The Wallcreeper. Nell Zink

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ theory of relativity and everything like that. He liked clamming a lot, but I really hated clams. So my eagle scout project was to study the ospreys that were breeding and feeding in the cove.”

      “I thought you were addicted to codeine.”

      “Listen, man, I went to state running the mile. There are a lot of hours in the day when you’re a kid.”

      I had to admit the truth of that statement. I replied, “The most ambitious thing I did at that age was let these girls pierce my ears.”

      “I would have done anything in the world I thought would piss my parents off,” Stephen said. “Eagle scout was a conscious trade-off to keep my dad from killing me.”

      I realized that he was not like me at all. I only did things I felt strongly moved to do. As a child I consistently felt I had no options and was surprised by my parents’ strong reactions to the entirely inevitable things I did. My life moved forward in ineluctable leaps. The only smart leap I had ever made, in their opinions, was marrying Stephen. It was what set me apart from my sister, since secretary and bikini barista are not really such different professions when you get right down to it. I mean, I’ve served plenty of coffee in my day.

      “Were you in a band at Temple?” I asked.

      “No. Once I moved out of my parents’ house, I calmed down a lot. I just didn’t like having people breathing down my neck.”

      That made sense. It would be a reason to marry someone too shy to ask personal questions. It was also a way of saying: I wasn’t doing drugs when you met me and I’m not doing drugs now, but if you breathe down my neck, I’ll do drugs.

      “Isn’t it hard,” I asked, “getting up so early in the morning on weekends after you worked all week? I mean, it’s hard for me, and I’m just writing a screenplay.” (I had intimated that I was a writer with industry connections so he wouldn’t make me work.)

      “Oh, I feel great,” he said. “It’s great getting out of the lab. I feel exhilarated. I feel like I can concentrate for hours. I feel on top of the world right now. This is a really good time for me.” He reached out and clamped his hand lovingly on my leg. He was shaking.

      When we got to the river, I helped him set up his blind. It was a bit cramped, so first he would get in, and then I would hand him everything he needed before going back to the car to read.

      He saw a greenshank, linnets, and a poacher. He made me look at the guy. We took a picture through his spotting scope, but it didn’t turn out.

      It was soon after that that I started saying, if he asked me what I was doing, “Oh, breeding and feeding.” The majestic simplicity. It always made him laugh. But I couldn’t envy the birds. Their lives weren’t as simple as mine. My life was like falling off a log comfortably located somewhere light years above the earth.

      At Elvis’s suggestion I took a course in Berndeutsch. I learned ten verbs for work: work hard (drylige, bugle, chrampfe, schaffe, wärche), get stuck with jobs no one else wants to do (chrüpple), work slowly (chnorze), work carelessly (fuuschte), work absent-mindedly (lauere). Stay at home and putter around doing little harmless chores (chlütterle). I learned fast and the teacher said maybe it was an advantage my not knowing any German. Then the ten weeks of the course were over and I didn’t know anything anymore, except that I would never look for a job. When people other than Stephen asked me what I did, I could say, “Chlütterle.” Another laugh line.

      Elvis said he wanted to go dancing, which would involve staying out very late. Going dancing was his reason for being, and he wanted to share it with me. I wasn’t sure I could get that past Stephen, but I agreed to try. Stephen said, “That sounds like a date.”

      “It totally is a date. Obviously this guy wants in my pants. But I mean, when’s the last time you went dancing? For me I think it was my sophomore year. And I wouldn’t know where to go. He’s a nice guy. I’m sure you know him. The guy with the beard at the gas station. He’s totally harmless. He’s a disciple of Slavoj Žižek.”

      Stephen snapped the International Herald Tribune tight to turn the page. “That is the tiredest line in Christendom,” he said.

      “I know. It’s not his fault he’s a tragic figure. It’s never a tragic figure’s fault. That’s what makes them tragic. But he says he knows this really fun place to go dancing, not a disco but, like, a bar where they play all kind of ‘mixed music.’ ”

      “Do you need a chaperone?”

      “Would you please?” I said. I couldn’t really say no. We picked Elvis up at his place. I had never been there. It was farther out of town, up at the edge of the woods. An old house. He came out as soon as the car pulled up. The street obviously didn’t get much traffic late at night. Elvis directed us to the most pitiful bar I ever saw. Young men unlikely to be in the possession of Swiss passports danced with eyes half-closed, snapping their fingers, while women in various states of disrepair jockeyed into their axes of attention. Lumpy, lantern-jawed, pockmarked, bucktoothed, short, tall, or simply drunken women, here to pick up devil-may-care subaltern gigolos for a night of horror.

      I saw Elvis through new eyes. “You are so much beautiful,” he would often say charmingly as he worshipped at the altar of my body. Looking around, I could only think that a bar where I am the best-looking woman by a factor of ten is not a bar where I want to be, and that beauty is apparently relative. I felt both better- and worse-looking than before. Better because I was suddenly reminded that the world is not all college girls and secretaries and trophy wives, and worse because everything in the whole universe is contagious if you look at it long enough. Just opening your eyes puts you in front of a mirror, psychologically speaking. Garbage in, garbage out. Or rather, garbage goes in, but you never get rid of it. It just lies there turning to dust and slowly wafting a thin layer of grime on to every other object in your brain. Scraping the gunk off is not only a major challenge, but the chief burden of human existence. That’s why I keep things so clean. Otherwise I would see little flecks of Rudolf-shit everywhere I looked, from Fragonard to the Duino Elegies.

      “I am not staying here,” Stephen said. “Do you want to stay?”

      Elvis asked if he knew another place. Our next stop was called Mancuso’s Loft. It was running drum ’n’ bass. The proprietor waved us in. Here I saw Stephen through new eyes. Then I ran to the ladies’ room and stuffed my ears with toilet paper. Stephen led me to the floor and yelled, “I’m going to dance a little bit!” He then proceeded to dance as if he had never seen me, or any other human being, before in his life. Cranes came to mind.

      Touching my elbow, Elvis remarked, “This club is so much beautiful,” and headed for the bar. Elvis was right. In Mancuso’s Loft, I felt below average-looking and quite conspicuously ill-dressed. My pants revealed nothing whatever. My shoes were comfy. My shirt had long sleeves so thick I was soon terribly hot.

      “I like your husband,” Elvis said. I said that was not really his assigned task. “No, he has something. Un certain je ne sais quoi. You know what I need? A girlfriend. By myself, I am never getting into this place. You think they let me in? A brown man alone, with a beard? Ha!”

      “You’re not brown! You’re lily-white anywhere but Denmark!”

      “Many times, I am standing in the queue outside clubs like this. And all the time, I think I am living in Berne. But I am not living in Berne. I am living in the Berne that reveals itself to me, okay, a white ‘Yugo’ if you please but with no connections, СКАЧАТЬ