John Hawkes - Death, Sleep & the Traveler

“Well, Ariane,” I said in my heaviest tone and once again aware of the seams in her tight pants, “what have you found that is so amusing?”

“Bats, Vanderveenan, bats,” said the wireless operator, laughing and jerking Ariane against his side.

“Aren’t they strange, Allert? And beautiful?”

I took a step forward, I put my hands in the pockets of my linen jacket. I gave myself over completely to the lonely and unavoidable study of the bats in their cage. For the most part they were hanging black and folded in long wet clusters behind the wire mesh of their filthy cubicle, and not until now had I seen the demons of old barns and caves so large, so ominous, so ripe with latent disfigurement. For the most part the heads, bodies, and limbs were wrapped away from view inside the long stiff folds of those black ribbed wings, and yet in all their terrible bunches they were fluttering with hidden life. They stank with what I took to be a kind of anal ejecta. Without turning around, without glancing explicitly at Ariane and the young and slightly drunken ship’s officer, still I detected his clumsy movement and knew that now Ariane herself was wearing the white and visored cap which, much too large for her, had only moments before been cocked at a lurid angle on the back of the wireless operator’s bony head.

“Take a better look, Vanderveenan. Do you see them?”

I stood directly in front of the wire mesh. I attempted to hold my breath, as I had often done as a child in just this situation. I stared directly into the colony of sleeping bats, and did so with such intensity that I was hardly aware of Ariane, who was still off balance, stretching out her hand and touching my sleeve. How could I possibly not see what the wireless operator wished me to see? After all, the two waking bats were among the largest of that black horde. Furthermore, they were hanging head down and frontward and side by side and with their wings drawn apart and at eye level and in the precise center of that black clotted curtain that was hung in crude illusory fashion across the entire rear of the cubicle. Yes, the two waking bats, like a pair of old exhibitionists, were holding open their black capes and exposing themselves. I saw the pointed ears, the claws, the elastic muscles, the sickening faces as large as an infant’s fist. Even upside down the two pairs of tiny unblinking eyes were fixed on mine. And the penis of each bat was in a state of erection.

“There you are, Vanderveenan. Two new friends.”

“But they do not look unclean as they are supposed to, Allert. Isn’t it strange? Don’t you too find those little male creatures interesting and attractive?”

I did not answer. I did not move. Instead I watched a few sudden waves of unrest clicking and whispering through the dormant rows, and exhaled and then drew in unavoidably a deep breath. The faces of the two aroused and wakeful bats were grinning. Their penises, each one perhaps the size of a child’s little finger, looked like slender overlong black mushrooms, leaping out of all proportion from the tiny loins.

“But watch them,” Ariane was saying, “they are so agile!”

As if in response to her words and to her girlish voice, in unison the two bats slowly rolled and stretched upward from mid-body until grotesquely, impossibly, the two eager heads were so positioned that in sudden spasms the vicious little mouths engulfed the tops of their respective penises. I understood immediately that this was how the two bats must have been engaged — in the slow jerky calisthenics of autofellatio — when Ariane first came upon the sight of them.

Behind me Ariane made a sound of pleasure, disengaged herself from the wireless operator, and with both small hands took hold of the wire mesh. Her blouse was stained, her small and perfectly proportioned face was flushed as with some kind of rosy cream. On her head sat the offensive cap.

“Allert,” she said then, “see how much pleasure they give themselves!”

“Oh,” came the sudden voice behind our backs, “Vanderveenan knows all about that pleasure. You’re able to do what the bats do, aren’t you, Vanderveenan?”

She turned. Her little nostrils flared. A small thick sun began to climb from the opening in her purple blouse. Her breath, for her, was heavy.

“Olaf!” she said quickly, fiercely. “Olaf, you may not be cruel!”

But already I had turned away from the still unsatisfied and still voraciously preoccupied winged vermin, already I had turned away from the insult of the wireless operator’s hostile voice. I smelled the dreams of the coiled snakes, in my slowness I contained the desperation of the two bats, in my mouth I tasted the oily residue of peanuts dropped accidentally and long ago by children who also would have been interested in the performance of the two bats. I exited. Ariane uttered a single faint cry inside the old building and called my name. But I did not answer and did not wait for her to join me, since I was not convinced that she wanted me to, and since she at any rate was no match for the young ship’s officer who had abandoned his empty bottle near the python’s cage and, clearly, had himself become uncontrollably aroused by the sight of the bats. In my mind I carried away the impression of Ariane wearing the white officer’s cap as would a sailor’s whore.

The light was the color of dry pine. A faded hair-ribbon was snagged, I noticed, on the thorns of a dry and naked bush. Everywhere stretched the shadowy landscape of the cages — empty, untended. A marble water fountain yielded not one cool drop, despite my patience. Its bowl was impacted with dead leaves. On I went in my white linen suit which, only a few hours before, had been fresh and pleasing to the touch when I had removed it from my stateroom closet. The light made me think of the green and yellow suffusion associated with the ashen aftermath of a volcanic eruption. The cages I had passed with the wireless operator appeared to be empty.

When I reached the carriage, which was now a piece of dreamlike statuary in the vast gloom, the old horse was unresponsive to my thick and well-intended caresses. I patted his nose, I stroked his withers, I spoke to him quietly in Dutch. But to no avail. As for the driver, the old man did not awake, though I put my full weight on the little iron step of the carriage, though the black carriage squeaked and tilted dangerously, though I resumed my former place on the cushioned seat with unintended clumsiness and noise. Clearly the old man and ancient animal were sleeping the same sleep in the depths of their age.

Thus I sat waiting for the return of the lovers. I relaxed as best I could, I noted the straw bag on the floor beside my foot, I crossed my knees, I smoked a cigar — but too quickly, a little too quickly — and alone in the sleeping carriage and vast silent zoo I thought with mild bitterness that here was the reality of the “Paradise Isles” promised in the pages of the brochure describing the special delights of our endless cruise. Here, I thought, was the truth of our destined exoticism, the taste of our dreams.

I nodded, I took a last puff on the cigar, I coughed, I saw Ariane approaching up the shadowed path. She was alone, she was bareheaded, she was walking briskly, she was still tucking in her purple blouse and adjusting her tight pants. It was a trivial but significant operation — the sum of those gestures — and without speaking, without changing my position in the carriage, without smiling, I read in the movement of her hands and fingers the message of what had obviously occurred on the dusty wooden floor of the reptile house. She was angry, she had dressed in haste, she did not wave to me or speak. It was only too apparent that she was indifferent to my perception of the whole long song so evident in the way she walked and the way she twisted and tugged at her clothing.