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The Red Chamber

By James Keegan

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Revelers below my window… I can hear them at their winter festival, hear their music and fireworks. In a second story window of a rented room above Miller’s Butcher Shop, the landlord a butcher, I, in my place, am unable...more so, unwilling... to join in the festival because …I have my work; I am a scribe. The festivalgoers dress themselves in bells to give sound to their dancing; there is an ice sculpting contest, and tents where beer is sold. I live in a building built by the sale of blood. There is the drop in which I have to live, the others outside. This is my red chamber.

Their smiles, their happiness, is brought about by the alcohol; they drink to the point of violence or nausea; all their festivals end in headaches. Their food fattens them to obesity; their meals end with them defecating out what they have eaten. Their music is a child banging a pot on a kitchen floor - it is an irritation - it is no solace, and they will outgrow it. Their bodies… hardened…engorged… for them every day is a mating season, a forty-year menstruation; the men speak vulgarities of fourteen year old girls - the men are just old and fat, capable of masturbating only. Sex is like blowing one’s nose, a gesture, a gesture like wiping with toilet paper.

The nights I have had to sit in this room at my papers, fifteen hours straight at times…

I tasted of their desserts, the dripped chocolates, but the sugar burned holes in my teeth.

I could not subsist, could not find nourishment from eating of their food, although I was made to eat of it, every day.

Hunger becomes my lover. Much do I salivate. But, I find the banquet of living bitter.
Today, I hauled two identical baby beds, each painted with multiple coats, carvings on the headboards covered over; the antiques shall be restored, stripped; the craftsmen’s work shall be brought back, revealed again. The generation now and the generations in the near past shall be soaked off, the great moral men and artisans, skilled, brought back. Restoration awaits.

On the table, on a folded napkin, is a glass of wine as red as the business of the shop. Much do I admire its neck. A glass is well made if upon the stem, it is well etched. I taste of its wine. To me, it is like swallowing unchewed gelatin, many-sided and bland.

Upon the floor are crumbs, pieces of cake, I eat of those, but nothing. I eat too of postage stamps, pages of cookbooks, carpet fibers. I stomach much, but can gain little from the stomaching.

Down the hall, I can hear the gathered party, a few of the revelers come back early, to warm themselves, I should think. The sound of their merriment saddens. I was invited, but I did not allow myself to partake. I shunned the offering and the bearer of the invitation. They are little, and the little men are not to my liking. It would be pleasing to be them.

Afternoon into evening, sunlight becomes candlelight, and I work; of living, I know not much more than the ink pen. I spent my life rewriting another man’s sentence 100,000 times.

Alone and laughter down a hallway…

* * *

In a sink basin, soap stained and the metal stopper rusted out, I sit eating whiskers from yesterday’s shaving. I eat of clipped facial hair. The house’s man enters; he stares into the mirror. For the first time I realize I am two millimeters long. Whiskers are my food.

The man begins to shave.

With the curve of the sink, I realize I am like a foundling at the zoo, encaged, like in a bear pit. I look over my steep enclosure. How can I be imprisoned in a place so small?

Scalding water begins to fill the basin; steam rises from the water’s surface as its watermark rises. Surely, I will burn. At a dollhouse auction, a carving came up for sale, that of Noah and His wife, their ark and their animals. Much did I desire the carvings, but little did I bring in my purse. It booked for three thousand coins, but sold for eight thousand coins. I am hand-painted and running.

If I am overtaken, how my skin like fuel…

Accidentally, the shaving man drops his razor, and I jump onto its metal shaft. It is my sailboat, my junk. The shaving man lifts the boat to his face, and I run to the metal head and jump between the razor and its flange. The Shaver puts the blade to his neck. Skin and hair squeeze between the works. I am suffocating. If I stay, I’ll be crushed or burned when the shaver dips the razor again. I swallow shaving cream, and I gag on it, shaving cream in my hair, on my clothes. It tastes of perfume.

Into the shaver’s skin, into his face, I jump, into a cell, one pore on his chin.

He startles and cuts himself.

My cell, my place in his chin, my chamber, begins to bleed, my red chamber.
The shaver swabs with rubbing alcohol, and the alcohol drenches, my clothes drenched, and eyes and lungs burned. I cough. The shaver puts toilet paper to his face to stop the bleeding. I have to tear down lengths of the toilet paper, frantic in the gesture, so that I may have a hole from which to breathe.

The man will be my legs. I will my servant to carry me. Here, I am the master. My plantation is mankind itself.

* * *

When the shaver showers, I stick my head outside for a drink. This is how I do not die of thirst.

When asleep, I eat of his facial hair. He has not shaved in days, and knows something is wrong. But what? Is it disease or old age? Or luck? Now, all he knows, is: he does not have to shave as often. His whiskers; this is how I do not die of starvation.

I tried to help; for a time, I played at savior. The actions were petty and without consequence; more so, I woke everyday to a job of soliciting myself: I dug out slivers from thumbs, used slivers to slay mosquitoes; at night, while he slept -- he is balding -- I transplanted hair above his sideburns to his widow’s peak; I cut off dead skin, shoveled out pimples, sewed small cuts with thread from his clothes and a thorn used as a needle.

Of his conversations and his human dealings, I record on dead skin with fat cell ink and a dander pen. Of human beings, I record, keep annals…

To the priest in attendance, the Shaver says, “Bless me Father for I have sinned. It has been three weeks since my last confession.”

The priest unseen, behind the partition asks, “Do you have any sins to confess my son?”

He has the sin of rape on his soul. I know. I had to witness.

Quickly the Shaver answers, “I have two.”

Finally, since the men of law cannot affect him, maybe the men of God can.

The Shaver says, “I used God’s name in vain, twice.”

Experience is the only teacher. I could try to tell you of it, but you would have to be a victim or a rapist to understand. I will give to you one sentence:

After the rape, her clothes inside out and backwards, some torn, she had to put them on herself because she did not want to flee, run outside, naked; she, straining like a child, she cried while putting them on; it took her a long time to dress herself, as long as a child takes to dress itself.

In the aisle, outside the confessional, the Shaver’s wife in a pew is at prayer. “Did you rape her?” asks wife.

“No,” says the Shaver.

“Then, I stand by my husband.”

Women, they say much, but not much of their speaking is of consequence.

I keep myself in the face of a rapist.

“Shaver,” I say aloud, “I shall be your Jesus.”

A woman well made, well educated, from poverty to prosperity, and kind… this is who you amputated in rape; jealousy - study it - because humans profess it.

Now, it is my place to punish.

It took me three weeks to learn his name; because he is average, no one cares enough to speak it; the rapist’s name is: “Stephen.”

How can I at two millimeters tall murder my world?

I begin with little things… to evoke. Some crumbs, foodstuffs, at his lips, I haul overland and bury in pores, to form acne, one of my little jokes, most always on the tip of his nose.

Thursday, the 22nd, a great discovery today… upon the right deltoid, a Tattoo. The Stephens of this living dress themselves in ink because they are ugly; people with tattoos - like their poorly drawn cartoons and shithouse art - fade, badly. There is nothing beautiful in an old tattoo. The needling is of a ram’s skull, Stephen of the Ram’s Skull.

I, in my place, however, am unable to render. I plot, but nothing. How can I kill this thing upon which I live?

I shall gather liquids, poisons. But where? There is the magic of death in alchemy. What substance is toxic enough? In what bladder can I keep the poison? To some it is a 1/5 of an ounce, to me it is thousands of gallons.

I plot out accidents, deformities; how shall he slip down a flight of stairs? How shall I burn his face?

The times I tried to jump into another face, it is not possible, or is it possible? Yes, but this face, the Stephen, would go on living.

I crawl inside his ear. And since he does not wax, the way is slow going. It smells of dead shad. I rock climb on tines, pull myself up; at times I have to scale inverted , following the shell, the conch that is the ear. Spelunking, the way is curvy. Nearing the inner ear, I stop. I am inside the head. I stand and scream, and here he can hear me.

He tells his wife, “I’m hearing voices.” She asks, “What do they say?”

“Commit suicide.”

At first I pleaded, "Tell of your deed. You can still be a hero. Help whom you have hurt." But, he would not. Stephen outweighs them by forty pounds; the women are forty pounds from not being victims.

There, I in his face, as he copulates with his wife, I wonder, is he thinking of the rape?

A young woman, Lamb’s Ear, presents herself by being in Stephen’s presence. She has the pinning of being weak: quiet, awkward in conversation, small in stature, and a woman. Stephen has never addressed her in conversation, never spoken to her.

It’s happening again. Recurring… the virus’s reemergence. The medicals can do nothing. He wants to rape again.

Since I cannot speak but to scream, my words not acted upon, I shall deafen with my tearing down.

Inside his ear I am an apostle. His hearing receptors hang like icicles, but organic; his hearing is my kelp forest. I find myself inside a French curve, inside a purple freshwater clamshell. Hearing is a cathedral. I to the alter go. And, in my hands I take the vines of hearing, in this cavern alone there are thousands, and I shatter. I tear down. “Because I could not make you hear!” The rinds are opened easily. To the floor, they fall. The noise echoes like timber cracking before it falls, a farmer cutting wood, stockpiling, for winter. I farm too; my crops are eardrums.

When it is done, the corridor is inflamed, and Stephen shakes.

“Is your god pleased I have maimed you? I wonder,” but he cannot hear my words.
I hike my way to the other ear through scalp hair like a red-black army ant in grass blades having to climb over.

Long have I prepared the speech, written a poem, thought of things to say, made allusions, quoted, the last thing he ever hears is this: “Stephen, every day you sat down to breakfast; everyday you mealed; today, you are on the spit, and I am eating, little by little.”

After thirteen hours of work, it is consummated, the marriage to disability.

Leaving the eardrum, out the canal, exiting out of, I see a doctor’s office. Stephen’s wife is there.

A medical instrument, some metallic object, is inserted into the ear. I am almost impaled.

“Can you see anything,” Stephan’s wife asks the doctor.

Above me, there is a giant mirror like device.

“Yes, the doctor says.”

“What is it?” she asks.

He says nothing. It is then that I know. He must see me. I begin to run. He looks to the freckles, but I hide in Stephan’s tattoo, in his ram’s skull. For fifteen minutes he searches, but he cannot find me. After the examination, the doctor says to his wife,“I’m sorry, your husband is deaf in both ears. The damage is both severe and permanent.”

Because he can still see Lamb’s Ear, I jump into his eye. It is a well. I dive down. It is no pond, no mud bottom, but a pupil. Holding my breath, I cut into, make scrape after scrape with my pen. While he sleeps… the rapist opens his eyes in the morning of my victory to nothing.

I blinded him in one eye, but what good is a one-eyed man? A one-eyed man is a joke to humanity; a minor Cyclops is nonsense.

Some Tinkers fail, but not this Tinker; I blinded twice.

I am two millimeters long, and subsist, cannibalize them, eat of whiskers, their fallen out hair is my food; my place, I keep my home in the dust jackets and pages of books which have not been checked out in decades, all this and Miller’s butcher shop; here, between the pages, this is my cell; this is my red chamber.

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James Keegan teaches writing as an adjunct English professor at Moraine Valley College in Palos Hills, Illinois, and British Literature II at Governors State University, in University Park, Illinois. He also tutors at Aurora University, Aurora, Illinois. He holds an M.A. in Education from Saint Xavier University, an M.A. in English from Governors State University, and he has earned 48 graduate hours in an M.F.A. program, as well. His alter ego and literary father is Anton Chekhov.

© 2005 Me Three