Those Wonderful Years - Barry N. Malzberg, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
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Those Wonderful Years
BARRY N. MALZBERG
I
LISTENING TO THE great sounds of '63, pouring like fruit from the
transistors, the engine on high, pulling me irresistibly toward that simpler
and more reasonable time of my life.
All is love/stars above/know the
tune/I lost so soon
, Cosmo and the Pearls, got it together in '61, got the
sounds right the following year, hit it to the top with MOONSONG in that
golden year of the assassination and then it all fell apart as so many lives
have fallen apart during the 60's: drugs, divorce, abandonment, flight,
hatred and Cosmo himself died in a fountain in Las Vegas or was it a pool
in '69, must have been around that time, maybe a year later. Does not
matter. Old Cosmo was finished by the mid-sixties, the whole sound that
he exemplified, the tender lyric which he probed overtaken by harsher
jolts but ramming the Buick at high speed down the expressway it is '63
again and Cosmo is young, all of us are younger and I let the apples and
oranges of that music bounce over me, humming only a little at the
rhythm parts. On the expressway I whir past other aspects of the past:
cars from the early sixties assault me from oncoming lanes, yield to me on
the right and in the chrome, the strange, bent archaic shapes of the 60's I
know my history again and again revealed. MOONSONG ends on a
diminished seventh or maybe it is merely a hanging chord (I know
absolutely nothing about music other than how it affects me) and the
radio is still, then there is a commercial for the Wonder Wheel chain of
superior foodstuffs in the metropolitan area and without transition from
'66 comes the sound of the TROOPERS singing
Darkness of Love
. '66 was
a good year too although not as critical in many aspects as '63, still it is a
period worth remembering. The TROOPERS help me remember. Locked
to the sound, a little pivot wheel of memory I soar through all the spaces of
the Expressway and into the impenetrable but to-be-known future. The
vaginal canal of the future, parting its thick lips for me gently as I snaffle
along in pursuit of my destiny.
II
Outside the building containing Elvira's single-girl's apartment I wedge
the car into a space, remove the key (cutting off Tom and the Four Gees in
SWEET DELIGHT, a pure pear plucked from the tree of '54, a little before
my time but no matter) and sit behind the wheel for a moment,
 meditating. I am a little early for our date which happens quite often but
then too I am in no hurry to see Elvira, preferring always to cherish the
memories gathered through our times together than to go into the
difficult business of creating new ones. (The past is fixed, the present
incomprehensible, the future without control; I must remember this.)
Already Elvira is an artifact to me; her breasts already seem to have the
glaze of embalming fluid, her mouth tastes like mucilage, it is not Elvira
which I am kissing so much as the Elvira which I will remember. It is
difficult to explain this. It is difficult to explain this but I will try: Elvira
and our relationship are to be a golden oldie of the early eighties. Thinking
this and other muddled thoughts I step briskly from the car, move through
stones and into the lobby of the building where I see she has already come
down to wait for me, a handbag slung over her shoulder, a tight and
aggressive expression across her eyes and cheeks. I know that I will have to
suppress memories of Elvira's aggression in order to be truly moved by her
years hence. "We must make a decision," she says, grasping my arm
between wrist and elbow, in the vicinity of the ulna, and applying modest
pressure. "We cannot go on this way. Tonight we must resolve our
relationship."
"I am not prepared to make any decisions, Elvira," I say, submitting to
her grasp. In ordinary life I am a claims examiner for a large insurance
company which has, partly because of me, one of the lowest payout rates
in the business, a statistic which they do not advertise. In that capacity I
must do a great deal of writing and checking but fortunately this is with
the
right
hand and not with the left which feels Elvira's pressure.
Resultantly I do not protest at being greeted by her in this way but try to
take a lower key. Cosmo and the Pearls, according to the newspaper
stories at the time of their success, are supposed to have met on an
unemployment line in the Bronx, New York, but I do not believe this. I
discard most public biographies as lies and, trusting nothing, believe that
the truth can only be found in what Cosmo does to me. A little snatch of
MOONSONG buzzes through my head like an indolent fly and I do not
slap at it; I listen.
Lost so soon/all I loved/like the stars above
. Above,
above. "We will have to take it as it comes, Elvira," I add liking the sound
of her name.
El-vi-ra;
it carries within it the characteristic sound of the
seventies, posturing and yet somehow childlike, which will surely
characterize this decade in the years which lie ahead.
"No," she says, tightening her grasp on the arm, leading me toward the
one voluminous couch which in shades of orange and yellow dominates
 the lobby of her residence, "it cannot be. You've equivocated too much. I
can't waste these important years of my life on someone who doesn't even
know his identity!" She raises a fist to her face, dabs at her eyes. "And
besides that, I sometimes think that you don't even really want me," she
says, "that when you're with me you're already thinking about how you'll
remember me. I tell you, this is no way for a relationship to function. I
have a great deal to offer you but it must be within the terms of the
present. You've got to be here with me now."
"You don't understand, Elvira," I say, guiding her to the couch, gently
easing down and at last her terrible grip eases and I run a fervid hand over
my joint, relocating the source of circulation and bringing the blood to
clear surge yet again. "The past is fixed, the present incomprehensible, the
future without control. If we repudiate our past, well then, what are we?
And if we do not cherish the past, that only immutable part of us, well,
then, Elvira, what will we make of the present and the future?" but even as
I am saying this I feel the hopelessness of the argument overwhelm me.
Her little face is set tight, her little breasts jut with argumentation; if I
touched her body my hands would recoil, I am sure, with a metallic spang.
She does not understand. Slowly I disengage myself from her, stand, walk
back through the lobby, gesticulating.
"I'm not ready to make a commitment," I say, "how can we know where
we're going until we know where we've been? You've got to understand
history, otherwise the sheer accumulation of data overwhelms," and so on
and so forth, now I am beyond the doors themselves, the cool,dense glaze
of air hitting me, ruffling my cheeks and still Elvira sits on the couch,
unmoving, her hands closeting her pocketbook, her eyes fixed straight
ahead. She seems to be speaking but I cannot hear a word which she is
saying. She mouthes polysyllables, I concentrate, but all is beyond me. "I'm
sorry," I say, "truly sorry," and walking back to the car feel a fine, true
instant of regret; I could come back to her, vault against her on the couch
and confess my sin: that dark, unspeakable stain which radiates from the
heart through all the tendrils of the body, that stain which begins in loss
and ends in acceptance but what good would it do me? Or her? No, our
relationship is obviously finished, I restore myself to the seat cushions of
my car, hurriedly start the motor and drive away, the radio, caught in the
gears, booming.
The Four Knights, '59, THE TEARS OF YOUR HEART. '59 was a year of
great transition just as this has been; everything hurt in '59, I let the
 music run over me like blood and for an instant it is that year again and I
twenty years old trying to come to terms with matters which I do not even
remember. In retrospect I glimpse Elvira; she remains on the couch, she is
sunk on the couch like stone: already a perfect artifact nestled in
mucilage, on display for the
tourista
of recollection which in little fibers I
shall send on their way in all of the years to come.
III
A man with all of his limbs torn off by an automobile accident was
denied compensation when I was able to establish through delicate
interviewing and piecing together of evidence that the accident was
self-caused and therefore not covered under the terms of his particular
policy. For this I was given praise by my supervisor and a small bonus but
I cannot get over an unreasonable feeling of guilt even now as if somehow
it would have been better if I had falsified the interviews and
documentation and allowed the quadruple amputee to slip a false claim
through the company.
IV
A Festival of Revival is held at the large municipal auditorium which I
attend. All of the great performers of the '50's excepting only those who
have died or have gone on to better things are there: the Chryslers and the
Flyers, Lightnin' Joe and the Band, the Little Black Saddle, Tony
Annunzio. Seated in the third row orchestra, surrounded by stolid
citizenry who have carried forward the menacing expressions of their
youth and little else, I am stunned again by the energy of that decade, its
fervor and wildness, the way in which it anticipated and sowed the seeds
of so much else to come, but I am also humbled because in a critical way I
have come such a short distance from that time; my responses to the Little
Black Saddle are as they were when I was thirteen, no difference, this is no
Festival of Changes. Of course the '60's were even more significant than
the '50's, I must remember that, and that is to take nothing away from the
'40's which prefigured both of these decades to say nothing of the '70's,
fast receding from us and likely to be remembered as the most moving
decade of all. Tony Annunzio takes off his jacket and tie to sing his final
numbers, just as he did in the old days, and I am shocked at how round he
has become although, of course, my memories of him are unreliable. His
great hit, BROKEN CHAIN OF CIRCUMSTANCE, is the finale of the show
and while standing in tribute with the rest of the audience I find myself
 thinking of Elvira. If only we had been able to share this moment together!
but she declined my invitation, of course, hanging up the phone on me
nastily but not before saying that in her opinion my unusual attachment
to certain elements of the past only showed a childish inability to face the
future.
How could I have explained to her that the past
is
the future? and what
difference would it have made, the spotlight on Tony Annunzio winking
off, the houselights surging on and all five thousand of us rising as one to
cheer the voice of his generation, and Tony, standing on the bare stage to
take those cheers with the same grace and offhandedness with which,
more than twenty years ago, he bowed to us at the old Orpheus, now the
new
Orpheus and also the site of many great revivals?
V
Coming home I find Elvira lying naked in my bed, the covers below her
waist, her eyes bright with malice. Try as she may, it seems that she
simply cannot leave me alone. I know the feeling well although I have
never had it with Elvira. "I'll tell you about the nostalgia craze and your
golden oldies," she says with a mad wink, "I've been thinking this through
carefully and now I'll tell you the truth." She is thirty-one years old,
attractive but not exceptional and from the beginning of our relationship
she might have regarded me as her last chance. This has led to much
bitterness in the breakup.
"Let me tell you what I think it is," she says, her voice wavering, her
little breasts shaking, the nipples pursed as if for a kiss, "the nostalgia
craze, this constant digging up of the past for people like you who can't
face the future; it's all a government plot. It comes from the capital.
They're manipulating everything by digging up the past so that people
aren't able to bridge the distance between the present and the future. They
think that they can keep people from seeing what's really been
done
to
them if they feed them the past like a drug to keep on reminding them of
what they used to be. They're going to keep us all locked in the past so that
we won't really ever see what's going on
now
but I won't fall for it and I
won't let
you
fall for it." She leaps from the bed, breasts shaking, and
seizes me around the neck, gathers me in. "Please," she says, "you must
face your life, must face what you've become and where you're going, you
can't live in the past," moving her body like a lever against mine, bone to
bone, flesh to flesh and for all of my embarrassment and rage it is difficult
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