Nietzsche's Kisses- Excerpt

Stomach

You knock on Wagner’s door thirty-some-odd years before and it is just past eight and raining violently and you are under the impression you have been invited to a musical soirée but your father answers and from what you can tell he is alone. He is tall and slim and dressed in Wagner’s outlandish Dutch painter’s costume chocolate velvet jacket knee-breeches silk stockings buckled shoes Rembrandt beret blue cravat. Behind him the hall is empty lit by a single candle and he looks over your shoulder as if expecting someone more important to come up the walkway and so you look too but there is no one and you are wearing a shabby suit because it is the best you can afford. Your tongue is not your tongue and your teeth not your teeth you are borrowing them from a very sick man who barely hangs on to life in someone else’s imagination. You have come to meet Wagner who wants to make the acquaintance of the bright young philologist he heard so much about during a recent visit to Basel only you find yourself facing your father. Giving birth he tells you with great affection while looking over your shoulder is the production of proof concerning the parents’ inadequacies and then he turns his back on you and wanders down the silent empty hall and you hesitate before following. He leads you to an elegant drawing room slightly larger than a closet where there are no windows or perhaps they have been covered over with the satin wallpaper and it is very dark your stomach hurts a large stuffed-leather chair and miniature grand piano atop which rests another candle comprising the only furniture. It is so confined the air so heavy with Wagner’s patchouli perfume it is difficult to draw a breath and your father indicates the chair and you sit his back still to you and address him with a few words of respect telling him he looks extremely good for a dead man you miss him very much. You remember you say how he was liked and welcomed everywhere for his conversation and kindness and your father moves away and hunches down at the miniature piano knees up by his ears and speaks quickly cutting you off telling you if he had lived he would be the same age Wagner is now and please open your mouth. His back is to you and he bangs out several parts from the Meistersinger imitating each voice with great exuberance then stops sharply leaps off the bench opens it rummages inside comes up with a manuscript so fat it could never have fit in there except it has. It is Wagner’s autobiography. He sits again back to you and begins reading and every few sentences interrupts himself to tell you to please open your mouth. You tell him you miss him very much and the first five years of your life the years he was alive were your happiest and you ask does he recall that Saturday morning he said it is time to learn how to fish and took you on horseback into the countryside you sat in front of him in the saddle balancing his rod and tackle and everything was true the sun feeling like when you crouch directly in front of a fireplace on a winter’s night. No he does not. Your stomach hurts. He continues reading interrupting himself every few sentences and telling you to please open your mouth. He is not you realize before long reading about Wagner’s past but about Wagner’s future telling you how Wagner will in time come to exhibit the Christian pathology. Your father winces when he pronounces these words. Be careful he says they’re hot. After Parsifal Wagner’s work will bloat with hysterical women and its flesh drop off and it will turn sticky then histrionic then pretentious. He that humbleth himself your father says wants to be exalted. He winces and is on his feet again agitated the pages of the manuscript scattered across the floor as if a heavy wind has blown through the room and he is standing next to your chair his back still to you but he reaches out behind him and discovers your face and feels along its contours as if he were sightless. When he reaches your lips he strokes them with his forefinger and gently slips a digit between them and tells you to please open your mouth you hesitate he pushes a little you instinctively resist and then he is prying your jaws apart forcing his first three fingers between your upper and lower front teeth. You ask him to stop try to ask him but your mouth is full of him and he is touching each of your teeth as if every one were a beautiful pearl that could reverse time. He examines each with his fingers and you are progressively interested in his touch until he grips your left incisor with the strength of pliers and begins to unscrew it and you balk your hands shooting up to stop him but you are no match for his power the first tooth is already out the inside of your mouth bloody. His back is to you and your stomach hurts and he takes your tooth and raises it to his own mouth and you can see him huddle over it as he inserts it with a wet grinding sound like roots twisted in mud. He reaches behind him and begins to caress your lips again fingertips tickling and forces your jaws apart a second time his fingers eeling around inside your mouth searching for another tooth they choose an upper molar grasp it unscrew it then that one is in him too. He repeats this gesture twenty times and afterward turns around his mouth smeared with your blood your gums pocked with slimy holes and your father tells you to please open your mouth he has some difficulty articulating the words because of his new set of teeth he tells you to please open your mouth and when you do not he reaches out and runs a hand through your hair tenderly and then down the side of your face and when he reaches your lips pauses and three fingers are inside your mouth and you are having trouble taking air. He inserts three fingers inside your mouth and then four and then his whole fist and you are convinced your jaw muscles will tear your jawbone shatter you are gagging he is forcing his fist down your throat. He exerts steady insistent affectionate pressure and his pink-smeared lips are close to your right ear left arm braced against your chair for support. He exerts steady insistent affectionate pressure and his arm is up to the elbow inside you and the joint presents a temporary problem but your father braces himself against your chair and shoves with great vigor and then you feel his fingers wadding up your stomach sac from the inside and then his arm is slowly withdrawing and your stomach coming with it and your father is whispering what I have given you I have come to take back what is yours has always been mine and you listen with interest coming to appreciate this reclamation may take quite some time and so you attempt to settle into your chair make yourself comfortable trying and succeeding to love your father a little harder every second your consciousness remains intact.