1
During my last couple of years in Spain, things—how shall we say?—spun out of control. It was like getting tossed by one of those huge ferocious Northern Californian waves that tumbles you, holds you down, pounds you, until it really seems like it’s all over, you’re going to drown.
Following the barroom brawl commemorating the anniversary of my mother’s death, and shortly before I bought some tweezers and plucked the stitches from my forehead, I read something by the Japanese poet Komachi:
“It is because we are in paradise that everything in this world hurts us.
Outside of Paradise, nothing embarrasses for nothing matters.”
Four days later Anushka broke up with me. She broke up with me many times, and I understand why. She was tired of living in paradise, of my overly vigorous approach to life. I can still feel the tip of her index finger tracing over the stitches in my forehead, “What have you done?” she asked. And then she was gone.
I was devastated, went into freefall. At the time I was scraping by as a freelance translator. And then out of the blue I received a phone call offering me a job. And that is how, after several years of living a dissolute and bohemian life in Madrid, I found myself working as a translator at a Spanish bank. A bank! Shortly thereafter I was recruited by the Spanish subsidiary of a different bank, a Swiss bank, so I left the Spanish bank and ended up on a plane to Zurich for a week of indoctrination at the Swiss bank’s corporate headquarters. On my flight I sat next to a very serious man in a suit reading a book titled,
Hope is not a Strategy
Rick Page: Personal trainer to 25,000 sales superstars.
We did not speak. I thought about this phrase, “Hope is not a strategy.” I thought about hope. I thought about my strategy. I thought about Anushka and I thought about paradise. The blonde stewardess walked by with a counter in her hand, counting the passengers, click click, click. I felt sure these clicks held some sort of message, that these clicks, in fact, represented all the years I'd frittered away wandering around the planet, writing unpublishable novels (I’d even written a play, about a cowardly Jesus who had his arms cut off so he couldn’t be crucified. No wonder I didn’t get published!).
When we are young, we are taught to believe in the myth of progress. If we are American, we are taught to believe in the inevitability of success. Taught to believe that things will sort themselves out. I was beginning to have my doubts.
I landed in Zurich, went to my hotel in the center of town, and the next morning I ate Swiss muesli sprinkled over velvety white yogurt, and ambled to corporate headquarters. I was greeted by an enthusiastic Swiss woman, with long black hair, a short skirt, expensive looking hosiery, and a smile that flicked on and off like a switch, a symphony of perfectly executed muscular contractions and quite devoid of affect. She strode down the halls in her high heels, escorted me from office to office, cubicle to cubicle, introduced me to everyone on the team. I obediently shook hands with my new coworkers. My guide (my Virgil, my Cerberus, my succubus) beamed at me with her perfect teeth, her corporate rictus. I smiled back.
I was on autopilot, earnest and polite. Since college, I’d scrupulously avoided corporations. I’d been a carpenter, worked in a think tank, spent a couple of years doing human rights work in the upper Amazon; I’d done all sorts of things to make money, not all of them legal, but this—this was simply too much. I continued to smile at people, and nodded solemnly when they spoke. Sweat pooled in the small of my back, and I felt like a fraud, like a bad actor, like a fool. Then my entire body started sweating, I was literally dripping with sweat, as if I were sparring with someone in a boxing ring somewhere deep in the tropics. I wiped my forehead with my sleeve, but the sweat just kept cascading down. I excused myself, went to the bathroom, washed my face, looked in the mirror. I had a wild look in my eyes. I got some towels, dried myself under my shirt, my face and neck, wherever I could reach. I breathed deeply ten times, patted my face dry again, and went back out. I must, I thought, try and seem normal, try and be a good employee. I must enter the fold. It is time.
But first I had to change my shirt. I told my coworkers that I felt a little feverish, and perhaps I did. They insisted that I return to my hotel early and get some rest. That afternoon I paced back and forth across my hotel room, my fever gone. I was in the center of town. I pulled open the blinds in my room. The sky was sheet metal gray and it was raining and people were shopping below, streaming in and out of Zara like blood cells getting pumped through a heart, and there was a temp agency across the way filled with office workers flitting hither and thither, like insects in a vivarium, like gnats dodging lizard tongues. I turned on the TV which was suspended in the corner of the room. They were talking about the US elections, about the possibility that America would elect its first African American president. This seemed like good news, but it felt very far away from me. I was far from home and I felt hemmed in, panicked even, “What the hell am I doing in Switzerland? What the hell am I doing with my life?” I defused the situation in my usual manner: by masturbating ferociously.
Later, I went to a bar and they were playing James Brown, who was telling everyone to take it to the bridge. Take it to the bridge, James howled. They never will, I thought. These people take nothing to the bridge. There is no bridge. Fuck the bridge. You’d probably have to pay some insanely expensive toll to cross it anyway.
On my third day in Zurich, I went to the modern art museum, where the earnest big-boned German woman who sold me the ticket informed me, “Obama is making history. It is a world historical moment” and I gave a demure smile, and did a little dance and then went and knelt before a big Cy Twombly painting. Cy (before the dementia set in) always knew exactly when to stop scribbling. That was his gift, the gift of saying “Enough!” There was a single diptych by Rauschenberg and some landscapes by Oskar Kokoschka too—I stood in front of the Kokoschka for a while, transfixed by a single cloud. It was just a few crude brushstrokes really, but somehow, he’d created a sense of weightlessness – and a simultaneous density, too. I do not know how to explain it. There were some beautiful sculptures by Giacometti, and some paintings too. He had once done a lovely portrait of Jean Genet, and Genet wrote a wonderful essay about him; indeed, it ended up being Giacometti’s favorite piece of criticism about his work. They became good friends, but one day Genet absconded with one of his paintings and sold it to a fence in Nice. That was the last they saw of each other. (Genet later toured the insurgencies of the world, even making a stopover in Oakland, California to consort with the Black Panthers. But more on that later).
I put my head against the wall and looked behind a Giacometti drawing. It was only hanging by a couple of hooks. A smart thief could take a picture of this drawing and frame, make the frame, do a laser copy of the drawing, come to this fine museum and heist the drawing and hang the replacement and no one would be the wiser. Or I could just take it off and put it up against my back under my shirt and jacket and shoulder bag and stroll out of there, perhaps giving a smile and uttering a demure, “Go, Obama” to the enthusiastic German woman at the door.
I needed some life, I needed something more.
The fondue from the night before had given me terrible gas. Or perhaps I was feeling bloated with art. As I exited the museum, I released a small fart in the same way that one might release a small colorful tropical bird that one has sequestered in one’s pocket—that is to say, I released it with a certain regret that we could not be together forever, that such intimate relations with an exotic member of the animal kingdom must end. But I also released it with a certain joy knowing that it would finally be free and find its place in the great inscrutable scheme of things. And as I released it, I could not help but wish that it was I who was set loose into the cosmos, and not my fart.
2
After I left the museum, I went and had a beer and then another beer and it was drizzling and the Swiss people were playing James Brown again and were all very kind and polite, and then I went for a walk in the rain, passed a rather fancy-looking gentleman’s club tucked away on a cobblestone street, and on an impulse I entered. Let me say here that this impulse was not borne out of callow horniness, but rather, a terrible loneliness. But maybe that’s what all men say when they go to such places.
Inside the gentleman’s club it was all mirrors and red velvet. Blonde women paraded about, Russians, I guessed. I needed to talk to someone, to explain my metaphysical position, so I ordered a thirty-euro beer and proceeded to be bombarded by Slavic woman after Slavic woman, which perked me up somewhat. They came and sat on the stool next to me and asked me my name, where I was from, whether I was in town on business and for some reason I felt like a precocious undergraduate, and was dead set on talking about Russian literature with these women, I don’t know why. All of a sudden, all these books came back to me. Inexplicably, I even told them my name was Fyodor.
“But that is a Russian name,” they said in their lilting accents, cocking their heads, raising their eyebrows, pursing their lips.
“I was named after my Russian grandfather,” I lied, “He was a submarine captain in the Soviet navy.”
“Fascinating,” they said, raising their impeccably plucked eyebrows.
But if after a little conversation I found they were not up to par, for example, if they didn’t know who Platonov (an obscure Russian writer I was obsessed with) was, I sent them on their way, telling them that if I bought them a drink and spent more time with them I would surely fall in love, but that my heart was fragile, from having been broken so many times by cruel and unusual women, and that they would surely break it again (and here I placed my hand over my heart and held it fast), and they laughed and smiled and told me that they were not like other women, that they were neither cruel nor unusual, and that they would never ever break my heart—Oh no, never—and I looked at them coldly, and then their eyes narrowed and they asked me if I was a Mafiosi and I didn’t answer. Perhaps they thought I was a Mafiosi because of my swarthy complexion, the interesting scar on my forehead, my profligacy, and ruthless dismissal of their less well-read colleagues. Maybe I should have told them that I was indeed cartel-affiliated, and visiting Zurich on a money-laundering mission, or to behead a naughty banker.
But instead, I explained nothing, just sipped my beer thinking, “Ah, I wish I were so glamorous, I wish I were a Mafiosi, but I’m just a lowly translator!” And then another one approached me, and I ordered another beer, and so on, until finally I met Svetlana, who while not as scandalously beautiful as some of the other women was still beautiful, but what really mattered at this point, was that she was extremely well read, a veritable scholar, and sweet and smart too, and she told me that her favorite writer was Bulgakov, that she especially loved The Master and Margarita. I was, of course, utterly charmed. She said, “He writes very beautifully. And the story was actually about his relationship with Stalin, who was a very dangerous man. So it is not so much what Bulgakov actually writes on the page—you have to—how do you say?”
“Read between the lines…”
“Exactly…” she said, giving a pert little nod, and tossing her blonde hair winningly, causing a rainbow to erupt from her head through a marvelous and unexpected optical effect, “you have to read between the lines.”
Suddenly I was assaulted and caressed by the multifarious possibilities of life, the majesty and huge, explosive expanse of it all, yes, suddenly there was no separateness, no divisions, no sets or subsets, all categories based on difference became transcended by the realization of that which was already the case, that cold, hot, indeed, lukewarm fusion was both possible and necessary, that we all stumble, trip, scamper, dance on the edge of our own event horizon, and that this can go on for a long time, the dancing I mean. In short, I experienced the famous “oneness” I’d heard so much about. Am I making sense?
Yes, there was something magnificent about this exchange of ideas. A rush of happiness swept over me like a tsunami. And Svetlana had the most spectacular eyes, and such remarkable, firm thighs and…
Reading between the lines, she suggested, “We buy a bottle of champagne and talk about books over there?” I looked to the back of the club which had glowing aquariums filled with tropical fish, a big black cat, more of a leopard really, roaming about in the shadows and there were little round couches and candlelit little tables tucked away in corners, and it seemed like the perfect place to talk about Bulgakov (whom I’d never read), indeed, I couldn’t imagine anywhere better and so I asked how much a bottle of champagne was and a menu was brought over and I saw that a bottle of champagne was 400 euros. I was quite broke, had recently spent several weeks in a Rio favela, and only had about 800 Euros in my bank account, but given the moment, the intimacy, and the literature at stake, I decided that it all seemed very reasonable, and so we went to the table and talked more about books, and she was sweet Svetlana was and very perceptive and told me that I seemed “disappointed” and distant, but that I had a good heart. I filled our champagne glasses and told her that I was indeed disappointed, and then we both laughed, I’m not sure why. We continued talking, but I had been there too long, almost an hour, when a bottle of champagne should only last 45 minutes, and the Madam was hovering about, looking vexed. Svetlana suggested that we go to a place that was even more private, deeper in the bowels of this remarkable place, and I told her I must think about it and then we went back to the bar and soon I was enveloped, besieged by a horde of Slavic nymphs talking about literature, about Prince Myshkin and Anna Karenina and men named Ivan and Dmitri and Boris. I felt like a precocious college boy, like a star student. It was a symposium, a colloquium, a seminar. There were heated arguments, foot stomping and raised index fingers, and much laughter too and then Svetlana introduced me to a strikingly athletic and comely woman who looked like she might leap over hurdles during her spare time, who had just been pole-dancing on stage, a talented and imaginative acrobat and lo! she too liked Bulgakov.
“She’s very pretty, no?” Svetlana said, “and she dances so beautifully, no?”
I could not deny it. Anastasia was an athlete, a stunning young thing, despite a slightly discolored canine tooth. Russian women in lingerie and impossibly tiny cocktail dresses swirled around me, orbited me like Sputniks. I was surrounded by literati, became giddy, called for another whiskey, and bought another round for my intellectual friends. I became dizzy with literature, bursting with bookish brio. I gripped the bar tightly, swayed under the force of their arguments, the subtle charms of their discourse, and then Svetlana looked at me and said, “Come, we buy another bottle of champagne and go upstairs and we make a party! We talk about books! A book party! All of us!” She made a sweeping gesture with her hand that included all the women in the establishment, all of Russia, and the Ukraine and Moldavia too, “Come,” she said again, “We make a party!”
“A party! We make a party! We talk about books!” they all cried out, ecstatic that they were consorting with such a cultured mafiosi, and then they started to shout “Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” like in a Dostoyevsky novel. We were having a ball. I laughed, raised one arm in the air, rodeo style, and said “Ha Ha Ha Ha! Yes, a party!”
It all seemed to make perfect sense, was inevitable really, but suddenly I remembered the dismal state of my finances. I was in wild indio mode, and earlier I'd paid for the champagne and drinks, thinking, “How easy it all is! I give this little plastic card to the Madam, she sticks it in a special slot, and suddenly everything is much easier, I can talk about literature with Svetlana, there is succor and companionship and champagne and whiskey, what do I care about a silly plastic card? Yes indeed! We make a party!” It was probably in this same spirit that the Indians handed over Manhattan to the white man for some glass beads and a mirror.
I excused myself, went to the bathroom. My heart was racing. In the last hour I'd just spent close to 1000 dollars talking about Russian literature. I was tapped out. I peed. I shook my penis vigorously, releasing the last few errant drops, and swayed slightly before the urinal. I looked down. Just below the flush button, there was inscribed in blue cursive, the word “Fortitude.”
I made my decision. I washed my hands and strode from the bathroom and towards the front door.
“Fyodor!” they cried, “Fyodor! Where are you going?!”
I was set upon by Slavic sirens, but I was relentless, principled, and made it to the street before they could pull me back, before they could seduce me with their erudition, with those hard-edged Slavic accents, before they could entrap me into succumbing to a more intensive and arduous literature seminar, or perhaps semen-ar, and I’d spent all my money anyway, in fact I didn’t really know how much I’d spent. Outside, it was no longer drizzling, it was pouring now, the rain was pinging off of cars, making little rivulets between the slick black cobblestones. I walked slowly through the rain, tried to understand what had just happened.
How could I have been so foolish to enter such a place?
For the next two and half days in Zurich I was totally broke and had to live on Bratwurst and Kebab from street stands. My friendly corporate colleagues invited me on several occasions to go have drinks after work, but I begged off, saying I felt under the weather. It was shameful. I was demented. When I landed in Madrid, I immediately called a friend to borrow some money and went to a bookstore and bought The Master and Margarita.
A few weeks later I had a nervous breakdown.
