The Invention of Morel / Adolfo Bioy Casares

My initial response to “The Invention of Morel” by Adolfo Bioy Casares was a desire to defend it. As the work of a gifted 26-year old writer, “Morel” is extremely impressive, even powerful. I found it marvelously clever, at times deeply perceptive and very funny, and also prescient regarding technology and science, and contemporary societies’ obsession with these related features as carriers of the ideas of salvation and redemption, and the un-life-like aspects of life itself (such as the “consciousness” of chemical processes and certain machine functions). I was both tired of the tedious recursiveness and moved by the over-stuffed emptiness. I did not find it satisfying, but I do not believe Bioy intended that particular effect. It is haunting.

It would be unfair and, I believe, incorrect to compare Bioy with Borges, though it is hard not to. Borges comes from a full world and describes the myriad ways in which totality/the incomprehensible expresses itself and in so doing connects to the living, and the living to each other; Bioy represents a stunted and fractured dystopia, alienated beyond the possibility of—or belief in—connection; sentimentality is something to aspire toward, so lost or inconceivable is any greater image of emotion.

Compare Bioy’s country-club set eternally eating the same lunch after a morning of tennis (in real-life or simulacra) to Borges’ character Pierre Menard. Menard chooses to devote himself to an incredibly rigorous, albeit apparently (and necessarily) absurd, task that can have meaning only to him, through his own eyes, which Borges shows the reader via the narrator’s incomprehension. Morel’s companions never do anything unexpected—they are already mere conventions.

Bioy’s creation (and that of his narrator) is, however, not unrelated to Menard’s (certainly the title is a pun intended to point to an “entire” invention of the narrator’s mind). The narrator is, of course, a writer and his dilemma is creation itself, alienation and the isolation and justification of existence, and the question of whether there is any reality apart from that isolation and acts of creation. What Menard and Bioy’s narrator are doing is essentially the same: creating something that can show—especially to themselves—that they are not just reflections or reiterations of some ancient dream or act of chance—that they live. If making oneself into a simulacra can demonstrate that one actually “was”, it is the same as Menard.

In Bioy’s world, Malthus’ prediction has unfortunately proven to be un-true, or too slow: over-population does not necessarily “create” the checks of war and famine, or these checks cannot fulfill their purpose, and the result is misery and a world that is over-crowded such that there is no place, no order for anyone to fit into, except in the tiresome tyranny of clubs and institutions where individuality is entirely lost; indeed almost all relations seem to drain away the possibility of individual personality and liveliness. Without room or connection in the real world, they hope to find a place and partner in eternity.

Borges, The Aleph / House of Asterion

At the risk of being so reductive as to be nearly meaningless, I offer a few comments about how these stories struck me. Every story seems to describe a point on a continuum that alludes, nonetheless, to all the rest: the abstract and particular in constant inescapable union through alternations that naturally entail the themes of reflections (including references), complements, and the inability of anything to fully describe its source. Everything becomes its opposite, one story proceeds from another, complicating a theme or redirecting it altogether, or falls back on itself just as it seemed to go off in an entirely new direction—which, of course, it does.

Though Borges accuses literature (and language) of being incompetent, in his hands it is anything but. A crashing and conflicted cosmos is ever at hand, pre- and post-Big Bang, simultaneously, as some physicists would agree. Emma Zunz is a marvelous contradiction/conflation of fact and point of view, both true and false at the same time, vengeful and redemptive. The Dead Man gets to live because he is already marked for death, therefore his actions do not matter (who is not marked, eventually, for death?) Flaminius Rufus realizes that he and the troglodyte (who will turn out, perhaps, to be Homer, more or less) have identical perceptions, but that they “live” in different universes: they coordinate and construct the same perceptions differently, in ways incomprehensible to each other.

I was very touched by one of the shortest stories: The House of Asterion. The progression of the story re-envisions a mythic tale and imaginatively evokes the budding awareness of a growing child. Asterion claims indifference to literature and words of any kind, but he is not entirely fulfilled in pure, marvelous, and unrelenting action and being. His favorite pastime is engagement with imagination, in which he envisions his “other” self.

Asterion is also a perfect image of the human experience: half beast, half human (drawing energy and substance from the organic element, controlling and developing its application with intelligent thought and intuition), these two forces must work together to create a whole, civilized being.


Borges marvelously involves the dissimilarities of belief and knowledge, how Asterion has come to understand that one thing in the world is singular—therefore outside the world, and alone—himself. Having been told, Asterion believes that he knows that his redeemer will come, a word he cannot (or could not previously) conceive, that corresponds to a feeling he has: weariness at the endless multiplicity of his world, and his own solitariness. He yearns for reduction--a return to the simple innocence of the un-self-conscious world: the garden of Eden, or, further, immersion back into the god-head itself.

Though he is “ready” for his redeemer, Asterion has no idea of what form it might take. This shapeless readiness without pre-figuration is an essential element of redemption. He gives himself to Theseus, and we cannot know if he was wrong. Did Theseus slay the minotaur or did the minotaur find redemption in Theseus?

The Forest

I love the forest—the smell of eucalyptus, the sound of bird wings rustling into silence like a deck of cards shuffled in one hand, and the scattered shimmer of light: long, bright blind fingers reading their way across the moss-covered floor. She is at my side, or I at hers—either way we are together.

Harder and harder, we pedal up the hill and turn to the right, but the bicycles veer off to the left, into the courtyard of a beautiful church, long abandoned.

We enter the open door. The floor is checkered in huge black and white tiles that slough fine, grey dust in long narrow mounds that look like rows of curving dunes on a sea-less shore. An elevated pulpit curls out from the sculptured wall like a pale orchid blooming on the side of a rock. I climb the winding stairs and step onto the little balconied stage whose floor is a jumble of broken slats.

In praise, jubilation, or mere readiness, my arms shoot up from my sides, pointing to the windows and choir that are not there.

“Look! Here I can be myself,” she calls out to me from the center of the darkness below.

Peeling off her clothes, she crawls onto a low wooden crate. Her whole body glows like a jellied candy held up to the sun. She brushes the back of her hand against the nape of her neck, lifting her dark hair in a long arc that spills back over her shoulders. Her arm descends, unfolding outward into another arc, finally pointing to a painting framed in gold—it is a landscape of the same forest just outside the church.

Her shadow rolls across the floor, up the wall, and settles into the shape of a dark doorway leading into the painting of the forest. Entering this doorway, I see the stairs straight ahead, running deep into the moist red soil, farther and farther from the last glimmering light that quickly disappears behind thick branches and masses of bruise-black leaves.

The darkness bristles with gunfire. I lift my rifle toward the enemy hiding behind the huge fallen oak. My aim is sure. One by one each of them startles upward and pirouettes to one side before tumbling forward over the dead tree, like a puppet whose strings have been suddenly cut by a sharp, swift breeze or the silver edge of an outstretched wing.

“You cannot win,” the last one calls out, already dead.

I lift my hand to check my cards. The ace of diamonds slowly turns from red to black.

How will I explain, and to whom, that it is still the ace of diamonds. I want to check the hearts to see if they too are black, or if the spades and clubs are covered in blood, but the alarm rings out: the castle’s on fire. It’s time to leave—run over the dark lawn, through the colorless shrubs. I must scream and yell—call for help as if I mean it.

Outside the beautiful gate, five men walk toward me, unarmed except for long coats with high velvet collars. Across the square in the building on the corner she is waiting, and something to eat is laid out on a table. From there it is a short walk back to the forest.

Recipes

The grandmother liked to sit at the foot of the long walnut table in the dining room at her daughter’s house, in the chair closest to the door. She liked to come and go as she pleased, constantly threatening to arrive or disappear in a rhythm all her own, punctuated by the jingling keys always in her hand. This freedom was a luxury she had come to know only late in life and, among the unexpected joys of widowhood, gave the most pleasure.

Perhaps she should have been a lion-tamer, a white-collar criminal, or a card-shark in an old frontier town. A small, comfortable life in southern California had allowed her only to be bossy, and invariably correct—if not also often wrong.

Among her family, conversation was almost entirely unknown. So unlike herself, her descendants resembled sea urchins or beautiful, pale underwater corals, crusted around the edge of the dark table. As if moved by an invisible current, they seemed to sway and interact in arbitrary and impersonal patterns that described the merely physical laws of cause and effect—attraction and repulsion—more common to plants than to people. They nibbled at life, like goldfish, or pigeons endlessly pecking at one dry spot or another on an empty sidewalk, too stupid or never hungry enough to move on.

If Julie was to become one of them, she too would have to learn to meander in the slow-motion selvage of purposelessness, whatever she might actually think. Paul’s grandmother was at the center of this universe, not so much because of the power of her attraction or force, but for the laziness of all the others, who circled in predictable orbits, like marbles around the rim of a big platter. It didn’t really matter if there was anything at the center, but for the sake of form, as an idea.

“We had a wonderful dinner last night at Café Verdi—linguini with lobster and saffron sauce.” Julie put her hand on Paul’s shoulder as she spoke to his grandmother. She was only trying to be polite. Of course, these people could be crowding around her little kitchen table whenever they want, if she marries Paul. The grandmother rustled her pearls, planning the attack she could neither admit nor resist.

“A million years ago, I used to cook lobsters. Finally, I couldn’t stand the noise.”

Not known for her prowess in the kitchen, the grandmother’s idea of cooking included mashing fresh strawberries and whipping heavy cream for pastries that came in a box from a bakery. Anything to which she applied heat experienced a transformation far more alchemical than culinary and produced relics rather than meals.

For Julie, cooking was also little more than a bothersome concept: she subsisted on steamed zucchini, dressing-less salad, and English Breakfast tea. She was better read, and much less daring than the grandmother, and believed that the lobsters must have made some terrible screech as they were plunged into the boiling water.

“Is it a high-pitched sound? It can’t go on for that long, can it?”

“No, dear… it’s the tapping.”

“Tapping?”

“Yes, you just can’t imagine.” The grandmother repositioned her eyeglasses, like a gunner setting her sights. “Everyone loves to eat lobsters, but no one thinks about the cook who first has to get them all into the oven and then must listen to their relentless tapping on the glass of the oven door, until they’re cooked. Silence is the only way to know they’re done.”

Was she simply lying? Was it possible that, from cruelty or kindness, no one had ever countered this woman and told her how lobsters are cooked? Paul must have heard this story a million times, but his face was as pure and blind as a crystal paperweight. He looked straight ahead at the ugly credenza loaded with china dogs, and his shoulder dipped slightly, away from her hand.

“What are your other favorite recipes?”

Paul’s mother finally spoke, “Who wants more iced tea?” The grandmother rattled her keys.

Chekhov & Marx: the Riddle of "A Woman's Kingdom"

Chekhov’s stories and plays transcend any single point of view or system of analysis. Much, however, can be gained from the application of a particular lens toward organizing a pattern of understanding and focusing details of content and structure, attitude and atmosphere. A “Marxist” lens applies in many ways, from the simplest fundamental agreements in both men’s observations of their complicated and fast-changing world, to a deeper and more enigmatic probing of how this ideological mechanism operates at all levels of existence, especially through the choices and actions of the individual. For both Marx and Chekhov alienation is the primary effect of the reigning system of capitalism and it is characterized by volatile and shattering contradictions that result in suffering.

Many of Chekhov’s titles appear at first to highlight in a literal sense some obvious aspect of what the stories describe. Afterward, the seemingly straightforward title can be understood as a contradiction and comment on the previous understanding and its inherent assumptions, becoming the instantiation of an entirely new and different point of view.

For example, in “The Russian Master,” Nikitin is master in name only—simply from marrying a girl with a substantial dowry. He is not a master within his profession, of any of his slighter interests, or of the wife he thought he controlled. He briefly imagines himself to be the author of his own fleeting happiness. By the end of the story he is so little master of himself that he begs to be overwhelmed by something that would render him into a better person—by which he means relieved of his suffering.

Chekhov repeatedly refers to Nikitin as acting and appearing young—too young. It is a device to hide the character’s immaturity in plain view, Nikitin’s concept of sufferingis also too young—immature—he is as yet unable and unwilling to comprehend or instantiate the idea of suffering except through external conditions, Nikitin stands at the great threshold of Chekhov’s rich cosmos, ready to tke the first steps in once he sees the pointless contradiction of blaming the world for being itself.

Olenka, the “Darling” of the story of the same name, is in fact a vampire—sucking the life out of those she claims to adore, taking on their attributes of character and interest as the metaphoric stolen blood courses refreshingly through her own body. Her ‘goodness’ is entirely self-serving; she is destructive primordial unconsciousness. She never suffers; it is those upon whom she settles her draining gaze who wither away and die.

“A Woman’s Kingdom” will turn out to be anything but for Anna Akimovna, the young and beautiful heiress who discovers the true nature of the world she appears to own and the painful limits of her ability to make demands of life or of herself.

In each case, title and story are much more than merely ironic. Reality itself is turned on its head. The reader’s awakened consciousness, not a proverbial happy or sad outcome, is the goal of Chekhov’s masterful efforts. A conventional ending is never possible. Chekhov exploits the very idea of convention and ordinariness and does so with characters and settings so seemingly unexceptional that this very aspect is the means by which the extraordinary is hidden in plain sight. The stories articulate the contradictions, uncertainty and arbitrariness of the foundations of what is perceived as real and meaningful, illuminating Marx’s contention that the perception of reality is the result of the social relations of a given time expressed through that era’s mode of production. These social relations are what Anna Akimovna cannot overcome. She, like everyone, is caught in the alienation that makes each of them a commodity and player in the game of social reality, simultaneously sincere and false.

In Marx’s description and prognosis for the capitalist system, an increasing few, like Anna Akimovna, own and control the means and materials of production. The worker is separated from the meaningful pursuit of work related to his/her own existence, environment, personal needs and individual abilities; s/he becomes a means to an end. Reduced to a wage earner, the worker’s value resides in the value of his/her labor; surplus value—production and profit beyond the necessary amount to maintain life—is the property of the capitalist. No matter how much product the laborer makes, s/he earns no more, though earning less is certainly possible and likely.

It is in the interest and within the ability of the capitalist to increase the amount of production by improving the system of production—specialization and technology—in which s/he is willing to invest. This, however, invariably results in the ultimate decrease of the exchange value of the product made and a decrease in the wages earned by the laborer. As Marx predicted, the result is increasingly violent alternations of plenty and want, ever more unevenly distributed. The only things shared by all under this system are alienation and the loss of personal expression and freedom. Chekhov is clear in his depiction of these ruinous forces running rampant through all levels of society.

By the end of the 19th century conditions were such that it was already evident that Marx’s assessment of the capitalist system was correct in his description of its failure to address the spiritual, political and economic needs of a rapidly increasing and vastly more interconnected modern population.

Chekhov saw in his own family the entire spectrum from boom to bust, the exceedingly uneven distribution of the few benefits and enormous losses. His grandfather and father were serfs, his father had managed to purchase his freedom prior to Alexander II’s Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861 (Chekhov was thereby born “free” in 1860); the father became briefly a successful lower middle-class shop merchant. Yet before Chekhov had completed High School his father had gone bankrupt and fled to Moscow to avoid creditors. From an early age, Chekhov would spend the rest of his life supporting himself and his family with the proceeds from his writing. Independent of the errors Chekhov’s father may have made to contribute to his own ruin, the system itself was proving to be anything but a dream come true. The volatility of the markets predicted by Marx had encouraged many factory owners to torch their own establishments in order to collect insurance money and offset losses from speculation. Before the glistening benefits of mass-production, the wide distribution of products and education to improve life had time even to begin to tarnish, the system was already in decline.

In “A Woman’s Kingdom,” Anna Akimovna already knows that the industrial empire created by her uncle and overseen by her father is falling to pieces under her tenure, though not specifically from her neglect or personal error—she still employs the same managers as her uncle and father to operate the factory. But they are mostly corrupt and she neither knows about nor likes the business from which she derives her enormous income; everything about it is abhorrent to her. More and more money is spent each year on the maintenance of the workers’ lives and living quarters, yet whose sorry lot nonetheless continues to deteriorate.

In this detail Chekhov resonates with the Marxist belief that this system itself cannot prosper and endure. Within this story is the ironic detail that the only representative group that thrives and endures are the Chalikovs, the impoverished unemployed clerk/charlatan/beggar, his numerous progeny and yet again pregnant wife. Had Chekhov lived longer he might have written of Chalikov’s eventual victorious emergence as a financial services scam artist or some other of the forms of business characters made possible at the ragged margins of the destructive course of capitalism.

Ostensibly, “A Woman’s Kingdom” centers upon Anna Akimovna’s awakened desire for love and a family of her own—the kingdom she desires is the realm of the hearth, not the huge industrial enterprise of which she is mistress by the accident of inheritance. Regretfully, she imagines other women her own age from more modest backgrounds who are happily exhausted and abundantly fulfilled in the loving work of raising children; she does not consider the one-sided and idealistic viewpoint entailed in this dream. A chance meeting reveals a man, Pimenov, upon whom she can project her fantasies of simple and uncomplicated romance, but he is far beneath her station. In fact, he is a foreman at the factory she owns. Over the course of two days—the day before and, principally, Christmas Day and its “two” dinners—she will test the limits of her resolve and the world’s compliance and will end empty-handed and alone, despite all her wealth and privilege. Several compromises will be offered to the terms she dictates, but it will be she who cannot say yes to life, who cannot imagine a life outside of the conventions that she obeys without believing in.

Chekhov employs his usual cunning in introducing Anna Akimovna in the middle of a quandary that subtly suggests that we sympathize with her plight. She is young, attractive, rich and idle; she is not without awareness or conscience, yet her actions never correspond to what she presumably knows to be true and right. Chekhov constantly contrasts characters and situations to amplify the mystifying uncertainty and violent oscillations that correspond to the manifestation of alienation within oneself.

Early in the story Anna Akimovna looks down from her window on the numerous factory workers, bareheaded in the snow-filled courtyard of her palatial house, pleading her forgiveness. These employees were fired by her manager for absenteeism. Anna Akimovna is too ashamed to go out to them and instead lets them be driven away like dogs, into the darkness and cold. Later, in her widowed and childless aunt’s downstairs domain within the huge house, she will participate in the charade of censure for the drunken driver whom the aunt will pretend to dismiss and then quickly forgive and re-integrate into the familial feudal realm of the lower floor—all done with a pointless wink to Anna as the true sovereign of the new order. Yet she has had no say, one way or the other.

In the description of the house itself Chekhov subtly incarnates the contrasting social orders. The vibrant remnant of the feudal, integrated past lives out its last glimmerings in the downstairs quarters where the old aunt resides with a cozy and populous entourage within a strictly defined hierarchy. The palatial upper rooms were originally built and furnished only for use as an entertaining stage for special guests and the social scenarios that are part of the script of the successful life of a wealthy capitalist. In these glittering and sumptuous upper rooms Anna Akimovna now lives, alone with her servants and chef.

Chalikov and his family live far away in a poor old house divided into numerous overcrowded apartments, reminiscent of the humble world into which Anna Akimovna was born. Chance and fate brought her early in life to the palatial house and her role as mistress. She cannot justify her two realms, she longs for the simplicity she imagines was present in her humble past, yet is entirely a creature and product of her position and wealth.

Chekhov creates a stunning opposition in the characters of Chalikov and Anna Akimovna’s lawyer, Lysevich, one of the principal guests at her French Upstairs dinner. Both are devious; both lie; both want money. Ultimately it is Chalikov’s style that offends Anna Akimovna; he is cloyingly ingratiating and too knowing to play his part as supplicant innocently and well. Despite the actual reality of his need she ends up not giving him the large sum of cash that has happenstancely fallen into her hands at the opening of the story. Instead, she gives the money to Lysevich, who is independently wealthy and has no need for the money, yet asks for it in a manner that is subtly humiliating to Anna Akimovna, implying that it is she who has been cruel and neglectful. Ultimately it is Lysevich’s style that pleases Anna Akimovna, and she pays up knowing it will contribute toward nothing of worth.

One of Marx’s contentions about the lives of all under a system of alienation is that the final redoubt of action devolves to the animal necessities: eating, drinking and the acts of reproduction—sacred or profane. Chalikov is always eating or bringing more impoverished and needy souls into the world; Lysevich is a glutton, though only for better cuisine; Anna Akimovna is consumed with a desire to express her true feminine nature, but not willing to pay the price. In all of Anna Akimovna’s tiny, glittering realm no one can generate a literal future: there are no children. The guests at the upstairs dinner are old or impotent disinterested men; the women at the downstairs dinner are also old and well past the prime of life and the few men are drunkards or servants. What Anna Akimovna’s class is good at bringing into the world are the products and displays of culture. Though this is not without meaning, it is not what she actually desires. Anna Akimovna knows that it will be her fate to fail at her last attempt to enter into the continuum of life.

Pimenov becomes the object of her re-awakening. Chekhov shows how this man alone among all the other characters has managed to retain some hold on his own integrity, the integrity that Marx declares is nearly if not entirely impossible to maintain in the awful distortion of economic exploitation. Chekhov refers often to Pimenov’s great physical strength—presumably an emblem of his potential to fulfill Anna Akimovna’s feminine desire, but his greatest strength is seen in the clockworks, watches and tools neatly and lovingly preserved in his simple room. These are the symbols of his re-unification with self, work he does from love and interest and not solely for someone else’s profit. It is not facetious or for show, as with Chalikov and Lysevich, when he tells Anna Akimovna that for her he will make an exception and offers to repair her elegant watch.

In this sense Pimenov is “rich” and Anna Akimovna is “poor” because the supposedly valuable treasure and commodities that compose her world have no exchange value for that which she actually desires. It goes without saying that, in this story, Pimenov’s humble worthiness is not to be rewarded and that Lysevich’s elegantly entertaining unworthiness is promptly, and handsomely, paid for.

At the downstairs dinner an old crone called the Beetle along with all the other women lament the waste of Anna Akimovna’s youth, beauty and wealth, explaining how she might have the experience she desires, even if that should include marrying a simple common man like Pimenov. In a short-lived and convulsive rush of false freedom Anna Akimovna consents to the Beetle’s offer as matchmaker.

The great sadness of this story is that Anna Akimovna is not blind to Pimenov as a man; it is in considering him as a husband that she cannot keep her strength of will and all her money is of no avail. Pimenov is not acceptable to those who inhabit her world, both the born residents like Lysevich and the other upstairs guests or even her own servants, who co-operate with the punishing system of appearances and raise the price of her desire beyond her understanding.

It is her own simpering butler Misha who acts as tutor to his wayward mistress who momentarily forgets the rules of the game and imagines that she might be able to find happiness in a union with the man she imagines her own father might have heartily approved. Misha “reminds” Anna Akimovna that Pimenov would be a frightening sight at table among the highborn guests, trying to figure out exactly how to hold a dinner fork properly. Surely, it was all a good joke, he cajoles—but his tone is not really that of a question. Yes, of course, is her only possible reply: a joke.

This leads to the strangest and most startling realization, both from the perspective of Marx and of Chekhov. Why is it that Anna Akimovna is so powerless in the pursuit of happiness? In Section 4 of the first volume of “Capital”, Marx describes the extraordinary and enigmatic power of commodities within a capitalist society. It is almost identical to the misleadingly seeming ordinary aspect of Chekhov’s stories:

“A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.”

As Marx describes, the fetish power of commodities is not located in our minds but in the social relations themselves comprised within capitalist society. Therefore, despite knowing in our minds that a commodity has no intrinsic power or value, we not only act “as if” it does, but must honor that known misperception—we cannot separate ourselves from it as if it were a mere idea any more than a fish could imagine living on land—because our participation within the dynamic of the entire system is that from which we derive our sense of reality, our sense of self.

Marx offers an “explanation” as to why these characters cannot act in their own best interest and it is far more potent and mysterious than the force of social pressure in the common or naïve interpretation. It is a powerlessness and blindness inherent to the very “rules” of the operating system. These characters are intrinsically divided within themselves owing to their very participation in a particular unavoidable cultural interpretation of “reality” which Chekhov so masterfully weaves into an illuminating and sorrowful work of art.

Blue

When I feel ‘blue’ I wonder what shade it might be.

In a museum, in front of a small immaculate landscape painting, a man I did not know turned to me and said, “In Russian, we have more than forty distinct and separate words describing the color you call ‘blue’. Other people think we are very sad, but Mother Nature makes these words in snow and ice and mist, water and sky. Look!”

Why me? Despite the paltry offering in my native tongue of words describing blue, I know all too well what the Russian is talking about. And, frankly, he is a little sullen, if not altogether sad, but this I also understand, or think I do.

I have excuses or reasons for why I linger so long in all things blue: it is easier on the eyes and there are more colors (and moods) with blue than without; their variety is a delight to discern.

A color wheel is like an upside-down arch; its keystone is the truest blue, betraying no tendency toward yellow or red. Two arms reach up from the blue core, one becomes green on its way to yellow, the other turns purple midway toward its red palm. Above, a narrow slice of blue-free color stretches from pure red to pure yellow, an orange filament of pure joy whose entire expanse is one third of the total wheel. Two thirds of all colors contain some amount of blue; too much of life to ignore.

As night follows day, blue is rest and repose from the exhausting and gorgeous delirium of the brightness that burns out fast, yet lingers in traces like shimmering light on a watery surface, the glimmering turnings of shiny fishes or the fluorescent glissandos of unnamed creatures burrowing deep into the couch of vibrant darkness.

The Kitchen

* * * * * * *
“…angels have no memory...” “Margaret, he has no eyes, no eyes!” “They’re closed.” “Do they have feet; do they need them; his wings don’t move; how will he get around to do his miracles? How will he know where to go if he can’t see?” “Roberta, they’re angels; they just know.” “Why isn’t there a button to bring back the color?” “Stop it, Bertie; it’s an OLD movie; it’s IN black and white.” “Margaret, I can see that, but why isn’t there a button to bring back the color?” “It never had color.” “What does that mean? How could it never have color?” “Because its black and white; now stop it, I can’t hear.” “How are we supposed to believe he’s flying if his wings don’t move?” “Bert, it’s a MOVIE.” “So?” "…to us there is no evil…” “In old movies they don’t have color and there are lots of things they don’t show.” “…we love everyone, equally…” “Why, Margaret?” “I don’t know.” “Well, did they paint everything white before they made the movie? Is that because it’s an angel movie?” “Yes, that must be it. Now will you stop?’’

* * * * * * *
I didn’t really mean ‘right now’ when I said we could bake cookies; I meant ‘someday’. I was hungry—not enough to go downstairs. Bert wouldn’t be stopped. She is a short, scrawny, almost-eight year old, quick and resilient as a tiny steel spring.

At the green marble island in the middle of the kitchen she is a mad scientist, or maybe a pale pigmy conductor, arranging her deaf and dumb orchestra. She stands on the little pink step stool dad made for her in his weekend woodshop class. Bowls to the right; both bottles of that awful organic goat milk and a tin of olive oil in front with all the butter and eggs; and sugar, flour, oatmeal, cornmeal, corn flakes and shredded wheat in a clutter to the left, scattered with raisins, lemons and jars of jelly and jam. Bertie waves tireless, coaxing signals to the uncomprehending boxes, bottles and jars, certain they will become something if only she tries harder or figures out the magic sign.

* * * * * * *
Except for her red sneakers and red hair, everything Bertie has in the entire world is pink. I love pink, though not so bright. It looks very good on me, not like on her. I mix it with white or navy blue, or beige. Maybe, for me, it’s really an accent. It looks more elegant that way, more attractive and, well, I am a blond and, obviously, that makes a difference.

What can she do with red hair and skin so pale and fine? Whenever I bring Bertie along to the market I try to keep her away from the fish counter. Under the fluorescent lights she looks just like the uncooked shrimp and, then, she is so small. It's ridiculous, I know. Bertie is too short to see the shrimp herself and she wouldn't think anything or care, but I worry that other people might notice. Her eyes are magnificent and scary: deep turquoise, and splintery like the inside of diamonds and bright as her hair, which usually sticks straight out, all over, very soft and thin; and though I love it—the way it feels—of course, it will never work when she is my age; she will have to do something.

“Blood is thicker than water, Margaret.” She likes this kind of phrase, but, to me, it makes no sense. Who doesn’t know that blood is thicker than water? And what does she mean? She is too young to ‘mean’ anything. Blood is blood and water is water, and you can’t be a human being and not need both.

“You don’t put olive oil in cookies, Roberta, and we don’t need all these eggs or the milk, put some of this back—and no cereal.”

“Margaret, what do we need? What?” It is a reasonable question, or should be; but it makes me angry—for a moment. We should be looking in a cookbook or something. I can’t remember ever making cookies; people do, I know. I must have, sometime, with my mother. I’m not sure how that makes me feel.

* * * * * * *
“What can I do for you today, Roberta?” “If you don’t know, Mr. Phillips, then why am I here? Waste not, want not.” “No, I mean, you know, Bertie, what would—is there anything you’d like to talk about today?” “Nothing, nothing, nothing.” “All right, we can just sit here, together—I like your sweater, Roberta. Are those flowers you’re drawing?” “No………..They are birds. On little strings. That are very strong. And they are trying to fly away as fast as they can. That’s just what they do.”

“Roberta, I got a special pillow for you, it’s pink.” “I have eyes.” “Yes, Bertie, you do; and I have eyes, too, so I can see you still like pink. It’s a pretty pillow—don’t you think? And you can take it with you or leave it here, if you like.” “I’ll leave it here. I have pillows at home.” “What are you reading?” “A book.” “Yes. Of course. It has a pretty cover; what’s it about?” “Places…Far away places.” “Is there some place you’d like to go, Bertie?” “I want to go home.” “Well. Yes, of course. And it’s all right, Bertie, if you actually want to leave… you don’t have to stay. I’ll call your mother, she’ll be glad to come get you; you don’t have to stay.” “No, I…it’s OK. Mr. Phillips, I don’t… know, I mean they’re shopping. For clothes. Margaret needs new clothes for school and they like to shop.” “Your mother won’t mind at all; neither will your sister.” “I know.” “Margaret is going away soon—to school, to college.” “Everyone says so. I’m going to school too.” “Yes, but Margaret is going away to school-- she won't be living at home, and she won’t be back until Thanksgiving. You’ll miss her, won’t you?” “She’s so much older now. Her hair is so long she looks just like the picture of her mother and daddy.” “Yes, Margaret looks very much as her mother did.”

* * * * * * *
“Blood is thicker than water, Margaret, blood IS thicker than water.” She wants to reach over and flip on the water—to prove her point, I guess—but she can’t without moving the step stool, and, really, that would lose all the effect. She looks over to the sink, and starts laughing when she sees that I notice.

“All right, honey, it’s OK. Put the jelly on top, but make a little dent first.” “You won’t like them.” “Yes I will.” “It’ll look like blood, Margaret. The cookies will look like they’re bleeding.” “Ewww, Bert, that’s awful, it’s raspberry, not blood.” “It still looks a lot like blood, Margaret, really.” “They’ll taste like raspberry; like little linzertortes.” “Linzerwhats?” “Cookies, Roberta, just little cookies, with cute red dots on them, just like you.”

* * * * * * *
“But I don’t look like anyone. Not daddy or mom or Margaret.” “Roberta, you look like you, and Margaret didn’t look so much like her mother when she was a girl your age.” “But she had blond hair.” “Yes.” “Mr. Phillips, how do you know?” “Bertie, I’ve told you. I knew your father before he was married to Margaret’s mother.” “I know she’s dead, but where is that, where is she?” “I would say heaven but you never like that word, or, that’s what you said last week.” “How can you believe it when the angels never move their wings and they don’t have feet?” “I see what you mean, I do. I never thought of it that way, but it doesn’t mean you can’t believe in heaven. Where do the little birds you draw go?” “Far away, far away.” “Maybe it’s the same.” “But they have very, very, very strong strings so they can’t go that far away, they can’t, even if they do.”

* * * * * * *
“Of course I want to go to school, Roberta. It’ll be fun, and everybody has to; how else will I get a job? When you’re older you’ll understand. And you’ll go away to school too.” “That’s not it, Margaret. That’s not it at all, not at all, nothing.” “What then? Where’s the timer, Bertie? We don’t want them to burn. I’m not going away forever and I’m not even going that far.” “But you won’t be here, Margaret, here. HERE.” “Yes I will, when I come back.” “But how?” “I’ll drive.” “No Margaret, I don’t mean that. Did your mother ever come back… just for a visit?”

“Honey, they don’t have anything to do with each other. I am going to school—to college, Roberta—I’ll be back, you’ll see. And…I know this sounds terrible—I was younger than you are now—but, I don’t remember my mother. I remember us. She didn’t live here, with us, with daddy and me. I mean, mom didn’t live here then either, well, obviously, you know, and you weren’t even born. She did live here—my mother—she must have. I guess she was in the hospital most of the time. And when I look at the picture of her and daddy it’s strange, more like me, older, with some boy who looks like daddy, or only just a little. She never looked like that picture—maybe when she was young. She didn’t have any hair. And it’s awful, Bert, and we shouldn’t talk about this at all and you shouldn’t think about this. I don’t know what to say. She put her arm around me, or, well it wasn’t… daddy had to help her.

She gave me the gold barrette, the one in the picture. She tried to put it in my hand. It almost fell. Her fingernails were too long, and sharp. Maybe it was at the hospital—the floor, everything, everything was white. She was sitting up in bed, very high. It must have been morning because it was so bright, the window behind her, the barrette. She told me to look underneath; she said it was our names: 'Anne' and 'Margaret', but I hadn't known her name was Anne; she was my mother. The letters were carved so thin and small, but they sparkled in the light and I could read them. She looked at me for a long time—I mean, I think it was a long time. I can see her now. But it has nothing to do with mom or going to school or you. You shouldn’t think about this, sweetheart. I’m sorry I’m going away, I mean, not really. You’ll see. It will be all right.”