How I Came to Know Tanztraums — Part I.
I. Arimathean Cruets (Blood, Sweat…)
He had been hovering near me for probably about 15 minutes. I had noticed, but I hadn’t let on that I had. I wasn’t sure how it would pan out when he eventually approached me (because don’t they always?) but I figured that, as with most unwanted encounters like this, it would begin with some sort of conversation. It had been ages since I’d really spoken to anyone — spoken beyond niceties anyway. I pivoted slightly and glanced upwards enough for our eyes to catch. That was all he needed to come and take the seat opposite.
I nodded in assent and he smiled shyly and placed his hands palm-down on the wood that joined us. After an exhale he began.
“There are some things which are necessarily true.”
I agreed with his broad-shouldered statement.
“Mm. Yeah.” I replied.
“How big must a spider become before the owner of the house in which it resides finds crushing it warranted? Wherein lies that point and that threshold that, if exceeded, results in an existence being snuffed out? A star which shines too bright and too briefly because it burns too hot?”
I’d managed to decipher some slither of meaning from his teenage-existentialist prose but I wasn’t impressed. And he wasn’t teenaged. But I replied, and in feigning ignorance I let him run anyway.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I knew a man which, if the threshold just alluded to can be described, had not only reached that fatal line, he outstripped it, it dissolved in the extent of his parlour and it appeared meaningless forever after — but he ended all the same.”
After he said this a single solitary tear flashed down his cheek. It was gone far quicker than I think it had been brewing, and despite how easily tears come to these strange characters I was, just then, a little stirred.
I thought to try and steer my (unasked-for) interlocutor in a direction where I could grasp things a bit easier. Although, to be fair, a good part of me wasn’t sure yet whether or not he was just another gesticulating burnout that lives (sic exists) near to me.
“Who’re you talking about? Yourself?”
He made a hollow coughing sound that was half laugh and half sob.
“No. Not me. Even an ascription of ‘father’ is too contrite, cliché, and in its ontology entirely insufficient to capture what he was — words cease to do justice. Yes. Anything containing the remotest seed of ANY anthropomorphic relation is a descriptive — and conceptual! — failure. Utterly, utterly.
“There, here, was a synergy between me and Mr. Tantztraum — for that is what I was favoured to know him as — and of that fact I have not the slightest doubt. But you will not grasp it without fitting analogy. It, it was like a stone’s relation to the shore. Intangible, inconsequential, really, when all is said and done, unless of course one is stone (or shore), but harmonious, to some extent, with I — if you had not guessed already — as stone and he as sea, minuscule next to grace and majesty and power, his presence.”
This now reminded me why I hadn’t really conversed in a while. I was already feeling knackered, and I wasn’t too intrigued. But the thing about exhaustion is that you’re just that — exhausted. I (figuratively) rolled over hoping he would run out of steam or look for attention somewhere else like they tend to. He continued:
“In the tiny but multifarious alcoves of my heart I pray my analogy truly does hold some truth in the truest sense, and I hope — not just pray — a selfless hope, that there were also many other stones and pebbles, lain there rapt on that rugged coastline, equally comforted, cajoled, by the ocean, the he.”
During all this I made two conflicting inferences. I first thought that this odd man had been speaking about a romantic partner when he characterised ‘Mr. Tantztraum’. But then I dismissed this. The brief nod to a fatherly relation (though, by the stranger’s own admission, an inaccurate nod) had me thinking that the man — Mr. Tantztraum — wasn’t known to the stranger for any sexually intimate reason.
If (emphasis here on ‘if’) I felt inclined to extract a bit more information then I could relax. He was about to continue giving me more freely.
“But before the sentiment overwhelms me I should say that what I’m about to tell you has a dual-function — perhaps even a quad-function once I introduce to you the quantifier of Mr. Tantztraum’s son, fell dogsbody — a dual-function which is on the one hand an obituary for Mr. Tantztraum, but on the other — hand, that is — a chronicle.
“And, my newly met but newly dear friend, if you cannot grasp the difference between ‘obituary’ and ‘chronicle’ then, and I forgive you, by the way, for letting it elude you, the difference lies in the fact that the former is something I shall fill brimming with my personal affectation, and the latter is, or will be, to the best of my incomplete abilities, objective, true, and free from feeling — as much as it is possible for me to do so. Yes, these are the two things I will attempt to achieve, though you should not forsake me if you find difficulty in picking out which is which as I continue.
“I think I’m with you on the difference. Go on.”
“It is a sad fact, and one which now becomes caveat, that I have alluded to already in semantic form — if not through my palpable sadness — that both strands: chronicle and obituary, must make reference to the son of Mr. Tantztraum, that is, Paul Traum.”
“Why the change?” I uncharacteristically jumped in.
“Change?”
“The surname. ‘Traum?’
Again he made a hacking sound. This time he winced while doing it — it was very unpleasant.
“You consider that a change? It is more a castration of a surname than a change of it!”
At this point I saw the stranger steady himself with his left hand on the table. Then he, as if conscious of me noticing this, jerked his hand upwards towards his shirt and twiddled with his collar. The top button was missing.
“But not just yet, no, one doesn’t regale his audience with a description of a banquet by starting with the worst course. No. That will not do in the slightest.”
He was getting more and more flustered with our current topic. At the same time, my energy my leaving me. I decided to better jump in.
“Why don’t you stick to Mr. Tantztraum — I’m pronouncing that correctly aren’t I? — rather than his son?”
“Yes. That’s what I’ll do.”
Except he didn’t, he was staring at his nails while breathing deeply in and out through his nose. One hand, then the next. His nails were feminine and very clean. Cleaner than mine anyway. I decided I best prompt him.
“Go on.”
“Yes. Sorry. With some chronologies it can be perfectly sensical to begin near the end. I imagine, if one is asked to imagine, this is so as to give the reader — or listener, forgive me — a flavour of where an individual ended. An endpoint which, if appropriately relayed to the reader — ahem, or listener — gives them the ability to perform or predict a kind of regression, an imaginary joining — or placing! Yes, placing! — of the dots which constitute a man’s life.
“Starting at the endpoint — which is often by necessity the most complete; most packed with experience and a history of all phenomena relevant to an individual — can gild your imagination. It sets the reader — or listener — up, gives them an opportunity to work backward when looking at a chronology and to make individual predictions, either to be proven right or proven wrong, both of which, I might add, are pleasant and admirable sensations for those — like us, good friend — who seek and prize knowledge or clarity; for they are different you know! Starting at the end allows the rest of the story to unfold in reverse.”
Fuck me I thought. Wouldn’t that last sentence have done the job?
“Let’s start at the end then.”
“No. No that won’t do. Not the end”
I pressed my tongue against the back of my bottom teeth and let out a sigh. The stranger was a nightmare to try and keep up with — and if he was breadcrumbing his story to entice me along then he was miles off. I swallowed the rest of my drink which was now just melted ice. I never seriously thought he’d pick up on this cue to leave (or hurry up) but I tried anyway. He began talking again.
“I think it’s best I start at the start.”
“Start anywhere — I’ve got to get on in a minute” I implored and lied.
“I am not ignorant of your ignorance concerning Mr. Tantztraum. So now, I realise, it is both fitting and demanded that the actual birth of the man in this chronology should be synchronous with the conceptual birth of the man within this obituary, and your cognition.”
It was obvious he hadn’t registered what I’d said.
“You will note, no doubt, in what follows, that I shall make little reference to place names, and even less reference to dates. The most important thing is that you develop impressions — strong enough to form waves on which a picture of a man can freely sail — from my words which will now proceed. The validity of the pigment — “
He strongly emphasised the start of this word (‘pig’) and it seemed out of character. I didn’t say anything though. My interruptions looked like they didn’t do anything, but I thought it best not to risk any more prodding.
“ — from which your respective picture will derive its existence is to me superfluous. It is only that your respective picture is bold and remains within you; remains recallable and in a sense belonging.”
I tried another tactic.
“Please, come on now. Else you’ll run the risk of my ‘picture’ of your Mr. Tantztraum being either completely off the mark or just non-existent.”
“No! No! He wasn’t mine — he could never be. But I both understand and appreciate. Onwards! Onto the birth.”
