works by w.pham

works by william pham, 2005-present

The Unlimited Savagery

We were traveling underground. How long had it been, since we started traveling? I'm not really sure, and what does it matter, anyway? Don't ask me these kinds of questions because I'm not prepared to answer them, I'm not in a state of mind to answer them, and what does it matter, anyway?

Well it was very dark, that's easy enough to tell you. It was very dark and there were many of us in the beginning, a great deal of us wanted to strike out on this grand adventure, and then we stared at the mouth of the hole and I think it was then that we realized how it wasn't going to be a grand adventure, we were simply grand idiots. Either it was then or when the bears attacked that we realized this grand realization.

They weren't necessarily "bears," though, not "bears" in the classical sense of moderately peaceful omnivorous creatures with large paws and black noses, but that's the closest analogue, the term we could all agree on after there weren't so many of us, just a few actually, just a few who were left. The "bears," and here I will drop the significant intonations that tell you I am thinking of the word with quotation marks around it, and hereon they will just be bears, they had great big claws, great big vicious claws, and they lumbered very quickly, and their giant bodies were covered with fur. I would tell you the color of the fur but it was dark and also I was very scared for my life, so things like colors, concepts like shades or hues, these things escaped me.

What mattered in the end was the unlimited savagery of the beasts. I closed my eyes and moved, moved very quickly or as quickly as I thought I could, I pushed people aside without thinking, a rapid-fire sequence of crimes that were not premeditated, but in a civilized place, a crowded shopping avenue or amusement park, there would be shouts. "Hey, you!" they would yell. "No manners at all!" the grandmothers would hiss through their wrinkled lips. There was nothing approaching an indignant response in the tunnel when the bears attacked, ripping ripping ripping, tearing and tearing, there were barely screams, there were only screams at first until they were replaced by something much less than screams, screams are the response of a violated consciousness, but nothing was conscious there, not at that time.

Can you imagine? No, you can't, and neither could I. This was not something to be imagined, or dreamt of, this was not a thing to be conceived of, to conceive is to give birth to a thought, but there weren't any thoughts, I think I already told you that. But neither is this a thing to be remembered, so why should you trust me in the first place? You can't, really. You can't trust these words, because they will betray you, they will escape at first chance, like an alleycat, taken in and nursed to perfect health, leaping off of the fire escape railing, to freedom, to brutal freedom, back to the darkness that bruised it, scabbed its skin, pulled away at its fur, leaving behind only reminders of pain and nothing good. Nothing good can come of words because when there is only darkness and un-screams, non-screams, sounds of such suffering as I could never have predicted, the words are the first thing to go. Before I closed my eyes, and shut my ears to the sounds, and before my lungs seemed to explode with every wracking breath, before all that, I had no words. Words were the first thing to fail me, before I eventually collapsed to the ground, exhausted, so completely exhausted that I fell asleep even though my feeble mind seemed to be shouting at me, "Hey, you! No manners at all, collapsing here, where there is still very obviously a great deal of danger!"

And when I woke up I remembered nothing, nothing at all. I picked myself up off of the ground, and waited until my eyes readjusted to the absence of light, ignoring the blood on my clothes, there was so much blood, how could I have ignored it? But I did, irregardless, and stepped over the dead, people whose funerals I would later attend and still, still, even then, at such ceremonies where words are so incredibly needed by the mourning families, the wives, the husbands, the children, it's not the quantity of the words that matters, but rather the significance, the meaning, the quality, and so at a funeral one could simply say, "I'm sorry," and why is this person apologizing? This hypothetical person did not kill anyone, what are they sorry for? But to know that someone sympathizes, this person may not understand, who can understand, really, but that this someone attempts, attempts at comfort, at solace, that is usually enough.

At one of these funerals for one of these dead, this dead person happened to be very wealthy, and left behind a lot of that wealth, unspent, at his funeral reception I had a very strange encounter. This dead person had no family, none that I knew of, only a girlfriend, and this girlfriend was in attendance, and many of his friends. He was young, not so very young, but young enough to be popular in a number of crowds in the city, he could not walk across a shopping avenue or through an amusement park without someone recognizing him and the inevitable two and a half minutes of meandering conversation that would follow before goodbyes and promises to meet again at some undisclosed and undetermined, indeterminable location and time. There were lots of these kinds of people at this funeral, all offering condolences, a multitude of words, and here, again, as always, as has always happened, words failed.

The girlfriend cried until her body could not biologically create any more tears, and her skin seemed very much like transparent vellum. Nothing made any sense to her, neither the death of her boyfriend nor this funeral nor anything else, really. Once the lens is shattered it cannot be replaced, no matter how well-constructed the camera may be, it cannot be replaced as it was, only a facsimile can take its place. And if someone should suffer very, very much, then they will have facsimiles of facsimiles, ersatz perspective filtered through ersatz eyes, again and again until everything is so unlike any conception of reality that it is assumed everything is very real. It is a circle, a very terrible circle. The girlfriend was about to embark on such a terrible circle.

I was so frustrated with the other guests that I stepped into a bathroom to escape, one of many in the dead man's house. There were marble counters and gold-plated fixtures, and the faucet handles themselves may have been real diamond. The towels were very soft, and the mirror was impeccably free of spots or stains, very much unlike what I was used to. I turned off the lights and waited for my eyes to adjust to the absence of light and turned one of the handles which I soon discovered was the handle for cold water. I discovered this when my eyes had finished adjusting and I leaned forward into the darkness and rinsed my face by cupping my hands together to form a sort of bowl, which I filled with cold water, and the coldness was surprising at first but not surprising enough to cause me to break apart my sort of bowl, and I splashed this bowlful of water onto my face. I repeated this six times before there was a knock on the door and a quiet voice asked, "Hello, is someone inside? If so, please excuse me, I'm sorry, I'll wait."

I splashed cold water onto my face again and turned off the faucet and wiped my face dry with one of the very soft towels and turned on the lights and opened the door, and there she was, the girlfriend of the dead man, she appeared very beautiful and very sad, as is appropriate of a girlfriend of a dead man at his funeral reception. She wore a men's blazer, and dress shirt, and skirt, and tights, and high-heel shoes, all in black, as was her hair, and if she had not looked away at that moment I would have predicted, incorrectly, that her eyes were black as well.

"Hello," I said.

She did not respond for a very long time and I could not begin to imagine what was occurring inside her heart at that moment. I have never loved the dead, and I would say that if I loved a woman and she died I would not stop loving her, at least not for a very long time, at least two years, that is the proper time, and maybe at least forever, maybe that is for the best. When she finally spoke, she spoke in a quiet voice, and she said, "Would you please stay after the other guests have left," and this was not a question, nor was it a demand, it was simply a statement, almost whispered, and considering the context I could not refuse. It was an invitation to speak to the dead. This was something impossible at a funeral reception but perhaps it was possible after the funeral reception in the dead man's house, with the dead man's girlfriend.

Two hours later the last of the guests had left. I walked through hallways which seemed to be pantomimes of each other, very austere pantomimes. I returned to the main parlor, which was now marked by wine glasses of varying emptiness. I sat on a large leather chair and it was very comfortable. I waited.

After some time she appeared out of a hallway, still in black, and smiling slightly. A picture of the dead man and the woman still alive, framed, occupied a level of a wooden bookshelf, painted gray. There was a coffee table of a subtle color. She sat on top of it, tucked her skirt underneath her legs, uncrossed, and looked at me, still smiling, still in black, I looked at her and had nothing to say, words failed once again, as always, as they ever had and ever would. But she spoke, she spoke quietly.

"When did you meet him?" she asked and it was very clear who this "him" was, her tone was hushed, appropriately reverent, reverence for the deceased who had done such great things while alive but now was dead. But I could not summon reverence, I had not loved him though he had been my friend, though I had been with him when he died, for some reason my tone was flat, I wanted sympathy, to empathize, but the sounds were not there, the pitches and tones of sympathy were absent.

"We met at our university. At first, from a distance, he didn't seem the type I'd be friends with. I was comfortable with my little group, we amused ourselves in our small ways, and he was a personality, a name, a vastness that I never thought I would approach in any sense of amiability or camaraderie. I mean, you yourself saw the sorts of people here today, it was the same back then, a name surrounded by other names, never people, they never seemed like people to me. It was judgmental of me but it was the way I perceived things, and yes, so often reality betrays perceptions, and that was how it was with him."

We were in her bedroom, now, their bedroom, and I looked at a painting hanging on the wall, a Magritte reproduction, a pipe that is not a pipe. She did not say anything so I continued.

"We met in a literature class. We were studying testimonial fiction, fiction that testifies, that bears witness," and here I laughed a short, dry, laugh, the only laughing I did that entire year, "and so how funny it is that now I am testifying about him, I am bearing witness to his life because he is dead. I'm sorry, I don't know why I laughed, but it is ironic, isn't it? A kind of irony, I think. He certainly would have thought so, I imagine, because he was the one with the sense of humor in this class, always the cutting remark, not in an insulting way, because that wasn't his personality, but cutting to a kind of humorous truth, a sense that there was humor in everything, even in fiction that attempts to evoke the Holocaust, there's humor there and he found it. He always found the absurdity in it, the core, the 'essence' was how our professor spoke of it, the carefully placed word that unraveled the whole thing, and that is itself absurd, that a single word should pull at the seams of an entire work, but it happened, he did it, whether the author wanted it to happen or not, that was how he was, and that was how he distinguished himself from a name, from an archetype, to become a person to me, my antisocial judgmental self, my wry expressions whenever someone misspoke. I was not an ideal classmate, and yet he sought me out."

I turned my head away from the painting and she was standing there, right there, behind my right shoulder, and I turned away quickly, back to the painting, trying to escape that expression, that quiet smile, it sent a shock through me, unexpected but not unwelcome, and I attempted my very best to suppress it. But I had imagined the expression earlier that evening, when she said to stay, I had wanted the expression, not only to see it but to experience it, at this proximity, I had imagined it exactly as it had happened, with her behind my right shoulder, and that quiet smile. She said nothing and I looked down, at the hardwood floor of this bedroom, of their bedroom, and continued.

"Mostly all we did was drink coffee. Good coffee, bad coffee, whether it was in a coffee shop, or a restaurant, or a diner, with many friends or a few, in his apartment, or in mine, there was always coffee, and conversations. We discussed literature, we discussed language, words, we discussed knowledge, we bantered, we dueled, we conversed, we laughed, there was always lots of laughter, you know this of him, his ability to inspire laughter, to inspire the sound that is a result of some kind of electrical signal traveling through the brain, and every single person's laugh is different, it is a better identifier than a fingerprint because a fingerprint speaks only of identity and nothing of the mind, and a laugh, that says everything, and to be able to cause someone to say everything, it was his gift, a rare gift."

She touched my left hand with her right hand. No, she didn't touch my left hand with her right hand, a touch speaks of limits, of a single moment of contact, but she didn't exactly hold my hand, either. Here, you see? Words themselves speak so much of limits, I cannot describe how exactly her left hand met my right hand, but it was more than a touch, it lingered, and when her left hand lingered I had choices, several choices, and of course what could I do but choose what was best for me? Without turning around I held her hand in mine.

"We never lost contact after our time together at the university. Always whenever we were in the same city we met for coffee, no matter the location, as long as there was coffee we had conversation. He was the sort of friend for whom you created time, for whom you shuffled appointments around, canceling luncheons and delaying meetings. We drank coffee in Boston, in New York, in San Francisco, in Seattle, in Los Angeles, in Paris, in Tokyo, in Sydney, the list goes on for long enough to lose any sense of meaning, but suffice to say that we drank coffee in a great number of cities, and therefore conversed in a great number of cities. Until this city, and you, there were no cities after that."

She pulled, without saying anything, only the pull, the tugging at my hand, at my grasp, until I had to turn around, there was no other choice, and in turning around I relinquished any sense of control over the situation. Of course I could have let go, of course I could have walked away, of course I could have gotten into my car and driven away, but equally as a matter of course I could not have done any of these things. It was not the expression on her face, nor the feel of her hand, nor the near-blackness of her eyes. You see everything now but I could see nothing then, nothing except for the moment in which I chose to let go, a specific point in time surrounded by an uncountable number of points in time, but this one in particular I could not sidestep, I could not avoid the choice and so here, too, I could not avoid the choice, it was determined long before I was standing there that I must at that moment turn around and smile at her. I was speaking to the dead when I opened my mouth.

"There were no cities after that. Coffee, still. Coffee, and conversation, until the end. It was a very ideal existence. We had outgrown the constant travel. We had outgrown the process, the changing of cities as easily as we changed cuff-links. Staying in one place was the new adventure. It was a very grand adventure, and it was very fresh and new to us, and so we ran headlong into it. And it worked out, in a way, because it brought him to you, this city, this adventure. And in a way it didn't because now, now he is, I'm sorry, now he is dead, and it is because of me that he is dead, not because of this city, not because of you, not because of anyone except for him and me, because I won't accept sole responsibility, but I'll take my share, I killed him, didn't I? That wasn't a real question. I killed him. I killed him, I killed him, I killed the man who lived in this room, in this place, with you, I killed the man who owned these things, there are pictures of him everywhere and he is dead and he is dead because of me. I do not want forgiveness, there is no forgiving it, there is nothing, I'm sorry," and here I broke into tears, I pulled my hand away, I turned around to the pipe that was not a pipe and I leaned my hands against the wall and I wept for only the second time in my life, I can say I have shed tears on several occasions but this was only the second time in my life that I have wept.

It was a mess, I had made a mess of things, and what else is there to do then but make everything worse? It was impossible to do otherwise, it was impossible to improve. She wrapped her arms around my waist and pressed her right cheek into my back, between the scapulae, against the fabric of my jacket.

Some time passed and then we fucked. We did not undress, only pulled at each other's clothing, unbuckling, unbuttoning, but not undressing. We did not kiss, not in the normal sense of the word, we pressed our lips against body surfaces but never against the other's lips, we did not speak, we barely inhaled and exhaled, we only breathed as necessary, and so it would have been a very cold experience if not for the passion of the act itself, irregardless of the acts surrounding the act, we fucked, that is the only way to say it, we did not make love, we did not sleep together, there was no sleeping, I left after we finished. We did not lie together for a time, we did not caress each other afterward, we said nothing, and barely looked at each other. She pulled up her tights and straightened her skirt, buttoned her shirt, and I buttoned my pants and shirt, and put my belt on. After that night, we never saw each other ever again, she did not contact me nor did I contact her, though I wanted to.

Why, then? Why did it ever happen at all? The causal relationships are completely invisible to me. I cannot begin to guess her reasons, nor can I really understand mine, why I embarked on the second betrayal of the dead man. I wanted her, I wanted to possess her in some way, I wanted to hold her, to fuck her, that much is clear to me. Otherwise I would not have stayed. Am I so simple a man as that? Perhaps, yes, I can apply Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is the most true. I wanted her so I let go of him, first to let him die and then to let him disappear. Perhaps that is true, but also it is very likely that here there is another case of the inexorable failure of words to speak of anything at all. I have struggled so very hard but there is no forgiving it, I'm sorry. I can only see the unlimited savagery of the beasts.