Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

“May I?” she said.

“Go ahead.”

Long, gleaming tears flowed from her eyes, in the way of a child too deeply hurt to make a sound. She combed her hair. I watched. She finished, put the comb back into her purse, snapped it shut, and walked to the door in three brisk steps, as if she had somewhere to go. Books and papers lay on my desk in a meaningless clutter. I put them in order as the office darkened.

The next day I received a note on heavy beige paper, in a fine, small, careful handwriting. It said she’d dropped all classes, apologized for wasting my time, and thanked me for being patient. Squeezed into the right corner was a phone number. I read the note twice, looking for more than it said. The clear script, with its even pressure, said nothing inadvertently. I folded it, put it into my pocket, then picked up the phone. I was about to do something I’d regret. I shouldn’t phone her, I thought. My concern will be misinterpreted. After dialing I listened only to ringing, monotonous ringing. I phoned her from my office, gas stations, drugstores, restaurants …

One afternoon, on the way out to lunch with Henry, I said, “A student of mine who lived in Africa came back with a parasite. She calls it Nigerian fluke. Have you heard of it?”

“Nigerian fluke is fatal in every case. I’ve had many students who were diseased …”

“She dropped out.”

“See?” Henry seized my elbow and stopped me, grinning as if pleased, yet frightened. “But I’m not a doctor,” he said. “And I’ve never been right about anything. She’s dead?”

“Dropped out. That’s all I know.”

As we left the building, he asked, “Were you smitten by her?”

The daylight was so pure there seemed nothing to say. Like creatures sliding into a lake without disturbing the surface, we entered it.

I visited a monastery in the wilderness. The monks had carved every stone by hand. It took years to complete. They were content, but their work was so ugly it seemed to comment on their faith. I wandered in halls and courtyard looking for a redeeming touch. There was none. In works of self-abnegating faith is there necessary ugliness?

In the American South, it’s said of a medical student,“He is going to make a doctor.” For writers there is no comparable expression, no diploma, no conclusive evidence that anything real has been made of himself or herself.

I go to the movies. The hero’s girlfriend, about twenty years younger than he, tells him that he is made stupid by his closeness to realities such as work, debts, domestic life. He sees too clearly the little daily facts. He lacks historical understanding, the perspective required for political action. She berates him because he doesn’t assassinate the President, blow up a department store, change the world. He sits stolidly in his tweed jacket and dark knit tie. The seriousness of his expression tells me that he suffers, like a European intellectual, the moral weight of thought. He has no choice. The scriptwriter gave him nothing to say in defense of himself. I want to shout at his girlfriend for him, “What do you know, you narcissistic bitch with your bullshit Marxism and five-hundred-dollar shoes from Paris,” etc. But she is good-looking. I grow quiet inside and try to take in her whole meaning. I wonder, if she were plain, would I put up with her for a minute? The hero wants to be a good man, think the right thoughts, do the right things. I believe he wants more to shove his face between her legs. The scriptwriter is no fool. Why should he give the hero anything to say? It’s enough to sustain a serious expression. This is like life, but I think I can’t stand it another minute, when suddenly she puts her face in her hands, collapses beneath a weight of feeling, and says she wants his baby; that is, she wants him to give her a baby. They lie down on a narrow couch, still wearing their clothes, him in his oppressive tweed jacket, which probably stinks of cigarettes. He is presumably giving her a baby as the scene fades. Is this also like life? Oh, come off it. The question is, When did I last do it with my clothes on? My senior year in high school? No, I remember a hard, cold, dirty floor, papers strewn about, and a shock of hot wet flesh through clothing, wintry light in the windows, the radiator banging, a draft from beneath the door sliding across my ass, the telephone ringing, voices outside saying, “He isn’t here.” “Knock.” “I knocked, he isn’t here.” And the indifference to all that in her eyes, their yellowish-brown gaze taking me into her feelings. She said, “Wait for me.

I have to go to the bathroom.” How real that seemed, its sensational banality. My hands trembled, making the flame jerk when I tried to light my cigarette. Why did I light it? Was it a way of collecting the minutes we’d lost? She straightened her skirt, and then, with a quick wiggle, hoisted her pants. Odd not to have straightened her skirt last, but like her.”What are you laughing at, you?“ she said.

Ortega says men are public, women are private. Montaigne says if you want to know all about me, read my book. “My book has made me,” says Montaigne, “as much as I made it.” In the same spirit, a man writes a letter, then decides not to mail it. He thinks it’s himself, a great letter, too good for just one person. It should be published. One of Byron’s letters was made into a poem. Real intimacy is for the world, not a friend.

The woman wakes beside me and tells me her dream. She might forget otherwise. Nothing is easier to forget than a dream, or more difficult to remember. Her voice — I’m half asleep — twists into my skull, trailing a residue of strange events. This is always irritating, but I wake, listen, urge her to see more, see the whole dream. Frightening, sad, funny, her voice remains neutral, as if it mustn’t interfere with what she sees. The secret of writing.

Writers die twice, first their bodies, then their works, but they produce book after book, like peacocks spreading their tails, a gorgeous flare of color soon shlepped through the dust.

I phoned my mother. She said, “You sound happy. What’s the matter?”

They say “Hi” and kiss my cheek as if nothing terrible happened yesterday. Perhaps they have no memory of anything besides money or sex, so they harbor no grudges and live only for action. “What’s up?” Just pleasure, distractions from anxiety and boredom. Impossible to sustain conversation with them for more than forty seconds. The attention span of dogs. Everything must be up. They say you look great when you look near death. They laugh at jokes you didn’t make. They say you’re brilliant when you’re confused and stupid.

I phoned Boris. He’s sick. He gets tired quickly, can’t think, can’t work. I asked if he’d like to take a walk in the sun. He cries, “It’s a nice day out there. I know it, believe me.”

Feelings come for no reason. I’m tyrannized by them. I see in terms of them until they go away. Also for no reason.

Bodega Bay. Want to write, but I sit for hours looking at the dune grass. It is yellow-green and sun-bleached. It sparkles and changes hue with the changing light. It is more hue than color, like the whole northern coast. Now the dune grass has the sheen of fur. I need to be blind. Only the blind can write.

Anything you say to a writer is in danger of becoming writing.

The poets reading their poems.

The critics reading their criticism.

The him reading his me.

The Cedar River, the woods, the fields.

I prefer the houses and barns of Iowa to what knows it prefers.

Boris tells me, apropos of nothing, that he has been rereading certain novels and poems. It’s as if he is talking to himself, yet he is curious to hear my opinion. He says the novels and poems mean different things whenever he returns to them. As he talks, he picks up a small lacquered bowl which he brought back from Japan. It is very old, very good. It has the aura of a museum object whose value has emerged over time and declared itself absolutely, but he studies it with a worried, skeptical, suspicious eye.