It was pretty clear to me that this was a piece of autobiographical fiction, with Kadmilos standing in for Trumilcik himself. There was a wearisome macho swagger in the tone that seemed entirely consistent with the image I had already formed of Trumilcik, and there was also the fact that for money, he (or his surrogate Kadmilos) taught at a college bearing a strong resemblance to Arthur Clay, to whose female students he appeared to have the attitude of a sultan towards his private harem.
It wasn’t a particularly edifying story, and in the end offered little clue to its author’s present whereabouts. The only things that gave it any interest (and even that, purely incidental) were one or two odd points of convergence between Kadmilos/Trumilcik’s life in New York, and my own. He lived for a time in the West Village, in the meat-packing district, as Carol and I had before moving across town. Reading his stiff but strangely vivid English, I had the feeling of being right back there on Horatio Street where beef carcasses were rolled out of trucks every morning on hangers like bloody dresses and blood froze in the cobbled gutters. Glimpses of pale partygoers breakfasting at Florent came back to me on a fond current of memory; Bolivian flowermen trimming dyed carnations outside the Korean groceries on Greenwich Avenue…
At one point, about halfway through, there was a prolonged scene down at the INS building on Federal Plaza where, like me, the author had spent many hours waiting in line to fill out the multitude of elaborate forms required to obtain a visa.
I found this passage peculiarly absorbing. I see myself there in Room 106, hunched at the screen, mesmerised by the strange familiarity of it all. There, as I try to reconstruct it now, is the line of immigrants, already long at 8.00 am, two hours before the building opens; the Latin Americans stocky and dark, wearing their poverty with a stoical air; the East Europeans with their penchant for zipper-slashed anoraks, their impatient look of having been kept unjustly poor. Here is the sour coffee you buy from the little stall as you join the line – run by a beaming couple who’ve just this moment, it would seem, tumbled out of the very mill you yourself are about to enter. Here are the security guards who man the metal-detectors at the entrance and frisk you with their rubber-gloved hands. Kadmilos notes a merry lack of conviction in the way these young men, with their ear studs and clubland haircuts, wear their uniforms, and I find myself smiling in recognition. Passing through security, thirty of us are shepherded into a large room with doors that close automatically, whereupon the room turns out, lo, to be an elevator, rising slowly to a high floor where we find ourselves in a vast open prairie of a room with rows and rows of fixed orange seats surrounded by little glassed-off booths, each containing, like an egg its embryo, an immigration official. At one of these, when our number finally flashes up, we give our signature. Kadmilos remembers how, in his excitement, his hand shook, so that his official signature has a stumble in it. Mine had shaken too! He describes tapping his right index finger into fingerprint ink, then pressing it into the box on the form, gladdened at the thought of this inimitable detail of his existence entering the consciousness of the Federal Government. He remembers how, without explanation, the official then handed him a small sachet marked Benzalkonium Chloride, how he opened it, mystified, to find a towelette inside, and realised it was for cleaning his finger, and had to choke back tears of joy at this marvellous grace-note in the official procedure, noting merely as an added glory that the towelette doesn’t actually remove the ink but simply smudges it all over his hand.
From there to the photograph line. The woman in front – dark-haired, elegant, discreetly coquettish in her yellow shawl – fusses with her hair; combing it, primping it, then pushing it back a little from her ears to reveal a pair of gold earrings. Next! calls the photographer. The woman sits in the metal chair, angling her neck so that her modest jewelry will catch the light. Earrings! the photographer yells, wagging an admonitory finger at her. She doesn’t understand. Aretes! Embarrassed, she removes them at once, then stares crestfallen at the camera for her official mugshot.
While we wait for the photo i.d. to develop we feel suddenly dizzy and nauseous. We realize it’s the benzalkonium chloride on our fingers, possibly aided by an empty stomach and a sleepless night. Then our name is called; just our first name, Kadmilos remembers fondly, as though we are now on the most intimate, almost filial footing with the United States government. And a moment later, there in our hand is our brown Employment Authorisation card, with our little grainy photograph, and our faltering signature.
Given what I discovered in my office the next morning, I should add to this picture of me sitting there at Trumilcik’s computer, the image of Trumilcik himself, watching me, for this turned out to have been the case. Watching me, as it happens, from inside the room itself.
I see him observing me with growing suspicion as I come to the end of his document and without pause rise from my chair to hook the computer up to the printer on the filing cabinet across the room, evidently intending to print a copy of his narrative for myself and – who knows? (I imagine him thinking) – take it home to plagiarise or otherwise misappropriate it. I picture his relief as he sees that I can’t find any printing paper in the room, and with a glance at my train schedule, apparently make up my mind to defer trying to print out his story until the morning.
Exiting from the computer, I left the room, locking the door behind me.
The night had cleared. The crisp, cool air was bracing.
Coming down Mulberry Street I saw a group of figures heading toward me. A little to my dismay (I’d have preferred not to have it known that I paid nocturnal visits to the campus), they turned out to be Bruno’s students, back from their play. The two men, and three of the four women. They nodded at me as we passed, and a few steps on I heard a snort of stifled laughter.
Down at the train station, I was about to pass through the waiting room on to the platform, when I heard the familiar voice of Bruno himself, and stayed where I was; not intending to snoop, just wanting to avoid an encounter that I realised would be awkward for us both.
He was with the fourth girl; the tall, waiflike one with blonde hair. I’d seen her often on campus; a frail winter-flower of a girl, wearing a tie-dye T-shirt in the snow. Bruno appeared to be in the process of trying to persuade her to return to New York with him.
Through the waiting room window I could see them in the powerful sodium l & Bruno leaning against an iron pillar, holding the girl’s hands in his, the toplit smile of his boyish mouth shaping the words with languidly self-satisfied pouting movements, as if he were supremely confident of getting his way.
He spoke quietly, but his voice was one of those subtly rasping instruments that penetrate at even the lowest volumes, like a distant buzz-saw or the purr of a cat.
‘Don’t send me home alone, Candy,’ he murmured. ‘Here, come here…’ He pulled her toward him, brushing her lips with his. She was taller than him; thin and frail in her denim jacket, her slim long legs in the thinnest of wool tights, one knee bent, the toe of her other foot swiveling in its suede ankle-boot on the concrete floor, like the compass-needle of her prevarication.
‘I’m not sure,’ I heard her say, averting her head, though leaving her hands in his. ‘I’m not sure that would be such a great idea.’