Sometimes I went for walks. Even when I didn’t have to go anywhere, I did it for the movement. My head had stopped hurting. I only drank by the fire sometimes. It was the only way I could stand the lamentations and braggadocio. Some people have the unique ability to curse and beg for help all at once. Here almost everyone spoke that way.
Lying behind the barrels, I saw: the wind wafting pieces of paper, a trickle of water sparkling between the old train tracks, pulp oozing out of a burst plastic bag, two pigeons pecking a hunk of salami, then a dense black cloud spread over the scene, and when it floated off again the birds were gone and the paper had settled to the ground. All of it at once. I sensed a miracle. I was awestruck, filled with awe. This is happening? This exists? And I’m here to witness it? On the inside I was all curled up, but my body was taut. I didn’t take anything for granted. It’s here. It is what it is. And I’m part of it. It’s … sometimes it’s even beautiful and I enjoy it. That’s enough.
Maybe it was the food, or maybe it was not talking so much, but I grew stronger and more peaceful. I’d put it aside. The idea that I’d kill myself if somebody else didn’t kill me first was still in me. I’d betrayed a lot. I’d lost my tribe, my people, there was nothing tying me down.
Around the fire the tramps and drunkards spoke into the flames, conversations intertwining and crisscrossing like the trails of the Dump. It was the speech of the train station, a barebones tongue. Not trash. Always someone yammering: So I slug im, right, he’s shittin his pants, right, an so’s the other one, right, relating the wreckage of his odyssey in leftover language, a warrior without a war … yeah an I’m on her an she farts so I says, hey cow, are you shittin or fuckin, bitch … I says to him, I go, an I walk out, I tell ya …
And sometimes they fought. I surprised myself. The night Hippo kept goading me on. Why ya by yerself … you a homo? Yeah. Yer a disgustin moron! Hippo told me, obviously proud of his putdown, beaming around at the others. Cut it out, Vulture said, you know Mr. Jasuda doesn’t like scuffles … he ain’t here, said Hippo, slamming a branch into the fire. Then he yanked it out. Reminded me of the sheepherder. I whimpered, I’d almost forgot. Listen to him, whinin like a dog … are you a dog, you stinky-ass hobo? … Hippo gave me a shove. I fell into the fire on my knees, but then, getting up, the words tumbled out of me … shut your fuckin face or I’ll kill you, I’ll chop alla you into little bits, an as for you, you piece a shit, I’ll skin you alive an carve you like a goose … I kicked him, he wasn’t expecting it … Vulture stood up … suddenly I saw it all, the fire and the shadows, said: People, forgive me, I was asleep, he woke me up … yeah, he provoked cha, I saw it, said Vulture … shake hands, you’re buddies now … we shook.
To Vulture, Jasuda was a god … and one day when I made a few disrespectful remarks, Stick … he was a little younger than me and one of his legs was shorter from some botched operation, so he walked with a cane, ergo the nickname … turned to me and said: Better watch what cha say, the old man works for Jasuda. Never know what might happen to ya! An … he took me aside, the old man’s got a flintstick under a board out in the shack, Jasuda gave the okay, so watch it. I took what he said seriously, I’d met a pretty wide variety of bosses and their methods of enforcing obedience were all the same, the only difference was context, the most dangerous fucks’re the ones who get off on their power … only the next day Vulture said the same thing about Stick … I decided to believe them both and kept my trap shut. After all, they’d probably saved my life, and did it like it was nothing, didn’t feel the need to talk about it. If they hadn’t taken me in, as a matter of course, without any bullshit or questions, I most likely would’ve gone down the first few days I was there. And not the way I wanted to, either.
Stick showed me where not to step. Stay away from the brown stuff, sticks to your soles, an don’t ever step in those pools. Saw this one old bag fall in … Stick shuddered … glad it wasn’t my granny … there were a lot of old people there at the Dump.
Among the machines, among their skeletons, I found a heavy iron lever, dragged it back to the barrels … lifted it every day. As the sun warmed up, I established a sort of daily routine. The only thing I wouldn’t interrupt was my dreams, when images, words, and sentences emerged. I didn’t move much then. Other times, though, the rhythm of the images forced me to walk around. I even went without water one day.
The Spinach Bar was still in my brain, that was where I’d spoken to her, that was where my love was, let her be a whore, let her be a single slit in the body of a whore, but let her be, let her be mine, I realized if I picked up and left it would only be to find her, because there was still hope … the images were also of all the trips I’d made by train, wherever, luggage swaying in the nets overhead, someone else’s … and I supplemented my dreams. The magazines took up a lot of my time. I took my world from their pages too. Sometimes I had to peel all kinds of sticky stuff off of them.
One had photos I guess from some movie. Showed a kid standing there with a T-shirt on that said “Give me freedom or give me death.” He was facing down a tank. Two meters away. Surrounded by pagodas with dragons all over em, some square, probly Asia. From the blur of the tank, the motion, it was obvious the crew’d made up their minds, the kid was gettin the latter. It got to me for a minute. Ah, it’s just a movie, I waved it off.
The ads and photos got me going … I even recalled that first appointment with Micka, at the Tchibo coffee shop, I know a lot of ordinary stuff happened to people close to me that day. Like always. I added one more exercise to my routine, preserving words and sentences, writing them under each other. Sometimes they were connected. But the point was that it gave me material for my dreams, I didn’t have to fumble around in my memory anymore … in that cellar of mine, I had it down on paper.
I filled in empty spaces on magazine pages, the ones where there weren’t photos. Got a ballpoint pen from Stick for my Mickey M. T-shirt, the one from the Mission. There were plenty of threads around. Plus Stick had a thing for Mickey. On the side of the pen was some ballerina or dancer, when you turned it upside down her skirt came off … Stick told me he used to masturbate to it, then it got old and he found some porn.
While I wrote I thought a lot about Sister and the attic. This is my Firewater, I’d think to myself as I braked time with my writing, making it mine alone … it was like a drug.
I tried to give a name to what mattered to me. It would exist more then, I felt. Even if just in my memory. What I’d lost. That was all I lived for anyway. It didn’t seem right to avoid cruelty and hunger.
Hey, Bog, it’s mine … I’ve got it in my coat pocket. You need yellow wind, people as they are, pigeons that peck meat, you’ve got Jasuda an pits, cold rain an barbwire, I guess that’s what makes the world go round, fine, I’ve got my time grenades, the worst they can do is blow my head off. These were the tales I put in my pocket:
Old Words
Today he sleeps under his dream can’t bear it anymore. He’s afraid
of truck wheels mounds of gravel animals the knife sickness.
But he’s in her he’s with her
they’re together they’ll protect each other.
Strong feelings. And he’s battling in the arena
for his grandpas in the crematorium too.
It was B. that dragged em out on the ramp.
How did it happen? Were they too weak?
Let me be a Hun be a Devil-killer
he says to himself.
Sometime later Sister lifts herself up on her elbows