Snow Approaching on the Hudson Read online

  AUGUST KLEINZAHLER

  Snow Approaching on the Hudson

  To friends departed—

  “See you on the river”

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  30, Rue Duluth

  Traveler’s Tales / A History of Western Music: Chapter 74

  Micino

  La Belle Ville

  Traveler’s Tales: Chapter 53

  Sergio Leone

  Snow Approaching on the Hudson

  Father

  A Baroque Scot’s Excess

  “East Wind Over Weehawken”

  Quasi Afflatzi

  After Réaumur

  Meet the Joneses

  Launderette

  Against Socialization

  Club Messina

  Murph & Me

  Boy

  Heat

  Shadow Man

  Traveler’s Tales: Chapter 66

  Chauncey Hare

  Traveler’s Tales: Chapter 90

  Dance, Dance, Dance

  Dream Machine: Episode 22, Take #3

  Love Chant

  Revenue Stream

  Mrs. Sinatra

  Seminal Vestibule

  A History of Western Music: Chapter 42

  So

  “Coming on the Hudson”: Weehawken

  She

  Driving by Bluff Road Just after Dusk in Late Autumn

  The Bench

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  SNOW APPROACHING ON THE HUDSON

  30, RUE DULUTH

  —Elvis is dead, the radio said,

  where it sat behind a fresh-baked loaf of bread

  and broken link of kolbasz

  fetched only lately from Boucherie Hongroise:

  Still Life Without Blue Pitcher.

  I read that piece of meat as if I were Chaim Soutine,

  with its capillaries and tiny kernels of fat,

  bound up in its burnt-sienna casing.

  There and then the motif came to me

  that would anchor my early masterwork, Opus 113.

  No? I’ll hum the first few bars.

  The window was small,

  and set low on the wall. Little out there to see,

  only the legs of pedestrians below the knee.

  Captive, a prisoner nearly, inside the ochre room,

  as the radio poured forth this terrible news:

  —KING ELVIS IS DEAD

  his flesh empurpled, the giant gold medallion,

  his lolling tongue bitten nearly in two.

  I took note, the time was propitious for soup

  even amidst the bulletins and updates, and then made ready

  with the preliminary slo-mo casting about that attends

  the act of creation,

  a length of sausage readily at hand.

  Soup-making always seemed to settle me back then.

  Those with whom I lived considered me vain,

  excepting the Lady M,

  with whom I tirelessly played,

  Parcheesi, Scrabble, less circumscribed games.

  She would have bought for me a giant gold medallion

  could she have managed the expense,

  if only I would let her.

  Presently the soup was the color of the room;

  everything around me, the walls, the air,

  varying shades of ochre,

  but pebbled with paprika-colored nuggets.

  They say he existed on Tuinal and cheddar,

  his blood turned to sludge,

  odds & ends from this snack or that buried deep inside him,

  dating all the way back to Blue Hawaii,

  the fat around his neck like a collar of boudin blanc.

  Every so often he’d soil his white cape,

  and only, it turns out, in Vegas and while on stage.

  Now, that’s what I call a showman.

  Both afternoon and summer were drawing to a close

  while the soup thickened on the stove,

  the unlit room darkening by degree.

  The radio resumed its regular programming,

  And, as always seemed the case that hour of the day,

  Satie’s Gymnopédies.

  TRAVELER’S TALES / A HISTORY OF WESTERN MUSIC: CHAPTER 74

  Odd, unsettling somehow, visiting here again after so many years,

  traveling through town at this hour,

  the Baixa nearly deserted, then along the river, the lights of the bridge blurred by rain,

  just me and the Consul’s driver:

  customized Citroën C4 Aircross Picasso, outsized smoked-glass windows,

  upholstered like the inside of a leather queen’s crypt, brown Bavarian bull hide.

  Might as well be in a glass bathyscaphe or slow-motion pneumatic tube

  forcing its passage through a tunnel of oil.

  I mean, how different is this from the last time,

  way back when, before our anthem hit the charts? It’s still in everyone’s earbuds,

  even here: the fidalgos in $500 jeans, the Monsignors in their black cassocks, purple trim,

  the senhora ladling out the caldo verde and feïjoada.

  In those days she would have been dressed in black.

  You lived on that kale and potato soup, and with that bottle of piri-piri

  you carried around everywhere we went. And me, custard cups.

  They cost pennies in those days, with the fascistas still in power,

  at least for a few more months. They were watching us, that crew. Not sure why.

  We’d run into Saramago at the pastelaria all the time, remember?

  He lived nearby. He wasn’t famous yet, just finishing up the Blimunda novel,

  the one with Scarlatti. He’d buy us both a galão now and then, sweet man.

  I can’t imagine he had much more than we did.

  Nor were we; famous, that is. Not quite yet. It wasn’t until the band let me sing.

  No one was much into drum machines then,

  at least not how we went about it, and that big bass synthesizer sound,

  the two of us tap-tapping on part-filled milk bottles in time to the chorus.

  I forget who it was dreamt that one up,

  clink-clink, clink-clink, each bottle a different level of water, different pitch.

  But it worked. Blow me, it worked …

  What were we, 22, 23?

  We walked all the way down from the summer palace.

  Dark green avenues, fern colonnades, those ponds with water lilies …

  Lord Georgie-Porgie wasn’t half-wrong. It was like Eden, but even Eden can get old.

  We were starving when we found that hole-in-the-wall just off the square,

  and the bossy little owner with his charcoal brazier.

  He nearly dragged us in there and made us sit still for what seemed like an hour,

  grilling those chunks of cuttlefish, basting and basting them in their own ink.

  You squealed like a little pig later on when you got a good look at your tongue.

  —I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die!

  It rained most every day that January, just like it’s raining now,

  The Terreiro do Paço nearly underwater.

  I’d never been anywhere like this before. I don’t know that I’d really been anywhere.

  Climbing up all those slippery cobbled steps every night to that pensão the nuns ran,

  half-pissed, the white peacocks shrieking in the castle garden

  and the sound they made in the rain. It moves me still, this place,

 
the jumble of pastel doorways with their sagging jambs and worn stone sills.

  The people too, so modest and obliging, a bit melancholy—

  no, not so much melancholy, subdued, perhaps, a lid on top.

  They do fancy their hats, all right, the old gents.

  We clung together like children then.

  And you could be so awful, especially if your dick wasn’t in me or you weren’t drinking.

  I’d cry and cry, not because of how you were or what you said.

  I felt like I was always melting inside.

  Yeah, yeah, sure—But oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din / of towns and cities …

  My apologies, Mr. Chalmers, you did your best …

  You know how water finds its way through a seam in the roof.

  I mean, do I really want to split open again like a sodden aubergine?

  Does anyone need to see that again?

  These drives to the airport are all the same, no matter what town you’re in.

  —Luis, darling, can you turn up the sound a bit? You know who that is, don’t you?

  Of course, luv, of course you do.

  MICINO

  I found under the tongue, when he opened wide,

  a harvest of minuscule Thai red peppers

  clustered either side of his pink frenulum,

  twin fields of fiery stalagmites.

  And as if that were not passing strange enough,

  behind and above two shelves of tiny Lucite drawers

  to my alarm one of which you chose to open

  and examine closely in its moist mucosa casing

  before gently replacing it, and without consequence

  as to structure or disquiet on sleeping Micino’s part,

  I suppose given our past history of how routinely

  I would pry open his jaws to massage his gums,

  then run my finger along his sharp, serried molars,

  those twelve incisors, rub up and down both fangs

  between forefinger and thumb, then for luck tap

  the tips of both as I made to take leave of that warm portal

  and carry my attentions elsewhere, first stroking his flanks,

  then, discreetly, his belly, and tickling behind both his ears.

  Micino, Micino, so bounteous the love that flowed between us,

  and a trust I would in the end betray so cruelly …

  But here he was again, spread lengthwise across the floor

  at the foot of the backseat in our powder-blue Chevy wagon

  looking scrawny, gray, dusty, more mummified than living;

  that is, until he blinked. BLINKED. Micino risen …

  At which point I raised him to my lap:

  —Micino, Micino, you’re alive, I cried,

  and then he lifted his eyes in the direction of mine, ever so weakly,

  it seemed as if life itself was barely flickering inside him.

  But as I began to stroke him he seemed to suddenly revive.

  —Where have you been, my darling boy, Micino?

  For had I not left him long ago on the Bardo Plane,

  his mortal flesh dissolving at the foot of the fan palm

  in the shallow grave I dug for him there, the rhizomes

  of the bamboos close by slowly, slowly pulling apart his bones?

  —Holland, I think, he offered wearily and with no certainty

  as we unhurriedly made our way along the banks of the lordly Hudson.

  LA BELLE VILLE

  Passenger jets float silently across the thunderheads

  in the direction of Chibougamau and Matagami Lake,

  one after another. Who can say why:

  the Midsummer Meti Mosquito Festival, featuring

  live performances and dance workshops, handicrafts …

  I watch them pass overhead through the skylight

  as I stretch out on the yoga mat, aligning my sore bones.

  The loud snap of a wheel clamp on the street below

  drives the Rottweiler next door into a paroxysm of rage.

  The sun now above the tree line, the world again renews,

  bicycling from point A to point B, a box lunch of Brie and

  ham on a kaiser roll, twelve grapes, a Fanta, attached to the rear rack.

  It continues on like this until the leaves begin to fall

  and the first snow arrives, but much the same, different footwear.

  Off they go to the groovy software design studio and columbarium,

  enorbed by their things-to-do lists and amorous set-backs.

  It’s all enough to drive one to a dusty cubicle, chanting Sutras …

  Oh, but oh, the cycle of Samsara, with its lesions, exhortations,

  lost appointment books, gratuitous slights, bouts of catalepsy,

  her goodie-tray wrapped in a variety of silks or light cottons.

  I am the Body of the World, pinioned like poor Gulliver in Lilliput.

  Semi-trailers and tank cars filled with ethanol course through me.

  I cannot move. A plaque from their exhaust accumulates in my arteries,

  the particulate matter taking on the viscosity of despair.

  TRAVELER’S TALES: CHAPTER 53

  [Stamboul]

  They are unattractive,

  these prosperous couples spread about at breakfast,

  familiar to one another as old bathrobes,

  color faded, nap nearly gone. It does no harm to say so.

  And lordly, pecking and scrolling away between bites,

  calling in dispatches from their frontier outposts,

  each a caliphate unto himself.

  All appears to be in order, as God would will it.

  Their pashas know better than to disturb them,

  not here, not now, not in this distant refuge at their leisure,

  this privileged eyrie looking south

  at domes and minarets, the harbor below,

  history funneling through its narrow strait,

  where Europe kisses Asia,

  war fleets, like swarms of bees, hovering beyond the walls,

  awaiting the signal …

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  Galleys bob out on the Marmora, oars dipped,

  dragon-headed prows making ready to spit fire.

  Siege engines take up position outside the Gate of St. Romanus.

  Sappers burrow below.

  There is now much disquiet in the room.

  Young women servants hurry about, squeaking apologies.

  This seems to be a characteristic of the young women here,

  this squeaking. They are no doubt trained to do so.

  Ibrahim, addicted to lust as Murat was to wine,

  espied the privy parts of a certain wild heifer

  and so inflamed he thus became

  urgently sent forth the shape of them pressed into gold

  across his vast kingdom with order to take inventory

  until such a one was found, an Armenian,

  it turned out, from the village of Arnavutköy,

  a 333 lb. oven of enchantment.

  He very nearly lost his wits until Mother stepped in

  and had the poor thing throttled over dinner.

  Surely, the servers will return to use presently.

  This is not a Third World country

  and we are paying through the nose to be here.

  It seems the Genoese cannot be trusted.

  A great plank greased with animal fat has been laid secretly

  over the shoulder of the hill behind us, only a few blocks off.

  The enemy’s ships have been dragged down it in the night,

  portaged to the inlet below.

  Sultan es Selatin, king of kings, sovereign of sovereigns,

  most high emperor of Byza
ntium and Trebizond,

  very powerful king of Persia, of Arabia, of Syria, and of Egypt,

  supreme lord of Europe, and of Asia,

  prince of Mecca and Aleppo, lord of Jerusalem,

  ruler of the universal sea,

  sits atop a pile of carpets, stacked high

  in front of the carpet shop, whiskers bristling, and, taking in

  the fearful events around him, eyes narrowing to slits,

  blinks.

  SERGIO LEONE

  —Lamb Posse is what tops the bill this a.m., Sheriff,

  plus your shot of choice, plus a slice of pie, pecan or rhubarb, you pick.

  —I’ll skip the pie, thank ye, and have a beer back instead o’.

  —Don’t know that I can swing that, bud.

  —Swing it, brother, swing, you dozy cull,

  slapping down my sidearm on the counter, loudie-like, to make a point.

  A head or two beginning to turn my way

  but one gander at that big silver gun barrel, swiveled right back.

  There was a hunnert mile of high dry plain on every side of us out there,

  heat slithering up your back, then garroting you about noon,

  like faux wild west España: rattlesnake maracas, bad teeth,

  squirrelly red-eyed night varmints, ruined old battlements

  ever so often, a day or so’s journey on horseback between,

  ’stead of our own gas station/convenience store lash-ups …

  talking days of yore España, storybook fare, swords, infidels, history …

  but we don’t do history, never have done, none to be had or made use of.

  What we do got is now, right here, pucker up that brain and have a lookie-see:

  horizon to horizon, nada amigo, before or after, just the law, and the law is me.

  SNOW APPROACHING ON THE HUDSON

  Passenger ferries emerge from the mist