Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

LORD BYRON’S LETTER

“The day before I left Rome I saw three robbers guillotined. The ceremony — including the masqued priests; the half-naked executioners; the bandaged criminals; the black Christ and his banner; the scaffold; the soldiery; the slow procession, and the quick rattle and heavy fall of the axe; the splash of the blood, and the ghastliness of the exposed heads — is altogether more impressive than the vulgar and ungentlemanly dirty ‘new drop’ and dog-like agony of infliction upon the sufferers of the English sentence. Two of these men behaved calmly enough, but the first of the three died with great terror and reluctance. What was very horrible, he would not lie down; then his neck was too large for the aperture, and the priest was obliged to drown his exclamations by still louder exhortations. The head was off before the eye could trace the blow; but from an attempt to draw back the head, notwithstanding it was held forward by the hair, the first head was cut off close to the ears: the other two were taken off more cleanly. It is better than the oriental way, and (I should think) than the axe of our ancestors. The pain seems little, and yet the effect to the spectator, and the preparation to the criminal, is very striking and chilling. The first turned me quite hot and thirsty, and made me shake so that I could hardly hold the opera-glass (I was close, but was determined to see, as one should see every thing, once, with attention); the second and third (which shows how dreadfully soon things grow indifferent), I am ashamed to say, had no effect on me as a horror, though I would have saved them if I could.”

SPECIES BEING

Casual precision, lucidity, complexity of nuance, smooth coherent speed. I admire the phrase “great terror and reluctance.” It makes the prisoner’s interior reality and his exterior — or social — reality simultaneous. Surely he felt more than reluctance. But the word stands in contrast to “great terror” and thus acquires the specifically social quality of great terror suffered by an individual at the center of public drama. He could collapse and dissolve into his great terror, but doesn’t. Nor does he become ecstatic. Instead, sensitive to the crowd, he tries to join it by conveying an idea of himself — as also watching, like the crowd, a man who is about to get his head chopped off, who is in great terror and who — reluctantly — is himself. He owes the crowd his head. He knows the crowd will have his head. The crowd didn’t go to the trouble of gathering itself around him for nothing. He wants to indicate that he is not the sort who is indifferent to what the crowd wants, but after all, it is his head it wants. Of course he is in no position not to provide it. The crowd sees that he has brought it with him. He would like, just the same, to suggest that he is “reluctant” to do so. At the last instant, he loses poise and pulls back. The result is a messy chor, a bad show. Ethics and aesthetics are inextricable. All this, and much more, is intimated in Byron’s letter. Though it is infected, slightly, by ironical preciosity, the letter was written to somebody; therefore, like the prisoner, it participates in a consciousness other than its own; by attitudinizing, it suggests that it sees itself. This is Byron’s concession to society; it is justified by his honesty — the childlike, high-spirited allegiance to the facts of the occasion inside and outside his head. Compared to the sneering, sarcastic, bludgeoning verbosity of Karl Marx, who walked in Paris, it isn’t easy to believe the latter’s idea of humanity as social essence is either witty or attractive.

DOSTOEVSKY

In Dostoevsky’s story, a condemned prisoner — at the penultimate instant before a firing squad — is reprieved by the czar. Dostoevsky says it was his own experience. The reprieve was announced, he says, and the firing squad — not the prisoner Dostoevsky — sublimated. What follows? In life and art at once, the czar is a champion of imaginative forms. For condemned prisoners — which is all of us — the czar, a true aristocrat, is godlike in his manifestations. Astonishing, arbitrary, inscrutable. More evil than good — but thus are we saved. From above! Of course, in historical fact the czar and his family were slaughtered. Trotsky considered this “action” indispensable. Stalin’s considerations, regarding Trotsky and his family, were identical. It is impossible to live with or without fictions.

THE NIGHT I BECAME A MARXIST

I heard a voice, turned, saw nobody, walked on, heard the voice again, but didn’t turn. Nobody would be there. Or somebody would. In either case — very frightened — I walked faster, stiffened back and neck, expecting a blow, anxious to swivel about, but not doing it until I could no longer, and, walking quickly, stiffly, swiveling to look back, walk on, I noticed street lamps were smashed, blackness took sections of everything, signs were unreadable, windows glossy blotches, doorways like sighs issuing from unimaginable interiors. I felt absolutely outside, savage, and I’d have begun running, but there was the park, the streets beyond. I continued to walk, swivel, walk, saving power, holding self — and then, hearing it, whirled, dropped into a crouch, legs wide, fists raised. I’d have seen nothing, nobody, but — crouched low — realized, suddenly, I was face to face with it, shorter than a midget, speaking mouth, teeth like knives: “Always having fun, aren’t you? Night after night, dancing, drinking, fucking. Fun, fun, fun.”

CONCLUSION

Long before ruling-class, ideological superstructures, there were myths describing ecstasies like those of Jaromir Hladík and Jesus. Nymphs and beautiful boys, fleeing murderous gods, were always sublimating into flowers, trees, rivers, heavenly constellations, etc. The earliest stories, then, already convey an exhilarating apprehension of the world as incessantly created of incessant death. Nothing changes. Stories, myths, ideologies, flowers, rivers, heavenly constellations are the phonemes of a mysterious logos; and the lights of our cultural memory, as upon the surface of black primeval water, flicker and slide into innumerable qualifications. But Jaromir Hladík, among substantial millions, is dead. From a certain point of view, none of this shit matters anymore.

JACK PHONED.

I said hello Jack.

He said he was going to the hospital.

I said all right I’ll go with you.

I asked if I should phone his wife. They weren’t living together.

He said he wanted me to know where he was. He didn’t want me to do anything.

I said you’re the boss. What’s wrong? I made my voice little.

He yelled let’s not talk about it. I’m in the hospital.

I said you said that you had to go to the hospital. Little words. Cheepee cheepee cheepee. His wife couldn’t stand him. I knew plenty.

I said hello Jack and rushed to the hospital.

I had a bad foot. Every step was a wolf bite.

But Jack was in the hospital. He was the boss.

Jack phoned so I said hello taxicab. He’d do the same for me. We were old friends from Novgorod. Nothing to think about.

Taxi. Taxi.

In the hospital I noticed everyone was dead. Then a nurse was walking. I yelled rooms rooms rooms.

She said she personally didn’t build the hospital.

I said so where’s Jack?

She said he was in a room with another man.

In a hall I was running.

I saw Jack. Compared to the other man, Jack was Mr. Universe. What the Mongolians did to one grandmother the Germans did to the other. They made a big blond Chinese Jew His wife hated him. She was from Budapest. I didn’t say anything.