Moonflower

Einstein In Tunisia

I have been held in this Mediterranean fortress for the last eleven years. My apartment is appointed with paintings of the local terrain—all hillsides and empty beach scenes. I can't tell where I am. I have forgotten something vital to European security and my jailers and I have been attempting to find what I have lost. A nuclear device is buried somewhere in Europe.

I was an undercover agent working with the DIA when an explosion in Tunis, Tunisia effectively shattered my memory of all preceding events. My cell had been targeted by the CIA. A classic fuck-up. We know the implanted device is real from a cable I sent to the DIA a good two months before. I was the only survivor.

For the last eleven years I have been given drugs, watched endless film and video; my jailers even gave me a girlfriend. I've read and re-read my diaries. All the research, all the prodding, and I don't know who I am. I can't imagine being the person they say I was. Tonight my jailers throw a farewell party for me.

I read the last entry in my diary: "Feb. 18: People are mad. Each believes in their own fantasy. Sanity is for those who see this—the way it is: writhing and terrifying. People are mad for they remain oblivious to the power of the unconscious. I think people have always been afraid of me." When I was a child I would tell adults, "It's all in your mind." I infuriated them.

"You know nothing about it." "Wait till you grow-up," they would say. Now here I am. My freedom is all in my mind and I can't find it.

The very last note in the diary (the morning before the CIA attack) reads: "Large spirits tend toward domination. For those spirits to become great they must refine themselves and their desires. Concentration and restraint are the watchwords of dominating spirits." What could I have been thinking?

Roger, one of my guards, comes in. He stands inside my door looking like the languid Christ he is.

"Anything?" He asks plaintively.

"You know me. I gave up a long time ago. I can't live my life for them." His long face leans toward me.

"A lucky guess could postpone the party."

"Ah, I had not thought of that. Would you mind not disturbing me until perhaps a pot of coffee at four?"

"Okay Einstein," he says politely and retreats.

My parents had been notified years ago of my MIA status. Hannibal was from Tunis. Carthage, to be exact. in ancient times it was famous as a place for human sacrifice. They were also the perfectors of the mosaic. O Exquisite world, which I'm sure I never loved enough,

why can't I see you?

I hold my head in my hands. I moan and bemoan my condition. I decide to write down and record everything I do remember. These thoughts, at least, may give me a clue as to who I was: what I am.

Moonflower

Saturday - Christine climbs down the steps to her garden and unravels like a snake. I can see her lashes closing down over her dark green eyes. I stand in front of her while she undresses, unbuttoning her pants, letting the blue denims slide down her legs to the dirt floor. I kneel and grasp her ankles as she struggles to lift her slender feet. My hands travel to the waistband of her butterfly patterned underwear, and I slide them down her coltlike legs. Lying down in one another, we are surrounded by a large wooden fence. "Become gentler," I can remember her saying on one particular brutal afternoon. And yet, I will nibble on her flowers, undisturbed, for an hour or so.

I love watching her masturbate. Suppressing cries, rolling over on her stomach, with her right hand she'll touch her buttocks. Turning to me and letting her tongue slip out to caress her painted lips, she'll moan quietly and say, "Fuck me good."

I enter her house. She has her childlike drawings and bulletins of the latest events taped to the walls. "Christine," I say, "are you home?" I can hear the shower. I walk down the hall and open the bathroom door. She is bending over, a full moon. A white terry cloth lies on the tile floor.

"Am I disturbing you?" I ask.

"Not at all," she says, "I was hoping you'd come back."

Her face is between her legs. Her body is tan and blonde. My cock is aching to break out of its skin.

"Take off your clothes and come on in," she says, "the water's warm."

"Did you plan this?" I say.

"Don't be stupid. C'mon, I'm not going to stay here all day."

She lifts her head up and turns to me, and puts her hands on the porcelain tub.

My clothes are off and I'm coming toward her, brushing her erect nipples, kissing her neck, easing my way into her. Our movement is slow and circular. The steam from the shower creates a sauna. She keeps looking over her shoulder. With a net I'm chasing her, driving her, across a rain soaked field. I think I might never catch her. I'm right.

Sunday - I call her. I thought I had been dialing Bishop, my psychiatrist. She says that what she was doing was trusting; she was trying to trust. That I should look at it that way, too. I tell her I love her. She says I don't like her tender, soft parts. I say that isn't true. She says, "You don't like the cracked part, that's the tender part. It's the same thing." My god, are we crazy!

I have to reply. I say, "I thought you said you didn't want to lose me?"

She says, "I meant that."

Then she starts to cry. She says she is sick, and she has too much work to do. She is crying when she hangs up.

I quickly dress and drive to her place feeling yes, I can see her again, and offer my help: rub her back, make tea (but she drinks coffee in the morning), buy her groceries, fix the bathtub handle (for the hot water).

When I arrive, I park at the top of the hill; there is a parking spot in front of her house. I look up at her window. There is a tall, young man, with black hair, sitting in the living room. I watch him for a minute, shrug my shoulders, and leave.

Sunday afternoon - This is my chance. My chance to prove how much I love her; cracked tenderness, romantic clown, sheer energy, that she is. I must hold fast and be calm.

I walk the three levels of my house, through the terraced garden of rose bushes, and a wild backyard, around the orange and the lemon trees near the mint growing in the corners. There is a panoramic view, from the living room, of the San Bruno Mountains, a railroad yard, the San Francisco International Airport, and the Bay. I sit on the edge of the pool table. Will I fly away? I see a jeep parked at the top of her hill. I recognize it. It is the same jeep that Christine's uncle let her drive in the desert. She loves the desert. Loners, old women, with pull-down poker lamps above their tables who wear green poker shades; tough and eccentric desert people.

That jeep is ours. She's driving. I'm sitting next to her. We've returned to the desert in search of food, she and I.

Monday afternoon - Bishop is tall, blonde, with the battered, mashed-in face of an alcoholic; his eyes are bright diamonds, a cocaine blue. How innocent it sounds. What emotional junkies we are.

I like talking with him because he sympathizes with me, but he doesn't believe me. He knows or thinks he knows that I'm suffering from some egotism, a delusion; he thinks I really don't understand reality, the reality of human life, and so, I can't love. He doesn't understand that I'm being controlled by something other than myself, some force that is making a farce out of my existence. I keep monitoring my thoughts, sifting through, looking for the image, but I know when it comes. I can feel it.

I enter his office - stereotypical. He looks like he's sorry for me. I feel great. He says you look like you should be leading a Russian circus with Russian bears following you.

"The Christians and the scientists are dead," I say. He likes that. It's safe ground. I show him the letter I received this morning.

Saturday Evening

Dear Bill -

I am sorry for the negative things I said to you. It takes away from all the nice and special things that happened to us, with us, for us. It is not so much that something was wrong between us, not looking for something else, but open to it if it happened, I guess. Somehow I felt that what you wanted was a playmate and I was that. It never occurred to me that you were looking for a more permanent kind of relationship. You told me that you didn't want to live with anyone until you had a lot of money, and then you wanted children, etc. I knew I couldn't be the person you would want. If things weren't exactly what I wanted, I didn't worry about it. If I was sad, I wrote notes which I never sent, because I didn't think that's what "we" were all about. Looking back at it, I feel like I gave you my best love and attention and let you know me. That I didn't do what you wanted, I am sorry - but we hadn't made that kind of commitment - we had never even mentioned living together. Even now, I don't think you would want to be saddled with that kind of responsibility.

The qualities you admired in me at the start now make you angry. I can't be made to feel guilty and hurt because I didn't do what I didn't even know you wanted. I must feel free to do what I feel is best. But I am responsible to you - if you want to talk to me I will be available, without fear. I had hoped we could be friends, work together and whatever happened. I understand your hurt and I am sorry. I cared and still care very much for you and I know that you know that.

Sunday Morning

Right now I don't have anymore to add to the above and preceding except that it was good talking to you yesterday and I still mean it about talking more if you want to.

I don't want to sever all connections with you - but I do feel that I need to find out what the other thing is all about.

And I want to send you this book since I finally found it. And I'm glad that you brought the Tomato Soup writings back.

Love,

The Tomato Soup writings are her diary, which she had given me a few weeks before. I had been tempted to keep them. The book is Malamud's The Natural.

"There it is," he says, "it's all verbalized. Do you accept that?"

I nod my head and watch his eyes, very blue. Inside there, it looks like someone's lost at sea.

He says, "Have you seen your wife?"

"No," I say. I pause.

He looks at me. He must think I'm a fool to think I'd tell him the truth.

He nods.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" I ask.

Without blinking an eye, but slouching, he says, "Trying to understand you."

"Fuck off," I say, and, once again, leave. He expects it. He just says, "See you later."

There are greater, less explored realities. Psychiatry has had its two deep sea divers. The rest, and all the divergent movements, are pale imitations, piranhas living off the Freud-Jung creation. For the past twenty years, the great field has been extrasensory, human telepathy, interstellar communication, Chardin's Alpha & Omega, the revealing common unconsciousness: In short, Jung's world.

There is an obsession in our culture with drugs, with books that speak of life after death. People die knowing these things. They spill their blood to the Greater Truth, for it is the only sacrifice the God will accept: the complete transformation of human reality. To go beyond this narrow plain of war and religion.

Bishop is a fool, but I will continue to work on him until he breaks through the mask. Someone says calm down. How can I? It's an exquisite, heartbreaking afternoon. The sounds on the street, the car horns, the whistling of children, birds, the large dog barking, its mouth agape: an orchestrated symphony of domesticity...a pleasure to listen to from a distance.

My concern is for the lower vibrations. I must keep myself in tune to the humming that one cannot hear, to the invisible engine that one knows is there.

Does Bishop realize that what he thinks and feels is the community, the intermingling emotions of what his group is thinking? The feeling of the forest is coming from the forest, from the inhabitants of that mind.

Tuesday morning - Sometimes, it's difficult to get moving in the morning. I like to lie around, in the early winds, catching those slow, cold explosions from the approaching sun. I like to stand on the stairs above the garden, especially after a rain, and let all the fragrance seep into my body. It's a sexual fatigue the plants and trees feel after a strong rain.

I've got my light blue jeans, maroon sweater, and not quite matching levi jacket on. I'm wearing buckle-over dress shoes, and a Russian hat. Liz, the blonde, hook-nosed bartender, from a bar I frequent, the Mauna Loa, brings down black coffee and scrambled eggs. She says, "I've got an appointment at 10:00. I'll see you later."

"Wait a minute," I say.

"Oh no," she says, bending and giving me a kiss. "I'll see you later."

"All right. Bye."

I watch her walk up the stone stairs. She has trouble closing the gate, but she finally does, and leaves.

Rain clouds have appeared. I have to take the eggs and coffee inside. Someone has come and is standing near the orange tree. I can't make out the form. It's trying to say something. "You are loved by her. You must act on it." Slowly, it vanishes. Patience, somehow patience was what this was all about.

III

Tuesday night - Life in the city, the bee into the various beehives. The hummingbird in the garden of delights. The smoke, the ground haze that surrounds us. The drugged beauty. The dance of changing partners, and the constant money exchange for services rendered. Sleep in the city is fitful without sex. If not sex, certainly alcohol. The tensions are too continuous. There is no rest, no peace in the city.

I hear the grove of eucalyptus being rustled by the wind. I've always heard it, and the sound and sight transfixes me. It's as if I made the sound, when I was born, and will make it, again, when I die. A creaking. In and out. An almost leathery sensuality. A gentle passing, like the sound of ice melting.

I see Christine tonight. I feel there was hope for us. We talk, turning in the bed, aching. All night long, holding each other. I can't fuck her. She can't let me back in. "Remember," she says, "you feel right." She nods her head. Indicating she still feels that way? I tell her I’ll wait one month before leaving. I want to live with her. Have us become successful. Business, lovewise. Gently understanding the feelings. In response, I write her this letter: "Even now you don't think I want to be saddled with the responsibilities. Are we joyous people? Do we believe in love and experience, work and the healing of wounds (old wounds)? Of course, we do, of course, we are. If only I could have pulled off the road, and spoken to myself about the depth of my feeling, about my desire. If only I could have spoken to myself and resolved the conflict." I think she says she hates me and she loves me. I arouse all those feelings. Basically, she doesn't like me. So what am I to make of that? I continue. The car is burning; I have to jump out. My feelings unwind slowly. I wake up to myself. I have lost (for the moment); I went to the station, but the train had left. I look at it go away. I run after it; I run. I restart the engine. I love you. I wait for you. For the train that you are on. Return. But I'm in the past, aren't I? I have become another memory, almost a fantasy.

Wednesday morning - It's curious how weird I can become. People begin moving across the veranda. There's no end to them. Their faces are smiling; they all believe and are attached to God. They have a general, and he mutters something about stopping, and, as one, they halt the march. They break their lines and stretch out. A few lie on their backs to catch the morning sun; others sit in circles and talk. The general looks off into the distance. His wife has sent him a nagging letter. She says he's been away too long. Goddamn woman, he thinks to himself. This journey may be a delusion, but I must do it. "Do it, do it," the general says, hardly visible, staring madly out of the shadows. The creatures, hearing him, stand and walk back into line, leaving the sun and their circles. Why is he so obsessed? Why are they so obedient?

No one wants to buy the ping pong table, but I have sold the pool table, my car, metal desk and filing cabinet. The fuse has been lit. I'm leaving this shattered kingdom. To Bishop, I have given my papers. To my wife, Barbara, my appreciation and respect. I don't want to think about Christine: smiling, frowning, waiting, serious, businesslike, expectant, gone from my life, a kind of poetry, a delicate strength, a projection of my feelings. I feel there is more to say about this.

I am moving because I do not want to repeat the same cycle. I am hungry. I do not want to become an old cigar, or plain brown shoes. I'm diverging. Like a falcon, I must circle closer to the quarry.

Wednesday morning - Stars are roots. I replay one of our sex scenes; She moves into my bedroom and strips, removing her shoes, and then her pants.

"I'm here," she says.

Startled, I turn to her pretty legs.

She says, "I'm here to get fucked."

Now, she could say it, a stroke of independence. She says it again, "I'm here to get fucked."

"All right, I will."

I walk nakedly with a stiff hard-on pulling me along.

She drops to the floor.

"I hope this satisfies you," she says, tilting her head back. "Does it?" I slip her panties off, and kneel with her. Separating her, I unravel her.

"Oh, Bill," she says.

"I miss you," I whisper.

Wrapping her legs around me, she says, "I know."

Wednesday afternoon - I walk to the road above my house. I'm not really possessive. I just want to make sure, when I lose something, that I haven't been ripped off. Drifting, from moment to moment, without checking and balancing, is an escape from the depth.

For instance, the man I call my old man was given a blueprint of his contract, yet, chose not to believe it. He told me the story, at least twenty times.

They had been on their second honeymoon, a winter in Northern Canada. I was two years old at home, with my grandmother. Great time, he said. Skied, fooled around, you know. On the sixth day they were riding on a land bordered by tamaracks. Anne, my mother, talked about the possibility of an avalanche. The horses became skitterish. The old man heard moans, human sounds, coming from somewhere up the lane. He jumped off; she held the reins. He walked toward the sound. The old man said he was scared, but he turned to pure fear as he saw the unfortunate soul, all too human, caught in a bear trap, his mouth agape, his blood frozen. He cries at night when he dreams of that cold uncomprehending stare.

Sometimes I feel like telling him that the man in the trap is him, his contract, but I think it would break his heart. In a lot of ways he's innocent, well protected, a good sport.

There is a wild bed of roses growing on top of the hill. I am not in tune. As I look upon it, I become aware of the struggle. Inside, there is a world. So, there is a world outside. They are not in tune. I've stopped thinking. I know because there is a creek that runs alongside the road, and now I can hear its glib gliding sounds.

It's true, though. From each of these confrontations, the tree that is me grows a little more, the soil becomes enriched by the psychic blood that flows through the trunk and into the roots. The blood is like paint and winds its way through the trunk and into the roots. The paint winds its way into a discernible form, a painting which vibrates and sends out messages. The picture is called Tenderness. I will not hide from my tenderness.

I call Bishop. He says that I've been in this lush, vibrating California pit too long. He's drunk. He's got a woman he fucks but doesn't love, a child he loves but cannot see, and a wife whom he is indifferent to. He doesn't smile much.

VII

The happiness I feel at this moment is the result of a small glass of beer. My father sits across from me on his yellow recliner. We are surrounded by sun. The magnolias turn.

He nods. "Where are you going now?"

"I think I'd like to drive a cab, or maybe I'll get back into commercials but I won't be able to do that stuff for about a month. Can you loan me $500 until I get going?"

"I don't know. How much do you owe me now?"

"About $1,700.00."

"If you want to know the truth, Bill, I think you're wasting your life."

I stand. The old man tries to look tough, but age has softened his face leaving his brown eyes tender and domesticated.

"You think I could have been a pro, eh?"

Wistfully, he says, "Everyone thought so. You were the best end in the country, Bill."

"It was your dream," I say, "not mine."

He doesn't like that.

"It just shows how irresponsible you are."

I smile. "Right."

I can see him over sixteen years ago, on a cold evening, bowing down in his bedroom, and saying a "Hail Mary" for the team. Then, he rose from his knees to climb the stairs and knock on my bedroom door. "Come in."

"Would you like to share a brandy with me?" he asked shyly.

"I'd love to," came my voice from the other side. "I'll be there in five minutes."

"Fine. I'll see you downstairs."

Carefully, he closed the door.

His brandy was excellent. He boasted it was his only drinking weakness. Above the television, in a Blackburn portrait, a boy was shoeing a horse.

I accepted the snifter. He sat across from me, in a chair, and sipped the deep amber colored wine. I can remember I felt like telling him that this was all a joke, that he shouldn't take it so seriously but I knew he'd think I'd gone completely crazy.

"I know what you're thinking," I said.

The old man moved forward. "What?"

"You're worried about the game. You're wondering what happened, aren't you?"

"That's what's been on my mind, yes."

"All right. Let me tell ya. I was tense. It's true. I, also, felt disoriented. Now, what blows my mind is your taking one lousy performance so seriously. I'm fine. The team's fine. We had a let down. We don't feel good about it. But it happened. We don't think it will happen again."

"I think it will."

"What?"

"I can't say, this is a delicate subject. You're a football player, maybe, a great one. You should just stick with it. You know?"

"I know what you mean."

"You know...good. There's plenty of time for women. You've got to stick with it."

"That's up to me, I think."

The old man nodded his head. "Alright." He raised up. The brandy glass in hand, a red Pendleton on his back, he turned to the fireplace.

"You know, I love you," he said. "I want the best for you." Against the fire he, looked like a monk.

I looked clearly at the brandy, at its silken texture. I touched it, raised it to my lips. I looked up. "I love you, too," I said.

I felt the old man was crying. "What's really wrong?" I asked him.

He kept his face from me.

"I don't know."

I watched the left side of him. He looked bloated.

I left the brandy on the table and came up to him. I touched him on the shoulder and said, "I love you."

He said, "Go on."

I turned and left the room, flickering a deep orange and red.

"C'mon," I say, "I'm hurting; I need your help. Goddamit!"

"I've got room for a truck driver. You can have the job.

"I can't work with you."

I feel like we're aching there in the sunlight, linked like two dogs in heat, needing someone to throw water on us.

"You're a fool," I say.

He peers up from beneath his baseball cap. As I pass by, he stares at me. He says, "Don't hurt yourself, Bill."

After quitting football, I got up to 320 pounds. It took three years. I hitchhiked down to a fat farm in Raleigh, North Carolina. I don't think I've ever had a happier time. To the majority of the people there, the farm was home. They felt no pressure being ugly, obsessive, or disgusting. They fucked each other with care, and love. Once a month, around midnight, three or more of us would sneak out to an all night Denny's and eat a dozen eggs, a pound of bacon, pancakes, and hamburgers. Back home, getting into bed, we'd pop a water pill, and shed the pounds. When I left three months later, I weighed 240 and attributed the loss to a steady diet of fucking, and an ample supply of water pills.

There's nothing I can do to prevent all this from happening. Nor do I have any desire to. I am receiving pictures from the past, or the future, and occasionally, I can feel, but not see, all the steps in the movement, all the moves in this chess game have been played out. I am a hunter who looks for an opening, a clearing, a clarification of will, a demonstration of clairvoyance. A madness is growing in me.

On top of Russian Hill, a fire is blazing. Sirens arch through the city heading for what is probably Macondary Lane. From the spark, the entire city could burn. Visions of grandeur. The red trucks stamp it out and cones of smoke drift toward the Bay.

I have been there before. The last time I was unsuccessful. This time I will complete the process. I have the feeling I created this situation and have done it many times. Each time failing to complete it. This time I know I will not fail.

What is the purpose of it all? Wouldn't you like to live and let live, to build on the old, create from the new, survive and raise your young? If so, it is within your grasp by disarming and learning to share. Too simplistic.

The fact is that is not what you want. People the world of your imagination, with your desires, crown it with your dreams, and the phantasmagoria that arises would put any single genius' portrait of hell to shame. The true picture of man is in Sappho, Aeschylus, Bacon, Balzac and Melville. Obsessed with power, a gabby mouth, a desire for salvation, a cunning unmatched in creation, he walks about glum or smiling, repeating old worn out phrases, which he knows will enable him to pass by unnoticed, and undisturbed.

I might have a drinking problem. I should go to Triple A and get towed away. I close my eyes, and picture the painting, Yradsgil, A Tree of Life. It's a masterpiece of light greens, whites, browns, and greys. The tree is the center. There is an unmistakable fish in the left hand corner. The rest is shapes and half-forms, a Rorschach. It hangs in my wife's living room. I see a white tiger hurling itself through the upper branches. In the upper left, looking toward the nearest frame, a sea horse, and to the right, four legs tucked under him, sitting on a branch, a smiling ram. Above the ram, a strange creature with a large moose's face, but without the antlers or hair, and with a patch over one eye, and a long, flaccid penis lying on its back. I think it is somehow connected with scholarly work and manipulative desires. At the roots of the tree, above the fish, is a football, and a host of half-creatures in the process of being born.

At the top of Market Street, before the tram enters the tunnel, I slip out the front door, and walk up 17^th Street, away from Christine's and head for the view on Twin Peaks. It's a climb and I'm out of shape, but reaching the top, standing below the Benign Protector, the crucible through which all our visual information blows, I get the microcosmic flash, the profusion of parks, the deep, orange towers of the Golden Gate.

At the end of Market Street, I can see the World Trade Center, one of the few survivors of the 1906 earthquake. We don't need a war to keep us on our toes. Though right now, from here, it would be nice to see the planes and the troops, the underground against the overground, maybe the smokers versus the nonsmokers in an old fashioned destructive action.

I've calmed down enough to smoke. I light it in the wind. In a '56 Chevy, two white kids in their late teens pull up alongside me. I'm sober enough to sense trouble. I look over at them, and unzip my coat. They're "good times" kids, punks riding the 50s crest of nostalgia and aggression. I want them to know I'm no one to fuck with. The one driving, a younger version of the "Fonz," rolls down his window and says, "Eh, man, you got a match?" I look at him. He doesn't seem too frightened. His buddy raises a can of Coors.

With the left hand I scratch my beard. "No, I ain't got no light," I say. "Sorry."

The driver nods and rolls his window up. I don't want to turn my back on them, and I know they're not going away. I begin walking backwards. I'm tempted to blow their tires apart. The passenger opens his door, stands up and walks to the back of the car.

"Hey," he yells, "you got a couple of dollars we can borrow? We're almost out of gas."

That does it. I take the .32 out and point it at him.

He panics. "Wait a minute," he says.

"Tell your friend to get out of that fucking car." The young "Fonz" ducks. I can't do it. I fire two shots into the air. The passenger falls behind the fender, and I run for the hill adjacent to the Television Tower.

I watch them take off. From where I am, it looks like they'll go off the road, but they make it down. I wonder if they'll head for a bar, or go home.

I feel trapped, but safe. This has suddenly become my territory. "Who’s next?" I yell to the pastel rows, the jigsaw puzzle of cheap Mediterranean style housing.

I look out over the water. It has become dark. Slowly, I climb down the mountain. At the Twin Peaks bar, I call Christine. She answers; I hang up. "Take a chance," I say, and begin moving toward her place. My heart is pounding; tears stream down my face. Why this emotion? I catch a glimpse of myself in a parked car. I look insane.

From a hill above her house, I watch her in a chair reading. I don't think anyone else is there. I climb over the back fence. Standing on top of her stairs, I look down on her garden. She is growing greens, mints and lettuce, amid the flowers. A bust of a woman with a Harpo Marx wig sits near the bottom of the door. It is locked, but the window opens easily.

What does it matter that she has redecorated her kitchen, or what book she is reading. I unzip the jacket and place it cautiously around the arms of a chair. When I walk into the living room, she looks up from the book and doesn't bat an eye. She doesn't register fear or surprise as I point the .32 at her.

She sits in the chair with a yellow bandanna around her neck, wearing a black and white cowboy shirt, and a pair of Levi’s. No shoes. Her legs are tucked underneath her. There are three neatly rolled joints on the table at the base of her lamp. Vibrating, in back of her, the diamond lights of the city look like so many stars.

"T'ai," she says, "fast and clear as a mountain stream. You know, I was just thinking about you when you walked in. Put that gun down and come over here and kiss me."

Savages

I

"Dearest Marilyn, I can see you walking in the fresh morning grass. With your right foot you'll find a small rock; your toes will curve around it; to lift it and fling it into a blackberry bush.

I cannot hide from my sorrow. I am bound on all sides by this past winter's snow. The patterns and traps of Washington, the feelings of remorse, what are they but to enslave us, to keep us here. Now, I am being followed. Someone, if I am not very careful, will murder me. I dream every night that I am flying to you. I want you with me in this time of trouble. What am I waiting for? I will go to you.

I loved your sun, your water, your tent, your dreams; why haven't I returned sooner? My hands go up; I got lost in a whirlpool, without a memory, in a fantastic country of my own making.

But finally, out of necessity, I am planning my trip back to you. I am leaving tomorrow. I want to talk with you, see you, kiss you. I think if only I can let myself into the warm folds of your country, again, I'll be safe.

“I'll be arriving on the 22nd, 7:00 o'clock - Amtrack, Oakland.

Love, Joe."

She folded the letter and slipped it into her back pocket. She sat in the grass, drawing her legs toward her, tilting her head toward the light.

The note of desperation puzzled her. Six months ago an article in Newsweek hailed him as one of the country's leading therapists. Newsweek had spoken of him as a realist, a man in touch with practical solutions. There was a hint, in the article, of Joseph's political ambitions which she found alien to her knowledge of him. Possibly that, the political pressure, plagued him. She jumped the two feet into the shallow brown water and began walking toward the road.

Like a bird arranges and rearranges its feathers after a rain, her feelings and thought reconstructed themselves. His power to make her believe in what he said, to feel for him, attested to her affection. Watching the light play in the trees, she knew that was what she liked. Little black Joseph, gentle and strong, placing himself in her so she could not forget.

Once she had described a place, a jar that someone had given her. She said she lived in the jar. On one level were flowers, another pots and pans. She lived at the bottom of the jar on a floor coated with raspberry jam.

"My God," he exclaimed, "do you really?"

She said, "Yes," her soft brown eyes laughing.

"Don't you feel trapped in that jar?"

"I feel secure."

He had nodded.

The sweet smell of cherry blossoms brought her back. Sliding over rocks she felt the snakelike turns of the creek. She moved onto the grassy bank.

Across the Bay, in Japantown, the streets were lined with the signs of festival. Lights, plastic flowers, parades, and demonstrations of ability exploded into sight. In the spirit of the season she turned her body into a tent, an old Japanese custom.

If one could appreciate the little things in life, the grains of soil at the bottom of the grass, strife and conflict would evaporate. To become absorbed by life was its secret. Her one great enemy was this dream she had about thinking there was an end to her flight for survival.

To her right she noticed a bluejay landing on a small eucalyptus. It frightened all the smaller birds from their perches. He, or maybe it was a she, looked at her. "You're a bad bird," she said. She scowled at him. Unmoving, it stared back.

She moved toward the road. It cut her property in half. There were no cars in sight. Quickly, she ran across the old stone bridge, then into a small meadow of poppies to reach the front door of her house.

She stood in the doorway staring at the piece of paper tacked to the wall years before. She was naked, the beads of water drying, being absorbed by her skin. "If you are to live, you must fight, gently, quietly. Against you are all the enemies of the past. You must always go forward." Her first husband had written it six days before his plane crashed.

She turned to look through the bay window at the hills and admired the red texture of its soil, the clay and grass surrounding it. She noticed two figures, people scrambling on all fours up the side of it. The sight gave her a warm feeling, as if she had created the hill and placed the people on it. She knew there had been a time when she had first come out of herself, when she wasn't sure. After his death it seemed quite plausible to her that she was the Creator. Now, she only flirted with the feeling.

III

Joseph turned the tape recorder on.

He heard himself say: "I'm going to give you one chance to redeem yourself, one opportunity to show me that you are alive. What is this?"

A boy's voice, a high tenor, replied: "A knife."

"What do you propose to do with it?"

"Throw it."

"Where?"

"Against the wall."

"That's a good suggestion. Do you think you can make it stick?"

"I don't know. I've never thrown a knife before."

"You're lying. I want you to throw it. But I also want you to make it stick."

"Is it okay if I throw it at your head? I think I can make it stick."

A robust, incredibly intelligent ten year old, his orange hair and blue eyes were running, churning somewhere outside of him. Joseph shook his head. In a way they were both walking across the same street, a long nightmare stretch of white and blue, the absence of darkness, the heat of a thousand dreams.

He pushed the button down. "The child must be given every opportunity to channel his aggression." He shut it off and lay back against his seat. Looking out the window he saw himself in the glass. There was no joy there. His face had been scarred and stretched by the American changes of weather.

So many changes of clothes.

For Wendy & Rob, Paul & Julie, George, and Ivan

Einstein in Tunisia…………………1

Moonflower ………………………. 5

Savages ………………….…………28

G.I.V.E. ……………….………….. 50

Anders’ World ….………………... 82

The Last Killing ………………….. 113

The Inner Life of James. . . . . . . . . .135

The Madras Jacket………………...157

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