Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

I say We should get out a bit.

She says To do what?

I say We could go sit in a café & look at people.

She says I can’t look at people anymore. I’ve seen too many.

Life’s lost its appeal. Nothing I can suggest to break her from catatonic spell. Museums? She’s been to every one. Walks in the park? Already strolled under every color of the leaf. Movies? Books? No new stories only different character names. Sex? She’s done every position untold times.

I ask her Are you sad?

– No, unhappy.

– Depressed?

– No, miserable.

– Is it the baby?

– I’m sorry. I can’t explain it, but you’re being so lovely, Martin. Thank you she says squeezing my hand & staring at me w/ her wide glassy eyes.

One night she cleaned the whole apartment & went out & returned w/ wine & cheese & chocolates & a fedora hat for me which I wore w/ no clothes on & it made her laugh hysterically & I realized just how much I missed her laugh.

But by morning she was miserable again.

Remembering how on the morning after our relationship began she’d drawn my face in pencil I went out & bought paints & a canvas spending all the money I had in vain hope that she might take out burning misery on blank canvas instead of on me.

When I unveiled the gift she cried & smiled in spite of herself then moved the canvas by the window & began painting.

That set off something new.

Each painting a rendition of hell, she has many hells & she paints them all. But hell is just a face, and it is just the face she paints. One face. One terrible face. Painted many times.

– Whose face is it? I asked today.

– It’s nobody. I don’t know. It’s just a face.

– I can see it’s a face. I said it was a face. I didn’t say Whose hand is that?

– I’m not a good painter, she said.

– I don’t know much about painting but I think it’s very good. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I want to know who the face belongs to.

– I painted it, she said. It belongs to me.

You can see there was no talking to her like you talk to a normal person. You had to be tricky.

– I’ve seen that face before, I said. I know him.

– He is not a man. He is not in the world, she said & my suspicions hardened into conclusions: that this woman is insane.

Always small canvases, always the same painting, only the colors differ browns & blacks & muted reds. I can see her frenzy in that face.

Later I study the painted faces hoping that in the hallucinatory state in which she paints slips of her subconscious have dropped clues onto the canvas. The paintings perhaps elegantly symbolic maps that can lead me to epicenter of her morbid condition. My eyes train on them, dissecting them furtively under the weak lamplight. But I can’t see anything in that face other than her horror of it that fast has become my own. It really is a horrible face.

Yesterday

Whatever religious sentiments she has banked up in her interior stirred up in all this painting. Sometimes she’ll be lost in painting & she’ll call out Forgive me Lord! then go about chatting to him in half whispers leaving lengthy pauses presumably where he responds. When today she said Forgive me Lord! I did his part & said OK. You’re forgiven. Now shut up.

– He doesn’t believe in you, Lord.

– He’s right not to believe in me. I’m not very believable. Besides, what have I ever done for him?

– You have led him to me!

– And you think you’re such a gift? You aren’t even honest with him!

– Yes I am, Lord, I am honest with him.

– You don’t tell him anything about your past.

– I tell him about my feelings.

– Oh for fuck’s sake. Go and take him a beer. He’s thirsty! I shouted & a few seconds later she entered the room carrying the beer smiling sweetly & kissing me all over & I didn’t know what to think.

Curiouser & Curiouser

This is how we communicate. How I’m finding out a little more about her. Is there really a possibility she doesn’t know it’s me doing the part of God?

This morning she painted as I sat beside her and read.

– Oh Lord! How long! she shouted suddenly.

– What?

– How much longer!

– How much longer what? Astrid, what are you talking about?

She wasn’t looking at me she was looking up at the ceiling. I thought for a few minutes then went into the next room & half closed the door & peering through the crack tried this experiment and shouted back How much longer for what? Be specific, my child.

I’m not a mind reader.

– The years! How much longer will I live?

– A long time! I said and watched the light behind her face galloping away.

I couldn’t get any more out of her after that.

& Curiouser

Only when painting her ghastly sickening faces does it happen. I was sitting on the toilet when I heard from the living room Lord! I am afraid! I am afraid for this baby!

I opened the door a little so she could hear me.

– That’s ridiculous! What’s there to be scared about?

Speaking as God from the toilet lent the whole situation some authenticity, the acoustics made my voice echo just like his would.

– Will he be a good father? she asked.

– He’ll do his best!

– He won’t stay. I know it. One day he’ll go and I’ll be alone with this baby this sick baby!

– There’s nothing wrong with the baby.

– You know he must be sick like me.

Then she laughed long & horribly & lapsed into silence.

These chat sessions with the Lord i.e. me seem to take on proportions of a fabulous opera. Calling out from across the room, she confides in me as never before.

– Lord?

– Talk to me.

– My life is a waste!

– Don’t say that.

– I have wandered everywhere! I have no friends! I have no country!

– Everyone has a country.

– I moved too fast! I saw too much! I forgot nothing! I am incapable of forgetting!

– Is that such a bad thing? So you’ve got a good memory. Listen, whose face are you painting?

– My father.

– Really!

– My father’s father.

– Well, which is it?

– My father’s father’s father.

– Listen, Astrid. Do you want me to smite you?

She said nothing more. I’d put the fear of Me into her.

Sigh

Eddie & I discussed tonight my pathetic financial situation & he offered to give me money not as loan but as gift. Out of fictitious pride I refused it biting my inner lip. Wandered streets randomly picking cafés & asking in patchy French if I might work there. Answers came in wordless sneers. What am I going to do? Clock’s ticking. A nine-month gestation period just isn’t enough preparation time. I pray the baby won’t be premature- undercooked people are trouble.

Love Is Hard Work

I was in the kitchen & Astrid in the living room painting her soul’s leftovers & I heard her shout Dieu!

– What?

– Dieu! Vous êtes ici? Pouvez-vous m’entendre?

– English, my child.

– I saw a child’s corpse today, oh Lord.

– Yuck. Where?

– Outside the hospital. A couple were carrying him in their arms to the emergency room, they were running but I saw that the child was already dead.

– That’s hard, I said.

– Why did you take him, O Lord?

– Why blame me? I was nowhere near that kid!

She fell silent for ten minutes then said Where are you, Lord?

– In the bathroom.

– WHERE ARE YOU, LORD?

– IN THE BATHROOM!

– What if after the baby’s out, nothing’s changed?

– Are you nuts? A baby changes everything.