“Sí. She arrives tomorrow night.”
Less tries to assemble the wayward congress of his mind. Marian. The last words she ever said to him were Take care of my Robert. But she had not known then that he would take him from her. Robert kept Less away from the divorce, found the shack on the Vulcan Steps, and he never met her again. Would she be seventy? Finally given a stage to say what she thinks of Arthur Less? “Listen listen listen, you can’t have us together. We haven’t seen each other in almost thirty years.”
“Se?or Banderbander thinks it is a nice surprise for you.”
Less does not remember what he replies. All he knows is that he has been fooled into returning to Mexico, to the scene of the crime, to be impaneled before the world beside the woman he has wronged. Marian Brownburn, with a microphone. Surely this is how gay men are judged in Hell. By the time he returns to the hotel, he is drunk and stinks of smoke and worms.
The next morning Less is awakened at six, as planned, introduced to a cup of coffee, and led into a black van with smoked windows; Arturo is there with two new friends, who seem to speak no English. Less looks for the Head, to forestall disaster, but the Head is nowhere in sight. All of this is in the predawn darkness of Mexico City, with the sound of awakening birds and pushcarts. Arturo has also hired another guide (presumably at the festival’s expense): a short athletic man with gray hair and wire glasses. His name is Fernando, and he turns out to be a history professor at the university. He tries to engage Arthur in a discussion of the highlights of Mexico City and whether Less is interested in seeing them, perhaps after Teotihuacán (which has not yet been described). There are, for example, the twin houses of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, surrounded by a fence of spineless cactus. Arthur Less nods, saying this morning he feels like a spineless cactus. “Sorry?” the guide asks. Yes, Less says, yes, he would like to see that.
“I am afraid it is closed to mount a new exhibit.”
And there is, as well, the house of the architect Luis Barragán, designed for a lifestyle of monkish mystery, where low ceilings lead to vaulted spaces, and Madonnas watch over the guest bed, and his private changing room is overseen by a Christ crucified without a cross. Less says that sounds lonely, but he would like to see that as well.
“Yes, ah, but it too is closed.”
“You are a terrible tease, Fernando,” Less says, but the man does not seem to know what this means and goes on to describe the National Museum of Anthropology, the city’s greatest museum, which can take days or even weeks to see completely but, with his guidance, can be done in a number of hours. By this point, the van has clearly taken them out of Mexico City proper, the parks and mansions replaced by concrete shantytowns, painted all in taffy colors that Less knows belie their misery. A sign points to TEOTIHUACáN Y PIRáMIDES. The museum of anthropology, Fernando insists, is not to be missed.
“But it is closed,” Less offers.
“On Mondays, I am sorry, yes.”
As the van rounds the corner of an agave grove, he is aware of an enormous structure, with the sun pulsing behind it and striping it in shadows of green and indigo: the Temple of the Sun. “It is not the Temple of the Sun,” Fernando informs him. “That is what the Aztecs thought it was. It is most probably the Temple of the Rain. But we know almost nothing about the people who built it. The site was long abandoned by the time the Aztecs came through. We believe they burned their own city to the ground.” A cold blue silhouette of a long-lost civilization. They spend the morning climbing the two massive pyramids, the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon, walking the Avenue of the Dead (“It is not the Avenue of the Dead, really,” Fernando informs him, “and it is not the Temple of the Moon”), imagining all of it covered in painted stucco, miles and miles, every wall and floor and roof in the ancient city that once held hundreds of thousands of people, about whom literally nothing is known. Not even their names. Less imagines a priest covered in peacock feathers walking down the steps as in an MGM musical, or a drag show, arms spread wide, as music plays from conch shells all around and Marian Brownburn, standing at the top, holds the beating heart of Arthur Less. “They chose this spot, we think, because it was far from the volcano that destroyed villages in ancient times. That volcano there,” Fernando said, pointing to a peak barely visible in the morning haze.
“Is it still active, that volcano?”
“No,” Fernando says sadly, shaking his head. “It is closed.”
What was it like to live with genius?
Like living alone.
Like living alone with a tiger.
Everything had to be sacrificed for the work. Plans had to be canceled, meals had to be delayed; liquor had to be bought, as soon as possible, or else all poured into the sink. Money had to be rationed or spent lavishly, changing daily. The sleep schedule was the poet’s to make, and it was as often late nights as it was early mornings. The habit was the demon pet in the house; the habit, the habit, the habit; the morning coffee and books and poetry, the silence until noon. Could he be tempted by a morning stroll? He could, he always could; it was the only addiction where the sufferer longed for anything but the desired; but a morning walk meant work undone, and suffering, suffering, suffering. Keep the habit, help the habit; lay out the coffee and poetry; keep the silence; smile when he walked sulkily out of his office to the bathroom. Taking nothing personally. And did you sometimes leave an art book around with a thought that it would be the key to his mind? And did you sometimes put on music that might unlock the doubt and fear? Did you love it, the rain dance every day? Only when it rained.
Where did the genius come from? Where did it go?
Like allowing another lover into the house to live with you, someone you’d never met but whom you knew he loved more than you.
Poetry every day. A novel every few years. Something happened in that room, despite everything; something beautiful happened. It was the only place in the world where time made things better.
Life with doubt. Doubt in the morning, with the oil beading on a cup of coffee. Doubt in the pee break, not catching his eye. Doubt in the sound of the front door opening and closing—a restless walk, no good-bye—and in the return. Doubt in the slow sound of typewriter keys. Doubt at lunchtime, taken in his room. Doubt vanishing in the afternoon like the fog. Doubt driven away. Doubt forgotten. Four in the morning, feeling him stirring awake, knowing he is staring at the darkness, at Doubt. Life with Doubt: A Memoir.
What made it happen? What made it not happen?
Thinking of a cure, a week away from the city, a dinner party with other geniuses, a new rug, a new shirt, a new way to hold him in bed, and failing and failing and somehow, at random, succeeding.