the eclipse
Novelists do not find it difficult to extrapolate; phenomenological reality is dependent on a tidy set of facts. Vladimir Nabokov was inspired to create Humbert Humbert after reading of a caged ape in the Jardin des Plantes who, when given drawing implements, sketched only bars. (The first little throb of Lolita went through me late in 1939 or early in 1940, in Paris...) Context established, the ape’s nature and state were revealed by its pen. Men are no different. The bars my brother knew -- upholstered, lit by neon -- were just as much the stuff of cages as those in the Jardin des Plantes.
I met Rita, another bereaved sister, who - in a charming Nabokovian twist - shares my birthday. Rita lives in North Carolina, a place of fox-hunts, copperheads, corn mazes. "My grandfather never left this state. Had no desire. My father begged his father to let him fly him back to Texas with us when we lived there. No such deal. I remember my grandfather saying that he never lost a thing in Texas. That’s just the way people are around here. Not too concerned with the outside world. Maybe that’s called contentment." Twenty years earlier, her sister Ann committed suicide. A week after my brother’s body was found, her other sister Kim -- the mother of a 12-year-old boy and also a devoted wife -- died at 42 of a cerebral hemorrhage whilst living in Portugal. "I totally lost the month of November. Seems like a blur. I want my sister back and that’s all - no explanations, no empty stupid words from people who have no idea of the pain I’m in." She wrote in great, starved gulps, a stranger to her husband, and increasingly alienated from herself. "At first I wanted to die to be with her and it scared me. One day I was driving and thought how great it would be to drive my car straight into a tree."
the pure weight of the heart
"William: [stubbing his cigarette out on his butter plate] 'I could reverse the vasectomy, you know. We could have a little daughter. Calliope. Clytemnestra. Andromeda. Aria -- '"Angelica: [staring to his left] I'd rather die than bear your child, William.'
"William: [cooing] 'Lovely pale pink nursery. Nabokovian pink. Little cutie smiling away at me in her cot. With my profundity and your verbal celerity. A little daughter I could dandle on my knee. She'd grow up to be the president of the United States, Angelica. She could arrange for my face to be on the one dollar stamp.'
"Angelica: [shaking a cigarette from his packet and lighting it] 'They say that fifty per cent of heavy smokers are killed by their habit. Which gives you a one in two chance, William. It's an ugly death, but it would stop you talking. I could study patterns in star clusters while you lay beside me, breathing from a hole in your throat.'
"William: [gazing at her admiringly through smoke] 'Every time I look at you I think the same thing, which is Jesus.'
"Angelica: 'That's uncharacteristically sweet of you, darling.'"
"She suddenly raised an index finger. Speak, memory!"
"William presented the sleek black-bound galleys of Juanita Dark to me with trembling hands. An ugly row. I believe I aimed the atlas at his head and knocked him out. On regaining consciousness, he clutched at the heels of my slippers: 'If I use people's lives in my -- in my writing, I'm just using my own, which is the only one I've got... and if I use you, my darling, it's because whether you like it or not, you're part of my life. No-one can control the slant things take on the page; I can't apologize for the ugliness you see in the world I create. I love you, darling! I love you!' And here he began to sob so horribly that I could not but pity him. The book was to be the usual financial success, but I knew that no matter how hysterically he posed by his typewriter (index finger glued to pumping temple, eyes ravaged, chewed thumb cupping jaw), he had trouble mustering beauty. It eluded him, dissolved before his scrutiny. His paragraphs were inadequate bars, he could not lure it. Ultimately, his vicious sensibilities were those of a thriller writer. And more than anything else, this killed him. He knew in his heart that his work was substandard."
- Many thanks to Mr. Slam for the reference and for providing the quotes.
- More information on Antonella Gambotto.
- Both works are available via Broken Ankle Books.
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