Where was he? And who was he? A childhood in Biarritz, ranging over little dunes with a tank in his hand that when he set it down went all by itself. Who are any of us? Others would pop up behind the sand with mogul faces, human gas masks. The little tank slowed, heaved its turret over one haunch and took aim. The other child stunned, glancing down at his ankles, toward which the tank was furiously staring. Then the snow, the wild Spanish snow, the dread Zhivagon that blows from the north. How romantic, suddenly sixteen to the tune of one and a half guitars from somewhere down a hooker's hall. Hot and cold again but nothing like this. Monsters with fur and a black ring of static around his stupid eyes.
Louis couldn't open them. Where was he? And who was he? Little bears danced before him, a green smell, bumperstickers and pot. He did not move, though he commanded himself to do so. There was a protocol problem in his nerveses. Mom come open my eyes. Eddie, they got me. Cough. The American Journal--something--called it sleep para--something, type one letter. And who are any of us? Trajan's column, broken: his leg, lashed to a something. The other one too. He was seated, he felt it on his ass, and it almost made him cry with loneliness. I don't like the dark. I'll--as he did when he was a kid--count to twenty and see if it will stop.
It didn't, and then suddenly it did. His eyes came alive, his body followed. Oh, OK. This is a, um, what was it. It was a room without windows (because they usually have them he said to himself). The light--it was very bright to a waking person--came from a pulsing white orb in the ceiling, which covered the room at a distance of some seven feet from Louis's head. Tables and shelves, nice ones too, from Bowery Restaurant Supply--oh the innocences he'd taken on such tables, and once on such a shelf. But those were bygones, and these shelves were right here and now. On his sides and presumably behind. Could he--no, he couldn't, still bound by whatever it was, half asleep or whatever. But he really wanted to. One, within reach behind, presented to his feeling hand a pair of scissors, and smart boy put them (mentally) in a category together with certain other objects in his vision: a drill, a tesseract made of nails, a spigot. Tools. Another behind him felt itself to be, he reached and hurt his shoulder, a something with a rubber snake tail, oh no--and he laughed! Oh, the irony oh my god. It was a stethoscope. Here he was after all and good, in the basement of some clown doctor. Oh, mother, I knew it would happen. I warned you. And now I'm sure to get a shot. The tesseract fudged in on itself and came out its other side.
All in all, he took stock, it was better than darkness. And who are any of us anyway? He put on the stethoscope and pointed the sucker end at the far side of the room. Something warm and pleasant chirped at him from the--right, and he swung the stethoscope around to get a closer, oh ha, but it clanked into a glass something, and the sound was funny and painful in his ear, like a hammertap against the glass door to his brain. Whoo. Well, then, he turned his head to get a closer look, the way it is supposed to be done. It was--a jar. Hurt a lot to hold one's head like this, but I am overtaken by a certain spirit, a certain--je ne sais quoi. What (chuckling now) could be inside? Perhaps these English words on the label will give a clue. Bingo the Acid (asterisk) Organic, dated December last year. Next to it: Distilled Water, August of the same. Behind them and now he was really stretching out the old neck Eddie, was a nice big one which revealed, behind glass, a plan of New Berlin made with human wait for it teeth. Some old, he could not help looking at them with his scientist's eye and even listening a little through the instrument, some new.
OK, so he is no historian, but this is a total Nazi basement, gell? Now the tears came. He--he couldn't go on. The felty green hills of Böblingen. The iron road from Gechingen to Sindelfingen. The sheetmetal smoke from the Mercedes plant where he'd lost his virginity, the smell of rubber. Everything came back at once, at once. Like a goddamned express train just shooting by you with all that wall of Doppler sound. Good god. He beat his knee with his fist. The stethoscope's rubber tail swung freely back and forth, uncognizant of his pain, the ironic object. Yes, take a step back and look at this. Back and forth it went, uncognizant. Now a tear strikes it by chance. Oh, he cried harder for Germany than you, reader, ever will.
But what had been that sound? And where was all this leading? The rubber, the glass and teeth. He gently took the scope out from his ears and let it clutch the back of his neck. Oh! The sound clinked again by his naked ear. Like a couple of glass birds getting to know each other. Like a--oh, who knew. He turned right again, as best he could, and spied what could be the source, the very source. It was a brown spot in the corner of his eye, but its manner of being just out of sight and its obvious connection with the glassy sound of hellmessenger birds, for that is what they do, convinced him that it was memory itself right there. Or some broken glass. Well, he turned himself right around, taking the chair--CHAIR, ha--with him, and there before him was what he'd been seeking for what seemed his whole life, something to drink beer out of when he was watching Olympia. He went for it but toppled over, being bound with some kind of organic material to the chair. His head split a little over a table with an edge by Ragged Metal.
Now there was something happening at least, and he decided to make the best of it. He rolled with the chair around the perimeter of the room, marking his progress with the blood streaming from his head, counting the number of rolls down to a half-turn. And he was just about to run into the brown thing with the glass that would make it much more drunk to watch Olympia from now on, which was good, when he PLUMMETED INTO A LITTLE RAVINE for goodness's sake, of which the only good thing was that he got a leg free to kick himself for being such a jerk.
Pain and pain again, so many kinds. He wanted a pretty nurse in his mother's clothes. Oh man. But it was only rapid footsteps behind the somethings that kept the room there and not somewhere else and not fudging in on itself and out the other side, oh for a nice girl on a shelf. Mother help me--and here came this river-voice, no a little stream-voice, from out there in the what must be void outside the room. "Fuck, Lou," said the voice. "Fff. He does take his time."
His eyes snapped open. Zelda! Germany! Pass auf, Scheiße! And the great shroud of the sea did its thing again, and out like a light.
