Iris Owens - After Claude (New York Review Books Classics)

IRIS OWENS (ne Klein) (19292008) was born and raised in New York City, the daughter of a professional gambler. She attended Barnard College, was briefly married, and then moved to Paris, where she fell in with Alexander Trocchi, the editor of the legendary avant-garde journal Merlin and a notorious heroin addict, and supported herself by producing pornography (under the name of Harriet Daimler) for Maurice Girodiass Olympia Press. Back in the United States, Owens wrote After Claude, which came out in 1973. A second novel, Hope Diamond Refuses, loosely based on her marriage to an Iranian prince, was published in 1984.

EMILY PRAGER is a novelist, a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, and the winner of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism 2000 Online Journalism Award for Commentary. She is at work on a book of essays for Random House, entitled Secrets of Shanghai.

I LEFT Claude, the French rat. Six months of devotion wasted on him was more than enough. I left him as the result of an argument we had over a lousy movie, a sort of Communist version of Christs life, except it didnt seem Communistic to me, whatever that is. Everyone was poor all right, and Mary didnt sport her diamond tiara, but otherwise it was the same old religious crap about how wonderful it is to be a pauper after youre dead. It took them a good half hour to nail Christ to this authentic cross with wooden pegs and a wooden mallet, thump thump, nice and slow so if your thing happens to be palmistry you could become the worlds leading authority on the fortunes of Jesus Christ. Then, in case we thought we were watching a routine crucifixion, the sky turned black, thunder and lightning, the Roman troops, played by Yugoslavias renowned soccer team, squirmed around on their picnic blankets, pondering whether to throw the dice or pack it up.

Do you think theyll have to call off the game? I nudged my French boy friend, which was when I saw that the idiot was having himself a full-blown Catholic seizure.

Claude glowered at me, and in the gloom of the theater, conveniently illuminated by the flashes of divine lighting occurring on the screen, I got a strobe picture of his features: dark, intense frog eyes, abundant black curly hair foaming out of his head, and finally, his full lips, sealed in a hurt pout. Claude had two expressions: that one, which accompanied his profound moods, and the other one, sleepy eyes, mouth relaxed and puffed as if he were blowing out invisible candles, which was the face he woke up with and starred in most of the day.

He might have answered me, but all human exchange was drowned in a clout of heavenly thunder that simultaneously wiped out Christ and the critical faculties of the stunned audience. The houselights went up, and I found myself in this ward of catatonics.

Thank God, I said, as we staggered toward the aisle. I thought that fag would never die. You cant imagine the looks I got from the shell-shock victims. Claude, who wasnt in such great shape himself, made a dazed push for the door.

We left the theater with the rest of the zombies and filed out into the hell of Manhattans Upper West Side, me wondering how I had allowed Claude to con me into penetrating enemy territory for the privilege of undergoing that exquisite torture. It was hot, New York summer hot, the airless streets pressure-cooked into a thick layer of grease and scum, which reminded me of the best part of the movie which was that it had been cool in there. I lit my first Marlboro in three hours, since the so-called art house considered it very unartistic to smoke anywhere but in the balcony, and Claude, a non-smoker, was happy only in the third row of the orchestra. As a film connoisseur, he deemed it his duty to sit as close to the screen as his neck muscles would tolerate.

Boy, I said, drawing the smoke into my deprived lungs, its all fixed or the guy who invented air conditioning would certainly have won the Academy Award by now.

Why the hell dont you ever shut up? Its a drag to take you anywhere.

I gathered from Claudes tone that I had committed a crime, but the only offense I could think of was that of retaining my sanity throughout the endless dirge.

Claude, who had learned his English in England, spoke with one of those snotty, superior accents, stuffed into a slimy French accent, the whole mess flavored with an occasional American hipsterism, making him sound like an extremely rich, self-employed spy. I forgive myself for not instantly despising him, because one: its not my style to pass hasty judgments on people, and two: it was my luck to meet him under circumstances that made anyone not holding a knife to my throat look appealing.

All around us, the shuffling movie patrons seemed to be snapping out of their trances, because a babble of words rose out of them, and instead of mounting into a riot, instead of rushing back into the theater and pulling up the rows. of moth-eaten seats, there was just this Greek chorus about how authentic, how beautiful their recent ordeal had been.

Authentic, I snorted at Claude. What makes the director so sure Christ had rotten teeth and acne? Because, believe me, his close-ups had been unsparing.

Shut up. Stop attracting attention. Its embarrassing to take you anywhere.

What is it with you, Claude? Cant we go to a crummy movie without you getting hysterical about the impression Im making?

Claude marched smartly ahead of me, and I was practically running, as well as shouting, to keep in touch with him. In a normal neighborhood, we might have aroused suspicion, but up there, it just passed as a harmless purse snatching.

Slow up, I yelled, when he reached the corner of Broadway and Ninety-fifth Street, because its not one of my favorite fantasies to be abducted by six muscular militants to go play White Goddess in the back room of guerrilla headquarters. Claude waited, but not necessarily for me. He was searching nervously up and down the hostile streets. I knew he was having a crisis about whether to spend three dollars plus on a taxi ride down to the Village or to risk a knifing/ mugging expedition on the IRT, a soul-searching choice for a Frenchman to make.

Decide, sweetheart, I said, when I caught up to him. Your money or your life?

Claude pretended not to hear me, an act of male intelligence that never fails to impress me, and waved at a cab with a glowing off-duty sign. Since we were obviously desirable tenants, uncluttered by kids, pets, or luggage, the taxi came to a screeching halt at the corner. Any halfwit knows that New York taxis dont back up, so we did the hundred-yard dash like two grateful hitchhikers. There followed a brief but searching interview which established that we were all going in the same general direction. The sullen driver unlocked the back door, and Claude shoved me inside and proceeded to give the most detailed directions to our residence on Morton Street, all in his greasy headwaiters accent, lest, God forbid, the bandit employ his own initiative and take us down the cool, quick extravagance of the West Side Highway. One additional dime spent in a taxi was Claudes idea of death by fire. The driver, hate in his heart, went careening down Broadway as if he were rushing plasma to a beheading.