Finnegans Wake

Fiction by Miles Greaves | Issue 2.12

Cover Art: L. Erickson

The driver’s seat bucked backward, out from under me, and my face spread briefly, like a blot, over the inside of the windshield, and my eyes migrated earward, and I was birthed raggedly through the glass, like clay through teeth, and I fluttered languidly over the asphalt, and struck a neighbor’s yard, in a rain of screws. There I tried to rise, but I couldn’t—I could only look down the length of my body, toward my sneakers, where I saw popping, painless flames, migrating up my jeans, as if up a cigarette; and I saw too that my copy of Finnegans Wake had landed with me and was split, spread-eagle, across my ribs. I spit and breathed at the cover, but the book would not lift. I was soon haloed by my intrigued, bathrobed neighbors. One neighbor, Allen, finished eating an egg sandwich and suckled at his fingernails. Then he bent and retrieved the Wake from my chest, and he seemed to read a passage to himself. Then he frowned and said:

“I read this book, and I wrote a paper on it, twenty years ago,” and he began to blink, defensively, as if wrestling some emergent sadness. Another neighbor touched Allen’s shoulder, and Allen said, “I would walk the book to English class, exposed in my hand, like it was a show-dog, and I’d sit it on my desk, angled out into the classroom, like it was a mating bird. And my professor would see the book, and her whole body would prick, like an antelope smelling a lion, and she’d hiss protective, Portuguese prayers into a necklace. ‘It doesn’t have to be Finnegans Wake,’ she whispered to me once, but I ignored her, and in my thesis I argued that Finnegans Wake was a book about a dream about reading a book, instead of a book about a dream, or something, which is why you did the writing for it; and that this is why, and I forget why, at the heart of Deconstructionism was a Reconstructionism, which had a Deconstructionism hidden in its own heart, on and on, as if there were two contradictory umbrellas that you had to live under, constantly passing from one to the other, but without contradiction, because no one could ever exist under both umbrellas simultaneously. And my frightened teacher gave me an A.” Here Allen stopped and stared at the ground for some time. Then he said: “But I understood nothing.” The neighbors murmured. Allen said, “I retained nothing. Whole pages of Finnegans Wake slid over and off of my eyes, like yarn off of a bowling ball. I worked line to line through that book, trying to choke each sentence to death, while those sentences watched me, as impassive as pyramids, until I exhausted myself, and began skimming pages, like sprinting through a museum, staring at a photo of myself. But I wanted to finish reading Finnegans Wake, I did, I did, because I wanted to say that I finished reading Finnegans Wake, to other men and women, like I was publicly giving blood, or cleaning a river; and because I wanted to feature that book on all of my future bookshelves, like a marlin, so that one out of every thousand-and-one houseguests would say, ‘You read Finnegans Wake?,’ and ‘Yes,’ I would say, ‘yes I did, yes.’ And I needed a grade, and it was too late to switch books, so I threw some Latin into a bag, and I shook it, and I was given that A.” Here Allen paused again, still staring downward. After a time, he said, “But like I said, I was a false comprehender of Finnegans Wake. False. An animal wrote it, with the same general anatomy as myself, but not general enough, there was too much play in the margins, Joyce had more land than me, and on his extra property was the seedbed that spawned Finnegans Wake, six-hundred pages of artifice, manmade, by someone who I’m related to, via some Stone Age grandmother, but those six-hundred pages are still greater than me, the book still exceeds me, it exceeds me, and now it follows me, everywhere—every Walgreens, every urinal—dwarfing me, like a taller man, cheapening me, and my children. It’s a mountain that I’ve been cursed to live next to, for scale. It infantilizes me. It cleans my thighs. I’ll die in its shadow, like grass under a rock.” Allen paused again. Then: “And think of my cultural violence, too. I bet Joyce watered a hope, in the cellar of his heart, that his readers would make it to the final half-line, and realize that the book was a cycle, and scream beneath the profundity of it all. But I robbed him of even that. I knew the book was a cycle, and after reading that last half-sentence, I felt only that baseline beat of adrenaline that follows the end of any book, like erect hackles, because you expended X amount of time in the reading of it, and even if every word you read was like painting a white wall white, now you’re done, the workday’s over, and there’s the final, letterless space, sagging down to the last page number, like an oriole’s nest, and you quiver. And then I stared at the back of the back cover, at 5:14 on a Tuesday, the 24th of July. I put the slug-horn to my lips, and blew: I had read Finnegans Wake.” At that, Allen looked up and off to the side, at what might have been a passing plane, and then he said, “But I forgot about it by dinner.” Then he said, “I hate the young man that was me. I wear his corpse around my neck like an albatross.”

The neighbors murmured again. Then:

“Yes!” screamed a second neighbor, but then she covered her mouth with both hands. A napkin-sized chalkboard hung from her neck by a yoke of purple twine, with the words “Kill Me” written on it. And though she held her mouth like a stomach wound, her jaw continued to work anyway, until her fingers began thrashing, like a palm tree in a storm, and then flew from her mouth, and she said, “A gaping aleph uttered from the godmaw, suspended like a tardigrade in a teardrop, opossumming batlike from that holy lower lip, yawning like an open Ark, vomiting thereforthwith that antibiotic trapezoid of Spielbergian thicklight, the blaster of flesh from frames. And then in the afterfire, the remaindermen: inkblackened skeletons, a continent’s worth, who, shamed by their newfound nudity, figleaf their absent genitalia with the flatbones of their palms, but acclimate eventually to the neighboring nakidity, we can sense it like a bonfire at our back, they say, which triggers then the Old Sanguinary Magnetism, pubis seeking pubis, like planets rolling into suns, until a general plague of fornication seizes the populace, and coast to coast, ossuary to ossuary, there are only bones tangling within bones, tangling within bones tangling within bones, and esophagusless moaning reverberating harmonically up the nine singing spheres. Our everyday orthography Ovided into a skeletal menage a million, Bs lying with Zs, Ps lying with Gs, magnets and water, pretzels and reptiles. And the book is shunned accordingly. What summervacationing officewife or officehusband would tote a continental harem of copulating skeletons to the seaside? Not one. And Finnegans Wake is, therefore, in its election to remain itself, our one suicidal novel, which of all forms free to it chose the Perverse Moth, meaning a moth already but one re-encapsulating itself in a midlife chrysalis, or the Reverse Homunculus, a-begging back to its birth beaker, Leve moder, leet me in!, and then dousing its scalp in homemade formaldehyde, and then the cork, and then naught but onanistic selfobservation as its vial wafts moonward off the canon, to balloonbob in some unnumbered wallcorner, between cobwebs and cthulhus, but solitarily grand even among that company, Homer in Hell, orbited by its moonlike asterisk, its everhungering birthmark, dooming it to display in the Smithsonian Institute of the Antipragmatic, a millennium from now, next to a flipphone, and not some hearth, its hope.” Here the neighbor paused to put her hands on her knees, and pant. Then she suddenly straightened and stiffened, like a windsock, as if a belch were working its way through her, and she spasmed, and said: “And oddly unapeable! Huh! Too sui generis, as if Joyce Gödeled his own loins, like a beanstalk breaching the clouds, and cracking its crown against the soilside of its own roots; weather-resistant to the moldlike mimicry of its admirers—a pristine, scarlet, weathersealed Adirondak chair; there. But my my my, the melancholy of the groupieless parkinglot—the mile after mile after mile of sad softdrinkcups, lolling like aukeggs; the floodlights, illuminating nothing; who knew that death had undone so few. And avoidable, at that: he was, when he wanted to be, a suitcase of catchy tunes and tones for the garagebands—each leaf a siren, virus, sundew, lotus flower, Library Scene—throttling authors in their cribs; the impressment of entire minds and generations into the service of his navy, to peel his potatoes. For whosoever engageth to swallow another must first fathom the diameter of their own jaw, lest the meal wear the eater, like a small masque on a large face, and when you open your mouth, their mouth will be under yours. Waiting. And your family will hate you. Behold myself. Behold myself, who—despite the foregoing—has been trying to say… who has been trying to say… who has been trying to say, ‘Good mo… Good mor… Good morn…’” The neighbor stopped and put her hands on her knees again, panting again. After a time, she looked up at the other neighbors, and said, in a different voice, which she seemed to be wringing from her lungs, “I… cannot… scrape this… from my tongue.” Then, exhausted, she began to slowly and faintly tap her chalkboard. Once. Twice. Thrice. Then:

“And one himhimorehims,” said a third voice, “duodaysmally frowning, post naceday, in the drear mistyheaventh of our bard, but the preteensunbath and mirthyrife of this tristian error, hitnourr way twowars unappeacement, publessed, desklined in dunlit hirschfields, his smirk in egress egressed, end, februcated, serialsly exagmirated arout this ratification, bored, torsococked literally, tractably transditioned, twicetended noowse of tooboldefum and judgunum and illeffum, feefing fike and foth, hammocking unbillibally diaphragmtoscrotum, beringbridge and lumbroads, two smartly playdead or paytallonce, sanz culattes for certains, while, scarwards we Trotsee his yig, yan bifurcles, sleeked shock, hes iggnobless obligued penciltip graphitying his greased tonguecrease, his unparsimonious salutoryglands dewing ladylike onto his spent lifelets, devious bhorniclers of noramative nightmatings, wet, earotic, insistwous, georgeous, lucious, humerous, hideous, inane, inane, pandaemonially teetering, palatablly eyefelled, toomuchint clot, laquor on laquor on laquor on, thinking, as he nodded, Stillviang, Beacher whasn’t a critpick, in all the Continent, wailling to singall his pages, the voyer over, ture, a ulysstless end wandering wreck, beyawned our interest, its prowd helm needleadly inland, where he mistook his fans for boars. And one youyoumoreyous him, in surge of new novel impleriments, redreaming his coptic eschatology, no’m on the Nile’s antcedental shore, dandead in stillhouetted bowler, indeedgo against the stygnant, jackelcrowned inverno, his riverburations a (punderouspuntooningfroffelowchalkingdaymoanatomaynextomebreadinglaymotsalanictalamodealamonetjestjest!) thunder. But neithers of had he deeamed longly or forlongly when, trampversing the wrighted pastscape, subluminating all, a callousal fog, dawn and quartered, crested, cote du armes, gospeled, claymiracle, manevolent, tetrahydral, constantinated the empyryrun, lidding the liffeying barrel of, ceasetrating the postcoital power of. Shaun. Seapped with shadows Shem’s hermeticage, his alchemmical nouns, sbared any inissystuous copopulating, forspade the Alps fem maleking mass dreamlets. It was, my Rod!, Thoucomma! (It conenote be! It sees! It sies! It seize!), that iriscible lightthief witch spreadwise its mulky, dimensionless psalms, foregrounding foregrounding, in infinerate reversals, redoalls, insurgercy, anathesialess, anathemafull, sicklic contripation of the anual sphector, telescoping carom of glassed silverplanes, these phinnisian posts and leantols, dust, thair, platween the cave and the vexst, forwards which wereel beckwords as, earwhickerwhichway is finn, we or it transcends, though all reeks lastly (I, manyway, half ailed, thighblistered by the giantolders) of foppish ellipses, armisticed alone, aloof in the claimingtoknow, stuttering emptily upon elucidation, a handsull of cakecrumbs, helliptical dotdotdots, crust before the expiring author, hithercrossing yonnettes, maybe, a busyfisted fly in the eirewakes, goading golden furbrows from the creampact, but a firstflare, in spite of it, burgessoning, Pagend, empspace for profendity’s sake. Nor will this ether settle, laking finarity, lin, a stewlike fillume, a cauldron, dvery dawdling, asymmering, gophering in the stuck, without tip or tottum. But why, offerwise, the aerobatics? Have I enjoyed? Anecessity? A hite of time for the aretrick climbmax? And after? Conjecture and hypertheses. Be cause? We are relegated irrrabically into binality: quadratics, functions, unctions, powers, excess and ohhs, black rhombi. A gain.”

“Yes, it’s exactly like my aunt, it’s exactly like my aunt, who worried that her baby would be a boy, and that the boy would look exactly like his father, who abandoned my aunt while she was pregnant, Because, thought my aunt, no man should be allowed to brand something that he won’t raise, and to guarantee himself one of our two avenues of immortality, to hand your face down the generational bucket-line, here you go, here you go. Then my aunt would tell herself that it wouldn’t matter who the baby looked like; that it might be a girl; that even a boy still wouldn’t be an exact replica of the man, each gene being like a pea under a mattress; that these thoughts were monstrous; that she wasn’t having them at all; et cetera.

“And then the child was born, and it was a boy, and it began as a modular ensemble of spheres, as fungible as any other infant, but as the child aged, ineluctably, his face began to ossify, and it was in the direction that my aunt had feared—the boy’s face migrated, like a flounder’s, creaking closed, creaking closed, until the aunt returned home from the restaurant one evening and turned on the nursery light and saw, gripping the bars of the cradle, grinning without giggling, the boy’s father. So the aunt turned off the nursery light and returned to the living room and sat on the couch and began cursing every lamp and clock that she saw, and hating herself for cursing the furniture, and then cursing it again, and then hating herself again, like a perpetually quickening metronome. Then she thought:

“What if the boy is a handsomer version of his father? That would make the boy not just a billboard, but a false billboard—people will see him and credit the missing father, in secret, for at least leaving the child his eyes and jaw, which is more valuable than food and shelter, because it guarantees these things, and in secretly crediting the father they’ll secretly forgive the father, fraction by fraction, until they forgive him entirely.

“And the boy was handsomer. As he rose on his femurs the baby-fat burned from his cheeks, stranding a handsome, suffocating set of bones; and as it did, in direct relation, you could see my aunt’s eyes dull with suppressed distaste, as she pushed the boy on the swings, and walked him through the zoo. But when she was away from the boy her eyes would sharpen, and she would pull her stuttering nails through her hair, and will herself into thinking fondly of the boy, and she would, she could manage it in his absence, she could, she would think of an abstract blue cloud, in a rough semblance of the boy, and love it, and she would buy the boy a surprise toy. But back home, mired again in the boy’s proximity, sitting on the couch, holding the toy, like a horseshoe crab holding its food, watching the boy come in from the yard, my aunt would fantasize about sanding his nose from his skull, or reshaping his eyebrows in a smithy. Then the boy, making certain not to muddy the rug, would walk to her, and ask if she had a fever, while my aunt would have to say no, she was fine, would the boy like some macaroni-and-cheese.

“Six years passed, and then my aunt married and had a baby girl, and this child was spliced nicely from she and her husband, like a kidnapper’s note, which allowed my aunt to both easily love the girl when the aunt was alone, and to easily love the girl when the aunt beheld her in her empirical skin, each pinchable square of it. But there was a tail-side to that joy, which was that her unmentionable distaste for the boy began to accelerate, and threatened overtness, now that he was in constant juxtaposition to the new daughter. No, she thought, No, she thought, I love my son, she thought, but, finally, one night, on the verge of sleep, she formulated, in English, the idea that—with her daughter—she could finally expunge the boy from herself, and allow her new, uniform family to calcify, from the core outward, and strand the boy, in college or elsewhere. Then the aunt sat up in bed, and plucked five audible hairs from her head, in penance for the thought, and then tried to fall back asleep.

“But the next night my aunt had an even more horrifying thought:

“What, she panicked, if the girl can tell that I don’t like the boy? And she hates me for it? Which makes me hate her? Then: No, she thought, that won’t happen.

“But it did. By the age of three the girl had tuned into the aunt’s low-frequency distaste for the boy. My aunt would yell at the boy for firing a Nerf pistol that she herself had handed to him, and the daughter would sense the aunt’s injustice, and hiss at the aunt, or throw blocks into the television screen. Then my aunt would yell at the girl, who would hiss again, but now in self-defense, and be sent to her room, only to come out later and commiserate with the boy. And then this cycle would repeat. And as it did, the children’s entanglement grew, as the children grew, until the girl shadowed the boy like a gull. So:

“I’ll be nicer to the boy, reasoned my aunt. And she was. One evening my aunt entered the dining room with a carton of chocolate ice cream, only to see, below her, both of her children strangling hungry, vertical spoons. So my aunt panicked, and the carton oscillated between the boy and the girl, and the boy and the girl, until at last she smacked an exaggerated dollop of ice cream into the boy’s bowl.

“‘Why’s Mark get a lot!’ screamed the girl, and, after the ensuing fight, my aunt sent her to her room, where she could hear the girl screaming into the walls. Then my aunt went to the bathroom and lightly impaled her own face with her own ten fingertips. The current state of affairs was slowly stranding my aunt with one miserable paradox, which she had to wake up to, daily, and step into, like a bloody shirt. As before, some corner of my aunt could bear her son, only, when absent from him, as a cloudy abstraction. But when breathing concretely beside him, the boy disgusted her concretely, or at least it disgusted some horrific piece of her. And as for the girl, the aunt still rejoiced whenever they were in the same room, because the girl was still such a finely minced version of the aunt and her husband. But now that the girl and aunt fought daily, whenever they were apart, my aunt sickened at the daughter’s abstraction, because the notion of a daughter, at one point, had sustained her so brightly. Now, because the daughter detested her, thought my aunt, that notion acquired something of the soiled and vacated nest, a taste of her heinous son, and my aunt was incapable of loving both of her children simultaneously, to her horror of horrors.

“Then, one day, my aunt thought, Starting today I will love them both at all times, and she made plans to begin, but now her paradox will never resolve itself, it will remain standing, like two planks leaning against each other, in a sealed room, until the sun eats this planet, the paradox having congealed when the boy, home from college, went to buy his half-sister a bagel, but crashed his car instead, and burned to death at my feet, alongside his copy of

—

Miles Greaves is an attorney living in Sleepy Hollow, New York, with his wife and their two young boys. A story of his won first place in Zoetrope: All-Story’s annual short-fiction contest (winter 2018–2019), and others have appeared in Tin House Online, Jersey Devil Press, Storybrink, and Curlew New York.