Mad diary of malcolm mal.., p.16
Mad Diary of Malcolm Malarkey, page 16
“Of course, I could not contain myself. One day I wrote one verse, another day another I wrote another verse, here a note, there a phrase, little by little the opera was composed. It was the autumn of 1841, and recalling Merelli’s promise, I went to see him and announced that Nabucco was finished and could therefore be performed in the next Carnival season. But there was a problem. Even though, Merelli was ready to keep his word, he also pointed out that it would be impossible to stage the opera in the coming season, because the repertory was already settled and because three new operas by renowned composers were due for performance. To arrange a fourth opera by a composer who was a novice was dangerous for everyone not the least of which was me. He said it would be better to wait for the spring season, for which he had no prior engagements and he assured me that good artists would be hired. But I refused. I was angry. He had promised me and I had done the work so I demanded that he either stage during the Carnival season or not at all. There were good reasons for saying that, since I knew it would be impossible to find two other artists as excellent as la Strepponi and Ronconi, whom I knew would be engaged and on whom I was much relying.
“Merelli, although disposed to agree with me was, as impresario, not altogether mistaken. To stage four new operas in a single season was very risky not to mention adding another by a bonafide failure. But I had stood firm. In short, after assertions and denials, obstacles and half-promises, the bills of La Scala were posted, but to my shock, Nabucco was not announced! I was outraged.
“Even at twenty-six and grieving over the loss of my family, I was hot-blooded. I wrote a rude letter to Merelli, venting all my resentment. Of course, in a way, I was lashing out at him because of my own failures, my own insecurities, not only as a writer but also as a father and a husband and was blaming him for my own tragedies. I must confess to you, Signore Malcolm, that as soon as I had sent the letter I felt remorse, and I feared that as a result of that hastily written missive I had ruined everything: our friendship, my connections to the opera world, my future as a composer. But Merelli was insightful and he sent for me, and when I arrived at La Scala he exclaimed:
“Is this how you write to a friend?”
I started to apologize when he interrupted me.
“But still, you may be right. We’ll stage Nabucco. You must remember, however, that I have enormous expenses because of the other new operas. I shall not have the resources to build special scenery or sew original costumes for Nabucco, but shall have to patch it up with whatever we can find best in the storerooms. Agreed?”
I agreed to everything because I was anxious for the opera to be staged. New bills were issued, on which I finally read, Nabucco! Toward the end of February the rehearsals began, and twelve days after the first rehearsal the first public performance took place, on March 9, with Strepponi and Bellinzaghi and Signori Ronconi, Miraglia and Derivis in the cast.”
“And it was a success.”
“Yes, it was a success as was Solera’s I Lombardi alla prima crociata, which followed.”
“So, you owed it all to Merelli.”
“Yes, he understood me well.”
Verdi pauses.
“I realize that I have been doing all the talking. I apologize, Signore Malcolm. Is there something else you want to ask of me?”
“Yes.”
“And what would that be?
“I have been writing for years and regardless of what I’ve been told, I feel as if I’m a failure.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I’m old and gray and full of sleep and haven’t achieved what I set out to achieve when I was young and vibrant and infected with the joy of composition. Those who know me don’t know the anguish I suffer and of being relegated to some repository of worthless prose. Sucking on the tit of obscurity.”
Verdi paused.
“Yes, well I must commend you on your colorful use of metaphor, Signore Malarkey, and I do not mean to speak in clichés, but an artist must yield to his own inspiration. I should compose with utter confidence a subject that set my musical blood going, even though it were condemned by all other artists as anti-musical. In short, an artist cannot endure on the vagaries of others.”
“But I’m an old man.”
“But you are not a dead man.”
“Then what advice can you give me?”
The maestro thought for a moment.
“I have given you my advice, Signore Malcolm. My story is my advice. Take from it what you wish.”
“But you had Merelli as your mentor.”
“Yes, and now you can consider me, yours. And if anyone asks, you can tell them, I get my advice from Giuseppe Verdi. I hear la Strepponi calling so I must leave you, but I thank you for the flowers, my friend, and I wish you well.”
Malarkey respectfully nods to the maestro and turns to leave.
“On second thought I do have a few words of advice.”
Malarkey looks back.
“Yes? And what is that?”
“See Falstaff.”
And with that, Verdi disappears into the vastness of the universe filled with the atoms of all the other musical miscreants who in spite of allegations and assaults their melodies haunt us still.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
WHAT MALARKEY GLEANED FROM WATCHING FALSTAFF
Life is a burst of laughter, so, be happy hereafter.
Your mind is a tempest whirling, always this way and that.
Everyone mocks you, whether you’re thin, or whether you’re fat.
But it is best for him who has the last laugh of all!
This loses something in translation. Malarkey suggests the Reader see Verdi’s opera in either English or Italian for the full impact of what Verdi suggested. Only then might one appreciate the maestro’s words.
CHAPTER ETERNAL
AT THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN HUSBAND
Before Malarkey and Liliana return to Citrus City, Liliana makes a visit to the gravesite of her husband, Massimo. She goes alone, with a bouquet of white lilies, kneels at the graveside located beneath an isolated medlar tree whose drooping branches, contorted by the winter winds, shrouds the tombstone which reads:
Massimo Verga
1971-2009
Beloved Husband, Dutiful Son
Liliana recites a prayer, heard only by Liliana, kisses the marble headstone and leaves the cemetery to the accompaniment of the wind whistling through the meager, yet melancholy, medlar leaves.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
ENTR’ACTE; OR, GAZING OUT A WINDOW AT THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND FEET
This is another entr’acte because it comes in between leaving the shores of Lago Maggiore and returning to the senescence, if not the detritus, that is Citrus City. It is also reflective of what will be a change in Malarkey’s worldview as the following dialogue between Liliana and Malarkey will attest:
“Gotta see the dentist about this tooth,” Malarkey says.
“Which tooth?” Liliana answers.
“Wisdom.”
“To put one in or take one out?”
Liliana smiles and raises her eyebrows.
“You’re still not a member of the mile high club. You wanna try it again?”
“On two conditions.”
“What’s that?”
“One, that you’re absolutely positive the Chancellor is not flying on this plane and two, you get me pregnant.”
There’s a pregnant pause.
“Gotta see the dentist about this tooth.”
“Always an answer,” she replies as she gazes out the window at thirty-five thousand feet. Additional tests to follow. Watch for that chapter.
END PART II
ACT III
WHEN YOU ARE
OLD AND GRAY
AND FULL OF
SLEEP
“If you do not love me I shall not be loved. If I do not love
you I shall not love.”
—Samuel Beckett
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
COMING IN A CUP & OTHER IMAGINATIVE THINGS ONE CAN DO WITH SEMEN
At this point, the Reader may be drawing conclusions about Malarkey’s character. Some may be angry with him; some may call him an asshole; some may think there’s little hope for Malarkey and Liliana to remain as a couple let alone as parents; while some others may have already thrown the novel into the trash or flung it to the floor or hurled it out the window, even a closed window, or tossed it through the slats of the Venetian blinds or crumbled it into molecules and atoms. The Reader might think Malarkey has no interest in whatever Liliana wants, but Malarkey implores the Reader not to judge him harshly. Then again, Malarkey really doesn’t give a fuck what the Reader expects; however, if that is what the Reader expects then the Reader would be wrong as the Reader can plainly see Malarkey walking down a hallway at Kaiser Permanente toward a sign that reads: UROLOGY LABORATORY TOILET. Malarkey is not walking into the Urology Laboratory Toilet because he has nothing better to do than hang out in the Urology Laboratory Toilet of Kaiser Permanente. He’s there for a reason.
With some trepidation, Malarkey walks into the toilet, locks the door (there’s a first for everything) and raises the toilet seat. Malarkey isn’t quite sure the Reader has any notion of how it feels to walk into a urology lab toilet, whip out one’s dick, wipe it off with a sterile pad and begin to jack off with the hopeful expectation that something of significance will be ejaculated. Besides the fact the toilet is sterile and the pad is sterile and the containers are sterile, the entire act of coming in a cup leaves one questioning whether it’s supposed to be an orgasmic experience or merely a clinical one. The context is everything. Needless to say, after a significant amount of prompting his dick to cooperate, not to mention an even more significant amount of time fantasizing (this would include, but not be limited to, Malarkey conjuring all sorts of erotic fantasies as a way of imploring his flaccid phallus to erect itself [e.g. images on PornHub, aging fantasies of a youthful Sonia Braga or Romy Schneider or Jean Seberg or Julie Christie ad astra]) Malarkey, as if by the miracle of hand, succeeds in coming into the cup, squeezing out every drop as if it were a Maxwell House commercial, hurriedly zips up, returns the sample to the laboratory and flees the clinic as if he’s stolen the pharmacy’s entire inventory of Oxycontin or feeling as if he were Peter Lorre with the letter “M” (for masturbator) indelibly sewn on the back of his jacket. What then remains are the test results. In a way, it’s a bit like waiting for the SAT or GRE results while fidgeting as if on steroids.
Sometimes, being competent at one’s job has reverse consequences. This is the case with the urology laboratory. Malarkey is hopeful the results of his masturbatory miscreance are going to take some time. Maybe a week. Maybe longer. Maybe they will get lost. But, Malarkey is wrong. As a matter of fact, later the same night Malarkey sits at his laptop when he receives a message from the lab that reads:
YOU HAVE TEST RESULTS.
Malarkey hesitates since he’s not quite sure he wants to know the results. Are his fellas Olympic swimmers or are they merely floating in a sea of semen like jetsom upon the ocean? Gathering courage, Malarkey finally clicks on the attachment which takes him to the test result site. He clicks again and in bold letters, the results appear on the screen, which reads in a discourse that is easy to understand:
Sample shows no sperm content, no motility, no morphology. Ability to conceive: negative. Possible lab error. If not, you have a lot of drowned swimmers. Please return for follow up analysis and have a nice day.
Malarkey looks at those results with mixed feelings, since Malarkey didn’t want to have the tests done in the first place. The Reader may not understand why that is, but, you see, there’s a direct correlation between the content of one’s sperm and, with all due respect to Dr. King, the content of one’s character. Regardless of one’s physical stature, one’s health and well-being, one’s sperm content is more reflective of one’s manhood than one’s ability to bench press one’s weight and the results of Malarkey’s sperm count is: zero. It is the closest thing to menopause a man can come to (no pun intended) and Malarkey ponders what, exactly, the results mean. For Liliana, the results could be devastating. After all, the Reader knows she’s desperate to get pregnant and, at least at the time of the results, Malarkey cannot impregnate a termite assuming termite impregnation were even possible. This impotence affects Malarkey on multiple levels not the least of which is the realization that whatever fantasy he envisioned about starting another family at his stage of life it is merely that: fantasy.
Additional tests to follow. Watch for that chapter. With that in mind, Malarkey turns his attention to something into which he can sink his teeth.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
IN THE DENNTAL OFFICE OF DR. AL-KHWARZIMI, PERSIAN ORAL SURGEON
Malarkey isn’t kidding about the tooth. He has been avoiding the extraction since his twenties, but removing a wisdom tooth at his age is not a simple thing. There can be extreme medical consequences: nerve damage, infection, dry sockets, even death. Look what happened to Wilt Chamberlain a week after he had a wisdom tooth removed: dead. So, Malarkey arrives at his appointment with some trepidation and the Reader sees him agitatedly sitting in the dental chair in the office of Dr. Al-Khwarzimi, oral surgeon, when Al-Khwarzimi, a mid-fifties, dark-skinned, Persian, walks in. It’s a state-of-the-dental-arts kind of operatory. Tastefully decorated in a kind of high-tech way, but with a distinctly Persian motif running throughout the office: Persian carpets, a facsimile of a portrait of Fath Ali Shah Qajar and original paintings by Hossein Behzad and Jazeh Tabatabai among others.
“Good morning, Malcolm.”
“Doctor.”
They shake hands and as Dr. Al-Khwarizmi talks, he washes his hands while his assistant prepares hypodermics and other supplies needed for the surgery.
“How’s teaching?”
“Couldn’t be better. Another year has come and gone and they haven’t fired me.”
“And your writing?”
“Couldn’t be better. Another year has come and gone and I haven’t murdered any New York publishers.”
“And your daughter?”
“Couldn’t be smarter and unlike Donald Trump I have absolutely no interest in having sex with her.”
Al-Khwarizmi raises his eyebrows.
“So, are we finally ready to have that ancient wisdom tooth removed?”
“Didn’t know I had a choice?”
“You don’t, really, but I always give my patients the right of first denial.”
“That’s a good line. Could I steal it?”
“Hadiyati Lak.”
“Sorry, my Farsi is a bit weak.”
“My gift to you.”
“Sepaas.”
“You’re welcome.”
Al-Khwarizmi sits in his dental chair, adjusts the dental light and after Malarkey opens his mouth the doctor uses his dental explorer to poke around in Malarkey’s mouth as if looking for a reason to operate when, in fact, there isn’t one. Usually in those moments, dentists like to ask questions a patient cannot answer with a mouthful of dental equipment. And the questions are not merely questions that require a simple “yes” or “no,” no, they’re more like: “So, what cost-effective opportunities to achieve significant reductions in carbon pollution, including promoting more energy efficient homes and businesses, improved industrial practices, and cleaner sources of energy might you propose?” or “What suggestions might you make in relation to Kierkegaard’s inversion of Feuerbach’s critique of Christianity?” or “Given the late Diego Maradona’s obesity, especially in the film Youth, what dietary suggestions would you have offered him?” Those sorts of questions. So, in order to circumvent that possibility, Malarkey initiates a conversation before the doctor can ask.
“Did you know there was an Al-Khwarizmi who invented algebra?”
Al-Khwarizmi looks at him askance as if someone had asked Malarkey: “Did you know Bushmills was Irish?” Like it’s bloody obvious.
“Yes, it’s something we all learn as children,” Al-Khwarizmi’s replies.
“Fascinating.”
“Only to Westerners. Malcolm, I’m going to give you an injection of midazolam.”
“What’s that? Sounds like a Walter Scott novel.”
“It’s an anesthetic that will make you drowsy so you shouldn’t feel a thing.”
“Sounds like a Walter Scott novel. Is there a way I could get that every day? You know, around 4:30?”
“No, Malcolm. I’m afraid not.”
The doctor’s assistant prepares the injection; Al-Khwarizmi injects it into Malarkey’s arm and hands the syringe back to his assistant.
“Just relax for a while, Malcolm. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Al-Khwarizmi leaves and Malarkey slowly closes his eyes. In his anesthetic haze, Malarkey has a dream. In the dream, Malarkey is wearing the same blue work shirt he always wears, but it’s beneath a black suit fashioned after one worn by Baudelaire before he lost his inheritance. Just where that vision comes from, Malarkey can’t tell the Reader though, perhaps, it’s from his idolization of Baudelaire when, as an undergraduate, Malarkey slept with a copy of Les Fleurs du Mal beneath his pillow or how he would memorize lines from Baudelaire’s poetry to try out on potential girlfriends or how he would visit Baudelaire’s grave in the Cimetière Montparnasse and leave real bouquets before removing the plastic ones and dumping them in the trash. Who knows? The Reader would have to ask Malarkey. Regardless, in the dream, Malarkey stands behind a podium the front of which bears a plaque that reads: PULITZER PRIZE. Malarkey addresses the audience.
