The Old Man

Everyone knew the old man. Some feared him. Most knew him only vaguely. He seemed never to have been young. He stayed there in his old house, rarely venturing out except for necessities. Never speaking to anyone. If he had a relative, no one knew it. If he had a pet, no one saw it. And yet they knew him--or felt they did--as he went about his business. He was cordial, oh yes, cordial to everyone. But rarely warm. Did women interest the old man? Did men? Did children? Did anything interest him except his own closed existence, as he pattered around? "Thank you, Mr. Garrett," he said, paying the grocer. "Thank you, I'm fine. I don't need help." And off he went. My mother said he was old to her--that she couldn't remember him ever being any younger. If he had a youth, she said, it must have been somewhere else. Unimaginable.

Yet he was part of the fabric of the town. No one minded him. No one thought much of his grizzled appearance.Does he bathe? said Emily Thompson, I don't think he bathes. Does he pray? asked Philip Leroy. I've never seen him at church. What does he eat? asked Sally Miller. Oh, some biscuits, vegetables, occasionally meat; told me once he liked to cook, said Mr. Garrett. Maybe he's a faggot, said Mr. Brownstone. Faggots cook. So do ordinary men, said Mr. Garrett, I like to cook myself. Are you a faggot? asked Mr. Brownstone. No, said Mr. Garrett.

This old man knew a woman who hated cats. She was fearful that one might move close to her, pretending love, and suddenly strike at her. If she saw a cat on the sidewalk she would immediately cross the street. The woman was not old but middle aged. She had never married. She had a secretarial job in the near-by city and returned each day by train. She rarely saw the old man but she would occasionally phone him. Their conversations were brief and superficial. The old man talked about his aches and pains, considerable at this time of life. The woman spoke of her day at the office and of the ways in which her co-workers, who were for the most part decent enough people, thought her strange. To tell the truth, she thought herself strange. Her emotional life was a complete mystery. She didn't know why or how her emotions arose. Yet she felt them deeply. She liked the old man because he was as clueless about his emotions as she was about hers. When they spoke on the phone they could pretend to an intimacy which each realized they did not share.

One day the middle aged woman killed the old man. It was not a premeditated murder. She decided to go to his house and pay him a call. She didn't phone first; the old man was always home. He didn't receive her with pleasure, but, remembering their phone calls, put up as good a front as he could, offering her tea and a biscuit. The woman suddenly felt a strange revulsion. The old man looked at her with his ancient, red-tinged eyes. He began to whine about his life, as he did on the phone. The woman realized at that moment what their bond was: it was hatred, hatred of themselves, hatred of others. The old man moved slowly, like a cat, and she hated cats. She picked up a heavy skillet while his back was turned and smashed it as hard as she could on the old man's head. He went down with a grunt. The movement was so sudden and unexpected and the pain so intense that he didn't feel surprise. He just died, blood spurting out of his skull.

The woman had hoped that she would feel pleasure from her act, or at least release, but she did not. She felt horror and then an unexpected tenderness towards the old man. She reached out her hand to his dead form and began to caress his shoulder. The old man, who was dead, felt nothing. His soul soared upward but no further than the ceiling. From its perch on the ceiling, the old man's soul looked down at the woman's tenderness. It felt a sudden flush of pity for her. His soul was naked and needed a body in which it could lodge. It swooped down into the woman. She felt its presence with great joy. She suddenly understood why certain tribes devour their enemies or why certain people eat red meat. Suddenly she was the old man. His soul inhabited her. Yet she did not cease to be herself.

The woman rose from her handiwork and thought whether anyone had seen her come to the old man's house. She felt certain that no one had. She would make certain that no one saw her leave. The woman now had two souls and two intellects inhabiting her. She was stronger than she had ever been. And she was androgynous. She reached down into the old man's pants and found his penis. With a large kitchen knife she tenderly removed it. She washed it lovingly in the old man's sink and dried it with a paper towel. She put it in a plastic bag and stuffed it into her purse. It was hers now. She gave a prayer of thanks to the old man for the offering he had inadvertently made to her. Upon the reception of the penis, the old man's soul gave a cry of happiness which the woman felt throughout her body. There was a shudder, and she realized she was having an orgasm.

The woman returned to her home, safe in the knowledge of her act. When the police came to question her, she said she occasionally telephoned the old man but rarely saw him--and that she had not seen him at all recently. She could not imagine why someone would want to kill him. The police thanked her and went away. Then the old man's soul began to whisper things to her. At first they were simple compliments: You're looking very beautiful today. I like your hair that way. Then they became suggestions. Why don't you wear a rose with that outfit. You know, if you wore that green blouse with that blue skirt, I would love you even more. The woman was flattered by these compliments and wished to please the old man. And your underwear, said the old man's soul, I wish you would get some nicer underwear. Something red, for example. The woman began to ask the old man's soul what she should wear during the day: Blue panties today, the ones with the flowers on them. Black today. Oh, you need a new bra. Let me touch your breasts. And the woman shuddered under his touch. People noticed the change in the middle aged woman, but they could not account for it. It must be the menopause, they thought. Blue today, black tomorrow.

The middle aged woman began to believe that she had not murdered the old man; she had simply transformed him. His history had become her history, his thoughts her thoughts. His penis, which she froze, remained in the refrigerator amid the ice cream and the frozen dinners. She was in ecstasy for much of the day but kept that fact from her co-workers. Though she had many orgasms, she grew wonderful at dissimulation and indirection. How are you? Just fine, fine. (I am a bride of darkness. I am a nun in love with God. At the end of the world, my husband, who has never left me, will come for me with a great sword. He will cut me in half. This pain will also be a joy. And then he will weld us together so that we cannot be separated. My life will be perfect then, though it is also perfect now. My love, at long last, will have been consummated; I will be alive.)

At 65, the woman retired and grew old, living apart from people as the old man had. Her secret was never discovered. When she died at the age of eighty-eight, she left no will, no indication of the change that had occurred in her consciousness. People noticed her death only as they might have noticed the casual separation of a leaf from a tree or a page from a notebook.

These are the facts: a middle aged woman murders an old man by banging his head with a skillet; the murder, which was almost comical, was never solved by the police, who in any case investigated it only in the most lackadaisical way. No one cared very much about the old man. When the woman's soul died, the man's soul died with her. Both vanished into a nothingness which I must believe had been prepared for them at the beginning of the world. But perhaps this statement is untrue. Perhaps both souls exist in a state so different from the human that we could see it directly in front of us and still not recognize it. Perhaps their love remains in that state. But here, their story vanishes, just as everything vanishes. First the old man. Then the woman and the murder. Then the love. Then I.

Ekleksographia:
Wave Two

November, 2009

Fiction

Jack Foley

Jack Foley is an innovative, widely-published poet and critic who, with his wife, Adelle, performs his work frequently in the San Francisco Bay Area. His poetry books include Letters/Lights—Words for Adelle, Gershwin, Exiles, and Adrift (nominated for a Northern California Book Reviewers Award). Foley's Greatest Hits 1974-2003 (2004) appeared from Pudding House Press, a by-invitation-only series. His books of criticism include O Powerful Western Star (winner of the Artists Embassy Literary/Cultural Award 1998-2000), Foley's Books: California Rebels, Beats, and Radicals, and The Dancer and the Dance: A Book of Distinctions, with introduction by Al Young. A book Foley edited, ALL: A James Broughton Reader, was designated number one gay book of the year by AfterElton.com. Foley's radio show, Cover to Cover, is heard every Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. West Coast Time on Berkeley station KPFA and is available at the KPFA web site; his column, "Foley's Books," appeared for many years in the online magazine, The Alsop Review. Foley is currently at work on a fifteen-hundred-page timeline history of California poetry from 1940 to 2005 to be published in 2010. Dana Gioia describes Foley's poetry as "that rare commodity—genuinely avant-garde poetry...experimental poetry with depth and intelligence as well as intensity." Poet/playwright Michael McClure calls Foley "our firebrand experimentalist": "he holds his torch high so the reader can have more light." The Wikipedia entry, "Jack Foley (poet)," gives a sample of Foley's poetry. Foley's play, The Boy, the Girl, and the Piece of Chocolate was filmed by Alabama filmmaker Wayne Sides.