540
PARTISAN REVIEW
eyes communicate to the listening devices your asinine but forbid–
den dissenting opinion. It's a wonder they speak to you at all:
you've become hard of hearing, and only that perverse gorilla is
howling inside, roaring with laughter at his own jokes. Yes, he wears
you out, you have no time left for anything else; you wander among
the blind like a dead man who hasn't been told he died. With brisk
steps you walk up and down the same paving stones, or crouch all
morning behind the same doorpost. You fell into captivity in peace–
time; soft white paws envelop you and pull at your chin, demanding
an answer. You look away, count the leaves on a branch, and then
your fingers; you curl up like a fetus and leave your keepers the illu–
sion of spaces still under their control.
If
only carnal desire didn't
make your decrepit organs shudder; if only you didn't still wait for
its thrusts, for someone to penetrate each of your orifices. You've
had your fill of yourself, and now believe that each grain of sand is a
coded message. You left your father's house and would like to shed
the body's torturous vestment, to stand in the light beyond, intact.
Instead, you sit on a bench, inviting great minds to come for a talk
during visiting hours, though all you see is a grimy brick wall.
Maybe you never had any visitors. But, then, who brought you that
cake that tasted like home? You wolfed it down in no time.
I'd like to get away from this asylum and live for a while in the
city of my childhood. I am tired of the smell of excrement and of all
these ugly faces. I am in the mood for more pleasant sights. Cymbals
crash, midgets scream, and masqueraders on stilts wobble down
Main Street. They wear pointed Chinese hats, a general's trousers
cover the wooden legs, and on their shoulders, wrapped in golden
robes, monkeys are ensconced. They screech into a bullhorn, invit–
ing the public to see their blood-curdling attractions-my younger
brother and I join the procession. Two large-headed, flat-nosed
midgets are doing cartwheels; they kick each other in the ass and
squabble in lisping English. A monkey dressed in a sailor suit jumps
down from his lofty perch and disciplines the wizened midgets.
Between the marketplace and the soccer field, red-calved
women stand in the gravelly bed of a brook, beating linen sheets on
which several generations have been conceived. A deranged gander
hisses at the skeleton of the circus tent, and when the reeky and mys–
tical canvas is hoisted onto the frame, a lion bellows in his cage and
steps on the violet-colored lung of an ox. Two listless crocodiles rest
