Siri Hustvedt - The Blazing World

13. Nobisa Notfinger lived in Paciland, a country beside Fervid where the inhabitants were well dressed and serene and followed the rules, but Nobisa had a temper, and she was a messy, dirty, chubby girl, and life was hard for her, and so she left to make her fortune in Fervid. You created Nobisa for Maisie, but you armed her for me. In her trusty brown suitcase she had a ray gun and a sword and a special ear-pincher given to her by the Fairy of Ill-Will and Malice that Nobisa could use only seven times. Maisie doesn’t remember the stories as well as I do. Different patterns of mind.

September 25, 1998, 10:00 p.m.

Vindication of the Rights of Harriet Burden! They have swallowed the Tish shit whole, gulped it down so readily I am dizzy with success, to quote that demon, Joseph Stalin. We have removed the c from his name to make the anagram work. Table no more! The little boy with a few fresh acne scars has whetted their appetites for more Wunderkind works, more smartass jokes with art historical flourishes, and the buffoons are pounding out their enthusiasm in reviews. They haven’t found a tenth of my little witticisms, my references, my puzzles, but who cares? They’ve had little to say about the story boxes, but that only demonstrates their blindness, doesn’t it? The other day one of their ranks showed up at Anton’s, someone Case, a dwarf in a suit and bow tie with anachronistic hair pomade and a fake Brahmin accent that made me wince. He asked me for my “views.” Poor, self-important little man.

After he left, Anton and I laughed so hard I had to sit down on the folding chair in the studio and rock back and forth. We are a team, I told him, a twosome deep in research on the nature of perception: Why do people see what they see? There must be conventions. There must be expectations. We see nothing otherwise; all would be chaos. Types, codes, categories, concepts. I put him in, didn’t I? The fellow in the suit looking oh-so-seriously at immense naked woman. How quick they are to embrace and anoint the smiling young male artist with innocent air; look how knowledgeable, how sophisticated, how clever he is. Big Venus has made a big (little) buzz. I hear the sound of bees, and bees sting. I have told Dr. Fertig that I hate the bees. Hate is not a word I use lightly. He knows that. He knows that the joke is also no joke. He wants to know when I will reveal my identity. The phrase itself is exciting. It makes me feel as if I am living in a thriller. When will I reveal my identity?

He asks about Anton, too.

But Big Venus belongs to Anton Tish, I said. Dear Dr. Fertig, without Anton she would not exist. It is a work that came into being between him and me because it was made by a boy, an enfant terrible , not by me, old lady artist Harry Burden with two adult children and a grandchild and a bank account.

Dr. Fertig pointed out that the money is rarely simple.

Anton gets the money from sales. That is the deal.

I close my eyes. I close my eyes. It is my time now. It is my time, and I will not let them take it away from me. The Greeks knew that the mask in the theater was not a disguise but a means of revelation. And now that I have started I can feel the winds behind me, not because Big Venus is so much — cynical fun — but because I see what they gobble down and with the right face I can do more. Nota bene .

And yet, Anton says she is beautiful in the gallery space asleep, that she is better than I imagine because we couldn’t see her so well when we assembled her. I have not dared to go yet, but maybe I will peek in from outside and look through the window at my big doll, my first success.

Nobody knows but me and Anton and Dr. Fertig. Edgar is suspicious. The other little assistants know that I paid for her, but they believe the lady is blown straight from Anton’s imagination. One of them, with a preposterous name, Falling Leaves or Autumn Sunshine, no doubt the offspring of New Age fruitcakes, seems to have glued herself to Anton — an unheimlich little creature, very pretty with blond curls and poppy-colored lips, and strange, large, knowing blue eyes.

Speaking of winds, where is the Barometer? I looked in his room. He is usually curled up in his sleeping bag by now with his eye mask and earphones on to keep out the pressure so he can rest from his labors of feeling the weather. I hope the poor man hasn’t burst and been taken to a hospital. Although Rachel insists medicine can help him, I know that he doesn’t want the poison pellets the doctors give him, which mute his gift, and it is a gift, strange to say. Sometimes when I listen to him talk, I begin to feel the barometric variations myself — the ups and downs in my own bodily register — a hum in the system.

I have another guest: Phineas Q. Eldridge, not his real name. He was born John Whittier; he disavowed the name when he emerged from the closet. The new man disconcerted his sister and homophobic brother-in-law, but his mother, whom he e-mails often and visits once a year in North Carolina, has stayed true. Mother and sister come on the sly to see him at a hotel. Phineas is a performance artist; he performs in “half drag,” half man, half woman, half white, half black, cut straight down the middle, and the two parts of him have conversations onstage. His father was white; his mother is black, so he knows something about halves. The couple is mostly in conflict, apparently; it would not be entertaining otherwise, but they also blend at times, mingle and mix, which I find compelling. He has invited me to watch him next week, and I am excited about it and just a bit anxious as well because I hope he is good. Phineas Q. (the Q , he says, can stand for anything one desires — Quentin or Query or Querulous or Question or just Q) is highly articulate and, although I haven’t seen him much because he works at night, I have come to hope he will saunter in and offer one of his tart comments about my work. He called my Felix dolls “ambrosial runts.” He also said my Empathy Box could do with some empathy. That hurt me, but he was right. I have begun over with mirrors. He also made reference to the building as a “flophouse” and advocates rules, organization, someone to run it. I can’t just take in any drug addict or sleazeball that knocks on my door. He is right about this. Last week I housed a girl in pigtails whose bum had been squeezed so tightly into a pair of red leather shorts, I thought of sausages in casing. It’s possible she turned a couple tricks before I asked her to leave. There were two grim-faced men who came and went in a single night. If they had sex with Red Shorts, it wasn’t happy sex.

There is sadness in Phineas, a wound that lies beneath the brisk, bright persona. I don’t know how old he is, mid-thirties maybe, but I am drawn to that doleful piece of him. In unguarded moments, a pensive expression changes his features. It never happens when he is looking at me, but when he pauses, when he turns away. Once I asked him, Are you okay?

And he said, No.

The no made me glad. Aren’t we always saying, Yes, I’m fine?

Yes, and you?

Fine, fine.

We’re all fine.

I wish I hadn’t been so fine, so goddamned fine for so many years…

I waited politely for Phineas Q. to tell me why he wasn’t fine, but he didn’t, and I let it go because there is fear in me, a sickening reticence. For as long as I can remember it has been there, lying in wait — a fat, leaden, hideous thing. I don’t want to wake it. If I wake it, the earth will rumble and the walls will crack and fall. Put your finger to your lips, Harry, put your finger to your lips and tiptoe around the thing. Make nice and fine, Harry, as nice and fine as you know how.