The Gnome Stories, page 20
Do I even remember that? I know these questions become a loop. How can I trust anything? How can I know I am if I can’t know for sure what it is I’ve done or if I’ve done or what I’ve seen. Can I even believe myself to have a self? Yet I do. You have to. How would you go through the world believing you didn’t have a self? I know I’m the product of the self-obsessed West, but still I can’t get outside myself. I can’t see myself. Even in the mirror I can’t see myself.
We flicker into a hair salon. We’re getting our hair done. A man’s fingers are running through my hair in little circles, massaging my scalp. There’s the exact same hairbrush on the shelf. I’m surprised that the salon would use one too. He’s speaking in a voice as low and crisp as a remembered September from my youth, the air bright and cold, trees unleafing for the winter. He’s saying nothing in particular. I’m focused only on sensation. Something’s awakening in me. I can feel it. This is later the same year. I fixate on the hairbrush: it’s exactly like the one I have at home. I’ve always preferred women’s brushes. I like salons. I like scalp massages. These things make me feel like I’m not purely at the mercy of my gender.
There are different gradations of real here: when we call a memory real most of us mean true, as in the memory corresponds to the factual record, if there is such a thing. Sometimes what we mean by this is that it can be proved. But we also mean honest or organic: as in we came by the memory honestly, as in it built itself out in our brain without outside influence. We believe it to be true (whether or not it corresponds to fact in this regard is irrelevant). There are lots of ways in which this gets complicated, though: memories are often planted postevent, whether or not they correspond to fact. Ask me whether I remember anecdote X, and with enough specific detail offered by credible sources, I begin to register it dimly. Once it takes hold it can become foundational. Then there are the entirely fake: a section we create wholesale here on the inside postevent. It’s easier to copy sections of someone else’s memory into a client’s brain than it is to rig the thing entire. Sometimes these seem to overwrite other real memories. They don’t get erased, not exactly—you can’t ever fully erase, because the circuitry’s too redundant for that. They get patched and smoothed over and pressed down. Like how when, say, shot with a bullet, the saguaro cactus smooths over the wound and builds up scar tissue over it, incorporating it to continue growing, albeit at a little angle off from how it grew before. Augmented memories get digested and metabolized and narrativized and become part of you too.
So how real are you if you contain augmented memories? How real are we anyway? I think about the I sometimes, that necessary fiction, stretched across all the unstable rest of us like a skin holding in an ocean. It holds us in, mostly, of whatever heterogeneous and unstable stuff we’re made. You can’t function without it. Even those who lose their memories still know they are an I, a subject. They just don’t know exactly who or what they are. But then you do something that you didn’t think you’d ever do, and what do you do now? Are you who you were before? Were you just wrong before, or relying on incomplete information? Or are you someone else?
Or Caribou: she now has this little skin inside her, underneath which there’s a hole where that memory used to be. Does this make her less a person or companion?
Or the Saudis: Are they still real? They’re constructs now but they seem to live. They believe they live. Are they aware just how they live? At least they persist.
Here again is the sensation of fingers moving through my hair and down along my neck. Everything is warm. Here they dip just below the collar of my dress. They penetrate my loneliness just a little. I feel my body tense as if to announce its presence. Then they disappear. I crack my eyes and see that Caribou is looking straight at me as if to see whether I’m enjoying myself. Is it strange to say I am? Is it strange to say how exciting it can be to haunt another’s halls? How weird it is to wear another body? I finger the little lighter in my pocket.
With that thought the hands are gone. The room becomes noticeably colder.
Caribou signals that we have only an hour to get our asses out of here. I kind of wish she had an ass. Instead, this is an idiom I had added to her programming because I like my girls a little bit profane. Can she be aware of how she’s been tweaked? She looks at me as if she does.
I run my hand along the memory wall in this event. Here we’re back to fire. I smell the fire before I see it. We’re here because I simply wanted to see. Here is where the client burned her father’s hands and erased a section of his face. Here is where she earns the term vitrioleuse after spattering him with acid. This is where her first album title comes from, and it’s a great one. You see how she appeared like this: almost fully formed. We see his hand dangling off the side of the huge outdoor tub. I’ve never seen an outdoor tub before. I figure it must be real. There are two, side by side. It’s not a pool. It’s obviously a tub, designed for two or more. The air is cool and everything is silent, unusually. We can see the steam rise up and just a bit of his head and feet. Mostly what we feel right now is rage. We are in control, though that’s not what she said in court. She said she couldn’t remember it, that she was not herself, that she would never do a thing like that. She cried for some time convincingly. I read all the transcripts before coming down. If I’m being honest I did want to know. It’s not my business to pass this judgment along. The charges were dismissed when their history came out, before the forensic techs got in here to assess the situation.
We haven’t seen this room before, notes Caribou. Something’s off, she says. I’m not sure what, she says.
I can’t feel it, I say: this feels right to me. But then I’m in the righteousness so it’s hard to separate myself from the role I’m here to play.
Suddenly what I hear is I hear our song, coming from somewhere, first faintly, and as I listen to it, more and more obviously: it’s here. It is. It’s making its way out. And here I am with the rubber gloves and bucket, trying to move silently through the grass, suddenly listening to this thing singing out of nowhere. I realize it is coming out of me. My lips and breath and body are making it. They’re making it as he hears it, too, and turns to see what his daughter’s doing, and here I am spattering it all along his body, and here are his screams.
It doesn’t take long at all.
I feel no regret for doing it.
I sit a minute after. I feel full of something. Something exciting.
Caribou looks horrified. I didn’t realize horror was a feature she could manifest. She’s usually better at ignoring emotional content. She’s programmed that way. But she looks like she’s about to split apart, like something’s broken, a bicycle spoke that’s deforming a tire as you keep riding on it. I ask her what is happening.
She says: what did you do—without a question mark. It’s not a question; it’s a remark.
I touch the bucket and we backtrack out into another memory. We’re on a train: a dining car. I can feel its rhythm, can see the bowed, tandem tracks out the window. We shake a little back and forth. We sway when we walk back and forth. The glasses in the metal cupboards clink. We seem to be going through an industrial area, over and over again. All I see are warehouses out the sides of windows, stacks of pallets, rusting metal walls, a tractor trailer that reads “Cronos” on the side.
This memory is different: it’s only Caribou and I in the car. I don’t know why we’re here. None of the seats are occupied. I gesture to Caribou to sit with me at one of the tables.
She says again: what did you do.
I tell her I didn’t do anything.
She says she doesn’t believe me.
She asks me what this is. This doesn’t look like a memory at all. She says it’s made of something else. It’s almost full speed, for instance, so it feels like we’re moving insanely fast. There’s barely enough time to think before I speak. We pass a billboard reading Words Can Hurt. I think it’s supposed to be anti–domestic violence or bullying or something of the sort.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.
Another train comes by, but I can’t see in the windows well. It moves too fast; it’s more a blur than anything else but it looks empty. All I see is open space inside. We pass a posted sign: “Attention: Remote Control Locomotives Operate in this Area: Locomotive Cars May Be Unoccupied.” I don’t know what that means.
I start to hear our song again. It’s piped in from the tinny speakers in the corners of the car. Caribou says: Is that the same song we heard before? She makes a note. I say that I didn’t notice it.
She says: I think we’re in trouble here.
She says: I don’t see any way out of here.
I don’t see a catalyst either.
She says: I don’t know where here is or what this has to do with anything.
I realize I’m holding the bucket from the last memory.
We pass a pier from which a ship has just unmoored. It’s pouring water from its deck.
I think Caribou knows what I did, I mean, what has occurred.
She says: I can tell you know that song. Where is it from?
I say: I’d never heard it before the last room. I say: Write down the lyrics just in case. We’ll check it out when we get out.
We pass into darkness. We must be in a tunnel. The running lights are on, so we can see. She says: We don’t have much time. Five minutes now. She says: Do you see a way out for us?
She says: you did something when you put me under. She says: these memories are changed. She says: I read a lot of inconsistencies, and they seem to be growing.
She stares at me.
If this isn’t a memory, what is it?
I don’t have a response, and I don’t know what to do, so I throw the contents of the bucket at her. I don’t know what’s in it here. It was acid just before.
Now she’s wet. She blinks. She says: Why did you do that? She looks entirely flabbergasted: a word I’ve never before had the opportunity to use. She looks like her world has changed, like she doesn’t know who I am anymore.
I can see her calculating, going inward. By now she’s determined that she doesn’t trust me either. By now she’s probably reporting all this back up to management; it might be in the log already. I can’t be sure.
Then she starts burning.
She says: I seem to be on fire.
She says: What did you do?
She says: Why don’t you help?
She says: What does this mean we are?
To each other? Or at all? I don’t say anything. I just stand and watch.
She says: I don’t understand.
It doesn’t take long until she stops saying anything at all.
What have I done.
Her skin pulls away and soon she stops moving. It seems to take forever for her heartlight to click out. I can’t feel mine anymore, but I’m sure it’s there.
I’ll have to burn the room and hope it disconnects. I have the lighter still from the previous memory. I wonder how. I finger it.
If I can’t find a catalyst to bring me back I’ll have to fail-safe out. So I touch everything in the car, slowly at first, and then frantically as it starts to dawn on me that there isn’t one. The doors don’t lead anywhere: just to openness, like whatever’s out there isn’t finished.
I touch the char of Caribou’s form on the floor, half-opened as she is. I put my hand on a remaining bit of skin. I slide my finger underneath the seam into her interior. I feel a little like a lover. I’m looking for the nub of flesh that connects her heartlight to her processors. I’ve never been this close to her. All she is is mesh and lace and wire and bits of sear. This intimacy scares me, even if I know that what she was is gone. She’s gone, isn’t she? She sure seems gone. I find her nub and hold it, hoping for it to be my catalyst. I’m disappointed that it isn’t.
That was the last idea that I had.
Almost as if in response, the song gets a little louder.
I have no choice. I start the curtains in the car on fire. They start to go. Everything’s happening so fast it’s like I can’t control it. Obviously I can’t control it. I take a moment to contemplate the fire. It looks pretty good. I can’t see the loop. I put my hand in it to see. I look reflexively to Caribou. She doesn’t look like Caribou like this. She looks just like a screen. Will she exist when I’ve fail-safed out? Can she be retrieved? If the room burns after I am gone, all her logs should be erased. There’s a decent chance her report won’t be recoverable. The story that I’ll tell about it later will fit with my history of fire. I’ll say it was an accident. I’ll say I tried to drag her out. I’ll say she malfunctioned there when she touched the fire. They won’t care as long as I have the maps, as long as I did my job. Like me, she’s replaceable. Will this be a memory the client will have access to? Who knows. I for one don’t really care.
The fire’s going pretty good now. It’s spreading right: the smoke has become a haze, a curtain hanging all across the car. I can’t breathe real well, so I get on my knees. The air is cooler here. I put my hands on what used to be Caribou.
I find her input and I enter in the fail-safe code.
For a moment nothing happens. I feel the car shake back and forth. Another train passes without anything or anyone inside.
I enter the code again.
I enter it again.
There is no response, no tearing motion up, no opening, no movement. There’s just the rocking of the car, the spreading fire, and the sounds of clinking glass.
I release her nub.
Almost without intention, I slide my hand up to the back of my neck and finger my own seam. I don’t know what it means.
Our song continues to play on repeat.
Notes
“Everyone looks better when they’re under arrest” was something said by John Waters.
The gnome story was told to me by Page Buono, repeated from someone she’d heard it from, and for some time I assumed it was original, but found out only later that it’s a variation on an urban legend. From there it only grew in my mind.
“In a Structure Simulating an Owl” is after a patent, “Structure Simulating an Owl,” filed on April 20, 1931, by Grace E. Wilson and granted September 6, 1932.
Acknowledgments
Some of these stories appeared elsewhere, often in substantially different forms:
— “Believing in the Future with the Torturer’s Apprentice,” in the Huffington Post
— “Everyone Looks Better When They’re Under Arrest,” in Ploughshares
— “The Gnome,” in Alta
— “The Golem,” in Witness
— “In a Structure Simulating an Owl,” in XO Orpheus: 50 New Myths
— “It Is Hard Not to Love the Starvationist’s Assistant,” in Gulf Coast Online
— “Opportunities for Intimacy,” in American Short Fiction
— “This Time with Feeling,” in Harvard Review
— “Weep No More Over This Event,” in Tin House
Thanks to those who read and talked about, published, solicited, edited, and/or contributed material to this book: Kate Bernheimer for believing in the Strix; Chris Cokinos for mishearing “Viva Burrito”; Josh Foster for taking on the Starvationist; Paul Hurh for the memorable conversation about the essential sadness of the Pauls; Cheston Knapp for tightening and publishing “Weep No More Over This Event”; Manuel Muñoz and Aurelie Sheehan for their attention to these stories and fellow traveling; and Nicole Walker for Seven Rings and ongoing fellowship (and a little competition). I am glad to be in company with all of you.
Particular thanks to Jacqueline Ko and Katie Dublinski for their belief in and shepherding of this book.
It’s dark out there/down here. I am particularly grateful to Megan and Athena, my two best co-adventurers, for holding the light.
ANDER MONSON is the author of eight books: four of nonfiction (Neck Deep and Other Predicaments, Vanishing Point, Letter to a Future Lover, and I Will Take the Answer), two poetry collections (Vacationland and The Available World), and two books of fiction (Other Electricities and The Gnome Stories). A finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Award (for Other Electricities) and a National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism (for Vanishing Point), he is also a recipient of a number of other prizes: a Howard Foundation Fellowship, the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, the Annie Dillard Award for Nonfiction, the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award in Nonfiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He edits the magazine DIAGRAM (thediagram.com), the New Michigan Press, Essay Daily (essaydaily.org), and a series of yearly literary/music tournaments: March Sadness (2016), March Fadness (2017), March Shredness (2018), March Vladness (2019), and March Badness (2020).
The text of The Gnome Stories is set in Clerface. Book design by Ann Sudmeier. Composition by Bookmobile Design and Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manufactured by Sheridan on acid-free, 30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.
Ander Monson, The Gnome Stories
