The Fugitivities, стр. 1

The Fugitivities

First published in 2021 by Melville House Publishing

First Melville House Printing: June 2021

Melville House Publishing

46 John Street

Brooklyn, NY 11201

and

Suite 2000

16/18 Woodford Road

London E7 0HA

mhpbooks.com

facebook.com/mhpbooks

@melvillehouse

ISBN 9781612198064

Ebook ISBN 9781612198071

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021932777

Book design by David Ter-Avanesyan/Ter33Design adapted for ebook

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

a_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Part Two

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Part Three

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Part Four

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Acknowledgments

About the Author

For my mother and fathers, and all the foremothers and forefathers who keep us in flight

They said a whale swallowed Jonah

Out in the deep blue sea

Sometimes I get that ol’ funny feelin’

That same old whale has swallowed me

—J. B. LENOIR

Le voyage est une suite de disparitions irréparables.

—PAUL NIZAN

PART ONE

My best allegiances are to the dead.

—GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Your letter came today. I brought it with me to the Luxembourg Gardens and read it on the shaded path behind the tennis courts. Are things going very differently from the way you imagined? Or is it that your writing has changed since you moved? You sound more American now, I think. But there’s something else too, a sadness that you haven’t shared with me before. I’m glad that you found an apartment, and, if I read you right, a new friend. I liked the image of you and Isaac painting the walls, and of the group of black girls playing double Dutch on your street in the evening. I understand you’re worried that they might soon disappear, but could Brooklyn really change that suddenly? I would have written sooner if I didn’t keep falling behind at work. I get so distracted staring at the screen. Does it happen to you? I’ll be clicking and tapping along and the whole thing weirds into daydreaming. I think it’s the other half of my brain playing tricks on me—the part that wants to write songs. Sometimes I get into a panic, interrupt whatever I’m doing and throw down scads, a flurry of notes that I hope I might finish someday. Not even songs, just spots of emotion flaring up, like Sailor Moon in her ecstatic transformation. It’s funny how I used to fantasize about being swept up in that tornado of light. I wrote something the other day that made me think of you. It’s about the river by my grandfather’s house. The smell of its mossiness. The cold licking at my ankles. Those spirals of snail-colored water under the neat lines of the poplar trees along the départementale. It reminded me of those ripples of river grass in the Tarkovsky film that we talked about at the café around the corner from Le Champo. I miss those days when we were always together. I guess I should worry about you—or tell you that I do. You say that maybe you’re drinking too much, waking up suddenly in bars not knowing where you are and stumbling outside to hail one of those yellow taxis that have televisions in them now so that you don’t have to look out the window. That many times when you wish you would pass out, you don’t. I feel like I can see you slumped in a musty back seat, hear the droning rush, and feel your loneliness as the car takes you over one of the great bridges, and for a brief moment you feel everything drop away. Like the city all around you is a distant star. I know better than to tell you what you need to do. But don’t forget that you promised we’d keep writing, even in our delayed, interrupted way. Remember all the things you promised to tell me, and the stories we’ve only half told each other. I have my moments, comme tout le monde. I never told you about them, maybe because there would be too many other things to say. But I think that’s what these letters are for. To make up for lost time with an unavoidable slowness, like a station where we always know we’ll bump into each other. I wish I could tell you why I think of you when I think of my river. Or the smell of rain along the footpath behind our house. I would say it entirely in images like one of your favorite poets. But I can’t right now. I still have two open reports to file and my mother needs me to help her with the telephone company. They’re tearing up her street to install the fiber-optic. I’m going to Strasbourg tomorrow. I’ll be sure to write you again from there if I can. I’m bringing your letter with me and will read it again on the train. I want to travel with it a while, stretch these words across space and time, unfold, read, refold. I want to hold onto you, to this.

—A

Perspiring, dizzy with heat and exhaustion, Jonah stopped at the corner of Underhill and St. Johns and plunked down the armchair he had trundled through the leafy streets of Park Slope, along the wide sunbaked extension of Flatbush Avenue, and, at Grand Army Plaza, around the imposing monument to the “Defenders of the Union,” where bronze charioteers looked out over the construction of a condominium tower. The rich folk in the Slope had a habit of throwing out nice furniture in the summer, and he was determined to furnish his new apartment. The haul had been pretty good so far—a “reclaimed-wood” bookcase, a banker’s desk lamp, a vaguely Oriental side table—with the only downside being that the crib now had the eclectic air of a showroom.

He was about halfway down the block when he took note of the