Visions of Cody Read online

  The altar of St. Joseph at my right a symphony in brown—his brown vestments with the traditional waist cord, the flickering brown candle racks—the brown confessional in back in its swarming nameless church shadows where old men whisper laryngitisly in your ear, with a rich wine, portwine red velvet drape and somewhere a priest is eating grapes—A curious young woman in a muskrat fur coat is hanging around there lighting candles—What’s her truck with St. Joseph?—he who now with demure plaster countenance, holding the insubstantial child with feet and face too small and body too doll like, presses cheek against the painted curls, supports in midair lightly against his brown breast the Son, with unstraining but rather greeting hand, downward looking into candles, agony, the foot of the world, all the angels and calendars and spirey altars behind him, eyes lowered to a mystery he himself wasn’t hipped to yet he’ll go along in the belief that poor St. Joseph was clay to the hand of God (statue), a humble self-admitting truthful Saint—with none of the vain freneticisms of Francis, a Saint without glory, guilt, accomplishment or charm—a self-effacing grave and demure ghost in the Arcades of Christendom—he who knew the desert stars, and spat with the Wise Men in back of the barn—arranger of the manger, old hobo saint of haylofts and camel trails—Old lady in black coat and gray hair (Ma Tante Justine) socks the necessary action, the coin, into the candlelight concession and Joseph acknowledges with that ungraspable imperceptible sigh of statues—

  Now my holy blue window, the one like the window at 94-21 that made me so often think there was a weird blue light in the railyards which could only be seen from halfway down the hall stairs when actually it, the window, was only taking the ordinary corner streetlamp which was in line with railyards and giving it inky blue hues like that apocalyptic-end-of-the-world blue light, the light of subterranean stars, we’ve all seen in tunnels especially subway tunnels—that window, as suddenly now I hear the chorus of prayers in a rickety mumble repeating the moans of an accredited adjuror either upstairs or so far up front that it’s inconceivable to my senses like some of the distances in the West—all I see is five spaced ordinary ladies, only two of them side by side, and it can’t be them make this ghostly prayer—It’s a novena in the innards of the church itself, it is locked in the stone and released each night at this time by the wizardly prayers of some old hooknosed ribbon clerk who acts like a divining rod withal to draw the innate sound out of the churchy-twisted Chicago stone (I have just noticed that the marble squares in the floor are also separated by metal rims like in the MERIT Food Shop last night)—The novena hushkehush sounds like this: agony in the hands, fakery, fear of moaning, so a general communal drone that takes care of the moan-sound when it rises en masse in these stone arches that were made and shaped to transform irritable mumbles into long-faced groans—Far off across the sea of seats and the continent of the altar, among Gothic holes and openings, I see a parade of hand claspers and one flitting wispy ravenclad boy priest who wheels to kneel and coughs politely—There, too, I see flickers like the fires of Hannibal’s camp across the plains of Rome—This window is now gone dead with the night, woe unto the last halo, it didn’t seem possible—The leading novena voice is like a woman’s—can it be? Before me kneeling is a humble little woman in a black cloth coat and cheap fur collar, with black beret, ordinary hair, praying like the ladies, the unobtrusive unshowing-off ladies of Lowell especially the French ones who live above the Royal Theater and wait for their husbands to come home Saturday night from Manchester, from over yonder over the gray woods where the crow caws—

  Many years ago in a church just like this but smaller, holier, more venerated by hearts, I came with hundreds of little death-conscious boys of St. Joseph Parochial School (church always filled us with the knowledge of the gloom and horror of funerals even if we had learned to reconcile ourselves to the shame and sadness of confession, confirmation exercises, what all)—We circled in orderly terror and also boredom beneath the great arches that weren’t high like this yet seem the same height and from which depended the longest lamp chain of my experience—there are some actually that long here but only unobtrusive at sides and supporting unimportant side lamps shaped unimpressively like circular breadboxes with Jap lantern sides and eight-disc bottoms shining (fragrant glimmer)—The one at St. Jean was the main lamp of the entire church, an immense chandelier of the house of God greater than chandelier in anybody’s including City Hall house—Always this kind of girl in church: unbearably pretty, unbearably neat, carrying unbearably crisp and crinkling package, unbearably stylish and in gay but not wild colors—this one white silk kerchief well flowed and green coat—and unbearably sharp clean high heels—but I always think: “You’re too unbearable for anything—the least or most of which is love or the house of the real dying God—Where do you go, doll of the bathtub? to Purgatory to clean up some more—to hell to burn neatly—to heaven for snow—to church to add fresh snow to the snow of your soul?—Have you sinned? can it be? Is the white snow of church respectability what you come for?” But this is wasteful speculation—Now in Mexico, on San Juan Letran, I know churches where little barefooted girls in rags kneel in dust—and in Lowell, though, you’ll see crispy-clean in church, she’s everywhere, I don’t know what she’s up to, who she’s trying to drive away (me I guess)—speculation—

  Slam! the great slam of a pew box in echoey church—it sounds like the sad gun of eternity being fired in the name of mortal imperfection—a vicious priest performs the rite to see effects—he mocks those who’re afraid to try slamming—and vanishes on shroudy feet to tear the chicken at rectory nappes with a spot-splash of wine and a joke about the great syphilitic Pope who was squeezed into his coffin but never said a word against the church—An American flag and a nameless crazy Steinberg flag hang above—out front, Easter Day 1950, I covered parade with Sara and United Press—My life—O vast beginning pillars of the knee-rest’s base—O marble bottoms of stony heaven—Here in St. Patrick’s they have rubber mats for knees, no tortured wood. A fag television dancer in white turtleneck and sport jacket swishes down the aisle—But this reminds me, all these women indiscriminately scattered in a church at evening, of Lowell and the way they’ve swallowed priest’s cock in that humility of theirs that commands me to desist and know the “fear of God” and they love funerals, I don’t; they love wax, love musty indoors and innards of bloody altars—

  The men in here are horses’ asses—And now finally the window is so out that the bottom glass reflects brownly the lights that just came on for an imminent service.

  These glass windows refract NIGHT too for now I see nothing but the rich dim recollections of what at dusk was a Rembrandt barrel of ale in a Dublin saloon when Joyce was young, the hint so vague it’s like people in a dark room wearing phosphorescent rims and all involved in some drama so tragic that the light of day can’t shine on it—only the inward light of night—“A holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead so that they may be removed from sin”—from Maccabees. The priest speaking: now he quotes MacArthur Old Soldier crap—mixing theological verities with today’s headlines, blah, blah, I now go out, tired, into my own thoughts and have no place to go but find my road.

  * * *

  HIPSTER, SOUP, didn’t get any bread because he’s so habitually thin can’t absorb it—just soup—tall, thin, dark long hair almost bun in back—coolly stirs soup, tries it for heat, casts scornful glance around, starts—still blowing—wearing (now really deep in eating, all he needs is little soup) a sharp-cut lapel suit with tieless yellow sport shirt—hornrim glasses, mustache—his curiosity is thinly veiled in a sophisticated glare, done side-eyed y’see—A guy sat opposite him, he glances coldly into his face, other ain’t looking so studies him a little longer coldly—table manners flawless—now he’s interested in guys open paper upside down on table—looks quickly over a shoulder pad to notice sources of noise and voices—wipes himself with napkin using both hands daintily—now lights his cigarette, as he came in he threw the crumpled pa
ck (disdainfully) on the table before taking big hipster winter blue coat off—now he’s finished, just came in to eat, warm up some, puts it on, goes—reaching in pants pockets in that nameless gesture men have in topcoats when they so reach—glossy hair—to Eighth Avenue.

  Now exactly in his place without knowing who was there before, the poor lost history of it, sits a pretty brunette with violet eyes and a flowing purple drape coat—takes it off like stripteaster, hangs it on hook (back to it) and starts eating with pathetic delicate hunger her hot plate-deep in thought while she chews—wearing cute little white collar draped over black material and three pendants, pearls; lovely mouth; she just blew her nose daintily with a napkin; has private personal sad manners, at least externally, by which she makes her own formal existence known to herself as well as polite social cafeteria watchers she’s imagining, otherwise why the act though it is genuine. She took a bite off the fork and THEN and how she’d blow! she licked the side of it in a slight furtive movement of pleasure, her eyes darting up to see if anybody noticed this—as her hunger is appeased she grows less interested in outward manners, eats more rapidly, has sadder more personal bemusements with herself over the general rim and consciousness of her cunt which is in her lap as she sits—

  She breaks my heart just like X. and all my women have broke my heart (just by looking at her)—that’s why women are impractical for me—Now, as I say these great grave things, she turns and watches a Naval officer leaving with open flirtatious interest but he didn’t acknowledge, just flapped his coat like Annapolis or a shroud and left, and she watched anyway as if for the benefit of any girls watching her dig a man, as if she was in the WACS, or made little jokes about the shortage of “available” men when all the time the good men like me peek at their souls like this unnoticed ha ha—An ugly woman is sitting opposite her; my girl is bored, looks away, abstractly primps her hair—Her nose has that interesting little curvedness that emphasizes the plump point pearshape of her cheeks and general Indian melancholy or Semitic womanliness—her fingers are long, long and extremely thin and breakable and I bet cold—warm heart no doubt about it—Now, finished, she hangs to look around, tosses her head to see, coughs, feels her own chin, is bemused as if on a cock and same as in sun doing wash—with that little ravenous birdy attention to things, to special female-comprehension things—yet all of a sudden she’s drowned in sorrow looking at mirror, at herself and also just into space—but snaps, darts around the head to see people, couples, women and men (always interested exclusively in the man’s bearing with big coat and proudness at the wintry entrance and the woman’s acceptance of this and flaunt of it at cafeteria with birdy dignities and knowledges and primps of her own while man dreams in his own dream of himself with a self-satisfied smile) and further she’s aware at this very moment of the sheen of the ebony-latex tabletop with its innumerable microscopic scratches but she’s really thinking of something I’ll never know, since I was in the Cathedral while what she’s thinking about probably took place. She lingers a long time for a girl—waiting?—cold?—sad, lonely?—I can’t help her, I’m doomed to these universal watchfulnesses—and a whore or two—With her head down inexpressible purity shows in her face, like a young Princess Margaret Rose, and beauty, slant-eyed young girl beauty with freshness of the cheeks and upward-sending rosy-glow lips—she’s reading a library book! and sighing!—a freshness that comes from her lips being chastely compressed and is aura’d from the tendernesses of her neck just beneath the ear from the fragile white breakable susceptible cool brow which will never know wild sweats, just cool beads of joy—as she reads she fondles the creases that run from her nose to her mouth each side with doubly applied fingertips and is really digging her own face and beauty as much as I—turns the bookpages with small finger, so long, ridiculously far out—the book is a Modern Library!—therefore she’s probably no dumb little book-of-the-monther typist but maybe a hip young intellectual girl from Brooklyn waiting for Terry Gibbs to pick her up and take her to Birdland. She’d melt for me in two minutes, I can tell by looking at her. Big horrible middleaged Jewish couple sitting now with her—like invading Ammonites. Now she goes—beautifully, with simplicity. It no longer makes me cry and die and tear myself to see her go because everything goes away from me like that now—girls, visions, anything, just in the same way and forever and I accept lostness forever.

  Everything belongs to me because I am poor.

  * * *

  I HAVE RÊVES, abed on a third-story tenement porch and any moment I can turn over, ruin the balance of the corrupted porch and fall down with the works or I can turn over and fall out of bed through the rickety railing—This porch kills me—it’s like Moody Street above Textile Lunch porch—The tenement, O woe, is in middle of woods with Philippine-wars and also “Dracut”—Mike and Jeannette and Rita mostly are there—I am ill, thus bed, as in Margaret Cole ill-on-porch-but-first-story dream—these woods are green and belong to that up-and-down hilly rickety village by the lakes which associates with the Horace Mann hill and the S.S. Dorchester at foot of it.

  And day before an incredibly exciting perfect dream—I was told to find my way back to the Kingsbridge Hospital—started by way (out of same spectral Pawtucketville two weeks ago sprouted Lowell-center skyscrapers) of Mt. Vernon or Crawford Street, on hill part that leads to pines of “North Lowell” like—and Road became one of these brand new oiled sand roads out by places, hills where I did some dream-sliding and actual three-year-old real-life-rolling on wheels—through such woods, a few “American” cars going by, smack leading into the Hospital, where the walls, the doors (the same place three weeks ago bombarded by artilleries) and same place where those patients joked with me in a big room with all complicated jokes and wheelchairs, whirlpool baths (and that artillery dream, we started at hospital but moved up to the front, to night, MacArthur, boom, enemy land and town, but made our way back). This “Gardner” sand road goes among woods where (near sandbank) my Ma and I once moved to tenement and similar to Mike’s rickety porch one—among woods where also are hills that begin in Bloodworth’s Highlands and go all the way to immense hills of Gardiner, Maine via sunsets and Norths that go even further to Greenland of pumps, via canals, the canal being that which Fortiers and us in Gershom but also Salem house floated to Boston, a spectral canal, far from dull, and in any case big house like Lowell high school basement, Salem basement, Paramount theater apartments (on Times Square) so vast and sunny and the one big high-ceiling rich glassy-on-the-floor huge one-man room Cody had to do with in last night’s dream before our rendezvous with the sensualists who had girls, weed, and that Mexico apartment (Medellin) tablecloth (that fleecy soft bed and soft table, what a joy to recall it! damn!—).

  This Philippine wood round Mike’s house is the one in the bigyard Horace Mann dream and is just like Hospital grounds, pale green, afternoon green (Ah that relaxin at Kingsbridge! talk about your Touros and Camarillos), the dream of the westbank Mike-first Hudson River homestead, the trees of Versailles—in which Duke Gringas was and later real infantry movements and one time a jungle clearing with snipers and straw—the Philippine, or Mike woods are I think different level than Chet Vaska Lakeview also Central City North woods and maybe even rolling hills of Ioway with cops and gun and connected to another part of the Hudson westbank in redbrick—Hospital whirlpool jokes like the cruel needle jests of sadistic docs in Japan war and in fact in Japan itself when I saw that Jap boy at dark dusk in cold London hat—O the vast arcades of that London! with my father! and Liverpool gang nights. Tony Bero was with Duke Gringas.

  The sensualists were Richman and that Glennon guy I lived near where the mattress fires took place, 40th Street behind big high Times Square where I always find my show on a glittering apple-pie corner, show’s inside and is always Brooklyn one (with high terrible balcony) that I reach via Lynn-like brownbrick leaving behind sad Nashua sorrows where my father is either onelegged or is Louise himself in a truncated house and the Nashua is like As
bury Park and the towns of Nin and Paul in the South (because of one Main Street) where recently I had an affair with a girl and handled a rake on bonfire night—that country goes back via Vaska northwoods and King and jagged Colorado namelessly I guess you might say to that damn tragic dark pump at the bottom of the hill where potatoes are peeled, Oh Slave!