Peru. Gordon Lish

      

      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”