Peru Read online

  PERU

  Gordon Lish

  With an Introduction by the Author

  Dedication

  TO REGINA LISH AND TO PHILIP LISH

  AND FOR DENIS DONOGHUE

  AND TO STEVEN MICHAEL ADINOFF

  B. 1934, D. 1940

  Epigraph

  The first memory is of memory itself.

  —GIORGIO AGAMBEN

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  THE PROPERTY

  THE CELLAR

  THE ROOF

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Selected Other Works by Gordon Lish

  Introduction

  Dear Reader of Dalkey Archive Press’s PERU,

  Not at all aware of what nowadays obtains in the law respecting provisions bearing on the jeopardy of self-incrimination, nor, for that matter, if there are ameliorating distinctions to be drawn thereto, or thereof, regarding statutes individually in sway among the various fifty states. Am, nevertheless—if this does indeed apply—not one whit ignorant of the confluent happenstance that both of the misfeasances I will, in the ensuant sentences, recite occurred, as we surely must, and disagreeably, have it, within the jurisdiction of New York. Don’t I mean that no variant can be thought blurred by dispensations laid on in precincts where the government’s part in our affairs is either indistinct or lax? You understand. Fine. I’ll take my chances. For one, I’m old. Tomorrow, it just so happens, as proof of the foregoing declaration, I turn seventy-eight. (Well, yes, not proof as such, is it?—or, to solicit the parallel structure eager to emerge into being, say I said “in” proof—but as well noting specificity (the specific) can in itself betimes exert the force of going some sufficient distance toward the buttressing of a falsified—or fallacious—claim.) Two—the second datum in my enumeration— I’m terrifically calmed by the luck, as should be you, that this reprint, speaking officially, is, of course, issued under the august auspices of, huzzah, the Dalkey Archive organization—so that I might happily suppose there could be some species of protection to be imagined flowing to me from Dalkey’s prestige, press-wise-speaking. Anyhow, I feel, well, free to speak, fair enough? Or, putting this last bit in a more practical light, liberated to enact other recklessnesses. Very well, then. Let us proceed—introductionishly. Peru is true. To the extent that anything resident among the artifacts I appear to have accumulated behind me, count on it, Peru, viz. its uglier facets—um, shall we say its ugliest facet?—is, hmm, God help us all, all too grievously true. So much for that, or this, then. But inexpressibly worse—to wit, in, at least, my idiosyncratically fastidious view—than my commission of the attack touched upon (brimming, I acknowledge it, with unnecessarily grisly detail) in the text to follow, is this: that some years ago—indeed, in the year when my father’s sixtieth birthday was fast upon him, his brothers (for specificity’s sake again: already acknowledged: the dissembler’s device) presented the man (my father, yes, my father) with a wristwatch, a timepiece, I might not unpridefully observe, of a particularly fine stamp (Audemars-Piguet, for your personal information), on the back of whose wafer-slim case the man’s, you know, given name, incised into the metal, is shown, along with those of his “loving” brothers: (specifics, right?): thus: qua benefactors, Henry, Charles, and Sam (or Samuel, should you prefer this latter formulation). As I recall, my having been passed the wristwatch—in Miami—by my mother, this on the occasion of my father’s death, and my having promptly, on arrival in New York, converted the token of filial affection into cash (big cash)—I cannot, now as I review the event, refer to the object itself for confirmation of this or that detail, yet I can assure you there were also engraved there certain numerals: I’m guessing, am I not? (again specifics, my father’s birthdate having never been very well known to me inasmuch as, persistantly and triumphantly, the more nuanced practices of arithmetic escaped my cerebration from the outset)—but wasn’t 1962 the junction of the brotherly transaction? Well, sir, I board the aircraft for my return flight and, while airborne and well away from my superb mother’s ken, I examine, with fierce intensity, this hot ticket in my father’s, you know, “estate” finding there his name, my father’s name, spelt PHILLIP. I tell you, it knocked the wind out of me—I who had always understood my father’s name to be spelled PHILIP. What to make of this, what to make of it, what, what? These were my postulates: 1) that my father had determined a jeweler’s solution to mount to an expense unmerited by the bother, and/or 2) that my father, in his cynicism, wished for me, his beneficiary, to take note of, and to be edified thereby, the fraud underlying all expressions of fraternal—nay—of any publicized esteem. Ah, I don’t doubt I may have entertained other hypotheses but cannot this instant retrieve, sad to say, a lick of them. Or, hah, a tick. Whatever my suppositions over the duration of my return to New York, not a one of them was not underwritten by the gloomiest dismay, save, of course, my descrying an open door of delight to the moolah the “heirloom” would, in no soon order, upon my landing, fetch. Yet imagine my disarray all these years thereafter when, slipping from my files the document wherein gravesites in the Lish Family Plot are designated by name and relation to the author thereof, all this in my father’s distinguishably erratic hand—you know, wife Regina here, daughter Natalie (or a.k.a. Lorraine) there, son Gordon and so forth, Sam (scratch that: Samuel) and his Dora, Henry and his Miriam, Charles and, you know, Aunt Esther, not to mention (ach!) grandparents and great-grandchildren and etc., etc. here, there, everywhere, an assortment of Lishes, by which I mean in the nominal sense—namely, as per loci for footstones situated and preserved in reserve, the host of them radiating from the central stone (marmoreally-speaking)—or, if you must have it your way, monument. You see what I am saying—the map, the geographized tableau—no? Plus—here we go, get this, do get this—PHILLIP. Penned, as the poet prefers, by the man (the very chap) himself! Are you hearing me? Are you seeing this? Because I, Gordon, student of my father, scholar in this personage insofar as my scholia goes, see, i.e., PHILLIP—and do not see, heaven help me, PHILIP. Are you paying attention? I, the man’s child, the man’s scarcely lackadaisical nor nonchalant tormentor, had, ever since memory and the advent of my having succeeded in introjecting the skills of the alphabetic—well, until yesterday, did indeed, have indeed, as I have rather less than subtly been hinting—spelt my father’s name with only one el. And therefore, wherefore, have been doing so, did so, good and wrongly, good and erroneously: oh, mercy, mercy: in an act of aggression, as an act of aggression?—or, orthographically-speaking, in the manner of a perpetually dedicated assassin. But too late, too late. No, no—no amends to be made now! Nothing will do! Is not the fellow—my father, my dad!—not now, in his own right (one might interject, Steven-like), consigned to the soil by reason of severe decrepitude—his person deceased, dead? Listen to me, friends and neighbors, do please harken—what I did to the boy in Peru I did in minutes, whereas what I did to my father, it was a felony committed (patiently, methodically, without exception) over the course of all the years of my (of Gordon’s!) lettered existence. Reader of the abbreviated disclosure ahead, I the undersigned invite you to decide which was the worse of my transgressions. The infanticide recounted herein? Or the parricide? Unless, in your role as witness and judge, you would sooner deem the word “patricide” as the locution less figurative—and therefore, semiotically-speaking, several shadings in favor of the accusatory in connoting my reigning yet inexorable (let’s face it), unatonable crime—the one, I agree, at bottom oedipally narrable and, accordingly, moral (howsoever superfluously), the other neither more nor less than the outcome of the conventional backyard impulse. Shall we, then, at this remove, surrender to su
ch diction as strictly, if regrettably, indicative of the infamous commonplace homo ludens submitting himself, alas, yes, not a little sweetly if, no, scarcely a jot forgivably, to the impressive sovereignty of his nature, effecting, as a consequence, play, yes, everyday play, yes, a form of developmental deportment, yes, oh so indubitably puerile, to be sure, oh so very unappealingly boyish, you bet—in sum, it is admitted, amounting to conduct plenty enough hideous for any and all appetites, if you like—but nonetheless behavior to be beheld in no other wise than (pah!) as dismissable as water under the bridge and as, no less wistfully, an instance of the all-too-human spectacle of the selfsame flowage uncorrectably over the dam? Nonetheless—oh, these, timid, pimpled, nonethelesses of ours!—what choice do we have, what choice did we ever have, but to take credit for elucidating a destiny—of Steven’s body, of Phillip’s identity—whose quality, however ordinary, the publisher, I expect, joins me in trusting you will not fail to reckon, satisfactorily, as crazy and real as fact.

  G L

  10 February 2012

  THE PROPERTY

  I SAID, “BUT IT WAS ONLY JUST ON.” I said, “It was only just an instant ago when it was on.” I said, “Come on, can’t you tell me what it was?”

  She said, “There is no one here who can do that now.” She said, “Don’t you know what time it is now?” She said, “I’m sorry, but this is just the night crew here—this is just the night crew now.”

  I said, “We had the sound off.” I said, “We had to have the sound off.” I said, “In all reality, how much trouble could it be, all told?”

  She said, “I know.” She said, “But really.” She said, “All of us would really like to be able to help you out—but honestly, I’m honestly really sorry, the answer’s going to have to stay the way it was—it’s going to have to still be no.”

  I said, “No.” I said, “No.” I said, “We’d been packing here, my wife and I have been packing here.” I said, “Tomorrow.” I said, “Starting tomorrow, our son starts camp.” I said, “You understand what I mean when I say the boy’s got to start out in the morning and leave for camp? So the volume,” I said, “don’t you see what I mean?” I said, “He’s sleeping, the boy’s been sleeping, and his mother and I have had to stay up all night packing, so this is why the sound, why we had to keep it down so far down, why we had to have it almost all of the way off.” I said, “Come on.” I said, “Go ahead and ask somebody.” I said, “Go ahead and be a sport.”

  She said, “I’m sorry, sir.” She said, “I am really sorry, sir.” She said, “Don’t you see it is something that I tell you which cannot possibly be done?”

  I said, “We only had the picture on.” I said, “Ask.” I said, “Can’t you ask?” I said, “What was it?” I said, “I just saw it when I looked up.”

  She said, “It’s impossible. There is no one here who can answer you now. We are just the night crew now. What you are going to have to do is call back when the regular people come back on.”

  I said, “Yes, but I don’t think you really understand me yet. I couldn’t believe it. How could they show a thing like that, people doing things like that? Didn’t you see it yourself? Didn’t you yourself see it yourself? It was so unbelievable. I’m telling you, you have to do this for me, you have to go find somebody and go ask for me. Because there was no way in the world for me to actually hear for myself. You couldn’t hear what it was all about. How can I sleep after this? You think people can sleep after this? Oh, come on, you must have been listening, they must have said, you must have heard, somebody there must have heard them say. One of your announcers probably, or what about an engineer?” I said, “All I am really asking for you to do is for you just to please do something, please go ask.”

  She said, “It is really out of my hands. Who do you think is here to do it for you, sir? There is no one here for them to do it for you, sir. It is just something which is at this hour almost all of it automatic and all a question of tape. All you have to do is call back in the morning. You call back in the morning, they will help you out in the morning, just tell them in the morning what it was you say you saw.”

  I said, “Just hold it for a second, just don’t hang up on me for a second—just listen for a second—no kidding, please. You have got to appreciate this, I’m going to have to find out what that was. Do you really appreciate that it was just on, that it was just this instant ago on? Be a pal, be a friend—please just go ask someone who probably heard. Are you positive you know what I’m talking about? The news just now, it was just only instants ago and the minute right after I saw it I picked up the phone right as soon as I saw.” I said, “I’m telling you, I’m really telling you, I am going to have to be up going nuts all night if no one is going to help me out and find out what that was.”

  She said, “There is nothing that can be done as of this hour. You are going to have to call back. Call first thing at nine. There will be someone here at nine. That’s only almost not even a total of six more hours from now, nine.”

  I said, “Even so, even so.” I said, “What if a child had been looking at that? Didn’t anybody first stop to consider what it was? Don’t you people ever look? Does nobody ever bother to take the time?” I said, “Don’t tell me these things are never checked out before you people just go ahead and put them out over on the air.”

  She said, “It was just some footage, sir. It was just some footage from the news, sir.”

  I said, “You don’t understand yet—about the sound, about the sound, my boy’s been just jumping out of his skin all night because of him being so excited about tomorrow’s being camp. So you see why he couldn’t drift off? This is the reason why he couldn’t drift off. The boy just could not drift off, and then he drifted off, but we had to stay up to get him all packed up, and so this is why my wife and I had to have the sound down, because he has got to stay down and get enough rest for the ride up to camp, but we’ve still been up to all hours packing him up, getting his duffel bag, getting the rest of everything for his duffel bag and for his footlocker all packed up, and I just happened to be looking down into the footlocker and this was when it happened, that’s when I knew the news was going to be coming on and so then I looked up.” I said, “Really, it’s no big deal, it won’t kill you, it’s not going to kill anybody—because with all of my heart I am telling you that I could just not believe what I saw.” I said, “Make one single exception and tell me what it was.”

  She said, “I already told you, it was just some footage on the news. A prison thing—a thing in a prison—it was just some prisoners loose in a prison somewhere, some hostage thing in a prison somewhere, some kind of trouble going on somewhere with a prison somewhere.”

  I said, “Where? Where was it trouble with a prison? Which prison, where?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Where?” she said. “So you only want to know where?” she said.

  I said, “Yes—that’s it—I want to know where. That’s right,” I said. I said, “Tell me where the prison was.”

  “Peru,” she said. She said, “They said it was Peru.”

  THE CELLAR

  I DO NOT REMEMBER MY MOTHER. I do not remember my father. I do not remember anyone from back before when I killed Steven Adinoff in Andy Lieblich’s sandbox. What I remember is the sandbox, and anybody who had anything to do with the sandbox, or who I, in my way, as a child, thought did. Which is why I remember the nanny, and why I remember the colored man, and why 1 remember Miss Donnelly, who was my teacher when it was then.

  I cannot tell you what 1 thought about the other people, about almost all of the other people. 1 cannot even tell you who most of the people were, except to give you certain highlights of them when I think of them. But I don’t think there is going to be anything which I can tell you about either one of Andy Lieblich’s parents, or anything about what it was like inside of their place once you were actually inside of it, aside from the fact that there was a maid who always lived inside of it—not that I myself ever
actually saw her other than through a screen door, or other than through a storm door, and that we ourselves, that my particular parents, that our house never had either one of those kinds of doors, that we never had a screen door or had a storm door for any door, that the only kind of special door which our house had was the door which you went down to get into the cellar of it.

  There is nothing which I will not tell you if I can think of it—Steven Adinoff is not even the half of it, Steven Adinoff is not even a smidgen of it. For instance, for instance—speaking of the cellar, for instance—I once, or maybe twice, went down to our cellar with their dog once—I once went down into our cellar with Iris Lieblich and with her dog once—I went down there with her and with Sir once.

  I wanted to be different things.

  I wanted to be something nice.

  I wanted to be just like the way he was—have hair which had the smell which his hair had, have hair which had the smell which Andy Lieblich’s had, not have hair which had the smell of Kreml or of Wildroot. Or be a girl who had a place like Iris Lieblich’s. Or be a lady-in-waiting and have one like a lady-in-waiting did. I mean, have a place which they could look at through gossamer, not one where you had to get off your underpants for them to see what it was.

  I wanted to be Miss Donnelly’s hankie, Miss Donnelly’s lilac, Miss Donnelly’s bodice—or just be gossamer or just be Miss Donnelly or just be Miss Donnelly when she came to a page with a picture on it.

  I wanted to be able to sit on the toilet and really do something. I wanted to never have to get down off of the toilet and go downstairs and have to talk to Mrs. Adinoff when she came over to my house to make my mother make me get down off of the toilet and go downstairs and have a good talk with her and let her get a good look at me and ask me the question of what kind of a boy I think it took for him to go ahead and kill a person.