556
PARTISAN REVIEW
can see you follow. My own name, for example, Handy Man, is
actually an allusion to
Homo habilis,
the earliest known man whose
skull survives, who possessed the physiological capability of ·speech.
Except, you see, in talking I say nothing at all.
If
I say
evitative,
I mean
it both backwards and forwards, so that the sum total of what I am
saying is,
evitativeevitative.
So too, when I say
interlaminations,
I
mean anagramic
internationalism
as well.
-Intourist guide speak with forked tongue.
-How was that?
-Skip it, buddy-boy. We're on the ground.
He seems to think of all the things he could say, reviews them all,
then dismisses them as too arbitrary; to this monolithic mandarin of
near-aphasia, utterance unutterably corrupts. So I am doubly alone,
sole tenant of the palindrome that reads 0, not only the same back to
front as front to back, but also top to bottom, bottom to top, from that
side, from this, all right I
know
it looks oval, but it's supposed to be
round and to roll.
So, it seems, I have discovered the wheel. Good.
All that is above ground is a small pumping station, into which
we step, and here is a tiny elevator that takes us down in the pitch
black. Am persuaded to walk forward after elevator halts; hear groans
of effort, smell of tallow, the heat greater than upstairs in the desert of
Kizil Kum, the wall surfaces bafflingly smooth.
All this with not so much as a word.
All this with not so much--.
All this with--.
All this.
A sudden pulmonary pain I refuse to heed, my hands have been
planted on something hard and smooth, not metallic but warm. I move
along, we all move along, my hands brush other hands and I apologize,
but no one apologizes back, and I begin to develop the notion that this
thing I am feeling at is infinitely long, extends all the way to the Arctic
Circle. I marvel at the firm surface, smooth as a baby's bOllom or some
indefatigably polished apple, and estimate its height at about six feet,
for I can feel the convexity begin to curl over at about five feet. The
only sounds are of shuffling feet, breath pulled in and shot out, and
what I can only describe as earth-tremors, as if the ground itself were
giving and settling under the thing's weight. And, as I go, in a straight
line as far as I can tell, I speculate wildly about what the thing is: it has
neither cavities nor protuberances, varies not a jot in texture, never
sounds hollow when I clap my open palm against it, and has no
