew landward, until finally it resolved into a wooden plank, a lone, waterlogged board that came to rest against the rocks, where it beat time to the waves, a sign without message, a smooth plane lacking all trace of the saw that had cut it. He remembers how relaxing it had been to sit and watch that meaningless object drift toward shore, the feeling that if you just wait long enough, something is bound to come drifting along — some stupid, meaningless thing, to be sure, but something, something will eventually come drifting, floating, bobbing along, a plank, say, all you’ve got to do is wait for it, he thinks, it’s him, he’s the wooden board that beat time on the rocks one summer day ten years back. No. That’s not him. He’s alive. He’s sitting here watching the board in the water.
No. He watched the board in the water ten years ago. Or seventy-three years ago. On the beach. His hand on her thigh, up her skirt, and so on, no, not that, he thinks, but he could see flecks of light thrown from a sailboat as it drifted past a tangle of branches and leaves, disappearing and reappearing again, unbearably slow, and he could smell the acrid scent of roasted hotdogs coming from the bonfire up the beach (though by then the fire had burned down to a glowing, reddish-orange tangle that occasionally sent a shower of bright sparks gyrating upward with a snap), and he’s glad those days are past.
No, he really isn’t. Take an apple, for example, or any other fruit or vegetable that rots, that withers, shrivels, and wrinkles, as human bodies wither, shrivel, and wrinkle more and more as they age, so that rotting can be considered the lowest common multiple of all fruits (or vegetables), just as people too are only really revealed in decline, he thinks. He’s sweating, especially his back, a heavy, clammy sweat that feels like syrup on his skin. What was that he read once, something about an artist hanging a row of bananas from a rack along the wall, how all the bananas were painted white, so they all looked identical, and how they were all artificial, except for one, and how once the exhibition opened, one banana, the real one, of course, began to rot, thereby revealing its true face, while the others, the artificial ones, of course, stayed white and pristine. No, no beach today. How long has it been? Four months. It’s been at least four months since he was last outside. It’s a gamble every time. But worth it. Never during the winter, though, that’s too dangerous. It’s bound to be quite the experience, though, after four to six months of looking at the same view. It doesn’t really matter what he sees, just as long as it’s something different.
True enough, but not through a telescope: a gyroscopic mobile aluminum pipe mounted to a solid base with a platform and a coin slot (there’s nothing to see, he knows, until you’ve paid; coins rattling in the box are the sudden aha that opens up the new and unexpected, making it appear magnified, recklessly close, crystal clear — just so long as you’ve paid; he imagines a blind man with a rattling box for a stomach, who constantly feeds himself coins just to buy himself a few more minutes of sight, though when the river of change dries up, he’s blind until he can fish up some new coin; sight isn’t free, you’re indebted to it, he thinks, and he laughs softly to himself there in the dark, and luckily there’s no one who can hear his gasping, choking, hissing, throatless laughter). No, not through a telescope. First of all, he couldn’t balance on the small platform (it’s no more than a small step, really); second of all, he’d probably be too crooked and shriveled to reach the telescope itself; but most of all, he’d have to discard both crutches, or at least one, to put in coins.
It’ll have to be the naked eye. When he’d gotten both of his elbows situated on one of the café’s terrace tables, the kind made of a white lacquered metal that buzzes when you slap it, when he’d settled into a stiff folding chair, which was nothing more than a collapsible iron framework with wooden slats attached, when he’d settled there, though it was hard and uncomfortable, in the shadow of a fringed plastic umbrella advertising a fruit drink, he’d drunk coffee and eaten waffles with butter and strawberry syrup (never mind that he’d had to repeat every single syllable of his order three times before the girl behind the counter finally understood what he wanted, and on the third time watch her unconsciously form the words with her own mouth, as if she were the ventriloquist and he was her dummy, and he’d seen how frightened and embarrassed his amphibian croaks and gurgles had made her). The rotating fan on the counter had given off a pleasant breeze, as he’d stood in the empty restaurant listening to clinking sounds coming from a dish cart in the back. When he went outside again, the first thing to happen was that a sugar-cube wrapper blew away before he got the chance to wad it up.
This evening the rug next to the bed stays put, which means that he can sit there and unbutton his shirt without having to worry about keeping his balance, a good thing, because unbuttoning his shirt is a real task, it’s a project in and of itself, his stiff and shaking fingers struggle with every single button, because the tiny, flat discs are always slipping away, but today he manages it, despite the fact that he’s sweating and that he can’t see too well in the darkness, or half-darkness, or shadow; it’s a relief every time the stubborn friction between a button and its hole gives way, and the button slides out with only a slight nudge, it’s a triumph every time, to split his shirt steadily in two. Now it’s dark and he’s lying in bed next to the firewall. First there’ll be a heavy thud inside the chimney, followed by a rapid, intermittent hissing, and then the whole business will repeat itself, and then will come the thump of feet on the attic stairs; the chimney sweep arrives early in the morning and the sounds are made by his tools: an iron ball on a chain, and attached to the chain a broom with flexible metal bristles, the ball probably forcing the broom to the bottom of the chimney, while the bristles knock the soot off the walls: ball, chain, and broom are then drawn up again, while the more or less pulverized soot drifts down to the basement, where it’s swept through a special hole. But not today. The chimney sweep comes in the spring, in the spring and in the autumn, two times a year. The older you get, the easier you are to entertain. He wonders if he’ll ever hear the sounds made by the chimney sweep’s tools again.