ARCHIPELAGO
Richard St. Germain
Matching fabric covered the armrests. The same fabric covered the headrest, but did not detach. What was the point of that? Below the armrests additional fabric made pockets, with the help of some bands of elastic. Actually, there might not have been pockets. It does not matter. No one wants to talk about pockets. But pockets would have been useful to keep the fabric for the armrests in. The fabric tended to fall off. And the floor was more than dusty. Things fell, then accelerated. They had to stop; that was what a floor was there for. The things became an archipelago, whose keeper was not inclined to sweep. Kick maybe. But the things rebounded easily, safely, repeatedly, offering another aspect. Things are good for that. Some things kicked back. There were the usual truces, wellings of respect, concessions to shoes. The feet were accustomed to larger, longer, other rooms. And where the feet were the head went above, helped by the body. From the head I watched the feet perambulate. By lengths of arm-ish instruments I tied the shoes. Through maneuvered ports and tubes, I breathed. I found the bathroom. I found the real ceiling, colored in another dust. There were two. You could choose. The other option was storage, desuetude, forfeiture. You might find something really valuable. You might contribute something really valuable. You never knew. It was worth looking into. I needed something to do, other than preserve the archipelago until the urge to kick something came along. Have you ever needed something to do? What did you do? You looked through the rooms. You revisited the bathroom, pondered your euphemisms, calculated angles that kept you out of the window. But the only beings that might have seen me were insects investigating the ivy. Refugees from the archipelago cowered under the piping, expecting to be kicked out. Did you? God, the closets. This one was for linen. The real ceiling crowned it, unimpeded. Dripping, shivering, grimacing, you peeled a folded towel from a stack. If you were perched, like a bird, on slender earth, your feet would be clenched like this. You would be teetering like this. But your eye would be open, cocked to the danger. You were sick of these towels. Even sicker of the face cloths. Ill. You could not help sniffing, it was something you did. Every emanation you had ever made was contained in these towels. This was what an animal stalking you would sniff before it killed you. Once the towel was unfolded again it had to be hung. Again, you could choose. I let the sodden things drop, where they belonged. When they were hung already I let them hang. Things accumulated. Insects inspected the rooms, alerting me to certain failures in sanitation which might lead to their dominion. Or the insects might be just passing through and the rooms and two of the windows were part of a larger circuit. The effort to detain then interrogate them was not worth it, after having to extend the pursuit and killing them in the end anyway. There were better things to do. The windows speckled with insect blood; the insect relatives conveying their contempt around you; and you: consigned to the archipelago, excused from showing motility, gratitude, homesickness, inebriation, appreciating only as ambassador to creatures that shuttled into the cracks of the living room floor. Another view I had was of creatures shuttling into a post office. By lengths of arm-ish instruments they kept themselves from spilling into one another, leaving creatures faltering to reconstruct their paths. I could have trained the ivy. You were a gardener, essayist, bicycle repairman. You were a felon, drug-taker, thief. You cooked everything you cooked in a toaster oven and it all came out oozing and crusted and good and if it didn’t you ate it anyway, you did not abandon it for a bowl of noodle soup. Did you? Any food was resurrectable, considering its ingredients and reflection on you who had purchased these ingredients, who had harbored these ingredients from beings that wanted dominion over you, who had taken these ingredients over others that had been more palatable to you. You trusted the mechanics of chewing, of biting the dry lumps until it was time. It was time. Your body wanted to operate. Tables kept the food available and segregated from the archipelago, generally. I had a bottomless collection of condiments and a toolbox full of cutlery to assist me. What the cutlery could not cut the condiments could sometimes dissolve. God, the sinks. Fitted to the deepest reach of one of them was a tiny colander. You saw what was clotted in the colander becoming more awful as the water leached beyond it, becoming more solid, becoming a condition you were going to be responsible for if you did not want other beings to have dominion over you. You did not want other beings to have dominion over you. You wanted dominion, but over whom? You wanted dominion over whoever wanted dominion over you. Dust was one thing. It had already been consumed. Creatures that lived in it were never going to extend their dominion beyond the cracks in the living room floor. The colander assumed categorical importance. You knew what the difference was. The nearest accepted receptacle impregnable to insects was convenient to none of the rooms. Noodle soup could be delivered. Noodle soup resulted in nothing solid, nothing awful, nothing in the colander, nothing. There was nothing awful about food in the colander. Food that got beyond the colander was another condition you were responsible for. But it did not get beyond the colander. The colander did what it had been supposed to do. Now you. Finish whatever you do. Find a way of thinking it was not awful. It was only awful the way you thought of it. There was a little coffee can I kept the lid for that I put the kitchen scraps in. I kept it in the refrigerator. It was little, so I had to empty it. There must be a can or two of something in your refrigerator you do not want anyone poking into. There must be coverlets of dust you cultivate. There must be legions of creatures craving the sustenance to justify their little existences. You must be afraid of something. You balanced baking dishes on the armrest without retrieving the fabric from the pocket, even though that would have helped you read or watch TV or just eat, scanning the infinity for anything with a destination, any breach of the emptiness. God, the coffee table. It was what you put your feet on. They needed the relief from the kicking and perambulating, always while underscoring the body. But that crowded the knees. You never experimented with its orientation or tried forcing it against the wall to compete as a bench. You did not need a bench. You needed a coffee table, something to put your feet on. You did not even drink coffee that you needed to keep available and segregated from the archipelago, generally, because drinking coffee created a volatile condition in the body, one that caused you to find the bathroom repeatedly, there to swear that you would not drink coffee, and if you did drink it you would drink it responsibly, not leaving it on a table where, seeing it available and segregated from the archipelago, generally, you would be prompted to drink it, and not occasionally, and sparingly, but wantonly, until it was gone. Books were conscientiously exempted from the archipelago and the coffee table did effectively prevent books from being kicked, the effect being: you could read. The shelves which upheld the rest of the books required a schlep and a kick and a who knew what else to get to, and here the books were ready to be hefted and reentered and read. Reading availed in many locations. I could take a book from either side of the bookshelf on my way to finding either the bathroom or the room which contained what I came to realize was my bed. I realize my bed is not the topic here. No one wants to talk about beds either. Everyone talks enough about beds already. But you realize that you leave a place and find you have been dreaming, and you leave a place within this place that looks exactly like yourself, and you even see things in this place which you come to realize are portions of yourself that have left you irretrievably, and unconsciously, not that you needed them, but they indicate infallibly that you were there, and people—readers—are going to ask why they do not see it, why do they not see where he dreams, you have seen where he defecates, what he eats—is there something he does not see? I am not obligated to see what is beside me. You would see everything. You would recall the weather, if anything moved in the wind. You cannot see wind. The miserable littleness of the rooms did not allow for cross-ventilation. There was that fan you had persuaded to stop crawling off one of the tables. You were glad to have at some point confiscated that fan and hoarded a three-prong adapter so that with the modicum of wiring you were granted you could enjoy an uninhibited assault of air coming at you, coaxing the hair up off the skin, dilating the crevices you refused to widen, evoking gratitude from all parts of the body. You were not used to that. It was, for you, a departure from suffering. It was nearly disagreeable to have that fan directing so much energy at you. Decisions of the body are not unanimous. That is when your attention is helpful. Another fan—of contemporary origin, that you paid for—would have glanced beyond you, as if it were curious, hurried back to you, reassuring, turned to whatever was beside you, letting you swelter again, making you yearn—remembering—and then remembered by you. Another fan would have deprived you occasionally. But another fan would not have needed such upkeep. Wires frayed and splices melted and motors, some day, quit. The toolbox was full of cutlery. Second-hand fans do not come with manuals. It was something to do. Receptacles were commandeered, emptied down to the fragments of hair you shed as a youth, and arranged on a table to receive in the order you could produce them the units that in their unity had added up to a fan. You scrupulously guarded these units against inclusion in the archipelago. Doing something scrupulously was new to you. Add it to the list of adverbs that could be applied to you. You can have your adjectives, your descriptive passages, your pronoun shifts. The adverbs are what will matter. It would not have hurt to have had the units of the fan dispersed, to kick them up and down the rooms. They deserved it. Space on the tables was being wasted. They were also dirty. They tended to replicate. They were inedible. Somewhere still secure among them something did not work. What did I keep reserved, where did I keep returning when the pressure got too much for me, the light too uninspiring, the table too obtruding? Where did I go for comfort? Where could I put my feet up? You could put your head back without sleeping. The fabric was too scratchy. If you had to, you could sleep at the table. You could nest your little head between your little hands and put the obtrusion to your advantage. The idea was relegation of duties to specified areas. The idea was not to evoke a continuum that would encourage your sensibilities, that would cause you to question what you were doing as you were doing it. Other projects became available. You still had not yielded the advances on that fan. There would be a reevaluation. There would be a reconsideration. You would seek a new appreciation. You would eat again. The aluminum tray you used to prevent everything you cooked in the toaster oven from oozing where it was not supposed to proved more suited to constricting a flow of units to a finite region of the tabletop. That was okay. You had a cast-iron skillet, too. Acookbook among the books had taught you what to do with it. The collection of condiments grew. Finally they were displayed with the label or shape or a desiccated residue hinting what their effect might be. God, the spice rack. Decades, maybe, of situation above stoves had induced a tackiness which presented the most offensive artifacts from the unsettled dust for your quiescent study. Nothing was immune to an updraft. What curtains there were attracted a sticky gauze. Were curtains laundered? Were curtains, in fact, ever disturbed? Were curtains ever retired, their bright panes endured? These curtains were. The effect on the rooms was a catapult of brightness that had to be entertained until the panes relented. The doors had been removed, too. Events in one room bled into others. I had trouble finding the bathroom. I perambulated freely. If my feet proceeded when my head could not, I leaned. There was an area where, if my feet proceeded and I fell, I went to sleep. You could sleep anywhere. You did not need the two ceilings. You did not need the floor, crowded with the things you did not need. You gathered some of these things beneath you, discarding, reclaiming, until you had an inner version of the shelter you enjoyed already but which could be enjoyed more closely, nakedly, even, furnishing you with heat supplied by the body, inviting you to disgorge stories that made you proud but ashamed, protecting you from the sight of yourself, who sported this body, who contrived for its engorgement unwise fantasies, who nevertheless built on these fantasies when he had the opportunity, who disgusted himself, really, who relied on excuses to redeem himself enough to put on the coffee. You loved coffee, so almost any excuse would do. You waited with your feet up while water percolated, resolving losses you were subject to—twilight, the originality of those stories, body heat or its absence, independent of the fan—and awaiting their replacements. The things clutched and warmed during the night dilated and cooled. The same things after a different night might have lain where they had been exiled. You could choose. Things would forgive you as long as you did not kick them. Even things you kicked would forgive you. The thing you had attended to in every aspect that was apparent to you had rejected you apparently. Apparently some aspect of it eluded you. Who would forgive you? Who would gambol about the rooms emptying the receptacles into a receptacle adapted to the purpose or maybe even acquired new, searched for and inquired about and finally directed to by persons employed in that service, and when it had come to an accounting, a total, a worried cashier, handed over, surrendered, transported, presented with the lid off, spent, incapacitated except to get the lid on again, settled in among receptacles incapacitated with kitchen scraps, thought of when you emptied the kitchen scraps again, missed, almost wished for when you had other things to put in it—remnants of the toaster oven, for instance—but finally, absolutely, frequently saluted: good riddance. Adieu. All was well that ended well. The fabric, after a while, caused a person to scratch. You ran your fingers along the skin until you felt where it was stippled and raw. There. Right there. Again. Thank you. The fabric suffered an occasional drip of ejaculate, I won’t deny that. I knew how much to expect, usually, and where it would collect, given the consistency. When worse came to worst, I flipped the cushions—you’d have to switch them—and called on the insects, who would come anyway and have to be shooed. I did not want to shoo them, but it was too early to have them feeding off me. Later it would be their duty. When other creatures stopped coming, for all the eventual reasons, then the insects would be welcome. Until then, the insects were welcome to the cushions. They were welcome to the recesses of the toaster oven. They were welcome to the clots at the bottoms of the sinks. Let them thrive behind the walls. There were traps of doubtful efficacy under the counters, reached only if you trusted the plumbing without insisting on the position of your sleeve, which knew better and retreated, while your hand went out and down and your elbow distended something which granted the elbow’s passage but then clamped above it, on the tenderest part of your arm, committing you to feeling, trying to spare your cheek from the adherence of crud hidden by the edge of the counter, splaying fingers grotesquely, inhumanly, imitating creatures whose lairs you were breaching, until the rest of you prevented you from doing anything except listening to the asinine sibilance of your breath. There must have been somewhere you put the spent traps. They were not accepted members of the archipelago. Maybe you had favored one once with a kick. The world could do without your favors, couldn’t it? You asked yourself this. But you needed to demonstrate the rhetoric of it. There were rooms, extra rooms, misproportioned, without doors, with the ceiling you knew overruled propped over them, infiltrated with a whiter, finer dust. The dust did not like to stir. It liked to sit, like you did. Look, you could even see through the rooms, tabulate the layers that made them, ramify the abscess in the layers, and look, look what you were achieving, ramifications that did not need you, an expulsion of that fine, white dust. There were things better left untested by you and they were left in these rooms. You might have contributed something valuable. You never knew. Nothing of value was exhibited in the rooms. The only thing I could not hide was my bicycle. You could not help stepping into something and feeling it topple and grabbing at whatever projection it offered you, stopping the reaction of wheels being righted and guided even by someone so surprised and reluctant as you. That was my bicycle. It would give you a reason to sit. You were a little dizzy. Where had you been? Could you have been everywhere you remembered? You could not remember everywhere you had been. You had been dodging seabirds reluctant to part from their garbage. You had been waked by the gritty winds that follow buses. The grit was still on your lips. It was under your eyes, it was on your fingers, you were wiping it over the fabric that covered the armrest. That was better. The fabric on the armrests allowed that. The fabric was stiff, but the fabric had been stiff before that. Thank God the fabric was not in those pockets no one wants to talk about. No one wants to talk about God either, especially to thank Him. Still, it does not hurt to mention Him and to capitalize Him whenever you do mention Him. You seemed to hold Him responsible for the sinks, the closets, and the spice rack, which He had assigned to you according to His obscure and inscrutable wisdom. But you forgave Him for the coffee table. There had been no need for Him to assign you the coffee table. You already had things to put your feet on or to show you what books you were supposed to be reading. You tried sitting, getting the little legs to resist you, not so the top bore all the resistance but so the little legs could transfer some resistance to the top and all the elements consort to support you. You were more than a stack of books. You were more than two stacks of books. You were more than a pair of feet, even yours, between them. Maybe someone, some person other than you, something other than a stack of books could sit on a coffee table. Were there persons other than you, other than creatures besieging a post office? Were there creatures so ethereal they could sit on a coffee table, even sharing it with your feet and a couple of stacks of books? There was a stack of magazines you had barricaded under a welter of clothing. There was always the Korean lady who served you the noodle soup. There were dental hygienists, bank tellers, librarians, crossing guards, bartenders, sales clerks in cosmetics departments, transvestites, DWF’s (a few of whom did not specify “no drugs”), laundry attendants, receptionists in any capacity, in lawyers’ offices, in daycare centers, in travel agencies, receptionists who were always sympathetic, professional, trusted, resourceful, multi-talented, getting off soon for lunch or the weekend, populating sunny benches and happy hours, humming music they had heard in the lobbies, asking what everyone else was doing later and saying what they were going to do, too. They were going to do exactly what the creatures in the magazines were doing. They were going to do exactly what you were doing. The creatures in the magazines were not sitting on coffee tables. There were no coffee tables in the magazines. God had not assigned coffee tables to the creatures in the magazines. There were no stacks of books these creatures were supposed to be reading. There were angry, intimate distensions of clothing. The fabric was never too scratchy for this. The light, that catapulting brightness, clashed with the evolution from disinterested perusal to self-flagellating abandon, with one or two fingers mired in your asshole. You had to move. I realize my bed is not the topic here. We have better things to talk about than beds. The creatures in the magazines had been assigned beds. The beds had been assigned these creatures. You had trouble deciding. But you did not have to choose, the creatures forgave you, researched new positions, confirmed their effect on you, collected what comfort they could get from the beds in their new positions without alerting you to the futility of beds in their new positions, the absurdity of being on beds in positions appreciable only by you, you and a few other creatures like you. There was always a scab, a hair, or God forgive us, a booger awaiting its relocation. If you forgave Him, He would forgive you. I kept veiled receptacles in the rooms. True excreta accreted slowly. Pages seceded from magazines. Underwear suffered grave discolorations.