Forced Sight and Smell
From The Tortilla Curtain, by T.C. Boyle:
During the final quarter hour a man in stained clothes appeared out of nowhere and sat beside her on the wall. He was old, with a goat’s beard and eyes that jumped out at her from behind a pair of glasses held together with a piece of frayed black tape. She smelled him before she turned round and saw him there, not twelve inches from her. She’d been watching two girls in jeans and heels, with black lingerie tops and hair starched up high with spray, and suddenly the wind shifted and she thought she was back in the dump at Tijuana. The old man reeked of urine, vomit, his own shit, and his clothes — three or four shirts and a long coat and what looked to be at least two pairs of pants — were as saturated in natural oils as a plantain in a frying pan. He didn’t look at her, didn’t speak to her, though he was holding a conversation with someone only he could see, his voice falling away to nothing and then cresting like a wave, his Spanish so twisted and his dialect so odd she could only pick up snatches of a phrase here and there. He seemed to be talking to his mother — to the memory of his mother, the ghost, the faint outline of her pressed into the eidetic plate of his brain — and there was a real urgency in the garbled message he had for her. His voice went on and on. América edged away. By the time the illuminated pointer touched the hour, he was gone.
Part of the excellence of The Tortilla Curtain comes from the ways in which T.C. Boyle describes his characters and constructs their social encounters.
Here, Boyle has this “man in stained clothes” enter the scene on a breeze and exit as quickly. Yet in that time, Boyle fills the outside space with the man’s presence. The idea of how the old man makes himself known then becomes as important as the impact of the how on the why he appeared at all.
How
The most guttural part of this man’s entrance must be from his smell. Although this isn’t what Boyles shows us first, it is what he spends the most time describing. Specifically:
The old man reeked of urine, vomit, his own shit, and his clothes…
I’m taken with the way in this entire sentence takes shape. If you stop at the moment here where I’ve stopped, the wording suggests that the old man reeked of his own clothes. I was caught off guard here because, of course, there are more words to read. If you continue through the full wording of the sentence
The old man reeked of urine, vomit, his own shit, and his clothes — three or four shirts and a long coat and what looked to be at least two pairs of pants — were as saturated in natural oils as a plantain in a frying pan.
you will find the description of his clothes. This makes it possible to understand that “and his clothes” isn’t strictly, grammatically, meant to add to the list of reasons the man smells; instead, it becomes more of a description of his appearance and everything the smells are attached to. Still, the fuzzy way it’s written feels special as a quick play on words. I considered writing this essay about that singular structure.
I also appreciate how Boyle’s time spent here highlights what comes before it. Two sentences earlier, you learn that América initially smelled the man before seeing him, but you could only guess at how much. Boyle lets this moment build from her initial smell of unknown (to you) intensity. Then he wrenches América’s (and your) reality with the mention of the “dump at Tijuana.” Boyle’s final blow comes as the list of specific odors that attacked her nose. With each step, you can smell more of man through the pages, even if you don’t want to.
What Boyle adds next is the master stroke of this scene: He shows the old man speaking.
On the surface, this looks like another basic addition to his character — the way he sounds — as in the elements of “his Spanish so twisted” you can feel the growl of his utterances and of “his voice falling away to nothing and then cresting like a wave” you can imagine the pattern of his speech and the body movements that must accompany it. Beneath that surface, though, hides the companion to which he resonates. He apparently sees or recognizes no one else; he is with his mother, a ghost but alive to him in full clarity. In this way, Boyle shows that the man is speaking in a world that, to him, is real in sight and touch and sound.
To América, the reality of this man is less those things. It’s more smell than the other senses. Certainly she doesn’t see the man’s mother, but she does see the man.
Why
A surface glance at her existence in this place might seem much different from his. She wears relatively clean clothes and only a single set; she speaks clear Spanish; she sees everyone and everything around her; she doesn’t see or speak to hallucinations.
Boyle, however, brought this man into her life for a reason. In this moment, América is living on the street; her clothes haven’t been washed in weeks; she doesn’t know when she will have her next meal or where she will sleep this night.
In as much as the man’s mother is his ghost, I think the old man is América’s ghost not fully realized. Boyle plays the man as just a passerby, but he had a reason for unleashing this brief torrent of senses on América. Her life has reached a point where she’s nearer to him than ever. Without connection to family and without a certain thought about how to survive the night, she could mirror this man’s patterns more easily than she would care to think.
How many days away is someone from wearing everything they own, having no place to wash themselves, and diving into a mental abyss to escape the horrendousness of their days?
Boyle forces América to absorbs this man in all ways aside from touch. They sat on the same wall together and occupied the same moments in time, and perhaps Boyle showed a possible future for América and anyone in that same situation should the worst come to pass.