Spring 2014

The Harvard Advocate

Spring 2014

Vol. 149 No.3

ART Kiara Barrow, Brad Bolman, Harry Choi, Camille Coppola, Isaac Dayno, Mattie Kahn, Julian Avery Leonard, Graham Moyer, Sarah Rosenthal, Nicolas Schwalbe, Jake Seaton*, Nora Wilkinson, Yunhan Xu. BUSINESS Nelson Arnous, Hayden Betts*, Jack Kleinman, Joy Lee, He Li*, David Manella, Tyler Richard, Sarah Rosenburg*, Tobi Tikolo, Kristin Tsuo, Krithika Varagur, Calvin Willett.

DESIGN Julia Cohn, Connor Cook, Louise Decoppet, Simone Hasselmo, Michelle Long, Eric Macomber, Vadim Medish, Kelsey Miller, Mahan Nekoui*, Sam Richman, Michael Segel, Lanier Walker, Jeannie Sui Wonders.

The Harvard Advocate www.theharvardadvocate.com

EDITORIAL BOARD President Publisher Art Editor Blog Editor Business Manager Design Editors

JULIAN LUCAS KEVIN HONG BRAD BOLMAN MOEKO FUJII CALVIN WILLETT SIMONE HASSELMO JEANNIE SUI WONDERS Features Editor INDIANA SERESIN Fiction Editor YEN PHAM Poetry Editor COLTON VALENTINE Technology Editor JAWAD HOBALLAH Hermes JENNY GAO Pegasi ISAAC DAYNO SAM REYNOLDS FAYE YAN ZHANG Dionysi NELSON ARNOUS KIARA BARROW Circulation & JACK KLEINMAN Publicity Managers MAIA SILBER Librarian WANJIKU MUNGAI Alumni Relations Manager KRITHIKA VARAGUR Communicorn EZRA HUANG STOLLER

BOARD OF TRUSTEES Chairman Chairman Emeritus Vice-Chairman President Vice-President and Treasurer Secretary

JAMES ATLAS LOUIS BEGLEY DOUGLAS MCINTYRE SUSAN MORRISON AUSTIN WILKIE LESLIE DUNTON-DOWNER CHARLES ATKINSON PETER BROOKS EMILY CHERTOFF JOHN DESTEFANO JONATHAN GALASSI LEV GROSSMAN ANGELA MARIANI D.T. MAX CELIA MCGEE THOMAS A. STEWART JEAN STROUSE

FEATURES Victoria Baena, Eric R. Brewster, Rumur Dowling, Moeko Fujii, Olivia Munk*, Noah Pisner, Sam Reynolds, Indiana Seresin, Kurt Slawitschka*, Ezra Huang Stoller, My Ngoc To, Bailey Trela*, Warner James Wood, Faye Yan Zhang.

FICTION Emma Adler*, Liza Batkin, Victoria Black, Brad Bolman, Bryan Erickson*, Gina Hackett, Anna Hagen, Matthew Krane, Julian Lucas, Wanjiku Mungai, David Neustadt, Rebecca Panovka*, Yen Pham, Maia Silber, Ben Sobel, Emily Wang.

POETRY Samantha Berstler, Wendy Chen, Anne Marie Creighton, Robbie Eginton, Reina Gattuso, Brandan Griffin*, Roxanna Haghighat, Zoë Hitzig, Kevin Hong, Ben Koerner, Matthew Krane, Eli Lee*, Ethan Loewi, Ben Lorenz, Tyler Richard, Daniel Schwartz, Christina Teodorescu, Colton Valentine, Lara Zysman.

TECHNOLOGY Luciano Arango*, Eric Arzoian, Eric Burdette, Juliana Castrillon*, Louis Cid, Dan Citron*, Dan Cole, JN Fang*, Zach Fogelson*, Jenny Gao, Ethan Glasserman, Jawad Hoballah, Yuqi Hou*, Rafic Melhem, Josh Palay, Michael Segel, Rachael Smith*, Victor Wu. *The Harvard Advocate congratulates its newest members.

The Harvard Advocate considers all submissions of art, features, fiction, and poetry anonymously. Submissions may be emailed to art@theharvardadvocate.com, features@theharvardadvocate.com, fiction@theharvardadvocate.com, or poetry@theharvardadvocate.com. Submissions may also be mailed to 21 South St., Cambridge MA 02138. All submissions should be original work that has not been previously published. If you wish to have your submission returned to you, please include a self-addressed stamped envelope. Questions about submissions may be directed to the individual emails above or to contact@theharvardadvocate.com.

Founded in 1866, The Harvard Advocate is the nation’s oldest continuously published college literary magazine. It publishes quarterly from 21 South St., Cambridge MA 02138. Published pieces and advertisements represent the opinions of the authors and advertisers, not necessarily those of the The Harvard Advocate. Domestic subscription rates are $35 for one year (4 issues), $60 for two years (8 issues), and $90 for three years (12 issues). For institutions and international addresses, the rates are $45 for one year (4 issues), $75 for two years (8 issues), and $110 for three years (12 issues). Rates are payable by cash or check made out to The Harvard Advocate and mailed to the above address, Attn: Circulation Manager. Back issues are available for purchase at www.theharvardadvocate.com. No part of this magazine may be reprinted without the permission of The Harvard Advocate. Copyright 2013 by the Editors and Trustees of The Harvard Advocate.

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 1

CONTENTS ART 3

Loud Pipes

Hunter Jones

10

Isolation 1

Hunter Jones

11

Isolation 2

Hunter Jones

14

Bees

Ryan Adams Murphy

40

Rug

Julian Avery Leonard

FEATURES 24

The 450-Year-Old Man

28

In Memoriam

42

The Feasting

Sam Reynolds Victoria Baena My Ngoc To

FICTION 4

Venero

15

The Zoologist

34

Queenie’s on the Strip

Ryan MacLennan John Bryant Christopher Alessandrini

POETRY

2

12

Lagomorph

41

Ruth Thalía writes to the poet

46

Ansatz: Confronting a Still Life

SPRING 2014

Michael Thorbjørn Feehly Jacob Moscona-Skolnik Zoë Hitzig

Hunter Jones Loud Pipes Medium format film

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 3

Venero RYAN MACLENNAN

We’d been living in Madero for months of silent siege when I got a toothache on the right side of my mouth. It hurt like hell. I chewed only with the left side of my mouth for ten days while I tried to find a dentist that would take the insurance that Katherine got through the school. Most places didn’t take it because it was cut-rate. You’d think they’d give teachers better benefits. I started to worry that the right side of my face would become sallow and emaciated from lack of use. I knew it probably wouldn’t, but I grew out a beard just in case. I hadn’t grown a beard in several years, and when it came in I was surprised at how much gray was in it. I shaved it right off. I did eventually find a dentist that took the insurance, but his office was in a little town called Venero. It was a half an hour away, in a valley up in the mountains.

The only opening was on Friday morning that week. I would have to take a whole day off of work to go.

I spent that Thursday framing a house with my foreman Eric. A guy from a neighboring town had done the plumbing the day before, because I was Eric’s only employee and didn’t know how. Eric didn’t like being called the foreman, but I thought it was funny. I liked working construction even though I had to wake up so early. There was something peaceful about the rhythm of it. I liked it much more than waiting tables, or tending bar, or moving furniture like I had done in California. When I told Eric that I wasn’t going to be able to come in the next day because of my appointment, he wasn’t happy about it, but there was nothing to do. It wasn’t as if I was playing hooky to have fun.

Venero used to be a mining town. The mine was still there, but it employed so few people it wasn’t really reasonable to call it a mining town anymore. At least that’s what Eric told me when I asked him for directions. I had never been. His uncle used to work in the mines, he said. They mined molybdenum, but his uncle didn’t know what the company used it for. To him, it just looked like the lead in pencils.

Molybdenum is mixed with steel to make it stronger. I looked it up in the library a couple years ago.

When I came home from work that Thursday, Katherine was sitting in the living room. The house was cold. We were in a standoff; neither of us wanted to be the one to turn on the thermostat for the winter.

As I sat down on the couch, she got up and walked into the bedroom and closed the door. I went into the kitchen and began making as much noise as I could but she didn’t come out and eventually I got tired and stopped. I sat down at the kitchen table. She came into the kitchen a little later and poured herself a glass of white wine. As she walked back to the bedroom, she spilled a little wine on my sleeve. I knocked the chair over as I stood up. She said it was an accident and that if I was going to yell I could leave the house.

I smiled and said that it was fine and then I shut myself in my office until she had gone to bed.

That night, my tooth hurt too much to sleep. I tried every trick that I knew of to drift off. Nothing worked. I massaged my cheek with my fingers, which seemed to help, but my hands were so cracked and dry that my cheek began to chafe and so I stopped. I had given up trying to use lotion to make them better, because the lotion made my palms soft and they would rip open when I worked. Katherine didn’t like the lotion. She preferred it when my hands smelled like sawdust. I sat at the kitchen table the whole night, with only a candle for company, but it burned down to a nub and died out. I was left in the silver light of the moon.

We’d been fighting a lot. They weren’t loud and fiery fights like we used to have in the old house. I

4

SPRING 2014

never hurt her. Several times I flipped the kitchen table over onto its side. The first time her grandmother’s vase was on it. The subsequent vases that she put in its place were cheap and from secondhand stores, so breaking them didn’t mean anything and I stopped flipping the table over altogether. I moved on to all the other stuff that made our house our house. When we moved, we didn’t take any of the things we owned.

They were all replacements. They didn’t mean anything to us.

Our new house is bare. It only has the furniture it came with.

These quiet fights were worse though, worse because they were slow and deliberate. Katherine was a master at fighting like that. Not me though, it ruined my digestive system. I didn’t have the nerves.

I want to blame Katherine’s drinking for our fighting but that isn’t fair. It wasn’t why we were fighting, and she really only started seriously drinking after we moved to New Mexico. She handles drinking much better than I do. I wasn’t drinking back then; I’m making up for it now. This is how it went: half a bottle of Chardonnay before dinner, half a bottle with dinner, and half a bottle after dinner. Out there, the air was so dry that the chilled bottles didn’t sweat and leave little wet rings when she took them out of the fridge and left them on the table. She was very regimented about it; she didn’t let it affect her career. She woke up every morning, right when I was leaving for the construction site, to get ready for school. The children at school didn’t call her by our last name. They called her Ms. Katherine.

When the sun crested the mountains I went into the bedroom to change my clothes and brush my teeth. I wanted to leave before Katherine woke up. She was asleep, but she didn’t look peaceful. Her lips were pursed and her brow was furrowed. When we first met, she kept a dream journal, but she didn’t bother anymore. She said that she had the same dream over and over—so many times that she had stopped keeping track. I told her she should go see someone about it, but she never did. She said she didn’t dream when she drank. She told me once about the dream. It wasn’t unpleasant.

The road to Venero went through the foothills. It went up and down. I had to go as fast as I could on the declines to build up speed for the climbs. My car was little and old and I was worried that it would die. It wasn’t used to high elevation. At the beginning of the drive, at lower altitudes, the aspens which were interspersed with the pine trees had yellow leaves, but as I climbed, they became barren. It seemed to me as though I was driving outside of time, and I didn’t mind the idea of going on forever, climbing and climbing, until everything turned white.

As I drove, I thought about how my older brother and I used to hop the fence around the orchards in the fall when the branches were heavy with apples and the leaves were yellow and red. We tried to catch the falling leaves as they zigzagged through the air. We climbed the trees and picked apples to fill our shirts with. We ate until we were swollen and had bellyaches. Then, we would lie under the trees in the dappled afternoon light and drift between napping and talking. Later in the fall, when most of the apples had fallen off of the trees, we would take turns pitching the partially rotten fruit to each other and batting with a branch. My brother’s swing was all wrists. He would cushion the apple with the stick and then flick it, whole, up into the blue afternoon. I didn’t have any finesse and every time I hit I sprayed chunks of apple everywhere and they coated our clothes and it drove our mother crazy.

My brother passed away a little while before Katherine and I moved from Menlo Park. It was nothing dramatic. He didn’t even live in the town. One minute he was there in my mind, then the police called and he was gone. It was a stroke. I hadn’t seen him for years, and if they hadn’t called, he would have gone on living in my mind forever. I waited a week or so to tell Katherine. When I did she put down her book and walked over and hugged me from behind. At first I tried to brush her off but she hung on, like she was riding a bull. Suddenly all the fight in me, all the stubbornness, left and I let her hold me. She never said anything about it after that, but when I wanted to move I think she understood. The house, our childhood home, was unbearable for me after he died.

I thought that Madero would be the perfect town for us to move to. It was small and quiet. There were mountains and a river. Katherine got a job at the local elementary school and I worked construction. But I didn’t realize how dry it would be and how empty. The sky was huge out there and blue, but the earth was flat, except for the mountains, and there were times, when the wind whipped up and I looked out the window at the expanses of sagebrush and the lonely mountains, that I felt as if I were the only person in the world. The air there was too light and arid, and it almost felt like there was no air at all, that each breath was futile.

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 5

I arrived in Venero fifteen minutes early for my appointment. The only buildings on the main drag were a couple of houses, a gas station, and a liquor store. At first I thought that I had arrived at the wrong place. The office was in a doublewide mobile home that sat on the ground. It didn’t look like a dentist’s office, but it was the right address. I opened the dusty glass front door and a bell chimed feebly.

I don’t really know how to describe the place. There was a small reception area, stocked with old magazines and a slumped couch. Through one door a dentist chair and tools were visible. An old woman sat reading a fading magazine behind the receptionist’s desk. Cages and tanks that were full of small animals occupied the rest of the office, which was most of the space. The carpet was green and there were wood chips everywhere. I remember that the office smelled of disinfectant and cedar and animal urine and the combination stung my nostrils and made me nauseous. I stood in the doorway surrounded by falling dust particles that were illuminated by the beams of light that streamed through the door.

The receptionist looked up and greeted me. Her face was deeply wrinkled and her black hair was held tightly back in a bun. She wore shabby clothes and spoke with a thick New Mexican accent. Her teeth were perfectly straight and white. She asked me to fill out some forms but she didn’t have a pen and neither did I. I asked her about the animals and she told me that the dentist ran the only zoo in Venero.

She told me too that I was welcome to look at the animals while I waited. Other than us, the office was silent.

The cages were stacked against the faux wood walls. The glass on the tanks was smudged and dirty. I walked through the office, looking for some sign of movement. One of the big tanks had a rattlesnake in it, or at least that’s what the plaque on the tank said, because the snake didn’t have a rattle. As I looked at more and more of the animals the more uneasy I felt. The dentist came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. I jumped. His hands were strong and weighed heavily on me. He was a tall man with white-blond hair and thick, wire-rimmed glasses. He wore high-waisted jeans and a plaid shirt with a bolo tie. His face was wide and shiny and he smiled with his mouth open and his teeth slightly gapped. He told me that he had caught all the animals himself and that he had the largest collection of monitor lizards in the state. He asked me if I had seen the caiman. I had not. His breath smelled sour. He led me by my shoulder to his prized possession, the one animal not from New Mexico, at the far end of the room, in the biggest tank. I didn’t want to look.

He’s beautiful isn’t he, he asked me. I nodded, but I didn’t say anything. I looked into the black and beady eyes and could not look away. The caiman was motionless, and for a moment I thought it might actually be stuffed, but there was something alive in its eyes, some malice. The pit of my stomach was cold. We might have been standing there for ten seconds, or ten minutes, and I think I would have kept standing there if the dentist hadn’t turned and told me to follow him into the back room where the dentist chair was.

The dentist chair was old and turquoise, ripped on the arms. He sat me down and tucked a bib into my shirt. I was staring at the ceiling, which was stained brown from water that had leaked through the roof. The shelves that lined the walls were filled with animal skulls. They were yellow and they all had big teeth. Under each skull, there was a handwritten label. There was a javelina from Texas and a wild boar from Colorado. There must have been at least a couple dozen of them. I was grateful when he turned on the bright dental light, which blinded me.

He injected a lot of Novocaine into my gums. The shot hurt, but soon I could not feel his strong and gloved hands as they moved my jaw. He used a tiny drill and all I could sense was the vibration that it sent through my skull. But I heard the whine of the motor and smelled burning tooth and felt the dust the drill generated at the back of my mouth. I think I would have gone without the Novocaine if I didn’t have to smell that smell. It scared me.

He was a good dentist. He worked quickly, and he didn’t ask me any questions. He told me that when he first opened the office children used to come in and look at the animals, but it had been a while since anyone who was not a patient had been in and even the patients no longer took an interest. He lived in a town south of Madero and commuted to Venero a couple of days a week. He told me that he didn’t work in the winters and that he had to pay someone to come in and clean the tanks and feed the animals. He lost a few animals every winter. He didn’t work in Venero in the winters because he was afraid of driving through the mountains on icy and snowy roads back to where he lived. He said, If your car breaks down

6

SPRING 2014

on those roads in winter, there’s nothing left to do but the dying.

He finished his work, switched off the light, and sat me up in the chair. He had a blue surgical mask on. He told me that I was all set and that they would mail me the bill. I thanked him, but could not pronounce any of the words because of the Novocaine. When I walked through the main room, I kept my eyes forward and unfocused.

On the drive home I kept looking in the mirror. I thought that was what I was going to look like when I was old, when all the vitality had left my body and my skin was loose.

I kept poking my cheek with my finger to see if I could feel anything. I couldn’t. I thought about what he said, about dying at night in the mountains, about freezing to death, about numbness.

Katherine and I drove when we moved out there in the winter. We only got part of the way on the first day and so we stayed in a hotel in some run-down little town. When we got up in the morning to keep going the windshield was frosted over. We didn’t have an ice scraper—we didn’t know it got that cold in the southwest—so I had to drive with my head to the side, looking out of the little patch of windshield that the weak defroster melted clear. Whenever the highway turned towards the sun the frost on the windshield lit up into a brilliant glow and I could not see a thing and Katherine would begin to fidget nervously. But I kept driving.

I got home and walked straight to the bedroom. I lay on top of the covers and fell asleep. I did not have any dreams. When I woke up, the walls were tinted orange from the setting sun. I had drooled all over the pillow. When I walked in to the kitchen Katherine asked me if I was having a stroke because of how the right side of my face sagged. Then she laughed.

It wasn’t until dinner that I was certain that I had to go back. Katherine and I sat across from each other at the table with our heads down, looking at our plates. Usually, I tried to ask about her day and talk to her. Dinner was the only time that we could talk, when she was just drunk enough to speak and not drunk enough to be mean. But I didn’t say a word that night. I was thinking about the animals. I thought of the cold wire cages. Even though it scared me, I felt sorry for the caiman. I was chewing, but I was not paying enough attention and my cheek slipped between my teeth and I bit down on it. I did not feel it, but I tasted the blood.

I don’t know why I felt that way. Once, when I was a boy, my father and I went on a hunting trip in the Rockies. We flew to Colorado. It was my special trip; my brother didn’t get to come, and it was my first time on a plane. My father had paid for a guide and a crew to take all of our gear. All I had to carry was my rifle. It was a .22. I don’t remember much of the trip anymore-–the camping, the food or any of that-–but I do remember shooting a deer. My .22 wasn’t really supposed to be able to kill anything, but the deer had popped up just in front of us, close enough that the little bullet could do damage. I remember being scared, scared that I would miss when my father whispered for me to shoot and that I would disappoint him. But I shot and hit the deer in the side. It didn’t die right away. It fell to the ground and lay breathing great gulps of air, its pupils so big that its eyes were black and they drew my own eyes with irresistible gravity. My father told me to shoot it again, behind the eye, and I did. My father patted me on the back, but I didn’t feel anything, not pride or empathy. I just wanted to go home.

I washed the dishes slowly, and when I was done, my hands were wrinkled and peeling. I sat at the kitchen table, waiting for Katherine to go to bed. She was already done with her drinking for the night, and so it was only a matter of time. As I waited, the Novocaine wore off slowly and my jaw began to ache. It was a dull and pounding pain. Finally Katherine went into the bedroom and closed the door and I was alone.

I waited until I thought Katherine was asleep before I snuck into our room. I fumbled through my dresser in the dark and put on a black pair of pants, a black sweatshirt, and running shoes. I guess I made too much noise, or maybe I was acting suspicious all night, because Katherine turned her light on and asked me what I was doing. I told her that I had some business to take care of. I tried to make it sound important. She laughed through her nose. What business do you have, she asked. I told her what I was going to do. I was always honest with Katherine. I was sure that she was going to try and stop me—that she was going threaten to call the cops or turn me in. But she didn’t. She asked if she could come.

We got into the car. Katherine wanted to drive, but she was drunk. It was crisp out and the moon was almost full. I drove the same route that I had driven earlier. We didn’t talk on the whole drive, but it didn’t bother me. Katherine rested her head against the window and I wasn’t even sure if she was awake. Under

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 7

the light of the moon the surroundings were a colorless gradation of gray.

Katherine and I used to sit on the fire escape outside of the window of our apartment when we first moved in together. It felt more real, somehow. When we were down on the street surrounded by buildings I felt like I was on a stage and each action was mimed. But on the fire escape we could see the curvature of the earth. We would smoke cigarettes and watch the ashes fall slowly, like leaves. Katherine was afraid of heights and I used to climb on the outside of the railing to scare her. Then she would grab me and hold me close and kiss me.

I pulled into the parking lot and turned off the headlights. We got out of the car and Katherine went and tried the front door, which was locked. I had a tire iron in the trunk and I got it out. I had never broken a window before and my first tap on the glass was too soft. Katherine asked if she could try. She put her whole body into the swing and she smashed the window. We both stood still as we waited for an alarm to sound, but the night was silent, other than the soft clicks of the car engine as it cooled. Katherine went and got a flashlight from the glove compartment. I reached through the hole in the window and unlocked the door. When I opened it, the bell chimed and echoed through the dark room.

Katherine swept the flashlight around. The soft yellow beam reflected off the tanks. I told her to turn it off so our eyes could adjust. There was enough moonlight to see, if we waited. We stood still in the silence and I heard Katherine’s rapid breathing. When at last our eyes had adjusted, we stepped carefully over the broken glass and made right for the cages.

I picked up a tank and walked out the front door. In the silver light it was difficult to see the plaques, which were often cast in shadows and so I didn’t know which animal I was carrying, but it didn’t matter.

It was surprisingly heavy. I took the lid off and tipped the tank on its side. I left it like that and went back inside for more. We ferried the animals out one by one, letting them go into the night. It was hard work, the cages were heavy, but my adrenaline was pumping and with each animal we released I grew more invigorated.

It seems silly now, but while we were in that office, in the pale moonlight, I thought I fell in love with Katherine all over again. We passed each other as we moved in and out of the door and I caught a whiff of her hair and we brushed shoulders, gently but consciously. With the lighting and the emotion it seemed as though that moment had been spliced in from some reel of film from long-gone days.

We had moved almost all the cages, laying them on their sides in rows in the gravel parking lot. I carried one particularly large tank out and took the lid off. As I tilted the tank onto its side, I felt a stinging pain in my right hand. I flung my arm backwards instinctively and the tank fell and shattered. A snake slithered swiftly out of the tank and into the night. The rattlesnake. I put my hand between my thighs and Katherine came running outside to find me on my knees. She asked me what had happened and I explained, the best that I could. Her eyes were wide and she swayed slightly in place as I held my hand up and she looked at the two puncture wounds. I started to suck on the bite, but Katherine pulled my hand away from my mouth. She thought I might poison myself that way. I didn’t know if she was right and so I stopped. Neither of us knew what to do, neither of us knew much about snakes. She wanted to call an ambulance but I told her we couldn’t call 911 from the dentist’s phone because then they would know it was us who had let the animals go.

I like to think the snake tried to warn me but couldn’t because it didn’t have a rattle. I like to imagine it shaking its tail vigorously and in vain. After the incident, I looked up everything there was to know about rattlesnakes. I have become an expert.

People don’t really die from rattlesnake bites, at least not unless they are in the middle of a desert.

The venom takes hours to be lethal. But in that parking lot I didn’t know if I was dying or how much time I had left, which was worse in some ways than knowing for sure. Then at least there is nothing left to do but the dying.

My favorite fact about rattlesnakes is that they give birth to live young.

The nearest hospital that I knew of was in Madero. I told Katherine that we had to leave. She wanted to drive, but I couldn’t let her because she was drunk. I started the car and the headlights illuminated the whole scene in yellow: the faux stucco, the shattered glass tank, the dark and gaping door to the office. The only animal left inside was the caiman.

I put the car in gear and eased onto the road. I leaned over and put my right hand as low on the floor

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SPRING 2014

as possible. I knew that slowed the spread of the poison. I was leaning over towards Katherine and had to crane my neck to look out of the window. She reached over and caressed my cheek and I almost jerked away because her fingers were so cold. She stroked my cheek in a way that she hadn’t done in a long time.

Beneath her fingers my jaw was aching. With each beat of my heart I thought I could feel the venom advancing up my arm. I thought about what the dentist had said about his car in winter. How much nicer it would be, I thought, to freeze like that, to fall asleep, than if we got stuck now. Katherine would have to watch me and I would have to watch her watch me. There would be no dignity in that. With each hill I held my breath and as we crested it I let it out slowly.

Katherine began to cry. I wasn’t sure if she was crying for me because she thought I was dying or for some other reason, and I didn’t ask. She told me that she was sorry, but she didn’t say what for and I felt as though her words were not for me. She asked if I remembered how we had met and for the first time since I was a boy I lied. I couldn’t recall a thing. She said that we were stupid, that this was stupid, to let those animals go. They are probably going to die in the wild, she said. And I knew she was right. She told me that she wished she had been bit too. She said that we both deserved it.

The pain was spreading up my arm and my tooth hurt and my neck was sore. My heart felt as hollow and empty as a swallow’s nest and I wanted to get as far away from Katherine as soon as possible, but I was afraid to lift my hand.

We got to the hospital and went into the E.R. I was embarrassed when I saw how unconcerned the doctor on call was. We sat on the plastic chairs in the waiting room, Katherine with her head lilting, and me with my chin almost on my chest. I thought about my brother, about how he had gone too quickly, about how he had died in a phone call. I felt as though I had an hourglass emptying sand into my limbs until they were heavy and hard to move. I felt tired. A nurse called my name and I got up and walked towards the double swinging doors. Katherine called out. She asked me if things would get better and I looked into her fearful and bloodshot eyes. Yes, I said and I turned and walked through the doors.

Some people think that, when cornered, a rattlesnake will bite itself with suicidal intent. This is not true. When cornered rattlesnakes strike out at anything that moves, including their tails. When they feel yielding flesh beneath their fangs, they will release venom. Rattlesnakes are immune to their own poison and they rarely die from this.

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 9

Hunter Jones Isolation 1 (House in Snow) Medium format film

10 SPRING 2014

Hunter Jones Isolation 2 (Loading Bay) Medium format film

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 11

Lagomorph MICHAEL THORBJØRN FEEHLY

I’m really a fan of the rabbits, of slender ears of their long left ears, fickle, triangulating signals from the wind, beneath the bushes beside the large ferrovitreous cistern collecting dimensionless shadows of European attitudes.

Now the right ear bends, turning toward ground the innominate blades under snow here.

Now I’m really a rabbit, mostly dishabille, a shapka-ushanka with flopping ashen flaps above, bobbing below, my peculiar ears.

Here I’m down on fours and my legs learn new syntax from the available experience of lassitude proffered by vernal narcoma.

Now I’m not worried if I have stipend in backlog with which to purchase utterances of the coterie or nibble the ivory indices of semophones. Here weightless excuses sink into deep wells and anchorites emerge from ochlophobia to dive into the ice covered river into the yellowmost layer of scaffold, of secondhand sulphur, down the clear river-torso, skimmuddied toes conjured by buoyancy stiffened by cold.

Now, the rabbits are speechless.

All these worries submerged in praise!

As a fan, I’m curious by megawatts, stupid by cocktail; I chase with abandon. I kick in the snow, shoot up white hurricanes, flares reflecting frightened Andromeda.

The warren, below roots and rubble under cedars, is too small for my biophysical exuberance; the undercarriage of trees disorients me.

Now I’m here, and I will be here until it’s time to rub against the clock, against the changeover at the rotary. I turn sinuously, I accelerate out of lens focus, beyond the pointillistic boundary.

12 SPRING 2014

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 13

Ryan Adams Murphy Bee Catcher Mortar and pestle; Crystallized honey, aged 4 months in mortar; Found bee, caught for 4 months 4” x 4” x 4”

14 SPRING 2014

The Zoologist JOHN BRYANT

My name is Dr. Isaac Lahm, and I’m the associate director of the Munich Zoological Institute, next in line for the directorship once Pfizer steps down. When people ask me why I study bees, I joke that it’s for the honey. But I know better. I know that if we are to have an appreciation for the fundamental laws of life, an understanding of how the human body functions, we must study the sensory capacities of the world’s most marvelous creatures, such that we can compare our quirks to theirs, the human eye to the bee’s visual system. Inevitably, said comparison welcomes debate, and it’s why I’ll be arguing against a young man named Reus from Berlin at a conference in a few days’ time. Young Reus refutes my theory that bees are color blind. In the March 1916 edition of Zoologischer Anzeiger, he outlines an experiment that claims the following: Bees associate a reward with color and thereby see hue. Though I fear the threat of an eager up-and-comer, the awards and publications on my wall stand for something. I believe young Reus wants my job. Clever boy. *** Now that Germany is at war—the Great War they call it—my colleagues use it as an excuse to visit the alehouse early. How they developed the idea that science slows down for conflicts of the state, I cannot fathom. Still, I prefer when the halls of the Institute are quiet. Fauna and fish ripple the water of the aquarium in the annex. Insects chirp in the monastery for field research. Invertebrate workers buzz with a self-sufficient hum in the bee house, where I tend to spend all my time. Outside, the bells of nearby St. Thomas ring, and though I’m not a musical man, I can’t help but associate the chime with the hum of my bees.

Today, when Pfizer comes into the bee house from the annex, I usher my most well-trained specimens into a glass case. Pfizer’s work on tactile sensations in fish led to discoveries on the sense of touch in underwater organisms. He used to work as late as me, but he’s stepping down soon. An old Austrian, he wants to live out his last days in Vienna before “war and time cripple us all,” as he likes to say. I only think about the war when it affects my next experiment.

Pfizer looks out the window at the courtyard. Past the gates, the Ludwigstrasse waits for the gallop of oncoming carriages.

“We used to fill that courtyard with graduate students and new faces,” Pfizer says. “Now it is vacant.”

It’s true that the educational component of the Institute has faltered ever since all our youth went off to fight. This hasn’t bothered me as much as it has the other professors. The rush of new students has always seemed like something of a distraction.

“The French are advancing on the western front and the Russians are pushing from the east. I suppose the whole nation must be on high alert, even us, in the south.”

I gesture as if this means something to me. My thoughts are on bees and the polarization of light through a pane, angles correlating to colors.

“Is this your design, Isaac?”

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 15

Pfizer places his hand on the glass case in which I train my bees. Inside the case, there’s a piece of cardboard. Outside, there’s a prism. When I shine white light onto the prism, the light refracts through said case. The colors of the electromagnetic spectrum then appear on the cardboard: violet, blue, yellow, green, red. Every time—every single time—I do the experiment the bees gather around the yellow-green light, the strongest region of the color blind human eye. It’s the intensity that attracts them, not the color—not the wavelength or energy on which color depends.

“The director of this institute must be a scientist whose work is respected in the zoological community,” he says.

Detractors might say my experiment pertains to a set of conditions not always met in nature. But I’m firm in my belief that science should be streamlined. We reduce magnificent workings of our universe to their simplest terms in search of the essentials. My experiment shows that a bee is drawn to the light intensity most favorable to the color blind human. Maybe there is an experiment out there that goes against my theory and verifies its hypothesis more elegantly—maybe Reus has a trick up his sleeve—but until I see it in front of me, until Pfizer sees it in front of him, I am steadfast in my view. I have to be. (Young Reus, I’ve read your point on flower petals. They’re different colors so that bees can differentiate between them?

I object. It may be shape or scent, not color, that guides pollination. Evidence is inconclusive.)

“The theory holds,” I say to Pfizer. “I’m certain.”

“Very well. The conference will go on. Last I heard, Reus wants to travel despite the threat of war.”

After Pfizer leaves, I repeat the experiment five more times—shine on the prism through the case onto the cardboard. The same result: The bees congregate around the yellow-green light.

“Beautiful,” I say. And it is. *** When I arrive home from the Institute, there’s a letter waiting for me. It’s from my fifteen year old daughter, Margot. She attends Rochstrasse, a boarding school for girls in East Prussia. It’s been months since we’ve exchanged correspondence.

Dear Father, I’m afraid I must be brief. Rochstrasse will soon close. The Russians are moving ever nearer and my teachers say it is no longer safe. Our food supply dwindles daily and I can’t foresee how we will manage on only turnips (even these are sparse)…I know you must be very busy, but I’m afraid I don’t have a choice. I will come home to Bavaria. A train departs from Berlin at the end of the week, a day after this letter’s arrival, and I will take it.

Affectionately, Margot

As I prepare dinner, I can’t seem to remember the last time Margot returned home. Margot’s fortunate in that, unlike most girls her age, she’s the recipient of a formal education. As an academic, I wanted my child to have the same opportunity for higher learning as I had. I used my contacts at the Institute to gain her entry into the prestigious Rochstrasse.

Her mother, Eva—my wife—died six months prior to Margot’s enrollment. Probably I would have acknowledged schools for Margot closer to home had Eva lived. But my daughter happens to possess the same green eyes as her mother. I couldn’t look at her. It’s small of me, I know.

One of the things that draws me to bees is their centrality. The external world may be so much bigger to them than it is to us, but perception is perception. Their sensations inform our coordinates. (Young Reus, if you’re implying that I’m letting my personal history get in the way of my science, then I advise you to take two steps backwards and re-evaluate said position.)

I live past the Siegestor on the outskirts of Schwabing. It’s the woods out here. And as I settle into my chair on the porch for supper and an evening beer, I’m taken by the glow of beetles in the yard. Light ignites these creatures and against the backdrop of night, their glow is blinding—one of the many ways in which nature introduces and regulates chaos.

16 SPRING 2014

*** Margot waits outside Hauptbahnhof, and as my stagecoach pulls in, I find it remarkable how fast children age during adolescence. Of course, Margot still has her mother’s eyes, but the rest of her facial structure is like mine: sharp, angular features. I open the door to the stagecoach, and just like that I’m two feet away from my daughter again.

She nestles into her corner of the wagon, and it seems the moment to slide over and be affectionate has passed.

“It’s strange to be back,” she says.

“Yes, quite strange, I can imagine.”

The carriage takes us through Marienplatz, where some people gather in the market. On the hour, the Rathaus-Glockenspiel will sound and its elaborate configuration of bells and life-sized figures will dance the Schäfflertanz. This giant dollhouse used to endear large audiences, but fewer citizens fill the city square these days.

“Would you like to stay and watch the dance?” I ask.

“No, but father, is that the opera house?”

A small crowd stands outside the National Theatre, presumably to purchase tickets. I’ve heard from my colleagues that performances rarely happen anymore. Theatre isn’t exactly a wartime priority. Not that I mind or have ever attended a show.

“Father, I would love to go.”

“Since when has opera intrigued you?”

“Ever since Mr. Heinz’s course on music history.”

“I’m not sure I have the time. There’s an important conference tomorrow.”

Margot turns away. “I see,” she says.

(Young Reus, why must you insist that it’s color, not intensity, that entices bees? Why must you quarrel with me?)

Margot keeps her back turned. I touch her for the first time since seeing her, a light hand on the shoulder.

“Would you mind coming with me to the Institute? I have some work to do.”

Margot nods. “Yes, fine,” she says.

She moves her shoulder free of my hand and we do not speak for the rest of the ride. *** One Sunday at the Isar River in Munich, a stray dog raced past Eva and me into the water. Margot was playing at the river’s edge, still very much in shallow territory, and though she had only received a limited number of swimming lessons up to that point, not nearly enough to justify any decision to follow the dog—she couldn’t have been older than five or six—she sprinted forward and fell into the deep water.

Eva, whose head had been laying on my lap and whose weight I can still imagine pressed to my body, bounced upright and ran. Spurred on by my daughter’s splashing, I beat Eva to the edge. Only it’s rather comical because even though every instinct shouted, Lift Margot to safety, by the time I reached her, the splashing had settled, and she executed a perfect doggy paddle motion. Letting her swim, letting her develop life-saving strokes, I said to myself: This is how you let go. *** As we enter the Institute’s bee house, the observational honeycomb engages Margot. Like the case in which I train my bees, the honeycomb is enclosed in glass. I use it to store my bees, my drones, overnight.

Margot watches the drones as they devour honey. Perhaps the stout abdomen or large eyes, twice the size of a worker bee’s, fascinate her. Or maybe she notices how drones can’t sting. Their stinger is instead used for laying eggs, another of nature’s marvels.

I say to Margot, “I find that bees possess limitless mysteries, and never a day goes by that their visual

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 17

system doesn’t intrigue me.”

She says, “It seems so boring.” And walks away.

I go to my lab drawer and obtain a blue card and a petri dish containing sugar water. “Margot, have I told you about the conference? Yes, well, a young biologist named Reus questions my credibility, can you believe that? Tomorrow we are doing live demonstrations to settle the matter.”

I slide the petri dish and the blue card underneath the glass case. In a matter of seconds, the bees flock to the card on which I positioned the dish. (Young Reus, this is where you’d allege they begin to associate the color blue with a reward—that reward being sugar, your hypothesis being, I believe, fraught.)

“Notice how they flock to the card to drink the sugar water.”

I allow the bees time to drink and solidify the connection of card to sugar. Then I remove the card and the dish from the case. I wait approximately two minutes—Margot looks at me in a way that is either indifferent or sad, I can’t determine—and slide the card back under the case. Once again, in a matter of seconds, the bees converge on the card, only this time there is no sugar to drink.

“Doesn’t it appear as if they recognize the color and fly to it, Margot? They expect sugar on the card.”

Margot nods.

“Yes, that is exactly what Reus would say. In point of fact, that is precisely what he says in the March 1916 edition of Zoologischer Anzeiger.”

I remove the card from the case once again. Holding it by the edge, I flick its corners and sides.

“But there is no telling what aspects of the card the bees recognize,” I say. “It may associate sugar with the card’s specific contours, the right angles of its corners, or the horizontality and verticality of its edges.”

I grab the prism and shine white light onto it. The light refracts through the case and onto the cardboard and (what have you, young Reus?) the bees huddle around the yellow-green light.

“This, however, is a reproducible behavior.”

Margot says, “I take it that’s your counterargument.”

“A scientist must also be a showman.”

Margot doesn’t respond. Instead, she regards the observational honeycomb again. She watches the drones as they hover over the hexagonal cells of the comb. Maybe she still finds it boring. Or maybe she thinks there’s something amiss with my argument—how silly, me concerned with young Margot’s view of my theory. Soon, Pfizer comes into the bee house from the annex.

“There’s something you must see,” he says to Margot and me.

He leads us into the courtyard. Past the gates, German infantry marches down the Ludwigstrasse.

They form lines of ten by what must be forty or fifty, and extend almost as far as the Siegestor.

“Should we be worried?” Margot says.

“Either it’s a procession, or a threat is imminent,” Pfizer says. “In either situation, yes, I think we should be worried.”

I look at Margot. One hopes this won’t affect young Reus’ travels. *** A few hours later I’m in the Institute’s courtyard with Margot awaiting the arrival of our carriage.

(Young Reus, you should know that I’ve prepared my demonstration for tomorrow exhaustively, and I’m feeling quite confident.)

I say, “Tell me about Heinz’s music history class.”

Her posture straightens in a way that can only connote enthusiasm.

“We discussed Richard Wagner before I left,” she says. “Did you know Tristan und Isolde premiered at the National Theatre in 1856?”

“May I ask who Richard Wagner is?”

“Father, he’s the most important German composer of the 19th century.”

She hums a melody in a low voice, operatically I suppose.

“Have you ever studied dissonance, father? In the show’s Prelude, it involves unconnected cadences that don’t resolve until the end when my beloved Tristan dies. Wagner’s masterful, just masterful.”

She hums the same low melody, which I assume pertains to the Prelude though I’m not a musical

18 SPRING 2014

man.

The hour approaches five o’clock and the bells of St. Thomas chime. The sound mixes with and dilutes Margot’s hum. I direct my attention to the segment of the Institute devoted to the bee house and my thoughts jump to contours, colors, and intensities. (Young Reus, how would you, how could you counter?)

I’m tempted to return to my laboratory and devise further schematics, but the many sounds, the many dilutions lock me in place and I can’t seem to get up. Soon, the carriage arrives at the gates.

My daughter stands and I face her.

“Margot, would you like to go to the theatre now?” *** I must admit we are fortunate to acquire two of the last available tickets. Including the ground level, we are on the sixth level, the highest in the house, and there is not an empty seat around us—who am I to say theatre is not a wartime priority?

A massive chandelier hangs before us, not above us, and I have to crane my neck downward to see the stage. Bright red curtains drape the walls of the theatre and ornamental lights line the balconies of each level. As they flash to signal the start of the show, I’m reminded of the Schwabing beetles in my yard.

Even before the opening number ends, Margot quietly asserts that it doesn’t compare to Wagner.

Given how she leans forward in her seat, I conclude she’s still excited. I also conclude that the leading woman, the soprano, has fallen in love with the leading man, the baritone. Her voice rises in concordance with the orchestra, but now it is soft, and it seems as if she is building up to the moment in which she will profess her love.

Though I am all the way up here, six levels above the bottom floor, and the soprano is a dot on the stage, I sense the veins on her neck constricting. They pulsate with the cues of the instruments. The strings tinker faster, the percussion hits harder, the brass booms louder. It occurs to me that there are so many ways in which this number could end, but there will only be one correct answer. (What have you, young Reus?)

The soprano’s voice nears its highest note, and the sound carries to the sixth level. (If you clarify contours, young Reus, how else do I counter?) She takes a long breath in preparation for the number’s final moment. (Could the bees emit a chemical, a pheromone that leads them to the card? Could they be guided by scent or sound?) She sustains her breath and sends the note throughout the National Theatre.

(It can’t be color, young Reus, certainly it can’t be color.) She holds it, holds it, and then falls into a heap on the stage.

The baritone seizes the soprano in his arms. To my left, Margot applauds, and so do I. I realize this is only the opening number, there are three acts left, and please excuse me, but I can’t keep from laughing. *** Not long after Eva died—Margot was ten or eleven—we returned to the Isar. As I set up camp along the river, I lost sight of Margot. She didn’t possess the disposition of a child seeking to run away. However, hers was not the spirit of a child seeking to climb a tree either, so when I found her in the upper boughs of an oak I was surprised.

She had never climbed a tree before, despite many visits to the Isar, not a single one. How she scaled the oak to such an elevated bough I could not say. When I instructed her to climb down, she didn’t move.

Instantly I recalled how much easier it is to go up than it is to come down.

I dug my shoes into the bark of the trunk and propelled myself up to the first branch. Margot was now two boughs above me, and I figured there would be no issues. Unfortunately, I misjudged the branch’s center of mass and when I stepped farther out from the trunk, the branch cracked and I tumbled to the ground.

I’m not an athlete. In my youth, I played football, but I lacked strength and speed. Even the school team refused my services. Though I attempted many times to reach the bough on which Margot rested, my efforts proved useless. I reasoned that Margot would have to jump, and I would have to catch her.

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 19

At first, she refused. There was genuine fear in her eyes, but I promised her it would be fine, and eventually, she believed me. She bravely stood up on the branch and leaped off the bough. As she flew through the air and fell onto my chest, I let the inertia of her body push me to ground, such that I fell on my back and gave cushion to her weight. I wrapped my arms around Margot, asked her if she was alright, and thought: This is how you hold on.

A few weeks later I accompanied her to Hauptbahnhof, and she enrolled in Rochstrasse. *** That night, in the woods of Schwabing, after we ride by the infantry lining the Ludwigstrasse, Margot and I eat a rather silent supper. She fiddles with her potatoes and I fiddle with my thoughts, and I think nothing will be said until Margot stands to leave the table and asks, “Father, do you think mom would have enjoyed tonight?”

Now, I fiddle with my potatoes. I hardly look my daughter in the eyes. “Yes, I think she would have.

Indeed, I think she would.”

After supper, Margot goes to her old room to sleep. And I, in my own sleep, dream of drones, thousands of them, congregating in the yellow-green light. They start to converse with one another and agree that the only way to stay together is to merge into one giant bee. Though the wings, thoraxes, and abdomens mesh as one, each drone maintains its own set of eyes, such that there are now thousands of lenses covering its body. It can see the entire visual scene—multiple perspectives and arenas. In principle, this ought to excite and please the bee, but the eyes cannot agree what perspective to act on, and eventually they argue, such an argument that the wings, thoraxes, and abdomens hastily elect to disconnect, and in the process one bee stings another, which triggers a frenzy, one sting after another, millimeter incisions all over their bodies, all over said body, only the bees soon find that they’re poisonous, so each sting equals death, senseless, pointless death, and I remember it all, every last sting, until all the bees litter the ground and only one eye’s left, a solitary eye, and then I wake up, exasperated, coated in yellow-green light. *** I first meet young Reus in the lecture hall of the Institute. He’s on stage laying a tablecloth over a glass case, which I presume houses his own experiment. I expect he has a formation of colored cards and sugar water underneath the cloth, which is fine by me, as I also have a colored card. It’s blue and in my chest pocket, and I plan to use it for my counterargument later. When the moment presents itself, I’ll flick its edges and sides, as I did with Margot, and rally against this reward-driven learning. (What else, young Reus? What else should I be ready for?)

Already some of my colleagues are present. They fill the first few pews that extend to the back of the hall. Most notably, there’s Dr. Mueller the sea urchin specialist, Dr. Neuer the insect specialist, and Dr. Braun the worm specialist. They’re joined by some of their close assistants whose names escape me. They wave, and I wave back. They also whisper amongst each other. A group of peers, colleagues for instance, can be the first to find fault.

Young Reus is not as tall as I’d thought he’d be, nor as direct. Rather, he seems to retreat behind his thick-rimmed glasses when we shake hands. I don’t know whether to find this annoying or charming.

Margot is at my side, so I introduce them. They smile bashfully in the way young people do when meeting for the first time. Margot and I haven’t spoken all morning, and I fear our silence may continue after the conference ends.

“I see you made it to Bavaria safely.”

“It can be difficult leaving Berlin. There’s a large military presence there—although you could say the same of Munich now. I was not expecting to see so many troops along the Ludwigstrasse.”

Pfizer walks into the lecture hall. “Yes, well,” he says, “it seems as if the whole nation is now on guard.”

He pats young Reus on the back and points to his setup on stage. “I see you have everything in order.

Very good,” he says. “Do we have a preference on who shall give the first demonstration?”

20 SPRING 2014

My counterpart says, “That decision is Dr. Lahm’s.”

Again, I don’t know whether to find this annoying or charming.

“I’ll go first,” I say.

Quickly, I go to the bee house to gather my materials. By the time I return, young Reus and Pfizer have sat down in the first pew with my colleagues. Margot, however, still stands near the steps leading up to the stage.

“Father,” she says. “Good luck.”

Stained-glass windows rise high above the wall behind the stage. They filter natural light kaleidoscopically. Pfizer once said that the architect who built the lecture hall was also a minister, hence the religious feel. Maybe it’s ambitious to claim any theological knowledge, as my expertise on existence does not extend any further than the sensory perceptions of invertebrates, but in this moment, as I prepare to illuminate the prism, which will lead to refraction and animal behavior, the universe seems contained in a glass case, enclosed in a tiny chamber, and so you’ll have to forgive me if, after transmitting the white light, a certain thrill sweeps over me, an elevation of the stomach that excites and nauseates, and I turn to my audience, regard the Muellers and Neuers and Brauns, but more importantly, young Reus, Pfizer, and my daughter, and say finally, “Behold.” *** “Isaac,” Eva said, “Would you please go watch Margot? She’s only a beginner.”

Margot whizzed up to the water’s edge and leapt into the Isar—no dog around, entirely on her own accord.

I followed her into the river. Surprisingly, she kept swimming and the water reaching my knees, my waist, my chest, forced me to swim as well. For some reason, I didn’t tell her to stop and soon we were immersed in deep water.

“Margot,” I said. “Where do you intend to go?”

The sunlight trickled through the foliage of overhanging branches and formed shadows on the river.

Finally, Margot turned to face me. Our bodies were beneath the surface from the neck down such that for the first time in my life, our heads rested at eye level. There was nowhere to look but into her eyes. I swam into their depths of greenness, and there encountered not only elements of the past, but futures—Sundays at the Isar, namely. Rochstrasse was nowhere near my consciousness.

“Monsters, daddy. I’m trying to find the monsters.”

I smiled and guided Margot’s arms around my neck. I asked her to hang on; the monsters were coming. Then we swam back to the riverbank and joined Eva for lunch as if they were. *** On stage, young Reus stands in front of his glass case, which is still covered with a tablecloth. My experiment went according to plan. The bees flocked to the yellow-green light, the strongest part of the color blind human eye. Now, I sit between my daughter and Pfizer in the front row, and the blue card rests ready in my pocket. (Young Reus, I’ll speak of taste or scent if you account for contours. Yes, that’s precisely what I’ll do.)

Young Reus says, “My theory suggests that bees associate sugar water with color, in this case blue.

The esteemed Dr. Lahm disagrees. He claims bees are attracted to intensity, an intensity corresponding to yellow-green light.”

I shift in my seat.

“In principle, it is difficult to disprove your theory, Dr. Lahm. It calls for a paradigm in which color can be the only cause of the behavior, that shows indisputably bees see blue.”

Mueller, Neuer, and Braun whisper. Pfizer seems to inch forward in the pew.

“As you might say, Dr. Lahm, behold…”

Theatrically, young Reus sheds the tablecloth. In the glass case, a panel separates two chambers. In one chamber, there are bees. In the other, there are squares—nine gray cards, one blue.

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 21

“The cards are identical,” young Reus says. “The bees cannot differentiate their geometries or spatial orientations. Their edges are the same.”

I blink twice and start to breathe heavily. I remove the blue card from my coat pocket.

“If bees really are color blind, all of the cards, gray and blue, would look the same. They would be unable to identify the blue card as the source of sugar water.”

I feel along the edges of my card, the smooth slits that compose its sides.

“But as I hypothesize, if they aren’t color blind, they should identify the blue card indiscriminately.

They should swarm right to it.”

I notice how the corners of a card can cut skin. How it’s possible to draw blood on said skin if you are so inclined. I put the card back in my pocket.

Young Reus says, “And now to dislodge the panel.”

As the bees leave their chamber—I believe you know scientific exquisiteness when you see it. When elegance appears right before your eyes, all you can do is applaud. The bees hover shortly above the gray cards, and I urge them to hesitate longer, to provide sufficient ground for error. Then they all buzz directly to the blue card and cover it in search of sugar, as they previously have been trained. One can hardly see the hue below their abdomens.

My colleagues lower their whispers. It seems like a very long moment before Pfizer places his hand on my shoulder. An old Austrian, he heaves his body up from the pew.

“The director of this institute must be a scientist whose work is respected in the zoological community,” he says.

He slowly walks onto the stage and shakes young Reus’s hand. One by one, Mueller, Neuer, and Braun, accompanied by their assistants, also congratulate him. (Young Reus, I see the way you smile. If you accept their praise, then one day you must also listen to their criticism.)

I know what I should do. I know what the honest man, the honorable zoologist would do. Soon, the scientists stop engaging one another and Pifzer looks at me. I stand, but my feet do not move. I can’t seem to step forward and be respectful, to join these men on stage. It’s on the verge of discomfort. Pfizer seems ready to say something, when I hear, we hear, a deafening noise from outside.

Pfizer leads us, Margot included, out of the lecture hall and into the courtyard. Directly overhead, a plane, no German flag on its shield, flies past. In the distance, smoke rises in the air above what must be Marienplatz. A line of armored cars, wretched-looking specimens, races down the Ludwigstrasse towards the smoke. The infantry trails them. When another plane surfaces in the clouds, I am so mesmerized I hardly hear Pfizer’s words.

“The basement!” he shouts.

He guides young Reus and his peers toward the annex. I recognize that it’s in my best interests to do the same, but beyond the gates, more armored cars race toward the smoke and the hum of their engines mixes with the drone of the planes. The infantry marches with greater thrust. Not a single soldier regards the Institute. Perhaps it’s time to go to the annex now, but bees possess centrality. I move toward the lecture hall.

Despite the growing noise from the Ludwigstrasse, everything is quite still. Young Reus’ bees are on stage. They seem lonely, in need of a scientist’s company.

I stand over the glass case. The bees cling to the blue card amidst the gray squares. Pesky invertebrates, they have not given up the hope of finding sugar.

“Father.”

Margot comes into the lecture hall. Or maybe she’s been here the whole time. She’s remarkably poised.

“Father, are you all right?”

Light through the stained glass forms crystals on her body. (Wouldn’t it be something, young Reus, yes, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we emitted the same intensity, if here we were, competitors, absorbing yellow-green light?)

“Maybe some day,” I say to Margot. “Maybe one day if we can get through this war, we’ll go again to the National Theatre.”

The noise from outside heightens, more shouts, more marches, more engines. The bees cling to the

22 SPRING 2014

same spot, but they need to acknowledge my presence. I extract the blue card from my coat pocket and inspect the glass. Though I’m uncertain if they’re drones, the risk doesn’t repel me. I place the card onto my chest, tuck it into the corner of my lapel, and displace the top of the case. Even amidst the commotion, the clamor of the Ludwigstrasse and combustion of Marienplatz, bees are attuned to the fundamental laws of life, the sensory elements that inform their coordinates, so it doesn’t surprise me that when exposed to the open air of the lecture hall, they search for a new source of sugar. Within seconds they find their target and bombard the blue on my chest, deliberating whether they’ll settle or sting. I hope for the latter, because I feel myself buzzing inward, further and further, to the green of the color blind eye.

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 23

The 450-Year-Old Man SAM REYNOLDS

Age 370—1934 Seated at the organ in the Stratford church, a man performs Rheinberger’s Sonata No. 4 in A minor. His back to the audience, he cannot see the procession leaving the pews to place wreaths on the grave. The only man who remains seated scribbles a note that reads, “having the air of being between a yeast factory and a steam laundry,” then adds in the description “ecclesiastical meandering” and underlines it twice.

Before the organist moves to the Choral Song and Fugue, he turns around and squints at the departing patrons. Today they remember birth and death, and he as the organist celebrates through music.

The reporter writes down another note: The second piece is “the dullest ever composed.”

Next year the player will return, and he will play something less bright. He will not play something less dull, because he does not believe his performance was dull at all.

Age 50—1614 Bonfires rage in the center of each village and public displays of celebration explode to honor Elizabeth I’s ascension. Everywhere the royal carriage rides, bells follow. Inside, James I listens to cheers for his predecessor. For the 44th year in a row, the people of England celebrate their previous monarch with a secular jubilee.

24 SPRING 2014

The first 12 anniversaries of the Queen’s reign passed without national fanfare. Royal pageantry limped through the streets on occasion, but the invitations to annual parties arrived only with a papal stamp of approval. Even with the Reformation, British holidays derived themselves from the Church’s holy days, at least until the 12th anniversary of Elizabeth I’s ascension, when the guest list was cut down to the Commonwealth. Once church bells rang for a national monarch, revelry in recent history replaced ancient holidays on the British calendar.

On November 5, two weeks before the country celebrates its queen, bonfires and bells also harmonize. Parades pass though the centers of villages, with each patron rolling his or her own beer keg. The people cheer as loud as they will for Elizabeth I in two weeks’ time, if not with the same clarity.

Gunpowder Treason Day arrives in the town square with the official sanction of Parliament, and the social approval of the clergy. Soldiers march the streets with unloaded muskets, celebrating nine years of separation from Guy Fawkes and his 36 barrels of gunpowder. The plot to shatter society failed, and to celebrate, the House of Lords feasts to the sound of ceremonial cannons.

A bishop preaches the endurance of the Anglican Church against the Catholic menace, and the pews listen to his words. He praises the state, the lords, even the commoners. The commoners cheer outside the church walls, pausing only to change kegs.

Age 10—1574 Inkpots empty as Latin becomes English and sunlight enters the classroom from the west.

Each bench matches a wooden desk, and the desks come from the same tree as the crooked beam across the ceiling. Below the bend in the beam, Will looks at the sun through the grates in the window, and predicts no more than 15 minutes before the light departs and candles arrive.

In the corner of the room, Headmaster Jenkins watches the sun and knows it will set in ten minutes. From six to five each day, he teaches boys from the ages of 7 to 14 how to give life to a dead language. This process repeats every day, except on weekends and Church holidays. Today is no different, except that it is St. George’s Day. It is also Will’s birthday, but no one minds either way.

While Will copies the motions of his fellow students, each translation revives a society known for power, prestige, and birthday celebrations. In that era of Roman domination, sons received togas from fathers, sisters and brothers exchanged jewelry, and even slaves honored their masters with shards of amber. Well-wishes arrived during the birthday feast in verbal exaltations from those in attendance, as well as tender letters from those out of town.

Exotic dancers poured wine throughout the night while a pig roasted on a spit and another bled in the temple. Other partiers placed wine and flowers at sacred altars, and some birthday boys performed dances not to the gods, but to the genius. Viewed as a guiding spirit through a man’s life as well as a medium between the gods and men, Romans treated the genius as integral to a man’s identity, and used birthdays as an occasion to honor and worship this being.

Will’s genius may be watching over him in England, but he shows no signs of worshipping his guardian. On his tenth birthday, his arms write without the clang of jewelry, covered by a coarse tunic rather than a silken toga. As the sun sets on Britain, Headmaster Jenkins sets a candle in front of Will to illuminate the past, not for wishes. As this light shines on Will’s translation, more candlesticks join in brightening the classroom against nightfall.

When the evening bells chime to usher the students home, the thought of a birthday does not cross Will’s mind. He walks home over the cobbled roads with a Greek mentality, unconcerned with celebrating ten years on Earth. The

only celebration of birth in the ancient Greek culture occurred after death, when relatives and loved ones mourned their lost companions through joy rather than sorrow. But this view is unknown to this Latin-educated Elizabethan.

The lack of excitement from the day carries into sleep, from which he will wake up tomorrow to repeat the same routine. In his dreams, he might imagine presents piled high around roast chicken bathing in mists of wine. More likely, he will dream of nothing.

Age 35—1599 Groundlings wait for the start of the new play, one penny poorer, the smiles across their faces concealing the rotten tomatoes in their hands.

Above, the middle class sits in boxes, having paid twice as much for the right to sit and throw tomatoes rather than stand with the filth below. Some sit on cushions, for three pennies.

Around the playhouse servants serve food and drink to every guest. From the top gallery, Thomas Platter and his group of Swedish cohorts look down on the platform. Offstage hide the only faces without smiles, each crouched in character for the first scene.

The play begins and five actors walk onstage in togas underneath Elizabethan jackets. A spot in the crowd only guarantees sight of the jackets, relics of powerful lords bequeathed to greedy serving men; they pawned these beautiful garments to actors for a few pennies.

Tonight’s premiere of Julius Caesar seizes the contemporary fascination with Rome, throwing Latin lingo at the audience ten times before this tragedy of history ends. Halfway through his play, Caesar dies, and Brutus fills his void with speculation and indecision, crying out to no one but the audience over the tension between “the genius and the mortal instruments.” His manic counterpart, Cassius, does not blame his genius for anything, but does forget to thank it when he remembers, “This is my birthday; as this very day / Was Cassius born.”

In lieu of pageantry, Cassius celebrates his birthday on the battlefield. He commands his subordinate to stab him; he’d rather die than face defeat. Fewer than five lines after his death, news of victory reaches Cassius’ body, but he does not hear the turn of fortune. Instead, his blood runs over the blade, a respectful sacrifice and celeTHE HARVARD ADVOCATE 25

bration to remember his birth and death. Brutus meets death in a similar fashion, shaking hands with the afterlife through the blade of his own sword. He runs on the sword, but again, the hilt is held by another man.

Once the performance ends, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men walk on stage. Fifteen actors wide, they break out into dance: One wears a jacket, two wear gowns, and all celebrate. In the audience, Thomas Platter and his compatriots applaud their choice of spectacle for the afternoon.

With two other plays across the Thames, they are content to have viewed what Platter wrote was an “excellent performance.”

Age 284—1848 Men gather to celebrate Will’s birthday in a building named after him. A reporter arrives and believes them to be distinguished, but their drinking habits quickly corrode their landed titles. Scribbling down their names, he notices that around their pomp and circumstance, the town of Stratford is as empty as usual.

Inside the building toasts commence before dinner, and continue as men wash down the roast with the wine. One man jumps from his chair at the first opportunity of silence, raises his goblet, and cries, “To the health of the immortal Poet.” Others follow his example and down their liquor to the spirit of poetry and her poets.

Once the lesser dignitaries finish opining, his Lordship, MP, rises from his seat and clears his throat.

“I am glad of the opportunity of appearing here as your representative, and I do declare, you are most ready to pay homage to the foremost genius of our country.”

The crowd cheers and he continues: “The writings of Shakespeare have contributed in no inconsiderable degree to augment the consideration and influence of England.”

They cheer again.

“Even in America they cheer for Shakespeare.

In France, they discarded the heresies of Voltaire and admitted his eminence. And do not forget Ireland, for which he joins with the poets of England and Ireland to bring justice to the West.”

The cheers shake the smooth timbered ceiling.

“Remember, the poet Moore still lives among us, and long might his myrtle be gilded with the mild and genial radiance of a protracted sunset.”

26 SPRING 2014

Spirits splash over the lips of the drinkers, and the living celebrate their current poet laureate at an event for the great playwright of the past.

At a nearby hotel, a lesser crowd performs the same celebration, with the same display of feeling.

Age 324—1888 “The entertainment is addressed to both physical and mental nature, and begins with the first course: the intellectual salad.”

A plate sits before each woman, filled with lettuce leaves made of tissue paper. One shade of light green reads, “There’s a special shade of providence in the fall of a sparrow.” A blade of imitation grass whispers, “Truth needs no colour—Beauty no pencil.” The bottom of the salad molds to a crumpled, yellowed scrap, with the words “Nature hath formed strange fellows in her time” faded into a crease. One particularly loud guest guesses Macbeth for each quote and receives nothing but a frown. For most of the guests, the scraps of paper mix without effort into their knowledge of folios and quartos.

One book rests above each plate on the immaculate tablecloth. The hardcover is too big for the palm of your hand, but just the right size to slip into a pocketbook, or a back pocket. Gilded pages slip underneath the fingertips of a reader, and golden leaves wrap around the spine to garnish The Shakespeare Birthday Book. There is no dedication or inscription in the front cover, other than one that begins midway through a line: My blessing with thee, And these few precepts in thy memory.

After alternating between title page and blank page, Will watches his own words in profile. His head, bald up to the crown, faces right. A textured tunic wrinkles around his shoulders, and the rest of the picture is unfinished. The next page brings the reader to The New Year, and the start of the birthdays. With each new day, two to three quotations prompt the reader to celebrate.

As years pass, the book will fill with names, and each name will be linked in ink to Shakespeare.

While the ladies of the Fredonia Shakespeare Club finish their celebration of Will’s 324th, 366 days await to be filled by birthdays living across

the page from quotations.

Age 102—1666 Will rests in his coffin. His arms are crossed, but his eyes are not closed. His eyes are nowhere, in fact. His flesh has decayed, completely, leaving only a skeleton under concrete.

The epitaph reads: Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare, To dig the dust enclosed here.

Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.

At the foot of the grave rocks a crooked wooden sign: “Here Lies William Shakespeare 1564– 1616.” Wreaths of flowers cover this ephemeral inscription; both will disappear within one year.

Age 300—1864 A wooden edifice obscures the source of bells chiming at noon. The streets snake around the structure, empty, but a brisk wind hints at the incoming wave of visitors intent on overwhelming the town. Tacked to the front of the temporary structure, a bulletin announces the festivities for the coming week.

A banquet is the only event on April 23, and will be presided over by Lord Carlisle. The cost to attend is 21 shillings, which entitles one to entrance and food. In the evening a grand display of fireworks will shoot over town. This is the only free event of the weekend.

On Sunday there are no events.

On Monday 500 singers, 120 instruments, and one conductor will perform Handel’s Messiah.

In the evening more music will be performed, accompanied by words from Shakespeare.

Twelfth Night opens on Tuesday for one per-

formance and 5 shillings. Immediately afterward a staging of a new comedy written by Lord Dundreary will appear in a new farce. Tickets are, again, 5 shillings.

Romeo and Juliet, The Comedy of Errors, and Hamlet all squeeze into Wednesday, and music returns on Thursday for a collection of music from the plays of Shakespeare.

The festival will close on Friday, six days after it opens, with a Grand Fancy Dress Ball. Those who cannot afford the 21-shilling surcharge are encouraged to attend the exhibition in the town hall, where portraits of Shakespeare will stare at 19th-century faces.

One week after the festival the wooden theatre will be destroyed, and all productions will return to the permanent Stratford Theatre.

Age 450—2014 Websites announce local celebrations for Shakespeare’s 450th birthday party. Stratford hopes to attract tourists to balloon its population of 25,505. Each year 4,300,000 people visit, but this year the local government hopes the streets will overflow with pageantry. France celebrates a tercentenary-and-a-half with public forums and discussions. Elsewhere in the world, those without an invite to the official party can celebrate by continuing to attend plays.

In a library, The Shakespeare Birthday Book rests filled with names in quill, surrounded in all directions by books printed in presses. Outside pubs, Saint George’s flag flies, sometimes, but most establishments remain the same. The buildings in Stratford stand, and they are still wood. No one performs the Fugue on this day, because it is dull. Latin is dead, and so is everyone in this piece.

Will does not care how you celebrate. By this time he’s a flower, or maybe even just grass.

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 27

In Memoriam VICTORIA BAENA

Down the passage we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind.

– T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets We may therefore conceive God to be the natural maker of the bed, and in a lower sense the carpenter is also the maker; but the painter is rather the imitator of what the other two make; he has to do with a creation which is thrice removed from reality. And the tragic poet is an imitator, and, like every other imitator, is thrice removed from the king and from the truth.

– Socrates, Plato’s Republic The front page of the website for artist Alisdair Hopwood’s False Memory Archive, currently on tour in Edinburgh and soon to arrive at London’s Freud Museum, declares: “WE NEED FALSE MEMORIES.” One could interpret this phrase in one of two ways: the utilitarian—the collective is in need of false memories for its project; or the more abstract—we human beings rely somehow upon a fabricated notion of the past.

The False Memory Archive is based on both principles. As artist-in-residence at the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths College, Hopwood wants to combine the techniques of contemporary art with the latest psychological research. Visitors to his website are invited to type 28 SPRING 2014

a false memory (“a distorted or entirely invented recollection of an experience”) into a window; the submissions are then collected and arranged into a spare, sleek installation, all black text on white columns and walls. The memories range from the poignantly comic (“I thought that my mother left me for 2 years when I was a child to look for work.

I found out in my 20’s that she only was gone for 2 weeks”) to the simply odd (“My mum passed a raw garlic clove from her mouth into mine, in the kitchen”). Others are more uncanny:

I remember biting into a mouse when I was four as a child in Indonesia in order to make my brother be quiet. I was sitting outside in the garden making mud pie and he just kept talking. A mouse ran by and I bit into it. Blood filled my mouth and ran down my face. My brother and the rest of my family have assured me this has never happened.

For psychologists, this phenomenon is wellknown and well-documented. Multiple studies over the past several decades, spearheaded by scholars like Elizabeth Loftus, have confirmed that memory cannot be trusted. Childhood hot-air balloon rides or trips to the mall (with hometown details provided by a family member) can be virtually implanted in a participant’s mind, so that he or she is firmly convinced that the nonexistent event took place. These false memories are known

to increase with age, as the knowledge and experience gained by children create a more cohesive and fully integrated network of conceptual representations. Ribot’s Law suggests that older memories are more stable, since the more a memory is revisited, the more it is consolidated into other, overlapping recollections. But a recent experiment in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology examined an exception to the law, finding that false memories based on images or scenes rather than vocabulary are more easily implanted in children than in adults. At all ages, most signs show memory as functioning less as a camcorder—press play and the scene unfolds, just as it was experienced—than as the concentric ripples formed by a pebble dropped in a pond, expanding, loosening, and eventually colliding with obstacles that interrupt and warp its tidy path.

Common sense still might seem to challenge these findings. The reliance on eyewitness testimony in courts has failed to ebb, even with initiatives like the Innocence Project, which have sought to expose and overturn false convictions based on witnesses that turn out to have misremembered a crucial scene. But in its revisionist account psychology has mirrored a recent literary trend. The slim memory novel has come to dominate lists and awards: a kind of novel increasingly concerned with the causes and consequences of, and opportunities resulting from, a faulty interpretation of the past. The narrator of Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending, winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, claims near the start to be recalling “approximate memories which time has deformed into certainties.” Some reviewers criticized the novel for a myopic thematization of memory. Qualifications abound: “That was my reading then of what was happening at the time. Or rather, my memory now of my reading then of what was happening at the time.” The novel is strongest when it departs from such commentary to return to the story, centered around one crucial misremembering during the narrator’s adolescence. Given the blandness of the narrator’s present he returns to the trotted-over, if still enigmatic, past, when his first girlfriend, Veronica, left him for his first true friend, Adrian.

Tony, the protagonist, subsequently dashed off a spiteful later to Adrian, before learning weeks later that Adrian committed suicide. Adrian, with a kind of clever, slightly irritating intellect, had been the center of Tony’s group at school; he

would ignore a history teacher’s questions before responding to his admonitions with, “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.” The rest of the novel relives, reinterprets, and ultimately revises this event, which ends up as an airtight example of Adrian’s dashed-off response.

Barnes’ novel extends the terms of Hopwood’s project—applying false memories to the very nature of memory. It takes its place among other recent fiction dealing not only with fickle memories of events but with the fickleness of interpretation at the moment in which a memory is created. Alice McDermott’s Someone, published last fall, is composed of a series of memories of an Irish Catholic woman. Her memories are simultaneously unique and undifferentiable; “Someone” could be anyone, but is christened in this case with capitalization and choice. Selection, indeed, is what structures and limits the book, the chosen memories unfolding in a loose narrative, in quiet scenes. It is the conscious selection of memory, rather than the phenomenon of memory itself, that creates or imposes meaning upon a life.

As a character in the short story “What is Remembered” by Alice Munro (another memory-driven author celebrated this past year) thinks, “The job she had to do, as she saw it, was to remember everything—and, by remember, she meant experience it in her mind, one more time—then store it away forever.” But memory, she learns, doesn’t work like that. A brief affair with a doctor who later dies in a plane crash resurfaces again and again, in later years, and yet never in its entirety. Instead she hears a scrap of a phrase, or catches a glance between a couple: “She would keep picking up things she’d missed, and these would still jolt her.” Never, in these recollections, can she remember what the doctor looked like. ** These characters’ failures to recall, coupled with earnest appeals to remember, are troubling on a deeper level because they come to challenge or at least call attention to the central conceit of storytelling: “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” What else is fiction but an attempt to implant false memories in a reader by constructTHE HARVARD ADVOCATE 29

ing a make-believe world? Of course, this conceit is no secret to most; the phenomenon is as old as the novel itself. Long before the modernists began a concerted attempt at laying bare the device—think of Georges Braque’s trompe-l’oeil nail in Violin and Palette, a reminder that the painting is only just that—storytellers questioned and played with the terms of this deception. Literary scholars like E.C. Riley have argued that the emerging genre of the novel at the end of the16th century, under Cervantes’ revolutionary aegis, was host to a particular vulnerability of the status of truth and fiction. Poetry had shed the necessary trappings of truth-telling and instead it was the novel that would come to concern itself with the role. Books in this genre—Don Quixote is a prime example—would often be framed as a memoir, or as a series of documents collected and arranged by an author who claimed only the role of editor. (Such a conceit would persist: Robinson Crusoe, after all, was structured as an unwieldy autobiography, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque….) Yet even Cervantes would tug against the truth-telling dictate throughout the Quixote. He played on cultural prejudices in creating a fictitious “author” of the text, Cide Hamate Benengeli, an Arab and thus thought to be wily and dishonest. And Don Quixote’s mad attempts to become a hero, his tendency to read danger and adventure into a windmill or a procession of nuns, come from his firm conviction in the verisimilitude of the books of caballería that he has spent his entire life reading—books that similarly position themselves as fact. His is little different from Tony’s fear in The Sense of an Ending—“that Life wouldn’t turn out to be like Literature.”

In Part I, Book IV of the Quixote, the priest holds his audience enraptured by reading a story: El curioso impertinente. In this, one of many stories-within-a-story, the friendship of two young caballeros, Anselmo and Lothario, is tested when the latter asks his friend to court his own lover.

The test of loyalty backfires and the majority of the characters end up dead, or at least distraught.

“There’s something of the impossible in it,” says the priest, closing the book, “but in what refers to the way of telling it, it doesn’t disappoint.”

This is the first case of many in which style clam30 SPRING 2014

bers up and over “truth,” in which the artifice of storytelling—the construction of false memories—is privileged over a one-to-one adherence to reported fact. “Fictitious stories are good and delightful to the extent that they approach the truth or the semblance of it,” the priest later proclaims in Part II. But the novel seems to hint that his is an antiquated, even reactionary approach to literature. In the famous book-burning scene, Quixote’s loyal friend Cardenio begs the priest not to hurl into the fire all the hero’s books that are not true. Even while admitting their unworthiness astride the pillar of Truth, he appeals, instead, to style—to beauty—as a justification for longevity. Beauty is truth, truth beauty: The artist’s trump card has long been to elide the difference between the two. ** The malleable boundaries between truth and fiction are belied, today, by the distinction and codification of separate genres: between “fiction,” for instance, and “memoir.” But the debate has never really gone away. Part of the appeal of Hopwood’s project is the interest, the shock, at realizing the possibility of false memories: a possibility we nevertheless act out on our own. For Hopwood, this reaction has an ethical dimension. “If we accept that autobiographical memory is a ‘creative act’ and that the fictive plays an important role in understanding the formation of a subjective truth,” he has said, “then how can we attempt to objectively identify and challenge pathological delusions, misinformation and damaging myths?” What is the difference, he seems to be asking, between the fundamental blur between truth and fiction, and the calculating attempt to manipulate those categories for a particular political or social purpose? On the one hand, of course, the “narrative moment” continues to envelop the academy, starting from the assumption that history itself is a narrative, that personal misremembering is paralleled by social forgetfulness that scholars should still try to remedy, all the while acknowledging the partiality and contingency of their own efforts. But on the other hand, we place such a premium, still, on truth-telling, on integrity. It is a commonplace to note that a writer who has something to say would, 50 years ago, have written a novel; today, he writes a memoir. According to Nielsen Bookscan, there has been a 400 percent

increase in the number of memoirs published since 2004. Despite a possible understanding that Truth is gone and no replacement (happiness? community?) has yet taken the crown, we yearn nevertheless for “real” stories, for true tales.

And when they turn out to be false, we are hurt, and angry—as in the revelation that James Frey had fabricated parts of his best-selling memoir, A Million Little Pieces, embellishing details of criminal action and jail time. Amid the frantic Oprah invites and dis-invites and publishers’ waverings lay deeper and more unsettling questions regarding the integrity of those who use their own past as material. At the time, Michiko Kakutani argued that the affair signaled the seedy underside of the postmodernist move toward skepticism, toward questioning the authority of narrative, firmly established over in the deconstructionist camp. See what happens when you poke holes in capital-T Truth? she seemed to be pointing out. Without a single overarching narrative a certain responsibility to facts was lost; Frey could justify his actions by maintaining that what he wrote about felt true. He could claim, disingenuously, that it was true somehow in another, greater way.

Kakutani’s analysis is overly simplistic. Few would claim that memoir is no more than a simple compendium of listable, checkable facts, just as few would deny that fiction draws on the author’s life. Certain kinds of fabrication are accepted as a matter of course. And this has been true long before the deconstructionist turn; Rousseau’s Confessions are packed with self-conscious claims to truth-telling along with stories told in such detail that some fabrication is undeniable.

Memoirs and biographies are full of long, quoted, dubiously accurate dialogue uttered years or decades before publication. It would seem that what scholar of journalism Norman Sims has called the “reality boundary” is more akin to, to borrow a phrase from the scholarship of imperialism, a permeable and malleable “contact zone.”

And in some cases—though, crucially, not others—the reader accepts this willing suspension.

But Kakutani is on to something when she bemoans the single narrative’s fragmentation into multiple truths. Frey’s justification for fabricating elements of his own life was based on a tale of suffering, in a book centered around addiction and recovery. It is a similar argument to that of Tim O’Brien in The Things They Carried, which distinguishes “happening-truth,” the facts

on the ground as the narrator fights in Vietnam, from “story-truth,” the constructed narrative that somehow becomes truer than the grouping of facts in its ability to help in the recovery from trauma or in dealing with horrific events.

O’Brien’s book toggles between the two. Can we equate different kinds of suffering—slaughter in Vietnam and drug and alcohol addiction? Can we distinguish them? In any case, The Things They Carried is—how significantly?—a collection of short stories.

Once Primo Levi had written Survival in Auschwitz, a memoir of his experiences in a concentration camp during World War II, he found that this was somehow not enough—that he would need to return to it once again through fiction.

“The problem of being a counterfeiter, of feeling false, worries me,” he said in an interview once.

“There’s a clear difference between telling stories you claim are true, and telling stories like Boccaccio.” But it was a question he would admit he was unable to resolve. Still, though, the incommunicability of Auschwitz, the struggle to fully encapsulate it in prose, is never equal to a denial of Auschwitz. This is, perhaps, the anxiety Kakutani signaled: the possibility of a slippage from questioning the truth of the past, from challenging an authoritative narrative, to denying that horrors took place. And the response—to write fiction out of fact in a way that restores truth to what seems devoid of fact or sense—can seem, as Levi intimated, heretical. The danger, of course, becomes that existing structures of power—the figures, governments, and institutions responsible for transmitting the past—invariably privilege certain of these narratives over others. The multiplication of possible histories, rather than a mounted challenge to History with its own limitations and prejudices as such, becomes itself vulnerable to a hierarchy of validity. ** Hopwood’s project is situated firmly within the assumptions of the archival trend. Gaining momentum and credibility, especially since World War II, the archive serves perhaps to counter the shortcomings of narrative proliferation. It proposes an alternative to the memoir, a competing textual form in which to chronicle the past and even its slippery spirit. The installation is not only a compendium of false memories but a false memory archive, one in which they can be THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 31

stored, searched and, crucially, remembered. Archives, so fraught with controversy and meaning decades ago, have come to be a central part of modern life. On the outskirts of European cities; in the damp basements of municipal courthouses; encased within Google’s whirring steel data repositories in Nevada and Arizona, information is accumulating. The origin of the archive is the anxiety of forgetfulness, of false or lacking memory. And its central question is what to include, and what to leave out—a question so provocative, with so much at stake, that increasingly little is left out at all. The archive, with its material evidence and concrete documentation, might seem to support a single narrative of the past.

But as more and more is recorded, it becomes increasingly difficult to reconcile all the evidence, to funnel all this data into one consistent story.

The story fractures, again, into fragments of history, as the archive once again promotes a variety of interpretations on what has gone before. In a way, this process restores agency and importance to lives so casually extinguished. The oral history collection at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for instance, seeks to record and publish testimonies and interviews with survivors of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution.

The few available journals or other documents written by African-American slaves accomplish a similar goal. But the process also signals what historian Pierre Nora has called the effect of a new consciousness: “the clearest expression of the terrorism of historicized memory.” With our e-mail histories recorded, centuries of censuses filed, and correspondence sanitized, stored, and uploaded so as not to allow the edges of ancient pages to crumble, it is no longer clear where the archive ends and reality commences. It becomes difficult to separate the significant from the superfluous and, more importantly, to make the active, ethical choice of what to remember and what to allow to slip away. ** Kierkegaard believed that a person’s resilience could be measured by what we tend to consider the opposite of memory: the ability to forget. Not by his or her forgetfulness—rather, by the active effort to clip away the unneeded and un-useful.

In the process the two become more alike than distinct, and personal identity emerges: “the Archimedean point with which one lifts the whole 32 SPRING 2014

world.” To decide what to remember and what to forget becomes another way of deciding what kind of person one would like to be.

If the rise of the archive is linked to the ethical task of preserving forgotten or underrepresented narratives, confirmed through historical rigor and social validation, the personal dimension of truth, fiction, and memory forms a more dialectical relationship. Autobiography and memoir may rest on self-deception, but even memory is similarly vulnerable to mistakes and misinterpretations. And even memory relies upon a construction of the past in which the conventions of style and genre dictate and determine how we talk about ourselves. The participant in the False Memory Project with the mother who left to look for work could employ that event as one example of a broader narrative of a lonely, isolated childhood, which becomes one explanation of a life spent in search of community and companionship. Just as fiction plays with lived memory and forgetfulness, real-life memory draws upon the tools of fiction in both creating and limiting its potential.

In some ways, all identity can be understood as narrative identity. Individuals, strung between contingent “human time” and deep “historical time,” struggle to understand their place and function within their own particular moment; in large part this takes place when historical time becomes human time by being articulated through a narrative mode. As philosopher Paul Ricoeur puts it in Time and Narrative, “Narrative attains its full significance when it becomes a condition of temporal existence.” In many ways, this process is a part of life, not just a part of literature: We make sense of and, in a certain sense, construct our own identities by telling ourselves stories about our own lives—making identity mobile rather than fixed. Psychologist Jerome Bruner, who has worked on narrative for decades, goes further. The ways of telling and of conceptualizing, he argues, become so rigid that they end up structuring experience itself— not only guiding the narrative of a life into the present, but also helping to structure it into the future. “In the end,” he has written, “we become the autobiographical narratives by which we tell about our lives.” A life as led becomes no more than a life as told.

This process is at the center of Hopwood’s False Memory Archive. “What’s interesting is that the submissions become mini-portraits of

the person,” he has said, “yet the only thing you are finding out about this person is something that didn’t actually happen.” What he calls a “lovely paradox” actually defines all memories, not just ones that turn out to be false. But the relationship between the two—the indistinct but visible line between stylized memory and falsified events—does tell us something about the possessor of these memories. Perhaps, then, the

conscious fabrications of Frey and others frighten us so because they are exaggerated examples of what we all do, constructing narratives that help to explain the past and lay the groundwork for the future. Conscious fabrication is a particularly egregious method of telling a story that reveals who we wish we were, rather than who we are— revealing, too, how the two are not as different as we would so often like to think.

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 33

Queenie’s on the Strip CHRISTOPHER ALESSANDRINI

Once when I was very young, the girl I loved had a seizure in the deep end. Her name was Melanie Fitzgerald, and I didn’t much like her. We spoke very little, and when we did, it left an ugly, pitted feeling in my stomach. The dull features of her face scrunched tight around the nose, and the ends of her mouth were in the habit of turning inward and down. We were playing Marco Polo, a group of us, the tall boys inching along the sides of the pool to six feet. And she followed them, her hair fanning flat where it met the water. She walked until the water kissed her chin. It was midday, and the sun made her hair shine like lacquered wood.

I could feel the pool jet against my stomach, as if it were trying to burrow deeper under the skin. It seemed a very pure force. When I turned again she was facedown on the water’s surface. Someone was shouting, the lifeguard maybe, or one of the tall boys. They dragged her to the stairs at the head of the pool, where she floated in the gentle tide like a skiff.

We exited single file from the pool, and as I left, I felt her hair tickle the back of my legs. For a moment I grew warm all over. The water winked and dimpled in the sunlight, so that everything shone impossibly white. Two of the tall boys had their hands about her wrists, anchoring her, and there were many other children shivering poolside to watch the spectacle play out.

In the locker room later—after the ambulance had arrived, and all the tall boys were in the showers making jokes—I rubbed my legs until I didn’t feel anything at all, just the raw red make of my skin, the dead memory of her hair along my legs, how real it felt, even then. *** Chronologies have never interested me. I’m going to keep things to the bone. I’m going to tell you only what you need to know. Some have said that in my retelling I withhold or that I do not fill in the right gaps. Maybe this is true. But this is all I have—the memory of a place, and the people who, for a time, occupied it. *** Each of us was going to run away. It was only a matter of time, we said. There were the four of us: Kennie and Levi and Fresno and me. We drove the Strip for hours. We took Fresno’s car, a shitty blue pickup given him by his father, a farmhand, for his sixteenth birthday. We got burgers and shakes at this little drive-through where the waitresses still went around on rollerblades. They all smelled of cherry cola, the waitresses, and went by names like Brenda or Linda or Sherry or Jill. When their shifts ended, they exchanged their rollerblades for checkered pumps and short skirts.

The Strip lit up like a carnival at night, the electric signs flashing and winking like schoolgirls, the night sky opening up beyond the lights to where the hills grew dark and tall with pine. At the end of the Strip the lights stopped blinking and the storefronts went dead with plywood. Fresno turned us around

34 SPRING 2014

and we started north again, toward the lights and the crowds. Fresno was a good kid. He was the first to go. *** Kennie went to vocational school the next town over where she learned to work cars. She had three piercings in each ear, a nose ring, and one on her belly button. We met in junior high when she was the new girl and she asked me to dance. We kissed on the dance floor. Freshman year of high school she told me she’d fallen for a girl. Then she switched to the vocational school.

It was about that time that Levi and I met at Saint Paul’s Rehabilitation Center for Wayward Youths.

Saint Paul’s had stone buildings with cupolas and porte-cochères and therapists who combed their hair to one side and didn’t think a thing of taking three-week “hiatuses” to Geneva or the Berkshires. Levi was in for being a sexual deviant and I was there because I didn’t seem to have many thoughts of value and that didn’t bother me.

I slept on the top bunk in a room with four beds and one window. Every morning I slammed my head on the ceiling. The schoolmasters at Saint Paul’s didn’t know much. They bettered my handwriting and claimed improvement in French and Latin. They taught me not to leave my elbows on the dining room table and I learned the importance of cufflinks, something I wouldn’t use until many years later. When I returned to school my junior year, people thought I was the wrong kind of kid. That made me a lot of friends, though I couldn’t give you any of their names now. *** The girls at Queenie’s had little red and gold tassels clipped to their nipples. Friday nights they lit the neon signs over the bar and served fifty-cent wings and fixed the jukebox so it played the whole song catalog on loop. Kennie’s friend Margot performed Friday nights and we went to watch her. Levi and I met Kennie and Fresno at the round table off the bar near the jukebox.

We only knew about Queenie’s on account of Kennie’s meeting Margot. The vocational school offered free car tune-ups as practice for the students. Margot brought her old Chevy in and Kennie got it running good as new. After that they started seeing each other. Kennie said Margot was like nobody she’d ever met. She had a theater degree from a little school in Michigan and her hair was a new color each week. That first time it was red.

Margot was a character. She had wide owl eyes and the very smooth dark skin that men found attractive. She knew things, like how much eye shadow was too much and which outfits made the right kind of men like her. For her the whole thing was a hoot. When she was drunk enough, and enough men had squeezed her thighs, and the skinny pimpled barmen had stopped giving her free drinks, she turned to me and said, “This whole thing’s a hoot, you know. Hoot-hoot-hoot.” What was I supposed to say? I bought her a drink.

Kennie brought us to Margot’s shows. Margot circled our table with a big cherry-lipped smile to her face and performed the little tassel bit for each of us before walking to the next table to tassel for the paying gentlemen. They pinched her cheeks and about once a week one would grow gutsy enough to squeeze her breasts and she would shriek and play coy, then rub her backside along his shoulders as he closed his eyes and moaned. Margot told us she only did this for the ones who didn’t wear wedding rings. She said she couldn’t respect the men who didn’t even pretend.

Fresno was Hispanic and well-muscled, a good-looking kid one year our junior who studied cars with Kennie at the vocational school. He said he was born in Mexico and that he wanted to travel America in a flatbed. Those were the two main things on his mind at any given moment: Mexico and the road. He always had gum. Usually he chewed three to four pieces at once, a thick little wad in his mouth like a wine cork. He’d fallen for Kennie even though he knew about her and Margot. When Margot flitted about him with her tasseled nipples he always stared ahead at Kennie, who stared ahead at Margot. ***

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 35

There was a little tin bell over the door at Queenie’s that you only ever heard as you walked in or out.

The rest of the time the music was so loud you didn’t know if people were coming and going.

No one carded at Queenie’s. The barmen were drunk half the time and the bouncer was a regular goof called Charlie who spent most of his time doing hits with the manager in the back lot. He was friendly and calm and when he wasn’t stoned he played at shooing people from the door. But for the most part he couldn’t keep his mouth in a straight line for more than thirty seconds. He liked a good time, and for years Queenie’s played the part.

Levi and I played games like, How many people will Charlie turn away tonight? Or, How many drinks will Margot get for Kennie tonight? Or, How many times will Fresno rub Kennie’s hand across the table? After tallying our scores, we escaped to the back lot. Levi had a soft tongue and nice smooth cheeks and he didn’t go slack when we kissed. Then we sat and smoked a pack of Pall Malls and he’d tell me about the men he met online—who they were, and how he used them. *** After they found Fresno’s body, I started to forget things. Small things at first, like the names of grade school teachers, or where I’d left my wallet. Then bigger things: which bus led home, where to find a good time, my mother’s maiden name. People mistook this for grief. They said it was only natural. *** Once Charlie sat at our table and spent the afternoon with us. When Margot returned from her rounds he told us about this job he’d had right after high school mowing a rich man’s lawn. He said he spent most of the time sitting in the tool shed, which was bigger than the studio apartment he shared at the time with two roommates, reading Playboy and drinking virgin pale ales he found in a wheelbarrow.

He said the job had definite perks. One was that he got to watch the house when the mister and his family went on vacation, which was often, and for extended periods. Another was that the mister’s daughter was a thing of beauty.

“She was purty,” he said. “P-U-R-T-Y.” He pawed the rash on his cheek.

“Did you make the moves on her, Charlie?” Margot said with a drag. Smoke went from her nostrils like she was a bull, or a sorceress. “Did you take her away and make her yours?”

“I had half a mind.”

“Half a mind only, Charlie?”

“Half a mind only.”

“Tell us about her.” I leaned forward and burped into my glass. Levi popped a PBR and slid it my way but not without taking a sip first. I made no move for the can, as I didn’t like thinking where Levi’s lips went at night.

“Tell us everything.” Margot was fixing her bra. It slipped around a lot after shows. She held Kennie’s hand under the table. I could feel Fresno watching.

“Oh I would but it makes me sad,” Charlie said. He blinked a few times fast and we all laughed.

“Charlie doesn’t like to be sad. Charlie hasn’t got time to be sad.”

“Why’d you quit?” Kennie asked. She wasn’t even listening.

“Didn’t,” Charlie said. He grinned so we saw his missing teeth. “I drove the mower into the pool and that done me in.”

“That done him in!” Kennie and Margot shrilled.

“Oh yeah it did,” Charlie said. “It done him in good.” *** Record heat that summer, and the girls knew it well. They cut belly-shirts from their good-girl shirts, cropped their tight jeans near the waist. Kennie was like any girl that way. She did her hair in pins and hairspray. Fresno listed all the chemicals in the hairspray like a child reciting the animals on Noah’s Ark.

36 SPRING 2014

Kennie would smirk and pinch his cheek and flop around on the hood of Margot’s car. She’d make poses for us.

The other girls at Queenie’s were chummy with Margot but they hated her. They said so any time Margot scampered off to the restroom to readjust her tassels. The other girls had been around and didn’t think Margot would last. They saw her type often. It was only a matter of time before she left for a wholesome trade, like telephone operating.

Kennie didn’t like the other girls. She called them trash. The other girls liked Kennie.

One of the other girls kissed me on the mouth. Her name was Fredericka but she told me to call her Freddie or Fred or whatever I preferred, she didn’t care, she could be anyone I wanted. She sat on my lap the whole night and ran her fingers through my hair until I didn’t feel her there at all. She sucked at my lips like a wounded animal, my fingers teased the small of her back. For days I smelled of jasmine powder no matter how hard or long I washed. *** In August Fresno came up with a plan. He was going to run away. We told him it was a bad plan.

“Easy for you to talk,” he said. He had a look to him that told us he was already gone. “You’re all going to leave me behind now you’re finished with school. I’m just waiting.” He smiled without looking up from his glass. “Don’t you see?” He looked mean when he smiled.

“Fresno,” Kennie said. She reached out for his hand and rubbed the backside of his fingers, which had grown hairy since May when we graduated. She brought his hand to her lips and he pulled away.

“I’m set,” he said. “All I need is some help.”

“You need some help?” Levi said. Levi hardly knew Fresno at all. It was easy for Levi to ask a question like that with a straight face.

“Don’t indulge him,” Margot said. She winked at Kennie and me. She leaned forward so her breasts caught the tabletop and peeked over her neckline. Her hair was blue. Levi was playing with one of my belt loops under the table and I had the urge to slap his hand, just to see his face go flat. “Look, Fresno. I ran away when I was sixteen and look at me now.”

“You went to college,” Fresno said.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” she said. She gestured at the neon signs over the bar, the skinny pimpled barmen, her recently detasseled nipples. “Look where I’m at. A regular paradise I’m working, huh?”

“You got away,” he said.

“I got away,” she said.

“You got away from the grind.”

“Oh yeah, Fresno?” She laughed and made a face at no one in particular.

Fresno went quiet. He looked around. The only one who seemed to find his idea any good was Levi.

After Margot and Kennie left and it was just the three of us, Levi leaned across the table and kissed Fresno on the mouth.

“It’s a joke, Fresno,” he said.

It struck me as terribly sad that we didn’t have a nickname for Fresno. I was ready for him to leave, though. *** Sometimes Kennie left messages on my phone. She would read a poem she liked, or tell me about something that went on in her day. She was working in a garage for the summer and sometimes she would tell me about the customers and their problems. She would say words that meant nothing to me—she knew they meant nothing to me—but she’d say them over and over until I felt like I knew what she was trying to communicate.

I erased them all, of course. Now I wish I’d saved one, or two. *** THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 37

Charlie hadn’t slept for three days straight and he was wearing sunglasses even though it was half past nine and black as ink outside. Earlier in the evening he’d crushed a glass bottle in his hand and he was still bleeding everywhere.

The manager told him to take the weekend off. He said some other things, too. They went out back and finished their conversation. When he returned he kissed each of us on the forehead. His lips were dry as birch bark. As he left, the little tin bell over the door dinged like it always did, and like always, we didn’t hear it. It was the last time we saw him. *** In dreams, the Queenie’s girls are running down the Strip. It is snowing and the neon signs are lit even though it’s midday and the sky is overcast. The first snowmobiles of the season arrive in the distance, inching forward, their great yellow scrapers marking a frontline. I hear the girls’ laughter—they’re laughing—when the sky turns black and their mouths start to pucker and curl like paper in flame and soon their faces are swallowed up with age and they drop dead.

For a time I woke in the middle of the night, crying. Then one day I woke without any tears at all and I didn’t like it one bit. *** It was Fredericka started calling me Hank. She said I looked like an old friend she used to have, called Hank, who lost an arm and both legs in Iraq. She said it was funny but it made him a nicer person.

She told me this when she was drunk and lying on the pool table in the back room. Kennie and I were lighting cigarettes and putting them out on the felt padding. We knew it made the manager angry.

Fredericka started going out back with Levi and me. She told us she liked it when we kissed, that she thought it was sweet. She asked if she could join, and so we took turns with each other. Once she took us for a ride in her car, down the Strip and to the suburbs.

She showed us where she lived with her parents in a small one-level with two picture windows in front and a two-car carport and one solid brick chimney bisecting the roof. She invited us to stay the night since her parents were out of town for the weekend. Levi licked the side of her face playfully and she slapped him. We all laughed. We lit some fine grassy stuff Fredericka kept in the trunk and the car grew warm and pale with smoke. The three of us kissed until we were sore all over. For a little we just sat in the car with the radio on to fill us up. Fredericka dropped us back at Queenie’s but by then Fresno and Kennie and Margot had left, so we walked the Strip until we found the bus that could take us home. *** Fresno ran. It happened faster than anyone might have guessed. He left a note at Kennie’s house the night before, begging her to join him.

“He’s a nut,” Kennie said on the phone to me the next day. We laughed about it for some time. “What a kidder. What a character.”

Three days later they found Fresno’s body in the river two towns over, bloated and mealy with the skin peeling off in strips. The eyes were gone, and two fingers cut clean from his left hand.

For weeks Kennie sobbed into me. She came over afternoons and wept until she felt good and empty.

We lay on my bed as the sky faded through the windows, made no moves for the light, she in my arms, my legs wound with hers.

We spent one last night at Queenie’s. The manager told us we weren’t welcome anymore. He said he hadn’t known we were underage the whole time, and that he had half a mind to call the cops on us.

“Half a mind only?” Margot said. He shouted at Margot in front of everyone. Kennie started to cry again and soon the manager was buying us one final round of drinks. As we left, he asked us not to come back.

He said it very quietly as he tucked a strand of Kennie’s hair behind her ear. He clarified Margot’s shipping address and said her final check would be in the mail.

38 SPRING 2014

Kennie stopped seeing Margot after Margot ended her stint at Queenie’s. They parted on good terms.

Last I heard Margot left for California to become an actress. Kennie and I continued to see each other. She told me stories about how she used to kiss Fresno in the pine stand behind the vocational school, where they kept the old car tires and empty propane tanks. She said sweet things about her memory of him, like how he prayed every night for her instead of for his parents. Soon we were making jokes about him again.

Kennie had saved some of his voicemails and we listened to them over and over. Sometimes we fell asleep to them.

Once we called his cell phone to see what would happen. I counted the rings before someone answered. “Hello?” a girl with an accent said. “Hello? Is this you, Thad?” Kennie looked at me and I looked at the mouthpiece. “Hello? Hello?” I hung up. Kennie stared at the ceiling and told me it gave her the creeps thinking how fast his number was reassigned.

“It’s only been a few weeks,” Kennie said.

“There are lots of people,” I said. *** “Would you come visit me?” Levi asked.

“Where? Would I come visit you where?”

“Just say yes or no.”

“Yes.” “Some man got me a hotel room for the weekend. He’s not coming until tonight and I think I’d like some company.”

“Which hotel?”

He told me. It was the wrong kind of place. I imagined him sitting on stained sheets with the shades drawn, making this call to me.

“I’m just incredibly bored. I thought he was going to be here earlier but I must have miscalculated.

There’s a swimming pool. Bring your trunks.”

It struck me precisely, and all at once, that I didn’t care for any of them. *** I told Kennie that Levi made me sick. I told Kennie I was glad to be leaving all that behind.

“What would you do without me?” Kennie said. She flicked her cigarette over her shoulder and pursed her lips. “Where would you even be?”

I took a deep drag from mine. “Somewhere else,” I said. “Lonelier.”

“Mm.” “I leave in two days,” I told Kennie.

“Do you? I wish you hadn’t told me.”

My last night home we took the bus to the Strip, just Kennie and me. We were going to climb the hills behind the Strip, the ones with the tall pines. It was a clean path to the top through scrub oak and trefoil. The night was thick and hot. I kept my fingers to her shoulders to feel the both of us sweating. We stopped at a ledge halfway up the first hill. Far on the orange horizon we saw the smoketrees humming white along the valley rim. Below us, the Strip glowed like a lost city in the desert, like something holy and clean. Sometimes I wonder what any of it meant, that place, or if it was worth it.

I gave Kennie’s hand a squeeze.

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 39

Julian Avery Leonard Rug (Replacement for a Missing Society of Arts and Letters Rug) Cardboard and acrylic 4’ x 6’

40 SPRING 2014

Ruth ThalĂ­a writes to the poet JACOB MOSCONA-SKOLNIK

today I heard the capitol catch fire like a burning bush all I could see were ground glass and sun it was the FARC I assume since sendero is dead even though homes in Lima still shine in a myelin sheath insects on their backs under tearing star at least that is what I see from here like a million trembling stitches on a floor rug

I can also see capitalism DOUBLE JEOPARDY and the answer: What is trite ca-pi-ta-lis-mo I can hear it is a white sphere so smooth I want to stroke with vibrating fingertips string it onto a thread wear it like a cross perched always between my breasts keep it moist screen its golden eyes from the stubbled capitol shifting between relapse and remission viscous black splotches wave from

silvery column physicians have diagnosed so I’ve been told the ailment confusion of self and nonself and are beginning administration of a cure oh why do you keep pulling at your scalp lab coats always reminded me of Miraflores of Dracula of mountains of lime

once I threw two handfuls at my face stood at the center of the highway at the foot of my home and almost thought I felt my heart beat white tightroping along the yellow painted line I walked in silence until midnight to my left waves fell silhouettes of piled trash became far red hills and the road smelled of salt and beer alive you and I looked at the world sideways and missed all the shapes I now see from above and below

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 41

The Feasting MY NGOC TO

I. There have been only eight reports of self-cannibalism recorded in scientific literature. The most recent case occurred in 2011 when a 28-year-old man from Australia, in a pit of depression, cut off one of his fingers and ate it. The most historic incident dates back to 1964, when a psychotic male from the U.S. ate copious amounts of skin, subcutaneous tissue, and blood from his shoulders.

The concept of self-devouring, however, goes back to the time of the Ancient Greeks. Erysichthon, the arrogant king of Thessaly, had plans to build a great feasting hall. Only the finest oak trees would be fit for such grandeur, he thought, and marched his servants to the sacred grove of Demeter. There, he found a beautiful oak tree growing at the center and ordered his servants to cut it down. They refused, however, to bring down the tree of a god.

So the king took the task upon himself. He picked up the axe and swung it, making a deep indentation from which bright blood poured.

Erysichthon ignored this ominous sign and continued hacking at the tree, each swing widening the red puddle at his feet. In time, the oak fell to the ground, and he carried the blood-soaked wood home, sure that it would be enough to raise his visionary hall.

When Demeter discovered the death of her tree, she decided that Erysichthon would be haunted with an insatiable hunger no matter how much he 42 SPRING 2014

ate. She ordered Famine to breathe into his stomach every night and day. Famine did as she was told, and the following day Erysichthon woke up feeling hungrier than he had ever been. He went to the great feasting hall and demanded the largest meals of lamb and egg. Yet the end of every meal left him wanting even more. Each day passed, and food became Erysichthon’s greatest desire. He did anything just to get more food, selling his land, his animals, and his castle. When his riches were exhausted, he sold his own daughter into slavery.

Yet the hunger persisted, and Erysichthon only grew weaker with each passing day. The hunger finally drove him insane, and in a final act of desperation, he ate his own body. He chewed first at his fingers, then his wrists, licking the sweet blood that poured down his elbows, and then ate his elbows, too. When his arms were gone, he curled up to tackle his toes, sucking each one off one by one. He then gnawed on his shins, taking off the kneecaps from their tendon source and crunching them between his teeth. Death walked by this debacle and took pity on Erysichthon, who was at this point nothing but a head and bleeding torso.

With one sweep of his hand, Death put an end to Erysichthon’s suffering right as he was about to eat his own tongue.

II. In order to survive, a cell must eat itself. Sometimes proteins are born misfolded and misshapen,

presenting a threat to the system, and at other times an organelle will come of age and fail to function. These misfits are dangerous and marked as good candidates to be destroyed.

The hunter is the phagophore, a U-shaped membrane whose only function is to find the inept proteins. Once it binds to one, it wraps it arms around the cargo and encapsulates it. This newly formed vesicle, called an autophagophore, then delivers the trapped proteins to the lysosome, the mouth of the cell. Once inside the lysosome, the proteins get shredded to pieces. The remains of the dead are recycled into new organelles to carry the cell’s functions forward.

This process is called autophagy. Some small amount of self-digestion is needed in every cell for quality control. In times of starvation, however, when either oxygen is low or nutrients are scarce, the rate of autophagy increases, and the cells will devour themselves.

III. The Dictyostelium discoideum, or dicty, is a type of slime mold. Under natural conditions, it exists as a single amoeba meandering and sliding through its moist home. It enjoys feasting on bits of bacteria that fall in its path. When food is scarce, however, something magical happens.

Within six hours of starvation, as if a conch shell had been blown to signal battle, hundreds of dicties from other lands march in and gather around a single point—the dicty that made the initial call. Once enough warriors have gathered, the mass begins spiraling counterclockwise, like an infant galaxy discovering its core. Streams of dicties flow into this mass until it becomes a moundshaped colony. The mound bubbles and morphs, throbbing with the lives of a million hungry dicties. It stretches and widens and becomes a slug, with a head and a tail and fake little feet that then send it lurching forward in search of food.

The slug knows to search for heat and light, both of which promise a feast of bacteria. When it senses that it has arrived at a good place, the slug flips over and rams its head into the ground.

The dicties at the head—the most starved of them all—die, and their wet bodies, smashed against each other, anchor the slug. It then comes time for the ones in the middle to sacrifice themselves. Their bodies pile and crystallize on top of each other to form a stalk, growing increasingly higher. Once it is high enough, the remaining dicties join together into a little sphere

and become spores.

And like this the mass of dicties, in this fruiting body, wait for rain to come. Eventually a drop falls hard enough on the tip of the fruit, and the head explodes, releasing the spores to the wild, where they may grow in some merrier home.

IV. There is no law against cannibalism in Japan, which is how 22-year-old Mao Sugiyama got away with cooking and serving his own genitals to five guests at a Tokyo banquet.

Sugiyama, an illustrator, considered himself asexual, and before his 22nd birthday had surgery to remove his penis, scrotum, and testicles. Following the procedure, he asked the surgeons if he could keep his excised genitalia. They handed him his frozen organs in a small plastic bag, which he kept in his freezer at home for the next two months, free of infection.

His original plan was to eat his own penis, but after careful deliberation, he decided on a different course of action. Two months after the surgery, on April 8, 2012, Sugiyama posted the following announcement on Twitter: “…I am offering my male genitals (full penis, testes, scrotum) as a meal for 100,000 yen…. I will prepare and cook as the buyer requests, at his chosen location.” He also announced that the organs were free of venereal diseases, that they had previously functioned normally, and that he had not been receiving female hormonal treatment. After much interest, Sugiyama also announced that he would take care to follow Japanese food safety and medical waste regulations.

With the help of three event planners, the Ham Cybele Century Banquet was hosted on May 24, 2012 in the Suginami ward, a residential area in western Tokyo. Seventy people showed up for the exclusive event. From among them, the highest-paying bidders were chosen to dine on the fine meats; each paid 250 dollars for the experience. The first was a 32-year-old male manga artist who thought the gross act would be good research for his own work. Following him was a 30-year-old couple who just wanted to know. Next came an attractive 22-year-old woman. The fifth was 29-year-old event planner Shigenobu Matsuzawa, who wanted to take part in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The sixth person did not show up.

A short piano recital marked the start of the event. Sugiyama emerged soon afterwards, THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 43

adorned in a crisp white frock and chef’s hat to greet his applauding audience. A small rectangular table with a red tablecloth greeted him at the center of the hall. His cooking materials lay waiting on the surface: a single portable gas burner, a small metal pot, a steak knife, a container of soy sauce, a napkin, and a single lemon. The room of people watched intently as he sliced up all six inches of his penis, cut his scrotum in half, and sautÊed them with cooking wine and a bit of

44 SPRING 2014

parsley. Those who weren’t able to eat his genitals were instead served crocodile meat.

Sugiyama finished within minutes and served his carefully sliced manhood to the five chosen diners, who all signed a waiver relieving him of any responsibility if they became ill. The meal came with a side of button mushrooms. One of the diners later commented that the meat was rubbery and tasteless.

THE HARVARD ADVOCATE 45

Ansatz: Confronting a Still Life ZOĂ‹ HITZIG

I. Will I eat the rotting apple before me.

Is that why you left it, inclining toward the blank-faced compass, oblique to the violin missing a string in spilled wine from the overturned chalice, pooling at the chipped carapace of a turtle. And whose skull is that, also chipped, also slow on the cloth.

II. Am I obliged of this cluster to pluck the fragile ones. Just as in the anatomy of woman every station must have its briny tubes. Just as in the anatomy of choice every action need not have will behind it which is to say choice does not in the penumbra of utility reveal preference.

III. But I want to engage. Want to tell you all I have learned about will in the intervening years.

If I peel the apple I can soak it in

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vinegar, carve out a face and leave it to dry in the sun.

Let it shrink into a head swathed in the tablecloth shrouded in shouldness.

Perhaps it will remind me of normativity. Or of the grace with which we used to put one foot in front of the other to walk or of the inertia that has since filled in the roads around us.

Reminders, remainders, remedies— have I solved your tangram, did I play the right game, my scarecrow is small but vain as I am—void, pour, drain— the difference is its flesh, which is now preserved— my scarecrow will remain on this table in this foyer until you move it, which knowing you will be when you tear up a letter you believe you never received. I will believe the same.

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SPECIAL THANKS

The Harvard Advocate is committed to publishing the most accomplished student art and writing at Harvard College. This would not be possible without the generosity of our donors, whose contributions support not only the quarterly printing of our issues, but also our broader mission to promote the arts and letters on campus.

The Advocate’s winter issue, TRIAL, was launched in March at Cabinet magazine’s location in Brooklyn. We would like to thank Sina Najafi and the staff of Cabinet for hosting us. We are especially indebted to D.T. Max, who moderated a panel at the event on the role of criticism in the arts. We are grateful to panelists Ruth Franklin, A.O. Scott, Tom Scocca, Casey Cep, and Adam Kirsch for lending their strong and engaging voices to this debate. TRIAL would not have been possible without the financial, logistical, and emotional support of Dr. Michael Coppola and Mrs. Ann Zumwalt. We would also like to express our gratitude to Dorothea Rockburne for her extraordinary cover design.

The Advocate would like to extend a special thank you to the student organizations that co-hosted events with us this March. The spoken word poets of Speak Out Loud collaborated with us on a joint reading and performance, and members of the Nigerian Students Association and the African Students Association helped put together a moving tribute to Chinua Achebe, followed by a discussion of Achebe’s work and legacy with Professor Jacob K. Olupona. Both of these events were part of the Advocate’s new event series Excerpts, an initiative which invites other student organizations to co-host arts events with our membership. We would also like to thank the writers and artists who have visited and read with us this Spring, including Hilton Als, Terrance Hayes, and Harmony Korine.

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Your contributions have supported the maintenance of our website (www.theharvardadvocate.com) and our blog, Notes from 21 South Street (www.theadvocateblog.net). Your support will continue to be vital as we rebuild our website, explore the narrative possibilities of digital essays, and make our magazine available on phones, tablets, and beyond.

In 2016, The Harvard Advocate will celebrate its 150th Anniversary. Contributors at the highest level of support will be recognized in the special anthology which is in the works for this historic occasion.

PATRONS Office for the Arts at Harvard, Dr. Michael Coppola and Mrs. Ann Zumwalt, Joseph Hearn BENEFACTORS Anna Sui DONORS Odyssey, Morgan Hitzig FRIENDS Cody Carvel, Tamara Richard

All gifts to The Harvard Advocate endowment fund are fully tax deductible according to 501(c)(3) nonprofit donation guidelines. Gifts will be acknowledged in the four issues following receipt according to the giving categories of Patron ($1000 and over), Benefactor ($500 and over), Donor ($200 and over), and Friend ($50 and over). For a limited time, Patrons will receive a copy of the Advocate’s Winter 2014 issue signed by Dorothea Rockburne, whose design, Focus, adorns the cover. All contributors will receive a complimentary year’s subscription to the magazine.

Checks should be made out to “Trustees of The Harvard Advocate.” Envelopes may be mailed to 21 South Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. We also accept donations through our website, www.theharvardadvocate.com.

Please email contact@theharvardadvocate.com with any inquiries regarding gifts to The Harvard Advocate.

Thank you for supporting Mother Advocate.

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CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES

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RYAN MACLENNAN has broken both pinkies. JULIAN AVERY LEONARD will not know what came before him. CHRISTOPHER ALESSANDRINI isn’t a smooth talker. JOHN BRYANT would like to thank von Frisch and von Hess for the inspiration. RYAN ADAMS MURPHY is the bee’s needs. HUNTER JONES is currently growing an impressive beard. SAM REYNOLDS wishes the tooth fairy would stop dressing like his dad. VICTORIA BAENA doesn’t remember.

MY NGOC TO has tried and tried. MICHAEL THORBJØRN FEEHLY is one part cloudberry, three parts diet coke; he is no longer called Mr. Stroopwafel. JACOB MOSCONA-SKOLNIK is a sophomore from New York City. He was inspired for this poem by his work in Peru. ZOË HITZIG is tRyiNg tO foRmuLatE hER mAxiM.

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