Free Travesty by John Hawkes

of the car or one of those sylvan paths that take you from
     the intersection of two dusty roads to the turnstile at the edge of the field. So it
     is a short village street but obstinate, and unlighted, and extremely narrow, and
     bordered for its entire length by a high, sinuous stone wall overtopped by the now
     wet tile roofs of the village houses and the limbs of an occasional dead tree.
     Throughout our passage through the wretched place the side of the car will be within
     touching distance of the heavy stone. If you insist on looking, you will see an
     infinite rapid shuffling of rock and wood; iron door handles and high broken
     shutters will fly in your face; our way shall consist of impossible angles, a near
     collision with the fountain in the central square, a terrible encounter with a low
     arch. We shall have become a locomotive in a maze, and the noise will be the worst
     of all. Our lights will be like searchlights swiveling in unimaginable confinement,
     and a forlorn, artificial rose and the granite foot of one of their crucified
     Christs and a sudden low chimney will all approach us like a handful of thrown
     stones. But the noise will be the worst. It will be as if we ourselves were a rocket
     firing in the caves and catacombs of history. Let us hope that the cats of the
     village are not as prevalent as the rabbits of our rural highway. Let us hope that
     we are not deflected by a shard of tile or little rusted iron key or the slick,
     white femur of some recently slaughtered animal. Otherwise we shall brush the stone
     walls, swerve, bring down the entire village to a pile ofrubble
     which we shall no doubt drag after us a hundred meters or more.
    There is nothing to be done about the sound. But you may well wish to
     close your eyes, or simply lean forward and bury your face in your hands. The entire
     deafening passage will last an eternity but also no time at all. Why see it? Why not
     leave the seeing as well as the driving to me? And you might amuse yourself by
     considering what the peasants will think when we shake their street and start them
     shuddering in their poor beds: that we are only an immoral man and his laughing
     mistress roaring through the rainy night on some devilish and frivolous escapade. Or
     consider what we shall leave in our wake: only an ominous trembling and a half dozen
     falling tiles.
    But do you see it? . . .Just there? . . .That huddled darkness
     of habitation? . . .The stones in the rain? . . .Here it is. . . . Hold on
     . . .
    Come, come,
cher ami
. It is behind us. But now you know how
     trustworthy I really am.
    Do you realize that among all the admiring readers of your slender
     and now somewhat rare volumes there are those who, if given even the briefest
     glimpse into your life and mine, would consider me a sillycoward
     and you a worthless soul? If the invisible camera existed, and if it recorded this
     adventure of ours from beginning to end, and if the reel of film were salvaged and
     then late one night its images projected onto a tattered white screen in some movie
     house smelling of disinfectant and damp clothing and containing almost no audience
     at all, it is then that your malignant admirers would stand in those cold aisles and
     dismiss me as a silly coward and condemn you as a worthless soul. As if any coward
     could be silly, or any soul worthless. But then it is what you at least deserve,
     since you have spent your life sitting among small audiences in your black trousers
     and open white shirt and with your cigarette in your mouth and your elbows on your
     knees and your hands clasped—like a man on a toilet—telling those
     eager or hostile women that the poet is always a betrayer, a murderer, and that the
     writing of poetry is like a descent into death. But that was talk, mere talk. Now,
     if given the chance, you would speak from experience.
    As for me, I have said it already and will not hesitate to say it
     again: I am an