Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex

“You tell me who this is or I’m hanging up.”

“I doubt you’ll do that, Milton. I’m the only chance you have to get your daughter back.”

Milton did a characteristic thing right then. He swallowed, squared his shoulders, and with a small nod prepared himself to meet whatever was coming.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m listening.”

And the caller hung up.

“Once upon a time in ancient Greece, there was an enchanted pool . . .” I could do it in my sleep now. I was asleep, considering our backstage festivities, the flowing Averna, the tranquilizing smoke. Halloween had come and gone. Thanksgiving, too, and then Christmas. On New Year’s, Bob Presto threw a big party. Zora and I drank champagne. When it was time for my act, I plunged into the pool. I was high, drunk, and so that night did something I didn’t normally do. I opened my eyes underwater. I saw the faces looking back at me and I saw that they were not appalled. I had fun in the tank that night. It was all beneficial in some way. It was therapeutic . Inside Hermaphroditus old tensions were roiling, trying to work themselves out. Traumas of the locker room were being released. Shame over having a body unlike other bodies was passing away. The monster feeling was fading. And along with shame and self-loathing another hurt was healing. Hermaphroditus was beginning to forget about the Obscure Object.

In my last weeks in San Francisco I read everything Zora gave me, trying to educate myself. I learned what varieties we hermaphrodites came in. I read about hyperadrenocorticism and feminizing testes and something called cryptorchidism, which applied to me. I read about Kleinfelter’s Syndrome, where an extra X chromosome renders a person tall, eunuchoid, and temperamentally unpleasant. I was more interested in historical than medical material. From Zora’s manuscript I became acquainted with the hijras of India, the kwolu-aatmwols of the Sambia in Papua New Guinea, and the guevedoche of the Dominican Republic. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, writing in Germany in 1860, spoke of das dritte Geschlecht, the third gender. He called himself a Uranist and believed that he had a female soul in a male body. Many cultures on earth operated not with two genders but with three. And the third was always special, exalted, endowed with mystical gifts.

One cold drizzly night I gave it a try. Zora was out. It was a Sunday and we were off work. I sat in a half-lotus position on the floor and closed my eyes. Concentrating, prayerful, I waited for my soul to leave my body. I tried to fall into a trance state or become an animal. I did my best, but nothing happened. As far as special powers went, I didn’t seem to have any. A Tiresias I wasn’t.

All of which brings me to a Friday night in late January. It was after midnight. Carmen was in the tank, doing her Esther Williams. Zora and I were in the dressing room, maintaining traditions (thermos, cannabis). In the mermaid suit, Z. was none too mobile and stretched out across the couch, a Piscean odalisque. Her tail hung over the arm bolsters, dripping. She wore a T-shirt over her top. It had Emily Dickinson on it.

Sounds from the tank were piped into the dressing room. Bob Presto was giving his spiel: “Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready for a truly electrifying experience?”

Zora and I mouthed along with the next line: “Are you ready for some high voltage?”

“I’ve had enough of this place,” said Zora. “I really have.”

“Should we quit?”

“We should.”

“What would we do instead?”

“Mortgage banking.”

There was a splash in the tank. “But where is Ellie’s eel today? It seems to be hiding, ladies and gentlemen. Could it be extinct? Maybe a fisherman caught it. That’s right, ladies and gentleman, maybe Ellie’s eel is for sale out on Fisherman’s Wharf.”

“Bob thinks he’s a witty person,” said Zora.

“Banish such worries, ladies and gentlemen. Ellie wouldn’t let us down. Here it is, folks. Have a look at Ellie’s electric eel!”

A strange noise came over the speaker. A door banging. Bob Presto shouted: “Hey, what the hell? You’re not allowed in here.”

And then the sound system went dead.

Eight years earlier, policemen had raided a blind pig on Twelfth Street in Detroit. Now, at the start of 1975, they raided Sixty-Niners. The action provoked no riot. The patrons quickly emptied the booths, fanning out into the street and hurrying off. We were led downstairs and lined up with the other girls.

“Well, hello there,” said the officer when he came to me. “And how old might you be?”

From the police station I was allowed one call. And so I finally broke down, gave in, and did it: I called home.

My brother answered. “It’s me,” I said. “Cal.” Before Chapter Eleven had time to respond, it all rushed out of me. I told him where I was and what had happened. “Don’t tell Mom and Dad,” I said.

“I can’t,” said Chapter Eleven. “I can’t tell Dad.” And then in an interrogative tone that showed he could hardly believe it himself, my brother told me that there had been an accident and that Milton was dead.

In my official capacity as assistant cultural attaché, but on an unofficial errand, I attended the Warhol opening at the Neue Nationalgallerie. Within the famous Mies van der Rohe building, I passed by the famous silk-screened faces of the famous pop artist. The Neue Nationalgallerie is a wonderful art museum except for one thing: there’s nowhere to hang the art. I didn’t care much. I stared out the glass walls at Berlin and felt stupid. Did I think there would be artists at an art opening? There were only patrons, journalists, critics, and socialites.

After accepting a glass of wine from a passing waiter, I sat down in one of the leather and chrome chairs that line the perimeter. The chairs are by Mies, too. You see knockoffs everywhere but these are original, worn-out by now, the black leather browning at the edges. I lit a cigar and smoked, trying to make myself feel better.

The crowd chattered, circulating among the Maos and Marilyns. The high ceiling made the acoustics muddy. Thin men with shaved heads darted by. Gray-haired women draped in natural shawls showed their yellow teeth. Out the windows, the Staatsbibliotek was visible across the way. The new Potsdamer Platz looked like a mall in Vancouver. In the distance construction lights illuminated the skeletons of cranes. Traffic surged in the street below. I took a drag on my cigar, squinting, and caught sight of my reflection in the glass.

I said before I look like a Musketeer. But I also tend to resemble (especially in mirrors late at night) a faun. The arched eyebrows, the wicked grin, the flames in the eyes. The cigar jutting up from between my teeth didn’t help.

A hand tapped me on the back. “Cigar faddist,” said a woman’s voice.

In Mies’s black glass I recognized Julie Kikuchi.

“Hey, this is Europe,” I countered, smiling. “Cigars aren’t a fad here.”

“I was into cigars way back in college.”

“Oh yeah,” I challenged her. “Smoke one, then.”

She sat down in the chair next to mine and held out her hand. I took another cigar from my jacket and handed it to her along with the cigar cutter and matches. Julie held the cigar under her nose and sniffed. She rolled it between her fingers to test its moistness. Clipping off the end, she put it in her mouth, struck a match, and got it going, puffing serially.

“Mies van der Rohe smoked cigars,” I said, by way of promotion.

“Have you ever seen a picture of Mies van der Rohe?” said Julie.

“Point taken.”

We sat side by side, not speaking, only smoking, facing the interior of the museum. Julie’s right knee was jiggling. After a while I swiveled around so I was facing her. She turned her face toward me.