The Actress and the Writer. Part II

Nila was gifted with language, but she didn’t share Joseph’s faith in the redemptive quality of words. Significance, she believed, lay in the way the mouth moved, not in the things it had to say. The performative aspect of human interaction intrigued her. She would accompany Joseph to his sporting events, and while he struggled to translate gestures into sentences, she sat absorbed for hours in the aesthetics of human aggression.

“Love and football adhere to the law of entropy,” Joseph once wrote. “Those who participate are compelled to a state of disorder and destruction, emotions and limbs tending toward violent collision. Yet beauty finds a seam. Tiny miracles occur, in the midst of chaos splendour breaks through somehow, despite all odds. Johnny Malone carries for 117 yards; Giants win. Final score, New York 28 Jacksonville 17.”

Joseph observed in Nila’s acting a similar compulsion to disaster. Her performances, like his writing, tended toward botched melodrama, as though imperfection were the natural state of her gestures and his words. And yet somehow she managed to accomplish tiny miracles, the achievement of perfect moments that could transcend the stage and send shivers down Joseph’s spine. It was a reaction no other woman could induce, at once a reminder of her beauty and his disappointments as a writer. He adored her radiance, but resented the success it slowly brought.

Nila was quickly becoming the star of her shows. With every particular role a new set of possibilities came into focus. For seven weeks she arrived home from work having suffered rape by a clown.

“I want a more sinister absurdity!” Joseph teased as Nila chopped cantaloupe.

She returned home tipsy after opening night; Joseph waited in bed in a clown suit. During those weeks his sarcasm was unbearable, her sense of infirmity pushed to its limit. Then the script changed and he became an inadequate and naive husband, unaware that she was sleeping with a Spanish matador. Matadors were in short supply in the West Village; she fucked the Argentine mechanic instead.

The Actress and the Writer. Part III

It was easy for Nila to see in Joseph an aspect of every male character she was ever asked to pull near or push away. As a result, Joseph had to adapt to every new role and plot curve. Their home was an extension of the stage, another scene in which to explore the depth and range of the people they played.

“Where’s dinner?” Joseph half-joked, unaware that she was no longer playing a cannibal chef, but a lesbian outcast that month. Nila picked up a plate and threw it at his head.

Joseph could have died. He left the hospital with a concussion and eight stitches. At work he wrote about the role of rage in Olympic women’s discus. He returned home and ducked immediately.
“Very funny. I’m sorry, baby. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I don’t know what happened. You just embodied everything that drives my character to flee society and sail the ocean on her raft of crucifixion wood,” Nila explained.
“You’re not a crucified lesbian, Nila.”
She knew that their relationship was a push and pull dance, and that an errant plate signalled her turn to tug.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m tormented by patriarchal structures right now. You know how I get caught up in my roles.”

They made dinner together. She prepared a salad; he fried vegetables and heated left-over chicken. They ate abstractedly, small talk penetrated by silence. He cleared the table, carried dirty dishes to the sink.

After dinner she approached him shyly, stretched out her arms and brought his waist tight toward hers.
“Ever fuck a lesbian?”
She tilted her head and smiled apologetically, seductively.
“Look, I can’t promise not to be difficult, but I can promise never to throw a plate at you again,” she said, slipping out of her jeans.
She un-caped him and sat on top of him demurely – ritual of apology. He swung her body below his – ritual of forgiveness. She focused on the pattern of the stitches, shuddered at the physical pain she had inflicted.
“Harder, baby. Go harder.”
She moaned while grasping his forehead, tracing the criss-cross with her hand.

Again, Nila returned home an outcast lesbian. And again, Joseph resorted to his writing, a new piece entitled Forgiveness after War: Shaking Hands in Sport. That night, unable to sleep, he sat at his laptop and typed “Now Is Past” in different combinations across three filled pages. He sat shirtless, black cape fluttering in the winter breeze. Nila pretended not to wake; she observed the dance of his fingers, the guillotine motion of left thumb toward spacebar.

The Actress and the Writer. Part IV

Their affair was perpetually short-lived, a recurring clash of tossed plates and bodies redeemed. It was love at the fringes, full of doubt, persisting through the logic of escape and return. Reasons to leave however, swelled and multiplied like disease, whereas reasons to return remained few and fragile.

“I got fired today,” Joseph said.
“I beg your pardon?” Nila had just finished an Austen play; her language refined, her accent British.
“Not really fired, moved. Both, I guess. Apparently, the philosophical turn in my writing has been lost on my readers. They want me writing for the arts now. Theatre reviews.”

Nila’s expression clouded over. Her eyes searched in Joseph something she wasn’t quite sure was there.

“You’re not serious. That’s hilarious. That’s tragic. You, writing the arts?”
“Bob in theatre had a stroke. I’m the new Bob.”
“Hold on a second. What exactly do you know about theatre, my love?”
“Only what I catch when you complain.”
“I don’t complain,” she maintained. “I release.”
“You give me insight into your craft. You’re quite an actress. … Even when you think you’re not acting,” he added, though he knew better.
“And you are what you write, Joseph,” she quipped back. “Baffling and meaningless.”

There was a slight pause as Nila turned inward. She had fallen in love with a failed athlete turned sports writer. There was something romantic in the metamorphosis. Was she now being asked to love a failed sports writer turned theatre critic? This left a decidedly unromantic taste in her mouth.

“So I’m dating a theatre critic. I never liked theatre critics. I always dreamed of an athlete. Or at least a man who wrote about athletes. This changes everything,” she smiled wryly.
He smiled back. “Guess my first assignment: The Distressed, a musical starring Nila Jones. You do open in a few weeks, don’t you?”
He whipped out a cigarette and placed it smugly between his lips. Joseph didn’t smoke, but carried a pack regardless.
“I requested it,” he continued.
Nila laughed. “You madman.”
“It’s not that ridiculous, is it? Just think of the article I could write.”
Nila broke out in another fit of laughter, uncontrollable, compulsive, her eyes swelling with tears.
“It’s completely absurd. Why would you go and do a thing like that?”
“My editor loves the idea. I’ve got intimate access to the star of the show.”
Another pause, Nila frowned. “Baby, access denied.” She looked genuinely grave. Her acting’s improving, Joseph thought.
“I don’t like the idea of you writing me. In fact I positively hate it.”

She stormed out of the apartment and left Joseph clouded in cigarette smoke. It was exactly the type of existential moment for which he bought his Camel Reds. He took a deep, satisfying drag, glad not to be alone. And if he died of lung cancer, surely Nila would be to blame.

The Actress and the Writer. Part V

The conclusion of this story can be found in the reject pile of the New Yorker...

Manifesto?

Michael Ondaatje has been a favourite of mine the last few months. His treatment of language and identity is abundantly complex and interesting, but what has most influenced me is his style of writing. It is very difficult to sustain a poetic register through three hundred pages of narrative story-telling. I think the reason Ondaatje is successful is his mastery of tempo and meter. The patterns of his language use reveal a rhythm that constantly contrasts long winded lines with quick lines, sensual abstractions with every-day banalities, and beautiful, tangled metaphors with the courseness of natural speech. Ondaatje’s narratives are most often associated with his lyrical quality, but it is his ability to know how and when to bring his poetic style into sharp relief that I find most impressive.

I think of human beings as creatures of resistance. There is a part of us that always struggles against that which is manifest. When we are confronted with courseness we demand poetry; when we are confronted with poetry we demand violence. I think of a writer as someone who is able, like Ondaatje, to anticipate the rhythms of a reader’s resistance, someone who manipulates language in such a way that every drop feels urgent and essential.

Writing in the Time of Speed and A.D.D.

These are the adventures of Fae-ling Rhyter, a young woman convinced that words are dying, if not already dead. Fae-ling finds herself in the midst of an A.D.D. generation. Our generation. Patience and focus are not our thing. Movies, music, comics, games - these are mediums that have learned to grab their audience and not let go. These are mediums that understand that art is speed and speed is war. Get in, do your thing, get the fuck out. 1, 2, 3, bang bang, linger and you're dead. But words are subtle and words are fragile. They linger. Like lost children in a time of speed and unforgiveness, they linger.

And so this striving. For a poetry that keeps up, but does so without pretention, without puking. Poetry in the age of unforgiveness.

Remnants of Old Montreal. Part I

(www.bears.co.nz)

Mr. Skirts often forgot about the sky, especially on days when he received a specially marked brown envelope. Today he was reminded by the unshaven vagrant who sat on the stoop outside his office-building. The vagrant wore a grimy white collar shirt with spotted green tie, and held a cardboard sign that wrote “This Way Up,” with corresponding black arrow pointing to the heavens.

Mr. Skirts heard a slight crack as he tilted his neck. He stood with his hands behind his back, mouth gaping open, and observed the movement of two massive clouds swirling toward one another. In only a few seconds the clouds collided and became one, as continents that crash and join in the sea after centuries of idle drifting. He half expected a tremendous noise to mark their impact, but the clouds moved through one another like phantom lovers and continued a silent path across the blue sky, gently breaking off into new formations.

The vagrant looked at Mr. Skirts with a wide, satisfied grin, as if to say, I told you so. Mr. Skirts tipped his cap and tossed the man a quarter; he then walked down the street with the sealed brown envelope tucked tightly against his arm.

“A new project, Mr. Skirts?” the waiter asked as he noticed the brown envelope.

“Yes indeed, Jacques.”

“Red wine and Fettuccini Alfredo, Mr. Skirts?” Jacques asked before bothering with the specials.

“Yes, let’s not upset the universe today.”

Mr. Skirts traced his finger across the insignia on the official red seal. He took a long sip of merlot, broke the seal carefully, and read the single white page inside:

Monday, May 14.

Mr. Duncan Skirts, head secretary to the Minister of Management and Logistics of New Montreal.

Congratulations on the completion of your last project. I would like to personally thank you for your role in the resolution of the city’s pistachio import crisis. You have once again demonstrated your unequivocal skills in the field of municipal management and logistics. I dare say New Montreal would cease to function without the dedicated efforts of you and your department.

Now, onto your next tast. We have a transportation crisis:

I. The average size car has ballooned to over three times the size of the city’s average parking spot.

II. Automobile collisions are up 64%; automobile fatalities are up 38%.

Direct your budget requests directly to my head office, and please remember that you have, as usual, two months to complete your assignment. I expect, at the end of two months, a full report on how best to decongest our streets.

Thank you,

And good luck,

Bradrick B. Delonte, Mayor of New Montreal.


Mr. Skirts read the letter carefully three times. His subconscious was already putting together figures and formulating hypotheses. Even after ten years in the same department, he approached every new project with the zeal of a young boy, excited by the prospect of piecing together the complex puzzle of the world. Today however, a vague notion interrupted his buoyancy: The sky was moving.

Remnants of Old Montreal. Part three

(www.bears.co.nz)

Mr. Skirts could only concentrate on his projects in the office. He was desperately out of touch with life in the city. He focused solely, passionately, on the task at hand, and though he understood much about how the city functioned in the abstract, he knew little of its blood. The city was, to him, an equation in time, a set of numbers to pound into a formula. He understood New Montreal as an idea, an ideal; he knew nothing of the physical city, or of the strangers that called it home.

Throughout the world New Montreal was hailed as a beacon of modern progress; sleek and efficient, every bullet train on time. But deep within the inner movements of clockwork happiness lay complex, hidden alleyways. The modern metropolis had an underbelly, parts of it swollen, parts of it starving. The progressive government was crippled by an ancient bureaucracy; the digital economy fluctuated with the whims of analogue desire; the law brutalized those who couldn’t speak; homeless folk failed to keep warm by the light of a bummed smoke. The new city was built upon old foundations, on the backs of men and women with memories.

Mr. Skirts comprehended these discrepancies as the unfortunate remainders of ingenious and inevitable solutions. Some fraction always gets left behind, he would say, That is progress.

Peanut understood differently. He resented the myth of progress. To him the remainder was what mattered. Art and terrorism, things too precious to leave behind or ignore. The remainder was Peanut’s pirate flag. It hung high above pipe dreams in shot glasses, tears for no reason, a broken water-main, snow in July, lovers in the afternoon, an underground poet, and an anarchist French bear who could never let a history of cuddles get in the way of revolutionary ideals. Peanut loved and defended everything that refused to fit nicely. He craved absurdity in meaning; he sought everything that was left-out or left-behind like a withered nun craves the leper. Without these things Peanut had no framework through which to understand his own existence – a disgruntled, talking teddy-bear, addicted to chaos and loose women, married to a rational man.

Remnants of Old Montreal. Part II

(www.bears.co.nz)

Mr. Skirts lived in his office with a teddy-bear named Peanut. He leased a small apartment on the West Side, but never bothered making it a home. There were showers on every floor of the municipal building, and a cafeteria on the third floor. The soft peanut brown teddy-bear was a friendly face at the end of each night, warmth waiting beneath the covers on the matress below his desk.

The teddy-bear was also a colleague, of sorts; though Mr. Skirts tended to work silently and alone, he sometimes found it useful to verbalize ideas and bounce them off Peanut, a compassionate and attentive listener.

Mr. Skirts returned from the restaurant and eagerly knelt down below his desk.

“We have a new project, my friend!” he announced to his teddy-bear.

“C’est quoi?” Peanut only spoke broken French.

“We’re to resolve some traffic issues. It’s all very mathematical, you wouldn’t understand.”

It was true, Peanut was very bad at math.

“Grrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaa,” Peanut grumbled as he stretched out his arms.

The teddy-bear was slow recovering from his afternoon nap. He rubbed his eyes and scaled up the counter, furry paws kicking frantically as he pulled his weight over the ledge. He stumbled over to the espresso machine and hit the magic red button. Remnants of last night’s double espresso still stained the bottom of his mug. He pushed the mug aside and laid down on his back as precious caffeine trickled directly into his open mouth. When the trickle ceased he pulled out his last Lucky Strike and smoked it on his back, moment of perfection.

“Ah oui, c’est ca,” he mumbled between puffs.

“You’re a ridiculously addicted bear,” Mr. Skirts warned. “You’re going to get cancer.”

Mr. Skirts scooted under the desk, sat crouched and cramped on his mattress and began counting obsessively on his fingers. Peanut eventually joined him, refreshed, awake; he picked up the letter and read meticulously, forwards, backwards, upside down, trying his best to translate the strange symbols into something he could understand.

“It’s more complicated than it first seems,” Mr. Skirts thought aloud. “Impossible to change the size of people’s cars. The auto industry would kill us if we set limits on car ownership. The oil companies would kill us if we set limits on car use. Repainting the parking spaces wouldn’t solve the overall congestion issue. Public transport is already swamped with commuters. … Where to start this math problem, that’s the question …”

“Non, non, non!” Peanut interjected. “Mais la!, c’est une problem philosophique. Donne-moi une minute …”

Peanut scratched the three day stubble on his chin and worked through the problem with his eyes shut. After a few moments he raised his arms and exclaimed, “Oui! Il y’a une solution. Je suis sur. Il faut exploser la ville!”

Mr. Skirts picked up his teddy-bear and shook him vigorously. Peanut felt the espresso unsettle in his stomach.

“Goddman, Peanut! Blowing things up isn’t a solution!”

They both worked silently for the remainder of the afternoon, a white-collar man and his eccentric bear. The two had been inseparable since childhood, but in the past years ideology crept between them as they drifted further and further apart. Mr. Skirts would still cling to Peanut in his sleep, but something of the tenderness they once shared was gone.

Mr. Skirts spent the evening in the Municipal Records Library on the seventeenth floor; he worked his calculator furiously and sketched bell curves in a notebook. Peanut sat on the windowsill; he watched the sun disappear behind tall buildings, and pondered the inevitability of having to bring them all down.

Remnants of Old Montreal. Part IV

(www.bears.co.nz)

The unspoken credo in the Department of Management and Logistics was to replace problems of one type with smaller problems of another type. It was the evolution of sacrifice and Mr. Skirts was a high-priest. He solved the pistachio import crisis by negotiating a reduction on toaster tariffs. The cries of the toaster pundits were drowned by the cheers of a pistachio crazed public. Case closed. Mr. Skirts frightened away the bullet train purse snatchers by proposing marshal law. Case closed.

He replaced crises with discrepancies, discrepancies with diversion. Progress. Case closed, case closed, case closed. Somehow the numbers always pointed to a way out. But this time the numbers didn’t work. The remainders overwhelmed the solutions. Mr. Skirts, no matter how hard he tried, or what formula he applied, could not draw up an adequate proposal to decongest the city streets. Meanwhile the turmoil persisted. Triple and even quadruple parking was now common practice on St. Denis. The roads were rank with obstruction and misunderstanding; civil courts were inundated with citizens fighting parking tickets. The city was becoming a giant demolition derby, a war of metal and thin white lines.

Two months had passed when Mr. Skirts received another specially marked brown envelope:

Well?

Bradrick B. Delonte, Mayor of New Montreal

Peanut sat on the windowsill daydreaming. He pushed his paws down slowly on an imaginary detonator, and made deep, growling noises as if Armageddon had come.

“Would you please stop that, Peanut,” said Mr. Skirts.

“Il faut pratiquer.” The bear jumped off the windowsill and performed a neat tuck and roll toward his distressed friend.

“Alors, quoi?”

“I don’t know. It’s not working. It’s just not working.”

Peanut could sense when his companion was desperate to verbalize his trouble. He motioned the man to follow him as he scooted under the desk. Mr. Skirts crouched down and crammed his long limbs into the small crevice of fading intimacy and Star Trek sheets.

“It’s really quite a complex problem,” he began. “There are issues of over consumption, integral to the strong performance of our auto industry. There are issues of big and small. While space in the city has been shrinking, automobiles are one of the few products which are still getting bigger in this digital age. Parking space size has been standard since the 1950’s. But cars today are huge. People seem to want bigger, stronger, safer cars in which they feel a sense of metallic power and security ...”

Blah blah blah, thought Peanut. He does nothing but think of himself and his career.

“... Public transportation is efficient, but entirely lower middle-clas," continued Mr. Skirts. "Driving is a status symbol, no one able to afford it is willing to give it up. … I’m going to propose we modernize the bullet train again. … But we can’t make it too expensive or the lower middle-class won’t be able to afford getting in from the fringes. … I’m going to propose we increase the cost of parking. Perhaps that will discourage some motorists from driving into the city. … But it’s already through the roof, and people continue to pay. … Every day drivers are getting out of their cars and bashing each other with tire irons. Sometimes for as little as a parking spot, or just out of sheer boredom and frustration in a traffic jam. There’s your increase in fatalities. Not just high speed car crashes, but the product of pissed off people wanting to go faster. … It’s such a mess. Did you know that Ford is marketing a new car with protruding spikes? It’s becoming murderous! I bet you’re loving all this, aren’t you Peanut?”

Peanut sat patiently, trying to take in every word. But he couldn’t offer any logistical advice. The bear was fed up and lost in a dream of toppling towers and shattered glass, an intense vision of the cyclical nature of creation and destruction. He extended his paws and pushed down on the imaginary detonator, then tumbled back in exaggerated slow-motion while growling out sounds of screaming mothers and crumbling rock.

Remnants of Old Montreal. Part V

(www.bears.co.nz)

Mr. Skirts stepped outside and noticed the same vagrant, holding the same sign, sitting on the stoop. He looked up, and this time didn’t see the clouds, didn’t feel overwhelmed by the unknown quality of the moving sky. This time Mr. Skirts saw his answer. He rushed back into the office building and began researching a train of thought that he knew would culminate in the solution of his task.

That same day Mr. Skirts lost his teddy-bear, his only friend. Men with square chins and dark suits entered the office at 7:04 p.m. Peanut was in his favourite place, on the windowsill, contemplating sunsets and tall buildings. The leader of the men put a gun to his fluffy little head while another cuffed his paws. He was led away as the sun disappeared behind thick grey walls. Mr. Skirts entered the office as the men were pushing Peanut through the door.

“You’ve been harbouring a terrorist suspect, Mr. Skirts. Were you aware of this?”

“He’s just a cuddly teddy-bear.”

“We’ve been monitoring Peanut for some time now, Mr. Skirts. You too in fact. Your little friend had some big explosions on his mind. He’d made some unsavoury contacts in the last few months. Some of them were French.”

“I was unaware.”

Peanut felt somehow betrayed, by Mr. Skirts and his vision of the world, by the night, by the last ten years. He cursed his paws for being so soft and clumsy, impossible to wire explosives with. If only he could have shown them his art, he thought.

Peanut refused to go quietly. He struggled, kicked, cursed.

“Sick little fucko, here’s a taste of what’s to come.” The man in charge struck Peanut with the butt of his gun. Before leaving, the last of the agents turned harsh eyes on Mr. Skirts. “Don’t leave town, boyo. We may have some questions.”

They continued kicking and smacking Peanut on their way to the elevator. The walls echoed malice all the way down the hall.

“Mais-la! Non! Arrete-toi! ...”

A teddy-bear sounds human if it's in enough pain, thought Mr. Skirts.

Mr. Skirts sat back down at his desk. He began to type his letter of proposal to the mayor, hoping that logical answers would somehow remove the taste of torture and lost friendship. It’s his own damn fault, he reasoned. He sat at his desk the remainder of the night. There was a half moon and two stars in the sky. One was faint and imperfect.

Remnants of Old Montreal. Part VI

A year had passed. The vagrant no longer sat on the stoop of the office-building. But his cardboard sign remained. Mr. Skirts stepped outside and allowed the arrow to direct his gaze upward. The clouds were hidden behind row upon row of hovering cars, whizzing at high speed, as far as the eye could see.

In his proposal Mr. Skirts had suggested the necessity of developing personalized air-transport technology. The city invested heavily in incentives for the auto companies to make it happen. Car owners were required to buy jet-stream engine upgrades. Skyscrapers were fitted with giant parking docks. The heavens had been sold off in chunks and opened for air travel. Street congestion was simply a problem of space, Mr. Skirts had realized, and the open sky offered room to spare.

There had been no word on Peanut; as far as anyone was concerned he did not exist. Mr. Skirts wondered whether the bear could have helped with his new project: the problem of air collisions. The creation of a high-speed, high-density air transit system meant the creation of hourly car-car and car-building crashes in the sky. It rained dented fenders and shattered glass in New Montreal. The modern sky moved in streams of metal. Mr. Skirts saw no clear solution to the problem.

That night Peanut emerged from forgotten gutters. He ordered five shots of espresso laced with Grappa at a nearby café and savoured them slowly. He scribbled something onto the check and handed it back to the waiter.

Tu connais le panda?

Peanut shot the puzzled waiter twice in the face, dropped the gun, and ran out without paying.

Champions of Recess

(Jakob's mumbled prayer is a poem by Jan Twardowski)


A circle formed around the two boys. Chamlong and Tim threw themselves into one another. Their limbs, like vines, entangled viciously and the circle grew smaller, intimate. They detached, spit each other out, and it became wider; inhaling, exhaling, arena breathing with every punch and kick.

“Faggot bitch!”
“I’m gonna snap your neck and cum in your eye!”
“Fuck you!”
“Yellow immigrant piece of shit!”
“Trailer trash!”

Jakob mumbled a prayer under his breath.


Aniele Boże Stróżu mój
ty właśnie nie stój przy mnie
jak malowana Ma
ale ruszaj w te pęd

Eliot was trying to look on the bright side of things. At least they’re fighting on grass, he thought. Faces red, not bloodied, noses hurt, not broken. Bell will ring soon. Teacher will come, he muttered to himself, teacher will come, teacher will come.

“Stop it!” Jamila tried to intervene. “Stop it!”
An angry snarl echoed through the crowd.
“Shut up and let them fight you dirty Arab!” yelled Francis.
“Yeah! Who the fuck do you think you are?” demanded Peter. “Cunt!”

She feared them when they were this aggressive. Their voices suddenly so much deeper. Boys that were twelve and thirteen acting like a pack of rabid dogs. She lost her resolve and remained quiet, sat lonely on the grass.

Jakob mumbled.

Aniele Boże
ładne rzeczy gdybyśmy stanęli
Jak dwa świstaki
i zapomnieli
że trzeba stąd odejść


Eliot shuddered at the scrapes, the swearing, the dirt and violence kicked up into the tranquil summer air.

“Fuck him up Cham! Fuck him up!” Chauncey encouraged.

“Stupid boys!” Catherine yelled as she knelt down beside Jamila.
“Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!”

They were out of breath but there was still energy in the crowd, still hatred to be settled. Chamlong kept his focus on Tim, Tim that little shit-pile, Tim that cocky little cock, Tim that little cheat!

Jakob mumbled.

Aniele Boże
kto z nas obejmie go za szyję
słuchaj - powie - zmieniły się czasy
teraz ja de przed światem ukryję

“Give up, little Timmy? Fuckin pussy slut like your mom.”

A jolt of electricity shot through the crowd. Pussy like your mom, they smirked and muttered. The boys knew every swear word on T.V., obscenities diffused into their collective conscious like rain seeping into fertile soil. And yet nothing compared to a simple sexual jab at another boy's mother. An all-time classic of pre-pubecent rage.

“Fuck him up Tim! Fuck him up!”

Tim licked the tiny trickle of blood on his lip, tasting, obsessively, savouring, obsessively, still craving more.

They jumped into one another recklessly. Chamlong was hit in the face, again, again, crowd moaning, Tim swinging his fists. Chamlong stumbled back, fell, eyes focused, irate. He threw himself forward, as though falling and attacking with a single motion, low to the ground, little legs kicking, sweeping, grappling their opponent down. The rush of adrenaline as the end drew near. Strategy was abandoned, defence was abandoned, everything in pursuit of a final hit, hit, hit, each pummelling the other. Tim lunged for Chamlong’s throat, squeezing tighter with every violent kick and punch, punch, punch, punch, smother his breath! strangle harder! kill his face! swing faster! The circle in ecstasy.

"Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!"

Mr. Mahoney noticed the tornado of boys move erratically through the field. He hurried over from the other side of the school-yard and stood like a scarecrow above frantic little crows in the midday sun.

“Alright, that’s enough, that’ll do!" he screamed. “I said that’s enough!”

Mr. Mahoney jumped between them and untangled their furious limbs.
“It’s over! Stop swinging or I’ll swing back you little shit-face.”

Ms. Phillips rushed out from her classroom and took hold of Chamlong, screamed at him to sit down on the grass Cham sit down on the grass Cham sit down on the grass Cham sit down.

Aniele Boże
z świętością mają kłopot
bo chyba przeze mnie
mój Stróż Anioł ma stałe
jedno pióro ciemne.

Jakob mumbled.

Mr. Mahoney led Tim toward the opposite end of the field. Tim retreated, away from the heat and energy, breathing, becoming calmer, calm, wind, stop, stretching out his arms and falling into the soft, cool grass.
“That’s the third time this month I find you in the middle of it.”

Tim smiled, panting.

“You’re happy with your little effort then?” Mr. Mahoney asked.
“Didn’t break nothin.”
“I’m not convinced you have anything to be proud of, young man.”

Tim liked Mr. Mahoney; he was new, not old, straightforward, still remembered how to talk to boys.

“Close call, sir, I give it 9-7 me, had him with the choke, don’t ya think? Have to wait and see what the fellas say tomorrow. Good fight though, good fight.”
“You’re mother won’t think so. I think she’s getting fed up of coming to see me.
We need to get you to walk away sometimes Tim, you’ve got to walk away.”
“Nowhere to walk, sir, nowhere else to go. Mom can’t do nothing cause pop’ll understand. He’ll be happy nothin broke, no doctor’s bill if nothing’s broke.”
“Ok, Tim Humphreys, up you come.”

He reached out his arm and swung the child up from the grass. Light as a feather, he thought.

“Let’s get you to the bathroom,” said Mr. Mahoney. “Clean you up for our date with the principal. And I guarantee he won’t be happy.”

Across the field, Cham continued stalking, eyes focused, black, bruised body pacing back and forth, ignoring Ms. Phillips’s desperate cries. He spat at her feet as she moved fiercely between him and his prey. She slapped, screamed louder. "Sit down, Cham! Sit down!"

Aniele Boże
kiedy zasypiam nachyl się nade mną
odmuchaj z księżyca
zasłaniaj rękami przed złem.

Jakob mumbled.

“What the fuck are you mumbling about Polski? Praying for fucking sausages?” Peter demanded. “Fucking faggot.”

The others laughed.

Catherine comforted Jamila who began to sob. Her hands shaking like frightened flickers of candle-light before an open window.

“Sit down boys!” Ms. Phillips turned and screamed back toward the mob, “Sit down!”

The dispersing circle of boys hollered as Mr. Mahoney and Ms. Phillips escorted the champions of recess into the building.

Ms. Phillips was beet red and furious.

“It's alright Vivian, it's over now,” said Mr. Mahoney casually. “Just boys learning to dance.”

“Boys indeed, David! Not at this school,” said Ms. Phillips. “I’ll make sure these two get expelled for this. Next thing you know, David, they’ll be carrying knives and guns. I won’t stand for violence here, not in this day and age. I won’t allow it. Not here.”

"Oh, come on Vivian," said Mr. Mahoney. "They're not bad kids. Just boys. Look at them, hardly a scratch after all that. At their age it's like rubber balls bouncing off one another." He stopped at the door. "Come on lads, show Ms. Phillips how quickly it's all forgotten."

Tim and Chamlong gripped hands, too exhausted for hatred or memory, and suddenly aware of after-school consequences.

Catherine cupped Jamila's hands in her own.

Eliot watched them enter the building, waited anxiously for the bell to ring.

"Aniele Boże, wybacz nam to co Bók nie moze." Jakob added this, his own line to the string of mumbled words, and then opened his blade and slit Peter’s fat fucking throat.

Casualties of Forgiveness. Part I

(Joan Miro, "Une Etoile caresse le Seine d'une Negresse" - 1938)

My story is written in the margins of the Spanish countryside. A foreign typewriter echoes in the room of the man I’m chasing. The machine doesn’t know the movements of my language. It hesitates as I strike. My fingers falter.

Casualties of Forgiveness. Part II

Always the other, I thought as we broke into Rafter’s black box of a studio. On the fire-escape, fifth floor, shabby part of town. Moonlight our only witness. His wife looked beautiful in it. Desert skin pressed against forbidden corners of the night. Rafter Sousa never allowed either of us near this hole. His artistic refuge, his muse asylum, his place to be important.

“Screwdriver,” I said.
“You’re good at this,” Maria whispered. “Break into apartments often?”
“Once a week into my own,” I admitted. “Always forget the key.”

Rundown, inimitable buildings all around. Metallic power-lines engraved onto a dark sky. The noise of young boys laughing, nothing to do with us, kicked cans, subway in the distance. Calm, beautiful night in a strange part of town.

Maria Sousa looked exhilarated, youthful, innocent for a moment. I held her by the belt-noose in her jeans. Brushed the ink black hair from her eyes. Our mouths met with the frenzy of amateur criminals. Her lips cold in the summer night. I took her again, my hands on fire against the winters of her waist. I couldn’t tell which of us flinched first. Her, because she was kissing me outside her husband’s studio. Or me, because I thought for an instant I saw him inside, waiting.

“This is wrong,” Maria said. “Right now it’s very wrong.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s what we have.”

Penny on a golf-course. Standing in for the one who’d gone away. Had I become a place holder for Rafter Sousa? She’d kiss him and smile. She’d kiss me and try not to fall apart.

“I’d forgotten why we came,” I acknowledged. “For a second I thought it was just you, me and the weather.”
“We should get inside before someone notices.”

I got back to turning screws. Same repeating motions. Tried to ignore the memories of her skin. Couldn’t get ways to touch her out of my head. Reasons that stood in the way.
Rafter Sousa was eccentric in subtle ways. He was an artist after things he couldn’t name. A miner of half-lit theories cut from the night. His faults seductive, themselves almost art.
Maria was an editor; clever, audacious, always on the verge of tears or beauty. Would speak among strangers, give you a nickname and yell it to the world. Soft Moroccan skin with L.A. education. Polish eyes deep like a wolf’s.

I filled the spaces between. Somewhere between her legs and his artistic expressions.
It was inevitable, I suppose. Forever a step behind Rafter Sousa. I laughed at the same jokes the following day. If he’d found ways to love her it was only a matter of time before I would.
I could’ve been happy, under different circumstances. Penny in love, fucking some poor bastard’s wife. But I respected Rafter too much, the way boys admire pirates and divorced men. A sense of rebellion tinged with indifference that seemed always distant, impractical. He smoked cigarettes while I died of cancer.

The final screw slipped from her fingers and dropped loudly through the cracks. Sudden screech of a window from above, like fingernails across the moon. A shadow peered down at us.

“That you, Sousa?”
I froze. Maria nudged my side, solicited me to be him.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I imitated nervously. “Forgot my key.”
“At least it’s a nice night,” the shadow said.
“At least.”
“Night, Sousa. Try not to wake the whole fucking neighbourhood.”
“Right, sure. Goodnight, Jim.”

I unhinged the window and we snuck inside. Together immediately looked back through the broken frame. We’d infiltrated Rafter’s most private space. Inside, dark and abandoned.

“Jim?” she said. “How’d you know his name was Jim?”
“I panicked,” I said.
“So you just made up a name!?”
“I panicked! Besides, a wife breaking into her husband’s place,” I reasoned. “How much trouble can we get in?”
“I’d rather not find out,” she said.

We still hadn’t called the police. It’d been three weeks, no word, no trace. Rafter disappeared frequently for days at a time. He’d wander back from some random town or mountain – unkempt, re-inspired, eager to draw, drink and make love.

“Artists have to vanish from the world to cherish it,” he once said.

But this felt different, ominous. It was the first time he’d disappeared since the beginning of my affair with Maria. I wasn’t sure what he knew. That I’d followed him down the long lines of her skin. That a letter spoke of Northern Africa and a Warsaw hospital bed.
Strange forms of disclosure haunted my dreams. I imagined Rafter confronting me in alleyways. I imagined Maria whispering, “it’s over.” Guilt and desire were a slip of the tongue for weeks. Maria and I spent anxious nights together, entangled. Our love-making had been reckless and imperfect. Addicted to the taste of weakness and remorse on each other’s lips.

We’d made love in his house, but tonight, in his studio, she was pushing me away.

“I should hate this place,” Maria said. “But it’s him. It’s cluttered and beautiful like him.”
Beautiful, in a heartbreaking way. Intense, self-indulgent, self-destructive. Altogether too dark, too desperate. Abstract obsessions in art. Flesh too close to candle-light. The drip and slow drying patterns of red wax. Beautiful maybe, but not essential. Not like her.

“It’s not worth what it cost,” I said.

Her eyes had a way of turning, quick and deep like a knife. She glanced sharply through built-up layers of the past. I could never tell if she meant reproach or invitation.

Rafter Sousa was never very good. He was brilliant, but never very good. He garnered an audience. His strange comics sold well enough to do it for a living. That should’ve been enough for someone who could barely draw. He wasn’t good enough to support a home and a separate studio. Maria was furious that he just went ahead and signed the lease. Unpaid bills and missed vacations.

“Art comes from brooding,” I remember him telling her in front of me. “I can’t brood properly with you around. I need a place to myself, something empty, no distractions.”
“You need a new argument,” Maria said. “You keep playing the same cards, and I keep waiting for you to grow up. We have bills, love. We have a marriage, I think. You can’t keep ignoring these things and blaming it on art.”

Yet she always put up with it. She put up with wandering nights and neurotic behaviour. She put up with a studio they couldn’t afford and that she couldn’t touch because Rafter was convinced that he needed a dark, secluded place to accomplish his ideas. The artist in him would’ve withered without it, and in the end it was the artist she loved. She fought, scathingly, convincingly, knowing full well it was only to concede. I both relished and resented that they felt able to bicker openly in front of me. Manifestations of their difference broke like sudden thunder and I’d find myself caught in the fascinations of a storm. They were a couple that infuriated each other to the point of nudity and forgiveness. I’d stand there, awkward and intrusive, silently sipping Earl Gray while pondering things I’d say in his place.

Eventually Maria became his duty and the tiny studio became his home. At first she was convinced he was cheating on her, using the studio as some excuse and cheap motel. But after enough weeks it didn’t matter. She’d lost him to something else, maybe another woman, probably just art. That’s when I kissed her. The day she realized she’d become someone’s obligation. It was a cloudy Sunday with chance of showers. The Knicks had lost again. And with tears streaming down her cheeks I kissed Maria Sousa, and I remember it was perfect.

We glanced around the single room. Bookshelves, pencil-shavings, empty power-bar wrappers. A mini-fridge with Chinese take-out and bottles of wine. The apartment reeked of him. Soy-sauce and marijuana in the air. Hints of masochism on the sheets. Sharp knives and an odd number of chopsticks in the drawer. There was a faint sense of hope in the scattering of things. A well lit table in the corner. The only bulb in the room. Everything else was darkness. Even the fridge remained black when you opened it.

On the glowing table was a manuscript for Rafter’s new graphic novel. Over three hundred pages of intricately crafted panels. Neither of us had seen it yet. His great project, his fixation of the last few months.

“His fucking mistress,” Maria said.

It looked clean, finished. Except no words. No scribbled dialogue, no titles, nothing that remotely resembled language.

The graphic novels were Rafter’s creations – his ideas, his pictures, his story. In early drafts he’d include basic dialogue, just so I knew what he was after. But for the most part he left writing to me. Maria edited. It was always our names in small print below his.

You could see it in Rafter’s eyes and in the trembling of his lips. Wild but vague. Leaning there on the precipice of his unformed thoughts, that one perfect thing. I imagined a forgotten word on the tip of Rafter’s tongue. For weeks he didn’t dare kiss her for fear of swallowing and pushing it further away.

But I knew it wasn’t a word. He was after something else. Remnants of our sunken ship.

“I’ll get it out,” he kept repeating, “I’ll tell it to jump, I’ll shove the fucker if I have to.”
I was drawn by his obsession, desperate to play a part. But Rafter had created his masterpeice without us. I began to flip through the burnt sienna pages:

Film-noire atmosphere.

Confrontation of styles and figures in alleyways; conversations without words.

Cryptic self-portraits.

Moments of oil-based abstraction.

Furious bodies raging against claustrophobic quarters.

Human limbs trapped in paranoid pencil strokes.

The art was better than anything he’d ever done.

Maria and I sat down together at the table. Stared silently at page 88, centrepiece in this museum of misplaced shadows. I poured two glasses of wine.

“To the webs we weave,” I suggested.

She responded with a look of reproach or invitation. Tonight she’ll bite her lip in the room he denied us. Our glasses touched timidly. Exaggerated faltering in everything we did. The wine was strong. Warm, like the night.

Casualties of Forgiveness. Part III

It started months ago when she sat beside him on a plane. There was a drizzle outside, a light summer rain that should’ve passed quickly. The Italian girl was shivering. Drops of water cascaded down the window panel. Rafter kept telling himself it’d be a short affair. But moments accumulated, became whole, twined into narrative.

When would he have to tell Maria? Immediately, after a month, after the first kiss, sex, love? It hardly seemed real since so few words passed between them. Those that were moved in strange accents. The girl barely spoke English, and inhibition often pursed her lips. Rafter struggled to remember Italian from his childhood, like blowing dust off an old cover. They compensated by speaking little. Theirs was a world shared in silence, a world without history.

Three weeks of broken Italian. The few words spoken were slow, delicate. He felt fragile, like glass in her hands.

“E la luna?” he asked, returning to an old conversation.
“It mocks us,” she said slowly in Italian. “But it never stops being beautiful, so I forgive it.”

They drove only after midnight to escape traffic. Together they sat often on the banks of an idle lake, forty minutes out of the city. New York sounded like an ocean at their backs.

. . .

Rafter ate dinner with Maria and then left her alone, tenderness creeping from the concealed chambers of his new life. Together they’d built and trampled a kingdom of castles in the sand. Lingering in ruins.

“Work at home tonight,” Maria offered. “Paint beside me while I drift to sleep.”

He kissed her with a number two pencil in his hand.

“I need my pastels,” he said.

Weeks passed and there was little need to say anything. After dinner he’d just get up and leave, ritual of abandonment, routine like washing the dishes.

“The great artist,” she mocked. “Fingering your book again?”

Rafter would seldom respond immediately, if at all. He was a deer in her headlights. He thought stillness and an absurdly blank expression were his best defense. But bitterness and frustration continued towards him; irony showed its teeth.

“Off to brood and create, love? Am I making you too happy again tonight, darling? Is our perfect happiness disturbing your drawings?”

Maria hurled her tea cup across the room. The shattered pieces scattered unevenly across the floor.

“Say something!”

She hid her face behind thin white elbows. Tears mixed with the scent of Chamomile.

“Fuck you, Rafter, fuck you! At least say something. I deserve that much.”

Her voice suddenly frail. For a moment she allowed herself to become weak, lovable.

“I need a few subway sketches,” he said. “You have to get up early. I’ll be home by the time you finish work tomorrow.”
“One question, Rafter. Why do you bother coming back?”

He was fascintated by endings. Last chapters and final pencil strokes, drawn to the sight of highway crashes and candles when they flicker out.

“Because I still love you,” he said.

Rafter and Maria had tested language, found it elastic, durable. But ultimately mortal. Like a wounded animal backed into a corner. In the confines of a language struggling or striking out with its final breath, Rafter imagined only two options: to spend a lifetime recycling the same phrases, the same inadequacies; or, to try and walk away. With Maria there was knowledge of too many dead or scathing words. Even the slightest glance or turn intimated a storm of meanings. Desire. Betrayal. Remorse. Forgiveness. A stockpile of cliches and ammunitions between them. They were armies, battered and bruised, still in love, retreating as best they could.

“Goodnight,” she said indifferently and walked out the door before him. Any other gesture would’ve betrayed too much. Her steps determined, though she was never sure where they were heading. Perhaps only a symbol, to the corner and back, or perhaps to visit a friend, to sit in a cafe. Maybe to find me.

. . .

It took Rafter a few minutes to adjust, like waking in a darkened place.
She spoke so little. Her laughter flickered in and out. The spontaneity of New York sounds filled their ears. Comments on the weather.

He walked Isabella to the bus-stop. Held hands like schoolkids or aged lovers. Uncanny mix of craving and comfort. Had said nothing most of the night. Together, unravelled the complex melody of sirens and falling leaves. The words that escaped were rare, precious. Drops of language like water in the desert.

“Thanks for waiting in the rain.”
“It’s nothing.”
“I appreciate it. Here’s the bus.”
“Goodnight then.”
“Stay with me tonight.”

Rafter and Isabella returned to his studio. Symphony of storms at the window. First time alone in darkness. Anxious embrace against the black of night. Sighs of overdue contentment drifted like sands across her skin. Her lips skipped across his neck like a stone on water. Ripples of warmth and desire. He picked her up and laid her on the bed.
She couldn’t help but notice drops of red.

“Most of it’s only spilled wine,” he said.

Rafter had taught himself the art of displacement. His pursuits tended toward extremes, and when art or beauty or pain became dangerous and overwhelming he sprang defensively to other themes, other ways of marking. She never mentioned it again. Her eyes searched in vain for new cuts. She imagined the lines that remained belonged to another man.

“I wish we’d met earlier,” he said.
“We have lots of time.”

Scarred fingertips ran down her spine, lingered along the waist of her summer skirt. Skin sensitive, moist, as yet untouched. Slow seconds of the night coursed through their fingers.
Their limbs began to move in ritual patterns, but frantic rhythms pursued Rafter from other corners of the night. Stir of strange darting echoes left unadressed on the wall. Her body understood and demanded all of him, inspired a pace and movement that felt excruciating and necessary. Pulse of a drowning animal gasping for final breath. Her pleasure and his agony became the same repeating motion. Sound of clicking bone like a quickening metronome. His finger was locked, forced violently out of its socket. Surrender. He anticipated the exact moment it dislocated inside her. She was far away, a place he was chasing. He imagined his movements machine-like, unbearable and relentless. He dug long sharp nails into his thigh, desperate to eclipse the throbbing sting. She took that hand away and held it in her own. When it was finished she used fingertips to spread delirium to her abdomen, across the room.

“Dovreste arrestarsi! I had no idea. You should’ve stopped.”

“It’s nothing,” he said. It was his favourite phrase, the only one he’d perfected with an Italian accent.
“It was wonderful, but you should’ve stopped.”

She retrieved a chopstick from the drawer, helped him to fasten a temporary splint.

“You should’ve stopped,” she said in beautiful broken English.
“Please don’t cry, Isabella. It was broken before,” he joked. “It’s nothing, really. Small sacrifice to heal this room.”

Having immediately to confront the imperfection of words, Rafter and Isabella moved beyond together. Touch and gesture, a world listened to, whispering them into old ways of being. Rafter stopped speaking English entirely. Language of a betrayed past. Language of pain. He avoided its pursuit in the street. Feared the trickle of rumours finding their way to Maria.

Casualties of Forgiveness. Part IV

His letter rushed through her like a sudden flood. Washing away the debris of convoluted and misfortunate months. Now Maria focused on the necessity of going home, a place she didn’t know.

My precious Maria,

Your mother’s ill. She has loving family around her and she’s not alone. My better judgement tells me not to return after all this time. I was never one for better judgement.
I’ve booked tickets to Rabat to visit family. Then to Warsaw to see her. Please, come with me.
With all a father’s love,

Adil

Maria lingered in New York, still not fully sure which past to confront. She read and re-read her father’s letter, waited for Rafter to call or come home. Made final preparations. In the bleeding sun glimpses of a shared history that’d slipped away.

She held her father’s arm on the plane, rested her head on his shoulder. His body was still powerful. Only the lines in his face betrayed his years. Accumulation of doubt seeping through the hardness in his eyes.

“I’m sorry about your husband. He’s a jackass. And an idiot.”
Maria chuckled, felt like a child in her father’s adoration.
“It doesn’t matter right now.”
“Fucking artists. Next time you marry a man with blisters on his hands.”

How much had he sacrificed for her? How much more difficult was it to return to places you’d abandoned than ones you’d never seen? She noticed parts of him in Rafter, in every man she’d ever been drawn to. Men strong enough to leave, cruel enough to leave behind. She wanted to be like them.

“Dad,” she said.

She meant to say something. She wanted to speak to a man about the lines that bind anger and desire. She wanted to speak to a father about a child. He looked weary as they listened together to the howling wind. Surrendered American emotions to the ocean below. Anticipated the sweeping gesture of burning sands.

“Does she still resent you?” Maria asked.
“I’m not sure. Wouldn’t any woman?”
“It depends on the context,” she said. “You’ve told too many conflicting stories. I don’t know what’s true.”
“Your mother’s name was Margaret and I left her,” he said. “That part’s always been true. The rest I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

Stepped out of the airport in Rabat in the dead of day. Time of afternoon siestas to escape the feverish sun. The plane had felt fragile balancing between midnight bodies. On the ground, triumphant, it towered impossingly above them. Stood strong, almost condescending.

Taxi into town, western hotel. Her father’s French and Arabic were still perfect, never forgotten. Hers were lost like baby teeth, placed under pillows and bartered for other forms of knowledge. She knew nothing of this place. A city vaguely European, vaguely everything. Elements of all the world mixed in a crucible to form life out of clay.

Casualties of Forgiveness. Part V

“Words are singular, meanings plural!” Rafter screamed. “It’s fucking tragic!”

The publisher sank back into his chair, tired, four p.m. on a Thursday.

“Fine, Sousa, fine,” he began in a monotone voice. “But I told you, I’m not going to publish it without words. Write it yourself, get someone else to write it, let me write it, I don’t give a shit. It’s not getting published without dialogue and some titles.”
“But it’s perfect. It’s fucking perfect!”
“It makes no sense. The pictures, what they mean, how they relate. You’ve got characters standing around saying nothing. Your readers need guidance.”
“It doesn’t need words!”
“What happened to the guy who usually writes for you. Luke whatever?”
“It doesn’t need Luke whatever!”
“It missing something.”
“The world needs new ways to listen and interpret,” Rafter said. “Language never finds anything. It no longer offers meaning. It’s an empty carousel. It’s a stupid animal chasing its own tail.”

Rafter gestured maniacly, supposedly to show these things. He looked around desperately for a pen.

“And English is the worst animal of all, prostituted by too many false lovers and capitalists.”

He’d found one and was sketching exactly what he meant.
The publisher glanced at the pad, saw nothing but abstract lines.

“You’re not popular enough to publish obscure things.”
“The images are perfect. How does adding deficiency make the art better?”
“It’s always the same conversation, Sousa. ‘It’s perfect, it’s fucking perfect.’ And then you sketch some justification. You need to compromise. You need to learn how to take criticism. Do you really expect me to publish this without a coherent storyline?”

Rafter gathered himself. His mind returned to places it’d long wandered from.
The publisher watched his compulsive gestures. Leg bopping furiously. Cracked knuckles and volatile eyes. He’d worked with him before, knew the drill. Heard the latest rumours of disappearance and self-mutilation. He’d half expected a madman to walk through the door. Rafter looked surprisingly neat, hair short, aviator glasses, even a vague contentment behind the cluttered thoughts and caffeine blood. But still the same conviction. Every time the same disappointment.

Rafter resented having to sit there and defend himself in English. A language dry heaving after a century of sordid nights. A language of confinement and circular arguments. He began muttering in Italian.

“Excuse me?”
“Che cosa!”
“Let me explain how this game works. We publish what you create, people buy it, get something out of it, critics use words to describe what you’ve done, react to it, write blurbs or whatever. You talk about whatever you want on some panels – maybe that little carousel metaphor, that was witty – you get paid, and you go home.”
“That’s how it works,” Rafter mimicked.
“Then why do you walk out on interviews and forums? Why do you ignore questions and start yelling God knows what? We work hard to set things up, Sousa. And you act like a prima donna or lost boy. This isn’t the music industry, you can’t get away with this shit. Ever heard of not biting the hand that feeds you?”
“It’s a cliche.”
“So are you, Sousa. You’re naïve, pretentious and stubborn. Do you know how many people would kill to get something published? And here you are making demands. Look, I’m not insensitive to artistic ideals and all that bullshit. I appreciate your passion. But we’ve got a contract to uphold. The book is good. I don’t understand it, but it’s interesting. I think with a developed story it’ll sell. We’re not talking about cheesy one-liners and cartoon clichés. We’re talking about poetry. Your pictures beg for a story, they beg for language in spite of your ideals.”

The publisher began to flip through the manuscript.

“Here for example, page 88, I really like this. But it’s a bit plain without dialogue, you know? Words would help slow it down a little, let some of the story sink in. Have the girl say “Ever feel like you’re being watched?”, or have him call her something affectionate, like “Sweetheart,” or “Baby.”
“I want speechlessness.”
“It’s simple, Sousa. Two options. You keep it perfect and it stays perfect, but only in your own head. Or you let it grow and offer it to the world.”

Rafter shrugged.

“Write it in Italian, no translations.”

At first the publisher thought it was some juvenile joke. But weeks later he heard Rafter was in breach of his contract with D&B Publishing. He had cashed his advance but left no copy of the manuscript. He and Isabella were parading around southern Italy. Train tickets throughout Europe charged to company accounts.

Casualties of Forgiveness. Part VI

I imagined Maria in planes above my head. I searched for them like shooting stars. She couldn’t tell me how long she’d be gone.

“Let me come with you,” I pleaded.
“I’m going with my father. I’m meeting my mother. This isn’t the time for us.” “Let me come with you.”
“It’s all too strange. He’s been watching us! And rather than confront it he’s drawn a book and disappeared! I need to get away from this. You, I’m seeing too much of him in you, of you in him, of me in the middle. I need to clear my head.”
“I want to be with you, Maria, please! Let me follow you to Morocco, to Poland, wherever you’re going.”

I knew I was clinging too tight, but I didn’t care. Nagging feeling that I was becoming passionate, assertive, like him.

“You’re just as obsessed,” she said. “I’ve seen you get up at night. I’ve heard pencil scratchings through the wall. A woman learns quick. Art makes a great lover and shitty husband. Art burns pasta and forgets the dishes. Forgets you’re even there.”
“I’m in love with you. It has nothing to do with Rafter. Forget him!”

I never tried to be like Rafter Sousa. At worst I simply came to similar conclusions a moment too late. There was a deep refuge between us, something essential that was the same. If I’d never met him we would’ve been the same man. Instead I come off as a thief, a pathetic other. Sneaking toward his shores. Slipping my emptiness into his sacred waters.

Rafter was a bookish figure in my college dorm. I saw him with entire sections in his hands. We shared classes. We were introduced by the coffee machine and spent endless nights weaving our way through literary theory. He turned toward a newer medium; I lingered in the ruins of an old one. The problems were the same. The search for morality in a web of infinite and arbitary signs. Together we confronted the slow death of langauge. Dug our way toward meanings that slipped unnoticed. Shared double expressos and cigarette burns.

We were allies, idealistic. Our friendship began in some abstract pursuit. But the closer we got to the thing we were chasing the more he pulled away. Always a step ahead. I accused him of going too far, of unclarity, of nonsense at every turn. And then one morning I’d wake up, coffee and cigarette and realize suddenly that I agreed. It happened enough times that I began to resent him, began to challenge him for the sake of finding myself. Wake up every morning with a newly formed thought that someone already had before you. Echo of a more interesting man. After college we stayed close while drifting apart. He fought publishing rights and I fought obscurity. At some point he realized he didn’t need me for what he was after; and through my bitterness and awe I realized the chance to write his comics was nothing but a favour for an old friend.
That’s when Maria entered our lives and became the space between us. She became his muse and editor. Soon after she became his wife and my lover.

“Take care, Luke. Goodbye,” she said. And with a final boarding call she was gone.
My name sounded foreign on her lips. She spoke it so seldom. Luke Jonathan Drake. Two thirds biblical. Not very memorable, not unique. Not like Rafter Sousa.
Bored, lost, I invented ways to pass the time.

There were black flies in my apartment. I named them all Rafter. Rafter. Rafter. Rafter. I followed their buzzing around the room. “It’s not even a fucking name,” I told them. “It’s a support beam. A dead piece of metal used to hold up buildings.”

My sense of otherness was spreading. I weighed every consequence of choice against him. What would Rafter Sousa think of this table? How would Rafter Sousa spend the afternoon? I felt as though he’d stolen an identity from me, a sense of self I had to reclaim.

That night I received a call from his publisher. Rafter was in Italy; D&B wanted him back, wanted his book. They offered me a ticket and a rented car in Italy. They offered me a chance. I couldn’t walk away from the web I was in, no matter how pointless or hurtful. There were still unformed reasons to confront him. I agreed to pursue Rafter Sousa, compell him to publish his graphic novel with a story I’d write. I remembered almost page for page what I’d seen that night with Maria. The publisher was right: the pictures were perfect but the art was incomplete. It begged for words, not just titles and dialogue, but an entire story, a new language.

I snuck back into his studio alone that night. The book was still there. I became convinced that he wanted me to find it. I lingered and drank warm wine. I sat down in his place and began to write a story to the images before me. Certain panels burned into my skull. A family keeping warm by the light of a book on fire. A goddess weeping over the globe she’d assembled. Men in uniform murdering for high ground on a sinking ship. Final panel on 88, the only numbered page, my cameo. Maria naked on top of me, my arms the way I hold her. A black cat and the full moon watching it all at the window. Their own affair.

Casualties of Forgiveness. Part VII

Isabella wandered foreign streets, curious and cautious, like a cat changing with the colours of night. Life in Rome taught her that language didn’t matter, didn’t automatically ensure trust. She learned quickly how to be a stranger. An observer with the discretion of a thief, mindful never to disturb the waters she was in.

She had saved money serving drinks on a train-station platform. A handful of regulars. Occasional foreigners from the train. Never more than four got on or off. A tiny Italian town on the way to other places. She’d seen the same trains pass a thousand times, had no idea the colour of the seats.

...

Recognition drew her immediately to the stranger on the plane. Necessity of human contact against the terrors of new technology. Asked shyly whether rain was dangerous.

“È la pioggia pericolosa?”
“No, not a drizzle like this,” he said. “We’re safe.”
“ . . . ”
“Do we know each other?” he asked.
“I served you a drink in Sorno,” she reminded him. “Waitress from the platform.”
She held out her hand.
“The food was excellent,” he lied.
“I didn’t make it,” she said.

First of many silences. Neither could yet decide whether they were awkward. Neither really had time. He was busy remembering Italian; she was busy remembering how to speak.

“What were you doing in my town?” she asked, more to drown the sounds of spinning blades than out of curiosity.
“My father was born there,” he said.
“Who was your father?”
“His name was Marco Sousa.”
“Never heard of him,” she said.

They both trembled slightly as complex machines and foreign expressions found their way. Italian rolled cautiously from his tongue. The plane shook suddenly like a train off its rails.

“Why are you flying to New York?” he asked.
“Impulse. Nothing but impulse. I must be crazy. I have an uncle who knows I’m coming. It’s a start.”

Isabella sat with her head leaning against the window. She did her best to focus on the silver clouds. But the ceaseless crash of waves stole her attention, pulled her into their violence.

“You’re still shaking,” he said.
“I’m still frightened. You’re not?”
“Always a little,” he admitted.
“How do you think we would die if we fell?” she asked.

What a wonderful and horrible question to ask on a plane, he thought. “Impact?” he offered. “I’m not sure. Why, what would you think?”
“Hypothermia,” she said. “Or drowning.”

She intrigued him; he chased every syllable-drop she offered.

“Sto leggendo sulla storia dell’aeroplano. Le leggende degli esploratori e dei capitani di mare,” she said.

The Italian words fired too quick and for the first time he didn’t understand. Each felt a little ashamed, responsible. She slowed down, directed the fullness of her lips toward him.

“The plane,” she said. “I’ve been reading about the history of the plane. Of the ship. Of old explorers. Trying to prepare. It got me thinking how the world was a better place when men still thought the earth was flat.”

Having to speak with such intention made Isabella conscious of her lips for the first time. Of her tongue. Of the sensual movement of our mouths. Self-awareness that shot through her entire body, caught her off guard. Every cell devoted to the exchange of complex simple thoughts with this stranger on a plane.

“How was the world better?” he asked.
“Less trapped,” she said.

She wrapped her arms in a gesture of confinement.

“Men cherish the world if they think they can fall off,” she said.

Two fingers walking off the edge of her palm.

“A world that circles around itself makes men go mad or indifferent.”

Gentle finger tapping his forehead.

“Explorers without the hope of finding anything,” she continued. “I think that’s why so many of you jump from tall buildings,” she said.

Fingers falling from a skyrise.

“It’s your way of protesting a world that’s round.”

Her hands cupped in the shape of a full moon.

“And women?” he asked. “Do you protest?”
“Sure,” she said. “But it’s different with us. We’ve always known the world was round. That’s why we tend to jump from bridges or cliffs into water.”

Her fingers falling into waves.

“It’s nothing modern with us,” she shook her head. “Nothing new.”
“How did women find out before us?” he asked.
“We’ve just known forever,” she told him. “The day Copernicus announced his big discovery all the handmaidens shrugged their shoulders, pointed at the moon.”

She shrugged and pointed out the window. The moon was hidden, but she knew exactly behind which cloud.

“We understand the cyclical nature of things better than you,” she concluded.

She smiled shyly, arrogantly. She was only half-sure it was called seduction.

“Anything else women aren’t telling us?” he asked.
“Many things,” she laughed.

For months it’d be the longest converstation they shared. They’d return to it, like a puzzle with peices left to fill.

Their bodies brushed against one another on the plane. He was drawn by her stillness and her lips. The way she was careful with every gesture, as though the slightest movement might disturb the machine or confuse her meaning, cast them into waves. She was drawn by the fervor in his eyes. Childlike depth and weary confrontation. Together they acknowledged intricacy could still be simple in its beauty. They shared their surroundings with attention to shades of light and dark. Attention to melody. How the shadow of a wing follows on a cloud. How sound moves through meaning. A mysterious stranger who speaks like a foreign child, she thought. His voice and his presence obscured the clamor of metallic speed. Rafter Sousa became an integral part of a story she was telling herself.

Casualties of Forgiveness. Part VIII

Maria and Adil followed dusty yellow corridors to a small house. There, her father reunited with an old cousin, shared tea, overdue thanks for a fake passport. She noticed there was little intimacy left between her father and his family. The cousin was one of few people who’d still welcome Adil into his home. The price of new beginnings.

“Here, take them” he handed her a stack of pictures and a pocket flashlight. “I left these things here before bringing you to Los Angeles. I know I’ve waited too long to speak to you, but I wanted to be sure you were old enough to understand, to forgive me. Your mother deserves to see you before she dies, but that’s all she deserves. I’ve learned to resent everything about Europe.”

Maria turned a worn photograph in her hand:

Her father, the year he became a man. Young, proud, his own family cupped like water in his hands. She, an infant in her mother’s arms.

“Dad,” Maria said. “I don’t understand why we’re doing this. I don’t understand much right now. I’m lost. I’m pregnant and I’m lost.” Tears spilled into her father’s chest.
“I know, sweetheart, I know.” He stroked her hair the way he’d done for years. “A child isn’t a reason to linger in old worries,” he said. “The miracle of a child is that it needs us. It’s a reason to find a strength we didn’t know was there.”

Adil held his daughter as she moved to the next photograph:

Her mother’s family standing proud behind them, glasses raised. Her father making a toast, a Moroccan among them.

“She’s pretty,” Maria said through a running nose.

He watched the folds of past and future turn in her fingers.

“Moroccan men aren’t supposed to marry Polish girls. Especially pretty ones.”

. . .

That night Maria sat staring at an empty street beyond her window. A three piece band in the hotel bar sang of God and one night stands. She lit candles that refused to burn calmly. Her father’s story had overwhelmed her. The brutality of an uncensored past. Her part in a history of violence. She’d become terrified of tomorrow’s flight. Of mortality and awkwardness. She was beginning to learn that we are creatures of forgiveness, often slower to forgive ourselves.

Casualties of Forgiveness. Part IX

They boarded a train toward lost southern fields and cottages. They were moving between worlds and I was following, gathering the discarded pieces of myself.

My story is written in the margins of the Spanish countryside. A foreign typewriter echoes in the room of the man I’m chasing. The machine doesn’t know the movements of my language. It hesitates as I strike. My fingers falter.

You and Isabella are staying in this Spanish room. You’ve been here a few weeks, a month at most. You speak seldom, offer no stranger your names. You’re caught in a young girl’s quickly moving dream. I’ve been a step behind through Italy, through France, through Spain, infiltrating the silence of your spaces whenever you’re not there. I often wonder if you still think of Maria and I? Of our nakedness. I’ve been watching you with Isabella, the way you watched me, biting down hard on my tongue, piercing flesh, at once saving words and sharpening them for our conversation in the night.

The landlady expects you back in two days, plenty of time to finish, I think. I’ll leave the typewriter behind this time. Along with these pages to your novel. Think of them as early Christmas presents. The slow resilient death of language, neatly wrapped in a big red bow. Resilient and deserving of our forgiveness, the qualities you deny.

I’ll reveal myself eventually, in a bar or cheap motel. I’m waiting for Isabella to leave you. That’s when you’ll better understand. Maybe when you’re drunk I’ll seem like an apparition at your side. “Did you really expect the novelty of silence and strange accents to last forever?” your apparition will ask. She’s too young; winter will find her and she’ll beg for a blanket of words to keep her warm. I’ll sit down on the stool beside you, buy you a drink for the pain I’ve caused. You should do the same. You’ll accuse me of obsession. The last to let go of intimacies forged in fever. I’ll explain the necessity of confronting the man who abandons all that I hope to hold.

I spoke to Maria from a payphone at the French border. She told me you’d sent her a copy of your manuscript. I sent her an early draft of the words that go with it. She wonders whether we’re trying to wound or ask forgiveness? I’ll leave that question to you. Maria has a story of her own, one she wants me to pass on.

“At least you know how to pick up a phone,” she said. “If you see him tell him for me.” The acknowledgement of a child had been on the tip of her tongue for too long and it slipped easily into the distance between us.

Casualties of Forgiveness. Part X

Margaret Duzniak was sixteen when her family left Warsaw for a coastal mining town in Germany. Her brother Peter was slightly younger, soon a soldier but still a boy. Her father was a miner, her mother a drunk. The family learned the harsh lessons of immigrant survival. But the Moroccan man who came into their lives three years later was an intruder, not a fellow immigrant. A black smear across the family name.

“They’ll be happy you’re handsome and have a job,” Margaret offered as they walked through the door.

It was Adil’s first day in her family’s apartment. Her parents were gone until dinner. Peter in the bath. Adil placed vegetables on the table. She kissed him hurriedly as he began to chop.

“We’ve no cooking oil! I’ll run quick, you chop,” she said.

He felt suddenly foreign without her. He abandoned the zucchini to explore the rooms around him. Polish crucifixes hung differently on the wall. Porcelain statues revealed a greater obsession with the veils of the virgin mother.

Knock, knock, knock.

Adil was startled by a rhythmic banging from the bathroom. Inside the sound of a tap still running. A light was shining through the grate in the door, marking patterns on the wall. Knock knock knock continued.

“Everything alright?” he asked in a German that felt harsher without her. “I’m a friend of your sister’s.”

Silence, as the light switched off. A minute later the rhythms started again. Adil stepped inside hesitantly, saw a boy naked on the toilet. Peter Duzniak cowered. Adil remembered the kitchen knife still in his hand, retreated and closed the door behind him.

“Everything ok?” Adil repeated through the door.

Immediately the knock returned, the light moving shyly through thin wooden planks. Adil stepped inside again, the boy covering himself, shaking slightly. Peter touched the empty roll beside him, nodded toward the open doorway. Flash of light appeared on the wall and guided slowly to the left. Adil followed and found toilet-paper rolls on a shelf in the closet. He returned and tossed one from the doorway, shut the door behind him. Margaret returned and Adil mentioned nothing of the virgin statues.

The teenage boy confronted them in the kitchen, took the grocery bag from her hands and began scouring for something to eat. His pocket flashlight dangled from a chord around his child’s wrist. When they were formally introduced he shone it brightly into Adil’s eyes.

“Peter is mute,” Margaret explained. “He uses this light to communicate.”
“Is he trying to blind me?” he asked.
“He’s warning you to treat me well,” she laughed.
“Doesn’t he know sign language, or something less bright?” Adil ducked.
“Oh come on, it’s not that bad,” she said. “He’s practicing morse code. My little sailor.”

Margaret was still young. She was ignorant of the depths of violence her love could stir. She didn’t yet believe in hate or politcs. To her there was little difference between a German man and a Moroccan man in Germany. She decided there were more important things that distinguish one man from another. Adil had already crossed half of Europe and Africa on mining contracts. He told wonderous stories of exotic places. He held her firmly in his tales, but never in a way she couldn’t escape.

“A German I could live with, but not some dirty Arab!” her mother screamed in Polish in front of him. “Imagine, my daughter with brown Muslim children! Are we a joke to you?!”
“He’s Christian just like us,” Maria shouted back. “And even if he wasn’t what’s it to you!?”
“He’ll sell you in the desert,” her father half-joked.

They fell in love quickly, irresponsibly.

Her mother yelled often in the days after their engagement. In a week she was out of words and found solace in alcohol. Her father’s pain was composed of softer tones. He slipped a different man’s name into every conversation. Jakob. Florian. Markus. Jonas. Months later he’d continue, new names, names of men from Peter’s ship.

By the time Adil reached the Baltic coastline his back was bruised and his feet eager to settle. But he was still young and arrogant, without the knowledge not to pursue her. He’d grown up moving like wind through the desert, too quick and too often to settle on wisdom or hate. Adil saw only the woman before him and ignored the circles that held her.

It was only after their marriage that Adil felt the full burden of a community’s condemnation. Secretly he wondered whether the blood of childbirth might act as catharsis. Ancient ritual of sacrifice and renewal. But to those around her Maria Duzniak-Alzebar was a child of the desert, barren and without culture, without the blood of ancestors coursing through her vains.

The punishment that awaited him was the carrying out of a sentence. Self-fulfilling prophecy of a culture that still believed in bad omens. Adil returned late from the mines. Thick boots heavy upon his feet. The sons of men with lost jobs were drunk and belligerent. He walked past them and up the grey steps toward his apartment.

“What are you doing here?” Adil demanded.

Peter moaned like a wounded whale washed onto the beach. The young man had returned after eleven months under water. He learned quickly that a submarine was no place for explorers. The men on board shared small quarters and moved like caged wolves. In packs they singled out difference and beat it back into the night. Prejudice and pain are forms of knowledge unlearned in vast spaces. Thick tar stretches out until it thins away in the air. But these men were too busy carving out small territories. They hadn’t the opportunity to reflect on the ocean. No one learned how to pray for the promise of sighted land. Reasons for resentment accumulated and festered in the metallic caverns. Peter stepped onto the shoreline not a sailor, but a soldier returned from sea.

A shovel swung suddenly into Adil’s face in the darkened corridor. The sound of crooked thunder bounced off the walls.

Adil woke to cuts, bruises, a starving tiger’s teeth, its nails jagged nails digging deep, nails clawing, hysterically into his charcoal flesh. They struggled but Adil managed to flip the boy onto his back. He then used all his strength to hush the demonic moans crashing below him. The rhythm calmed as Adil added pressure. The boy was scratching, flailing, finally limp. Adil held silence in his hands, clenching tighter and for the longest moments of his life until only silence remained.

That night Adil left the dead and boarded a train heading west. Toward Spain and Morocco. Los Angeles, the furthest place he could find. He left to untangle and forget. He took only a sleeping child. A reason to start over.

Casualties of Forgiveness. Part XI

“You shouldn’t be here,” the security guard told them. “It’s after ten.”

The lovers were caressing on the steps of a Michelin Tires retailer in Reggio di Calabria. The streets were empty and the full moon was shining bright through an oversized tire on the roof.

“Che cosa state facendo qui!?” the security guard shouted. “Hello!?”

He wondered whether they were mute or lost tourists.

“We’re protesting,” she finally said.

The security guard smelled absynth on her lips.

“You’re protesting Michelin?” the guard asked. “What for? In all my years . . .”
“No, no. Simpler,” she said.

It looks like a divine doughnut, the man beside her thought, still perplexed by the image in the sky.

“You’re protesting rubber?” the security guard offered. “Tires?”

Silver mocking moons reflected in her eyes.

“Rotondità?”

Casualties of Forgiveness. Part XII

Though the moonlight was faint and her naked body beautiful she wandered to the
window and shut the blinds.

“Because in darkness we’re as one,” she explained as her hands reached toward him.