Clarence Major - My Amputations

His hotel room was comfortable and when he opened the east shutters in the morning he got the sun and from midday on he got sunlight through the south window. An old well-maintained hotel, on rue Pastorelli, north side, called Riviera, near Gubernatis. From the window Mason saw neat Square Dominque Durandy in front of the old Biblioteque. On Sunday mornings philatelists gathered here to trade or sell. On rainy days they parked their cars along Pastorelli and while holding umbrellas over their heads carried on business from the trunks. They were each other's best customers. Idle, Mason went over. Fingered timbres of z Republique Francaise: their celebrations. One stamp collector, a handsome young man wearing a bright scarf, seemed to be watching him with unusual interest. Mason glanced back at the guy. Was he an agent of the…? Mirror was no ordinary reflector: a touch of silver, bedroom dimness, fantasy, illusion, birds in flight, other complications lurked in its illuminations, its “eternal darkness.” It was a ghost town too. The landscape of screaming. Obsidian in its corners, a river flowed through its center, emptying out into the gulf of its deepest century. Mason might get lost in such a vast ocean. He didn't have both oars in the water anyway. It'd take a chemist to successfully explore the terrain, a levee-expert to stop its flooding. Yet bravely Mason got up, like a sleepwalker, and stood before its silence with strange excitement. Here it was possible to dip into movements of waves deceptively disguised as one's own heartbeat, pulse and spinal nerve-twitch. But would he trust the image…? Well, nobody'd told him he had to confront it. In fact The System might advise against such slander. But he had a plan: he'd look in the old French mirror (with its peeling edges, its mongoose-greased surface) and declare himself visible. At least. Lest he fall in. Yes, fully alive. Only the bedside light helped the process. (He hated the ceiling one and never turned it on. Its glare was the slime of eye infection.) He hadn't yet focused on his own reflection but was trying to make out the background: a valley full of vacationers like ants crowded the edge. A red moon. Night had its way. Its sky was no garden of light with mosquito lava and housefly eggs and tiny pupa cups hanging from damp leaves. No, this was a landscape with debris and bathers in a state of metamorphosis. Mason bit his tongue and moved closer for a deeper view. Was this Africa with its delightful myths and mites. Somebody'd scratched a swastika on the parenthesis that was the moon. He felt calm. No green horseflies would buzz near his reflection. He was coming to that image slowly. Calmly. Mirror mirror. But wait, wait a minute! There was so much chaos behind the image! Chaos? Who sez? Hundreds of beheaded bodies in doorways and ditches. Where? In doorways and… But wait. There weren't any doorways and… What kinda rigmarole was this? What was taking him so long? Was somebody running him backwards again? Had his so-called Formula for Clarity been scrambled? Help! Despite himself Mason saw himself. Fine. So he was looking at the, uh… what was this? This wasn't Mason Ellis! Who then? What then? The guy in the mirror was more triangular, Mason himself was closer to the arc of a circle — slightly bent from despair and running. The mirror then might be the intersection of two sets. Leaves in there fell suddenly from winter trees. Clouds crowded the sky. The stranger was nobody he knew. Mason couldn't even identify the creature's race or nationality. And what was he doing? He was holding a forty-five automatic. Aiming it at Mason's chest. What kind of reunion was this? What absolute horseshit this betrayal! The image in the mirror showed no emotion as he shot Mason eight times in the chest. Mason cried out. As he began his descent he recognized the killer: that old mask had fooled him but only for a moment. As he lay on the floor clawing his own blood Mason realized suicide was not the answer.

He was made deeply lonely by the arrival of carnival time in Nice. Too many full moons, too much promise of Spring. Place Messena with its giant cartoon figures of Saint Nick and his nicky helpers, Popeye, Snoopy, Clark Gable, Roy Rogers, were a bit much. The New Moon had him by the balls. Ash Wednesday got his goat. He had the howling Quadragesima blues. Lent let him down. The First Quarter moon drove him mad till the Second Lent. He walked a lot nights now — just for the lights, the carnival spirit… Hard to imagine himself not followed — or that he wasn't in pursuit…

She had a clear triangular face. “Do you speak French?” “Un peu.” She was an exchange student at the University of Nice. About twenty-one. Knew his name. Was that grounds for celebration or the cue to split. This was in his little cafe on rue du Marché. Barbara Ann Reynolds. Would he come up to the Fac and give a reading? Professeur Jean-Claude Bouffault, one of her professors, she felt sure, would support the idea. Then it was suddenly set for the last week of February. Posters in Old Nice announced the forthcoming event. A week after he'd met Barb, this: at three in the morning the phone rang: It was she. She was weeping Little Orphan Annie-tears. The girl was hysterical. Mason told her to calm. She got louder. Screaming: “ Come and get me! — ” she shouted into the phone. “ He's after me! H-he raped me! I'm, mmmm, l-locked in —” (she screamed again). And Mason yelled: “Where are you?” only to get this response: “ He's trying to break the door in —” (and another scream, and—) “ Oh please, come and get me! ” “What's the address? “ I don't know — I, uh … ” Was this a set-up? For real? A tactic of the Observation Squad? He'd heard about such tactics. If for real, why'd she selected him? Surely she must have friends at the university. He couldn't even call and send the police. Mason pushed the light switch. Light the color of Billy the Kid-gunsmoke filled the room. A crackpot maybe? The feeling and sound of his own heartbeat was that of a scalawag viciously kicking repeatedly — with coldjaw, unbroken pride — a blood-slick fence on a candescent day. But what to do now? Clumsily he stepped into his stiff jeans. The phone rang. Barbara Ann again. “I got away.” Gasping. A high ring in the nightwood of her voice. Echo of a sleeper awaking. It dislocated him. Something fishy? Was she another spy after him? She explained that she'd been picked up by the police while running along, God who could remember the boulevard. Maybe Dubouchage. He saw a full moon swinging loosely above her flight. The cops stopping her. Every shadow was too long… When Mason entered the harsh light of the station he knew he was getting in too deeply. He took her away. She was in bad shape: red-eyed. Swollen face: out of focus. Her whole presence warped. The story went this way: she'd been in a bar in rue Droite, the Arab section. Everything was okay for a while with the two American guys and their French friend. Then Jackie went off with the Frenchman leaving her. Well, she and Jackie weren't all that close anyway. But there she was stuck with these two boys she didn't even like. She'd thought the French guy pretty nice. She was drunk. The year the place the season all fell like a landslide down her consciousness. “I made the mistake of trusting that sonofabitch and he raped me.” (The other had gone off alone on foot.) She went into convulsive heavings as she talked. Mason drove with no sense of direction. He felt helpless, hurt by her pain. She'd gone willingly to the American's apartment. She did not expect to be raped. She wept. She'd fought him violently. He overpowered her, pinned her down, entered her like a Boy Scout knife. She knew dimly then that no living organism ever wanted to be penetrated. Mason thought about this and its potential.