All About Me

By Elsa Martinez Coscolluela

This coffee shop called the Purple Nook is not really purple and is more beat than square, standing inconspicuously somewhere along the Cambridge side of the Charles, right in the heart of Harvard Square. Everyday after five, a group of young people make their way to the Nook like pilgrims drawn to Mecca and engage in endless discussions, formulating some political dogmas or building dreams for a moon-set utopia or simply concentrating on some monumental task like dunking doughnuts into cups of coffee. I love this place for here I take my dark glasses off and linger for hours over coffee and a good book or a sketch pad, alone and not alone, for always there is Paul and the group and all these tall Harvard men who smoke like chimneys and their Radcliff girls who sit around and swap some tired and tasteless jokes and scald their throats raw with espresso: very black and sugarless. Sometimes around six a poet would drift in from the smoky dimness and sit on the high stool at a corner platform and like some high priest with lighted candle and sacred book he would start reading a string of poems in a voice gripped with some personal anguish and despair. All the while cool Joan would moan softly about all her trials, Lord, soon be over. Sometimes there would be no poetry for a while but Joan would always be there, and after some time there would be a new voice and the old lament.

It is drizzling quite a bit outside but I don’t mind as I no longer mind many things. While shaking off the raindrops which persist in clinging to my trench coat I scan around for a familiar face.

Someone taps my shoulder, and without turning back, I know it is Paul.

In a moment he is beside me, tall and dark, with an air of sophisticated indifference I had earlier found appealing.

You are late, he tells me and leads me to a corner table where a blue bulb dangles from the low ceiling.

I know. Have you been here long? I ask.

A while. Where’ve you been all afternoon?

Museum. I have this long paper on cubism and collage.

Still? I thought you started out on that long ago.

And I am still at it, I snap. And in my mind: You do not know. You do not know how it is to drift from room to room, wall to wall, floor to floor, until your vision blurs and all you could discern are lines and angles and screaming blobs of colors and mass in motion so that the world becomes a long wall of hung paintings come alive in a fog. You do not know how it is to have curious eyes watch and follow you as though you were a piece of bric-a-brac. Aloud, I tell him. The hawks have not descended. Yet.

Paul gives me a blank look. I cannot junk them like a rotten bunch of fish. You know that.

Who is asking?

Look, what’s wrong with you?

What’s wrong with me, I echo. Can’t anything be wrong with you? At all?

Don’t show your claws, kitten. It isn’t becoming.

Forget it, I snap in a small tight voice and drop two cubes of artificially colored sugar into my coffee and drink it in silence. For a moment I feel terribly cold.¯

Just as the growing silence begins to drop a shroud between Paul’s presence and mine a group of young men in beige pants, baggy sweatshirts, and shapeless berets comes in and joins us.

Hi, Giselle, love, Tom Tucker calls, and I smile up at him like a miserable slob.

Coffee and doughnuts, Bruce Preston calls.

Make it a pot! Peter Hellman adds. The waiter, a small man with pasty complexion promptly brings in the order and the table becomes a shrieking clutter of cups and books and berets and ashtrays and dark glasses, too.

Hey, Hugh Skinner booms, we’re playing Yale next week and I tell you, man, we’ll skin ‘em!

Gad, Henry Reine drones, that’s what you said last season, slob.

Well… Hugh vaguely trails off.

The prophet says this Viet deal will blow us down, if nothing else, Mark Dexter announces.

I doubt it, Tom says.

Sure it will, man, Mark insists. A world war within this bloody decade.

World war! Hugh cries. Jesus, why?

Malthus and common sense, my boy, Paul says, speaking for the first time.

On the other hand, Bruce tells Henry, I believe that in time we can have a perfectly workable method, something like the Bokanovsky method, you see…

Are you crazy? Henry cries.

Crazy? Why, we can all be alphas…

And white, Peter adds. That’ll end all sorts of class struggle.

End? Henry wails, Can it end?

Why not? Bruce counters. Since science allows selectivity…

Selectivity! Henry is hysterical. Christ, what for? Are we not all men?

And what is man? Mark pursues.

Man is a forever-child groping in the dark, Paul declares and some voices agree and some disagree and I am lost in the confusion of their voices and faces and sounds. It is a wonderful feeling being lost in their magic for a while but soon it exhausts me: it leaves me struggling for air.

Soon the poet of the night comes out, bearded and indifferent. Perched on the high stool, he briefly waits for the noise to die out a little and in the hushed dimness he begins his reading in a voice veiled with drama. I push my chair back and try very hard to listen to a voice I almost cannot hear and catch snatches of the poet’s cry:

woman with queasy bones

stares out the window

with puffy eyes.

she sits in a state of stone

a dried corpse

with a strand of pearls

strung around her neck

like ornamental remnants

from some dead queen.

Through the smoky dimness I feel the poet’s eyes intent upon my own and I quickly look away. In a moment I feel his presence from behind me and pulling a stool he leans over a little and asks would I join him for a cup of coffee? It is ghastly to fill myself up with nothing but coffee but as I am no longer shocked by ghastly things I decide o have another cup with him, if only to show Paul that I am still alive and badly neglected. Paul seems so distant even when he is only across me so I turn my chair around and come face to face with the poet.

Black? He asks.

Black. Two cubes, please.

Eurasian?

Philippines.

I’m Sverre, he says briefly and looks at me.

Gisella Lopez.

How long have you been here?

Oh, three months. A little less.

You are at Radcliffe?

Yes. And you? What do you do?

I live and write. Live, especially.

Live! I snort. Do we live?

Tell me about yourself, he says and I close my eyes and try to lift the cobwebs from my mind and touch with sadness all beautiful things I once have known and have quickly lost. With a start of disbelief I ask myself how can I tell this stranger who I am when at the back of my mind I ask: Who am I?

Let me tell you about our politics, it is fantastic…

Yourself, the poet repeats and despite an inner panic I smile, pleased at the thought that here is a stranger who wants to know me and the things I value.

What does one says about one’s self? I ask.

You are not easy to understand. The poet looks at me and somehow I feel a wave of understanding pass between us and we are no longer mere strangers but strangers who know each other. He looks at me and all at once I am like glass.

Your face, he asks, is it a mask?

Doesn’t all the world wear a mask? If we are to believe in Prufrock.

Only when it is necessary.

One has to, I think. Especially when the truth seems so depressing.

And venture into unreality?

If it is kinder.

That is not too wise. Anyhow, one always takes himself along. Tell me, what are you running away from?

A fatal disease, I laugh.

What are you afraid of?

Everything, I reply seriously. Tell me,, how do you like the world we are in?

I wish for no other world than this, he replies, and refills our cups.

But it is too vast, I complain, reaching into the sloppy inside of my bag for a Marlboro. Give me a light, will you please?

By all means. You inhale deeply.

Yes. Yes, I do. I sometimes panic at the thought that all the world’s a cigarette and it is quickly burning out. Funny, isn’t it?

Not at all.

Tell me, do you know how a bird feels when it is being caged?

No, he laughs, I imagine it must be sad, if one does not get used to it.

Yes, it is sad.

You are not a bird, he teases.

But the world’s a cage. I sometimes feel like flying out, only I haven’t got wings. It is tragic, don’t you think? Not having wings, I mean.

Some tragedies touch us all. In a few years you will know better.

Better? Or just differently?

Either way. All the same, one must have courage to stay alive.

And if you don’t?

Then you die, he squashes his cigarette and lights another. How old are you?

Nineteen.

You are too intense for one so young.

I sometimes think that, too. I murmur, suddenly feeling tired, as though I had just emerged from some dark forest with my soul drained from my body. As though the soul were gas, or liquid. In a moment I feel Paul’s hand upon my shoulder and I seem to stiffen at his touch. I leave the poet to his coffee and cigarettes without saying goodbye.

It is now pouring like mad and the Charles has risen and the boats sway with wind and waves like ghostly shadows in the night. Rain, like thin glass fingers, falls and falls. The deserted street glows faintly as mist catches shafts of light from passing cars. Even with Paul’s heavy sweatshirt over my flat hairdo I begin to sneeze as we wait for a cab. Paul has not said anything at all and I wonder if it is because he is so very mad or that he simply does not wish to argue, for once.

Finally, he tells me, it was improper for you to leave us without a word.

Don’t we sometimes just leave each other like that? I ask, telling myself that absence is not only a physical leavetaking but a manner of forgetting a presence as well.

It was a great discussion, but of course you didn’t notice.

How could I? There was this fly swimming in my coffee…

Stop it, Giselle, Paul snaps and I stop, knowing it is almost impossible for opposite minds to meet quietly.

After a while, Paul asks, what’s wrong with us?

Everything, it seems, I reply quietly, without scorn, without bitterness, without sadness. Then I tell him, I have always thought we could find each other to know and love.

Haven’t we?

Only our superficialities. Not even things and people we could love together.

Perhaps we haven’t tried hard enough.

Perhaps we never wanted to, after all.

What can we do now?

Nothing. Nothing now.

After what seems like an eternity a yellow cab sails into view from where the fog lies dropping, drifting from across the Charles, preparing to settle itself damply in a dark, still hour.

We stop at a red light and through glass and rain I peer at a row of trees with blurry reds and browns. The leaves are afraid of wind and rain and they seem to say: Look at us now for tomorrow we will be gone. How sad it is to think that beauty, like love, is something we must grasp while we yet may for once it dies it is not born again. I feel like throwing myself out into the wind for I am like wind, having and knowing no roots. But unlike the wind I am caged in this madness they call the world and I am lost in the magic of its height and sights and sounds. Life has become one monstrous cobweb where I spin the seeming magic of my days and the darkness of my nights that know no hours. What madness, and yet I cling to it as one would cling to a precious breath because life is not like leaves that everywhere fall and fall and are born again each spring. Many have no spring, never will.

What’s on your mind? Paul’s voice comes from afar.

The leaves.

How’s that again? Paul looks strangely at me.

Nothing, I murmur.

Nothing is the womb of matter, he says to himself.

Lao-tzu, I reply and he looks at me again, wondering how I could possibly know that. How little he knows of me, for all he thinks he knows. A few polite questions and the right answers do not quite bridge the gap that exists between us and there is no reason now to build a bridge just because the gap is frightening.

Lost in a world of thoughts I do not notice Paul speaking to me or the driver with baggy eyes staring at me as though I were some unfortunate freak. I gather my books and over Paul’s ineffectual protests I dash out into the rain. Going up the walk I hear my own footsteps slashing distance on the cobbles and the sound vaguely frightens me.

I tiptoe up to my room and undress in the dark. Curiously I am aware of a pair of alien eyes piercing through the darkness watching me and in a fever of panic I gasp for air and turn on the light. It is nothing after all, and no one but my long golden cat eyeing me silently, propped up on my bed like the prince of scarabland. Batting an eyelash, Cat purrs hello. Don’t bother me now, Cat, I snap at him. He licks his paws and purrs again. Go away, Cat! I yell.

Startled, Cat jumps up and sits huddled over the Agony and the Ecstacy.

I put Joan on the turntable and the room fills up with a soft mournful voice and silver daggers. I stare at Joan’s face on the record jacket, wondering what depths her sorrows descend but the face only stares back at me, unseeing and unrevealing, and her voice rises, moonlike, into my soul. The room grows too stuffy, and I pull up the blinds and fling the window open. The wind’s steel fingers bite into my flesh. The night looms darkly, as it does nightly, like infinity before me. Feeling too cold, I shut the window and close my tired eyes: I find I can no longer tell victor from vanquished. With quick strokes I brush my hair away from my face and hold my hair in place with a wide hairband. With cold cream on my fingertips I massage my face with firm, circling movements. My eyes have dark circles under them and I am alarmed. They shouldn’t be there for I am young and so I ask myself: Is this really me? It is maddening hearing one’s self this question but I do not seem to know these eyes that stare coolly back at me and so I gather Cat in my arms. This cat who has feelings, too, does not wish to come to me. Forgive me, Cat, I have been so mean. I am so mean but I love you, Cat. You make me feel so darn secure. I peer into his green glass eyes and see nothing of myself there. How strange. For a long while I listen to Cat’s timed breathing as he lies plastered on my shoulder and I wonder if it will always be like this. This misery that I feel, from whence does it grow? Where does it begin and where does it end? I would trade places with you anytime, Cat. Yes, I, who deceive myself thinking I know the secrets of life.

Rain has stopped pounding on the pane and once more I am aware of the floating voice, deep and mellow, mournfully crying forth all its trials, bewailing the torments of human misery and despair. I turn the player off and reach for my guitar, fingering its taut wings. The night is quickly growing old and I cannot think of anything brilliant with which to start my paper on cubism and collage. How can I ever tell which is a Braque or a Braque or a Duchamp? Or why? The world is far too distressing it would be wicked to venture into the distortions and disproportions of art so I decide to forget about my paper for a week and Mr. Tabery can tear his thinning hair out and send me to hell and I shall not even care. Now I wonder if hell can reveal the spirit that lives in me? Aside from stained coffee cups and Marlboros and tempera will I still be me? Away from the Nook and the Playhouse and art galleries and tepid classrooms will I still be me? Apart and away from all these I will all the more be lost in a ghostlike woodland where wispy clouds sing muffled chimes and everything is quicksilver to my touch.

For a long while I sit hunched over my guitar, staring at the ash-cool walls and white ceiling and I think I hear this thin glass laughter of cherry trees like children’s voices tinkling over pebbles. I hear this thin glass tinkling over the muffled rain’s song and a cold shiver runs through me, remembering there are no cherry trees outside. Alarmed, I reach for my bag and light myself a Marlboro. I inhale deeply and with smoke clouding in my lungs the room seems to spin as geometric forms fly out from nowhere. I stub my cigarette out and climb into bed, feeling an aching hollow swell in my stomach and some dull pain throb in my head, throbbing like muted drums but frenzied still. With an effort I reach for the bedside lamp and for a fleeting moment the light is red, not yellow, and then it turns purple and glaring green. Colored shadows dance over the lamp like ill-sent witchcraft mocking my eyes. I pull at the cord and the room falls into liquid darkness.

These sounds that I hear like bits of ice tinkling in a wineglass are only night shadows and dark noises and I do not want to listen, Mother Mother Mother…

In the dark I feel a pair of alien eyes piercing into mine, a voice long lost and familiar calling my name and trembling I sit up and gasp: Who is there? Hearing no answer I switch on the lamp and try very hard not to cry for there is no one here but myself and no other sound but my own breathing. Tell me, does the soul have eyes and does it stare? Does it have wings and does it fly? Does it follow and does it question? I fumble for a Marlboro and inhale deeply even when the cigarette is dry and tasteless in my tongue and after smoking it down to its filter I turn off the lamp and sink back in bed, giving in to an easy, sinking sensation I do not want to resist, finding the gradual closing of the shutters of my mind infinitely desirable.

I enter the trolley, half-walking and half-pushed by the crowd around me. I take a window seat and sit numbly for a while, allowing myself to be lulled by the dismal music of iron wheels. In a moment the trolley speeds down the rails like a silver insect. And I am tired. It has been a loud day at the hospital. The kids were simply ghastly this morning, those pallid faces flat on white pillows, those tiny voices and mournful eyes. It is so strange, how hospital smell seems to me a fragrance I cannot get away from. The young boy with thin limbs died this morning. No kin of his was around and I could not let him die like someone who was not loved and so I made my kinship with death and held the young boy’s pain in the palm of my hand. When they took him away and I wondered why I did not die with him. Death is quiet; it is kind. Life is much too demanding and it seems to mock me: Flee if you can! And I cannot flee.

The trolley clatters to an abrupt stop at North Station. The door closes behind me with a heavy metallic bang. I carefully button up my coat and take several deep breaths, still feeling nauseous from the suffocating smell of the trolley. It dreadfully smelled like overaged fish.

Pausing at a corner drugstore, I glance at my reflection on the glass window. Layers of dust and grime almost hide my face and it seems like I am looking down on some murky waters pool dotted with tadpoles.

Hey, man, look at that! Hi, doll! Two crummy-looking characters standing by the fire hydrant eye me maliciously. The taller of the two pokes a finger at the fat character with enormous flat eyes and dilapidated floormop hair. They start to follow me and I panic at the sound of scuffling feet catching up with me. A taxi swings from around a corner and I run to hail it. After fumbling with the door I quickly climb in.

Take me to Durgin-Parke, please, I tell the curious driver and sink breathless in the seat.

At the door I drop a quarter into the cigarette machine and get myself a fresh pack. There are no empty tables left so I decide to sit with a prim little lady in a proper tweed suit. She reads her paper as I eat my lunch. Through my dark glasses I watch her turn to the horoscope page and eagerly read all about the miseries she shall concentrate on for the incoming week.

It is almost two o’clock when I leave Durgin-Parke. A taxi stops in front of me but I dismiss it, thinking so much is lost in a ride. I walk down the deserted street, past a row of restored houses, past small silverware shops, past tall windows and gabled roofs. I walk on to Washington Street, past Massacre Square, past prim apartments. Soon I find myself in a narrow street and can no longer tell where I am and somehow it does not seem to matter. In a while I am inside a quaint burying ground and as I walk past leaf-strewn lanes, past leafless trees, past mounds and tombstones I feel a sense of peace wrap itself around my whole being. A sense of peace in being here. I sit on Paul Revere’s tombstone and poke a stick at the leaves rotting on the damp earth. Whose dead are buried here? I have my dead too.

I buried my dead sometime ago when the boughs were quiet and there was no wind. It was a lovely day for a funeral. The sun had sunk behind the mountain, leaving only a slow-moving splash of earthen colors in the darkening sky. Long after everyone had gone, I was still there, clinging to the moment as one clings to a precious hour. For days I had felt nothing. Then all at once everything came to me: death, grief, hate.

Memories hang like cobwebs in the shutters of the mind. I remember Father coming for me at the convent school.

When I entered the parlor I saw him looking out of the window. At the sound of the closing door, he turned. I seemed to know his face only with the slightest semblance of familiarity and watching him, I knew he was conscious of being appraised.

Finally, he spoke. I’m sorry, he said. I had to come at this late hour.

It does not matter, I answered.

My plane was delayed, he said, switching on a lamp. It gets dark early around here.

It has been raining. For days and days.

I see. After a long pause, How have you been?

People manage. The Sisters are very kind.

He swallowed. There are many things you have to understand.

Yes. A great many things.

You are happy here.

Happy? Is there such a word.

His face darkened. Do you want to come home with me?

Home, I echoed. And in my mind: What is that? A house, a hut, a tent? How can you ask me to live with her? Perhaps she is now your wife?

Let me take you home, he said.

I have been accepted at Radcliffe.

He regarded me closely. Do you wish to go?

I wish to go.

Forgive me, forgive me, he murmured, holding me close to him. I stiffened at his touch.

And so he sends me fat checks each month to pay for his sins, for all that I have lost. I reach into the sloppy inside of my bag and light myself a Marlboro. After smoking down three sticks a man comes up to me and watches me poke a stick at the rotting leaves. He looks at me and I gaze back at him and finally he asks, What are you looking for, young lady?

My childhood, I reply.

The man looks at me as though I had gone mad.

Crossing the street I go inside Park Street Church on Brimstone Corner and sit on the last row of seats. It is so quiet here. Silence is a gift that moves me to prayer. I very much want to pray and I am shocked to find that I can no longer remember the prayers taught to me at convent school and so I make my own prayers and wonder if God hears me. Looking up at the altar I find I am not in the church of my childhood faith but then I decide to stay, asking myself what difference does it make? Does it matter where I pray? Is He not here too?

I do not know how long have I been walking now. I only seem to be drifting, drifting in a timeless hour. At the Commons I drift past a line of elms and birches, past frog ponds, past balloon vendors, past mobile hotdog stands, past people. For a quarter I get myself a ticket for a ride in one of the swan boats. Young people stroll around, laughing, talking, feeding the birds. Graying grandmothers sit on wooden beaches knitting and chatting in birdlike voices, waiting for the children to come up from their ride. Old men smoke their pipes and read the afternoon paper. They all seem to belong to the time, the place, to each other. Soon a swan boat comes up and I take my place among the children squealing in delight, throwing popcorn at the gliding ducks. Once I look down into the cool green water and see nothing of myself there.

The air is heavy with burnt leaves and twilight mist when I retrace my steps past small shops and numbered doors. For a while I stop and stare at a hat display and under the shadow of dusk I listen to the city’s dying heartbeat. Fog, punctual as ever, begins to rise from out of the Charles, and settles gently on every street and corner. I reach the Purple Nook and after hesitating for a moment I walk in and find the group huddled around the corner table where a blue bulb dangles from the slow ceiling.

Hey, over here, Giselle, love, someone calls.

Where’ve you been? Paul asks.

Out for a walk.

Are you coming tonight?

Yes.

I’ll call for you at half past seven.

All right.

I’ll get you a cab. After the play we’ll go to George’s place for a drink.

Paul and I hardly speak to each other during the performance. It seems to me that we have drifted so far away from each other so that it is such an effort to each out anymore. He absently helps me out of the cab and we take the elevator to a penthouse suite which teems with the after-theatre crowd: men in flawless dark suits and women in elegant frocks. The room throbs with life: ringing voices, laughter, soft music floating from nowhere, the tinkle of ice in wineglasses, the sound of champagne bottles popping open.

Where is George? I ask Paul over a martini.

Speaking to Oliver, he replies. Oliver, director of the night’s presentation, is a short, plump man gesturing frantically as he speaks to George, who plays Bill Reynolds in Tea and Sympathy. Oliver looks almost ridiculous, standing beside George. And so queer.

Paul waves at someone from across the room and in a moment a dark, melancholy man appears.

Pierre, I’d like you to meet Gisella Lopez. Giss, this is Pierre Genet, a very good friend.

Charmed, Pierre murmurs as he lifts my hand to his lips. Paul, where did you discover such an exquisite lady?

Where else, Pierre? Paul counters. To remain in your romantic mood, in Elysium.

Pierre smiles. Of course! You must sit for me sometime, Cherie. Soon.

Paul excuses himself and for the rest of the evening I content myself with Pierre’s company. Very soon I find myself listening to Pierre’s pronouncements. He is convinced he is a genius, a sensitive artist who paints and sobs.

I am not, he tells me, ordinarily very sociable. I mostly prefer my own company.

It is sometimes beautiful to be alone.

How true, Cherie. It is unfortunate people do not realize that. Here in America, one cannot be alone, or else they think him strange. One cannot do anything anymore. But in Paris, he raves, in Paris one can be anything, do anything!

Why did you leave Paris? I ask. He is silent for a while. Has Paris exhausted you?

No, no, no, Pierre declares. I have exhausted Paris.

Oh, I murmur, regarding him thoughtfully. Pierre lapses into silence and grows mournful. I sink back into the couch and watch Pierre slowly sip chilled ennui and sulk gloomily beside me, staring dismally at the floor. I leave him there and slowly make my way past men huddled in corners, whispering and laughing at some private jokes. I catch a glimpse of Paul holding hands with George at a dark corner, then they go into a room and the door closes behind them. For a moment I feel numb, unable to move or breathe. What am I doing here? And with such strange people? I take another drink from a glum waiter. The room grows oppressively warm and starts to move in slow, streaking motions. I sink heavily into the nearest chair and close my hot eyes.

Too much to drink? I hear a familiar voice. We met last night, remember?

I smile up at Sverre.

Where’s Pierre? I earlier saw you with him.

I left him sulking in a corner.

How about coffee someplace?

That is just what I need.

Your friend, Sverre says, will he mind?

No, I reply. No, not at all.

It is drizzling slightly. Raindrops tingle my face like clammy kisses.

The Nook? Sverre asks.

No, somewhere else, I tell him. And I wonder why I said that. One cannot, after all, change the pattern of one’s life by insisting on a new coffee shop. And so we have coffee at the Ruby I, an elegant little coffee shop beside the Charles Street Playhouse, where I continue to measure out my life in coffee cups.

Over coffee, Sverre tells me, you are still intense. And lost.

I reach into the sloppy inside of my bags and fumble for a Marlboro.

Give me a light, will you please?