THE VISITOR
David Hollander
There was the sun behind him, just now rising (as if bestowing a favor). He knew this because there in front of him, the black surface of the pond suddenly ignited, molten red, and he stared in awe at the effect of so simple a thing as light on the mannerisms of the world. Or perhaps it was not awe, but distress, that would best describe his countenance. Or perhaps not distress, but anger. Or if not anger, then maybe bliss. He was not one to make unequivocal judgments. He felt something, and that was enough. He sat on the freshly constructed wooden pier of The Prospect Park Boathouse. He could smell the pine, still ripe, as if the dock lingered under the continued impression that it was a tree. Behind him, in addition to the sun, was The Visitors Center, where he had been sleeping for three or four or five nights. Here is how he accomplished his residency in such extravagant quarters: At the end of each business day (which referred only to the business of others, and not his own, which was plied according to opportunity), he would hide inside the squirrel. It was built for children, which rendered this a claustrophobic bit of hijinx. The squirrel, that is, was built for children. The Visitors Center boasted precisely three other oversized representations of local fauna: A turtle (snapping); a cardinal (male); and a deer (doe). There had once been a rat as well, which he remembered from years prior, when vicissitudes had delivered him to this same boathouse hungry and staggering. The rat had disappeared, however, and he could only imagine that the complaints of well-intentioned parents had driven that rodent from the hallowed halls of this, and likely other, Visitors Centers.
He did not mind rats. In fact, he found them honest and fearless. Never a rat did he meet that shrank from his appearance. And he did not appear warm or welcoming or even necessarily harmless. His clothes were in tatters, and these tatters were themselves in tatters, such that he resembled a kind of shredded salad left out to brown. His face was blackened with the dirt of parks and of cities and of the interior of squirrels, and his hands, likewise. He was bald at the top of the head, and a single wen protruded like the pointed zenith of an umbrella from the center of his skull. For this reason, he never bowed to others, even when cadging change, for fear of introducing this wen and thereby dissuading potential benefactors from the altogether unreasonable act of dropping ten or eleven or twenty-five cents into the paper cup he held extended, always extended. It was important to keep a distance between his trunk and visage, and those of the patron. This was simple logic.
You climbed into the squirrel. There was a hatch on a hinge. You enclosed yourself as if for burial, and then inside two video screens came on, each representing what one of the squirrel’s eyes would be seeing, were this a real squirrel and, furthermore, were this real squirrel the size of a very large wolf or perhaps even a very small pony (he was distressed over such distinctions; when was the last time he’d seen a wolf? Or for that matter a pony? He never had seen any such beasts of the field! But what he would give for such an experience: not much, all that he had). This squirrel, he surmised, was a teaching tool. Children could experience life, for a moment at least, without the handicap of binocular vision. Squirrels, it seemed, saw two separate images at all times. One for the left eye and one for the right. Twice the bang for your buck. Now that was the way to accomplish something! He cherished that squirrel. Or if not cherished, envied. Or perhaps loathed. Ah, such sorcery, this language.
After they locked him in, though, there was much to be done, much to be done. There was a snack bar, whose less perishable items (candy and cookies and other confections well preserved by modern chemistry) were simply left in their plastic racks and bins. From these he chose carefully, as his teeth were largely rotten and not useful for chewing. It was necessary to permit his ample saliva time to soften these viands. And it did. It softened. He had the right stuff, and marveled at his body’s agreeable attitude toward consumption. Or again, maybe marveled was the wrong word. Maybe, feared, would be more appropriate. It is a small matter. Either way, he ate from this snack bar, and he wandered the Center, which was small from the standpoint of some Visitors, and large from the standpoint of Others. What constituted the normal size of the normal Visitors Center, in geometrical terms, he could not say. This one was exactly twenty-nine of his steps in one direction, and thirty-seven in the other, on a good day. By which is meant, a day on which he operated without noticeable limping or shuffling, a day in fact unlike most days. Of his three or four or five nights, only one thus far had conformed to these parameters.
Aside from consuming these non-perishables, he had an ample supply of water (two drinking fountains, one for children and one for adults, as suggested by the varying heights at which these porcelain monstrosities clung to the plaster). And activities, intended again for the young Visitor. For instance: A patch of dirt in which were imprinted various animal footprints that could be matched against colorful hanging placards on which the prints were replicated in gargantua. That sort of thing.
Once they were gone, once he had been locked inside the Center (and further sequestered within the hull of the squirrel), the place was his, for all intents and purposes. He could leave and return at his whim, simply by unlocking the door. Thus far, in the three or four or five nights he had bedded down, no other such as himself had wandered through during one of these excursions. Or, at least no one remained upon his return, if they had wandered through. To his knowledge, none other was aware of his luxuriant circumstances, and while he knew it could not remain thus (for nothing can ever remain thus, as he accepted; the world was a nightmare of flux and alteration), for the moment he was thrilled, or terrified, or appreciative, or perhaps sad. (He knew the world, but himself? What nonsense!)
He sat on the wooden pier (as has been previously noted) and the sunlight glowed red on the water and on his back, and he pulled a mostly-smoked cigarette from within one of his costume’s various folds and intricacies, likewise a match, and before many tries he was inhaling the sweet tobacco. There was a pain in his lungs. And another in the area he thought might house kidneys or liver. His teeth screamed in agony. His knees, in their current, bent position, trembled, threatening as always to surrender to the inevitable palsy. Then he would become useless, useless. He had a bad shoulder, a bruised hip, an acre’s worth of eczema. Within the tube of his throat, he felt a small, thorn-like protrusion, and even something as ethereal as smoke irritated this lever on its way in, and again on its way out. His intestines growled and gurgled and shot slivers of death through his abdominal region; he had not moved his bowels in three or four or five days. And how unfortunate! Because here at The Visitors Center, there were bathrooms with pink tiles and fluorescent lights, paradisial stalls inviting the expurgation of his blackened waste. Sad, that such resources should go unused.
Where was his mother? That is a question worth asking. Each of this earth’s multifarious cretins and millionaires has or has had one (and only one, that was the strangest part). We do not simply appear. And yet it was too much to consider, this issue of lineage. It was like asking how far away this or that star might be. Even though an answer may be available, it can not satisfy the imagination. He had a mother, let us say, and she wandered her own patch of earth, slept in her own Visitors Center, relied on the concealing properties of her own plastic squirrel. Beyond that, his mind did not make motions.
There were footsteps on the dock. They could not have been his footsteps, as he was seated, his legs dangling over the edge and only twelve or fifteen inches from the water itself, upon which floated small parcels of fungus and debris, which glowed an even sharper red (like embers floating within the conflagration). Some distance away – please, let’s not argue about the actual distance, there is nothing to be said – two swans circled one another, lovers or adversaries, their choreography revealed nothing in this respect. The footsteps approached, seemingly on his right, although he decided to reserve certainty in this picayune matter until further evidence was revealed. Had he been a squirrel, or had he at least been within his squirrel, he might have been able to discern the shape and form of the approaching interloper with the sole use of his right eye, while his left continued to track the comings and goings of this local waterway. But he was only a man, and as such he could see only the peripheral blur of another such as himself (indeed now, on his right), sitting down in similar position, perhaps five or seven or ten yards from him. He turned his head slightly. His neck ached; his spine made a familiar popping sound. He could see another pair of feet dangling over the dock, and the spitshine of black shoes, the implication of authority.
“I am a member of the Commission,” this other said suddenly into the air. “Or, at least I represent them.”
He extinguished his cigarette, and replaced it in a fold in his clothing, mindful of which fold, as he would no doubt desire this tobacco stub in the not-distant future, and as he had mentally labeled the many folds (in an elaborate numbering system that began at his torn collar, worked down along his left side, and then continued up his right until arriving back at the collar of origin) he had only to say to himself, “Nineteen,” in order to verify the placement of this latest artifact. Of course, how he would then remember “Nineteen” on the next and proper occasion, and not for example remember the number he had used on an even more previous occasion—let’s say “Seven” for the sake of example – was a question worth pondering. And an answer of sorts was available, despite overwhelming odds against. There were 37 folds in all, and “Nineteen” happened to fall at the bottom left of his shredded upper garment, and as this was the most natural place for his hands to grope, given the length of his arms and their natural proclivities in such matters, it hardly made a difference that he said the number to himself, as he would invariably reach for this spot, regardless. However, the system itself, like all systems, was a source of great comfort. Or, at any rate, a source of great dismay. It permitted him sideways access to the world, which was arguably better than no access at all.
“You can not,” said the black-shoed voice, “remain here. I have seen you emerge from within that mammalian belly. It is not right, sir.”
He cleared his throat. He had not spoken in many hours. His last words (meaning his most recent, and not those uttered just prior to death, as the phrase often connotes) had been, according to memory, “I am in need of species.” These dollops had been directed toward a well-dressed gentleman on a wide avenue (or a boulevard, if it is worth distinguishing between the two) who had inflicted a string of common and unflattering words upon his person, regarding issues of cleanliness and godliness. Was he really in need of species? Who can say? The phrase might have been gibberish, but it had been on his tongue, and like a small calf bursting forth from mother’s womb and through bloody vaginal opening, these words had simply . . . arrived.
The act of clearing his throat was laborious. It made a sound beyond his powers of description, high in pitch and full of verve. While he was in the throes of preparing a sentence, the other spoke again.
“You see,” he said, “there have been many before you. You are not the first to stake your claim here. This Visitors Center has seen dozens of such... infestations.” The other swung his black shoes leisurely, back and forth, over the dock’s edge. It was nauseating to behold. “And so you see,” the voice continued, “you have been tagged, like those before you, and like them you must now vacate. You are not welcome, sir.”
A series of sounds burst forth from his lungs, clicks and squeaks and then the gruff clearing of phlegm. When words finally came, they were of a practical nature. He was not beyond such gestures of necessity. “And were I to relocate?” he asked, his voice helium-thin and shimmying. “The cardinal? The turtle?” “Do you think,” the voice accused, “that you may simply shuttle your way throughout the animal kingdom? That you may inhabit the womb of whatever creature you see fit? Such perversity is unbecoming. Our Visitors Center has no place for behavior of your macabre variety, sir.”
Soon, in perhaps one or two or even three hours, people of various outlooks and origins would begin arriving. First would come those employed by, and ruthlessly committed to, a certain Commission. Then the Visitors, who unlike himself (or so he reasoned) enjoyed modes of habitation that took them outside the confines of Visitors Centers and into homes with elaborate color schemes and reclining chairs. Some of those people would be of the adult variety, others merely children. The water fountains, he knew, would separate one from the other, leaving more difficult judgments to the minds and hearts and genitals of men, not unlike the one sitting beside him in the licorice-red morning. They would Visit, they would Play, they would climb within the oversized fauna. He lowered his head, and this change of angle rendered his own visage suddenly visible in the water below. What’s more, the stranger’s reflected face was likewise visible, in the same water, seemingly only inches from his own. They might have been twins, so great was the resemblance. His head pounded. His heart fluttered, like an injured bird attempting flight, or not unlike such a bird, in any case. The stranger seemed to smirk, though this might have been a trick of the rippling surface. Were all surfaces not suspect in this regard? Did air not also ripple?
He commanded his knees: Bend. But they would not. (The palsy was indeed upon him.) He commanded his buttocks: Draw up these legs so that they may straighten and we may rise together! No results. He commanded his arms: Push from the dock! Push us to standing, you rapscallions! They twitched and gave a meager pressure against the pine, but not nearly enough.
“I cannot move,” he said.
“But you must,” the other assured him.
“I am in need of species.”
“Who among us, sir, is not?”
His mother had brought him into this world, a screaming infant unleashed. What source would instigate his removal? And what would be the effect of his leaving? He looked out across the water. The swans circled. A multitude of insects flittered just above the crimson surface. Elated (or perhaps elated is wrong here, perhaps bewildered would be more accurate), he began the unspeakably brazen act of enumerating these multifarious beasts of air and water. “One,” he began. And then he had his footing. “Two,” he said, with rare confidence, with unspeakable grace. “Three... four...,” it was all coming together, as in a certain expression he had heard and even – he would gander – uttered, on some special occasion.
“We have all day sir,” the other said.
“Five,” he demanded. “Six....”
Ah, contagion! By the time he reached eleven (or perhaps it was twelve, though certainly no later than that), he was not the only one counting. The other had joined in. Their voices drifted out across the water, through the now orange light and air, enumerating all of god’s pitiless creatures, as if determined to find the very last one. Though even then, of course, there would still be the matter of counting each other. Together, they anticipated such a moment with a dread as deep as sea caves, as dense as diamonds.
They were still counting when I left them there. For all I know, they are at it even now.