City, Sister, Silver, page 56
Besides the frequent rain, it drizzled constantly, and the nights were different too. It was light. Maybe because of the moon reflecting off the tinfoil, there were shiny surfaces everywhere, glass, sheet metal … at night you could see. It was bright. Silhouettes of trash heaps undulated through the Dump, so this was the sea I’d finally reached, not much murmuring, no waves crashing, one over the other, going forward, going nowhere … but underneath, the Dump was alive, sometimes it erupted, once I saw a fire break out, breach a trail, but since everything was soggy with moisture from the rain, the fires never spread, they only smoldered out … here and there a cloud of smoke would pass over the Dump, it occurred to me there might be some new creatures being born … out of the chemicals … some new thing … some kina dragon.
I found out what Stick’d been getting at about the Dump changing after a rain … after a real downpour the surface changed, at least where I was … paper mountains flattened under its weight, in other spots the surface swelled … where there used to be pieces of orange stuff now there was slimy muck, even the trails changed, but I didn’t go out much. At least the rain drove off the bugs.
But there tended to be a lotta mud on those trails.
Occasionally I stopped by Vulture’s, sat around the fire. Listened. Same stories here as at the station, even met a guy who’d hung out with Gramps for a time … but these people weren’t as frenzied … there wasn’t so much movement, there were even families here. From what I could get, the mysterious Mr. Jasuda had something like a police force … people with kids weren’t scared anymore … Vulture told me he’d been one of the first to come to the Dump, back when people used to get jumped.
But there were still plenty of wild people here, a guy could never be sure. And I didn’t have anything to take in hand, I’d thrown it away. Lost it. Not anymore, I’d told myself.
Oughta lay down a rope at least … so ya can always find yer spot, Vulture suggested. But I kina hang out all over, I said. Sometimes on my way back from the fire I’d take a detour on purpose, there was no need for anyone to know where I was. If there was a string they could find me. Mr. Jasuda. Or someone. No, thank you very much. Not anymore.
I kept playing around with magazines. Tearing out pictures of stuff and people, along with their names. In the head of lettuce I’d pulled from the pit were slugs, repulsive little things. I wondered if I threw them into one of those gurgling orange pools whether they’d grow into mutants. That’s the kind of crazy stuff I thought about. But I kept quiet.
Food. I hadn’t eaten so much since the days of the Organization. I fed myself even when I didn’t have an appetite. I used to be a dancer, knew how to leap high. But now I dragged. The green of my jacket merged with the colors of the Dump. Here the mountain patrol in all likelihood would’ve been at a total loss. It was a colorful world. In that, it resembled the world in the magazines. I lounged around the barrels stuffing myself. No longer tortured myself with thoughts of Černá. Sometimes I’d see us making love. Sometimes I’d call up the silkiness of her skin. It didn’t matter that two of my toenails had fallen off and the skin on my palms was peeling. I lay there sated, and on those increasingly rare truly warm days I’d strip naked and lie in the sun. It fed me too.
Sometimes I went for walks. Even when I didn’t have to go anywhere, I did it for the movement. My head had stopped hurting. I only drank by the fire sometimes. It was the only way I could stand the lamentations and braggadocio. Some people have the unique ability to curse and beg for help all at once. Here almost everyone spoke that way.
Lying behind the barrels, I saw: the wind wafting pieces of paper, a trickle of water sparkling between the old train tracks, pulp oozing out of a burst plastic bag, two pigeons pecking a hunk of salami, then a dense black cloud spread over the scene, and when it floated off again the birds were gone and the paper had settled to the ground. All of it at once. I sensed a miracle. I was awestruck, filled with awe. This is happening? This exists? And I’m here to witness it? On the inside I was all curled up, but my body was taut. I didn’t take anything for granted. It’s here. It is what it is. And I’m part of it. It’s … sometimes it’s even beautiful and I enjoy it. That’s enough.
Maybe it was the food, or maybe it was not talking so much, but I grew stronger and more peaceful. I’d put it aside. The idea that I’d kill myself if somebody else didn’t kill me first was still in me. I’d betrayed a lot. I’d lost my tribe, my people, there was nothing tying me down.
Around the fire the tramps and drunkards spoke into the flames, conversations intertwining and crisscrossing like the trails of the Dump. It was the speech of the train station, a barebones tongue. Not trash. Always someone yammering: So I slug im, right, he’s shittin his pants, right, an so’s the other one, right, relating the wreckage of his odyssey in leftover language, a warrior without a war … yeah an I’m on her an she farts so I says, hey cow, are you shittin or fuckin, bitch … I says to him, I go, an I walk out, I tell ya …
And sometimes they fought. I surprised myself. The night Hippo kept goading me on. Why ya by yerself … you a homo? Yeah. Yer a disgustin moron! Hippo told me, obviously proud of his putdown, beaming around at the others. Cut it out, Vulture said, you know Mr. Jasuda doesn’t like scuffles … he ain’t here, said Hippo, slamming a branch into the fire. Then he yanked it out. Reminded me of the sheepherder. I whimpered, I’d almost forgot. Listen to him, whinin like a dog … are you a dog, you stinky-ass hobo? … Hippo gave me a shove. I fell into the fire on my knees, but then, getting up, the words tumbled out of me … shut your fuckin face or I’ll kill you, I’ll chop alla you into little bits, an as for you, you piece a shit, I’ll skin you alive an carve you like a goose … I kicked him, he wasn’t expecting it … Vulture stood up … suddenly I saw it all, the fire and the shadows, said: People, forgive me, I was asleep, he woke me up … yeah, he provoked cha, I saw it, said Vulture … shake hands, you’re buddies now … we shook.
To Vulture, Jasuda was a god … and one day when I made a few disrespectful remarks, Stick … he was a little younger than me and one of his legs was shorter from some botched operation, so he walked with a cane, ergo the nickname … turned to me and said: Better watch what cha say, the old man works for Jasuda. Never know what might happen to ya! An … he took me aside, the old man’s got a flintstick under a board out in the shack, Jasuda gave the okay, so watch it. I took what he said seriously, I’d met a pretty wide variety of bosses and their methods of enforcing obedience were all the same, the only difference was context, the most dangerous fucks’re the ones who get off on their power … only the next day Vulture said the same thing about Stick … I decided to believe them both and kept my trap shut. After all, they’d probably saved my life, and did it like it was nothing, didn’t feel the need to talk about it. If they hadn’t taken me in, as a matter of course, without any bullshit or questions, I most likely would’ve gone down the first few days I was there. And not the way I wanted to, either.
Stick showed me where not to step. Stay away from the brown stuff, sticks to your soles, an don’t ever step in those pools. Saw this one old bag fall in … Stick shuddered … glad it wasn’t my granny … there were a lot of old people there at the Dump.
Among the machines, among their skeletons, I found a heavy iron lever, dragged it back to the barrels … lifted it every day. As the sun warmed up, I established a sort of daily routine. The only thing I wouldn’t interrupt was my dreams, when images, words, and sentences emerged. I didn’t move much then. Other times, though, the rhythm of the images forced me to walk around. I even went without water one day.
The Spinach Bar was still in my brain, that was where I’d spoken to her, that was where my love was, let her be a whore, let her be a single slit in the body of a whore, but let her be, let her be mine, I realized if I picked up and left it would only be to find her, because there was still hope … the images were also of all the trips I’d made by train, wherever, luggage swaying in the nets overhead, someone else’s … and I supplemented my dreams. The magazines took up a lot of my time. I took my world from their pages too. Sometimes I had to peel all kinds of sticky stuff off of them.
One had photos I guess from some movie. Showed a kid standing there with a T-shirt on that said “Give me freedom or give me death.” He was facing down a tank. Two meters away. Surrounded by pagodas with dragons all over em, some square, probly Asia. From the blur of the tank, the motion, it was obvious the crew’d made up their minds, the kid was gettin the latter. It got to me for a minute. Ah, it’s just a movie, I waved it off.
The ads and photos got me going … I even recalled that first appointment with Micka, at the Tchibo coffee shop, I know a lot of ordinary stuff happened to people close to me that day. Like always. I added one more exercise to my routine, preserving words and sentences, writing them under each other. Sometimes they were connected. But the point was that it gave me material for my dreams, I didn’t have to fumble around in my memory anymore … in that cellar of mine, I had it down on paper.
I filled in empty spaces on magazine pages, the ones where there weren’t photos. Got a ballpoint pen from Stick for my Mickey M. T-shirt, the one from the Mission. There were plenty of threads around. Plus Stick had a thing for Mickey. On the side of the pen was some ballerina or dancer, when you turned it upside down her skirt came off … Stick told me he used to masturbate to it, then it got old and he found some porn.
While I wrote I thought a lot about Sister and the attic. This is my Firewater, I’d think to myself as I braked time with my writing, making it mine alone … it was like a drug.
I tried to give a name to what mattered to me. It would exist more then, I felt. Even if just in my memory. What I’d lost. That was all I lived for anyway. It didn’t seem right to avoid cruelty and hunger.
Hey, Bog, it’s mine … I’ve got it in my coat pocket. You need yellow wind, people as they are, pigeons that peck meat, you’ve got Jasuda an pits, cold rain an barbwire, I guess that’s what makes the world go round, fine, I’ve got my time grenades, the worst they can do is blow my head off. These were the tales I put in my pocket:
Old Words
Today he sleeps under his dream can’t bear it anymore. He’s afraid
of truck wheels mounds of gravel animals the knife sickness.
But he’s in her he’s with her
they’re together they’ll protect each other.
Strong feelings. And he’s battling in the arena
for his grandpas in the crematorium too.
It was B. that dragged em out on the ramp.
How did it happen? Were they too weak?
Let me be a Hun be a Devil-killer
he says to himself.
Sometime later Sister lifts herself up on her elbows
and says: Hey it’s light out!
And it is. It’s day, night is done. That’s the thing
anyone can see.
A day with people like any other and if it’s summer
something’s growing. It’s January
and still the same old dirty
street of whores. Trade. That’s all there is here now.
And maybe the whole city’ll change in the night
like a brain written off by a dose.
Just to be safe he’s relearning
quickly the old words of love.
Firewater
My sister is Firewater
I tell her: honey
she tells me: tenderness
and we tell each other: I love you.
And we drink Firewater.
Today the moon protects me from danger
at the head of my sister.
I’ll swim in the water
in the power of fire till morning I get up
and clear out
through the dark hallway by memory down from the top floor.
My sister is Firewater
she’s got messy hair and in the morning she says: go to work
I think: I take what I want and give what I can
and we tell each other: I love you.
The moon blazes and the two of us’re here in the Firewater night
skin on skin. And everything
is important. Sister. Now, at night.
You’re next to me in my dream
and after. Sound of breathing and touch of a fingernail
to the rhythm of blood in my brain. You.
Be with me. Closer still. My Firewater.
“Now go in peace”
the man in the cassock told the crowd
of Christmas people below.
Now I can see you every night.
I saw the words: Freedom or death.
I made them up. They’re Sister’s.
& the Ghost strode up the stairs toward me
I got a cramp in the elevator down
in my guts.
I’m thoroughly awed
brother
life.
Hey- I say
An my life’s like ABC. I don’t do a thing
I organize verbal matter
just what my cells tell me.
Singed brain.
My mafia.
I said: freedom or death.
I wanted and searched. And now I know they’re Sister’s.
I sleep with em. In the same flat. In this smallish sorta room.
He’s There
I slash my back
so I’ll know that it’s me.
If it hurts he’s not an actor
stride altered by band-aids.
On the riverbank were trees
dampness settling into their tops
now there’s just a hole.
Is this still the same city the walls
and streets my turf? Would I tell
him myself the child Hi Take care Good night
pass him by standing there
key around his neck in a raggedy sweater
with a puppy? Would I bring him home? Or
is that brat still there?
An are pedestrians passin him by? Nasty faces? Yes.
He’s still standin there and he’s alone. He’s lost. His feet burning
over and over through that same that one that fiendish block of asphalt.
Into the City
On a sleepless night
sometimes faces swim in the dark
here and there one pops out
someone you used to know.
Then they all disappear with the morning trams.
Every madman knows how that is.
So tonight again in this home
full of Czechs in their in our
very own genuine state.
I guess it’s better than bombing
definitely.
Sleep you don’t gotta die you do you say to yourself it says softly
into your brain. But even that isn’t for sure.
Shadows shift slowly along the walls and the moon’s been there
for hours now. It’s like past lives.
If you went into the city
you would feel it with all its shards.
That can be managed.
Here and there in the wind
a trash can creaks like a living thing.
Another Story
