Jaimy Gordon - Bogeywoman

But no, his date with the love of my life seemed to have some way tightened the boilerplate on the world-famous diagnostician. Foofer sat before me more sealed than ever in his sphinx suit full of farts, his notebook closed, his ballpoint nowhere in sight, his baggy cheeks motionless, not even his thumbnail zissing.

“But howsabout we do it this way, Doc: If it’s no, say no, if it’s yes or maybe, say nuttin. Then nuttin’s for sure, but like you put it so succinctly” (I wasn’t above ladling on the shmaltz when he got that trapped look behind his bifocals) “at least then the truth shrinks down to my size, instead of staying as big as seven worlds like it is right now.”

“Ursula,” Foofer creaked, “nuh-zing you can propose, no game, no trick, will make me utter one word more or less than I zink good and right. Is it quite clear?” “It’s quite clear,” I echoed, We’ll see about that I was thinking.

“Okay, Doc, we’re talking Soviet Central Asia here, that narrows it down to six million square miles. I’m on the right track, aren’t I, at Camp Chunkagunk I was always the champ at this kinda thing… We’re talking Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, or Kyrgyzstan-cheese, there can’t be two Foodian dreambox mechanics in the whole six million miles, just try getting your conk fixed in Betpak-Dala!-you can forget it! So once Doctor Zuk let it slip that she grew up in Forty Maidens Feasting-that was the name of this real old fort where they hid her when the bad guys took away her old man. I swear the name’s got fourteen k ’s in it-sumpm like-well I’ll know it when I hear it. So I figure all I gotta do is dig up Forty Maidens Feasting in all the languages in Central Asia and I got my Rosetta Stone. Don’t look so surprised, Doc, I was trained by the best! the wood wizardess, namely Willis Marie Bundgus of East Millinocket, Maine.”

(I eyeballed him. Maybe August had put the dew on his wooly eyebrows, but what could explain the wild look under them, the restless irises stranded in bloodshot aspic-and he sat perfectly still-not even his thumbnail zissing-)

“Make it easy for me, Doc! I can tell I’m getting warm. Now the big question is who the hump was her old man and why did they take him. Are we talking Nazis here or Commies-”

“Nuh-zing means nuh-zing,” Foofer suddenly exploded, but quietly, like a dropped grapefruit, with a thud and a fizz, and only afterwards the shiny eyebags under his glasses reddened, “when I say nuh-zing, it needs no dolmetscher, do you understand me, Ursula?” he whispered.

I was shocked. “Hey, I thought that was the main way you dreambox mechanics operated, you say nuttin and we fill in the holes, work the crossword puzzle, stuff the sausage casing-and here for godzillas sakes I thought we were doing better-”

“I object to nuh-zing if you want to talk. I gladly hear all you have to say. I mean that my silence is not to be translated by some, splutter , teenager into confirmation of nonsense concerning another mental scientist and particularly not into cheap romance! Is it quite clear?”

This was stunning news, but as it was not love of Foofer that had set me talking in the first place, I refused to let him hurt my feelings. I drew a breath and ploughed on with the program: “Just tell me this-Doc-I mean it is my question-the old man was a Jew, am I right?”

“Zis Zuk woman is of far too much interest to you. I tell you nuh-zing more about her! nuh-zing! We will have no more questions. This concerns you not a damp chicken dropping, do you understand?” It was my jaw that dropped. “You have scratched up far too much already what is nuh-zing of your affair, Ursula. If you can find Doktor Zuk you may ask her. There is an end of the matter.”

“Sumpm’s different about you today, Doc,” I had to observe, “you used to be more, er, softer. Sumpm more in the overcooked vegetable line-don’t get me wrong-I like overcooked vegetables, they’re real good for you. But used to be I could push with the program and you fell over splat.”

“Yes.” He was recovering the Buick and the Alps before my eyes, I mean his dignity, the height and bulk of it, and to tell you the truth (maybe I really was getting better) he was easier on the eyes this way than when his baggy jowls shook. “Let us say I expect some-zing more of you now,” he said, after a pause, in a perfectly calm, dreadfully slow voice. “I can treat you as… some-zing of a fellow… seeker… now I see you are getting better. And I know from Doktor Zuk you are a young woman of great nerve… and respond to challenge… in fact I change my mind… I honor our bargain. I answer one last time-about Doktor Zuk’s fazzer-if you promise to respond as grown-up woman to some-zing I set before you…” Does it stink like some animal squashed five days ago under a pickup truck? Did I smell what was coming? I gobbled that ripe old catfish-bait hook line and sinker. “It’s a deal.”

Foofer settled himself in his chair with an urbane little kick of his pinstripes and folding of knuckles and liquid sparkle of watch chain that told me this interview was going exactly as he had planned. What did it matter as long as I’d find out about her at last?

“Her fazzer,” he began, in his creakiest, millstoniest voice, “was a writer of, what to say, odd, grotesque tales, in Yiddish. Self-evidently, then, a Jew… but razzer a phantast of z’nowhere… than a portrayer of some-zing very much Jewish. What to call these… promiscuous mystical tendencies…?

“Born in Poland, in Galicia… fled before German troops to Lvov… deported by z’Soviets to Kazakhstan-ah yes, your six million miles narrows it down very nicely. And here he went hungry. Then did some-zing clever… married an Uzbeki woman from a powerful family. They disappeared, and for a while this saved him…

“He was a phantast, but smart, you see, he was simply never seen… His stories appeared, out of nowhere, in z’last Yiddish papers… He signed them The Beetle, the one who lives in dung…

“He was betrayed by a Uigur guide to Stalinist agents, found and liquidated in 1951.

“Certain persons remained interested for z’daughter. She was hidden in the nomad villages, then sent to university… god knows where, some fantastic capital, Tashkent perhaps, or Samovarobad… She had studies in Vienna, in Paris and a little bit here… wrote in French a curious small essay, about, eh, puberty as ephemeral monstrosity that was translated into English and made for her some little passing celebrity in z’field… Before she is invited here she is Commissar of Mental Science in some Soviet Autonomous Republic, nine tenths desert, z’size perhaps of…” He shrugged. “Kansas?… She calls herself a Foodian, if you will ask me she has to z’world of everyday a hinge quite her own, razzer like her fazzer…”

Foofer recrossed his legs, comfortably. “Zis is all I know. He was a little famous, The Beetle. You can look under Der Kaifer in z’bigger Jewish encyclopedias… So .

“And now.” He drew from the inner pocket of his jacket a dirty pink envelope, unfolded a paper and smoothed it in front of me. “What do you say about zis?” It was a mimeographed menu from Stubby’s Seventh Furlong, Track Kitchen No. 2, Indian Mound Downs. I picked it up, turned it over and over in disbelief. On the back were ketchup stains and Margaret’s familiar scrawl:

My dear sister,

It’s not like me to dish out my judgment uninvited, but now that I’ve seen you, I take my greasy pen in hand. Ursie! What in godzillas name are you doing in that bughouse! Not that the joint has nuttin to recommend it, that scrambled Egbert is a genius in his shriveled little way, the Greek noodle is a masterpiece of simple cuisine and I could certainly oink that suave and helpful nurse’s aide Reginald once or twice, but the point is: What the hump are you doing in the bughouse? Godzillas sake I know you’re not buggy, Ursie, just crawling with love for womankind.