Garden of Whores and Jackals
The slow accumulation of capital continued unabated. There was nothing any of us could do about it. But I suspected things were bad. Bad and getting worse. My wife gave me a car antenna for Christmas. And a gutted radio for the new year. And broken earphones for my birthday. And a dull record needle for Easter. But that’s how things played out that year. That’s how things were, when I think back on it. She’d lock herself up in our bedroom and yell at me, calling me a whore and a jackal. The slow accumulation of wealth continued unabated. There was nothing any of us could do about it. Did we continue to have sexual intercourse? Yes, but as if some god or demon possessed our bodies during the act, our bodies and part of our minds. A red demon or a yellow and icy god. We had a new car, at least it was new to us, this blue Cadillac. We’d drive through the night sometimes, or at least until one or two in the morning. We’d drive all through the city. Good neighborhoods. Not-so-good neighborhoods. Some of the houses looked like there were whole families lying dead inside, shot up. The slow accumulation of capital continued unabated. There was nothing any of us could do about it. And then if you’re like me you start to think what if it was true, what if there really is a family in that house all shot up. And what if one of them is a little bit alive, a grandmother whose small finger, the one on her left hand, is ever so slightly twitching. The slow accumulation of capital continued unabated. There was nothing any of us could do about it. There were hot nights and breezy nights and nights so still it was like you could hear a twig break and cooler nights and nights that felt like they’d happened a hundred years ago and nights that felt like they were being dreamt up by someone lying in bed, someone you didn’t even know, someone you did not ever want to know, and nights where the sky completely opened up, and nights that smelled like earth, that had that muddy smell, and nights that came from nowhere and nights that would go nowhere, and hot nights and breezy nights and nights so still it was like you could hear a twig break and cooler nights and nights that felt like they’d happened a hundred years ago and nights that felt like they were being dreamt up by someone lying in bed, someone you didn’t even know, someone you did not ever want to know, and nights where the sky completely opened up, and nights that smelled like earth, that had that muddy smell, and nights that came from nowhere and nights that would go nowhere, and hot nights and breezy nights and nights so still it was like you could hear a twig break.
Exhibit A:
The film critic is driving through white nights and black days, through red cities with nothing but empty sidewalks and windows. She reaches an appropriate place to stop. It looks like a prison that had once been a ballroom. It seems to be a school with its brains knocked out.
She walks through an infinite white corridor, until she reaches the funeral. The casket is full of the blackest coffee. The service includes chairs and three doors that lock from the inside.
She is the only one present so far. Though there are a few figures of clay in some of the chairs. And figures of moist velvet on other chairs. Some of the figures are shaped like heads, though most are torsos, and there are a few legs shivering. All of the figures look like they have only recently been brought inside from sitting out in a rain of ash.
The film critic wears a red scarf. Her husband tells her it looks like her throat has been slashed. She wears a blue scarf and her sister says her head appears to levitate in air.
The sound of the film continues in the next room. There’s always a film in the next room, the film critic thinks. The voices could be rain that falls without hitting either foreground or background. The voices are not talking to her but through her and she is trying to listen but not hear them.
Exhibit X:
The figure without arms licks the figure without a tongue and the figure with hands but no fingers caresses the back of the figure with no head. The lemon air around them is haunted by crimson voices. The breeze around them has poured through a century of painterly silence.
The figure with no head is only good for breathing. So the director had decided.
The figure without hair probes part of its thinner shoots into the soft patches of the figure without brains and the figure with only a few branches of meat curls around the figure that consists of pink mist.
There will be crimson voices to reconsider. There might have been at least one century without tongues or hair or brain. The lemon figure might be called water and the crimson figure could well be sand.
They are on a beach. The breezier figures pour through the upper branches of air. It is a dark night, a silent night, a contracting night, a weathered night, an airy night, a night haunted by the general figure of night. So the director had decided. So will the figures lick and be licked. So will the silence pour. So will the meat crimson.
Exhibit B:
The lovers among us sleep like thighs.
The comatose eat sleep like cloud.
And the ghosts that searched our collars and straps.
Their cold feet in the naked closet.
Their roads in the storm closet.
Their grins in the salt closet.
Their tongues in the thorn closet.
Their throats in the iron closet.
Their shoulders in the arson closet.
Their windows in the burnt closet.
Their choirs in the velvet closet.
Exhibit C:
No one brought the mouth among the flowers. No one dragged the torsos nearer. No one could count the number of teeth that had bitten through.
We had been planning a film based on the bonier gods, with their skeleton grins and winter gazes. Withered flowers in different aspects of hair.
Heavens tinted. A multitude of years absent from the scene.
A shaking quaking started behind the emerald door. The more frantic shadows thought of themselves as afterimages from nights bright as milk.
Their Stroking Glove remained inert on the plate, though some of its fingers had been chewed. Their Examination Glove smelled like the newer types of saliva.
The gods with sinew among the flowers. The gods with their torsos exhaling.
The White Hotel
after D.M. Thomas
The biting and sucking near the outermost shrub lasted seven centuries and thirteen seconds. The coughing spell wandered from cave to cave growing colder and more robust. The shadows slept from their skin down. They smelled between their legs. They smelled between repercussions. They smelled excrement in the grass. They smelled shit along the walls that led inside. They smelled fire where their brains used to rest. They smelled hair in distant places. They smelled hot blood and then cooler blood. They smelled burning fat. They smelled mud in the war zone. They had bewildered holidays. They were tremors in the listening gowns. They held wolves open. They slept like mist in the night. They fastened. They fastened tighter. They made the Face of the Melancholy Dog. They maintained an Egyptian doubt. They thought about the dark messages. They thought about the light messages.