Norman Rush - Mating

They love me for it.

But back to my phonecall, because inhering in it is the cultural ghost of the whole perplex of women waiting in agony to be phoned by some man or other. I didn’t leave Africa to come back here with the covert purpose of waiting for a phonecall that would set me dancing and playing maracas. I left to leave. In junior high we were forced to read a short story about a girl who meets a boy when she goes ice skating and who then goes home and waits in agony for days for him to call. This is a famous story by a woman named Maureen Daly, who got elevated into the very top level of women’s magazines by it. The story is called Seventeen, and I think she was sixteen when she wrote it. The story won prizes. I had a very strong reaction to it. It sank into my soul and I vowed never to be her or anything like her. I vowed this. Also — and this is something I just now realized, thanks to the phonecall that’s driving me to the edge — it has to do with why, when I could have, I didn’t go after Nelson and stop him while he was still on his horse and heading for Tikwe. I had time. And I started to, but somehow I couldn’t do it. I realize that I was very moved, but in the wrong direction, by Jean Peters running out to stop Emiliano Zapata from going someplace he was determined to go. I may be confusing two different scenes, in one of which she presses a freshly ironed shirt on him, pleadingly, or tries to. I hated her. This would never be me. I wasn’t going to be Jean Peters in Viva Zapata when in fact the sensibility on the horse was who I really was. That was me.

Of course when I say my phonecall I should be saying message instead, which is all I have, because I was out when my mysterious friend called. Text is literally all I have. The call came to the office, and why the call came to the office is unmysterious, because I’ve written to enough people on business stationery for this number to get into circulation. There was the money order I sent for the Enfield. There were my notes to Adelah and to Mma Isang. The receptionist thought the call was from a woman but wasn’t absolutely positive. It wasn’t a clear line. The caller’s accent wasn’t American. There was no identification given. There was no request for a return call. And there’s nothing more to be gotten out of the receptionist. She’s sick of being quizzed. What is to be done? as Lenin so aptly put it. I think I need a maxim of some kind. Nelson’s — insofar as they’re apposite to this situation — are all so uniformly nothing but wry, as in Nothing ventured nothing lost, that they don’t help me.

Why do I still regard it as surprising that he turned to her, even though I had deserted and I had thrust them together and we all know how absolute his need is for the eternal feminine when he gets into trouble, such as being stalked by lions, or a lion, to be fair. Why, just because I had left him naked to his enemies? They were being civil enough, actually. Was it just that I’d let in so many of them? He could have called out for me, of course, something that might have made all the difference. I could have swung in like Wonder Woman and cleared the place and said everything was my mistake, the party was off. But no, he was going to be the unmoved mover. I was actually observing the proceedings, on and off, from within the draperies and other demeaning vantages. Hell is closed and all the demons are here, he liked to quote from Marlowe. I was febrile. I was thinking So this is what he wants! Not only is she beautiful and not only are there bookmarks hanging out all over from her copy of Development as the Death of, but she’s punctual. It was, as usual, difficult to read him, expert though I am. He was sweating lightly, more than the warmth of the room called for. He could have sent someone to find me, detach me from my duties masterminding the finger food relays. Of course at times I was outside looking at the moon. Even when it ended no one came to look for me. I could have been found. She went into our bedroom with him, conducted him. I sat in a rocking chair the rest of the night. I began cleaning up toward dawn, picking up each beer can and ashtray individually, delicately, trying not to make a sound. I thought of Grace and finding her and suggesting we move in together.

One factor I should take into account is that America is driving me more insane than I already am. I know this because sometime last week I felt anguish because I don’t own a zester. I needed one urgently so that I could get little spirals and coils of carrot and jicama on top of the larmen soups I was eating for lunch that week. Then they would be attractive and I would like eating them better and my weight would go down. Another factor is that we seem to be in prefascism of some kind. The right is at the center everywhere. There could someday be a TV series set in the specious present called I Was a Liberal for the FBI. Of course if I’m a serious person the question should be What is to be done? by me about prefascism. Talking to people would be one answer. But that leads to nothing other than making them think I’m fabulous. The import of everything I say is that we’re locusts, all of us here in the white West, but that never comes through. I recur to Nelson so much it makes me sick. What am I doing? There are only two kinds of work in the world, he once said. One kind on balance adds to the work other people have to do, the other kind on balance lessens the labor of others. What am I doing, or which am I doing? Youth wants to know! and suppose you say Okay, then, I’ll write, I’ll talk. Everyone tells me to write a book. So you say Okay. But too bad about the language. On television a commentator the other day described someone as morally devoid and a politician called someone a spineless puppet, in the same sentence praising his own steadforthness. His constituents demanded their freedom of rights. They said We want our voices spoken. And of course where is the man who could laugh alongside me at this and help me to not keep dipping into despair? I need the man who said Lyndon LaRouche should be called Lyndon FaRouche instead.

All of which brings me back to my message. I read it, and what does it tell me to do? It says either nothing or a great deal. It says Hector proven alive Manhope police agent. It says Bronwen sent from Tsau after one week.

I was on all fours cleaning up around their bedroom door when she came out in the morning looking as though she’d been inducted into something so very exalted. She almost tripped over me. She had the decency to look ashamed. I kept on polishing. She went back in. I had the place clean as a jewel for them. My knees were burning by the time I got through. This will fade. I made sure fresh orangeade was waiting in the breakfast nook before I left.

So: What is to be done, Lenin?

One possibility is that I should find a way to have sex before I decide anything. I am living asexually. I can get sex. My celibacy is known and is highly exciting to certain oaves on my periphery. What could be more pointless than what I’m doing, id est developing a sacral attitude toward historical sex with Nelson? Nothing.

The message was allegedly from a friend, and the call was placed in Gabs. I have no friend in Gabs, really, but that hardly means anything, because the call could have been made on or in behalf of someone someplace else, or by someone visiting Gabs.

One thing I have definitely ceased with is slavishly reading through the corpus of great books I unfortunately missed that he enlightened me as to the importance of, at least until I decide What is to be done? All it does is make me hopeless. His greatest of neglected books was too much trouble, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort, by George K. Zipf. It’s full of equations. Also, apropos being furious with actually existing socialism, I am giving up on reading socialist apologetic of any kind or stripe. I thought maybe I could convince him, if we ever met again, that socialism was curable and we could be socialists together and life could be like Berlioz on the stereo. This is an extreme of my extremis.