Forms of Devotion Read online

  The hope of the faithful is infinite, ever expanding to fill the space available. Faith begets hope. Hope begets faith. Faith and hope beget power.

  The faithful lean steadily into the wind.

  FIVE SMALL ROOMS (A MURDER MYSTERY)

  I have learned not to underestimate the power of rooms, especially a small room with unequivocal corners, exemplary walls, and well-mannered windows divided into many rectangular panes. I like a small room without curtains, carpets, misgivings, or ghosts.

  I. SMALL ROOM WITH PEARS

  I like a room painted in a confident full-bodied color. I steer clear of pastels because they are, generally speaking, capricious, irresolute, and frequently coy. Blue is a good color for a small room, especially if it is of a shade called Tidal Pool, Tropical Sea, Azure, Atoll, or Night Swim.

  I once painted a room a shade of blue called Rainy Day. I find a rainy day to be a fine thing on occasion, particularly after an unmitigated stretch of gratuitous sunshine. In that blue room, I kept a stock of umbrellas ready at hand just in case. This was the first room I had ever painted all by myself. For years I had believed that painting a room was a task I could never master, a task better left to professionals or men. After I finished painting this room, I was as proud of myself as if I had discovered the Northwest Passage.

  This room had many outstanding features including lots of large cupboards and a counter ample enough to perform surgery on if necessary. In the cupboards I kept all kinds of things: dresses that no longer fit or flattered me, a bird’s nest I’d found in the park when I was six, a red and white lace negligee, the program from a musical version of Macbeth, several single socks and earrings, instruction manuals for a radio, a blow-dryer, and a lawn mower that I no longer owned, a package of love letters tied up with a black satin ribbon. No matter how many secrets I stowed in these cupboards, they never filled up.

  Often I found myself wandering into the blue room in the middle of the night. I would stand naked staring into the refrigerator at three in the morning, until the cold air gave me goose bumps and my nipples got hard. It was a very old refrigerator which sometimes chirped like a distant melancholy cricket. I was searching not for food so much as for memories, motives, an alibi: how it looked, how it happened, when.

  I would reach into the refrigerator and pull out a chunk of ham, a chicken leg, a slice of cheese, or some fruit. Pears were my favorite. Imagine the feel of the sweet gritty flesh on your tongue, the voluptuous juice on your chin. Pears are so delicate. My fingertips made bruises on their thin mottled skin.

  This was nothing like “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? / I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. / I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. Peaches I am not fond of. Their fuzz gives me shivers like fingernails on a chalkboard. The color of their flesh close to the pit is too much like that of meat close to the bone. My consumption of pears had nothing to do with daring or indecision. It was strictly a matter of pure pleasure, which always comes as a great relief. At that point in my life I’d had no dealings with mermaids and did not expect to. I am tone deaf and, much as I admire a good body of water, I have never learned to swim.

  As for the women who come and go, they are not likely to be talking of Michelangelo.

  II. SMALL ROOM WITH SEASHELLS

  Later there was another small blue room, this one painted in a shade called Atlantis because it was situated on the very edge of the ocean. In this room I enjoyed the omnipresent odor of salt water and the ubiquitous sound of the surf. These struck me as two things I would never grow tired of.

  This room was very sturdy, with support beams as substantial and steadfast as tree trunks. The windows were recessed deep into the thick outer walls. These walls were solid straight through, not hollow in the middle like most. They put me in mind of chocolate Easter bunnies, how the best bunnies are the solid ones, how cheated you feel when biting into a hollow one only to discover it is just a thin shell of chocolate around a rabbit-shaped pocket of sweet empty air.

  Here I often wandered out to the beach in the middle of the night. I did not wear white flannel trousers and I never heard the mermaids singing. I had no desire to disturb the universe. I simply stood there with my toes in the ocean and my head in the sky. The hair on my arms stood up in the moonlight. I studied the constellations and thought about words like firmament, nebula, and galactic cannibalism. I had to keep reminding myself that some of the stars I was seeing were already dead. I had trouble at first with the whole notion of light-years, with time as a function of distance, speed, and illumination, rather than as simply the conduit from then to now.

  On cloudy nights, when I could not pursue the perfection of my theory of stars, I turned instead to collecting the miscellaneous offerings which the ocean so munificently deposited at my feet.

  I gathered seashells by the fistful, listened for the ocean in each of them, and it was always there, like the same moon seen from every continent, the same God petitioned in every prayer. From the sand I plucked moon shells, harp shells, angel wings, helmets, goblets, butterflies, cockles, and tusks. Less plentiful and so of course more desirable were the sundial and chambered nautilus shells. I’d read somewhere once how the young cephalopod at first lives in the center of its shell but as it grows larger, it must move forward, sealing off each chamber behind itself. This would be like shutting a door and having it permanently locked behind you.

  The seashells, like the stars, were long dead, the beautiful cast-off husks of the ugly mollusks that had made them. Only these pretty skeletons had survived, just as it was only the light of the stars that could still reach me. I thought long and hard about chambers, skeletons, a series of small rooms, the missing bodies of seashells and stars.

  There were other things too offered up by the sea: tangled balls of fishing line, plastic bags, a bracelet, a knife. A pair of panty hose, a set of keys, a bathing suit, and several used condoms. Pieces of driftwood like bones, coils of seaweed like entrails. One night I found a water-bloated copy of a murder mystery called Dead Dead Double Dead. The last five pages were missing. This, I could not help but think, was hitting a little too close to home.

  Apparently the ocean, in addition to being a weighty and ambivalent symbol of dynamic forces, transitional states, the collective unconscious, chaos, creation, and universal womanhood in all its benevolent and heinous incarnations, was also the repository of all lost things. I had long wondered what happened to those socks that went into the washing machine and never came out.

  At this time I still believed that I could summon up my former self whenever I was ready, that I could gather up my innocence and step back into it like an old pair of shoes. Now I began to see this was no longer true. Eventually I realized that in this small room I was forever in danger of drowning or being swallowed by a sea monster. This epiphany marked the end of my blue period.

  III. SMALL ROOM WITH CATS

  Various shades of brown are good for small rooms too. Brown imparts a sense of serenity, solidity, and security. Imagine lying down on a bed of warm soil. Imagine being buried alive and liking it. I am partial to any color of brown that looks like coffee with milk in it or any shade that is named after food: Honey Nut, Bran Muffin, Caramel Chip, or Indian Corn. In a small room painted a color called Pumpkin Loaf, I always felt full. Sometimes in the morning I thought I could smell the sweet bread baking.

  In this room there were tables but no chairs. Clearly the importance of chairs has been overestimated. I quickly got over my atavistic longings for them. Soon enough I could hardly imagine what I’d ever deemed to be indispensable about chairs. Like so many other things I once thought I could never live without, chairs, once I got used to their absence, proved to be just another habit, a knee-jerk reflex like flinching, apologizing, or falling in love. The only time I seriously missed them was when I wanted to sit down and tie my shoes. This was like wishing for a man when you want t
o clean out the eavestrough or open a new jar of pickles.

  There were also many shelves in this brown room, tidy well-spaced shelves like boxes built right into the wall. Some of them still bore items left behind by some former fugitive tenant. There was a pink lampshade which, in a happier time, I might have put on my head. There were some pale yellow bed sheets, soft from many washings, stained with the bodily fluids of long-gone strangers. No matter where you go, you are always leaving incriminating tidbits of evidence behind you.

  There was a stack of old National Geographic magazines. Everyone has a pile of these stashed away somewhere. There were also several empty picture frames propped up on the shelves and hammered to the walls. I carefully cut photographs from the magazines and stuck them in these frames. I selected several panoramic views of jungles, mountains, fields of wheat. I chose skies without clouds, seas without boats, landscapes without figures. I changed these pictures often so as not to feel that I was just treading water or running in place.

  Here I kept cats for company. I like the look of a small room with two cats in it. I tried to emulate the way they can settle themselves anywhere like boneless shape-shifting pillows and how, when falling from a great height, they will almost always land on their feet. I was impressed too by their apparently infinite ability to adapt, the way they can live well anywhere: in an alley, a barn, a palace, or a small brown room with tables and shelves, no chairs.

  I told my cats stories of other cats, famous cats, tenacious cats, heroic cats, miraculous cats who found their way home again after traveling through endless miles of wilderness, fording rivers, scaling canyons, leaping tall buildings with a single bound. My cats curled around me and purred. It is not true that cats only purr when they’re happy. They also do it when they’re worried or in pain.

  In my time I have been accused of many things: jealousy, arrogance, selfishness, viciousness, laziness, bitterness, and lust. Also infidelity, inclemency, insanity, immorality, and pride. I have been called reckless, heartless, shameless, malicious, sarcastic, demanding, domineering, cold-blooded, and cruel. The cats, of course, knew none of this and did not care to ask. They were well aware of the perils of curiosity, the trials and tribulations of being misunderstood. There is always someone who will be offended by a cat’s enthusiasm for killing. Think of the way they play with their prey and then, once it is sufficiently dead, how they always eat the head first, often swallowing it whole. Think of the way they leave the hearts behind, those slimy little lumps drawing flies in the driveway. Myself, I do not find this distasteful. There is always someone who will tell you that your instincts are wrong. Outside, the sweet yellow fog pressed against the windowpanes.

  IV. SMALL ROOM WITH MOTH

  Most kinds of green paint, as you would expect, are named after pastoral scenes and growing things: Meadow, Pasture, Orchard, Leaf, Broccoli, Asparagus, Spinach, and Dill. In a small room painted a shade called Forest Lane, the air was always moist, emitting an intimate odor of new growth and decay. The light was leafy and diffuse, like a green glaze on my skin. The ceiling was done in Maiden of the Mist, a humid color much like that of the sky on a hazy August afternoon. If I stared at this ceiling for too long, I found I could not catch my breath.

  Where the walls met the ceiling there were curves instead of straight lines and angles. The tops of the windows and doorway were vaulted too. I enjoyed these arches the way you enjoy a symphony, your whole body thrilling at the crescendo’s inevitable approach. I like a good old-fashioned symphony, the way it stirs the blood. At this point in my life I knew I was ripe for a transformation.

  In this room there were many solid wooden benches, the purpose of which was never clear. Perhaps the room had once been the meeting place of a secret cult whose members would sit on these benches in rows of black cloaks and hoods, worshiping their various devils and gods, planning their next move. Arranged upon these mysterious benches was an impressive assortment of cookware, metal pots and bowls of many sizes, some battered, some smooth. Perhaps these had been used to boil the sacrificial virgins or lambs. My desires both to cook and to eat having been dislodged by the heat and my overactive imagination, I filled these vessels with flowers instead of stew, sacrificial or otherwise. In this green room I ate only raw green things: lettuce, celery, sweet peppers, and limes.

  Here I did not wander at night. I still went to bed not knowing what I had been accused of but this uncertainty no longer tormented me. I had only two bad dreams during my sojourn in this green room. The first was of having my head shriveled to the size of a small sweet pepper, then sliced in half and served upon a big green platter. The second was of having my body covered with a fine white powder and then pinned still wriggling to the wall. It was not a green wall. It was a red wall. I slept flat on my back with the windows open and a candle burning on the floor beside me.

  Moths flew in through the open windows, misguided emissaries from the unbridled night. The patterns on their wings were written in a language I did not yet understand. They came from miles around, unable to resist the sweet deadly pull of the flame any more than I could ever resist a ripe pear, a good murder mystery, or a man who said he could save me. Moths, like humans, engage in complicated courtship rituals which involve elaborate dances and sudden dazzling flights. It was hard to determine whether they were courting each other or the promise of a hot dramatic death. I could have reached up from my bed and touched them. But as a child I was told you must never touch a moth because if that fine powder is rubbed off its wings, it will die. Outside, I thought I heard voices but I was mistaken.

  I did not touch the moths. They died anyway. In the morning I would find their corpses littering the floor around my guttered candle. Their beautiful wings were scorched, their feathery antennae fried, that magic powder turned to ash. There was a lesson to be learned here, something about fortitude and the purification of the soul by fire. Either that or the moths were simply too stupid to survive. Some people believe that white moths are actually the souls of the dead and that if a black moth flies into a house, it means that someone who lives there will die within the year.

  Looking back on my own life, it is hard to determine which was the moth and which was the flame. In these matters, there is no such thing as black and white.

  V. SMALL ROOM WITH CLOCKS

  I have learned to be wary of the purples which have names like Dazzle, Delusion, Charade, Mirage, and Masquerade. When I first painted this small room a shade of purple called New Year’s Eve, it was easy to fool myself into believing that here I could make time stand still. I imagined myself poised in the middle of the countdown to midnight. All around me expectant voices chanted: Ten nine eight seven six five. Then they stopped. Thousands of upturned faces gaped incredulously as the silver ball hung there and dropped no farther. Like the boy with his finger in the dike, I believed I could hold back time by the sheer forces of will, desire, and good intentions. I was encouraged by the knowledge that ancient sailors without clocks had navigated solely by instinct and fortuity.

  This room, like the others, has large windows divided into many rectangular panes, thick walls solid straight through, built-in shelves filled with an efficient array of cookware, several sturdy tables, and no chairs. I see now that I am beginning to repeat myself.

  In an old barrel with wooden slats and rusted iron bands I found two large clocks, identical in every way. Under normal circumstances, I appreciate an accurate clock but here I tried not to dwell on the fact that these two clocks kept impeccable time.

  It was winter. Christmas was coming. I hung clusters of purple glass baubles from the ceiling on strands of invisible thread. This was meant to be festive. Outside, it should have been snowing. But in this part of the world at this time of the year it rains instead.

  Each night as dusk fell, I liked to sit on the edge of the table closest to the windows. I would roll up my shirt sleeves, eat my toast, and sip my sweet milky tea. Sometimes it was raining, cold drops on black asphalt. On Ch
ristmas Eve, children sang carols in the street, their faces and their voices cherubic under red and green umbrellas in the rain. I was smug, thinking myself exempt from the passage of time, the wretched welter of loneliness, the annoying need to question, insist, or explain. Despite all the evidence against me, I was not afraid. It was easy enough to be brave with these purple walls wrapped like the robes of royalty around me.

  On New Year’s morning I awoke to the sound of a million calendars turning their pages in the wind. I was forced to acknowledge the unbearable sweetness of being. You can run but you can’t hide.

  Now I find myself watching the clocks instead of the rain-sprinkled street. Their faces are impassive but their hands are always in motion. All mechanical clocks depend on the slow controlled release of power. Like the ticking of the clocks, there is a refrain in my head all day long now: Be careful. Be careful. Be careful. Sometimes it is only background noise and I am not actually hearing it. But then, if I pay attention to it even for an instant, it drives everything else right out of my head. This is like the way mothers are always warning their rambunctious children: Be careful, don’t fall. Be careful, don’t bump your head. Be careful, it’s hot. Be careful, it’s sharp. Be careful, it’s dark.

  When I need to hear a human voice instead of this carnivorous ticking of my brain and the clocks, I talk to the walls. Talking to the walls is not necessarily a bad thing, not if they are good strong walls, perfectly perpendicular, freshly painted, cool and smooth when you press your fevered lips against them. Purple walls in particular can convince you that everything you are telling them is brilliant, witty, and profound.