The humble roller coaster is oxidizing gradually into scrap metal, and one loop-de-loop lies dead on the ground. Nathaniel imagines the joyful screams of yesteryear. Above the roar of the VW’s engine, and to pass the time, Coolberg begins to describe a trip he apparently made last summer to a country whose name, when he says it, sounds like “Quolbernya,” one of those rarely visited Eastern European locales at the edge of, or just off, the map.
“In that country,” Coolberg says, in a voice that gradually gains momentum, “the houses are all built of white stone.
They’re sepulchral, these houses, like those in a Bergman movie, and although they have huge drooping gutters and oversized windows, nothing about them seems particularly knowable. The people there don’t believe in directional signs, to begin with. They think you should know how to get where you’re going, and you should always know where you 58
c h a r l e s b a x t e r
already are. But by law, they require homeowners to plant decorative purple lilacs in their backyards, which will bloom throughout the seasons, lilacs engineered in the local laboratories so that not even snow will kill them. Another thing I noticed was that families no longer go down to the docks to welcome the passengers, because people have become, without anyone knowing why, too much trouble. The waves flatten out oddly in the central harbor, which is obscurely brokenhearted, like Lisbon. It’s one of those places that history currently ignores. The sights extrude a kind of nineteenth-century pain. There is nevertheless much actuality. The state planning makes everyone feel like a minia-ture, and though I found a few maps printed on high-quality paper, the maps themselves were fictional, and comically inaccurate. And, after all, people were indifferent to exact location—or they didn’t ‘care,’ if that’s the word—and I noticed that at dinnertime they bent down to their plates, where invariably food was located, and most of them ate and didn’t remark upon where they were.”
He takes a breath and makes a sound like a giggle.
Nathaniel feels rage, a rare emotion for him, rising up at this mockery of eloquence and distinction-making, this trav-elogue through a massive cognitive disorder, this manic word-spinning, but before he can interrupt, Coolberg starts in again.
“Everyone’s very loyal to the directives, for example, about eating the food. It’s one of those countries where people are particularly loyal to loyalty. Also, there’s the business of sleeping, how much dreaming has to be done, who has to love whom, that sort of thing. Their murders are elaborately planned and executed. Nothing is left to chance. As they like to say there, ‘You certainly have to dream a lot of dreams to get through a lifetime.’ In the capital city, I went t h e s ou l t h i e f
59
to the pavilion of end-of-the-world horticulture. The plain-faced plant-woman sprinkled powerful dust on the flowers for my benefit and explained that the long fields where nothing will grow that we had spied from the tourist buses, and the rivers that had turned to the color of cough drops, were not really manifestations of anything disarrayed in the organic world, understood as such. She said everything was demonstrably mending. She was almost alone in the pavilion. Her voice echoed, in that bottom-of-the-well manner.
Trust me, the plain-faced woman said. And then in French, Oui, je la connais. But if I was supposed to trust her, to acknowledge that she knew something, then why were all the children in the neighboring playground so frightened, their mouths making those terrible O’s? Why wouldn’t the lilacs stop blooming? Why did the gifts hurt long after they’d been given? Those were the questions. One morning I knew, finally, that the lists of examples wouldn’t do any longer, but examples were all that I had. In that country, they speak prose. And not only do they speak it, they live
“In that country,” Coolberg says, in a voice that gradually gains momentum, “the houses are all built of white stone.
They’re sepulchral, these houses, like those in a Bergman movie, and although they have huge drooping gutters and oversized windows, nothing about them seems particularly knowable. The people there don’t believe in directional signs, to begin with. They think you should know how to get where you’re going, and you should always know where you 58
c h a r l e s b a x t e r
already are. But by law, they require homeowners to plant decorative purple lilacs in their backyards, which will bloom throughout the seasons, lilacs engineered in the local laboratories so that not even snow will kill them. Another thing I noticed was that families no longer go down to the docks to welcome the passengers, because people have become, without anyone knowing why, too much trouble. The waves flatten out oddly in the central harbor, which is obscurely brokenhearted, like Lisbon. It’s one of those places that history currently ignores. The sights extrude a kind of nineteenth-century pain. There is nevertheless much actuality. The state planning makes everyone feel like a minia-ture, and though I found a few maps printed on high-quality paper, the maps themselves were fictional, and comically inaccurate. And, after all, people were indifferent to exact location—or they didn’t ‘care,’ if that’s the word—and I noticed that at dinnertime they bent down to their plates, where invariably food was located, and most of them ate and didn’t remark upon where they were.”
He takes a breath and makes a sound like a giggle.
Nathaniel feels rage, a rare emotion for him, rising up at this mockery of eloquence and distinction-making, this trav-elogue through a massive cognitive disorder, this manic word-spinning, but before he can interrupt, Coolberg starts in again.
“Everyone’s very loyal to the directives, for example, about eating the food. It’s one of those countries where people are particularly loyal to loyalty. Also, there’s the business of sleeping, how much dreaming has to be done, who has to love whom, that sort of thing. Their murders are elaborately planned and executed. Nothing is left to chance. As they like to say there, ‘You certainly have to dream a lot of dreams to get through a lifetime.’ In the capital city, I went t h e s ou l t h i e f
59
to the pavilion of end-of-the-world horticulture. The plain-faced plant-woman sprinkled powerful dust on the flowers for my benefit and explained that the long fields where nothing will grow that we had spied from the tourist buses, and the rivers that had turned to the color of cough drops, were not really manifestations of anything disarrayed in the organic world, understood as such. She said everything was demonstrably mending. She was almost alone in the pavilion. Her voice echoed, in that bottom-of-the-well manner.
Trust me, the plain-faced woman said. And then in French, Oui, je la connais. But if I was supposed to trust her, to acknowledge that she knew something, then why were all the children in the neighboring playground so frightened, their mouths making those terrible O’s? Why wouldn’t the lilacs stop blooming? Why did the gifts hurt long after they’d been given? Those were the questions. One morning I knew, finally, that the lists of examples wouldn’t do any longer, but examples were all that I had. In that country, they speak prose. And not only do they speak it, they live
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