Barry N. Malzberg - Those Wonderful Years.pdf - Barry N. Malzberg - widez2

Those Wonderful Years

BARRY N. MALZBERG

LISTENING TO THE great sounds of '63, pouring like fruit from the

transistors, the engine on high, pulling me irresistibly toward that simpler

and more reasonable time of my life. All is love/stars above/know the

tune/I lost so soon , Cosmo and the Pearls, got it together in '61, got the

sounds right the following year, hit it to the top with MOONSONG in that

golden year of the assassination and then it all fell apart as so many lives

have fallen apart during the 60's: drugs, divorce, abandonment, flight,

hatred and Cosmo himself died in a fountain in Las Vegas or was it a pool

in '69, must have been around that time, maybe a year later. Does not

matter. Old Cosmo was finished by the mid-sixties, the whole sound that

he exemplified, the tender lyric which he probed overtaken by harsher

jolts but ramming the Buick at high speed down the expressway it is '63

again and Cosmo is young, all of us are younger and I let the apples and

oranges of that music bounce over me, humming only a little at the

rhythm parts. On the expressway I whir past other aspects of the past:

cars from the early sixties assault me from oncoming lanes, yield to me on

the right and in the chrome, the strange, bent archaic shapes of the 60's I

know my history again and again revealed. MOONSONG ends on a

diminished seventh or maybe it is merely a hanging chord (I know

absolutely nothing about music other than how it affects me) and the

radio is still, then there is a commercial for the Wonder Wheel chain of

superior foodstuffs in the metropolitan area and without transition from

'66 comes the sound of the TROOPERS singing Darkness of Love . '66 was

a good year too although not as critical in many aspects as '63, still it is a

period worth remembering. The TROOPERS help me remember. Locked

to the sound, a little pivot wheel of memory I soar through all the spaces of

the Expressway and into the impenetrable but to-be-known future. The

vaginal canal of the future, parting its thick lips for me gently as I snaffle

along in pursuit of my destiny.

Outside the building containing Elvira's single-girl's apartment I wedge

the car into a space, remove the key (cutting off Tom and the Four Gees in

SWEET DELIGHT, a pure pear plucked from the tree of '54, a little before

my time but no matter) and sit behind the wheel for a moment,

meditating. I am a little early for our date which happens quite often but

then too I am in no hurry to see Elvira, preferring always to cherish the

memories gathered through our times together than to go into the

difficult business of creating new ones. (The past is fixed, the present

incomprehensible, the future without control; I must remember this.)

Already Elvira is an artifact to me; her breasts already seem to have the

glaze of embalming fluid, her mouth tastes like mucilage, it is not Elvira

which I am kissing so much as the Elvira which I will remember. It is

difficult to explain this. It is difficult to explain this but I will try: Elvira

and our relationship are to be a golden oldie of the early eighties. Thinking

this and other muddled thoughts I step briskly from the car, move through

stones and into the lobby of the building where I see she has already come

down to wait for me, a handbag slung over her shoulder, a tight and

aggressive expression across her eyes and cheeks. I know that I will have to

suppress memories of Elvira's aggression in order to be truly moved by her

years hence. "We must make a decision," she says, grasping my arm

between wrist and elbow, in the vicinity of the ulna, and applying modest

pressure. "We cannot go on this way. Tonight we must resolve our

relationship."

"I am not prepared to make any decisions, Elvira," I say, submitting to

her grasp. In ordinary life I am a claims examiner for a large insurance

company which has, partly because of me, one of the lowest payout rates

in the business, a statistic which they do not advertise. In that capacity I

must do a great deal of writing and checking but fortunately this is with

the right hand and not with the left which feels Elvira's pressure.

Resultantly I do not protest at being greeted by her in this way but try to

take a lower key. Cosmo and the Pearls, according to the newspaper

stories at the time of their success, are supposed to have met on an

unemployment line in the Bronx, New York, but I do not believe this. I

discard most public biographies as lies and, trusting nothing, believe that

the truth can only be found in what Cosmo does to me. A little snatch of

MOONSONG buzzes through my head like an indolent fly and I do not

slap at it; I listen. Lost so soon/all I loved/like the stars above . Above,

above. "We will have to take it as it comes, Elvira," I add liking the sound

of her name. El-vi-ra; it carries within it the characteristic sound of the

seventies, posturing and yet somehow childlike, which will surely

characterize this decade in the years which lie ahead.

"No," she says, tightening her grasp on the arm, leading me toward the

one voluminous couch which in shades of orange and yellow dominates

the lobby of her residence, "it cannot be. You've equivocated too much. I

can't waste these important years of my life on someone who doesn't even

know his identity!" She raises a fist to her face, dabs at her eyes. "And

besides that, I sometimes think that you don't even really want me," she

says, "that when you're with me you're already thinking about how you'll

remember me. I tell you, this is no way for a relationship to function. I

have a great deal to offer you but it must be within the terms of the

present. You've got to be here with me now."

"You don't understand, Elvira," I say, guiding her to the couch, gently

easing down and at last her terrible grip eases and I run a fervid hand over

my joint, relocating the source of circulation and bringing the blood to

clear surge yet again. "The past is fixed, the present incomprehensible, the

future without control. If we repudiate our past, well then, what are we?

And if we do not cherish the past, that only immutable part of us, well,

then, Elvira, what will we make of the present and the future?" but even as

I am saying this I feel the hopelessness of the argument overwhelm me.

Her little face is set tight, her little breasts jut with argumentation; if I

touched her body my hands would recoil, I am sure, with a metallic spang.

She does not understand. Slowly I disengage myself from her, stand, walk

back through the lobby, gesticulating.

"I'm not ready to make a commitment," I say, "how can we know where

we're going until we know where we've been? You've got to understand

history, otherwise the sheer accumulation of data overwhelms," and so on

and so forth, now I am beyond the doors themselves, the cool,dense glaze

of air hitting me, ruffling my cheeks and still Elvira sits on the couch,

unmoving, her hands closeting her pocketbook, her eyes fixed straight

ahead. She seems to be speaking but I cannot hear a word which she is

saying. She mouthes polysyllables, I concentrate, but all is beyond me. "I'm

sorry," I say, "truly sorry," and walking back to the car feel a fine, true

instant of regret; I could come back to her, vault against her on the couch

and confess my sin: that dark, unspeakable stain which radiates from the

heart through all the tendrils of the body, that stain which begins in loss

and ends in acceptance but what good would it do me? Or her? No, our

relationship is obviously finished, I restore myself to the seat cushions of

my car, hurriedly start the motor and drive away, the radio, caught in the

gears, booming.

The Four Knights, '59, THE TEARS OF YOUR HEART. '59 was a year of

great transition just as this has been; everything hurt in '59, I let the

music run over me like blood and for an instant it is that year again and I

twenty years old trying to come to terms with matters which I do not even

remember. In retrospect I glimpse Elvira; she remains on the couch, she is

sunk on the couch like stone: already a perfect artifact nestled in

mucilage, on display for the tourista of recollection which in little fibers I

shall send on their way in all of the years to come.

III

A man with all of his limbs torn off by an automobile accident was

denied compensation when I was able to establish through delicate

interviewing and piecing together of evidence that the accident was

self-caused and therefore not covered under the terms of his particular

policy. For this I was given praise by my supervisor and a small bonus but

I cannot get over an unreasonable feeling of guilt even now as if somehow

it would have been better if I had falsified the interviews and

documentation and allowed the quadruple amputee to slip a false claim

through the company.

A Festival of Revival is held at the large municipal auditorium which I

attend. All of the great performers of the '50's excepting only those who

have died or have gone on to better things are there: the Chryslers and the

Flyers, Lightnin' Joe and the Band, the Little Black Saddle, Tony

Annunzio. Seated in the third row orchestra, surrounded by stolid

citizenry who have carried forward the menacing expressions of their

youth and little else, I am stunned again by the energy of that decade, its

fervor and wildness, the way in which it anticipated and sowed the seeds

of so much else to come, but I am also humbled because in a critical way I

have come such a short distance from that time; my responses to the Little

Black Saddle are as they were when I was thirteen, no difference, this is no

Festival of Changes. Of course the '60's were even more significant than

the '50's, I must remember that, and that is to take nothing away from the

'40's which prefigured both of these decades to say nothing of the '70's,

fast receding from us and likely to be remembered as the most moving

decade of all. Tony Annunzio takes off his jacket and tie to sing his final

numbers, just as he did in the old days, and I am shocked at how round he

has become although, of course, my memories of him are unreliable. His

great hit, BROKEN CHAIN OF CIRCUMSTANCE, is the finale of the show

and while standing in tribute with the rest of the audience I find myself

thinking of Elvira. If only we had been able to share this moment together!

but she declined my invitation, of course, hanging up the phone on me

nastily but not before saying that in her opinion my unusual attachment

to certain elements of the past only showed a childish inability to face the

future.

How could I have explained to her that the past is the future? and what

difference would it have made, the spotlight on Tony Annunzio winking

off, the houselights surging on and all five thousand of us rising as one to

cheer the voice of his generation, and Tony, standing on the bare stage to

take those cheers with the same grace and offhandedness with which,

more than twenty years ago, he bowed to us at the old Orpheus, now the

new Orpheus and also the site of many great revivals?

Coming home I find Elvira lying naked in my bed, the covers below her

waist, her eyes bright with malice. Try as she may, it seems that she

simply cannot leave me alone. I know the feeling well although I have

never had it with Elvira. "I'll tell you about the nostalgia craze and your

golden oldies," she says with a mad wink, "I've been thinking this through

carefully and now I'll tell you the truth." She is thirty-one years old,

attractive but not exceptional and from the beginning of our relationship

she might have regarded me as her last chance. This has led to much

bitterness in the breakup.

"Let me tell you what I think it is," she says, her voice wavering, her

little breasts shaking, the nipples pursed as if for a kiss, "the nostalgia

craze, this constant digging up of the past for people like you who can't

face the future; it's all a government plot. It comes from the capital.

They're manipulating everything by digging up the past so that people

aren't able to bridge the distance between the present and the future. They

think that they can keep people from seeing what's really been done to

them if they feed them the past like a drug to keep on reminding them of

what they used to be. They're going to keep us all locked in the past so that

we won't really ever see what's going on now but I won't fall for it and I

won't let you fall for it." She leaps from the bed, breasts shaking, and

seizes me around the neck, gathers me in. "Please," she says, "you must

face your life, must face what you've become and where you're going, you

can't live in the past," moving her body like a lever against mine, bone to

bone, flesh to flesh and for all of my embarrassment and rage it is difficult

Barry N. Malzberg - Those Wonderful Years.pdf

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