With My Dog Eyes: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

Mathematician, right?
    Pity for Amanda washes over me. She has, looking at me, a stupid and childish look on her face. Some seminary man will say that a child can’t have a stupid look. I have always been afraid of children (I think my father was too, deep down), afraid they’ll spit in my face my eye my chest. For instance, the kid of one of Amanda’s friends spit in my glass of whiskey during one of those tedious parties, a birthday party for somebody’s little Junior, come on Amanda, come, afterward we’ll play a little game, well okay, he spit, and another little twerp let out a drawn-out fart that really set me off, and he just wandered away, a little cardboard party hat on his head. Amanda tersely screeching: Amós, I’m thirty years old, you get it? thirty. I say I don’t get it. She explains: I’m trying to say I’m young, Amós, and living with you it’s like I was dead, get it? Sheesh, Amanda, why would you say that? Every day you look older to me, more closed up, you don’t say a word to my friends, not even to that mathematician who seems to adore you. Who? Isaiah. Well that’s because we understand each other. How can you understand each other without even talking? I understandIsaiah, I do, Amanda. I don’t tell her that Isaiah lives with a pig in his house. Isaiah: I took a shine, Amós, to that little animal, she’s called hilde and she just showed up one day at my house, she’s friendly, very nice, she makes great company. And mathematics? Ah, it helps me a lot to have hilde around the house, she doesn’t annoy me, doesn’t shed, she’s gentle, patient, quiet. A few grunts at times, but that gets me a bit excited, you know? I know. Amanda continues: Amós, you’re acting strange. She leans over me. I’m seated. I see the groove between her breasts and the pendants on her neck. She says: you stink. I say: it was that little twerp that farted. Ah. You’re being very strange. You always knew that I was a bit confused. Confused how, Amós? You were never confused, you’re a professor of pure mathematics, you’re a university professor, you did a thesis and all that, remember? You were simply adorable. Adorable, huh? And they said you were brilliant. Brilliant, huh? Please, Amós, tell me what’s going on. I don’t even drink my whiskey. I couldn’t do it. I go home.
    When will you give me, O Great Laughter
    A string of agates or of threads of water
    Fine like those silky strands
    That hang from anemones
    When? So that I can
    Lace you, darkness and pleasure
    My selves disintegrating
    AND BARELY
    The you of you in me
    When
    This love clasped to your bone?
    Suspicions. Whispers that flare in the corners, at the edges. I’m stretched out on the sofa, looking at the ceiling. A friend of Amanda’s: could I squeeze in here on the edge? Her buttocks against my waist. Little lizards up above me. Their little feet clutching the long boards. I clutch at that understanding, the one from up there on the hill. A univocal universe, yes. A perfect and splendid Absolute. A short formula injected with light. Did the possibility of Amós having felt that incommensurable meaning create a loss or a gain? Around him objects, shelves, books, the kid’s bike, notebooks, the little building where he lived, walls roof floor, and the old car outside, and the two beings he lived with, and drawers with some shirts and socks and underpants, Amanda’s dresses, the boy’s clothing, and me here stretched on the sofa, this woman’s buttocks still warming my waist, and sweetened words, the sweetness of squash (want some?) and foolishness, a ride in the car (wanna go?) and senselessness, a cup of tea (want some?), whiskey (wantsome?). But is there any? We’ll buy some says Amanda, of course we’ll buy some says the hot buttcheek, I reflect: after that incommensurable experience there are only two options: live a pathetic, indecent life, transude obscenity, why not? Get drunk every night, and vicious, sputtering,