Aan Zee

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3Hubert drove home in his Corolla after a long day at work. His house stood on the little hill like an ancient castle. This was an absurd idea considering it was made of wood, colonial style, with the two Doric columns as the only references to a time long past. But the house was stately in some way and had a quietness about it, a solemnity that extended to the trees and the small formal flowerbed in the front and to the unceremonious driveway. The houses next to his were plain, though they were busy with life and the laughter of young children.

It seemed to him he had spent centuries hauling garbage cans back and forth every Monday. There had been a time when the backyard garden, now defunct, had expanded under his hands. It had rewarded him for the love he had invested in zucchinis and tomatoes, but it had also taught him bitter lessons about the cauliflower (mildew-prone and retarded!), the r****h (wooden and worm-riddled like antique bedknobs!), and the always unreliable onion.

Every day lately when he returned from work and approached his house, he felt a force clasping him, tightening around his chest. His breathing became shallow as he anticipated the emptiness behind the door. Now, as he opened the door, the way the sound echoed inside the house spoke of the solitude he faced again in the coming night. But as he entered, he saw Sunshine's big brown eyes. They expected him but also mirrored his loneliness. His cat was a solitary, hypochondriac tabby, one of the many possessions Karen had left behind on a November day three years before. Sunshine peed into his boots occasionally, an incorrigible trace of abuse by former owners, but Hubert took these episodes with understanding (nobody's perfect). Besides, his feet produced an odor that could reasonably get a cat confused about the purpose of the two smelly containers.

Sometimes he thought of Sunshine as a permanent witness. Those eyes had calmly watched the scenes of newfound love years ago, when they had chased each other naked through the house from one mirror to the next until they had settled in the downstairs closet for a dusty embrace. The cat had witnessed the times of long breakfasts, with Karen and Hubert draped in Japanese happi coats, reading the New York Times, listening to the sounds of the Brandenburg Concerti. Then, three years ago, when the fights started, Sunshine had watched the strange goings-on from a safe distance, as it was her turn to be in the closet, to avoid physical harm.

So, whenever he looked into Sunshine's eyes, Hubert couldn't help reading his own past, curiously distorted through a lens that presumably transformed steaks into mice and Scotch into catnip. There could be some kind of empathy: Hey, old man, we've been through a lot! But those eyes could also be telling him a nagging I-told-you-so. Finally, since Sunshine had seen goings-on before Hubert had come onto the scene, he was tempted to read more: about past lovers and mysterious nocturnal things a cat might have in common with a woman.

Hubert made himself at home. Followed by the tapping of the cat's overlong nails on the hardwood floor, he picked up the mail, walked into the living room, and put his Art Blakey record on. In the kitchen, he opened a can of tuna -- how easy it was to keep an animal happy! -- and poured himself a gin and tonic. The mail was an assortment of requests for attention and support: Sane Freeze, National Backyard Society, Guns Kill People. Besides, the water bill was there, and a catalog for Macy's intimate apparel. There were new, original misspellings of his name: Belivski, Beloovsky, and -- he loved it! -- simply Mr. Bell. It was all worth three minutes of attention.

Anticipating the barrenness and anonymity of his mail, he had brought a letter home from work, the day's pleasant surprise. It was addressed to him by a Dr. Schivenhagen from the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. He unfolded it now to read it again:

Dear Dr. Bolovski:

We are organizing the Twenty-First International Congress on Fluid Dynamics, to be held July 10–15 in The Hague. On behalf of the Scientific Programme Committee, it is my pleasure to invite you to give a presentation on the subject of “The Onset of Critical Conditions in Hydrodynamic Flow.” Due to sizable donations from industry, we will be able to pay your registration, hotel accommodation, as well as your economy-class APEX fare. Please let me know at your earliest convenience if you are able to accept this invitation.

I hope to see you in The Hague.

Sincerely,

Dr. Egbert Schivenhagen

Hubert anticipated the trip with excitement. It was less than three months away. Europe was this crammed old world of infinite complexity, a coffee house full of strange foreign voices, full of dissonances, yet, oddly enough, a house where everybody knew his place. In the center of it was the piece of Germany that had been his home, surrounded by well-wishing yet suspicious neighbors. It was still possible to get a rude welcome when speaking German in Holland, and in a way, Hubert felt that by speaking English, he'd enter that country in a masquerade, a wolf in a sheep's clothing, and thereby avoid the unpleasantness stirred up by the past. But he had been less than two years old when the Germans had invaded the Netherlands, and it would be easy to explain that underneath his clothing, there was yet another lamb.

Because there was the other Europe of hope, the increasingly happy intermingling of voices, the sophisticated fabric of urban civilization. There was even the newly relaxed demeanor of custom officers – traditionally, the barking phalanx of national pride. It was this new land he couldn't wait to see again. But there was also the thrill of traveling, of chance encounters, of new possibilities to redefine his life. He watched himself in the mirror for promises that might be written on his face: Intellectual depth? Affection? Sophistication in lovemaking? Those were all qualities he claimed to possess. Or was it a face that would cause its bearer to be dismissed as superficial, uninviting, boring, just because of mistakes in the mechanisms of countenance? He tried out some of his facial muscles and immediately disapproved of what he saw: a strange succession of grins.

The telephone rang; it was his friend Eric.

“Up for a beer?”

“Sure bet.”

* * *

Eric, originally among Karen's circle of friends -- his nickname was “the Bear” -- had stuck to Hubert when the times had gotten tough. He was Irish, blue-eyed and red-haired, with the fierce temperament of his breed, but confined to a wheelchair since the age of twelve due to an accident he refused to discuss. Because of the energy visibly brewing in his friend, Hubert thought of him as an eagle in misfortune, with wings clipped. He lived with his sister in the suburbs.

When Hubert entered The Fountain, he immediately spotted Eric at the round table, half-leaning out of his shiny contraption, finishing his beer. Before him on the table was a yellow plastic bag and another empty mug.

“Hey, what's up,” Eric said, giving him the upside-down handshake that had gone out of fashion some time ago. For a moment, the arms of the two friends zigzagged out of sync.

“Nothing much,” Hubert said. “Except I got invited.”

“Invited where? I hope it's not somewhere in Kansas again.”

“Kansas? God, no! No, it's big this time. The Netherlands.”

“Lucky bastard! Will you get to see more of Europe?”

“I don't know. Germany, perhaps. And I've got this Aunt in Tyrol.”

“Tyrol is in…let me guess…Austria?”

“Yes, Austria. It borders Italy. Up north from there.” Hubert turned around to look for the waitress. When she appeared two tables farther down, he signaled her. Turning back to Eric, he said, “What's going on with you? Anything new?”

“I'm fine.”

“But something is the matter. There's something I see in your face.”

“I guess there is. She drives me nuts.”

“Who? Your sister? What happened this time?”

Instead of answering, Eric directed his eyes past Hubert's shoulder. Lynn, the waitress with the crew cut appeared and put her hand affectionately on Hubert's arm. Her lips were painted black, and her face was unusually white. Her mouth looked as if she had eaten charcoal. What was left of her hair was blonde. Hubert, a regular in the bar since his divorce, had followed Lynn's transformation over the years from a country girl to a modish punk; her wonderful lips had been covered first with nothing, then pink, then a bright red, then mahogany before turning into the color of nothingness, of death. What could be next? The visible spectrum was clearly exhausted, and one day soon, her lips might only be appreciated through an Army infrared telescope.

“Hi, Bert! How've you been? Long time no see.”

Hubert smiled and gave her a quick tap on her waist with his flat hand. Perhaps it was on account of the synthetic look of her face that he found himself surprised her body still felt warm underneath.

“Hi, Lynn, good to see you,” he said. “A beer for me and another for the Bear.”

“A beer for Bert and a beer for the Bear,” Lynn repeated cheerfully as she headed for the bar. Her voice was always a pleasant surprise: it was the only thing that had not changed.

“Neat girl,” Eric said, “despite everything.”

“Yeah. A shame, though,” Hubert said, sighing. “But back to you. You were saying …?”

“About Jane. She's got a boyfriend, you know…”

“Your sister has a boyfriend? You never told me that.”

“Well, she does. It was never serious before, but now the thing is, they don't have a place to go. He's married.”

“You mean she doesn't want to bring him back to her own home?” Hubert said. “I think that's silly.”

“That's what I keep telling her. I'm telling her, 'I've got my own bathroom, and we are grownups, for Christ's sake.'”

“But that's her problem, right? What is yours?”

“Well, I think she's resenting the whole deal about living with me. At least, that's what I think is going on. It comes out in all kinds of petty things.”

“Like what?”

“Like I have my working stuff in the living room. It takes me ages to get organized each time, so I leave everything out: the accounting sheets, the dictionaries, the manuscript, the books I borrow. Stuff like that. And for her, the whole place is a disaster area, like…the result of cluster bombing. She says it makes her sick. So, what do I do? Abandon my projects?”

“You know what you need?” Hubert said, leaning toward his friend. “You need some time away from this place. You know, I thought about that. Do you want to meet me in Vienna after the conference? We could do things together. I could push you up the Alps. Seriously!”

“Are you crazy? First of all, think about the cost. Second, you don't know what you'd be getting into. In Europe, you have to travel miles to find a public toilet to fit a wheelchair in.”

“We'll get around. And you could get a charter. Think about it.”

There was an awkward silence. Hubert found himself staring at the bulging plastic bag. “What's in there? I meant to ask you.”

Eric opened the bag, imitating the sound of a fanfare, and produced a green thing somewhat bigger than a grapefruit, which he placed in the middle of the table. It was clearly a vegetable, but sculpted like a human head. The way it was placed, its green eyes looked firmly at Hubert.

“Aha!” Hubert exclaimed. “A first success with your green monster project?”

“It's going OK,” Eric said. “I think I can even start to think about production.”

“Holy s**t!” The waitress, arriving with the beer, emitted a shriek. “What on earth is that?”

“It's Eric's idea of making money in a big way,” Hubert said.

“But it's freaking unreal,” she said. “I mean…”

“Ok, I'll tell you,” Eric said. “It's simply a gourd grown in a mold.”

“They grow on vines,” Hubert explained.

“A gourd grown in a mold. A gourd grown in a mold?” she said as she looked up to the ceiling. “You mean you've got some kind of form that makes this veggie take on Lincoln's face?”

“Yup, that's right. Some kind of form,” Eric said. “Any face you like.”

“Greta Garbo and Elvis as vegetables? Big money? Give me a break!” She laughed as she walked off, shaking her head even more than her hips.

When she was out of hearing range, Eric leaned over toward his friend. “I was going to ask you. Do you have another five grand to invest?”

“Wait a minute,” Hubert replied. He suddenly realized that he might have been called to the bar for his money, not for his companionship. He quickly dismissed the unsettling idea: friends should be able to make demands without running the risk of such petty accounting.

“Last time you told me you have everything you need,” he said. “The seeds, the tiller, a basic set of molds…”

“Rumpelstiltskin, Bambi, Superman, Abe Lincoln,” Eric interjected.

“You've got two acres, irrigation pipes, and Stewart. He's still in on it, isn't he?”

“Sure bet,” Eric replied. “My Homo faber. He'll run it. He knows what he is doing.”

“So, what's the five grand for?”

“We need pumps and valves. For the irrigation system. The pumps are run by electric switches, so when everything is rigged up, I can run the whole thing from my desk. Well, more or less. I'll have Stewart only one day a week once things are set up.”

“Eric, are you sure this isn't a bottomless pit? I can spare another five grand all right, but I want to be sure I get it back. I want you to be careful.”

“Ten back for the five, ten for the other five. It'll work out just as I promised. You'll see. No sweat. I showed this thing around. Got everybody excited. I got a letter from the president of the Massachusetts Pet Plant Association. Think about it: combo bands…home decorations…the entire Halloween business…”

Eric interrupted himself as Lynn reappeared, and ordered another round of beer. Hubert admired him for his resilience, his humor, his imagination. And there was more; talking with him brought his own problems into perspective: Karen had left him, and before Karen, Helga, the woman he had once thought he couldn't live without -- big deal, there were men such as Eric with no Karens nor Helgas in their lives. Instead, all their mental energy went into maintaining a precarious balance: they needed a powerful fantasy to offset the forces of immobility. The sculpted gourds -- fantastic as they were, successful or not as a commercial venture -- would contribute to Eric's spiritual survival. In some way, the idea with the gourds was a phallic dream, a dream of swelling, filling, giving life, impressing one's form on unformed substance. By filling the molds, Eric would fill the world with his presence; he would finally overcome the constraints of his condition. Like a tree that produces wind-borne seeds, he'd send out messengers who would travel for him and testify to his ingenuity, strength, and prolific energy wherever they would go.

“What is it doing for you, the conference invitation?” Eric asked, breaking the silence. “I mean, scientifically.”

“I don't know. I suppose it's good, I mean, some recognition for me working my ass off.”

“Well, isn't this something? You don't seem to be that excited.”

This was the question Hubert had been waiting for; he needed someone who would ask this question, and he felt a rush of gratitude toward Eric when he spoke. He started telling him about his feeling of utter insignificance in the library a few hours before, his sense of uselessness in a world where not even his name was unique, not to speak of his role.

“Suppose I dropped dead right now,” Hubert said.

“Not here,” Eric said. “Don't do that to me.”

“No.” Hubert protested with his outstretched hand against the intrusion of sarcasm. “I mean, what would be left of me other than the records of my utility bills? Can you think of something?”

“Well, let me think. You showed me some papers you wrote. You were quite proud of those.”

“They are by a certain Belovski comma H. That could have been any number of people.”

“What about memories of people close to you? Even those who have been close at one time or other. Nothing of this is lost.”

“Memories! They'll be gone someday,” Hubert said, his face cradled between his two hands.

“Listen, on that scale, nothing will be left. One day, only a few hundred million years from now, our sun will expand to the size of the solar system, and every f*****g copy of the Britannica will be reduced to ashes.”

“You've really cheered me up today. Good try!” Hubert said. “Besides, I have done without the Britannica all my life.”

* * *

Back at home, Hubert spent a good part of the night writing in his journal. Sunshine lay curled up next to his chair.

I have spent my life shaking other people's hands. There are all kinds of hands and many kinds of shakes: the ones that melt in your hand like pizza dough, the ones that take on unpredictable errands in circles, spirals, and zigzags, and the kind that is to the point, bringing together firmly the sinews and bones for a cordial moment, but with a movement that carries with it a determination to sever the link as soon as it can be arranged.

The German custom brings hands together promiscuously, incessantly. I shook my father's hand every morning when he came down into the kitchen. I hated greeting one of my best friends because he was elusive in his shake; his hands would change shape, even rearrange bones and flesh, much like the way amoebae crawl, to melt away in my grip even before I could say hi. But it had to be done.

(Customs: habits that go unrecognized, uncommented in the area they rule. One has to leave the Teutonic Reich in order to share the sense of wonder about this constant business of touching.)

Recently, I found out something about the shake, first hand, so to speak. It happened one night when I tried out all kinds of things I might have done once as a toddler. (Why? Being alone makes you ageless; you don't have to profess to the way you look to someone else; you have no role to play; you are little more than a box filled with sensuous memories.) I licked my knee, pulled one of my big toes toward my forehead, and tried to let my elbows touch each other behind my back. This sounds crazy, but I suppose I was driven by curiosity and challenged by the sheer multitude of possibilities. Perhaps one could call it some sort of workout, except that it didn't require a contraption for $49.99, nor a switch to a new philosophy. Toward the end of my first permutational exercise, when my joints were beginning to hurt and fatigue was setting in, just then, when I was about to stop, my right hand ran playfully into its mirror twin. That is the moment I wish to talk about.

Each recognized some kind of sameness in the other: touch reciprocated, warmth felt, and the same degree of topological complexity -- fingeriness for lack of a better word. Yet there was also an instant feeling of transgression, as in an act of incest. Could it be that the Church, in its long fight for purity, has come up with the idea of folding the hands so as to order and tame the urges of self-exploration? I still don't know this. What I do know is that in the first consciously secular clasping touch of my hands, there was speechlessness, boundless surprise.

What happened next? After a second or so, my right hand remembered that something was missing. It inserted the movement of a shake into the resting pose the way Fellini slips a Bergmann scene into his films: as a jesting quotation, given with a winking eye.

My left hand followed reluctantly, like a woman on the dance floor who doesn't want to be led by the man who courts her, either because she is strong-willed or because she hasn't made up her mind. And in this way, my first handshake with myself developed, my hands embracing each other with the curiosity and shame of lovers in a public square.