The Center and The Periphery
“Things were not great. Everyone shuffled through the streets of the city, feeling their lives inexplicably changed around them. They inhabited old modes and identities that were in a rapid changing and becoming, and, in their dull languor, they often saw a shadow slipping from their peripheral vision. Forgive the tautology, but it was the present. It was their present, a marked one at that, conditioned by twenty-or-so years of unwillingness to let go. A heavy mist obscured the reality that their pot was being stirred, so when someone thought they made out a hun through the haze, thus locking gaze onto the shimmering figure, they then realized they rotated quicker and quicker on an axis. Napoleon III, himself a victim, barely felt that he earned his mustache. So, when the call came to hop out of the pot, Louis’s old inheritance, he figured Manchester preferrable to Rouen and answered it. I don’t think they were ignorant, just stupid. They thought they could thaw a near-century’s frozen nationalism and carry on like they did at the start of the era. Of course, things don’t taste the same when they aren’t fresh. Only leveraging such a world-historical defeat could Bismarck have reified a great abstraction like the Reich. So, without me spelling it out: if Charles X had been chill, we could’ve avoided our deplorable contemporary conditions. And, just to show you further: Charles never operated in his own interest. He might have thought stepping down from an absolutist concept of governing meant the end of the monarchy, but he was right only because he thought so. The Windsors hardly complain. He could’ve kept Saint-Cloud, maybe even a piece of the pie as a limited executive, and his family, and country, and world would’ve been better for it. Even the pomp and circumstance of a farce-court wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to feel like he and his family mattered in a world-historical sense. He wanted to feel like it, and maybe he never felt it; regardless, his desire made it so. He thought he was dying, and he locked himself away in the damp inner cell to order his affairs. There, with phlegmy servants his only companions, he succumbed to consumption and again made it so.”
“I’m going to ignore your idiot counterfactual; it has many problems. What you are trying to say is that Charles suffered from a unique pathology, and that this personality caused his misstep and thus the tumbling over of the entire world. But, I can confidently say, if you were there in 1830, you, not Charles, but you, you would have done the exact same thing. I can hear your thoughts: I would have simply given up, like Louis-Phillipe later did. But, no. Even with all your historical ‘knowledge’ you would have done the same as Charles in 1830 and the same as Louis-Phillipe in 1848. Indeed, you would have done the same as Louis Napoleon in 1870. You would think that you could do differently and win, this condition not cause but symptom of the fact that you, like him, would be incredibly, desperately, not bored.”
I imagined my acquaintance saying this in response to my monologue instead of what he did say, which was not nothing, but rather a continuum of interjections like “let’s go!” “yes!” “finally!” and “bro…” all while I spoke. His eyes looked not at me but rather the court, which did shine a gleaming beacon compared to my tired, prosaic musings. Indeed, here we were, in our present, which would soon pass. The past, meanwhile, would invariably stay as such. I vexed even myself by inappropriately bringing history into live sports time. Most were there for a same and simple reason, and I thought I was too, being a fan of basketball.
But I had had a dream the previous night about a French soldier. We met in some mean epoch between us and were thus both temporal foreigners. We walked and smoked and spoke about a shared profound lack of meaning in our lives. He told me he wished he had died in the war, so as to not have to carry on in the new world it made with the rubble of the old still visible if one stopped and looked behind. I became afflicted and shared with him how troubling it felt to know modern life had failed to give anything truly compelling in the 150 years between us. Upon telling him that there were no more wars worth fighting, even to the simpletons, no pensions, no real work to be done, he told me it was my problem. Cold, yes, but after doing so he turned his head from me to the vast expanse on his other side.
The dream isn’t important except to explain why I was feeling the way I was, peculiarly mired in the 19th century. And the way I was feeling, peculiarly mired in the 19th century, is only important insofar as it helps give a backdrop to the event truly worthy of note at this basketball game I was attending. My idle prattle was emaciated next to the mid-century marvel in which we sat, aconsensually squished up against the bodies of complete and contemptible strangers, its bright lights and screens, music, band, advertisements, food, banners, screams, and triumph all in service of the yet larger spectacle in a space smaller than most living quarters. This space itself had its own song of squeaks, grunts, and whistles, which, though subtle, aided nicely in accentuating the narrative drama and chauvinism of our home team. And it was and will be exciting to watch such large bodies fly and spin about the air, to hear the plunk with which they fall to the hard floor. It is so dynamic and unpredictable, unlike my idle prattle. In fact, it is so clearly much more dynamic and unpredictable and exciting than anything I’d ever have to say, which is why millions devote their dollars and duration annually to the sport, while I grovel, begging for a listener. This fact, basketball’s devasting moral and economic victory over me, was not too unlike Napoleon III’s humiliating loss to the Prussians. So, it shouldn’t be too coincidental that I was yearning for a squalid 19th century battlefield death when I saw them. And, it should be noted, I did not care that some teenagers had killed a dog. That was how Hitler did it, you know: what do you think they do with those street dogs in the ghettos? And what was the identity of the man in whose office Ueno Hidesaburo collapsed? He was Chinese, and that’s why Hachiko never ate carp.
They were two, presumably grandson and grandmother. They looked as if they had just then crawled out of the deepest hole in the farthest holler in the dark heart of West Virginia. The younger man embodied so well the Appalachian phenotype it was caustic. He had to be 6’5” or close, but he had a subtle stoop to his posture, owing to the fact that his entire being seemed caved in. His back curled into his sunken chest, and his chin was inseparable from his neck, such that he wore a scraggly beard to keep the less astute from noticing. His eyes were sunken, too, recessed into his flat face. He had a hooked nose that too described the arc of his posture and demeanor. He was tall and possessed an aura of dignity slightly greater than befitted his looks. He held his grandma’s seat cushion with one hand, and in the other he grasped hers, slowly, ploddingly, even, helping her up the stairs to the heights of the 2nd story terrace. The woman herself was unremarkable, except that it was difficult to tell whether she wanted to be there. She moved like many other women her age, in a slow and unsteady manner which excited the nerves of anyone watching. He set up her cushion in the aisle seat, checked his phone to ensure the seats were theirs, and helped her ease into her place. He stood her cane in the aisle, watched for a few minutes, then began to scroll on his phone, while grandma’s eyes were fixed on the court.
I drew the attention of my acquaintance to the new party. He ignored me until the media time-out when he finally turned to blink at them. I asked him if they weren’t the most afflicted folks he had ever seen east of the escarpment, and he said they were. My historical obsession locked onto this waning phenomenon: a marked regional phenotype. I completely forgot the game for a time and watched the two of them, a few rows ahead of us and to the right of the dividing aisle. I watched him bent over his phone, one arm on an armrest, chin in the other hand, eyes on the court with no corresponding reactions.
A thunderous roar pulled me from my stupor, and I reckoned I ought to watch the game since it seemed so exciting. Apparently, our forward had affected some sort of spin move while dunking and signaled an intention to perform it again. I relented to the entire stadium’s expectations and shared their bated breath, especially since I had missed the first showing. The game began to slow, and I found myself compelled towards the opposing team’s lead guard.
He had straight-laid middle part than ran a light brown when it bounced down the court. His mouth was of such a shape that when his lips parted they revealed his two front teeth, and his eyes sloped slightly down. He had quite a defined musculature for a guard, or maybe it was his general ephebousness that made it appear so. When I began watching, he was already desperate. I saw him call plays, run out into position, and gesture at his teammates only to be ignored. He started passing less. He missed all his shots, and selection deteriorated. He was taking step backs in the paint while our center towered over him. He missed them all, and each time he grew more frustrated. He would grimace and throw up his hands. If the whistle blew, he keeled over, puffing, hands on hips, eyes on the floor. His teammates finally started refusing to pass to him. On his last play he was carrying the ball down the court to his teammates already set. Our forward jumped out, stole the ball, and tripped him to dunk on the other side. He did his spin move, thus keeping his promise, and the whole crowd acknowledged it, even me. The opposing coach called a time out; the lead guard was called to stay on the bench. Thereafter his team made up three quarters of the score deficit. I saw him resting there, the last of his teammates to stand when something of note happened to, or was done by, one of his colleagues.
With the end of this compelling narrative, my historical condition returned. I looked where the two people were sitting. The grandson was gone. I asked my companion if he had seen where he had left out of. He was confused about whom I was speaking. Nothing had changed in the grandmother’s demeanor. She watched the court either listlessly or with an entirely internal effervescence. She did not appear concerned. Her breathing rose and fell measured. One hand weakly gripped the armrest. Her cane stood beside her in the aisle.
It all started to wind down. People were getting up to leave, but she just stayed looking at the court. And I was watching her. My acquaintance announced that it was time. We descended the stairs and entered the bustling concourse. Then, I made a show about not feeling too well and told him to just go on home. He objected for a bit but relented. I hid in the bathroom, in a stall. Once I heard the voices and footsteps abating, I exited. There were workers milling about, who all gave me a sort of confused look. I returned to the entrance of the section where my seat was. I stood there, a little past the threshold, squinting upward. The lights were off, but I know I saw her above me, still sitting there, unconcerned, eyes on the court. I knew there was no way she would be able to get down by herself. I commenced searching for the grandson. I looked in every bathroom, behind every food counter, but he was nowhere.
Eventually, a worker approached me and told me it was time to leave. I apologized for looking around strangely but said that there was an old woman in my section whose grandson had left. I speculated she had no way of leaving without help. He told me they would take care of it, but that it really was time for me to leave.
Concerned, I circled the outside of the stadium, watching them tidy up and close. I watched them lock doors and leave out of others, thereby restricting the domain of my surveillance. I might’ve been out there a few hours when I spotted the man with whom I spoke leaving and locking the door behind him. I approached him and asked if they had helped that poor old woman. He was startled upon seeing me and took a step back. He told me I was trespassed from the property. That if he ever saw me there again, he would call the police. I didn’t like the way he said that word, trespassed. He put a lot of emphasis on the hissing sounds. Then I said that yes that’s fine, but did you help her. I was told it was taken care of. I said that but I hadn’t seen her leaving. He again asked me to leave, so I walked on home.
And after a while I went to sleep. I didn’t dream that night, and I haven’t dreamed since.