ANGELSPIES
“What is depression?” Steve asked.
“Depression is indecision,’ Angel said.
“No,” said Steve. “I can’t see it.”
“Depression is indecision,” Angel said.
“Depression is repetition,” Steve countered.
“Depression is indecision,” Angel said.
“Hmmm. I don’t know. Convince me.”
“Indecision is depression,” Angel said.
“Inversion is depression,” Steve ventured.
“Inversion is decision,” Angel corrected.
“Has monsieur made a decision?” the waiter asked at last.
“Monsieur is depressed,” Angel explained. “Monsieur is depressed,” Angel repeated. “Monsieur is depressed,” Angel concluded.
“Monsieur?” The waiter waited. “Monsieur?” He cleared his throat. “Monsieur…? Monsieur…? Monsieur…”
(Inside, Monsieur had decided not to decide. It was all repetition, all of it, in any case. Why decide? What is there to decide? There are no real decisions to be made, he suspected, because there are no real questions.
Inside, Monsieur suspected many things. He suspected the waiter was not French. He suspected the waiter was not a waiter. He suspected the waiter worked for MI5. He suspected Angel worked for the waiter. And he, Steve, worked for Angel, he suspected. He suspected his name was not Steve.
Is decision depression? he wondered. He suspected so. He suspected he was not depressed as long as he merely suspected.
Besides, what could anyone decide? Nothing was ever truly decided. It was all one bottlenecked, funneling crush into the Great Indecision.
No, no. He would simply sit there. He had decided. He was done. No one could make him decide.)
“Water, please. Still,” Steve said automatically.
KAMCHATKA
We didn’t know what it was the collarbone of, so we asked Lev. There was gristle in his past, we had long suspected. Spleen. Blood. Ax. Tibor and I had agreed before Lev arrived that between us we could remember our esteemed colleague having gone squirrel hunting twice.
So?
Where did you get it? Lev said, not bothering to look up from his bottle of Kamchatka.
Doesn’t matter, I said, choking a little on a too quick swig from my own.
Lev veered off subject, as was his wont, noting wistfully that Kamchatka had been Ohio’s number one seller the previous year.
Really? You mean vodka? I asked.
Liquor, he said.
Volume?
Total sales.
Huh.
This got me thinking, daydreaming, really, about a desert place whose natives, a gritty autochthonous folk, seasonal nomads, perhaps, surrounded by encroaching sedentary agriculturalists, subsisted on a foul crumbly acrid donkey cheese, unleavened bread, prepared from flour acquired through trade and pillage in equal measure, and the blood and bile of great docile sand lizards, domesticated for generations, into the dark far past, well beyond the clutching outstretched arm of communal memory. The flesh of these bloated scaled beasts they would, of course, not eat.
Their bandoliers, I noted, were, to a woman, strung with at least two hotel sampler bottles of Kamchatka, dangling by lizard sinew thongs from lengths of tanned and oiled lizard hide. Here was fashion, drunk on belts of war. In the tang of sweat running down ribcage and thigh, I was sure I’d momentarily caught that El Dorado of field research scents, the junior scholar’s first whiff of polyandry.
My adoptive people had just begun to usher me, rather roughly I thought, into the reptile skin shelter of their leader, when the moronic boom of Tibor’s hectoring voice broke my reverie.
So? What the fuck is it the collarbone of, Lev?
Could be the Ass, Lev said, and, we thought, he meant it.
PERMANENT BISMARCK
“How can it be earlier now than it was before?” I ask my companion.
Franz seems disinterested. A smirk swells over his rubicund, indolent face and settles into a runnel of grease and spittle cresting the gentle rise of his lower lip on the left and down his neck, that side still limp from the Novocain. He has been to the dentist.
Franz is German. I too am German. We are all Germans here. Time and the telling of time are important to us. One must be vigilant. Always there is the threat of things coming loose and falling into disarray. His disinterest is an affront to our common bond.
He knows all this; hence, perhaps, the smirk. But I am in no mood for smirking. I must, therefore, of course, point out his error, note that this will not do, and so I begin, “Franz, this will not…”
“You know,” Franz begins dreamily, focusing on nothing, perhaps, or if on something, then on something just over my left shoulder, “I was looking out the window just now, the one behind you, out onto the garden and through the trees to the hinterland beyond, when out of the sky over the copse a pig descended into the fields beyond, the fields, as I say, and open valleys of the hinterland.”
After a moment, during which he seems to be weighing a curiously heavy question, Franz adds, “A pig, yes, I’m sure. Attached to a chute, a parachute, you see. Hmm.”
Another silence, then Franz again, “This duck is greasy, but pretty good, all in all. I suspect some tea is called for now, for balance, you know, something medium-bodied. An oolong, perhaps, at this point, I would guess. I’m not sure, could an oolong be said to possess a medium body? Do you have any oolong?”
“No. No I don’t, and furthermore…”
“No? I thought you might. Oh well, a Yorkshire blend will substitute nicely. It’s strong, but we can do a quick steep, keep the bitter at bay, as it were. Do you have any Yorkshire?”
Thoughts of York or of shires, of fermented teas, perhaps, fowl of the land or beast of the air, have, for the moment, suspended Franz in reverie.
I pause again, then firmly, slowly, return, “Furthermore, there can be no pigs descending, no pigs dangling from ripcords buffeted to and fro overhead, no pigs from above in the fields or in the valleys or the lands beyond the woods, you see. All that is nonsense. What I want to know is how it can be…”
“No, you're right of course, Yorkshire is too strong. Let us compromise on Lapsang souchon, shall we?”
“How,” I counter, out of a sense of duty, knowing it’s no use, “can it be 1500 hours now, when it was 1630 twenty minutes ago?”
Franz seems to startle awake. “When did you start using military time?” He is genuinely puzzled.
“Military? I don’t know, did I? I thought it rather continental, European, you see.”
“No, no, it had something martial about it, like in the American movies. And when for that matter did you start speaking in English?”
“You’re speaking it too,” I point out, not so surprised at first, then suddenly very surprised, not least by the fact that I wasn’t at first so surprised.
“Like in the American movies? Hmm,” I say, trailing off. Franz too seems suddenly ill at ease.
“Of course,” I continue haltingly, but eager all the same to establish the breadth and soundness of my learning, “Subtitles are of the nobility, you know, just like, uh, titles. The Americans prefer to…”
“Have we been speaking English all afternoon? I mean, I didn’t even know I knew English,” he says in a tone suddenly of this world and at a pace that his left jowl can’t quite match.
LACANIANA
This shirt does not have a bellybutton button.
Should it?
I don’t know.
Do you mean to say, this shirt does not have a bellybutton?
Yes, of course I mean to say that. I also mean to say what I said.
Of course. Pardon.
Of course.
To sum up, then?
To sum up, then, this shirt has neither bellybutton nor bellybutton button.
And this hurts?
Aches.
How so?
For want of it.
Of what? Not to put too fine a point on it.
Not to put too fine a point on it, a button.
For want of a button, then. Or a bellybutton.
And a bellybutton, yes.
As a ghost aches, perhaps? A limb, that is, perhaps?
Yes, as a ghost limb aches, perhaps.
Thus beginneth the passage of the flesh, they say. At severance. At birth.
Of the flesh, yes, and all things of the flesh, thus, severed, at birth, beginneth the passage.
The passage and the passing, thus, yes?
Thus, thus, the passage and the passing, thus, as you say, yes, yes…