Rick Moody - The Diviners

Cold and severe dawn falls upon the ocean once again, ricocheting in the play of waves; another ocean, stretching down toward the Falklands, down toward the Cape of Good Hope, this ocean of nuclear submarines whispering along ocean floors, this ocean of imperial vessels, of Erik the Red, of Christopher Columbus, of Leif Eriksson. Light upon the arctic frigidness of the North Atlantic, too, light upon the perpetual north of the North Atlantic, and light upon Iceland, therefore, light upon Mount Hekla, the volcanic peak of Iceland, held for many years to contain the mouth of hell. This time of year, dawn is late; the fishermen of Iceland are well into their tasks. In Reykjavík the prodigious revelers of the city square are just getting up from another binge, heading for thermal baths to try to blunt that sickness; light upon the expanses of volcanic rock between here and Keflavik, light upon the hot springs, the geysers, the black beaches of the south coast, light upon the mouth of hell.

Light upon the open sea, the Winslow Homer green of the North Atlantic, upon the blue whale, the right whale, the songs of North Atlantic whales, light upon the fish coming to the surface, light upon the currents of this well-traveled sea, light upon the circulations of the Gulf Stream, the North Equatorial Current, clockwise, into the light now, these currents, light upon Greenland, the light of the Inuits, the light of the many names for light, light upon the Nunavut territory, upon Baffin Island and Baffin Bay, light upon the coming of winter in the arctic, light upon the very end of the hurricane season, light upon the fishing boats coming back empty-handed from the Grand Banks, light coming down the coast now, where Leif Eriksson landed and turned back, light upon Newfoundland, light upon moose frozen in headlights on the highways of Newfoundland, light upon Cape Breton, light upon Nova Scotia, where the tides are so violent that the coast can come and go seventy feet in an afternoon, light upon Campobello, and light upon Eastport, state of Maine, United States of America.

It’s possible that the sleepers just beginning to wake know nothing beyond Eastport; they have stuff on their mind, there are car payments, there are mortgage payments, there are utilities, there is heat to worry about. It has gotten cold down east already. International concerns are not pressing. On the pier in Eastport, next to that deep water, a pair of teenagers in a pickup, having made out all night, having slept in the truck, hand in hand, are now watching the dawn fretfully. They are going to get yelled at. What a sunrise. The crimson sun beginning to dash itself on the islands. Autumn on the coast of the state of Maine, in New England. The light only tarries here for a brief spell. There have been snow flurries. The best autumn colors are in the past. People are getting their boats out of the harbors, up on stilts, in the Casco and Penobscot bays. Light upon the mariners of the eastern seaboard, light upon the mariners from here down the coast, light upon the fishermen of Kittery and Portsmouth and Newburyport, light upon Provincetown. Light upon the scrub pines. Light upon the towns of the Cape, from which the mariners of yore set out to hunt the whale, light upon the mansions of Newport and the designers of sailboats, and light on the lighthouse, for example, of Narragansett Bay, at Point Judith, the lonely lighthouses whose job was once to augur the dawn, light upon surfers of Point Judith, light upon Watch Hill, and then light upon the casinos of Connecticut, and light upon the nuclear submarine base at Groton, and from here dawn has a straight shot down the coast, a straight shot on the interstate clogged with truckers on amphetamines, infernal all the way through New Haven and Bridgeport. These towns are dead, and the light does nothing but show up the rubble. The light shows up their corrupt politicians, their pedophile mayors, their distracted suburbanites; everybody’s just trying to get past the cities of the dead, bent upon the gates of New York City.

How fast does it happen on this particular day? How fast does the sunlight rush westerly, dappling the world? The figure is 1,670 kilometers an hour, or about.23 miles per second, which is the speed of the rotation of the third rock from the sun. Day leaves no latitude behind. Therefore, twenty-four hours have elapsed, or twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes, all of this according to the quantum theory of light, as described by Feynman. Suddenly there is the behavior of sunrise on waves, like the light over the Whitestone Bridge, where commuters are trying to get a jump on rush-hour traffic heading in on the Van Wyck, past the airports, the dawn on their left. You can see morning from the bridge. Light upon the Empire State Building, light upon the Chrysler Building, light upon the World Trade Center. Light upon those gruff, show-offy digits. Light upon Shea Stadium, site of the recent Subway Series. Light upon LaGuardia Airport, the most congested airport in the country, light upon the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, light upon Floral Park, light upon Maspeth, light upon Inwood, light upon the Bronx Zoo, light upon Riverdale, light upon Yankee Stadium, light moving apparently instantaneously from here to the isle of Manhattan, its office buildings still illuminated with emergency fluorescence. Manhattan, New York City, beginning of another day.

New York City, noteworthy for its insomniacs. Light upon all the insomniacs, across this city, metropolis of insomniacs. They are there, in the despair of another night, out on the couch in the living room to avoid waking their husbands or wives, or insomniacs are in the tub, and they are reading, or they are thinking, or the insomniacs are regretting at the instant of the dawn. No one asks how they spend the middle of the night, no one who doesn’t suffer with insomnia wants to know. The insomniacs are the witnesses to the dawn, they are in the tub and looking out on the air shaft, through the one tiny window, where a tiny patch of sky is visible, or they are at the breakfast table, trying to read something so boring that it will put them back to sleep. Every block has insomniacs, and here’s the first light of a day in November breaking over them. A woman whose car is going to be repossessed, a guy who falsified his résumé to get an adjunct teaching position, an artist who cannot make her rent, a dot-com programmer whose company is about to exhaust its financing. The insomniacs! They welcome the day! One of them is about to take the dog out for a walk. One of these insomniacs is listening to the international news to see if the Japanese markets are up. A long, low moan escapes him when the intensity of the decline becomes clear. Whoever it is who made the dawn made it as a gift to these insomniacs, that they wouldn’t feel so alone, that they would have something to do in their apartness, namely watch the celestial display of first light. Some of them do it, some of them go up to the roof just to see the light caroming off the buildings in Jersey City. Even the insomniac will feel some hope at dawn, even the homeless man on the grates in front of the Eye and Ear Hospital may feel a bit of relief, even the guy who hasn’t been out of his apartment in years, even the racially oppressed, even the poor, even the unemployed, even they feel a transitory joy. Even the woman on the ground floor of the brownstone in Park Slope, who yanks back her blindfold, recognizing that she can put off rising no longer, rushes unsteadily from her full-size mattress, and makes a run for it, for the bathroom. A day of dawns. A jubilee. Morning, just after the election, year two thousand.

Rosa Elisabetta Meandro, in insubstantial light, entrails in flames. Rosa Elisabetta of the hammertoe, Rosa Elisabetta of the corns. Rosa Elisabetta of the afflictions. She has hinted about the nature of her sufferings to certain persons up the block, certain persons on Eleventh Street, Brooklyn. Emilia, whose son sells the raviolis, for example. She has whispered to Emilia about the colitis. She has indicated problems relating to her gallbladder. Stones. Also headaches. These headaches begin with visitations, with rainbows, celestial light, an inability to remember numbers. Rosa Elisabetta might smell the overpowering perfume of cocktail onions, after which there is Technicolor. Two or three days sick in bed, lower than a dog is low. If she’s enumerating the complaints for Emilia, there is the colitis, there are the corns, there is the pancreas, there are the headaches. At least four things. Gas, though it’s not proper to talk about it. On nights when the garlic has not been properly sautéed according to the cuisine of her ancestral homeland, Tuscany, then there is also the gas. Perhaps it is correct to include this in the list of complaints, assembled at 6:13 AM, as she burrows down further into bedcovers, into the folds of her four-poster. She doesn’t know how much longer she can resist the cramps, the pressurized evacuation of her last meal and everything else eaten in the past twenty-four hours, everything, at least, that has not already been evacuated. Best to be pleasant about it; this is what Emilia said when Rosa Elisabetta Meandro was telling her about the scabs. There are these scabs that don’t heal; when she gets a cut, saws into herself accidentally in the kitchen, dicing vegetables, there is the mineralization of the cut. The cut doesn’t heal, not as it should. What’s that all about? She was also going to tell Emilia about the halitosis, that day, which she can smell by cupping her hands and attempting to exhale and inhale quickly, while lying in the four-poster. It is no longer the smell of the garlic sautéed, nor is it the smell of the cocktail onions, nor is it the smell of port wine, nor is it stewed peppers. It’s some new smell, and this is what Rosa was trying to tell Emilia the other day, no doubt about it. The look in the eyes of Emilia was a look of pity, which is a look that makes Rosa Elisabetta Meandro irritable, though she tries to be pleasant, and this righteous anger, even in the dawn light ebbing into the garden apartment through the windows facing the street, is a refreshing sentiment, a motivator, as she breathes out cupping her hands.