Termination Shocks

Janice Margolis

• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781625344205
• eBook ISBN: 9781613766699
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

In astronomy, the termination shock is the boundary that marks the outer limits of the sun's influence—the ripple outward of our solar wind and its collision with the interstellar medium. This debut collection of stories evokes those moments when lives are unpredictably shaken and reset by forces beyond their grasp.

Making use of a diverse array of narrative modes, settings, and voices, these stories traverse space and time, moving from Egypt during the Second World War to modern-day Liberia and an unfamiliar Los Angeles. The title story, "Termination Shock," offers a lyrical exploration of two traumatic moments in a woman's life that occur decades apart and continue to reverberate in humorous and poignant ways. Janice Margolis shows us characters on the precipice of change—including a narrator in fevered quarantine following the death of her mother from Ebola, a cross-cultural love in a swiftly transforming Syria, and the desolation of the Berlin Wall, which from its various sectors and coordinates, confesses its crimes and mourns its destruction.

The Wall’s Requiem—Opus 1

N 52º 32' 08"; E 13º 07' 30"—East of Falkensee, Near the English Sektor

Klaus, Klaus, Klaus. You have had too much to drink. You are only eighteen and six months. Your new brown loafers were not made to run. The moon was full four days ago. Not to condescend, but that means it is still bright. If you carry the back of the ladder when the guards aim at your friend in front, you’ll run into the bullets meant for Dieter and double your chances to die. The death strip was made for world-class sprinters. The guard towers for bully marksmen. As your nephew’s generation will like to quip: This is not rocket science. You have siblings and parents. A “negative group of friends,” according to Stasi informants. They will mourn your evaporation. Your sister will be interrogated. Your shoes will be given to her as a reminder of your treason. She will polish them once a year and give them to her teenage son on his eighteenth birthday in a cloud of cigarette smoke and eardrum-busting Nick Cave. They will be lost before the night is over. You will be cremated so no one can prove how you died. You were born in Falkensee and mistake your birthplace for your abilities. You are not a falcon. You cannot fly.

N 52º 30' 41"; E 13º 23' 24"—Thirty Meters North of Kronenstraße

Dig in, Fräulein. There is a divot you can’t see, perfect for your small shoe. It’s between your legs. That trembling delta. I will tell you some things while you catch your breath. Intimacy is hard work. Rabbits hunt dandelions. Do not shave your legs too soon. Go on, rest your wet cheek against my spalled face. I promise to give back your tears. So different from rain. You may not know this but rain exterminates memory. You can’t imagine where my gravel has been. Where they scooped me from, what they bonded into me. My damp hope hardened around their gassy frost. I did not ask for this bed of nails in front of me. This rotten twisted wire carved into my crown. Rust streaks my spine, smears my belly, soiling the genitals the boy with the stutter and cabbage between his teeth spray-painted on my back. The woman who cradles a baby in the upstairs window on Friedrichstraße makes yellow marks on the glass. They come and go with her milk. Is she your mother . . . ? Is that your brother . . . ? Is she signaling you?

N 52º 30' 27"; E 13º 23' 24"—Checkpoint Charlie

Oy! Here they come. Five pale sewer faces. Another basement quintet emerges from their long pianissimo huddle. So many idealistic limbs. So slow. S o L a n g s a m. What a clumsy group. Ankles weak. Thighs paltry. Shoes too big. Ladder too short. They don’t know it’s deer season. Goose down duck blind time. Guards are different on Monday when they’ve killed on Sunday. The divine rush tough to give up. Give up! Hands, hooves in the air! Today is Monday, so you’ve chosen poorly, pale ones. I’ve got a vein of coal in here somewhere. The kind of honey pot you need to smudge sallow. Adorn flesh. Invisiblize mischief. Carbon under pressure when helium would be better. I’m sorry I don’t know how to unleash my frozen smoke over Checkpoint Charlie. Some of me is—was—a Goethe scholar so I understand that architecture is frozen music. That I am frozen music. Which means I can’t induce a chorale diversion either, much as I would like to help. Do you understand that pain is short, and joy is eternal? A Schiller scholar was sieved here too. They were father and son. Shot in the back with a hundred others. Pit your slow pale meat against my dispossessed bookworms and you will lose. The new moon can’t protect you. You are snowdrifts against tar. Your pale foreheads could be lanterns at sea. Your fecklessness will pock and gouge me even more. I do not like brains. I do not like bone. I do not like blood. I do not like bullets to bore holes in me that only worms used to aerate.

N 52º 30' 33"; E 13º 25' 45"—Schilling Bridge

Where are my heart-shaped chocolates wrapped in pink paraphernalia, my “Be Mine,” my “Ich liebe dich,” my lusty dancing pigs with snouts up asses draped in candied ginger? There you are, Valentine moon. You socialist sickle with your sharp corners and winking eye. Having a bit of fun with a cloud? Such a perfect night. A curtain of mist on the Spree. The Schilling Bridge wrapped in lonesome guards. Everyone home fucking. Oh, St. Valentine, bastard son of Rome’s Lupercalia, restorer of sight, aider to Christian lovers, secret bestower of illegal marriage vows, martyr of stones and clubs, where did they bury your severed head? So many fickle bodies fling themselves at me, want to wrap themselves over me, but I am not easy. Others, further along, have fewer boundaries, looser morals. I am painted pure white and not left filthy gray like them for a reason. Still, I am no longer a novelty. Not thought such a hunk any more. I am not easy, but I am kind. I always listen to their final cries after the hail of gunfire. “Ich liebe dich,” I love you, “es tut mir leid,” I’m sorry, “alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Happy birthday.” Häää?! Get a load of that drunk monkey stumbling over the boiler company roof. Hey . . . you with the two left feet . . . What are you doing!? Oh Scheiße! Oh fuck! Oh St. Valentine, please talk some sense into this one. He is hopelessly unfit. Too soft in the middle. He’ll never shimmy down that heating pipe. Well, I stand corrected. Whoa! Smart move, you! The guy landed in the dog run when the pack is being fed. No no no no no, go the other way. Don’t plaster yourself against me. I’m white, you’re wearing black. What was that? Calm down . . . I can’t understand you . . . You spent your last East marks on what . . . ?

N 52º 22' 35"; E 13º 25' 04"—Near Crossing Point at Drelinden/Drewitz

That first year, a song from the American sektor rocked my rebar. It never let up. The beat was new, squirmy, hot. It haunted me, taunted my makers, had what West Berliners called pelvis flypaper. My English wasn’t too good yet, and then there was the syncopation, those background sirens, a seductively Latin flair, a bit too much of what I’ve learned may be reverberation meant to blur the senses, so it wasn’t surprising what was sung and what I heard might not corroborate. Somewhere along the way the song gave up on rhyme, and with those sporadic bodies prostrate before me, cursing my not being a meter shorter, or a bit less slippery, or more penetrable, how (considering my position) could I have known “surrender” meant fucking and not capitulation, though of course the song was shamelessly begging for capitulation from one of the parties. Presumably the one with titties. Parts of me had studied the law. If this were 1938, I would be declared one-quarter impure and hard of hearing. Enough to be permanently jettisoned. So I confused “glory” with “gory,” “magic” with “tragic,” no one is perfect, except those who are. Over the years I heard the song less. Now on display in Kiev of all places, I’ve been subjected to irradiation and continuous dog piss. But when the occasional Elvis fan comes to gawk, a nostalgic swoon sweeps over me as I hear: So, my darling, please surrender . . .

N 52º 25' 34"; E 13º 07' 09"—Northeast of Potsdam

What a glorious spring! The Havel overfull from gluttonous upstream melt, the sky satin blue, no man’s strip choked with weeds. Another week and their flowers will peak. Explosive color wild with nests, eggs sweet to burst. Ahhhh . . . The white wooden cross, planted for the two who drowned only meters from the bank almost invisible among the tangle. I watched one give out as four hands reached for him from the west while that searchlight in the watchtower over there lit his back. Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. That’s how close he was. Sunk is the only word for what I witnessed. Sunk. The other one, superbly thin without his coat and sweater, fell through weak ice. I thought he was a young girl when he stepped off the bank. The water was still rippling under the surface. A skipping stone could’ve broken through. Why do so many choose to flee in winter? Is hypothermia one of those lost multisyllabic words no one is taught any more? Why have the weeds been left by the guards this year? It must be an augur of something. Halley’s already shot by with its tail between its legs, very upsetting. I had expected something predictable yet wild, visible but unimaginable. Perhaps that was too much to hope for. It’s hard to fathom I’ll be here for another seventy-six years to see if it does better. And then there were those environmental and astronautic crises. Chernobyl. Challenger. Will the Havel’s fish throw themselves on the bank in a mass suicide next? Will this become a lost world? With all that has gone on nothing seems impossible. I have seen many die. I used to keep count. The crosses helped. But then even those stopped. I’m beginning to suspect time has lost its synchronization.

N 52º 24' 03"; E 13º 31' 17"—North of Schönefeld Flughafen

Full moon, clear sky, Hallelujah! No one will come tonight. All points of the compass silent. Time to dream. Roam. Indulge the missing middle of this preposterous encirclement. Not to brag, but I am so much more than this monstrosity. Being forged under pressure has its upside, and while it’s impossible to avoid the intermittent mayhem directed against me, because to quote Voltaire—Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities—there are peaceful full moon nights that remind one why they go on despite being persistently pelted with a fusillade of metal and derisive language, and defaced by a cultural cornucopia of drunks, anarchists, and faux revolutionaries. Being close enough to the Russian sektor to feel the psychotic effects of that dreadful language on its occupants, which may also account for their endless disrobing and flesh displays in front of uncurtained windows, I’ve concluded that, while I am not a monstrosity, I am a monumental folly. Why this distinction comforts me, I can’t say, especially given that I am isolated in the outer ring of this quadrant, sans individuality and anything resembling a baguette, banger, or burger, exotic words I’ve heard on the wind from guards rotated here because they must have done something un-comrade-like. Words I’m convinced from their rapturously hushed intonation have to do with coital comfort. I’ve written a song about them. Would you like to hear it?

N 52º 32' 08"; E 13º 07' 30"—East of Falkensee, Near the English Sektor

As I was saying, Klaus, you are not a falcon. You cannot fly. Klaus, listen to me. You are still crouched in the overgrown vegetation assessing me. If I were to tell you there is a trip wire just past the signal fence, would it change your mind? You were never very good at sports, and, to be frank, you’ll be doing Dieter a favor if you bop him on the head with a nearby rock or clod of earth. As bad as your situation turns out, his will be worse. Oh, he will make it over the last fence and leave you for dead, which in fact you will be, but his next five years will have the makings of a Puccini opera. Have some compassion, Klaus. Dieter is your best friend. If you don’t care about your life, care about Dieter’s. His end is worse than Madama Butterfly. Worse than Turandot. What he will endure. What his wife will endure. What their unborn child will endure. Have a conscience, Klaus. Bop him on the head. The two of you will wake in the field tomorrow with twin hangovers and have a good laugh.

N 50º 26' 46"; E 30º 30' 39"—Kiev, Ukraine: Outside the German Embassy

All your love so warm and tender . . . Kiev, Jesus! Just my luck. Most people thought I was a bad idea, but now everyone wants a section of me outside their front door. Why is the German embassy memorializing me in Kiev? When did I become an accessory? So many of my comrades bask in the sun and tongues of Spain, Italy, South Africa. Twelve of my appendages—I do consider us all part of a whole and our dismemberment and scatterment as cruel as vivisection—ended up in Los Angeles. The way those two words roll off the tongue is so goddamn sexy. The only way to say Kiev is to bark. Some maladroit artist gave me a supposed facelift, a few pathetic pastel swirls and swipes, as if that alters anything. Concrete bleeds through pale pink and blue, dummkopf. Stumpy shrubs frame my base. Not very inspirational. Above me, tall buildings with narrow windows and narrower ledges provide perfect pigeon perches. No one fears me. No one curses me. No one touches me any more. It’s horrible to have to go on like this. Pastel painted, poop pelted, and piss potted.

N 52º 30' 33"; E 13º 25' 45"—Schilling Bridge

A used guitar? Is that what you said? Don’t cry. I’ve heard worse. One guy a few years back spent his last East marks on a trip to Moscow. Ironic, huh? Now . . . not that our visit hasn’t been fun but . . . you’re pressing your luck. Time to go home to your wife and do your Valentine’s duty. Have some fun. Make whoopee. It’s surprising the idioms I’ve acquired over the years. Since you’re in no shape—in every sense of the word—to shimmy back up that pipe, my advice is duck under the bridge over there and Hey! Don’t run off! Oh, Jesus . . . Not the river! Help! Help! Help!

N 52º 24' 03"; E 13º 31' 17"—North of Schönefeld Flughafen

I lied. I have not written a song. I tried to write a song, but without intimate knowledge of what baguettes, bangers, and burgers are in a coital context, I am without direction. Are they positional preferences? Erotic instruments? Or are they poetic inducements to be shouted near coital climax? Who can I ask? The guards despise me. Sometimes they shoot at me out of boredom. Or more likely envy. If it weren’t for me, their lives would be empty. And with this wide gap between us, my obviously superior status, and the way they can’t stop gazing at me, it is almost as if I am their new God, as I believe their old one may have perished.

N 52º 30' 27"; E 13º 23' 24"—Checkpoint Charlie

Ahoy, lantern foreheads! Dangerous shoal! Road closed! Beware of dog! They never listen. The lone child among them, a girl, has those big fish eyes you see on certain dolls. The toy is familiar to me, one or two having been dropped at this address. Not quite the tasty bounty other totems receive, though I have had more than my share of sacrificial virgins. Fish Eyes, all of five or six, certainly classifies. Her corn-silk hair could be a flare, oh hell, a poem is seeping out. Goddamn Schiller scholars! Their willpower is inversely proportional to their egomania. Just treat the non sequitur Now twilight dims verse as a case the water’s flow of hiccups. And from the tower this tends the beacon’s glow to happen when waves flickering o’er a child is about to die. Ah, you can imagine the dismal stream how distressing the lover’s eye and exhausting sounds moan these episodes from heaven are. Huge wave on Fuck huge wave there goes the yawning gulf searchlights! Through an opening pall oh no, Fish Eyes has frozen grim earth. Her body so small poor maiden the searchlight swallows her bootless wail completely. She is lone victim lost in the stormy sea of light. The giant gulf is I can’t watch grasping down. No, even they wouldn’t still that heart, would they?

N 52º 25' 34"; E 13º 07' 09"—Northeast of Potsdam

And why not lose its synchronization? Time, not life, is the big mystery. If time has lost its sense of self, what is to stop Halley’s from returning next year? Perhaps the cosmos is not unlike a bird’s nest. An aerie of appetite and hunger, that when set trembling by planetary-sized paroxysms, falls prey to unknown desires. In such imbalance, strange, even preposterous things seem to happen. New religions are founded. Messiahs are born, or spontaneously generate among the masses. Why can’t time become occasionally muddled, genuinely disoriented? Ahead. Behind. Now. Just words. Will you look at that! The electricity has gone out again.

N 50º 26' 46"; E 30º 30' 39"—Kiev, Ukraine: Outside the German Embassy

You don’t eat a dog, you don’t eat a dog, you don’t eat a dog, you don’t! You don’t eat a dog, you don’t eat a dog, you don’t eat a dog, you don’t! Goddamn that song! It’s everywhere. Haven’t heard Elvis for years. Screams, bombs, bullets, every goddamn day. The building behind me is overrun with pro-Putin rebels. My shrubs are dying. I’m sure my comrades in sunny Spain and lusc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 21 Days
• I Am Tom Waits!
• Little Prisoners
• The Wall’s Requiem—Opus 1
• Termination Shock