"3a22c021-2404-4425-8909-f885d0d888cb"@en . "CONTENTdm"@en . "Prism international 21:4 / Summer 1983"@en . "http://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?bid=1215619"@en . "Prism international"@en . "Prism international"@en . "2015-08-10"@en . "1983-07"@en . "https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/prism/items/1.0135338/source.json"@en . "96 Pages, 1 sheet"@en . "application/pdf"@en . " '^^ o JUL\ninternational BRIAN BURKE\nEditor-in-chief\nDAVID CORCORAN\nManaging Editor\nJ.E. SORRELL\nPoetry Editor\nRICHARD PAYNE\nDrama Editor\nBRIAN BURKE\nFiction Editor\nWINONA KENT\nBusiness Manager\nLIDIA A. WOLANSKYJ\nCopy Editor\nGEORGE MCWHIRTER\nAdvisory Editor\nEditorial Board\nEVA GRAATEN\nGENNI GUNN\nANNE HENDERSON\nBILL HURST\nWINONA KENT\nJUDY MCGILLIVARY\nRICHARD STEVENSON\nLIDIA A. WOLANSKYJ\n\"VI\njVU international\nA QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF\nCONTEMPORARY WRITING PRISM international, a journal of contemporary writing, is published four times per year\nat the Department of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver,\nB.C. v6t IW5. Microfilm editions are available from Xerox University Microfilms, Ann\nArbor, Michigan, and reprints from the Kraus Reprint Corporation, New York, N.Y.\nContents copyright e ,983 PRISM international for the authors.\nCover design and artwork: Derrick Clinton Carter.\nOne year individual subscriptions $10.00, two-year subscriptions $16.00. Libraries and\ninstitution subscriptions $14.00, two-year subscriptions $20.00. Sample copy $4.00\nAll manuscripts should be sent to the Editiors at the above address. Manuscripts must be\naccompanied by a self-addressed envelope with Canadian stamps or international reply\ncoupons. Manuscripts with insufficient return postage will be held for six months and then\ndiscarded.\nPayment to contributors is $15.00 per page and a subscription. PRISM international\npurchases First N. A. Serial Rights only.\nOur gratitude to the Canada Council, Dean Will and the University of British Columbia.\nAlso financially assisted by the Government of British Columbia through the British\nColumbia Cultural Fund and Lottery Revenues, and by the Leon and Thea Koerner\nFoundation.\nSecond Class Mail Registration No. 5496. July 1983 CONTENTS\nVOLUME TWENTY-ONE NUMBER FOUR SUMMER 1983\nJosef Skvorecky\nA n Insolvable Problem of Genetics\n7\nIvan Klima\nKlara and Two Men\n11\nJaan Kaplinski\nTwo Poems\n39\nOsip Mandelstam\nPoem\n4'\nMarianne Andrea\nPoem\n42\nCyril Dabydeen\nTwo Poems\n43\nRienzi Crusz\nPoem\n47\nLorna Goodison\nPoem\n48\nEarl McKenzie\nPoem\n49\nDavid Kranes\nHunt Imagines Himself\n50\nichael C. Kenyon\nPoem\n64\nMaggie Helwig\nThree Poems\n66\nTim Lilburn\nPoem\n69\nEmily Sion\nPoem\n70\nPeter Sears\nPoem\n7i\nA SELECTION OF WRITING BY B.C. HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS\nMarie Delia Mattia\nRhonda L. Anderson\nRoger Kuypers\nLinda Carpenter\nAndrea Lupini\nNicola Clur\nLesley Brook\nChristopher Mark Brown\nTwo Poems\n72\nPoem\n74\nThe Scar\n75\nTwo Poems\n78\nGrandmother's Story\n80\nPoem\n81\nPoem\n82\nThe Persecution of Mr. White\n83 Josef Skvorecky\nAn Insolvable Problem\nof Genetics\n[ From the secret diary of Vasil Kratky,\na third-grade student at the Leonid\nBrezhnev High School in K.]\nWhile offering a brotherly hand to many nations, our fatherland also\nharbours a certain number of dark-skinned African students; some of\nthese undergo preparatory courses in the Czech language in our town.\nLater they land the good name of our nation far beyond the borders of\nour country, but my brother Adolf lost his lifelong happiness because of\ntheir overly friendly attitude towards the population.\nThis is how it happened: for two long years Adolf was secretly in love\nwith the movie star Jana Brejchova and wrote her more than two hundred letters during this time. The interest shown by the film celebrity\nwas not in the least comparable to my brother's effort, and so Adolf began to pursue Freddie Mourek, whose skinny figure and seemly features\nresembled somewhat those of the aforementioned actress.\nThe parents welcomed his decision because Freddie, as the illegitimate daughter of the Secretary of the Party cell at the Lentex linen factory in K., came from a family with an excellent class profile. Nothing\nbut a single flaw disturbed the great impression made by Adolf's girlfriend on our family, and that was her given name. One day while at our\nhouse, Freddie, to the accompaniment of Adolf's bass guitar, sang a certain loud song in a foreign language. To my father's uneasy inquiry concerning the origins of the song she answered that it was a black American song, whose lyrics protested against discrimination. Father applauded, then extolled briefly the black struggle for equality; then he quite\nsuddenly became very angry, and turning dark red, he began to curse\nthe South African racists. Mother also became angry, and in the resulting friendly atmosphere Father asked Freddie why a girl as thoroughly\nprogressive and an activist of the Young Communist League, would call\nherself by a name apparently of English origin. At that Freddie blushed and said that she could now reveal to them the\nsecret of her name because she had just agreed with Adolf to enter into\nwedlock in a civil ceremony prior to the final matriculation examinations. Father was very heartened by the news as he happens to favour\nearly nuptials for youths finding themselves in their reproductive years,\nsince these are called for by the appropriate authorities in an attempt to\nprevent population decrease. He then encouraged Freddie to reveal her\nsecret without delay. \"My name\", she said, \"I inherited from my father.\nHe was a certain Frederick Positive Wasserman Brown, a migrant\nworker from South Carolina, who as a member of General Georgie Pat-\nton's Third U.S. Army seduced my mummy in Pilsen, and then had\nhimself transferred to the Far East.\" \"An American?\" Father recoiled and\nturned gloomy. Then he partially recovered: \"A migrant worker?\" and\nFreddie, attempting to aid the complete recovery of my father who had\nearlier lauded so eagerly the heroic struggle of the coloured people,\nquickly added: \"Yes. And besides my father was black.\" Against all expectations Father's gloom became permanent.\nIn the following days he began to bring home from the People's\nMunicipal Library books of a certain Lysenko; unable to find in them a\nsatisfactory answer to what he was looking for, he borrowed a volume of\nthe friar Mendel with pictures of various types of peas, white, gray, and\nblack ones. He studied those very diligently, and later when Freddie\nagain sang at our house negro songs in a foreign language, he asked:\n\"Listen, girl, that father of yours, was he a very black black, or was he of\na lighter hue?\" \"Very black,\" said Freddie, who herself is very white, but\nhas eyes which are very black, large and very beautiful. \"So black that\nduring the war they used him in reconnaissance, when, completely naked he would in the darkest night penetrate through the German lines,\nsince he was completely invisible.\" And Father turned once again\ngloomy and said no more.\nHowever, that evening he advised Adolf to break off without delay\nhis relationship with the black man's daughter. Adolf resisted: \"I'm not a\nracist!\" \"Neither am I,\" replied Father. \"If Freddie were a dark skinned\ngirl I would welcome her as a daughter-in-law, because the union with\nan obvious member of an elsewhere persecuted race would doubtless\neven further enhance the class profile of our family. But she is white.\nThere arises the danger, that on the basis of the reactionary laws determined by the friar Mendel, she will bear you a black child, and there will\nbe a scandal!\" \"What scandal? Black or white, it's all the same,\" Adolf re-\njoindered, and Father explained: \"Nobody will believe that this black\nchild is really yours. Everybody will think that it is the result of the efforts of our guests, the African students, and in that sense they will also\nslander your wife.\" And he concluded: \"Which is why you will break off\nthe relationship before it is too late.\"\nAdolf turned crimson and ponderous. Then he said: \"It is already too late. It is impossible to break off the relationship.\" A deadly silence\nprevailed, interrupted only by Mother's moaning and Father's fidgeting.\nFrom that day on, Adolf also started to carefully study the writings of the\nfriar Mendel.\nNo doubt it was too late; it was, I imagine, because Adolf loved Freddie much more than he had ever loved Jana Brejcova, although he\nalmost never sent her any letters. Freddie's mother, the textile worker\nand Party Secretary, was invited to our house, and I, hidden behind the\nlarge portrait of the Statesman, which conceals the hole where Grandfather's wall safe used to stand, overhead Mother emphasizing the terribly tender age of both the children and asking the esteemed Secretary's\nconsent to apply to some sort of a committee in the matter of an absorption (or something that sounded like that). I really could not understand\nwhy the Comrade Mother (Mrs. Mourek) got upset to the point of refusing to co-operate with the committee, slammed the door and left, when\non other occasions, as a class-conscious woman, she had always shown\nfull confidence in committees, councils, and organs of all kinds.\nIt did not end there: the Comrade Secretary of the Party Cell at the\nLentex Linen factory in K. provided us with a further unexpected surprise. Soon after, when Father, Mother, my older sister Margaret, and\neven Adolf himself began spreading all around town that the father of\nFreddie was the migrant black Frederick Positive Wasserman Brown,\nand at the same time introducing the people to the laws of heredity according to which a completely white person can give birth to a black\nchild thanks to the genes of its progenitor (in order to preventively protect the reputation of Freddie in case of a child with other than Czech\ncolouring), Comrade Mourek appeared again, and her squealing voice\ncould be heard from the parlour, expressing herself to the effect that\nFather, Mother, Margaret, and Adolf were giving the girl (meaning\nFreddie) a bad name around town and causing trouble, of which she\n(Comrad Mourek) had had more than her fill throughout her life, the\nresult of some youthful transgression. And although Father, having\nalertly declared himself the enemy of bourgeois morality, began to explain to her his intentions, he failed nonetheless.\nAs concerns Adolf, he deteriorated visibly, until finally he spoke about\nnothing else but the friar Mendel. This aroused the suspicion of the\nPrincipal of the high school, Comrade Pavel Behavka who for several\nSundays carefully observed from his table at the Cafe Beranek the\nentrance to the Catholic church in the town square, (adding to his surveillance later on also the chapel of the Czech Protestants, and that of the\nCzech Evangelical Brethen), to find out whether Adolf, as a result of\nbeing converted to the obscurantist faith of the friars, visited the services. He did not, but being psychologically uprooted, he would acquaint everyone at any occasion, even completely strange comrades,\nwith the secret of the background of his fiancee Freddie, as well as with the laws of genetics. Finally, after a large number of arguments, fights,\nand confrontations, Freddie one day broke up with him. To the accompaniment of his bass guitar they sang together for the last time the\nprotest song \"Get Me a New Dolly, Molly!\" and then she declared (I\noverheard it secretly, hidden behind the portrait of the Statesman):\n\"Your indiscretion is getting on my nerves, and I don't intend to put up\nwith it any longer. Also, I would like you to know that I haven't told you\neverything: for your information, the mother of my father Frederick\nPositive Wasserman Brown was Japanese, his grandfather, who was\nbrought over from Africa as a slave in chains, was a Pygmy, which,\ncombined with the fact that my mother is one third a Jewish gypsy,\nleaves me with a very good chance of giving birth to a green dwarf,\nwhich your father will not be able to explain to the comrades with or\nwithout his Mendel. And it's Good-bye forever, my little imbecile!\"\nHaving said that, she left forever; and so my brother, deprived of his\nlife-long happiness by the presence of the African students, did not become a father.\nSomewhat later Freddie gave birth to twins: one is a boy and the other\na girl, and both are completely pink. However, about that phenomenon,\nMendel says nothing at all.\ntranslated from the Czech by Michal Schonberg\nEvery week a group of writers assembled in Prague to read satirical, farcical stories.\nThe texts shown to the censors differed, sometimes considerably, from the ones\nactually read aloud in the small theatre. \"An Insolvable Problem of Genetics\"\nwas one of a series written by JosefSkvorecky; a popular form in the sixties, called\n\"Text Appeals,\" it was one way of circumventing censorship.\n10 Ivan Klima\nKlara and Two Men\nKLARA's room. A couch, an arm-chair, three small tables, two of\nwhich have various cacti and a large agave growing on them. On\nthe other table a large radio, another radio on top of the wardrobe\nand a larger transistor set on the shelf above the couch. In the corner\na sink with a mirror above it and a shelf containing the usual toiletries. Next to it a small kitchen table with utensils and a hotplate.\nOn the wardrobe an empty bird cage. Another empty cage above the\nsink. A telephone next to the couch. In a corner a clothes stand.\nKLARA comes in, a bouquet in her hand,\nlows her in, looks around, goes to the agave.\nThe MAN fol-\nMAN: So this is the way you live.\nKLARA: Everyone looks at that first. (She takes a vase, fills it with water and\nputs the bouquet of flowers in it.) My favourite with the spiny\nleaves. But don't touch the blossom; if you rip one off, you'll\nnever again be happy. That's a superstition. Greek.\nMAN: Happiness isn't everything.\n(He takes off his coat.)\nKLARA: I like to be happy.\nMAN: Everyone wants to be happy. But what are you doing with so\nmany radios, Klara?\nKLARA: Got them all as presents. Something to remember them by.\nOr for Christmas. I like getting presents. There's nothing\nwrong with that, accepting presents, when they're given with\nlove. (The MAN goes through the room, stops in front of the empty\ncage.)\nI'd never do anything bad. (She goes to the smallest radio and\nturns it on. Soft music is heard.) That's my doorway to the\nworld. I don't like it when it's quiet. Don't you do that? In the\nmiddle of the night maybe \u00E2\u0080\u0094that's when it's quiet here.\nEverything always the same. I'm always the same too. Then\nI turn that on and maybe two men start yelling at each other\nin some kind of funny language. And then I can imagine the\ntwo men and the people who are applauding and the city\nwhere they all speak this funny language.\n(The MAN steps up to her.)\nMAN:\nYou're like a child, Klara. What about the cages?\nKLARA:\nSouvenirs \u00E2\u0080\u0094of a man. He made them.\nMAN:\nIf you knew what I know. I still have a lot to tell you. Does\nthe telephone work? (He lifts up the receiver, listens.) You\nnever told me you had a telephone.\nKLARA:\nNobody ever calls me.\nMAN:\nTo be happy.... That's like standing on the peak of a mountain and looking straight down and not getting dizzy. (He\nstops, lifts up the telephone, examines the bottom.) I've never\ntrusted these things. (He puts the telephone back down, looks\naround in the room, goes to the couch, sits down.) But for you that\ntoo is the world. (As if he suddenly thinks of it) Klara, we're\nfinally alone!\nKLARA:\nI don't like being alone.\nMAN:\nI like you Klara. I've never.... (He stands up, embraces her from\nbehind.) You're the most beautiful woman I've ever met.\n(KLARA kisses him, slips away.)\nKLARA:\nThat's just talk, all the men say that. Want a drink?\n(The MAN looks at the clock.)\ni\t\n12 MAN: Maybe we should... We're always just drinking. But today,\nKlara, today when we're finally alone together\t\nKLARA: I always like to drink.\n(She opens the wardrobe, in which another empty cage is visible,\nalong with a blanket, a roll of wire, a tape recorder, a man's lounge\njacket as well as a bottle of wine and glasses. She takes the bottle\nand pours two glasses.)\nAnd I'd also love to dance.\nMAN: Here?\nKLARA: We'll move the table out of the way.\n(She pushes the table off to the side, turns off the transistor radio,\nopens the wardrobe again, turns on the tape recorder. Soft music.)\nKLARA: When I'm dancing I'm happy. Why are you looking like\nthat?\nMAN: That woman in the dressing gown when we came in the\nhouse, what was she all about?\nKLARA: Just somebody. She lives here. Down on the first floor. I\ncan't know everybody who lives here.\nMAN: At midnight in a dressing gown in the hall.\nKLARA: She's always standing there. Most of the time in the\ndoorway. Maybe she's looking for someone out there. (She\nsits down in the armchair, pulls her knees up under her chin.) And\ntoday I want to be happy.\n(The MAN sits down on the edge of the couch, bends down to\nKLARA, takes her hand and pulls her to him.)\nMAN: Me too, Klara. And today I am. And today I will be. The\npalm of your hand is so beautiful, Klara! (He lets go of her\nhand. Bitterly) I can't stand it when someone spies on me.\nKLARA: So let's have a drink, and then.... But this music is no good.\n(She stands up, turns off the tape recorder, goes to the radio on the\n'3 wardrobe, tries to find some music.) It's been so long since I\ndanced... Something is always coming up.\nMAN:\n(Stubbornly) I don't feel like dancing. (He looks at the clock.)\nIt's midnight. What would the neighbours...\nKLARA:\nThey're sleeping.\nMAN:\n(Nervously) Now that we're finally here. You yourself were\ntalking about happiness. Now maybe we could actually be\nhappy. Not think about anything, only about us, about our\nlove. There's hardly ever a chance to not think about anything else.\nKLARA:\nAnd you don't have to? Right at this moment you don't have\nto?\nMAN:\nWhat are you driving at?\nKLARA:\nMen are always thinking about something. Even then. Why\nare you looking like that?\nMAN:\nI've imagined this moment over and over (He embraces\nher.)\nYou're so beautiful, Klara. Like \u00E2\u0080\u0094like \u00E2\u0080\u0094a flower. (He kisses\nher.) And the fragrance. Like \u00E2\u0080\u0094like \u00E2\u0080\u0094a flower. It's so hard to\nsay, but when I'm with you, it's like losing my senses.\n(The telephone rings. KLARA pulls herself away from the MAN,\npicks up the receiver.)\nKLARA:\nHello... Yes.'... I don't know, I'll ask. (She looks around.) I\nthink it's for you.\nMAN:\nFor me! But nobody knows that I'm here! (He picks up the\nphone.) Hello.... (Waits) There's nobody there. (Relieved)\nThere's just nobody there!\nKLARA:\nMaybe she hung up, since you took so long to think it over.\nMAN:\nShe? Was it a woman?\nKLARA:\nWho else would you expect to be calling now, at midnight?\ni\t\n14 MAN: Nobody knows that I'm here. Half an hour ago / didn't even\nknow that I would be here. I didn't even know\u00E2\u0080\u0094 (He stands\nup, walks nervously across the room to the empty cage.) \u00E2\u0080\u0094 that this\napartment existed. I didn't know the address. I still don't\nknow it.\nKLARA: Oh, don't worry about it. Maybe it wasn't even for you.\nMAN: And besides there was nobody there (He sits down again next to\nKLARA, embraces her. Stops.) But she did call. And at midnight too. Once in a while it's true.\nKLARA: .. .that someone calls up and asks for the man who happens to\nbe there. But men are often called to the phone. Even at\nnight. Because they have duties to perform. Even at night.\nMAN: But you said it was a woman.\nKLARA: But men do have wives. Even at night. Even when they don't\nhappen to be with them.\n( The MAN jumps up.)\nOh, don't get so excited. (Shepulls him to her.) I figure it this\nway. They have wives, right. Isn't it correct that men have\nwives and not husbands. Huh?\nMAN: I'm not saying that I don't have a wife. I've never tried to\nhide that from you, Klara. Nor the children, either.\nKLARA: Oh have a drink and don't think about it.\nMAN: But she can't \u00E2\u0080\u0094she can't possibly know\t\n(KLARA hands him a glass.)\nKLARA: Don't think about it anymore. You said you wanted to be\nhappy tonight. (She gets up, turns off the radio, turns on one of the\nothers, tries to find a different kind of music.) So you don't want to\ndance?\nMAN: No. Klara, I still must tell you how....\nKLARA: What the hell is wrong with you today? (She dances by herself to\nthe rhythm.) Or don't you like being here?\n'5 MAN:\nKlara!\nKLARA: (Stops) What?\n(The MAN gets up, embraces her.)\nMAN: I never would have dared to come here if I didn't like you.\nAnd as soon as I saw you for the first time \u00E2\u0080\u0094 (he kisses her)\nyou were like \u00E2\u0080\u0094like a miraculous vision.\nKLARA: It's too bad you don't want to dance. (Shegoes to the sink, takes\noff her sweater.) Then at least have a drink. But the music,\ndoesn't the music bother you? Wouldn't you like\u00E2\u0080\u0094 (she takes\nthe pitcher of water) a shot of coffee? One time I knew a guy we\nwent off together to....The city had such a funny name,\nsomething \"polis\". Down in Greece. And there was music in\nthe hotel till dawn, played on weird instruments, and there\nwe were making love in that heat, and on the floor lizards\nwere scurrying about. And sometimes in the middle of the\nnight we'd go down and start dancing. And behind the fences\nthe donkeys were screaming.\nMAN: And then you were happy?\nKLARA: I am always happy.\n(The MAN gets up.)\nMAN: Don't make any coffee, Klara. (He turns off the hotplate.) Some\nday I'll take you off somewhere, too. (He leads her to the couch.\nWith sudden desire\u00E2\u0080\u0094) We'll be together. (He looks around the\nroom.) Without these cages, and we'll always be together\nthere.\nKLARA: Keep on talking. I love to hear stuff like this. A room with\nocean view. There, after we'd finished making love, we ran\noutside, before it was really light, and the water was almost\nhot, and then once more right there in the sand we made\t\n(Stops) You probably think, I But that's only when I really\nlike somebody. (Stops) But it's right to make love when you\nreally like somebody.\nMAN: (Embarrassed) I think Love is something very beautiful,\nKlara. (Cold) Even if you shouldn't push it too far.\n16 KLARA: I would never do anything bad. That must be terrible, to\nwake up next to someone you no longer love, and act as if\nyou still do.\nMAN: What do you mean by that? (He pulls back from her) Sometimes, Klara, love also means to endure and make sacrifices\u00E2\u0080\u0094to stand by someone, who needs you. If you knew,\nwhat I know\t\nKLARA: But I don't know it. I don't know anything of that sort. I\ncould never stand it.\nVOICE: (Muffled behind the wall) Klara!\n(The MAN shudders in fright.)\n(Violently) Who is that calling you?\n(In pain) Klara.\nMAN:\nVOICE:\nKLARA\nDon't pay any attention to that. (She looks at the clock.) The\ndoctor is late...He should already have had his morphium.\nMAN: Who should have had his morphium?\nKLARA: Oh, a \u00E2\u0080\u0094a sick man. Don't pay any attention to him.\nHe \u00E2\u0080\u0094he's just living here still. And sometimes he calls me.\nWhen he needs something. But that won't last much longer.\nSoon he won't need anything, anymore.\nMAN: (Cool) Who won't need anything more soon?\nKLARA: We met each other once....He was very lonely. I loved him\nthen. But now....He doesn't know anything about us. That's\nwhen I brought him here. (She points at the wall.) But now he's\nonly waiting for the doctor to come to give him the shots.\nMAN: And you loved him?\nKLARA: It's a long time ago. Now I don't love him anymore. I haven't\nloved him for a long time. Now there's you.\nMAN: (Taken aback) Yes. Now there's me.\n'7 KLARA:\nThat's the way it should be, that you're there and not him,\nwhen I don't love him any more.\nMAN:\n(Taken aback) Yes that's the way it should be.\nKLARA:\nI always do what I should.\n( The MAN gets up, walks across the room, stops in front of the\nagave.)\nWatch out, don't touch the blossom!\nMAN:\nWhy not?\nKLARA:\nIf you do, you'll never again be happy.\nMAN:\n(Struggling; generous) If you don't He did call you.\nKLARA:\nIf you think\t\n(She gets up, goes out. The telephone rings. The MAN looks ner\nvously at the clock, goes to the phone, hesitates.)\nVOICE:\n(Then muted) Klara!\n(The phone keeps ringing. KLARA comes back in, goes to\nthe phone, picks up the receiver.)\nKLARA:\nKlara.... Yes....I'll call him. (To the MAN) It must be for\nyou.\n(She gives him the receiver, goes to the sink, fills a glass with water,\ngoes back out.)\nMAN:\nHello, who's there? Petr? I don't know any Petr, unless....\nBut you can't be that Petr. You don't know that I'm here.\nWait a minute, hold on....Hello, hello. Petr.... What's....\n(KLARA comes back.)\nKLARA:\nI brought him something to drink. But he already had eight\nof them at his bed anyhow.\n(The MAN hangs up.)\n^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^M\n18 MAN: Eight of what?\nKLARA: Glasses. So, did she talk with you?\nMAN: It wasn't a woman. Why did you bring him another one?\nKLARA: He called me Otherwise he'd keep on calling. A man?\nMAN; Somebody called Petr. Maybe he wanted something else.\nKLARA: What else could he have wanted? And did he want something important, this Petr?\nMAN: I don't know. What is he doing now? Is he sleeping?\nKLARA: Don't think about him! (Shepours him a glass.) Have a drink.\nHe just lives here now. And sometimes he calls. I'm already\nused to it. And bring him something to drink.\nMAN: But you can hear everything next door. The guy knows\neverything about us.\nKLARA: Don't worry. He's certainly not going to be telling anybody.\nHe won't be with us much longer. The doctor says so. But\ndrink up.\n(She takes a drink herself. The MAN too.)\nMAN: Don't yell so loud! He can hear everything.\n( KLARA snuggles up to him.)\nKLARA: Oh don't think about it. Think about something else.\nMAN: Anybody can talk. You have no idea, Klara, what kind of\nthings people can gossip about. We just shouldn't stay here.\nKLARA: You are talking about a house.\nMAN: (Decidedly) Yes. I'm going to take you away from this awful\nplace. Why the hell did he make these cages. Did he sell\nthem?\nKLARA: Those are his cages.\n'9 MAN:\nWhose cages?\nKLARA:\n(Points to the wall) His! Don't think about it.\nMAN:\nWhy are they empty?\nKLARA:\nHe bought birds, and then he let them free. He carried the\ncages to the window and said, \"Fly away!\"\nMAN:\nThat's what he said?\nKLARA:\nHe always said something like that. But don't think about it\nanymore. It's a long time ago. (She hands him the glass, gets up,\nturns off the large radio, turns on a transistor set, tries to find dance\nmusic.) Sure you don't want to dance? Listen to that great\nmusic.\n(The VOICE behind the wall coughs.)\nMAN:\nWhat's that?\nKLARA:\nHe coughs. Because of his smoking. Cancer. He smoked too\nmuch.\nMAN:\n(Softly) He has cancer?\nKLARA:\nYes\nMAN:\n(Softly) How can you yell so loud! He must hear every word!\nKLARA:\nHe knows it.\nMAN:\nThat's awful.\nKLARA:\nDon't think about it.\n(She hands him a glass. The MAN drinks.)\nMAN:\nWhat's his name?\nKLARA:\nDon't think about him. You don't seem to be able to not\nthink about things you're not supposed to be thinking about.\nMAN:\nNo, I've never been able to do that. Man does have a\nconscience, doesn't he?\n^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^M\n20 KLARA: Sometimes when he calls me it almost seems as if it's my own\nvoice. That I'm calling myself. Klara! So that I watch out for\nmyself or something. So that I just don't forget everything.\nAnd then I'm happy, very happy, that I hear this voice.\nMAN: Maybe I know him.\nKLARA: I always called him Leo.\nMAN: (Relieved) Leo...Leo.... And then what? (Amazed) Don't you\nknow the rest of his name?\nKLARA: Oh don't think about him anymore.\nMAN: Klara.\nKLARA: Yes? (The MAN is silent.) Don't think about him anymore.\nHe doesn't know anything, anyhow.\n(She strokes the MAN.)\nMAN: Klara Actually, I've been a fool. Finally I'm with you. I've\nwanted it so much for so long. (He kisses her.) I don't want to\nthink about anything else. Only about you. Why don't you\nsay something?\nKLARA: I'm listening to you. Isn't that right, that I'm listening to\nyou?\nMAN: When I saw you for the first time, Klara....\n(Doorbell in the corridor. The MAN freezes. KLARA gets up.)\nWhere are you going? Somebody rang the bell At this\ntime (Freezes) You're not going to open the door, I hope!\nKLARA: Suppose it's good news?\nMAN: Good news? At twelve-thirty in the night?\nKLARA: Maybe somebody in America just thought of me and is inviting me It's not twelve-thirty at night there.\n(The bell rings again.)\n21 MAN:\nDon't open it!\nKLARA:\nIt might be for you.\nMAN:\n(Startled) For me? But nobody has any idea\t\nKLARA:\nYou can't know who might have seen you.\nMAN:\nExactly ( The bell rings again.)\nKLARA:\nIt might be the doctor.\n(She goes out.\nThe MAN looks quickly around the room to see where he can hide,\ngoes to the clothes stand, stands behind it, notices that he's made a\nfool of himself, opens the wardrobe, takes out the cage, gets in the\nwardrobe, pushes the cage out a bit further, closes the wardrobe,\nopens it again, notices that the wardrobe doesn't have a floor, is\nsurprised at this, takes the cage, puts it on himself, climbs in the\nwardrobe like this and closes the wardrobe.\nKLARA comes back in.)\nKLARA:\nWhere are you?\n(The MAN steps out, moves the cage out of the way.)\nMAN:\nWho was that?\nKLARA:\nThe lady from before, when we came in. The one in the\ndressing gown in the hall.\nMAN:\nWhat did she want? Now at half past twelve?\nKLARA:\nShe asked if the doctor was here.\nMAN:\nWhy does she need the doctor?\nKLARA:\nMaybe she also wanted an injection like that.\nMAN:\nWhat kind of injection?\nKLARA:\nMorphium. Maybe she wanted him to give her a shot of\nmorphium.\n^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H\n22 MAN: But she can't get morphium if she \u00E2\u0080\u0094 if she doesn't have any\npain.\nKLARA: Maybe she has some kind of pain. That's not our problem.\nMAN: But that's impossible, if the injection was meant for the man\nin there. For the guy with the cancer.\nKLARA: So how come she waits every night for the doctor?\nMAN: But the doctor would \u00E2\u0080\u0094\nKLARA: Oh don't think about it.\nMAN: But you must know if the doctor gives the injections to the\nman in there.\nKLARA: Oh don't think about it. It's not your problem, nor mine\neither. (She sits down next to him, embraces him.) Don't think\nabout it anymore.\nMAN: Klara!\nKLARA: What?\nMAN: Nothing.... You're right, Klara. Won't she come back\nagain? Is anybody else coming?\nKLARA: No, not anymore. Don't think about them anymore. You\nwere saying, something about when you saw me for the first\ntime\t\nMAN: Right. Remember? It was in the train that time. When I saw\nyou in that blue dress, it was as if someone had touched me\nwith a piece of iron, of white-hot iron. And I couldn't think\nof anything else but you.\n( The phone rings.)\nKLARA: Just keep talking.\nMAN: How am I supposed to do that? Don't you hear the\ntelephone?\nKLARA: Oh, let it ring.\n23 MAN:\nLet it ring? Suppose somebody's calling me?\nKLARA:\n(Amazed) What?\nMAN:\nOr suppose it's good news for you.\nKLARA:\nYou never hear good news over the phone. Nobody ever calls\nme, anyhow.\n(The MAN holds his head. )\nMAN:\nAnd if it's the doctor?\nKLARA:\nWhat doctor?\nMAN:\nThe one for the injection for him in there.\nKLARA:\nHim? No, it's not him.\nMAN:\nHow can you know that it isn't? Pick up the phone!\n( KLARA reaches out for the phone.)\nKLARA:\nHello...Yes, I'll ask him She wants to know how long\nyou're going to stay here.\nMAN:\n(Explodes) Who wants to know that?\nKLARA:\nThe lady who keeps calling you.\nMAN:\n(Ripping the phone from her) Hello...Hello, who's there?\n(Exhausted) Hung up. Did she say who she was?\nKLARA:\nYes.\nMAN:\n(Relieved) What's her name?\nKLARA:\nI didn't catch the name. ( The MAN takes a glass, drinks.) Aren't\nyou going to go on talking? (The MAN is silent.) Should I\nturn off the light?\nMAN:\nYes...Or maybe you'd better not. Can you hear from next\ndoor? Can you hear everything?\ni\t\n24 KLARA: I don't know. You can go over. Then you can hear for yourself what you can hear.\nMAN: Go over? No. Not there. But you say, he \u00E2\u0080\u0094he really doesn't\nunderstand anything anymore?\n(KLARA gets up, turns on the floor lamp, turns off the big lamp,\nsteps to the window. She draws the curtain.)\nKLARA: Now's the time when the snakes and lizards slither about.\nMAN: Where?\nKLARA: Out there. In the fields and places. (She moves down next to the\nMAN, half-sitting, half-lying.) The snakes were slithering\naround the trees there And we danced till dawn...\nAnd then...It's a long time ago.\n(The MAN doesn't move.)\nMAN: Can't you turn off the phone somehow?\nKLARA: Sure.\n(She starts to pull the wire out of the wall.)\nMAN: Just leave it. (He looks at the clock) I don't suppose anybody\nelse... (Remembers) ...Maybe the doctor.\nKLARA: He won't come anymore.\nMAN: But you said he would come!\nKLARA: Not anymore. Probably he's already given himself the shot.\nMAN: What?\nKLARA: The morphium.\nMAN: But that's impossible. No doctor would do that!\nKLARA: Oh, don't think about it.\n25 (The MAN drinks.)\nMAN: How am I supposed to not think about it?...Klara!\nKLARA: What?\n(The MAN lays his head in her lap.)\nMAN: Klara, have you loved a lot of men?\nKLARA: A lot? Why do you think a lot? I'm not a...I just...If I\nstopped loving someone, I just didn't stay with him any\nlonger. That wouldn't be right, if you stay with someone you\ndon't love, you don't stay with someone you don't love.\nMAN: What about the ones you used to love?\nKLARA: I pray for them. To my God. In the evening, when I'm\nalone, I lay myself down\u00E2\u0080\u0094 (She lays herself down) and fold my\nhands, and I place my legs like this...Not crossed, like when\nyou sleep.\nMAN: (Amazed) Klara...\nKLARA: Dear Lord, Klara is alone again. Let her be happy, anyhow,\nher and the man she loved. May he find happiness, even now\nwhen she no longer may see him. And he looks down upon\nme, a nice, fat Lord with sandals and wishes us both happiness.\nMAN: And did you pray for him in there?\nKLARA: Yes, but that's a long time ago... (Softly) But it's not my\nfault, that...Don't think about him, anymore.\nMAN: Klara.\nKLARA: Yes?\nMAN: It's very good of you.\nKLARA: That I pray?\n26 MAN: That you've told me everything. It brings you so\u00E2\u0080\u0094 near to\nme...I love you.\nVOICE: Klara!\nMAN: (Almost desperate) I am here with you. (He kisses her.)\nVOICE: Klara!\n(The phone rings - The MAN jumps in fear.)\nMAN: Again!\nKLARA: What?\n(The phone rings.)\nVOICE: Klara, Klara....\nMAN: He's calling you from in there, and out here....\n(He points to the phone.)\nIt's probably for me again.\nKLARA: Would you like to go out for a moment?\nMAN: Go out?\nKLARA: Go in to him.\n( The phone rings.)\nMAN: To him?\nKLARA: He's calling.\nMAN: Yes, but you. I \u00E2\u0080\u0094I can't go in there.\n(He gets up.)\nKLARA: Sure you can.... At least you'll be able to hear what you can\nhear.\n27 (The phone keeps ringing.)\nMAN:\nBut suppose someone\t\n(He goes to the door, but stops on the threshold.)\nAnd this person, Klara? Suppose he \u00E2\u0080\u0094suppose he's afraid of\nme too?\nKLARA:\nHe's not afraid of you.\n(She reaches for the phone.)\nHe won't even see you. It's dark in there.\n( The MAN goes out. KLARA lifts the receiver.)\nHello Ah, yes, my God, my dear Lord, make it come to\npass, today your Klara makes an extra-special request that\nyou make it come to pass. Look down upon her and remem\nber how often you have already made it come to pass.\n(Waits) You're silent, God? You're angry? Lord, I see you!\nYour fat paw.... You tighten up your sandals and look at\nme. How I lie here and wait. It shall come to pass, God, you\nshall make it come to pass... Yes, now I hear you. I know,\nyou are making it come to pass, my little fat one.\n(She hangs up. The MAN comes back in.)\nMAN:\nKlara... This person is It's terrible. I think, he's dying.\nKLARA:\nWhat did he want?\nMAN:\nI don't know if I understood him correctly. He wanted wine\nor something. He was so hard to understand.\nKLARA:\nWire. He always wants wire.\nMAN:\nBut that's impossible! (Screams) Why wire?\nKLARA:\nOh don't think about it. Have a drink. (She fills his glass.) It's\nnot your problem. (The MAN empties his glass in one gulp.)\nMAN:\nKlara, my darling! You know that I love you.\ni\t\n28 KLARA: Yes, that's what you're always saying.\nMAN: (Softly) Why does this person need wire?\nKLARA: He wants me to wire him up, like this. (She shows him\nhow.) Probably he was once in prison and knows that if\nthere is wire all around, he won't be able to escape. And he\ndoesn't want to escape. He wants to stay here. Here. With\nme. And that's it \u00E2\u0080\u0094here. Now he'll want me to bring the dog.\nMAN: The dog?\nKLARA: They probably had dogs guarding them there.\nMAN: Where?\nKLARA: Don't think about it. Why is that all you think about?\nMAN: Klara, when was he locked up'\nKLARA: I don't know. I never asked him. Maybe in the war, maybe\nnow. Maybe in the war and now. I never asked him.\nMAN: But you said... You said that you loved him.\n(KLARA pours him a glass.)\nKLARA: Oh, don't think about it. I don't love him anymore.\nVOICE: Klara!\nMAN: He's calling you.\nKLARA: He wants you to bring him the wire.\nMAN: Me?\nKLARA: He asked you for it.\nMAN: But he's calling you]\nKLARA: He doesn't know your name.\n(The MAN gets up.)\n29 MAN:\nI'm not going.\n(KLARA gets up, opens the wardrobe, takes out the roll of wire.)\nBut you can't do it. It's crazy!\nKLARA:\nHe wants it. It used to be he didn't want it. Didn't even want\nto talk about it. But now, now he wants to stay here.\n(She goes out.)\nMAN:\nMaybe you'd better call a doctor! (He goes to the phone, thumbs\nthrough the phone book.) Emergency.... But I can't Or else\nI'd better.... (He goes to the clothes stand.) But I don't even\nknow the address. (He goes back to the couch, pours himself\nanother glass, drinks it. KLARA comes in.)\nKLARA:\nNow he wants the dog.\n( The MAN is silent. KLARA sits down next to him.)\nMAN:\nNo. But all this....\nKLARA:\nDon't think about it. You can't do anything about it. Me neither. I just took him in here, because he was so lonely.\nMAN:\nWhy was he locked up?\nKLARA:\nHow should I know why they lock people up? Maybe he did\nsomething. Or maybe not.\nMAN:\n(Desperately) But you loved him.\nKLARA:\nWe loved each other.\nMAN:\nAnd you mean you didn't even ask him...You must have\nasked him why they had locked him up!\nKLARA:\nWhy? We never talked about anything like that. (KLARA\nlays her head on his lap.) Now I feel so well with you. Look at\nme like before...So...Then I have the feeling that I really\ndon't exist. And I feel happy.\nVOICE:\nKlara!\ni\t\n30 MAN: Klara!\nKLARA: Yes?\nMAN: He's calling you!\nKLARA: Don't think about it now.\nMAN: (Desperately) He wants the dog!\nVOICE: Klara!\nMAN: (Desperately) But he'll keep on calling!\nKLARA: Don't listen.\nVOICE: Klara!\nMAN: But I can't stand it!\nKLARA: Then you'd better go and start barking.\nMAN: I should go and start barking.\nKLARA: He wants to hear dogs barking. He didn't used to want that.\nAs long as we loved each other. But now. So that he knows\nthat they're guarding him. That he's here and can't get away.\nGo and bark, go and bark.\nVOICE: Klara!\nKLARA: Okay, either you're going or you're not.\n( The MAN gets up, pours himself the rest of the bottle, and drinks\nit down.)\nMAN: Come and bark. Klara, I'm coming to you to bark!\nKLARA: Oh don't think about it.\nMAN: On all fours or standing?\nKLARA: He won't see you anyway. It's dark. He just wants to hear the\ndogs.\n31 MAN:\nOkay, I'm going, Klara.\n(He goes out. KLARA stretches, puts on different music \u00E2\u0080\u0094the\nMAN comes back.)\nMAN:\nIt's quiet here. It's awfully quiet here.\n(KLARA presses up to him, embraces him.)\nKLARA:\nDon't thinlcabout anything.\nMAN:\nI won't think about anything. You're right. I am with you.\nThat's the way it should be. Think about nothing. Only\nabout you. That you are beautiful. That I'm holding you in\nmy arms. That we are happy. (He stops, listens.) But I hear\nfootprints. Next door. There, where the man is lying.\nKLARA:\nDon't think about it. It's not our problem. It's a stranger, for\nGod's sake. Don't think about him. He just lives here. He\ndoesn't want anything. Just to stay here. So don't think about\nhim. You can't think about everybody.\nVOICE:\n(Full of terror) Klara This one time I... I\t\nKLARA:\nKiss me, hold me, tighter!\nVOICE:\nI... One last time... Klara!\nMAN:\n(Sits up) I can't go on.\n(KLARA gets up, straightens her hair.)\nVOICE:\nKlara No Don't leave me!\n(A falling body is heard.)\nMAN:\nWhat was that?\n(KLARA goes out. The MAN rushes to the clothes stand, and\nputs on his hat.)\nKLARA:\n(From the next room) Come here!\nMAN:\nWhere? Me?\n^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H\n32 KLARA: Come here!\nMAN: Did something happen?\nKLARA: Come here!\nMAN: But I....\n(He takes off his hat, hangs it back on the clothes rack, goes out,\ncomes right back with KLARA. Together they carry the dead man\nand lay him on the couch.)\nWe've got to get a doctor right away.\nMAN:\nKLARA:\nMAN:\nKLARA:\nWhy?\nBut the guy is (He goes to the sink, washes his hands.) The\nguy is dead.\nThe doctor said it would probably happen at night. (She takes\na blanket from the wardrobe and covers him up, but as if he were still\nalive.) He didn't say in which night.\nMAN: Okay Klara, then I'll.... Somebody has to come. A doctor.\nOr maybe even the police.\n(He goes to the phone.)\nKLARA: That time in the hotel when the music played all night, there\nwas a black-haired Greek\u00E2\u0080\u0094 (She takes the dead man's hands and\nlays them on the blanket.) He kept looking at me while I was\ndancing. He just sat at the table and looked. And then they\nstarted fighting. They really roughed each other up, both of\nthem, until the Greek broke his arm. Here. (She raises the dead\nman's arm and pushes his sleeves up a bit, looks at the scar.) With a\nknife. The blood came spurting out. Everything was white\nthere, walls and tables and chairs, covered with white\nleather. Later everything was covered with blood.\nMAN: You mean it was him, who was down there with you?\nKLARA: It was a long time ago.\nMAN: Klara, you've got to call somebody!\n33 KLARA:\nYes.\n(She goes to the phone.)\nMAN:\nI don't like the police. I can't stand these guys with uniforms.\nRight away they want to know who you are, what you're\ndoing here. And I'm\t\nKLARA:\nI'm not going to call the police.\nMAN:\nThey may come anyway. But you.... (Stops) But you \u00E2\u0080\u0094you\nwon't say that I was here when he \u00E2\u0080\u0094when it happened.\nKLARA:\nI won't call anybody.\nMAN:\nKlara, if, if they still happen to come, for God's sake don't\nmention that.... Christ I never should have.... As soon as I\nheard him calling, or the telephone, the first time it rang, I\nshould have gone. And waited until another time, somewhere else \u00E2\u0080\u0094where we could have made love, Klara, and it\nwould have been beautiful. Because I.... (Stops) What are\nyou going to do now?\nKLARA:\nCall up.\nMAN:\n(Hysterically) Where?\nKLARA:\nI don't know, probably the police.\n(The MAN rips the phone cable from the wall.)\nMAN:\nYou can't do that! Do you want to ruin me? And as for him,\nhe just simply died. Natural causes. The doctor, call the\ndoctor.\nKLARA:\nYes, I'll call the doctor.\nMAN:\nAnd I'll\u00E2\u0080\u0094 (He goes to the wardrobe, comes back, connects the cable\nagain.) Okay, call him up. Call him. Right now, while I'm\nhere.\nKLARA:\nYes.\n(The phone rings. KLARA answers.)\n^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^m\n34 KLARA: Hello... Yes... He's here, but he's already.... (To the MAN)\nIt's for him. (Shepoints to the corpse.) Would you like to take it\ninstead?\n(The MAN rips the cable from the wall.)\nMAN: (Cries) No, I don't! I don't know anything! I don't know the\nguy! You were his lover, not me. I am not here. I never was\nhere. I did not speak with anybody. I did not hear anybody.\n(KLARA plugs the cable back in.)\nKLARA: Doctor, in case you're still.... He's, he's already.... Yes.\nAlready.\n(She hangs up. The MAN moves back.)\nMAN: That was the doctor?\nKLARA: He didn't come this evening. When he saw that you were\nhere.\nMAN: He saw that I Did you say something to him? (Hegoes to\nthe window, pulls back the curtain slightly.) Or did he really see\nme? But I.... In any case he doesn't know my name. What's\nthe doctor's name?\n(KLARA goes to the dead man.)\nKLARA: He'll come now, in a little while. We've got to move him out\nof here.\nMAN: Okay, Klara, I (He goes to the wardrobe, puts on his coat.)\nYou must realize, Klara, that they can't find me here.\n(KLARA stands in front of the corpse.)\nKLARA: He loved to hear music and to dance. Back then\u00E2\u0080\u0094 (She turns\non the second transistor set, and lets another hit-tune play.) We were\nall happy. Back then I was Then it was all over.\nMAN: I still like you, Klara. More than you can imagine. But it's\nalready almost light. I've got to go home.\n35 (He goes to the vase, takes the bouquet, thinks it over, puts the\nbouquet back in the vase, goes to the door. KLARA goes to the\nlarge radio, turns it on. There is an excited dialogue between two\nmen in a completely foreign language, then applause.)\nKLARA: And back then, when he was fighting...\n( The MAN is waiting at the door.)\nMAN: Okay, Klara.\n(KLARA is standing in front of the corpse, does not turn\naround.)\nKLARA: I will pray for you.\nMAN: For me? (He shrugs his shoulders.) Okay, then goodbye,\nKlara. We'll meet again. And this doctor.... Klara, you were\nhere alone. He must not learn anything about me. (He tiptoes out.)\n(KLARA goes to the wardrobe, takes out the MAN'S lounge\njacket.)\nKLARA: And we loved each other.\n(She goes to the corpse, lifts him up, puts the jacket on him.)\nNow you're dressed for the occasion And back then you\njust had to call me, and we'd be lying there naked.\n(She lays the corpse back down, gets up.)\n(Amazed) It's so quiet here. So quiet.\n(She goes to the transistor set, turns it on \u00E2\u0080\u0094organ music and a\nprayer are playing.)\nAnd even then when we no longer loved each other....\n(She listens.)\nThis quiet....\n36 (She takes the tape recorder from the wardrobe, turns it on full\nvolume.)\nAnd even then when he called \"Klara\" it was as if the voice\ncame from me, that's the way it sounded to me. Sometimes I\nwaited for him, here in this quiet even when we no longer...\n( The phone rings.\nThe doorbell rings.)\n...no longer loved each other.\n(She goes to the agave, starts to break off the blossom, stops. Then\nshe takes the bouquet from the vase, goes to the corpse, lays the flowers on his chest, gets up.)\n(Screams) I can't stand this quiet! (Waits)\n( The phone rings. The doorbell rings. The radios play. The tape\nrecorder plays.)\nCan't stand it! Can't stand it!\n(She retreats to the arm chair, sits down, fold her hands.)\nMy God, my nice, fat Lord, make it come to pass, at least\nlook down upon your Klara today.... ( Waits) You are silent,\nGod?\n(She shakes her head.)\nI can't even see you. Today I can't even see you. Not even \u00E2\u0080\u0094\nNot even you are looking down upon me? But I want to \u00E2\u0080\u0094 I\nwant to be happy! (Waits)\n( The phone rings. The doorbell rings.)\nDon't let it be so still! Just one noise, one word.... (Waits)\n(She climbs on the chair.)\n(Forces out one after the other, as in ecstasy) Klara, Klara, Klara!\n37 ( The light goes out. Sudden stillness. Only the transistor set continues playing soft organ music.)\n(Softly) Klara.\n(She climbs down from the chair, crawls to the sink.)\nThis one time, the last time, one last time.... Just one word.\n(Screams) Klara, Klara! Don't leave me!\n(Complete darkness. The sound of flowing water.)\nCURTAIN\ntranslated from the Czech by Peter Stenberg\nand Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz\n38 Jaan Kaplinski/Tow Poems\nWhite clover asks nothing\nbut when they ask in whose name\nI will reply in the name of white clover\nonly bones and tin buckles remain after soldiers\nresin has eaten the crosses from the pines\nwhite white white clover\none stalk three leaves: Father Son Holy Ghost\ndark needles bark fluttering in the wind\ncrimson was the question green is the answer\ntranslated from the Estonian by the poet and Sam Hamill\n39 Everything is inside out, everything is different \u00E2\u0080\u0094\ncolorless, nameless, voiceless \u00E2\u0080\u0094\nthat sky overhead is an axe-blade. No one knows\nthat what mirrors the stars and the Milky Way is an axe.\nOnly those who love see, and remain silent\nwhile in the sky the mirror-blade gets loose and falls\nthrough us, a black starry dark\nfalling through a blacker dark, and nothing can stop it.\nIt falls no matter how we turn, always,\nit hits us and divides head from body.\nThe sound of the abyss rises like clouds through us.\nTwin stars are high: one light, one dark.\nEverything else is illimitable void and distant,\ndust motes whirling through a dark cathedral, everything else\nis a black shawl where the fine old fire has written our names\ntoo.\ntranslated from the Estonian by the poet and Sam Hamill\n4\u00C2\u00B0 Osip Mandelstam\nInsomnia. Homer. Taut sails.\nI have counted the ships half-way down!\nThat long, extended flock,\nA train of cranes\nWhich rose up toward Hellas once,\nAnd like a wedge the cranes\nMove on toward foreign shores.\nHeavenly foam lies on the heads of tzars,\nWhere do you sail? Were it not for Helen\nWhat would be Troy to you?\nOh Achaens!\nThe sea and Homer, all moved by love\nWhom shall I listen to? Homer is silent,\nBut the black sea talks, roars and draws\nNear my pillow, thunderous and crashing.\ntranslated from the Russian by Marianne Andrea\n4' Marianne Andrea\nCAPE COD - JANUARY\nThe sea ebbed\nAnd left a strip of bandage,\nCoastline chalked\nLike statuary in mist;\nSea-grass, gray at best\nStand in rigid fingerlings.\nNo terns swoop from the dunes\nTo scold me for intrusion,\nNo sandpipers scatter,\nFootsteps leave no prints;\nIn the hard sky\nThe sun and moon have one color.\nFrom northwest a snow-squall\nPushes through sedgy marches.\nNowhere to light -\nIt whirls off, sullen, green\nAnd full of fury knifes the air\nAs if to maim\nAnd leave its quarry\nRagged and remote.\nEight wide-winged gulls\nChallenge clouds in foul weather,\nSwing above breakers at the wind\nAnd pull the air at angles.\nThe Cape is their nest,\nThey do not yield to seasons;\nBut in this plundered corridor\nI walk the evening as on shore of Lethe;\nLike gulls ask no consolation.\n42 Cyril Dabydeen/ Two Poems\nLEGENDS\nI begin my book of legends\nto be other than I am.\nI walk across the high bridge,\nbarefoot in the blistering sun.\nI swelter, seeking shelter\nfrom overhanging trees.\nDismay follows with a young\nbull bellowing; my father's lasso\nconverges. He looks back\nas I imagine an outside life \u00E2\u0080\u0094\nfishing in Ontario, skiing down\nVancouver mountains \u00E2\u0080\u0094\nfrom glossy magazines.\nI am still on the winding path,\nlooking for retreat once in awhile.\nI continue to be livid,\nI take further note of the sun.\nII\nLater in Canada, amidst deciduous\ntrees, I test myself: I am in a\nmuskeg, hounded by blackflies and\nmosquitoes. I plant tree after tree.\nI brace against the cold in northern\nOntario \u00E2\u0080\u0094 freezing one more time.\n43 Ill\nIn Kingston I am a founding father\nliving up to treaties; I bolster\nwith the old fort: I nurture defence\nwith brittle skin and flesh;\nI grimace as guns keep\nfiring in my head.\nIV\nIn Ottawa I am Governor General\nand Prime Minister too,\nParliament Hill my domain. I look\naround: cannons firing from the past,\nrelived in my dreams. A burning next.\nI continue to listen to entreaties.\nWar Measures Act. My mind festering\nsolitudes.\nV\nFinally, my mother, to remind me\nof myself, sends a postcard from\nTobago \u00E2\u0080\u0094she on her first holiday\nafter fifty years or more.\nI continue to make humming noises\nin my sleep\n44 TALKING BACK\nMy mother is at it again\ntravelling to the island,\nshe, a Gulliver\nI am away, making Crusoe\nstrides, imagining her steps\nin dreams: I lie, oceanless\nshe intermingles with\nsteel-band\nthe sea in her ears,\nechoing\nI expand my lungs\nas the leviathans\nconverge from some\ndark-watered creek\nmy body heaves\nAnother letter\na brother's carnival\nhe champs through the forest\nwith gritted teeth\nimmigration songs locked\nin his heart\nchildren frolic:\nthey look around\nsquint at the sun\n45 laughter next\nI talk about ice\n& snow \u00E2\u0080\u0094\nhow I miss togetherness\nI continue to gather\nthem under the ribbed\nlayers\nof my travelling self\n46 Rienzi Crusz\nLOVE POEM\n(for Anne)\nFor you, brown lover,\nwith buffalo curd and palmyrah honey\nstill sweet on your lips,\nthe raven winging in your hair,\nI offer the immigrant land\nwith no contrary season,\nonly summer,\nand summer and summer.\nNo white laming cold before the thaw,\nno cutting nodule of spring,\nno fallen leaves to confuse your feet,\nonly the consummate thing,\nthe full-blown rose, the sun\nin batik exuberance.\nNow also ask for the sweet warm rain,\nthe once monsoon harvest of fruit:\njambu, mango and mangosteen;\nguava and rambuttan, the tender cadju\nwrapped in green leaves, the jaggery bell\nof the godambara-rotti man,\nand I will tease the Asian condiment\nfrom the summer almirahs of this land.\nWhat you deserve will be\nwhat you always had\nin your warm rich blood:\nthe green land\nthat cast you with wedding band\non these white shores.\n47 Lorna Goodison\nLEPIDOPTERIST\n\"I've done my best to immortalise what I failed to keep.\"\n- Joseph Brodsky\nAnd now I am a lepidopterist\nwith my rows of bitter pins\nsecuring here, now there\nthe flown species wings.\nIf we soak the memories\nin our bile\nthey will keep and crystallize\ncome clear\nin the heat of this now poisoned air.\nI thought I had you/where are you?\nYou gave up on us/I gave up on you\nYou changed your mind/I'm changing mine\nLord, even in death the wings beat so.\nHold still\nlet me put this last row in.\n48 Earl McKenzie\nTHE BLUE STONES OF MY RIVER\nI know that I shall never be at peace again\nwith the blue stones of my river,\nstones washed by centuries of rain\nout of the hills around me;\nstones at the bottom of the river,\ncool in the heat of the sun,\nbasking in the shimmering light.\nI have seen the mist of the valley\nfloating over them,\nangels of fog\nwalking over the monuments.\nI have seen them at the edge\nof the chasm,\ndarker than fear;\nand I have been the first to see them\non mornings younger\nthan the optimism of birds.\nI have sat on those stones,\ncanopied by rose-apple and trumpet trees,\nand felt the water\ngouge the land beside my feet.\nThe blue stones of my river\nhave sunken lower now,\nand I know that I shall never touch\ntheir surfaces again.\n49 David Kranes\nHunt Imagines Himself\nHunt imagines himself as a person named Hall. He imagines Leah as\nJewel. He imagines a history.\nThey are, in fact, in a Benton Harbor, Michigan motel room. And, it\nis, in fact, the middle of the night: June, cool; Hunt awake; Leah sleeping, hand on Hunt's knee, as if it were the knob of a door she were about\nto open. New Hampshire is past. Sore and possible division are past.\nTodd and Sean are in Connecticut with friends who will set them on a\nplane in a week. Allowing Hunt and Leah to have what Hunt has called,\n\"a crossing.\" \"Crossing,\" Leah smiles, and because she is very sweet on\nHunt in their reconnection, doesn't correct him. But, in fact, they are\nhalf way to Tucson, which will be the new family home. And they are\nboth trying to be very tender and easy and discovering of one another.\nAnd their Volvo is in The Flying Dutchman Garage with a thrown rod.\nLight seems almost squeezed, it is so dim, through their motel window.\nAnd Hunt is touching Leah's shoulder in the middle of the night, and he\nis imagining: Himself/Hall. Leah/Jewel. And a history.\nHall's history is that he had a grandfather lost at sea, no traces, and\nthat his mother was lost in an historic Everglades' fire. Hall's history is in\nFlorida. Hall does not know his father. Hunt imagines that. And Hall\nsnaps sweating from dreams of smothering, drowning, sinking away.\nHall is not Hunt. He is Hunt's imagining. Hall is a person coming of age\nin a cocoon of mystery. And what Hall has sought, in Hunt's history, is\nto find some remarkable power in that mystery: some beauty, a joining.\nHunt imagines Florida, though, giving Hall only hints. A moment,\nplaying football, where he became the contact. The anesthesia of ocean\nsalt, inhaled, striking his brain. The morning songs of wild birds. And\nHunt knows, beyond imagining, that when Hall first touched a woman,\ngravity suspended: Hall felt more touched than touching; Hall felt electrocuted. Hunt imagines Hall with a history, from that point, of migraine headaches.\nThen Hunt imagines Hall at Florida State. Leah opens her mouth,\nbeside Hunt, as if to speak; as though, in sleep, to make more room for\n5\u00C2\u00B0 her breathing. But Hunt imagines Hall and science, hypnotized almost\nby the equation signature: parts, becoming whole while the whole becomes parts, equillibria. Hunt imagines Hall writing equation after equation. He even imagines Hall writing a poem about a wild parrot: \"...in\nsweet, painless equilibrium with your color and song.\" Then, on the\nJune night of Hall's graduation, Hall uses a key he's been given as an\nhonors student and lets himself into the chemistry building. In the lab,\nwith only the familiar quadrangle lights outside shedding visibility (like\nthe motel lights now in Benton Harbor), Hall moves beside long reagen-\nbottle shelves, touching not so much their labels as their seasoned glass,\nbreathing acetone, so sweet and thick amidst the equipment shadows of\nthe space. And Hall, Hunt knows, feels himself trapped, uneducated\nand on the edge of tears.\nSo Hall begins a journey. He goes to Atlanta and works in an optics\nlab. Nights, he visits disco bars. Hall has few friends and gets confused\nabout solitude. Often he gets up in the middle of the night and writes\nequations.\nFrom Atlanta, Hall goes to Toledo. He takes a job with Owens-\nIllinois, at their computer graphics division. He finds Toledo strange, no\nreal downtown \u00E2\u0080\u0094 though people say they're building it. In Toledo, Hall\nmeets a woman. Her name is Jewel.\nHunt studies Leah. He feels the gravity of her hand on his knee. He\nkisses her, very lightly, on the top of her head.\nJewel is divorced. She has a boy six and a girl five. She is twenty-\nseven. What she loves is photography. And for a while, Hunt imagines,\nshe made a go of it, accompanying groups of men on hunting trips,\nshooting their kills. But Jewel tells Hunt, tells Hall...that it made a\nwhore of her or nearly did, so she stopped climbing into Cessnas and\nLear Jets with 40-year-olds and took a job in a flower shop \u00E2\u0080\u0094which is\nwhere Hall calls her.\n-Hi.\n\u00E2\u0080\u0094 Hi. What's hot today?\n\u00E2\u0080\u0094 We're pushing blue carnations.\nThey laugh. Hall comes over and takes Jewel to lunch. Hall falls in\nlove. His migraines clear and then get worse. He finds himself walking\ndown the street, then losing balance; it scares him. Jewel scares him. Yet\nhe loves it. She is the only woman he has ever, truly, made love to, and\nhe blanks out at times, like smoke inhalation, though he doesn't tell her.\nBut Hall loves Jewel. He writes in a journal: \"With Jewel, there is the\nmost elegant, precarious terror I have ever known.\"\nOne day, Jewel calls from her flower stand. \u00E2\u0080\u0094 Let's make this actual,\nshe says. \u00E2\u0080\u0094Let's make this whole picnic real.\nHall catches his breath. Tears are pushing at the corners of his eyes.\n'Real?' he thinks: 'real?' What's 'real?' His head starts dizzying, as though\n5i he were under water. \u00E2\u0080\u0094We'll talk about it, he says.\n\u00E2\u0080\u0094 I'm talking about it.\n\u00E2\u0080\u0094 Tonight. Your place.\n\u00E2\u0080\u0094 I'll be there. Jewel laughs and hangs up.\n'Real.'\nThat evening they make love, and, embraced, Hall tells Jewel about\nhis headaches. About equilibria. About his elegant terror. And when he is\nfinished, he is sobbing. Then laughing. Then both. He reaches for\nJewel: He hasn't asked her questions; still, he expects answers. Instead,\nshe slides from the bed and walks across to her window and stands there,\npalms flat against the glass, fingers spread, looking out. Outside, there is\nthe elevated interstate, heading north to Michigan, south to Cincinnati,\nits arclights entering and wrapping her tight and tapered torso like filmy\nhands.\nHall feels himself in a car on black ice. Jewel leaves the window, the\nbedroom. Hall finds her in the kitchen eating leftover Chinese chicken\nwings. She won't talk. She won't look at him. When they start an exchange, every word is spare, opaque, brittle.\n\u00E2\u0080\u0094 Wings, Hall says as an opener.\n\u00E2\u0080\u0094 Wings, Jewel repeats. \u00E2\u0080\u0094Leftover wings. Cold.\n\u00E2\u0080\u0094 Would you like a microwave? Hall asks.\nJewel looks at him, trying, he feels, to enter his eyes. \u00E2\u0080\u0094 Would you?\nshe asks.\nThe next morning, Hall leaves Toledo. It is the most inexplicable\nmove he's ever made: packing two suitcases, vanishing. Somehow, he\nknows, he has done a terrible thing, betrayed Jewel. Or has a terrible\nthing been done to him? His head is splitting. He can barely stand.\nSomething, frighteningly, has shifted. On the bus, Hall remembers saying to a fifteen-year-old girl once, in Florida, when the image of her halter, slipped nearly from her shoulders, had shaken him: \"I lost my\nbalance.\"\nSo Hall leaves Toledo on a bus. He gets off the bus in Denver, buys a\nLotus, totals the Lotus in Grand Junction, Colorado, rents a Citation\nand drives it to Las Vegas. Jewel has no idea where Hall has gone. He\nmay be in Toledo. It is all, Hall feels, like some sort of structural\naccident: a loose thread in the industrial carpet triggering a fall down\nstairs.\nHunt leans against the headboard of his Benton Harbor motel bed.\nHistory, he thinks. In the lot quadrangle, outside, everything is quiet,\nexcept the light. It seems to move as it enters, though Hunt knows, in\nfact, it doesn't. Leah no longer holds Hunt's knee. She has shifted onto\nher side, curled slightly. Why is Hunt awake? You make The World up half\nthe time in your head, Leah has said. More than once. So is Hunt making\nhimself up by imagining Hall? He smiles. And what about Jewel? What\nhappens to Hall and Jewel in Las Vegas?\n52 Hunt imagines Hall loving the glass! He imagines Hall's migraines\nfading and Hall back in equilibrium. Hunt imagines Hall feeling separation from Jewel. Still, what can he do? Hall has taken a job as a specialized security person, working the monitor room high above a strip\ncasino's chandeliers and ceiling mirrors. Hunt imagines an enormous\ngridwork of I-beams. They are all wired with closed-circuit cameras\nwhich angle down; staff people adjusting the cameras from a catwalk\nthat is part of the grid. But Hall is in the monitor room, studying images\nthat the various working cameras sweep, pan and rotate across, zoom so\nclose that they can read the printout on a player's digital watch, pick up\ndirt underneath fingernails, wrist hair, lipstick cracks, loose threads on\nbuttons of a blouse.\nAnd though Leah would never imagine herself as Jewel, Hall, nevertheless, feels his flight from Jewel accutely. He tries to waylay his feeling.\nFor twenty months, he tries to minimize, analyze, laugh at, forget it.\nBut then Hall's migraines return. And as at home as he is in this glass city,\nwith his remove, his distance, his monitoring through the video images\nand the one-way glass, Hall feels that equilibrium begin to slip again. And\nHunt feels it too. Solitude. Remoteness. But what does Hunt imagine\nHall can do?\nHall sends Jewel a package! Hall sends Jewel a package with the label\ntyped, so that she can have no notion who it is from. In the package is an\nairline ticket and confirmed prepaid reservations to Hall's hotel. Hall reserves one of the rooms the hotel keeps for high rollers. It is a room with\nthe same glass ceiling of the casino, with the same mounted cameras in\nthe glass. The casino likes to know just where high-rollers are.\nSo, because Hall wants to see Jewel, he sends a package, hoping that\nshe might come, that he might watch her, that he could bring at least the\ncamera close to her skin, her body again. Hall knows that Jewel, being\nJewel, will probably toss the whole package in a trash barrel. Still, if Hall\ncan see Jewel's hair, flowing down and across her shoulders, see her eyes\nflash, he will feel...maybe balance again. Perhaps. What can he lose?\nHunt imagines Hall going to McCaren Airport. He imagines Hall's\nexcitement. Hall's been drinking. Hall's been drinking too much for the\nmonths he's been in Las Vegas; the top of his Sony is a shelf for glasses.\nShe won't have done it, he's thinking; She won't have cornel But then, on the\nWestern Airlines screen, Hall sees Jewel's flight: DEPLANING, and he\nstands in the concourse corridor \u00E2\u0080\u0094music, hotel-and-casino sign lights,\nthe eternal tape, \"Welcome to Las Vegas...\" dancing like a Bob Fosse\nmovie, the carousel of slots performing behind him. When a knot of passengers round a corner, Hall turns to the wall, grabs an MGM courtesy\nphone and becomes a fixture. If Jewel is in the crowd, she walks right\npast him.\nTwo hours later, working, Hall picks Jewel up on his screen. The lens\nzooms in on her eye shadow and Hall wonders whether he might not go\ncrazy. Jewel has checked into the hotel at 3:42; Hall knows that. Charlie\n53 T. was her bellman. And Hall's champagne and orchids and five hundred in five dollar chips were stacked on her vanity. Hall has watched\nJewel \u00E2\u0080\u0094 showering first: touching herself with the Jacuzzi wand; and\nHall, watching, has felt himself both partnered and sad. He has come\nclose. And felt dizzy. He has brought his camera in: so close that he\ncould see the erectile tissue. An hour before this moment watching Jewel\nsip a Marguerita and play blackjack, Time and the physical world, for\nHall, have broken down and Hall has felt himself and Jewel, together:\non a blanket by a stream; in a tiny room; joined and by a gasfire in a ski\ncabin; parked in a car. But, too, Hall has felt The World come back and\nhas heard the muzak in the monitor room and has felt corrupt and in an\nawful movie. Will it be this way only, Hall has thought: the camera? Controls\nabove glass for her entire visit? Or will I approach? Will there be touch? Words?\n\"What's that?\" another worker whom Hunt decides to name 'Lew\nJacobs,' up from his own monitor for coffee, asks Hall.\n\"Just a player,\" Hall says.\n\"Where?\"\n\"Blackjack,\"\n\"Table?\"\n\"104.\"\n\"Why the eyes?\"\nLew: You don't know this woman's eyesl Hall thinks. Not like I do. You\nhaven't seen them pool. You haven't seen them coil out, like a pinwheel,\nher amazing eyes when she's entered. You don't know brown and green.\n\"Lew \u00E2\u0080\u0094you watch your console; I'll watch mine, okay?\" Hall says. He\nhates Lew's kind of driven competition. Hall knows obsession, too; yes;\nonce, when he and Jewel were in the Toledo Art Museum, surrounded\nby Phoenician glass\u00E2\u0080\u0094Jewel's daughter, Christi, on the floor at their feet,\ncross-legged with a sketchbook and a box of pastel crayons \u00E2\u0080\u0094 Hall admitted: If I had the nerve, I would light myself on fire every day for a living. But\nthat intensity was not, is not Lew's.\nHall watches Jewel play blackjack \u00E2\u0080\u0094so close to her mouth. Hunt\nbends and kisses Leah; she doesn't stir; she carries Hunt's touch into\nsleep. But Hall watches Jewel. He watches Jewel lose. Jewel win. He\nsees her sometimes scanning the casino space to discover her benefactor.\nHall remembers intimacy: histories that they told one another in the\ndark or walking at the edge of the Maumee River. How to weigh Past intimacies against this moment? Now Hall has the edge. Right? In their\nbrutal, breathtaking Toledo closeness, who had the edge? Both?\nNeither? Hall remembers Jewel drew his blood. He wonders what will\nhappen, now, if he reveals himself. Time's gone by \u00E2\u0080\u0094nearly two years.\nHall worries about Jewel's blaming him. What if some other person has\nbeen cruel in the interim? What if, like her mother, Jewel has free-fallen\nthrough a sky of suicide? Hall zooms the camera, shifts, watches Jewel's\ntongue lick salt from the rim of a marguerita. The image cuts him loose\nsuddenly from guilt.\n54 When Hall goes on overtime, because Lew is gone, he moves from\nconsole to console, watching Jewel drift the casino. He sees her in the\nNorth cocktail lounge, appearing to wait. He sends for scotch. \"Management's gonna be pissed,\" another worker tells him. \"Fuck it,\" Hall\nsays and sees Jewel playing slots. He sees her back in her room. He sees\nher confused. Pacing. Hall orders more scotch. Jewel is writing, Hall focusing, a postcard to her dead mother: Mother\u00E2\u0080\u0094is this the sort of place you\nwent to in your mind before you tightened the nylon? Please! Answer me! I read your\nstories. I brought you cut flowers in Spring. I made a promise that I would never\nstop trying to love God. Please! Hall can read every word. He sees Jewel\nstick the postcard onto her mirror, then cry. He almost goes to her door.\nWhat is Leah dreaming? Hunt wonders. What's inside? What's on her\nface? Hall watches Jewel hold ice cubes, from the champagne bucket, up\nto her forehead, splotching it. He drinks. He watches her sleep. He stays\nup the entire night and focuses in on Jewel's eyelids, hoping to see,\nsomehow, her dreams. Hall battles a migraine. He sees Jewel wake, use\nthe telephone. He sees her in bra and panties. He sees her pinching an\nacne spot by her nose. He sees her remove a fingernail, zooms in, sees\nthe chewed nail underneath, watches as Jewel fastens the false nail on\nagain. Then \u00E2\u0080\u0094sweating, dizzy with scotch\u00E2\u0080\u0094Hall sees Jewel disappear\nfrom the monitors altogether, gone: not in her room, not in the casino,\nnot in the Steak House or the Mediterranean Piazza or The Coffee\nShop. She's on no camera.\nHall panics.\nHunt's throat is dry. The air conditioner in the Benton Harbor room\nseems to have discharged something talcy, and Hunt's breathing grows\nunsettled, fast. Hall is walking, carrying his warm scotch in a heavy\nhighball glass, along the I-beams of the grid, where, below, through the\none-way glass, are wide, stretching angles of tables, all the dealers in\nwhite shirts and blouses, their hands moving. Hall wonders, tired, unsteady. It is crazy light, the chandelier brilliance below, beam to beam.\nAnd Hall's drunk. Hall's eyes seem dry in his head; he has trouble\nopening and closing them. The highball glass nearly drops. He hesitates.\nHe lowers himself, bending, and sets the glass on the glass, the scotch on\nthe mirrors. It rests there, like a flaw in some synthetic gem.\nHunt gets up from the bed and goes to the bathroom. He draws cold\nwater in a plastic cup.\n\"Something the matter?\" Leah asks him, sleepy, when he returns.\nHe pats her, slips an arm around her. \"Just thirsty,\" he says. And\nLeah falls back to sleep.\nWhen Hall picks Jewel up again, she is at a roulette table, looking detached. She puts chips out, gets some back, puts others out again. Her\nexpression is: All right \u00E2\u0080\u0094I am submitting to this; I am following through what\nmust be my part in this \u00E2\u0080\u0094but you must know it's all just fucking lonely.\nHunt takes a breath that he holds for nearly a minute. Minute and a\n55 half. Hall exits the monitor room again. The staff is busy checking inappropriate cuts, die tumbles, inconsistencies. Last week, Hall remembers, in the back office, they ripped the hearing aid off a man because\nthey thought he'd been wired to some computer. Hall feels the power of\nsome chemistry, some unapprehended law or set of forces. There's a\nglass elevator that drops from the grid, and he takes it. His brain feels\nunattached to his head, at best a satellite. In the employee lounge he gets\ncoffee. Dealers are talking about the NBA draft and what's going first:\nThe Big Man or Speed.\n\u00E2\u0080\u0094 What's the point-spread on Height?\n\u00E2\u0080\u0094 Lopez is giving seven-to-five on Agility.\nHunt wonders where he is \u00E2\u0080\u0094though he knows he's in Michigan, Benton Harbor. What's happening with the Volvo? Can you repair, or do\nyou have to replace, a rod? Should they have left New Hampshire?\nTucson?! What painter ever worked out of Tucson?! Is he a Religious\nPainter? Suskind has warned him about that \u00E2\u0080\u0094 Forget this Adoration and\nAnnunciation shit!\u00E2\u0080\u0094 Or is he really just a person skilled at portraits?\nOccasional still lifes? What's the route that he and Leah are taking from\nhere, beside the lake, in Michigan...to Arizona?\nJewel is still playing roulette when Hall begins walking toward her, as\nthough it were her sentence. She is inside herself. Hall wonders if she is\nwith her mother. Hall thinks about all the threads that hold sanity on. In\nany of us. He remembers his words: If I had nerve, I would light myself on\nfire every day for a living.\n\"Jewel.\" Hall has to say it a second time\u00E2\u0080\u0094 \"Jewel\" \u00E2\u0080\u0094before anything\nreaches her mind.\n\"...You,\" she says.\nAll Hall can do is nod.\nJewel gets up. She begins, with Hall, to walk, not a word of\nconversation, across the carpet of the casino. \"Your chips,\" Hall says and\nturns back.\nJewel returns and gets them. \"Do I thank you?\" she asks.\nThey are walking again. Hall is making a laughing sound. \"Probably\nnot.\" He feels her arm brush his and feels the brush like an electrical\nweb.\n\"I'm fairly angry,\" Jewel says.\nHunt thinks: Her anger has an intention beyond Leah's.\n\"Yeah,\" Hall replies.\nThen, suddenly, someone from a craps table thunders into them,\nknocking Jewel down, giving Hall a head shot when Hall grabs his shirt.\n\"Oh, shit; there's blood,\" Jewel says to Hall, both of them on the\ndiamond-patterned carpet. Hall touches his lip. The man is gone.\nThey go outside. The sun is thick with silence on the tennis courts.\n\"How's Christi?\" Hall finally asks. \"How's your girl?\"\n56 \"Why did you do this?\"\n\"I work here now,\" Hall says. \"Have been. For a year and a half.\"\n\"That's not an answer.\"\nHall knows. He sees a white-haired man doing yoga and thinks of his\ndrowned grandfather. No; it's not an answer, Hall thinks. His mind is\nfalling. Hall and Jewel stand and watch a tennis pro giving volley lessons\nto a very tanned woman about five-nine and in her fifties. \"Wrist!\nWrist!\" the pro is snapping.\nThey go, sit by the pool. \"Marguerita?\" Hall asks. Hunt, once again,\nfeels thristy. He wishes he had a screwdriver. Very tall. Or Harvey\nWallbanger. Jewel agrees. \"You know,\" Hall tells her, \"this one hotel is\nmore self-contained than Toledo.\"\n\"If you had done this yesterday,\" Jewel says, \"cleared this up yesterday, it might even have been exciting, nice. But \"\n\"Would you like to see a show?\" Hall asks.\n\"It's a bad trip.\"\n\"Will you have dinner?\"\n\"You're a cruel son-of-a-bitch,\" Jewel observes, sounding, in Hunt's\nimagination, like a Leah-made-tough.\n\"If Christi, or Eric were here \u00E2\u0080\u0094we could all go to Circus Circus.\"\n\"It's hot out here,\" Jewel says. \"How do you live where it's so dry?\"\n\"It's like Florida,\" Hall says. Then, when Jewel gives him a quizzical\nlook, he admits: \"Not really. I was just...making something. Up.\nConversation.\"\nThey go back inside, to the Mediterranean Piazza, for lunch. Jewel\nhas mixed fruit; Hall has a crabmeat salad. Hunt remembers the spectral lady, Victoria Speer, his one trip to Las Vegas, decimating her\nshrimp. Hall tells Jewel about his work in the computer room, though he\ndoesn't describe, specifically, his tasks. \"I like your hair that way,\" he\ntells her. \"It's simple. Natural.\"\n\"Did you intend to come here?\" Jewel asks. \"When you left?\"\n\"I could rent a car,\" Hall says. \"Ever seen Lake Mead?\"\n\"Is it 'self-contained' too?\" Jewel laughs. \"I'd like to see something that\nwasn't bloody 'self-contained.'\" Hunt's skin, against the headboard of the\nmotel bed, feels itchy. Hall sees Jewel's amazing eyes.\nThey drive to Lake Mead, to a marina, and Hall rents a boat. Along\ntheir route, on the Henderson highway, Jewel tells Hall about the recent\nmonths at her flower shop. \"I can't keep the mums!\" she says. All the\nwhite and yellow and even copper-colored mums have been dying on\nher. And in the sixteen-foot sailboat, now, heading out to the center of\nthe bay, she throws her head back, amber hair furling around the mast,\nseizes the cloudless sky in a single vision and says, \"Shit!\"\n\"Coming about,\" Hall warns her. He feels badly about his own intrusion, but he needs to tack.\n\"Are you planning to drown me?\" Jewel asks. \"Is this An American\n57 Tragedy? Does this come with the champagne? And the orchids? And\nthe chips?\"\nHall takes a breath, equal to the horizon, and tells her, \"This entire\nlake is a construction.\"\nJewel smiles. Somewhere, she's found a humor in Hall, and she seems\nto relax. They sail up one bay and down another. Hunt feels very close.\nTo them. To Jewel and Hall. To their motion. His eyes are shut in his\nBenton Harbor bed. Leah's breathing is an audible element. Hall and\nJewel abandon talking. Jewel stretches, like a sleek animal, in the sun.\nShe takes her blouse off. And bra. Hall's chest feels like a metal bar is\nplaced against it. Hunt feels compressed. Jewel's breasts have all the\nshape and power of a boxer's arm. \"I wish we'd thought to bring wine instead of beer,\" she says at one point, and then, without commenting, she\npoints to an airplane first, then to a cliff active with swallows.\n\"Nice,\" Hall manages. The sun, on his shoulders, feels like fire.\n\"Why did we break apart?\" Jewel asks her question easily.\nHall lets the rigging go, sail luff. \"Why don't we swim?\" Hall suggests.\nJewel laughs because Hall's ducked her leading question.\nBut Hall's shoes and socks are off. His shirt. His pants. Jewel watches.\n\"I remember your body,\" she says, and Hall feels stupid. He pulls off his\njocky shorts and dives from the boat, glad for the shocks of both temperature and water. Hall stays under, in a kind of test-run of drowning,\nthen surfaces, breaking into a swim. The swimming, Hall feels, pulls all\nthe crazy dust of him together. By the time he stops to check where anything might be, the boat is empty and Jewel is somewhere with him in\nthe water.\nHall swims back. \"How deep?\" he hears Jewel asking.\nHe stops, sees her treading water. \"Feel good?\" he asks.\n\"How deep?\" she repeats.\n\"Very,\" Hall says. \"It was all canyon.\"\n\"The kids would go crazy here!\" Jewel says.\nBack in the boat, they have only the sun to dry them off. \"You are\nreally beautiful,\" Hall says. He opens her a beer.\n\"I have a wrestler's body,\" Jewel says. She laughs, looks at the sky,\nsays: \"God!\"\n\"I'm sorry I waited,\" Hall confesses.\n\"It's your style,\" Jewel says. And her words suddenly track her on an\ninterior. She comes out, for observation: \"The water's like glass,\" she\nsays.\nHunt wonders why this whole elaborate imagining hasn't put him to\nsleep. Why is he more alert than when he began? He counts his day's\ncups of coffee.\nAfter they've returned the boat and are crossing the marina parking\nlot to the rented Ford, Hall asks Jewel: \"Was that true? I mean, about\nthe mums dying?\" Hall feels like he should be in Florida.\n58 Jewel stops in the gravel. She's seething. \"You prick,\" she says.\n\"It's just so strange,\" Hall says. He doesn't want her to be angry.\n\"Really? What's strange?\" Jewel fires.\nHall doesn't answer. All he has is another question, that gets no\nfurther than his mind: Do you think you're responsible?!\n\"...Nevada,\" Jewel says, later, in the moving car.\n\"Jewel?\"\n\"Christ: It sounds like we should be in Spain. Nevada. Not in The\nUnited States.\"\n\"Toledo's in Spain,\" Hall says.\nJewel drifts to silence again, then says: \"Take me to the airport.\"\n\"Why?\" Hall's blood overloads, he almost stammers.\n\"Forget it,\" Jewel says.\n\"You have all your stuff at the hotel,\" Hall says. He's not sure what it\nis, precisely, that he's done. His car feels out of control, slightly.\n\"God, I'd put you in order.\" Jewel is crying. \"I'd, dammit, put you in\norder: Why couldn't you have stayed there?!\"\nHunt stops imagining. He tries. Does Leah feel like Jewel? Does a\npart of Leah wish Hunt had simply left? Or is Leah happy? Has Leah ever\nbeen happy? What makes her happy? Does Hunt? Does Hunt make\nanyone happy? Does Hunt have an actual exchange with any other person? Or is he just always...off by himself: like right now, in the middle of\nthis Michigan night, trying to put his skewed frame around The\nUniverse? Suddenly, in the bed, Hunt feels topheavy. It seems, that if\nhe's not careful, he is just going to slip off onto the floor. And wake Leah.\nHall's crisis is not his, Hunt instructs himself. Leah is not Jewel. Leah's\nmother's alive! Hunt only visited Florida once, when he was twelve. And\nhe and Leah are married! Hunt gave up fascination with chemistry years\nago.\nBut what is the resolution of Hall? What about Jewel? What about the\ntwo of them?\nComing parallel to Las Vegas Boulevard South on the highway, Jewel\nwonders aloud: \"Am I in a television show? Is this whole thing a television show of some sort? I feel like I should be a print of myself or something. Like I should be on film.\"\nHall almost confesses.\n\"It feels like the gravity's different here,\" she goes on. \"Is that possible?\nMight there be less gravity? Do people who are born here, who are born\nand live here, do they tend to be taller? Thinner? How's the Las Vegas\nbasketball team?\"\n\"Gravity's the same,\" Hall says. A knife blade is beginning to probe\nhis cortex, as he turns off onto Tropicana Boulevard. \"Gravity's the same\nfor everybody.\"\n59 \"How do you know?\"\n\"It just is.\" Hall steals a look and sees Jewel smirk.\n\"We don't have the same gravity,\" Jewel says, taunting Hall.\n\"Bullshit.\"\n\"We never did.\"\nHall knows it's a game; still, she gets him. \"I don't think you would\nhave stayed with me,\" Hall says. It's an unplanned statement, and they\npull into the employee's section of the hotel parking lot. \"I think what's\nmost important to you is some belief that you can always change. That\nyou are changing. You don't want to be permanent. You don't want to\nbe fixed. If I'd stayed \u00E2\u0080\u0094you wouldn't have. I was a burden!\"\nHall cuts his engine. He looks hard at Jewel then thinks that if she had\na gun, she would kill him. Hall knows that in Las Vegas it happens a lot:\nwomen shooting men with small pistols in cars in casino parking lots in\nthe sun.\n\"I'm sorry,\" Hall tempers his accusation. \"Jewel: you pissed me off\ntrying to get me with that gravity thing.\" Hunt feels very close. Hunt\nfeels closer than just seeing the two from the other side of the windshield.\n\"Tell me why the mums are dying,\" Jewel asks Hall. She asks it with\nno artifice.\nHall breathes. His migraine seems to appear in waves. He tries to\nimagine an answer to Jewel's question, but can't; he gets out, comes\naround to open her door. The air is 97 or 98 degrees. They walk a row of\ncars toward the tinted panels of the hotel-casino, the heat nearly denying\nreality, contradicting the outside, spuming foundations. \"Tell me why\nthe mums are dying,\" Jewel repeats. She is crying, and Hall loses his\nbalance as he opens a door and they cross a threshold into conditioned\nair. He tumbles into a Wall Street Journal dispenser.\n\"Do you want them to live?\" he asks her.\n\"Are you all right?\" she asks because Hall's unsteady.\n\"Do you want them to live?\" Hall repeats.\n\"I want you to come with me to my room,\" Jewel says.\nHunt remembers...something...what?...he can't remember. What is\nhe remembering?\n\"I have to be at work in fourteen minutes,\" Hall tells Jewel. \"But I get\noff at midnight.\"\nJewel says, \"Come then.\"\nHunt has the impulse to wake Leah. He has the impulse to tell her\nwhat he has begun and what is spinning now through his head. But\t\nHall kisses Jewel. He feels awkward. It is on the side of her head, and\nhe breathes her hair, breathes almond. She leaves, and the elevator takes\nHall up above the mirrors and to the grid. Hall craves a drink. He's had\nno sleep. What if I jump through these mirrors and hurtle down on the players,\nHall asks himself crazily. Would that be some statement? Would that be like\n60 lighting myself, every day, on fire?... Like the painting of Adorations? Hunt\nwonders.\nAt work, Hall finds a man marking cards with his fingernails. He sees\nthat Lucille, in pit #3, has wrists hatched with razor scars. He refuses to\nwatch Jewel. They are somewhere else. They are on another plane now.\nThey are beginning new. Hall is ashamed and angry at his own distance.\nAnd of his observation. Once, he catches Jewel, accidentally, in the East\nLounge drinking a Black Russian but he whips the camera away. At\nmidnight, he calls her.\n\"Where are you?\" she asks.\n\"In the lobby,\" Hall says. \"Come down. I need to show you where I\nwork.\"\n\"I need you here,\" Jewel says.\nHall's breath is heavy, like drapery sucked against his lungs. Hunt\nfeels the weight of breathing too. Leah sleeps. \"This...let me show you\nthis first,\" Hall says. Then he adds: \"It's necessary.\"\nThere is a stillness over the phone \u00E2\u0080\u0094which is like all the quiet in Benton Harbor. Which is like all the quiet between one home and another.\nWhich is like the quiet of balance and decision. Hall says, and Hunt\nmouths the word aloud from the foolish raft of his bed in the motel room:\n\"Please.\"\nWhen Jewel exits the elevator, she has thrown on a navy skirt and\nkhaki blouse. \"Where are your shoes?\" Hall asks.\n\"I was rushed,\" Jewel says, and makes a queer face, wanting it to be a\njoke but knowing that her face is probably angry.\nHall takes her hand. They ride the glass elevator up, above the mirrors to the grid and monitor room. Hall knows that he has violated Security; still he takes Jewel. He takes her into the room, and walks down a\nrow of consoles, other employees giving Jewel looks. \"This is what I've\nbeen doing,\" Hall says. It's a confession, and his voice is direct. \"Excuse\nme, Charlie,\" Hall says to a bald man and leans over and begins to fiddle\nwith the man's console. Then, to Jewel, Hall says: \"Look.\" He's found a\nplayer and, starting with a head shot, Hall moves the camera in. And in.\n\"Jesus Christ, Man: Get her out of here,\" Charlie whispers. \"The\nwoman's barefooV.\"\n\"What is that?\" Jewel asks, \"Hall, what is that: A microscope?\"\nHall points to the screen: a man's eye that the camera is now nearly\ninside of; he points to line-shadows which pull and relax where the\ncamera's zoomed. Hall tells Jewel: \"Nerves.\"\n\"Fuck\\" she says, then throws her head back, straight to the sky \u00E2\u0080\u0094if\nthere were a sky looming over it; and her eyes look betrayed. \"Oh, God,\"\nshe moans.\nHunt's hand is on Leah, almost squeezing. \"One more thing,\" Hall\n61 says. He feels like he's drowning. He feels like he's burning. Hunt feels\nelectric lights, in the dark, burning him. Jewel shakes her head as Hall\npresses buttons, finally getting her room on the screen and finding\npierced-earring-opals \u00E2\u0080\u0094so close the camera looks inside the stone.\n\"What the Christ are you two up to?\" Charlie asks. But Jewel has\nmade the most awful sound of rage. She bolts \u00E2\u0080\u0094Hall in pursuit.\nJewel runs out onto the grid. Hunt starts coughing. He mustn't wake\nLeah; he does not want that; but the Best Western air feels like it has\nbeen conditioned to dust: Hunt presses his chest. On the grid, Jewel's\nbare feet cling, looking white, to the blackened I-beams. \"Jewel!\" Hall\ncalls out, chasing her: \"I just wanted to be close \u00E2\u0080\u0094don't you see? Just\neven for a short while again: I wanted to be close \u00E2\u0080\u0094 without troublingyou\\"\nHunt tries, violently, to contain his coughing. Hall closes the\ngap \u00E2\u0080\u0094until Jewel leaps from his beam and is unmoored and in the air\nabove the thousand panels of one-way glass, the acres of mirrors on the\nceiling.\n'Wo!\" Hall shouts out. And Hunt shouts it too. In the room. Leah\nstartles. Then Hall sees Jewel land, and Leah relaxes \u00E2\u0080\u0094 shakily at first,\nbut then steadying \u00E2\u0080\u0094on the next beam, five or six feet away.\n\"You prick!\" Jewel screams. Leah pulls the sheet up. Jewel's body is\nheaving; her face is plastered with tears. Hunt wonders what the hell\nLeah might be dreaming about. Often, she tells him, she dreams about\nthem joined. \"God!...Jesus Christ!\" Jewel shrieks. They poise, across\nfrom one another.\n\"Don't move,\" Hall says. He urges: \"Please: Please \u00E2\u0080\u0094be careful.\"\n\"I'll move anywhere I goddam want!\" Jewel announces. And she looks\nas if she wants to move up, like an Apollo moonshot.\n\"Can we talk?\" Hall asks. And Hunt is crying.\n\"I think you're sick!\" Jewel says. And then she repeats the brutal word:\n\"Sick!\"\n\"I think you're beautiful,\" Hall says \u00E2\u0080\u0094 headache or no headache \u00E2\u0080\u0094and\nholds on.\nJewel's eyes drop from Hall's face to his feet. \"Don't come over here,\"\nshe warns.\n\"Let's go...\" Hall begins. \"...What if we go \u00E2\u0080\u0094and have some lobster\nand some Pinot Chardinay? \u00E2\u0080\u0094At the Barbary Coast. They have a roof\nplace.\"\n\"'A roof place'?\"\n\"Yes.\" But Hall can see, suddenly, that something is very funny, in a\ncrazy way, to Jewel. Still, before whatever the moment is gets realized,\nthere is the voice of a Security Guard booming from a catwalk near the\nmonitor room, the vision of his hand ready on his gun: \"Off the beams!\"\nhe orders.\nJewel and Hall stare, above the glass. \"You left Toledo,\" she says.\n\"You walked away to your window,\" Hall says, \"And just stared out.\"\n62 \"But Toledo's not 'self-contained.'\"\n\"Great! Fine! Go home then! Revive your mums!\"\nJewel lets loose. She swings. And, in an awful moment, she is falling.\nForward. But Hall reaches. Off balance. In an attempt to catch. Jewel is\nfalling. Hall is falling. Hunt feels a scream, desire or fear, uncoiling the\nlength of his viscera. But then Hall's and Jewel's hand clutch. Hall is\nholding Jewel. Hunt is holding Leah. Their feet brace violently against\nwhatever beams and suddenly everything is that exquisite terror and instinct that is never planned. Two hundred feet above any floor, two\npeople lock bodies, two people buttress one another: poles of some tenuous room: frail, equilibrated, crude architecture. \"Off those fucking\nbeams!\" the guard thunders. But it takes more than a threat to uncouple\nthem.\n\"What is it?\" Leah, now awake, holds her shaking Hunt. \"What?\n\u00E2\u0080\u0094 Darling!\"\n\"...Something,\" Hunt manages, finally. \"Something. I woke out\nof....romething.\" And Hunt understands, somewhere in his chemistry,\nthis moment in their lives.\n63 Michael C. Kenyon\nI awake at Dawn and think of June\nI open my hand on the knife blade\nsteel seems so cold as I watch my\nbreath above these smudged boards\nhearing the water gurgling just a\nfoot below as I hunt for the hook\nThat wind has blown the door open\nduring the night again as I slept\nand again the rope dangles frayed\nI have the choice of cutting more\nfishing line to resecure the door\nand angling only the lowest tides\nor of utilising my last good rope\nwhose present duty is to maintain\nthe suitable altitude of my pants\nLying supine I lick my blood away\n64 remember the hook is in my pocket\ncreep over to fix the broken door\nwith the belt then scoop the last\nspoiled dogfish from the bait jar\nfasten the hook to the nylon line\nflouting some sanction of fingers\nI crawl to the brink of the wharf\ndrop the hook to dogfish and pull\nthe green line from the green sea\nslit open the fish slide the guts\nto a seagull on the boards and we\nscream at each other for a moment\nThen I belly inside to a lunch of\ndogfish lobscouse I scratch at my\nwound open the chest and take out\nthe child's picture the last butt\n65 Maggie Helwig/ Three Poems\nTHE DERVISH DRAFTSMAN\nI paced the radius of the radiant\narm of God\nholding a silver pen.\nI had to turn back when\nI used up all my paper.\nI drew the circle of vertebrae\nat the nape of the neck,\nthe cell's dark code of history, the operation\nof a spell for safety under sail when on the sea.\nI thought to map\ncircumferences of the grounds\nwhereon stood holy men before the fire spoke\nbut falling from the zenith of the arc\nI broke my compass\nand fell under contract for my heart.\n66 THE SICKNESS OF THE DERVISH\nI turned upon myself until\nmy feet grew slippery in fever\nand I fell.\nArms raised in this tight space and under\nwaves of clinging weight\nI spin and sweat\nat the rim of the trace, the bell of the flower\nthe pit of the well,\nam bitter centre, acid nucleus, and\nrecall, recall soul into soul\nin narrowing fear \u00E2\u0080\u0094\nwhere have I come, where is it that I dance\nwhat is this endless place at which\nall things are near.\n67 THE DERVISH, RECOVERED, PREACHES TO\nTHE BIRDS\nSisters, beware\nThe turn is only turning, and escape from air\nis not the end.\nBe angels invisible, be centre still\nbe spirit purely poor \u00E2\u0080\u0094\noh, but take care\nWhen you have reached the open heart\nthe curling end, tail\nof the twin spiral of your being \u00E2\u0080\u0094\nwait \u00E2\u0080\u0094\nthe reason for your emptiness is there.\nBe soul drained utterly, fling out your arms\nand drink your fill.\nCast off your robes of nakedness, discard\neven the beauty of last loss\nand sing of glory, glory, glory.\n68 Tim Lilburn\nBRITISH CEMETERY, NEAR JIMETA,\nNORTHERN NIGERIA\nLast miles of Sahara wind\nWorry the hill.\nHere is England,\nTen windworked stones and a broken lamb,\nBattalion of bone\nFacing the Alantika Mountains\nWhere maps went blank\nSeventy years ago.\nMalarial wife of a colonial banker,\nCorporal from Bedford,\nChild of ten,\nThe wind spares the last\nMillimeters of name\nIn dissolving stone.\nThe baobabs grow like fright.\n69 Emily Sion\nGETTING IN THE HAY\nClouds a loud silence\nover the harvest field.\nThis sunbrittled hay can go black with rot:\nthis purplest timothy,\nthis bee-lioned clover.\nWe hurry hurry\nThe day crumbles into dry thunder,\ntinder for lightning,\nand me with a metal pitchfork\nand a water-soaked hat on my head.\nA moose's skull on the gate\ncatches the last of the sun,\nthe clouds close-in growling and snapping;\nI hurry past with the perfect hay\ngetting in as much as I can,\ncover the rest.\nRain soft apologizing,\nthen hard and soaking,\nsheets the skull,\nthe tarps,\nthe roof.\nInside, a green breathing\nechoes around the barn.\n70 Peter Sears\nBIRDS\nA scissoring and a whooping\nrushed the air above my house. I looked up\nthrough my hands, the sky a jabbering\nof birds. They flicked and blurred\nand how packed they flew stunned me.\nThey took the sky across a field\ninto a tree. I felt the clattering branches\ntry to let go. The birds lifted,\nblack leaves, black leaves,\nand blew across the house. Marie Delia Mattia/7wo Poems\nCONTESSA\nIn famous colours\nshe dresses\nslowly\nsmooothing\ncheap nylon\nover rough calves\ntrailing fingers\nhigher\nA ritual\nof a woman\nher care\nand concentration\nnot often distracted\nI bless your Abuela\nbut curse\nthe noble birth\nof babes\ndrawn out\nof carpet bags\n72 ROCK FORCE\nMark the open place\nWhere anthills speckle ground;\nWhere dancers dance\nUpon the face\nOf all, but make no sound.\nArms lift to the sky,\nAnd as they clap their hands\nThey fight to see\nThe reason why\nBut find no words in that.\nMarie Delia Mattia, First Prize PRISM High School Writing\nCompetition: Poetry\n73 Rhonda Anderson\nMORNING BIRDS\nIn the morning, sometimes,\nBirds are dead\nAnd cows are stiff and hunched,\nCrowded in a bunch.\nDeath, patient in the cold.\nThe sun is bright and false,\nThe sky hard blue,\nTight and painful is the breath,\nSharp with death.\nThe wind so deep and slow.\nDouble feed slides\nFrom the fork;\nIn February April's hay\nKeeps death at bay.\nDesperation clings and grows.\nAnd in the morning,\nOn the ground,\nSoft and small,\nThe birds are dead.\n74 Roger Kuypers\nTHE SCAR\nThe wild blur of white curved rapidly in behind him. The growling\npulse of his engine was stolen by the wind and left to hang among the\nfrosted trees. John grinned with exhilaration as he overtook his friend on\nthe motorcycle.\nHe was enjoying himself; something he hadn't done for a long time.\nHe felt a new sense of control.\nAs the road ahead stretched out to become an empty apex, his grin\ntightened. The hands clenched the wheel with a new determination. The\neyes that narrowed into vicious slits were no longer his; John was no\nlonger driving. He had taken a back seat.\nJohn lifted his face from the wheel. His feet were cold and covered\nwith snow. The black Lotus rested neatly at the end of the road. \"Not\nagain\", he pleaded with himself.\nJohn turned the key in the ignition and the warm motor jumped to life\nimmediately. He pulled the wheel sharply and brought the hood of the\ncar around to face the road. Something behind him rolled heavily and\ndropped to the floor of the car.\nThe black splintered object was at first hard to recognize. It had been\ncrushed and was now marred with freshly dried blood. The blond hair\nthat stuck to it in disarrayed tufts was unmistakably that of his friend. It\nwas his friend's motorcycle helmet.\nJohn felt a wave of shock wash through his weakened body. He nervously slammed the car into reverse and took the city-route home. The\nroad and the secret it held would have to wait.\nJohn fumbled hopelessly with the key to his door. He stepped inside\nthe warm comfort of his home; feeling a loss of control over himself, he\nfell to the floor.\nIn his deep, disturbed sleep, John saw visions of a motorcycle. Its\nfrenzied rider fought to keep control over the stunned beast. A look of\ndisbelief was etched eternally on his face as the motorcycle veered across\nthe road. It launched itself from an ice packed snowbank and ploughed\ninto a patch of light powder. There it rose up on its screaming back\nwheel and slowly crashed backwards on top of its dead rider. The bike\ncoughed and kicked and tore at the young man's clothes, spraying scarlet\nsnow in every direction.\n75 The killer knelt down beside the dead man. John saw the reflection on\nthe scattered visor. It was a face he knew very well \u00E2\u0080\u0094his father's. John\ndidn't understand. His father had been dead for over two years.\nJohn felt claws tearing at his throat, just as odd occurrences clawed at\nhis mind. He awoke to find his cat toying with the gold chain hanging\nfrom his neck. John's father had given him the chain.\nJohn looked into the mirror on the hallway wall. His father was pale\nand matted with sweat. The lines around his eyes had been carved by\npain. He promised himself that he would see someone, find help. He\nwasn't to blame for what was happening, but the guilt he felt was\nintolerable.\nJohn made up his mind to go back to the road. Some part of him knew\nwhat had happened.\nHe swung open the door of his black Lotus and was embraced by its\nsupple leather seats. He had failed to notice the dent on the side of the\ncar.\nThe Lotus had been a gift from his father. A beautiful black Esprit;\nsleek, low and fast with a slightly satanic look. Its wide black tires clawed\nthe asphalt. The polished chrome exhaust pipes resembled the threatening barrels of a gun.\nJohn's father had always wanted the best for his son. And in return he\nexpected the best from John. John's father had been very successful in\nbusiness but not with his son. Father was constantly bothering John\nabout his grades, his manners and his friends. They were never good\nenough for him. John had hated to disappoint his father. After all, his\ndad had always been good to him, he thought. He had worked hard to\ngive John the things he needed.\nThis hard work had resulted in an early death. His father's death had\nleft John feeling guilty. Guilty for not being what his father wanted him\nto be. John promised himself to make it up to his father.\nSlowly John's outlook on life and the things around him had changed.\nIt seemed that his father had become a part of him.\nOn reaching his destination, John paused and prepared himself for\nwhat lay ahead. The road in front of him cut a long icy scar through the\nforest, just as it had cut a scar through his mind.\nThe snow of late November weighted the branches of the forest. Their\nicy fingers pointed down at him accusingly.\nHe slipped the black Lotus into gear. It purred authoritively as its\ntires gripped the light snow. He guided the car along the white path with\nsmooth experienced precision. He and his friend had raced here often,\ncar against motorcycle. The \"Scar\", they had laughingly called it.\nJohn relived the race that had taken place earlier that day. He relived\nevery corner but found that it was getting more and more difficult to\nrecall.\nJohn shifted down into first as he approached the stretch where he had\n76 passed his friend. His eyes searched along the side of the road for any\nsign of an accident.\nHe crawled along at a frustrating pace and saw nothing. He was\ntrying to believe that nothing had happened. The needle on the speedometer rose, as did his hopes. He was nearly convinced that nothing had\nhappened when the grotesque red stain flashed by the car.\nJohn brought his foot down hard on the brake and the four wheels\nfroze simultaneously. The speedometer needle dropped. The back end\nof the car swung around violently before sliding to a halt. Unusual for\nthe Lotus, but John foolishly disregarded it. The front of the car was\nsomehow heavier than normal.\nJohn scrambled up the deeply-scarred snowbank and gazed down at\nthe patch of snow where rider and machine had landed.\nWhere once a light blanket of powder had rested, blood, snow and dirt\nnow combined to form a disarrayed mess. Fragments of motorcycle littered the area. An aura of death hung over the clearing like the freshly\nsoiled blade of a guillotine. But there was one item missing. The body.\nJohn suddenly felt very vulnerable; he had never tasted fear so strongly before. He grabbed the mutilated handlebars of the bike and dragged\nthem quickly back to the car. He would have to move the wreck piece by\npiece.\nJohn knelt down at the front of the Lotus. He groped clumsily for the\nlatch that released the hood. It sprung open and something seemed to\ngrab his leg. Staring from within the trunk of his car, torn, frozen and\nmangled, was the dead body of his friend.\nFrom deep within his mind John heard the voice of his father. The\nlook of shock on his face was replaced by a grin of revenge. Once again\nhis eyes became vicious slits.\nHe shut the trunk and drove away.\n77 Linda Carpenter/ Two Poems\nBY THE CREEK\nBy the creek\nthe trilliums and wild violets\nbloom.\nRose scent\nsoftens in the heat\nof the afternoon.\nThe calm of day plays on\nled by a robin\ndrowning like Narcissus\nin the beauty of its song.\nBut in the creek\nturbulence\na flash like lightning \u00E2\u0080\u0094\neels devour each other.\n78 WHEN BEARS\nI remember how it was\nYou turned away\nwalked down\nthe winding gravel road\nas lonely\nas three in the morning\nwhen bears cry\n79 Andrea Lupini\nGrandmother's Story\nJuly is very warm in Italy, and this July was particularly warm, so that\nwhen Gina and I went outside for a walk, we had to bounce from the\ndusty road to the green field, wiggling our toes and cooling our feet.\nMama came out too, with little Augusto, already thirteen months old,\nbut looking small and weak cradled in Mama's strong brown arms. She\nwent into the shade to talk with the neighbours, waving goodbye to us as\nwe journeyed up the hill, sweaty hands clasped tightly together. I loved\nmy little sister, though I had always envied her name, and had once even\nasked Mama why I hadn't been named Gina, or even Assunta, after her.\n\"I gave you the name of the Blessed Virgin, Maria,\" she had responded, rolling her eyes heavenward. \"What more do you want?\"\nMaria certainly was the holiest of names, but at times I wondered privately if holy things were necessarily pretty things. Still, I was proud that\nMama needed me to help take care of Gina, now that Papa was away in\nAmerica, and my uncle, who was living with us, was at the market in\nFano and wouldn't be home until tomorrow.\nI pointed out to Gina which vines grew the best grapes, and which orchards belonged to people we knew, and then watched her as she smiled\nat the tiny butterfly I held in cupped hands, its wings beating until I\nreleased it high above my head. We stood and watched as it disappeared\nin the deep blue ocean of sky. Then we turned and started home.\nOn the way we met Rosa, a young girl, and a good friend of my mother's. She was tall and slim, and as I fell in step behind her I began to\nimitate her slow, steady gait. Behind me, Gina was imitating me imitating Rosa, so in this queer procession we made our way down the\nslope. An older woman, another friend of my mother's, came out onto\nthe road ahead of us.\n\"Rosa, Rosa!\" she called. \"Did you hear what happened?\"\n\"What?\" cried Rosa, eager for gossip.\n\"Assunta's baby just began to cough and it died right in her arms!\"\nHorrified, Rosa turned to keep me from hearing, but it was too late.\nThe older woman, seeing me for the first time behind Rosa's lanky form,\nreached out to grab me, but in terror I dodged her arms, racing past her,\nand frantically ran the few remaining yards to our house, dragging a\n80 whimpering Gina with me. I kept telling myself that it wasn't true, that\nAugusto couldn't be dead; cold, white, and waxen like the bodies I had\nto file past at funerals in the church. But when I reached our porch, there\ncrouched my mother, weeping, and rocking back and forth, clutching\nmy tiny dead brother.\nMy father, receiving my letter nearly two months later, mourned the\ndeath of the son he had never seen.\nMy uncle, returning from Fano the next day, paused at the edge of\ntown to listen to the church bells ring, trying to imagine which old man\nhad died.\nNicola Clur\nHERON\nSlicing\nthe gray dawn\nA\nsingle gesture\npiercing\nthe mirrored\nwaves\n81 Lesley Brook\nTHE SWING AND THE BOY\nForth and back\nhe plays on the swing, asking.\nI answered with tact\na question about a bird's wing.\nI laughed and found\nhe sits while I push\nFrom behind\nhe agrees the snow is turning to slush\nI'd cropped his poker-straight hair\nhe wears above his grey long-sleeved sweater.\nAnd I should have patched his jeans wearandtear,\nhe says his feet through his shoes are getting wetter.\nBefore I left I pushed it again,\nHe too stands watching it, alone on its chain.\n82 Christopher Mark Brown\nThe Persecution of Mr. White\nBlain dove from behind the marble pillar and rolled, snapping off a burst from the\nBorgen machine pistol. The shells tracked across the wall, chipping concrete, then\nexploded into the chest of the assassin. Blood and bone fragments sprayed from the\ndead man. His corpse jerked twice and slid down the wall.\nBlain grinned and moved on.\nMr. White was pulled from his fantasies by a disturbance next door.\nHe had been Blain in the city museum hunting the government hit man;\nKILL OR BE KILLED! Now he felt cheated.\nHe dropped the paperback and wiped his damp palms on his trousers.\nGrunting, he heaved himself from the lawn chair and stared over at the\nyard across the garden fence.\nSomebody was backing a huge, eight-wheeler boat trailer into the\ngarage and having trouble making it fit the entrance. The fender scraped\na wall and the man driving slammed the wheel in frustration.\n\"Too bad,\" chuckled Mr. White. \"Too damn bad.\"\nMr. White fished in his pocket for his cigarettes and lit one up. He\ntook a long pull and felt himself relax. He was trying to quit, but it was\nhis summer vacation. When he got back to his office, it would be the first\nthing he'd do.\nThe man next door had successfully backed the trailer and was unlatching the coupling on his flashy red pickup. He was working quickly,\nwith a military precision, as though he was short of time.\nMr. White observed that the trailer was unusual; the object, cradled\nunder the orange tarpaulin, was shaped like a cylinder laid upon its side.\nMaybe it was one of those hot rod racing jobs.\nThe man pulled down the aluminium garage door and locked it carefully with a key from his wallet. He parked the pickup off the dirt road\nand stalked away towards the house, carrying a suitcase.\n\"Hello!\" Mr. White called from across the fence. \"Nice day!\"\nThe new neighbour ignored Mr. White, went inside, and slammed\nthe door. Mr. White, stunned by the insult, wanted to go over there and\nslap the punk's face around, but he was a mature man and did not let\nlittle things like that bother him. Still, he wanted to so badly he felt sick.\n83 He had come to the lake for six years now, every summer. He was established here and no weasel-faced new neighbour had the right to treat\nhim like that!\nHis face was flushed and he felt like an impotent fool. He finished his\ncigarette and flicked it in the grass with the other butts. He then went\ninside and opened the fridge, pulling out a package of Jiffy's Doughnuts.\nHe ripped open the box.\nOrange coconut! The box said, Jelly Doughnuts'. Those idiots! He\nhated orange coconut. Tomorrow he'd drive into town and exchange\nthem.\nMr. White sighed and bolted down a doughnut before he could stop\nhimself. It was too late to return them now.\nHe shrugged wistfully and took the box into the den, to read the Sunday paper. It was nice to sit in the Lazy Boy recliner and glance over\nthe headlines.\nMOHAMMED TRASHES\n'COBRA SLATE\nBoxing was great to watch on T.V. If he had joined that club when he\nwas a boy he would probably be in the paper right now. No doubt about\nit, he'd been tough back in high school.\nSTOCK CARS FACE\nNEW REG.\nNow there was a stupid sport. Damn cars kept going round and\nround. It was only good when there was an accident with a nice explosion.\nA girl in a panty hose advertisement stood with an arch smile, stretching her long legs. Mr. White felt hot and anxious.\nLater, he went to the fridge for another beer. His mouth tasted vile.\nProbably, he should be watching his diet more carefully; twelve doughnuts was too many. He threw out the empty box and slid a Hardy Man\nDinner in the oven. There was some chocolate layer cake left over from\nlunch. Best to save it for dessert...Well, one piece wouldn't ruin his\nappetite.\nA movement caught his eye and Mr. White stared out the window.\nThe sun was setting and the glare dazzled his eyes. The man next door\nleft the garage through the side door, locked it and walked into his\nhouse. The single window on the side of the structure was covered, so\nMr. White could not see inside. The new neighbor had tacked some\nblack material on the inside of the frame.\n\"Strange,\" Mr. White reflected. \"What's he trying to hide in there?\"\nDisturbed, Mr. White returned to the den but forgot about it while he\n84 watched football. It was an excellent game and the opposition got annihilated. He particularly enjoyed the half time parade and cheerleaders.\nWhen it was over he changed to the eleven o'clock news.\n\"Controversy still rages concerning the flea collar marketed by American Pet Aids. Several dog owners claim the collar has poisoned their\nanimals.\"\nThe picture switched to a fat woman crushing a poodle to her chest.\nShe was speaking, \"And then Little Sammy, Sammy was my chihuahua,\nLittle Sammy comes stumbling into the living room and looks at me real\nlong and sad and I went over to pet him and he just up and dies all over\nthe carpet. It was horrible, horrible...Well I've got you now Big\nSammy.\" She kissed the poodle and squeezed him possessively, \"I've got\nyou now and nobody's going to take you away from Mother.\"\nAbruptly, she glared up into the camera stabbing with a plump finger\nat the lens. \"I tell you something's got to be done. Someone should be\npunished!\"\nMr. White looked down at the cake pan hopefully, but he'd already\nlicked the foil. He searched for his cigarettes. None left. Well, that was\ngood because if he started to cut down now it would be easier to quit\nlater on. Probably, when he went into town tomorrow he wouldn't buy\nany more.\nThere was supposed to be a hot film on tonight. Angelique in Slave to\nPleasure. He checked the listings but found the set did not get the\nchannel.\nWhy did life have to be so difficult all the time! Nothing ever worked\nout.\nHe went back to the kitchen to discard the empty beer cans.\nA light was shining behind the covered window in the garage. That\nscum next door must be working there still. What was he doing this late\nat night? Mr. White didn't like it. Something strange was going on in\nthat garage. He would be sure to keep a careful watch on this new\nneighbour.\nMr. White awoke the next day and stretched, rubbing the grit from\nthe corner of his eyes. He looked over at the wall clock.\nTwelve-thirty already!\nHe had planned to get up early and take the lake hike. Tomorrow he'd\ndo it for sure. Right now he'd just sleep in for another ten minutes\t\nIt was three in the afternoon when Mr. White slid out of bed. His\nmouth felt so sore that he decided not to brush his teeth. He had soup\nand potato chips for lunch, and a large bowl of fudge ripple ice cream.\nAfter his third cup of coffee he felt more energetic and dressed to go into\ntown.\nThe Neighbour was out.\nPleased with his slyness, Mr. White sauntered out the door and into\nthe Neighbour's yard. He tried the garage door, but it was sealed with a\n85 heavy padlock that the Neighbour must have installed the previous day.\nHe considered forcing the hinges but subsequently rejected the idea. He\ncould get into real trouble for that Disappointed, he examined the side\nwindow. It was locked from the inside. He pressed his check against the\nframe and peered through. The darkness inside was almost complete,\nbut as his sight adjusted he could see something in there, and it was\nstrange, like a\t\nThe red truck exploded up the dirt road trailing dust like a comet's\ntail. The magnum wheels locked and it slid to a halt shrouded in a dirt\nfog. Oily smoke belched from the chrome exhaust.\nThe door swung open and the Neighbour leapt from the cab. In a\nsingle liquid movement he plucked a crowbar from the truck bed and\nvaulted the backyard gate.\nHe sprinted up the lawn swinging the bar.\n\"No, please!\" Mr. White squealed, shielding his head with his arms.\nThe Neighbour swung back to smite Mr. White, but spat and tossed the\nmetal away. He grabbed Mr. White's collar and shook him. His nails\ndug into the flabby chest, like claws.\n\"If you ever come near this garage again I will hurt you very badly.\"\n\"I'm sorry, I....\"\n\"Silence!\" He slapped Mr. White across the face and then backhanded\nhim: \"Get out!\"\nMr. White lumbered home. The Neighbour unlocked the garage and\nwalked inside.\nHe could have been killed. That guy was crazy! Nobody treated him\nlike that! Nobody! His body heaved for oxygen. Mr. White tore open a\npack of Twinkies with his teeth. He could feel his flesh tremble and the\nblood rushing in his ears.\nSitting down he felt calmer and wiped the cream filling off his face\nwith a towel. He reached for some chocolate cookies off the shelf and\nsome instant coffee to help his nerves. Should he call the police? He\npicked up the phone and put it down. No point in starting trouble for\nhimself. It would be necessary for him to go to the police, show up in\ncourt, and then what if nobody believed him? After all, he was the one\nwho had been trespassing. If he went to the police and they found something illegal in that garage...And if they didn't wouldn't he look like a\nfool!\nIt seemed to Mr. White that he had read a newspaper story once, in\nwhich a man pressed charges for assault, lost the case and was found the\nnext morning hanging from a barbed wire noose.\nMr. White decided, definitely, that he was not going to start trouble\nfor himself. Maybe he should leave in the morning, but the house was\npaid for another two weeks.\n\"Nobody treats me like that,\" he mumbled. \"Just what the hell is in\nthat garage?\"\nWhen it was completely dark, Mr. White crept out to this car and\n86 drove into town to buy food and cigarettes. While he was there he took\nadvantage of the Pancake House 'all you can eat' Dinner Special.\nFour days passed. The Neighbor spent almost all his time inside the\ngarage and ate his meals there as well. He did not leave in his pickup\ntruck again, or take the trailer down to the lake. He kept it locked away\ninside.\nOn the fifth day Mr. White had to know what was hidden in the garage under the tarpaulin. He couldn't read the paper, or concentrate on\nT.V., and once he forgot to buy food for dinner.\nHe had to know.\nHe waited until three in the morning before he moved in. He was\ndressed in jeans and a dark shirt. A hammer, screwdriver, and other\ntools were tied to his body. There was a kitchen knife taped to his ankle.\nHe'd seen that in a movie.\nHe stealthily levered himself over the fence and crossed to the garage\nwindow. The house lights were out and he could not rid himself of the\nfear that someone was standing up there, invisible in the dark, watching\nhim and waiting. He slipped the screwdriver in the jamb and tried to\njostle it open. Five minutes later he gave up, confounded. The only way\nto open it would be to smash the pane and that would wake the\nNeighbour \u00E2\u0080\u0094Maybe he slept with a shotgun!\nMr. White decided to go home; it was useless. He knew he'd tried. He\nstill had guts.\nAs he turned to leave he noticed that the padlock was off the door.\nBefore he had time to consider what he had done, he was inside and the\ndoor was closed behind him.\nThe room was full of strange sculptures made of human bones. Against the wall a\nribcage acted as a lampshade. The ceiling was hung with mobiles made of fingers\nand small bones. Suddenly, a man plunged through the doorway wielding a meat\ncleaver. He was dressed in a butcher's smock and his face was covered with a mask of\ndried skin. He snorted like a pig and struck with the cleaver, splitting \u00E2\u0080\u0094\nAlone with his fear and the darkness, the scene from the horror film\nhad seemed to come alive before Mr. White. He switched on his flashlight and flicked the beam about. It was a normal garage with a built-in\nworkbench, littered with delicate metal tools, and a large double cupboard next to the doorway. Filling the space was the huge trailer with the\nwheels wedged behind wooden blocks; the tarpaulin had been removed.\nSupine along the trailer frame was a small nuclear missile about\nthirty-five feet in length. It was black, elegantly tapered, and evil.\n\"Damn!-\" said Mr. White.\nHe approached to touch the sleek metal. ICBM USA EXPERIMENTAL was stenciled on the side in neat white capitals. In the feeble\nlight of the flashlight beam it was beautiful and frightening. It seemed to\nfloat in the shadows like a great black shark; an ancient, insatiable\npredator.\nMr. White tried to laugh to dispel his unease. He whispered: \"Boy, is\n87 this guy in for trouble.\" He tried to think what Blain would do now; but\nhe only had a kitchen knife. He knew that Blain would have gone ahead\nand taken the Neighbour out. He felt ashamed. Well, the police would\nknow how to handle it and he would be a hero!\n\"Don't walk another step, fat man.\"\nThe Neighbour stood between Mr. White and the garage door, his\nhand on the light switch. In his other hand he gripped a Luger sporting a\nsilencer on the long barrel. Behind him, the cupboard door was ajar. He\nsaid, calmly: \"I sleep inside there, fat man, so nobody can mess with my\nbaby. Got anything to say?\"\n\"I...I was leaving. It was a mistake!\" Mr. White pleaded.\n\"Yes, it was a mistake. You think I'm sending this to Russia. I am.\nBut not in the manner you believe. I'm launching it at Leningrad.\"\nMr. White gasped. \"But you'll start a war!\"\nThe Neighbour smiled and prodded the Luger barrel at Mr. White's\nstomach, which flinched. He said: \"Let me explain it simply to you. I\nused to work for Boeing in cruise missile design. I pioneered what you\nare looking at now: the Piranha Class Cruise Missile.\" He patted the\ntailfin affectionately. \"This is the most sophisticated cruise ever; nothing\nperforms like it. Its guidance system is based on an ingenious and yet\nsimple idea. It samples radio and television waves to home on its target.\nThink about it: the higher the population density, the more waves\nemitted, and the more attractive the area is to the Piranha. The propulsion uses a radical variation on the pulse jet and hits mach four at two\nhundred meters above the earth! That's faster than any 'stealth' machine.\nThe Piranha follows the contours of the terrain exactly. It modifies its\nflight path to fly around mountain bases and skim down into valleys to\navoid radar tracking. But even more entrancing, she's remarkably light\nand compact to give her incredible mobility; I can move her on a conventional boat trailer!...And now attend most carefully, this is my\ngreatest innovation. She has a completely independent launch capacity\u00E2\u0080\u0094no fueling or launch units are necessary. All I have to do is winch\nthe trailer up to thirty degrees and she'll take care of the rest. I'm\nlaunching her at nine o'clock tomorrow evening. Incredible, isn't it?\"\nMr. White whined: \"You're crazy! You'll die if this thing hits Russia.\nEveryone will die.\"\nThe Neighbour looked at him with undisguised contempt. \"Of course\neveryone will die. That's the whole point, you fool. Everyone dies. You\ndon't think I built the Piranha not to be used, do you? I didn't spend\ntwenty years of my life building an ornament.\" His urbane manner\nfaded. \"Listen, when I perfected this weapon, the government was upset. They worried that the Russians would hear about it and panic. 'We\ndon't want to upset the balance,' they told me, 'It's too advanced for the\ntimes'. With this missile you could actually win a war with no more than\nsay fifteen percent of your civilians crisped. You want to hear something\namusing? I stole this by secretly programming it to fly off the test site and crash in Great Slave Lake up in the Territories. The military boys\nallowed themselves to believe that she had malfunctioned and fragmented in the atmosphere. Then I just waited for my vacation and\ntravelled north to the lake. I tracked her on a special beacon I installed,\nand recovered her from where she was twenty feet below the surface on\nflotation bags. That was nine days ago. It's taken me some time to fix her\nup and synthesize more fuel.\"\n\"You mean that thing has an atomic bomb inside?\"\n\"Of course not! They don't use warheads on flight trials. It isn't necessary. All the Russians need is for this thing to come screaming in on\nLeningrad at mach four and they'll hit all the buttons. After all, everything's automatic. Goodbye, fat man.\"\nMr. White peered down in astonishment at the orange dart plume\nstuck in his belly, and at the Neighbour, playfully blowing the smoke off\nthe Luger. He tried to say something, but someone was pumping black\nmud into his head with a high pressure hose. The cement floor sprang up\nand smashed into his body.\nSomething was pressing on Mr. White's face. Like enormous lead\nshields, his eyelids rolled back and he squinted up at the sunlight pounding down from the window. He tried to lift his head, but his machinery\nseemed jammed. He had something important to do. What was it?\nSomeone had shot...and drugged him. Yes, he'd been drugged, and\nwhere was he?\nThings seemed to be bending and twisting, but he was sure that he\nwas back in his own house, on his bed. The tools that were tied to him\nhad been removed, and the kitchen knife was gone.\nThat damn Neighbour.\nHe braced his arms beneath himself and tried to stand, but he collapsed on the floor and was sick. He almost gave up, but he was ravenously hungry. Gradually, he grew stronger and his head cleared. He\ncrawled into the kitchen to the phone. It was gone. Ripped off the wall\nwith nothing left but a torn red wire. He stood, though his legs felt boneless, and wondered if he could make it to his Buick. The wall clock read\neight o'clock P.M. He'd been unconscious all day. He checked the fridge\nand found that all the ice cream had been taken.\nThat damn Neighbour!\nMr. White hit the accelerator hard. He hurtled past the garage. The\npickup truck was gone! He drove as quickly as his coordination allowed.\nTwenty minutes later he pulled in at the police station.\nWhen Mr. White walked through the glass doors, a thin, hardlooking\npoliceman got up to meet him. He had short black hair and bad skin.\n\"What can I do for you?\" he inquired.\nMr. White hesitated, then blurted: \"I have something really important. It is a matter of...National Security!\"\n\"Fine,\" the policeman answered, looking at Mr. White rather strange-\n89 ly. \"I am the senior officer here. Please step into my office.\" He followed\nMr. White inside and shut the door firmly. \"Have a seat, sir. I see you\nare admiring my collection. It's a pastime of mine. Now, what is the\nproblem you have?\"\nMr. White was confused. The walls of the room were cluttered with\nhunting trophies: wolf, deer, and bear heads were mounted along the\nwalls. Shotguns and assault rifles were racked behind the desk.\nMr. White twisted his watchband nervously. \"I'm renting a place for\nthe summer up by the lake. My neighbour has a deadly weapon in his\ngarage.\" The policeman sat down slowly. He asked: \"Is this weapon a\nPiranha Cruise Missile?\"\nMr. White lurched forward, spluttering: \"Yes, how did you know!\"\nThe policeman glided his chair back on its casters so that his hands\nrested near the gun rack. \"I'll talk straight with you, Mr. White. I received a call this morning from your neighbour. He informed me that\nyou were a lunatic, that you have accused him several times of concealing a cruise missile in his garage, and that he planned to use it to destroy the world.\"\n\"But it's true!\"\n\"He told me you threatened to call the police and have him locked\naway for good. He doesn't want any trouble. He just wants a peaceful\nvacation.\" He paused and stared at Mr. White. \"He invited us to check\nthe house over and I did. We examined the house and grounds thoroughly, especially the garage. There's no missile or weapon of any\nkind.\"\nMr. White became very red in the face. \"There is a missile! He's taken\nit away. You've got to believe me!\"\nThe policeman sighed. \"You're a lucky man, Mr. White. He's not\ngoing to press charges for harassment and assault, and he's leaving this\nevening. Apparently, you threatened him violently with a crowbar and\nripped his shirt.\"\nFurious, Mr. White jumped up. \"That's a lie!\"\nThe policeman snatched a shotgun off the rack and worked the pump.\n\"Don't get yourself excited now, sir.\"\nMr. White let himself out of the office. The Neighbour had said the\nlaunch was tonight at nine o'clock. There was so little time! He glanced\nat his watch; it was eight-thirty. By the time he was approaching the lake\nroad, it was dark.\nThe pickup was back! Mr. White parked and jumped out. The big garage door was folded up and the light was on inside. The Neighbour sat\nin the middle of the empty room in Mr. White's lawn chair reading Mr.\nWhite's paperback. Mr. White walked cautiously up to the entrance. The\nNeighbour glanced up from the book. He remarked: \"This Blain character is quite disgusting, murdering corrupt bankers and then sleeping\nwith their daughters. Blain: MASTER OF SEVEN MARTIAL ARTS!\n9\u00C2\u00B0 Extraordinary nonsense! The Piranha is up at the lake picnic grounds in\nthe clearing, if that interests you. I'm going up there and launch it right\nnow.\" He checked his digital watch. \"ETD is fifteen minutes.\"\nThe Neighbor rose, strolled to his vehicle, and started up the engine.\nHe backed into Mr. White's Buick, shattering the headlights.\n\"Sorry!\"\nHe roared away, illuminating the dark like a phosphorescent fish in\nthe depths of the sea.\nMr. White scrambled into his car to follow. With no light he could not\ntravel more than fifteen miles per hour along the invisible surface of the\ndirt road. Twice he left the edge and almost piled into a tree.\nHis Neighbor must have been travelling about fifty!\nHe climbed the last stretch of hill to the clearing.\nFlames twisted up into the black sky. A hard booming roar hit his ears\na second later. Fifty meters away in the scrub grass was a circle of\nglowing earth dancing and smoking with small fires.\nThe missile was gone.\nMr. White walked out across the clearing to the launch pit. Up close\nhe could see that the dirt was fused into a crude glass by the action of tremendous heat.\nMr. White turned around. The Neighbor was standing back in the\nshadow of a tree. \"The retaliatory wave will arrive here in about ten\nminutes. It's likely that we won't receive a direct hit up here, so we might\nhave twelve hours before we die from radiation bombardment.\" The\nNeighbor laughed cheerfully. \"Look, why don't you come home with me\nand we'll talk. We can take my car. You'll never need yours again\nanyway.\"\nThe pickup was parked behind some bushes. Mr. White followed and\nclimbed inside. They drove back to the house, Mr. White silent and\nwithdrawn and the Neighbor singing with a rich vibrato: \"So long it's\nbeen good to know yuh. So long it's been good to know yuh. So long it's\nbeen good to know yuh. What a long time since I've been home. And\nI've gotta be drifting along. The sweet-hearts they sat in the dark and\nthey sparked. They hugged and they kissed in that dusty old dark. They\nsighed and they cried and they hugged and they kissed, but instead of\nmarriage they talked like this: Honey \u00E2\u0080\u0094So long it's been good to know\nyuh. So long...\"\nAs they walked into the Neighbor's house, he leaned over and whispered to Mr. White: \"That song was 'So long it's been good to know\nyuh', by Woody Guthrie.\"\nMr. White thought to himself just how much he hated Woody Guthrie\nsongs.\nThe Neighbor's digital beeped twice. He grinned. \"She's in Soviet airspace, a matter of minutes now. Counter strike should arrive in three\nhundred seconds.\"\n91 Mr. White crossed to the sofa and fell into it burying his face in his\nhands.\n\"Why! Why, did you do it?\"\n\"I can't cheapen the beauty of the thing into something that you could\nsee. If you do not understand already you never will.\" Reaching into his\npocket, he lifted out a small pair of steel scissors and began to trim the\nnails on his left hand. \"This may seem strange...clip...but why don't\nyou...clip...tell me something about yourself...^/)...What are your\nplans and dreams, my friend?\"\nMr. White beat his hands on the arm-rest. He shouted, \"You've killed\nme and my life was just starting to work! I was going to go on a diet and\nquit smoking! I hate my job; you don't understand, working in a bank is\nsheer hell! It's so dull....Every Friday the same old bag of a lady comes\nin and counts out her pennies onto the counter, one after the other] I was\ngoing to quit and become a ranger like I always wanted to. For fifteen\nyears I wanted out but I didn't have the guts. This year was different! I\ncould have, really \"\nThe Neighbor patted Mr. White compassionately on the shoulder. He\nsaid, \"Be brave, man. The days of man are as nothing. Tell me if you\nhad another chance, would you change?\"\n\"Of course I would! I hate myself. People stare at me in the street and\nlaugh. I'm embarrassed to buy clothes! The only excitement in my life is\nfood \u00E2\u0080\u0094 it's the only real friend I have. My doctor told me I'm headed for a\nheart attack, and I pretended that it wasn't true, but he was right. I could\nchange...I would change! But you've taken it all from me. YOU\nKILLED ME!\"\nThe Neighbor stepped back and grimaced. He said firmly: \"Please\nstop bellowing. The Soviet missiles are here and we're still alive. Let's\ncheck the radio.\"\nHe crossed the room and switched on the portable stereo. There was a\nwail of static: \"...repeat, please...Toron...destroyed...do not approach\n...vehicles...city core...evacuate...please...\" The signal cut out with a\nhowl of raw sound.\nThe Neighbor switched it off. \"Station must have been hit. I'm surprised we got anything at all.\" He turned on the black and white cable\nT.V. that came with the house. He flicked through the channels but\nthere was nothing but snow and frenzied lines. The Neighbor straightened and winked at Mr. White. \"All gone,\" he said. \"My friend, we are\ndying men. The hard radiation we have absorbed by now is already\nripping our cells apart; the protein in our bodies is degenerating rapidly.\nIn three hours or so our hair will fall out and our vomit will be mostly\nblood. After that, our eyes and gums will bleed and the pain will be\nhorrible.\"\nHe opened a desk drawer and took out a shiny tin box. \"The black\npill, Mr. White. It contains a fatal dosage of potassium cyanide.\" He\n92 opened the lid with a flick of his index finger. \"Take one, Mr. White, it\nwill be much cleaner this way. Death is very quick. I shall take one in an\nhour or so. Of course if you have a bathtub and razorblade in your\nhouse, you might prefer...\"\nMr. White grabbed a pill from the box and stuffed it in his trousers.\nHe wept noisily.\nThe Neighbor frowned. \"Please, you are making this lovely time most\nunpleasant for me. I must ask you to leave my house.\"\nMr. White shambled out the front door, consumed in his misery. The\nNeighbour called after him: \"Goodbye, Mr. White, you'll never see me\nagain. I urge you to savour the life you have left; one second can seem\nan eternity \u00E2\u0080\u0094Don't look up at the sky or your eyes might melt down your\nface.\"\nThe Neighbour closed the door.\nMr. White wandered out across the yard to his house, gazing at the\nground. He went inside and found the power was out. He was horribly\nhungry, and he ate and drank in the dark for almost two hours. Then, he\ntook the black pill into his palm and found that he could not swallow it.\nHe cried himself to sleep and dreamed of his death.\nWhen he awoke at three o'clock the following day, Mr. White's hands\nwent to his face with a great dread. His eyes were wet, they were\nbleeding, he...His eyes were wet with tears. He seemed normal.\nWhimpering, he placed a hand hesitantly to his hair and tugged. It hurt\nand was firmly rooted. He rushed to the bathroom mirror to examine his\ngums.\nThey were normal.\nA plane murmured off in the distance.\nMr. White walked out into the backyard. The sky was clear; it was a\nhot, middle of July day. There were no pillars of smoke in the distance\nand the air was fresh. The garage next door was empty and the trailer\nand pickup were gone.\nAnd so was the Neighbour.\nMr. White looked up and saw that the powerline to his house was\nneatly cut. He ran over to the Neighbour's house and tried the door, it\nwas open and he walked inside. He went to the phone and dialed 'O'.\n\"Hello, Operator.\"\nHe tore the receiver out and threw it at the wall. It bounced back and\nstruck his forehead.\nHe stormed into the living room and turned the television around.\nThe cable leads were wrapped with insulating tape where they were\nwound around the contact screws.\nMr. White lifted the set and hurled it to the floor. It sparked and\nflashed. Unfortunately, the Neighbour had taken his radio \u00E2\u0080\u0094or had it\nbeen a tape recorder? \u00E2\u0080\u0094 with him.\nShuddering with fatigue, Mr. White trudged up the slope to the picnic\n93 grounds. He searched the area and found, twenty feet from the ring of\nthe scorched grass, a plastic carton and three empty gasoline cans discarded in a bush. He flipped the carton over and read the label:\nDANGER ELECTRICAL BLASTING CAPS KEEP AWAY FROM\nSPARK OR FLAME.\nIt would be easy for a man at night to watch for a car coming up the\nhill and to time the effect just right.\nMr. White drove home in his car. What had he really seen? Didn't the\ngovernment sometimes build mock-ups of rockets for public display?\nBut he had touched the missile and felt the solidity of the machined\nmetal!\nBack home, he opened the fridge and took out a package of Jiffy's\nDoughnuts that he had missed last night in the dark.\nThey were orange coconut, but he ate them anyway.\nChristopher Mark Brown, First Prize PRISM High School Writing\nCompetition : Fiction\n94 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS\nRhonda L. Anderson is a grade twelve student at North Peace Secondary School in Fort\nSt. John, B.C.\nMarianne Andrea has appeared in PRISM as a poet and translator. Born in Russia, she\nhas lived most of her life in the United States.\nLesley Brook attends Grand Forks Senior Secondary School in Grand Forks, B.C.\nChristopher Mark Brown, a grade twelve student at University Hill Secondary School\nin Vancouver, B.C., is the winner (Fiction) of the B.C. and Yukon High School Writing\nCompetition, for The Persecution of Mr. White.\nLinda Carpenter is a student at Mission Senior Secondary School in Mission, B.C.\nDerrick Clinton Carter's work on PRISM 20:4 and 21:1 has been nominated as a finalist for a 1982 National Magazine Award for best cover design.\nNicola Clur attends Hillside Secondary School in West Vancouver, B.C.\nRienzi Crusz is currently editing an anthology of Asian Canadian poets, with Cyril Daby-\ndeen.\nCyril Dabydeen's published works include Distances, Goatsong, and Still Close to the Island.\nLorna Goodison is the author of Tamarind Season, Kingston, Institute of Jamaica, 1980.\nSam Hamill, in collaboration with Jaan Kaplinski, is working on a translation of Kap-\nlinski's Selected Poems. He is the publisher of Copper Canyon Press.\nMaggie Helwig's first book, Walking Through Fire, was published by Turnstone Press.\nJaan Kaplinski's poetry has appeared in Willow Springs and Northwest Review. Kaplinski\nlives injartu, Estonia.\nMichael C. Kenyon appeared in issue 20:4. His poetry and fiction has been published in\nmany Canadian literary magazines.\nIvan Klima was born in 1931 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He has published more than a\ndozen plays, three novels, several collections of short stories, and literary criticism. Since\n1968, his work has only appeared outside Czechoslovakia.\nDavid Kranes has published novels, short stories, and plays; his most recent play is In The\nValentine Lounge (May 83), at the Manhattan Theatre Club (NYC).\nRoger Kuypers is a student at Lord Byng in Vancouver, B.C.\n95 Tim Lilburn works on a farm near Guelph, Ontario.\nAndrea Lupini, a poet and prose writer, is a student at Magee Secondary in Vancouver,\nB.C.\nOsip Mandelstam was born in January, 1891. He is the author of Stone and Tristia (1913\nand 1922). He died in exile in Vladivostok in 1938.\nMarie Della Mattia is the winner (Poetry) of the B.C. and Yukon High School Writing\nCompetition, for her poems Rock Force and Contessa. She is a studeFt at North Surrey\nSenior Secondary.\nEarl McKenzie lives in Jamaica.\nPeter Sears lives in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he is the Dean of Students,\nBard College.\nMichal Schonberg is the dramaturg of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.\nEmily Sion writes poetry, nonsense verse, and minute stories.\nJosef Skvorecky is a Canadian writer, writing fiction in Czech. He teaches English and\nFilm at the University of Toronto, Erindale College. His most recent novel is That Swell\nSeason, Lester & Orpen Dennys.\nMarketa Goetz-Stankiewicz is the Head of the Department of Germanic Studies at the\nUniversity of British Columbia. She is the author of The Silenced Theatre: Czech playwrights\nwithout a stage, University of Toronto Press.\nPeter A. Stenberg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies at\nthe University of British Columbia. He has published in Swedish and German Literatures\u00E2\u0080\u0094particularly that of Austria and Eastern Europe.\n96 Supplement to PRISM international, Volume 21:4\nJuly, 1983\nThe National Magazine Awards Foundation has awarded the\ndu Maurier Award for Poetry to Erin Moure, for her poem\n\"Tricks,\" volume 20:3; and the Bomac Batten Award for\nMagazine Covers to Derrick Clinton Carter, Brian Burke, and\nShin Kishinoyama, volume 21:1. The Editors of PRISM\ninternational would like to express their appreciation to the\nAwards Foundation, and to the artists for their contribution\nto the magazine. \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 \u00E2\u0080\u009E.V;. .\n$3.25 "@en . "Periodicals"@en . "PR8900.P7"@en . "PR8900_P7_021_004"@en . "10.14288/1.0135338"@en . "English"@en . "Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library"@en . "Vancouver : The Creative Writing Program of the University of British Columbia"@en . "Materials provided for research and reference use only. Permission to publish, copy, or otherwise use these images must be obtained from the Prism international: http://prismmagazine.ca"@en . "Creative writing Periodicals"@en . "Poetry--Periodicals"@en . "Canadian literature -- Periodicals"@en . "Prism international"@en . "Text"@en . ""@en .