Good Bones Read online

  Homelanding

  1.

  WHERE SHOULD I begin? After all, you have never been there; or if you have, you may not have understood the significance of what you saw, or thought you saw. A window is a window, but there is looking out and looking in. The native you glimpsed, disappearing behind the curtain, or into the bushes, or down the manhole in the main street – my people are shy – may have been only your reflection in the glass. My country specializes in such illusions.

  2.

  Let me propose myself as typical. I walk upright on two legs, and have in addition two arms, with ten appendages, that is to say, five at the end of each. On the top of my head, but not on the front, there is an odd growth, like a species of seaweed. Some think this is a kind of fur, others consider it modified feathers, evolved perhaps from scales like those of lizards. It serves no functional purpose and is probably decorative.

  My eyes are situated in my head, which also possesses two small holes for the entrance and exit of air, the invisible fluid we swim in, and one larger hole, equipped with bony protuberances called teeth, by means of which I destroy and assimilate certain parts of my surroundings and change them into my self. This is called eating. The things I eat include roots, berries, nuts, fruits, leaves, and the muscle tissues of various animals and fish. Sometimes I eat their brains and glands as well. I do not as a rule eat insects, grubs, eyeballs or the snouts of pigs, though these are eaten with relish in other countries.

  3.

  Some of my people have a pointed but boneless external appendage, in the front, below the navel or mid-point. Others do not. Debate about whether the possession of such a thing is an advantage or disadvantage is still going on. If this item is lacking, and in its place there is a pocket or inner cavern in which fresh members of our community are grown, it is considered impolite to mention it openly to strangers. I tell you this because it is the breach of etiquette most commonly made by tourists.

  In some of our more private gatherings, the absence of cavern or prong is politely overlooked, like club feet or blindness. But sometimes a prong and a cavern will collaborate in a dance, or illusion, using mirrors and water, which is always absorbing for the performers but frequently grotesque for the observers. I notice that you have similar customs.

  Whole conventions and a great deal of time have recently been devoted to discussions of this state of affairs. The prong people tell the cavern people that the latter are not people at all and are in reality more akin to dogs or potatoes, and the cavern people abuse the prong people for their obsession with images of poking, thrusting, probing and stabbing. Any long object with a hole at the end, out of which various projectiles can be shot, delights them.

  I myself – I am a cavern person – find it a relief not to have to worry about climbing over barbed wire fences or getting caught in zippers.

  But that is enough about our bodily form.

  4.

  As for the country itself, let me begin with the sunsets, which are long and red, resonant, splendid and melancholy, symphonic you might almost say; as opposed to the short boring sunsets of other countries, no more interesting than a lightswitch. We pride ourselves on our sunsets. “Come and see the sunset,” we say to one another. This causes everyone to rush outdoors or over to the window.

  Our country is large in extent, small in population, which accounts for our fear of empty spaces, and also our need for them. Much of it is covered in water, which accounts for our interest in reflections, sudden vanishings, the dissolution of one thing into another. Much of it however is rock, which accounts for our belief in Fate.

  In summer we lie about in the blazing sun, almost naked, covering our skins with fat and attempting to turn red. But when the sun is low in the sky and faint, even at noon, the water we are so fond of changes to something hard and white and cold and covers up the ground. Then we cocoon ourselves, become lethargic, and spend much of our time hiding in crevices. Our mouths shrink and we say little.

  Before this happens, the leaves on many of our trees turn blood-red or lurid yellow, much brighter and more exotic than the interminable green of jungles. We find this change beautiful. “Come and see the leaves,” we say, and jump into our moving vehicles and drive up and down past the forests of sanguinary trees, pressing our eyes to the glass.

  We are a nation of metamorphs.

  Anything red compels us.

  5.

  Sometimes we lie still and do not move. If air is still going in and out of our breathing holes, this is called sleep. If not, it is called death. When a person has achieved death, a kind of picnic is held, with music, flowers and food. The person so honoured, if in one piece, and not, for instance, in shreds or falling apart, as they do if exploded or a long time drowned, is dressed in becoming clothes and lowered into a hole in the ground, or else burnt up.

  These customs are among the most difficult to explain to strangers. Some of our visitors, especially the young ones, have never heard of death and are bewildered. They think that death is simply one more of our illusions, our mirror tricks; they cannot understand why, with so much food and music, the people are sad.

  But you will understand. You too must have death among you. I can see it in your eyes.

  6.

  I can see it in your eyes. If it weren’t for this I would have stopped trying long ago, to communicate with you in this halfway language which is so difficult for both of us, which exhausts the throat and fills the mouth with sand; if it weren’t for this I would have gone away, gone back. It’s this knowledge of death, which we share, where we overlap. Death is our common ground. Together, on it, we can walk forward.

  By now you must have guessed: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, take me to your leaders. Even I – unused to your ways though I am – would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them.

  Instead I will say, take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths.

  These are worth it. These are what I have come for.

  Third Handed

  THE THIRD HAND is the one stamped in bear’s grease and ochre, in charcoal and blood, on the walls of five-thousand-year-old caves; and in blue, on the doorposts, to ward off evil. It hangs in silver on a chain around the neck, signalling with its thumb; or index finger extended, and with its golden wrist attached to an ebony stick, it strokes its way along the textural footpath, from Aleph to Omega. In churches it lurks in reliquaries, bony and bejewelled, or appears abruptly from fresco clouds, enormous and stern and significant, loud as a shout: Sin! Less elegant, banal even, and stencilled on a metal plate, it bosses us around: Way Out, it orders. Up Here. Way Down.

  But these are merely pictures of it: roles, disguises, captured images, that in no way confine it. Do pictures of love confine love?

  (The man and the woman walk down the street, hand in passionate hand; but whose hand is it really? It’s the third hand each one holds, not the beloved’s. It’s the third hand that joins them together, the third hand that keeps them apart.)

  The third hand is neither left nor right, dexter nor sinister. Consider the man who is caught in the act, red-handed as they say. He proclaims his innocence, and why not believe him? What axe? he says. I didn’t know what I was doing, it wasn’t me, and look, my hands are clean! No one notices the third hand creeping away painfully on its fingers, like a stepped-on crab, trailing raw blood from its severed wrist.

  But that happens only to those who have disowned it, who have cut it off and nailed it to a board and shut it up in a wallsafe or a strongbox. It’s light-fingered, the hand of a thief in the night; it will always get out, it will never hold still. It writes, and having written, moves. Moves on, dissolving, dissolving boundaries.

  Vacant spaces belong to it, the vowel O, all b
lank pages, the number zero, the animals wolf and mole, the hour before birth and the minute after death, the loon, the owl, and all white flowers. The third hand opens doors, and closes them thoughtfully behind you. It is the other two that busy themselves with what goes on in the room.

  The third hand is the hand the magician holds behind his back, while showing you the other two, candid and empty. The hand is quicker than the eye, he says. Notice that it’s hand, singular. Only one. The third.

  And when you walk through the snow, in the blizzard, growing cold and then unaccountably warmer, as night descends and sleep numbs you and you know you are lost, it’s the third hand that slips confidingly into your own, a small hand, the hand of a child, leading you onward.

  Death Scenes

  I WANT TO get the rose-bushes in first. I like just sitting there. Last night there was a firefly. Can you imagine?

  He said I could heal myself. He told me over the phone. He said, I can hear it in your voice. You should meditate on light for three minutes every day, and drink the leaves of cabbages, the leaves right next to the outer ones. Put them in a blender. Some garlic, too. You’ll pee green, but you’ll heal. You know, it actually worked, for a while.

  This is not attractive. I know it isn’t, especially the hair. What do I want? I want you to talk about normal things.

  I know I look like hell. But it’s still me in here. What do I want? I want you to talk about normal things. No I don’t. I want you to look me in the eye and say, I know you’re dying. But for Christ’s sake don’t make me console you.

  I said, get the fuck out. This has nothing to do with my fucking attitude. Of course I’m bitter! Get out or I’ll throw something at you. Where’s the bedpan? You know I don’t mean it. Christ I’d like a drink. Well, why not, eh?

  No, don’t. Don’t hug me. It hurts.

  I want to see what comes up, in the spring. Damn squirrels, they eat the bulbs. Mothballs are supposed to work.

  If you want to cry, do it around the corner where she can’t see you.

  It’s time for you to go home.

  Something went wrong, we don’t know what. We think you should come down at once.

  — Can’t you do something? It isn’t her, it isn’t her! She looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy, she’s all swollen up, I can’t stand it!

  — It’s not bothering her, she’s in a coma.

  — I don’t believe in comas! She can hear, she can see everything! If you’re going to talk about death, let’s go down to the coffee-shop.

  It’s cruel, it’s cruel, she’s never going to wake up! She can’t get back into her body, and if she did she’d hate it! Can’t somebody pull the plug?

  I knew she’d died when the ashtray broke. It cracked right across. It was the one she gave me. I knew she was right there! It was her way of letting me know.

  Glorious scenes. Glorious scenes! Nobody made scenes like hers. Vulgar as all-get-out. Of course, she would always apologize afterwards. She needn’t have done. Not to me.

  What I miss is what she’d say. What she would have said. That’s the difference: you have to put everything into the past conditional. Bereft, you might call it. Not her word, though – too po-faced. That was her word.

  I went over there, did a little weeding. It’s fading though, what she looked like exactly. I can remember her tone of voice, but not her voice. It’s funny the way you keep on talking to people. It’s as if they could hear.

  Four Small Paragraphs

  For Mr. Flat

  THIS IS THE landscape where he came to rest: the earth, ochre and rust, that has been used and re-used, passed through mouth and stomach and gut and bone, and out again into earth and then into stem and bud and ripe fruit, then harvested and bruised and fermented for a moment of warmth; the pruned vines like twisted fists, the unclipped ones with their long yellowish intertwined fingernails, like those of potatoes in the dark; and the light inside everything, oozing up from the furrows like juice from a cut peach, glistening along the leaves like the slippery backs of snails, like licked lips. When it rains, the dust of the Sahara falls from the south wind, spotting the white plastic patio chairs at the tabac with dried blood. Higher up are the limestone mountains, dry and covered with tough and pungent shrubs, the maquis they’re called, and gullied by time and sparse as aphorism. He liked the harshness of the sun here, or so he said.

  In the restaurant he was known as Monsieur Terrasse, an alias to deceive the tourists while he ate his dinner. I almost said terrorists. Famous people don’t wish to be interrupted while chewing, or watched closely while they do it. Neither does anyone else, but there’s less likelihood. In English he was Mr. Patio. Many things are more romantic in French, the word odour for instance. Camus translates as plain flat, but he wouldn’t have minded.

  The books in the brick-and-board bookshelves, dismantled, reconstructed, dispersed, it must be thirty years ago, are turning yellow and then brown, crumbling at the edges like fallen leaves, consuming themselves from within. There’s the same odour, a slow acrid burning. Uncompromising, he wished to be; and clear, like the desert light.

  On All Souls’ Day the dead are tended. Here it’s a duty. The graves are weeded, and huge bubbles of bright paint bloom beside them: chrysanthemums, purple and orange, yellow and red; and china dahlias too, the colour of last year’s lipstick, and brittle pansies chipped by hail. What he himself has been given is not ornate. Squareness and greyness, the elegance of plainsong, no mottoes. No gilded mementoes, no picture of him in a glassy oval, that quizzical face with its simian postwar brush-cut. What do I remember most clearly, from all those acrid pages? The scene in which a man spits on a woman’s naked body, because she has been unfaithful. What did he mean to convey, to me? Something about betrayal, or else about women’s bodies? He isn’t telling. An abrupt bush is what he has, with dark cryptic foliage, one of the mountain shrubs. No hope, no armfuls of petals. This is what there is, he says, or fails to say. You are what you do. Don’t expect mercy. Later, when I went back, someone had left six withering real roses in a kitchen jar.

  We Want It All

  WHAT WE WANT of course is the same old story. The trees pushing out their leaves, fluttering them, shucking them off, the water thrashing around in the oceans, the tweedling of the birds, the unfurling of the slugs, the worms vacuuming dirt. The zinnias and their pungent slow explosions. We want it all to go on and go on again, the same thing each year, monotonous and amazing, just as if we were still behaving ourselves, living in tents, raising sheep, slitting their throats for God’s benefit, refusing to invent plastics. For unbelief and bathrooms you pay a price. If apples were the Devil’s only bait we’d still be able to call our souls our own, but then the prick threw indoor plumbing into the bargain and we were doomed. Now we use up a lot of paper telling one another how to conserve paper, and the sea fills up with killer coffee cups, and we worry about the sun and its ambivalent rays.

  When will it all cave in? The sky, I mean; our networks; our intricate pretensions. We were too good at what we did, at being fruitful, at multiplying, and now there’s too much breathing. We eat dangerous foods, our shit glows in the dark, the cells of our bodies turn on us like sharks. Every system is self-limiting. Will we solve ourselves as the rats do? With war, with plagues, with mass starvation? These thoughts come with breakfast, like the juice from murdered fruits. Your depression, my friend, is the revenge of the oranges.

  But we still find the world astounding, we can’t get enough of it; even as it shrivels, even as its many lights flicker and are extinguished (the tigers, the leopard frogs, the plunging dolphin flukes), flicker and are extinguished, by us, by us, we gaze and gaze. Where do you draw the line, between love and greed? We never did know, we always wanted more. We want to take it all in, for one last time, we want to eat the world with our eyes.

  Better than the mouth, my darling. Better than the mouth.

  Dance of the Lepers

  WHO KNOWS whether there could be such a thin
g? Possibly lepers do not dance, or are unable to. On the other hand, possibly they do. Somebody must know.