The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg Page 9

  Cranberry, with his purple hair and multihued, hayfield skin, is a breathing embodiment of Van Gogh's palette. I didn't come up with that. Kaatje did. She is twenty-three and works as a business consultant for a chain of hotels. On the plane, Kaatje looked at Cranberry, told him she dreamt about him, began to cry, then said, “You are like a Van Gogphk. (This, I swear, is how the Dutch say Van Gogh, and they should know.) Your pretty colors. So beautiful.”

  Cranberry knew Kaatje, too. He told her about his poetry, which, of late, revolves around a tree woman, who comes to him in his bedroom and makes plain his place in the world, in the universe. It's no lie. He has been writing weird woman poetry. He showed me some yesterday, after the plane, something about a tall Danish princess more willow than girl who inhabits his dreams and tells him to go to Europe. He's in Europe now. So that's something. Of course, I pointed out the Danish princess is not Dutch and, from the context of the poem, she is dead, lived centuries ago, and serves herself up only in the dreams of teen poseurs. Cranberry shouted, “I imagined Kaatje exactly!”

  Cranberry often yells at me. He is filled with passion and energy. He has violent mood swings, which have nothing to do with the life of a middle-class adult and everything to do with teenage angst regarding his place in the universe, which I respect. I love that Cranberry.

  This morning Kaatje called us from the lobby of the hotel. When we got to the lobby, she cupped Cranberry's purple head with her big hand and pressed him to her chest—Madonna and Child.

  What was it in me that saw God in you? Why don't other people fall off cliffs like I do? Why is Cranberry able to pursue his bliss? Or will he fall off a cliff, too, regardless of the financial net provided by his parents? These are interesting questions.

  Van Gogh had some kind of epilepsy that drove him wild. I have a hard time believing it was epilepsy, but what do I know? He tried to butcher Gauguin before he famously swacked off a piece of his own poor ear. Later, “for the good of all,” he shot himself in the chest and died. I just learned this today at the Van Gogh Museum, which I visited with Cranberry and Kaatje.

  Seeing the art and reading Van Gogh's story got to Cranberry. He got teary and told me not to kill myself, whispered that to me. And I thought, for a moment, perhaps I shouldn't. Look at these gorgeous, so completely alive paintings made by this freak!Why should I kill myself? Look at life! Then I got terribly depressed, facing fifty years of living, fifty years of paranoia and fear, fifty years of terrible nightmares, fifty years without you, and immediately sank, recommitted myself to the task at hand, then disappeared into darkness.

  Van Gogh is my new hero. I had a great time in that museum, the Van Gogh Museum, the museum of my new hero. Van Gogh made me love you more, and you are life to me. I love life. I love you. You are gone.

  In my nightmare last night, a recurring Nazi nightmare, you were suddenly next to me, not sewn into a tapestry but really next to me, and you were kissing my neck and then my mouth, and we touched hands then we made love and all the terror drained away and I was only with you.

  God, Chelsea. I love you.

  T.

  Day Seven:

  Transcript 2

  * * *

  That's why I want you to define what you mean by God. I didn't once think of a big bearded . . . flowing robe fellow . . . on a throne.

  My God was more an ecstatic energy, a feeling. Think of homeless men in convenience stores talking about God.

  You think God is comforting them? Is that Catholic theology?

  Oh ho ho . . . nice. Yes, okay. Maybe I did conflate Chelsea and God. That's an interesting way of putting it, Barry. Sounds perverted.

  I'm too literal? I've never been accused of that.

  Her . . . intensity. Everything intense. Big hands and eyes and shoulders . . . She washed over me, filled me. I suppose she gave me a notion of how to live? She was a guide. She was all action, which was very sexy. Incredibly sexy.

  I don't know that I do know the difference between a sexual and a spiritual experience. Being with her felt like a spiritual experience.

  I'm surprised you're entertaining this at all. I was a married man having an affair, you know? Don't you condemn that?

  It is complicated.

  Right. You're right. Not that complicated.

  Letter 21

  September 18, 2004

  * * *

  Dear Vincent Van Gogh,

  I went to your museum today and had a beautiful time. Why do you sound so happy in your letters to Theo? You weren't happy, were you? I'm not ever happy, and yet, I think, in all of the letters I write, I sound quite happy. I write suicide letters, Vincent!

  In one of the translated letters I read, you suggest Theo should smoke a pipe, as it is a cure for the blues. You say you happen to have the blues now and then. So you smoke a pipe.

  We are so much alike. Except I think you were a good person. I am not a good person.

  I'm going to smoke hashish. What did you put in your pipe, Vincent?

  I'm sorry you had the blues.

  Your great admirer,

  T. Rimberg

  Letter 22

  September 18, 2004

  * * *

  Dear Chelsea,

  I only stopped writing you an hour ago. I have stopped in a “coffee” house. Cranberry wasn't in the hotel room and he left no note. I can only assume he is with his new love, Kaatje. And so I am alone—or sort of alone, I've been talking to people around me a little.

  Why am I in Europe? To find my dad. Cranberry is distracting.

  Yes, here I am, on another continent and in a “coffee” house where the hash smoke is thick and sweet. I've been told it's Moroccan, and it is dark, oily, beautiful. It smells organic and sweet, and it smells like you.

  There are people on either side of me, sitting with other people, smoking and talking quietly. My energy is high. I am sort of sunnily suicidal today, and this is a very quiet, dark place. No light is let in through the windows, and the lights in here are dim, casting dark orange on dark wood, and there's no music playing, only people murmuring, whispering, many of them in wool coats, because it's cold. Where's the pot laughter? Where's the Marley music? Come on! There are Rasta flags all around me and pictures of Rastafarians and there are some Rastafarian types sitting in this café, but they just whisper to the German and Dutch and English intellectuals while they smoke their ganja. Nothing is light.

  I'm drinking tea.

  You would love it here. You like pot. I became afraid of pot, as you know. Remember when we smoked pot? You had it stashed in your panty drawer for God knows how long and then we smoked it out of that one-hitter pipe, sitting cross-legged on the beige carpet of your duplex living room. The one-hitter, the heat, burned my throat and made me hack big puffy smoke coughs, while you laughed and laughed, sitting on the floor of your tiny living room, folding over laughing at my coughing tears. We were listening to Coltrane, Coltrane—what a funny name. You got calm when I stopped choking, touched my cheek with your big, beautiful, electric hand, told me you loved me desperately. But then my heart raced and I began to sweat, and then I felt the panic, and you asked if I was okay, which I was not, then I ran out of your house, got in my car, and drove straight north twenty miles, up to Lino Lakes to a gas station, where I stayed for three hours, because I couldn't stay at your house, on fire high. My car was parked in your driveway and I knew Mary would drive by your house, even though your house was miles from my family's house. I just knew Mary would drive by.

  Oh shit, Chelsea. I wish I hadn't driven away, showing you that. I'm so sorry I was afraid to be caught with you.

  You wouldn't speak to me at the office on Monday (though I'd e-mailed my apologies over the weekend and you'd responded, “It's fine.”). You wouldn't speak to me for several days after that and I didn't know why, except I guessed you thought I couldn't hold my weed, which seemed ridiculous, because you gave me drugs and I acted weird, which is how people act on drugs. So what if I drove to som
e North Suburb and parked my car at a Super America where I ate three horrible rotisserie hot dogs and a terrifying Mex wrap called a Taquito? Of course I did that. I was on drugs, which you gave me.

  But now, of course, it occurs to me that you understood something about my wife Mary and what she meant to me. What you understood at that moment was: T. is not in this with me for the long haul because he ran away to Lino Lakes to hide his car from his wife.

  I'm so sorry. I made no mistakes in my whole life, because all choices led to you. But then I didn't choose you. How could God have let this happen?

  I shouldn't smoke hashish. But it is too late. I crumbled this oily, Moroccan stuff I got from the bar into tobacco, and the guy next to me rolled it up in a cigarette, smiling at me, because I can't roll a joint right and now I am getting high, Chels, and I am not paranoid, Chels, there's nothing to fear anymore for obvious reasons . . . But I am on fire, because I'm thinking of you and I know why you left me . . . It wasn't the fact I was married, but the fact I didn't see God's plan, which was that you and I were supposed to be. If I saw God in your face, then I have no faith in God, because I drove to Lino Lakes.

  Holy Christ. I'm so high. This is different. There has to be a way to tone this down, because I am going to be sick in this place. I will likely keel over dead. This is terrible. I have to go for a walk. I need to get some air, and I can't even read what I'm writing, how could you? That's fine because you don't care. Please.

  No, Chels. I love you. I love you. I always have forever even before I was born and I would never have left you and this whole thing might be different. I don't know anything, but my heart is going to explode, Chelsea.

  Day Seven:

  Transcript 3

  * * *

  I obviously survived.

  Actually, it was good. It was a good feeling. At least when I came down a little. I really thought my heart was exploding at first . . . but . . . I did feel close to something authentic, high, touching the metal railings on bridges over the canals. Something real, sort of sublime, I guess, which I wanted.

  I conflated God with drugs? Uh . . . I don't think so.

  Don't you think there are drug users out there who are recreational users, who prefer smoking hash to—to—riding dune buggies—or fishing? Is every impractical act a search for God?

  What are practical acts then?

  Letter 23

  September 18, 2004

  * * *

  Chels,

  Cranberry left me a note while I was out high. We're supposed to go to Antwerp tomorrow, but he wants to take another day with Kaatje. Should I let him derail my plans? He did say, “Please.” What about my truth finding? What about my search for the father I did not know? Should I let Cranberry go?

  Yes. God bless him. I want him to find his Chelsea before it's too late.

  Yes, his you. You've become my stand-in for great love. I mean, what if I met you now, on a plane headed for Amsterdam? What if I sat in the center aisle of a DC-10, between a mother with a screaming child and a girl with black hair and black eyes, who turned to me upon takeoff and said, “I dreamt about you last night”? What if we met now? I would throw everything else out, and we'd smoke hash together, maybe, or maybe we wouldn't need to, and we'd kiss on bridges and watch the bikers pass by, and we'd make love in a hotel. I'd give up everything for you now.

  Okay. I'm breathing. Okay. I'm having a Coke (the soda).

  Isn't it funny that I was reticent to be with you because I feared losing everything else and then I lost you along with everything else?

  Why reticence? I had built a structure—a family, a house, a career. Even though the structure felt empty after a while, I built it. I owned it. It was something concrete to believe in. And even when my divorce was final last year, I didn't call you, because, I suppose, I hoped Mary would come back to me so I could reenter that structure, that home. I didn't have faith in God who I saw in you. I hedged. I was conservative. I was preservative. And I lost everything, including you, who made so much sense when nothing else did.

  Go for it, Cranberry! Go for the GUSTO! Screw me, Cranberry, And Be With Kaatje!

  I'm sorry I'm such a coward. I'm fighting sleep. I need more Coke.

  T.

  Day Seven:

  Transcript 4

  * * *

  I got something right? What?

  If you have faith, there is nothing to lose. Okay. So?

  With God you are free because you know there's nothing anyone can take from you. You have God. They can even take your life, but they can't take away God, who is eternal, not destructible, right? So—so you're free to make courageous choices . . . like, what? To divorce your wife for another woman?

  I think we're confused here. First, I don't think you can be courageous if every choice you have is easy. Second, I don't like your idea of faith. You don't have to have a nice bone in your body and you can be horrible . . . and arrogant . . .

  I'm serious. Arrogance. There are World War II memorials all over Amsterdam.

  Arrogance causes war, Father Barry. So many of these jerks think they've got God so they don't need to do anything else, because God is on their team. Dumbassed Americans think they can tear up the desert in their dune buggies . . . they can cheat on their taxes without fear, because they have God. Religious people are fantastic. God gives them an excuse to be brutal, and nothing can touch them because they have God. Same logic underlies war, my man. You think Germans didn't have faith in their absolute? The Nazis had certainty, Barry. They knew they were right and God—whatever messed-up God they believed in—was with them, would reward them. Disgusting.

  Secular? Not exactly, Barry. Power to the people! The über people. Big blond giant magical people! Pretty people who are free to kill because they believe in their divine right!

  The Nazis had faith—maybe different rules and gods, but faith—just like you.

  Did you just ask me to cool down?

  Where are you going?

  Letter 24

  September 18, 2004

  * * *

  Oh shit, Chelsea.

  Terrible.

  The coffee shop where I had my several Cokes to stay awake apparently is only a moment's walk from the Red Light District. I just wanted to go back to the hotel, to have a beer, to calm down and watch a little Dutch TV before dinner. Instead, I was in the Red Light District after a short walk down the thinnest street ever—no cars could go there, only bikes, and the bikes nearly hit me, the street was so thin. And the windows, the many storefronts on this tiny street, as I walked apparently the opposite direction from the hotel, soon became filled with giant dildos of many colors, some more missile than penis. And right then, at the end of that street, the late day sun broke from behind the clouds, and although it is cool, moist, nippy, that darker sun in combination with the humidity, made me sweat, and the street, the next street after the thinnest street in the world, was filled with windows, and in the windows there were big-breasted African women in neon bikinis, beckoning with big dildos, waving dildos at me, puckering, rotating their hips and enormous, round asses, which made me sweat more. And the cold, sweaty heat was unbearable, so I pulled off my sweater as I walked, which brought the opening of doors, the whistling of women who wanted me to pay them for sex. So I hustled around the corner, which brought me to a street filled with Asian women in windows—apparently the marketplace is niche, segmented by race—who had smaller breasts and smaller asses and were wearing black or white bikinis and were not holding dildos but were posing as if in mid-orgasm, hips clenched then shaking, and were beckoning to me and to others. And outside some windows, groups of men stood making titty-pinching gestures and puckering-lip faces, and an American kid, a college kid, said to a teeny-tiny Asian girl who couldn't be more than twenty, “You can't handle this fat boy.” And he grabbed his penis through his jeans, then to his friends, “Dude, my dick would totally destroy her.” And then, prompted by his friends, high-fiving his friends, shouting, “
Fuckin right,” he entered the door next to the window with the tiny Asian girl and a curtain came down, so they were about to do it, whatever, right there behind a thin curtain as his boys stood outside that thin glass high-fiving, while this frat boy and his “fat boy” totally destroyed that poor girl. I know that can't be the case, but his intent—his intent. And I turned back, followed my streets back past Asians pressing their asses to glass and Africans pinching big pink missiles between their breasts, and then to the coffee shop where I last sat, where I last wrote you, where I am sitting now, dizzy, hot, not sure where my hotel is, without Cranberry, without you.

  Day Seven:

  Transcript 5

  * * *

  Maybe not. Maybe I didn't conflate sex and God or whatever, because I was really disturbed . . . I was heartbroken in the Red Light District.

  Those young women and . . .

  So animal. Like cattle. Living so other people can harvest your . . . Maybe I'm a prude.

  No, not judgmental. Who am I to judge anybody? It just made me feel sad.