Steve Tomasula - IN & OZ

and “Na ukhole mirimo awamenya,” and Again with the popping of the mouth: Then “Rabotai, gde zhivesh’,” and “Ta’vod aeifo ata gar,” and “Arbeide hvor du bor,” and “Trabalhe onde vive,” and “Se-veh dewk-a skan tix-oi,” and “Funkcii kien al ci log i,” and “Eshtaghel aeina taskon,” and and “Arbeite wo du lebst,” and and “Lavori dove vivi,” and “Werk waar jy woon,” and “Där jaii ke zendegi mikåni kar kån,” and “Werk waar je woont,” and “Prqcuj gdzic mieskasz,” and “Seikatsu wa hataraku ba de aru,” and “Travailles où tu vis,” and “Ni zhai na ni sheng huo, ni jiu zhai na ni gong zuo,” and “Trabaja donde vives,” and “ˇ ži tam, kde pracuješ,” and “Wyrce flær flu leofast….”

When Photographer had finished working his way through some six thousand living languages, and many dead, Mechanic asked, “Would you tell this to Composer?”

“Wyrce flær flu leofast,” Photographer told Composer, finishing his story this time the way others used to say “Remember the Alamo.”

He and Mechanic looked to Composer for his reaction. Composer paced about The Essence of IN Hole, hands clasped white-knuckled behind his back, his brow furrowed. High above, the mouth of the hole framed the night sky like the viewfinder of a box camera. Since this hole was far enough from town and deep enough to block out all artificial light, it was the only dwelling in either OZ or IN from which the stars were visible.

Composer began speaking softly, as though making a confession. “Everyone has heard of The Tower of Babel,” he said. “Less well known is The Tunnel of Babel. As you say, the tower wasn’t the issue at all. It wasn’t even what the people necessarily wanted to build. True enough, what they really wanted to make was a name for themselves. Building a tower that could reach to god seemed about as good a way as any to do so. Though god wanted to keep them at arms’ length, they were his children, and being children of god, they too had a sense of irony. After god knocked down their tower, the people of Babel began to dig. If god wouldn’t let them create a Sur myth, they reasoned, they would create an Ur myth. For, quite naturally, they thought language was already theirs. Hadn’t god left it up to them to invent, indeed, had not god made it a part of the human condition by allowing Adam to create it as he did, crying out every mineral, vegetable, and animal’s name, his every utterance the birth of a new word? With only one person giving names, every word matched exactly one thing, as a tree casts its shadow. When Adam said, cat, he didn’t confuse it with a jazz musician. Language was like a rock or a tree — a natural object — until god scattered their tongue. So being ironic comedians themselves, they said, ‘If you want to knock down our creation, all right, go ahead. But you cannot do it without our help,’ and they began to dig. They dug a tunnel that undermined the foundation of not only their own tower but of all buildings. Those edifices that were the heaviest, the institutions, leaned cockeyed, then fell with the loudest crashes. It was the deconstruction of Babel, if you will, and by digging it they made themselves a name—‘people,’ that is, no one in particular. And that is the lesson we live with to this day. Which is to say, I just can’t say what is right anymore.”

$1.00…$1.00…$1.00…$1.00… A white sedan with the humped shape of wings or fins slowed as it approached his booth, and mechanically, Mechanic stuck out his hand. The driver — HER — fished pennies from the built-in coin holder on her dash, then dropped them into his hand, saying “Thank you” to his hand, never looking up to his face, then driving on and he stood there staring at his hand, a strong wind blowing the pennies out of it as if they were leafs in a pile before an approaching gale.

For the rest of the day he kept watching the traffic in the other direction, waiting to see if Designer returned to OZ. She never came. That evening, he dug his heels into the pavement as he was pulled home, staring the whole while at his hands gripping the bumper, trying to hold back the momentum of the car yearning for the bottom. The gears of his mind ground with the memory of his hand, too stiff to close around the pile of pennies Designer had placed in it before the wind flicked them away one at a time till there was nothing left, only an empty palm that had the exact size, shape and lifelines as his father’s hand.

When he stubbed his toe on the mound of dirt that had reappeared before his door, he stomped it flat, and stomped it flat, and stomped, and kept stomping till he wore himself out with stomping. Live where you work, he kept hearing in his mind — while SHE was spending the night in HIS hole. He knew she was because he could hear the sound of distant singing, and he didn’t need to go there to know where it was coming from. He sat in his garage, hands clamped over his ears, fighting to ignore the sound, the low singing growing through the course of the evening until it became a yowl, and he couldn’t stand it anymore.

Outside, he found one of his dogs howling in pain — a pup was coming out of her. But something had gone wrong and it was stuck. The male dog raced around in a circle, yapping madly. “Work where you live,” Mechanic told her, stroking her fur and getting down on a knee to have a look. He stuck a finger in the slimy suck of the bitch’s bottom. Had the dogs ever left him? he wondered. Three other pups, all covered with afterbirth, were already lying on the ground mewing. He used to lie in bed imagining his dogs running all the way to OZ and romping through its luxurious trash. But now he doubted they had ever really left. He helped the next pup out, its mucousy body suddenly in his hands, afterbirth dripping like snot from his fingers. This pup looked exactly like the other ones, exactly like the mother, and the father. Using both hands, he helped birth two more pups, hoping they might explain the world to him. Each one was dark-haired, with identical pointed ears. Not one bird. Not one cat. He went back into the garage.

The furnace roared, the millstone of the forge’s counterweight slowly ground in its orbit mesmerizing him the way a person standing at the edge of a great height feels the seduction of surrender. Mechanic slowly brought his fingertips near. His right arm, the arm he extended and retracted from his booth a thousand times a day had begun to take on the angular dimensions of an endurance runner, while his left arm, and his middle, and his hands had begun to go soft. What had been most essential about his work, he saw, was his han—