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《Great Days》
Back Cover:
Donald Barthelmes new book藏书网 of stories, Great Days, is perhaps most notable for the presence of seven formally related dialogues, "The Crisis," "The Apology," "The New Music," "M," "Oeps o?９9lib.he guy or woman talking, right o his or her --
-- Frame or pedestal.
-- Prerecorded.
-- Naturally.
-- Shocked white faces talking.
-- Killed a few flowers and put them in pots uhe faces, everybody does that.
-- Something keeps drawing you back like a mag.
-- Watg the buffalo graze. It t be this that Ive waited for, Ive waited too long. I find it intolerable, all this putter. Yet in the end, wouldnt mind doing a little grazing myself, it would look a little funny.
-- Is there bluegrass in heaven? Make inquiries. I saw the streets of Pool, a few curs broiling on spits.
-- And on another er, a man spinning a goat into gold.
-- Pool projects positive images of itself through the great medium of film.
-- emas filled with industrious product.
-- Real films. Sent everywhere.
-- Film is the great medium of this tury -- hearty, giggling film.
-- So even if one does not go there, one may assimilate the meaning of Pool.
-- Id just like to rest and laze around.
-- Soundtracks in Burmese, Italian, Twi, and other tongues.
-- One film is worth a thousand words. At least a thousand.
-- Theres a film about the new barracks, and a film about the nehitheater.
-- Good. Excellent.
-- In the one about the new barracks we see Squadron A at m roll call, tense and effit. "Mattingly!" calls the sergeant. "Yo!" says Mattingly. "Man!" calls the sergeant. "Yo!" says Man.
-- A fine bunen. Nervous, but fine.
-- In the one about the amphitheater, a-day dramatization of Eckermanns versations with Goethe.
-- What does Goethe say?
-- Goethe says: "I have devoted my whole life to the people and their improvement."
-- Goethe said that?
-- And is quoted in the very superior Pool produ which is enlustering the perception of Pool worldwide.
-- Rich, very rich.
-- And there is a film ig the fabulous Pool garage sales, where one finds solid-silver plates in ed bags.
-- People sighing and leaning against each other, holding their silver plates. Think Ill just whittle a bit, whittle and spit.
-- Lots of aodations in Pool, all of the hotels are empty.
-- See if I have any bes left uhe G.I. Bill.
-- Pool is new, make you oo.
-- I have not the heart.
-- I get us a plane or a train, theyve cut all the fares.
-- People sighing and leaning against one another, holding their silver plates.
-- So you just want to stay here? Stay here and be yourself?
-- Drop by the shoe store, pick up a pair of shoes.
-- Blackberries, buttercups, and wild red clover. I find the latest music terrific, although I dont generally speaking care much for the new, qua new. But this new music! It has won from roup the steadiest attention.
-- Momma didnt low no clari played in here. Unfortunately.
-- Momma.
-- Momma didnt low no clari played in here. Made me sad.
-- Momma was outside.
-- Momma was very outside.
-- Sitting there lowing and not-lowing. In her old rog chair.
-- Low..ing this, not-lowing that.
-- Didnt low oboe.
-- Didnt low gitfiddle. Vibes.
-- Rock over your damn foot and bust it, you didnt pop to when she was lowing and not-lowing.
-- Right. Course, she had all the grease.
-- True.
-- You wanted a little grease, like to buy a damn ic book or something, you had to go to Momma.
-- Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Her variously colored moods.
-- Mauve. Warm gold. Citizens blue.
-- Mauve mood that got her thrown in the jug that time.
-- cealed ons. Well, what you do?
-- Carried a .357 daytimes and a .22 for evenings. Well, what you do?
-- Momma did nobody work her over, nobody.
-- She just didnt give a hang. She didnt care.
-- I thought she cared. There were moments.
-- She never cared. Didnt give pig shit.
-- You could even cry, she wouldnt e.
-- I tried that, I remember. Cried and cried. Didnt do a damn bit of good.
-- Lost as she was in the Eleusinian mysteries and the art of love.
-- Cried my little eyes out. The sheet was sopping.
-- Momma was not to be swayed. Unswayable.
-- Staring into the thermostat.
-- She had a lot on her mind. The ts. And Daddy, of course.
-- Lets not do Daddy today.
-- Yes, I remember Momma, jerking the old nervous system about with her electric diktats.
-- Could Christ have performed the work of the Redemption had He e into the world in the shape of a pea? That was one shed drop on you.
-- Then shed grade your paper.
-- I got a ce.
-- She dyed my beard blue, on the eve of my seventh marriage. I was sleeping on the sun porch.
-- Not oo withhold ent, Momma.
-- Got pretty damired of that old retty damired of that old woman. Gangs of ecstatics hanging about beating on pots and pans, trash- lids --
-- Trying for a ticket to the mysteries.
-- You wanted a little grease, like to go to the brothel or something, you had to say, Momma I have a little grease to go to the brothel?
-- She was often underly generous.
-- Give you eight when she k was ten.
-- She had her up days and her down days. Like most.
-- Out for a long walk one early evening I noticed in the bare brown cut fields to the right of me and to the left of me the following items of i: in the field to the right of me, couple copulating in the shade of a car, tan Studebaker as I remember, a thing I had seen previously only in old sepia-toned photograbbr>phs taken from the air by playful barnstormers capable of flying with their knees, I dont know if thats difficult or not --
-- And in the field to your left?
-- Momma. Rog.
-- Shed lugged the old rog chair all that way. In a mauve mood.
-- I tipped my hat. She did not return the greeting.
-- She . "The goddess Demeters anguish for all her childrens mortality."
-- Said my discourse was siing. That was the word she used. Said it repeatedly.
-- I asked myself: Do I give a bag of beans?
-- This bird that fell into the back yard?
-- The south lawn.
-- The back yard. I wao give it a Frito?
-- Yeah?
-- Thought it might be hungry. Sumbitch couldnt fly you uand. It had crashed. Couldnt fly. So I went into the house to get it a Frito. So I was trying to get it to eat the Frito. I had the damn bird in one hand, and iher, the Frito.
-- She saw you and whipped you.
-- She did.
-- She gave you that "the bird is our friend and we ouch the bird because it hurts the bird" number.
-- She did.
-- Thehrew the bird away.
-- Into the gutter.
-- Anticipating no doubt handling of the matter by the proper authorities.
-- Momma. Youd ask her how she was and shed say, "Fine." Like a little kid.
-- Thats what they say, "Fine."
-- Thats all you get out of em. "Fine"
-- Birl, dont make a pennys worth of difference. "Fine."
-- Fending you off. Similarly, Momma.
-- Momma lowed lute.
-- Yes. She had a thing for lute.
-- I remember the hours we spent. Banging away at our lutes.
-- Momma sitting there rog away. Dosing herself with straoxits.
-- Lime Rickeys.
-- e Blossoms.
-- Rob Roys.
-- Cuba Libres.
-- Brandy Alexanders and Bronxes. How could she drink that stuff?
-- An iron gut. And divinity, of course.
-- Well. Want to up some of this mess?
-- Some monster with claws, maybe velvet-covered claws or Teflon-covered claws, inhabits my dreams. Whistling, whistling. I say, Monster, how goes it with you? And he says, Quite happily, dreammate, there are certain criticisms, the Curator of Archetypes thinks I dont quite cut it, thinks Im shu and jivin when what I should be doing is attag, attag, attag --
-- Ah, my bawcock, what a fine fellow thou art.
-- But on the whole, the monster says, I feel fihen he says, Gimme that flake back. I say, What? He says, Gimme that flake back. I say, You gave me that flake its my flake. He says, Gimme that flake back or Ill claw you to thread. I say, I t man you gave it to me I already ate it. He says, an gimme the flake back did you butter it first? I say, an be reasonable, you dont butter a flake --
-- How does it end?
-- It doesnt end.
-- Is there help ing?
-- I called that number and they said whom the Lord loveth He chasteh.
-- Where is succor?
-- In the new music.
-- Yes, it isnt often you hear a disco version of Un Coup de Dés. Its strengthening.
-- The new music is drumless, which is brave. To make up for the absence of drums the musis pray nightly to the Virgin, kneeling in their suits of lights in damp chapels provided for the purpose off the corridors of the great arenas --
-- Momma wouldnt have lowed it.
-- As with much else. Momma didnt low Patrice.
-- I remember. You still see her?
-- On a way. Saw her Saturday. I hugged her and her body leaped. That was odd.
-- How did that feel?
-- Odd. Wonderful.
-- The body knows.
-- The body is perspicacious.
-- The body aint dumb.
-- Words t say what the body knows.
-- Sometimes I hear them howling from the hospital.
-- The detox ward.
-- Tied to the bed with beige cloths.
-- Weve avoided it.
-- So far.
-- Knock wood.
-- I did.
-- Well, its a bitch.
-- Like when she played Scrabble. She played to kill. Used the filthiest words insisting on their legitimacy. I was shocked.
-- In her robes of deep purple.
-- Seeking the ecstatic vision. That which would lift people four feet off the floor.
-- Six feet.
-- Four feet or six feet off the floor. Persephone herself appearing.
-- The ting in the darkeelesterion.
-- Persephone herself appearing, h. Accepting s, balls of salt, solid gold serpents, fig branches, figs.
-- Halluatory dang. All the women drunk.
-- Dang with jugs on their heads, mixtures of barley, water, mint --
-- Knowledge of things unspeakable --
-- Still, all I wao do was a little krummhorn. A little krummhorn on a while.
-- open graves, properly played.
-- I was never good. Never really good.
-- Who could practice?
-- And your clavier.
-- Momma didnt low clavier.
-- Thought it would unleash in her impulses better leashed? I dont know.
-- Her dark side. They all have them, mommas.
-- I mean theyve seen it all, felt it all. Spilled their damn blood and then spooned out buckets of mushy squash meanwhile telling the old husband that he wasnt hree on the scale of all husbands. . .
-- Tossed him a little bombita now and then just to keep him on his toes.
-- He was always on his toes, spent his whole life on his toes, the poor fuck. Piling up the grease.
-- We said we werent going to do Daddy.
-- I fot.
-- Old Momma.
-- Well, its not easy, dug the mysteries. Its not easy, making the grow.
-- Asparagus too.
-- I couldnt do it.
-- I couldnt do it.
-- Momma could do it.
-- Momma.
-- Luckily we have the new musiow. To give us aid and fort.
-- And Susie.
-- Our Susie.
-- Our darling.
-- Our pride.
-- Our passion.
-- I have to tell you something. Susies been reading the Hite Report. She says other women have more asms than she does. Wao know why.
-- Where does one go to plain? Where does one go to plain, when fiends have worsened your life?
-- I told her about the Great Septuagesimal asm, implying she could have one, if she was good. But it is growing late, very late indeed, for such as we.
-- But perhaps one ought not to plain, when fiends have worsened your life. But rather, emulating the great Stoics, Epictetus and so on, just zip into a bar and lift a few, whilst listening to the new, incible, great-white-shark, knife, music.
-- I hahe tall cool Shirley Temple to the silent priest. The new music, I said, is not specifically anticlerical. Only in its deepest effects.
-- I know the guy who plays washboard. Wears thimbles on all his fingers.
-- The new music burns things together, like a welder. The new music says, life bees more and more exg as there is less aime.
-- Momma wouldnt have lowed it. But Mommas gone.
-- To the curious: A man who was a unist heard the new musid now is not. Fernando the fish-seller was taught to read and write by the new musid is noer, white as snow. William Friend was caught trying to sneak into the new music with a set of bongos cealed under his cloak, but was garroted with his own bicycle , just in time. Propp the philosopher, having dinner with the Holy Ghost, was told of the ing of the new music but also informed that he would not live to hear it.
-- The new, down-to-earth, think-Im-gonna-kill-myself music, whis the sky.
-- Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that bbr>.９9lｉｂ. astound the most experienced.
-- The rest of the trip presents no real difficulties.
-- The rest of the trip presents no real difficulties. The thing to keep your eye on is less time, more exg. Remember that.
-- As if it were late, late, and we were ready to pull on our red-and-gold-striped nightshirts.
-- Cup of tea before retiring.
-- Cup of tea before retiring.
-- Dreams .
-- We deal with that.
-- Remembering that the new music will be there tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
-- There is always a new music.
-- Thank God.
-- Pull a few hairs out of your nose poised before the mirror.
-- Routine maintenanothing to write home about.
Cortés and Montezuma
Because Cortés lands on a day specified in the a writings, because he is dressed in black, because his armor is silver in color, a certain ugliness of the straaken as a group -- for these reasons, Montezuma siders Cortés to be Quetzalcoatl, the great god who left Mexiany years before, on a raft of snakes, vowing to return.
Montezuma gives Cortés a carved jade drinking cup.
Cortés places around Montezumas neck a necklace of glass beads strung on a cord sted with musk.
Montezuma offers Cortés ahenlatter taining small pieeat lightly breaded and browned which Cortés dees because he knows the small pieeat are human fingers.
Cortés sends Montezuma a huge basket of that Spanish bread of which Montezumas messengers had said, on first entering the Spaniards, "As to their food, it is like human food, it is white and not heavy, and slightly sweet. . ."
Cortés and Montezuma are walking, down by the docks. Little green flies fill the air. Cortés and Montezuma are holding hands; from time to time one of them disengages a hand to brush away a fly.
Montezuma receives new messages, in picture writing, from the hills. These he burns, so that Cortés will not learn their tents. Cortés is trimming his 藏书网black beard.
Do?a Marina, the Indian translator, is sleeping with Cortés in the palace given him by Montezuma. Cortés awakens; they share a cup of chocolate. She looks tired, Cortés thinks.
Down by the docks, Cortés and Montezuma walk, holding hands. "Are you acquainted with a Father Sanchez?" Montezuma asks. "Sanchez, yes, whats he been up to?" says Cortés. "Overturning idols," says Montezuma. "Yes," Cortés says vaguely, "yes, he does that, everywhere we go."
At a cert later that evening, Cortés is bitten on the ankle by a green i. The bug crawls into his velvet slipper. Cortés removes the slipper, feels around inside, finds the bug and removes it. "Is this poisonous?" he asks Do?a Marina. "Perfectly," she says.
Montezuma himself performs the operation upon Cortéss swollen ankle. He lahe bitten place with a sharp khen sucks the poison from the wound, spits. Soon they are walking again, down by the docks.
Montezuma writes, in a letter to his mother: "The new forwardness of the nobility has e as a wele relief. Whereas formerly members of the nobility took pains to hide among the general population, to pretend that they were ordinary people, they are now flaunting themselves and their position in the most disgusting ways. Once again they wear scarlet sashes from shoulder to hip, even on the boulevards; once again they prance about in their great powdered wigs; once again they employ lackeys to stand in pairs on little shelves at the rear of their limousihe din raised by their incessant visiting of one another is with us from noon until early in the m. . .
"This flagrant behavior is, as I say, wele. For we are all tired of having to deal with their manifold deceptions, of unc their places of cealment, of keeping track of their movements -- in short, of having to think about them, of having to remember them. Their new assertiveness, however much it reminds us of the excesses of former times, is easier. The iing question is, what has emboldehe nobility to emerge from obscurity at this time? Why now?
"Many people here are of the opinion that it is a direct sequence of the plague of devils we have had retly. It is easily seen that, against a horizon of devils, the reappearance of the nobility only be sidered a more or less tolerable circumstance -- they themselves must have realized this. Not sihe late years of the last Bundle have we had so many spitting, farting, hair-shedding devils abroad. Along with the devils there have been roaches, roaches big as ironing boards. Then, too, we have the Spaniards. . ."
A group of great lords hostile to Montezuma holds a secret meeting in Vera Cruz, uhe special prote of the god Smoking Mirror. Debate is fierce; a heavy rain is falling; new arrivals crowd the room.
Do?a Marina, although she is the mistress of Cortés, has an Indian lover of high rank as well. Making her fession to Father Sanchez, she touches upon this. "His name is Cuitlahuac? This may be useful politically. I ot give you absolution, but I will remember you in my prayers."
In the gardens of Tenochtitlán, whisperers exge strange new words: guillotine, white pepper, siy, temperament.
Cortéss mehrough many more walls but behind these walls they find, invariably, only the mummified carcasses of dogs, cats, and sacred birds.
Down by the docks, Cortés and Montezuma walk, holding hands. Cortés has employed a detective to follow Montezuma; Montezuma has employed a detective to follow Father Sanchez. "There are only five detectives of talent in Tenochtitlán," says Montezuma. "There are others, but I dont use them. Visions are best -- better than the best detective."
Atop the great Cue, or pyramid, Cortés strikes an effigy of the god Blue Hummingbird and knocks off its golden mask; an image of the Virgin is installed in its place.
"The heads of the Spaniards," says Do?a Marina, "Juan de Este and the five others, were arranged in a row on a pike. The heads of their horses were arranged in another row on another pike, set beh the first."
Cortés screams.
The guards run in, first Cristóbal de Olid, and following him Pedro de Alvarado and then de Ordás aapia.
Cortés is raving. He runs from the palato the plaza where he meets and is greeted by Montezuma. Two great lords stand oher side of Montezuma supp his arms, which are spread wide iing. They fold Montezumas arms around Cortés. Cortés speaks urgently into Montezumas ear.
Montezuma removes from his bosom a long cactus thorn and pricks his ear with it repeatedly, until the blood flows.
Do?a Marina is walking, down by the docks, with her lover Cuitlahuac, Lord of the Place of the Dunged Water. "When I was young," says Cuitlahuac, "I was at school with Montezuma. He was, in trast to the rest of us, remarkably chaste. A very religious man, a great student -- Ill wager thats what they talk about, Montezuma and Cortés. Theology." Do?a Marina tucks a hand inside his belt, at the back.
Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who will one day write The True History of the quest of New Spain, stands in a square whittling upon a pieesquite. The Proclamation of Vera Cruz is read, in which the friendship of Cortés and Montezuma is denounced as trary to the best is of the people of Mexico, born a unborn.
Cortés and Montezuma are walking, down by the docks. "I especially like the Holy Ghost. Qua idea," says Montezuma. "The od, the Father, is also --" "One God, three Persons," Cortés corrects gently. "That the Son should be s９9liｂ?acrificed," Montezuma tinues, "seems to me wrong. It seems to me He should be sacrificed to. Furthermore," Montezuma stops and taps Cortés meaningfully on the chest with a brown forefinger, "where is the Mother?"
Bernal asks Montezuma, as a great favor, for a young pretty woman; Montezuma sends him a young woman of good family, together with a featherwork mantle, some crickets in cages, and a quantity of freshly made soap. Montezuma observes, of Bernal, that "he seems to be a gentleman."
"The ruler prepares dramas for the people," Montezuma says.
Cortés, sitting in an armchair, nods.
"Because the cultivation of maize requires on the average only fifty days labor per person per year, the peoples energies may be ied in these dramas -- for example the eternal struggle to win, to retain, the good will of Smoking Mirror, Blue Hummingbird, Quetzalcoatl. . ."
Cortés smiles and bows.
"Easing the psychological strain on the ruler who would otherwise be forced to face alohe prospect of world collapse, the prospect of the world folding in on itself. . ."
Cortés blinks.
"If the drama is not of my authorship, if events are not trollable by me --"
Cortés has no reply.
"Therefore it is incumbent upon you, dear brother, to disclose to me the ending or at least what you know of the dramas probable course so that I may attempt to manipulate it in a favorable dire with the application of what magic is left to me."
Cortés has no reply.
Breaking through a new wall, Cortéss men discover, on the floor of a chamber behind the wall, a tiny puddle of gold. The Proclamation is circulated throughout the city; is sent to other cities.
Bernal builds a stout hen coop for Do?a Marina. The sky over Tenochtitlán darkens; flashes of lightning; then rain sweeping off the lake.
Down by the docks, Cortés and Montezuma take shelter in a doorway. "Do?a Marina translated it; I have a copy," says Cortés.
"When you smashed Blue Hummingbird with the crowbar --"
"I was rash. I admit it."
"You may take the gold with you. All of it. My gift."
"Yhness is most kind."
"Your ships are ready. My messengers say their sails are as many as the clouds over the water."
"I ot leave until all of the gold in Mexico, past, present and future, is stacked in the holds."
"Impossible on the face of it."
"I agree. Let us talk of something else."
Montezuma notices that a certain amount of white lint has accumulated on his friends black velvet doublet. He thinks: She should take better care of him.
In bed with Cortés, Do?a Marina displays for his eyes her beautiful golden buttocks, which he strokes reverently. A tiny green fly is buzzing about the room; Cortés brushes it away with a fly whisk made of golden wire. She tells him about a vision. In the vision Montezuma is stru the forehead by a large stone, and falls. His enraged subjects hurl more stones.
"Dont worry," says Cortés. "Trust me."
Father Sanchez fronts Cortés with the report of the detective he has hired to follow Do?a Marina, together with other reports, dots, photographs. Cortés orders that all of the detectives iy be arrested, that the profession of detective be abolished forever in Tenochtitlán, and that Father Sanchez be sent back to Cuba in s.
In the marketplaces and theaters of the city, new words are passed about: tranquillity, vinegar, entitlement, sell.
On another day Montezuma and Cortés and Do?a Marina and the guard of Cortés aai lords of Tenochtitlán leave their palaces and are carried in palanquins to the part of the city called Cotaxtla.
There, they halt before a great house and dismount.
"What is this place?" Cortés asks, for he has never seen it before.
Montezuma replies that it is the meeting place of the Aztec cil islature whiulates the laws of his people.
Cortés expresses surprise and states that it had been his uanding that Montezuma is an absolute ruler answerable to no one -- a statement Do?a Marina tactfully s to translate lest Montezuma be given offense by it.
Cortés, with his guard at his bad Montezuma at his right haers the building.
At the end of a long hallway he sees a group of funaries each of whom wears in his ears long white goose quills filled with pold. Here Cortés and his men are fumigated with inse from large pottery braziers, but Montezuma is not, the major-domos fix their eyes on the ground and do not look at him but greet him with great reverence saying, "Lord, my Lord, my Great Lord."
The party is ushered through a pair of tall doors rant cedar into a vast chamber hung with red and yellow banners. There, on low wooden benches divided by a broad aisle, sit the members of the cil, fag a dais. There are perhaps three hundred of them, each wearing affixed to his buttocks a pair of mirrors as is appropriate to his rank. On the dais are three figures of siderable majesty, the one in the ter raised somewhat above his fellows; behind them, on the wall, hangs a great wheel of gold with mutricate featherwork depig a whirlpool with the features of the goddess Chalchihuitlicue in the ter. The cil members sit in attitudes id attention, arms held at their sides, s lifted, eyes fixed on the dais. Cortés lays a hand on the shoulder of one of them, then recoils. He raps with his knuckles on that shoulder which gives forth a hollow sound. "They are pottery," he says to Montezuma. Montezuma winks. Cortés begins to laugh. Montezuma begins to laugh. Cbbr>.９9liｂ.ortés is choking, hysterical. Cortés and Montezuma run around the great hall, dodging in and out of the rows of benches, jumping into the laps of one or another of the clay figures, overturning some, turning others backwards in their seats. "I am the State!" shouts Montezuma, and Cortés shouts, "Mother of God, five this poor fool who doesnt know what he is saying!"
In the ki possible way, Cortés places Montezuma under house arrest.
"Best you e to stay with me a while."
"Thank you but Id rather not."
"Well have games and in the evenings, home movies."
"The people wouldnt uand."
"Weve got Pitalpitoque shackled to the great ."
"I thought it was Quintalbor."
"Pitalpitoque, Quintalbor, Tendile."
"Ill send them chocolate."
"e away, e away, e away with me."
"The people will be frightened."
"What do the omens say?"
"I dont know I t read them any more."
"Cutting peoples hearts out, forty, fifty, sixty at a crack."
"Its the around here."
"The people of the South say you take too much tribute."
"t run an empire without tribute."
"Our Lord Jesus Christ loves you."
"Ill send Him chocolate."
"e away, e away, e away with me."
Down by the docks, Cortés and Montezuma are walking with Charles V, Emperor of Spain. Do?a Marina follows at a respectful distance carrying two piic baskets taining many delicacies: caviar, white wiuffed thrushes, gumbo.
Charles V bends to hear what Montezuma is saying; Cortés brushes from the person of the Emperor little green flies, using a fly whisk made of golden wire. "Was there no alternative?" Charles asks. "I did what I thought best," says Cortés, "proceeding with gaiety and sce." "I am murdered," says Montezuma.
The sky over Tenochtitlán darkens; flashes of lightning; then rain sweeping off the lake.
The pair walking down by the docks, hand in hand, the ghost of Montezuma rebukes the ghost of Cortés. "Why did you not throw up your hand, and catch the stone?"
The King of Jazz
Well Im the king of jazz now, thought Hokie Mokie to himself as he oiled the slide on his trombone. Hasnt been a bone man been king of jazz for many years. But noicy MacLammermoor, the old king, is dead, I guess Im it. Maybe I better play a few notes out of this window here, to reassure myself.
"Wow!" said somebody standing on the sidewalk. "Did you hear that?"
"I did," said his panion.
" you distinguish reat homemade Ameri jazz performers, each from the other?"
"Used to could."
"Then who was that playing?"
"Sounds like Hokie Mokie to me. Those few but perfectly selected notes have the real epiphanic glow."
"The what?"
"The real epiphanic glow, such as is obtained only by artists of the caliber of Hokie Mokie, whos from Pass Christian, Mississippi. Hes the king of jazz, noicy MacLammermoor is gone."
Hokie Mokie put his trombone in its trombone case ao a gig. At the gig ev?９9lｉｂ?eryone fell back before him, bowing.
"Hi Bucky! Hi Zoot! Hi Freddie! Hi Gee! Hi Thad! Hi Roy! Hi Dexter! Hi Jo! Hi Willie! Hi Greens!"
"What we gonna play, Hokie? You the king of jazz now, you gotta decide."
"How bout Smoke?"
"Wow!" everybody said. "Did you hear that? Hokie Mokie just knock a fella out, just the way he pronounces a word. What a intonation on that boy! God Almighty!"
"I dont want to play Smoke, " somebody said.
"Would you repeat that, stranger?"
"I dont want to play Smoke. Smoke is dull. I dont like the ges. I refuse to play Smoke. "
"He refuses to play Smoke! But Hokie Mokie is the king of jazz and he says Smoke!"
"Man, you from outa town or something? What do you mean you refuse to play Smoke? Howd you get on this gig anyhow? Who hired you?"
"I am Hideo Yamaguchi, from Tokyo, Japan."
"Oh, youre one of those Japas, eh?"
"Yes Im the top trombone man in all of Japan."
"Well youre wele here until we hear you play. Tell me, is the Tenea Room still the top jazz pla Tokyo?"
"No, the top jazz pla Tokyo is the Square Box now."
"Thats nice. O.K., now we gonna play Smoke just like Hokie said. You ready, Hokie? O.K., give you four for nothin. Owo! Three! Four!"
The two men who had been standing under Hokies window had followed him to the club. Now they said:
"Good God!"
"Yes, thats Hokies famous English sunrise way of playing. Playing with lots of rays ing out of it, some red rays, some blue rays, some green rays, some green stemming from a violet ter, some olive stemming from a taer --"
"That young Japanese fellow is pretty good, too."
"Yes, he is pretty good. And he holds his horn in a peculiar way. Thats frequently the mark of a superior player."
"Bent over like that with his head between his knees -- good God, hes sensational!"
Hes sensational, Hokie thought. Maybe I ought to kill him.
But at that moment somebody came in the door pushing in front of him a four-and-one-half-octave marimba. Yes, it was Fat Man Jones, and he began to play even before he was fully in the door.
"Whatre we playing?"
" Billies Bounce. "
"Thats what I thought it was. Whatre we in?"
"F."
"Thats what I thought we were in. Didnt you use to play with Maynard?"
"Yeah I was on that band for a while until I was in the hospital."
"What for?"
"I was tired."
"What we add to Hokies fantastic playing?"
"How bout some rain or stars?"
"Maybe thats presumptuous?"
"Ask him if hed mind."
"You ask him, Im scared. You dont fool around with the king of jazz. That young Japanese guys pretty good, too."
"Hes sensational."
"You think hes playing in Japanese?"
"Well I dont think its English."
This trombones been makin my neck green for thirty-five years, Hokie thought. How e I got to stand up to yet another challehis late in life?
"Well, Hideo --"
"Yes, Mr. Mokie?"
"You did well on both Smoke and Billies Bounce. Youre just about as good as me, I regret to say. In fact, Ive decided youre better thas a hideous thing to plate, but there it is. I have only been the king of jazz for twenty-four hours, but the unfiving logic of this art demands we bow to Truth, when we hear it."
"Maybe youre mistaken?"
"No, I got ears. Im not mistaken. Hideo Yamaguchi is the new king of jazz."
"You want to be king emeritus?"
"No, Im just going to fold up my horn and steal away. This gig is yours, Hideo. You pick the une."
"How bout Cream?"
"O.K., you heard what Hideo said, its Cream. You ready, Hideo?"
"Hokie, you dont have to leave. You play too. Just move a little over to the side there --"
"Thank you, Hideo, thats very gracious of you. I guess I will play a little, since Im still here. Sotto voce, of course."
"Hideo is wonderful on Cream!"
"Yes, I imagis his best tune."
"Whats that sound ing in from the side there?"
"Which side?"
"The left."
"You mean that sound that sounds like the cutting edge of life? That sounds like polar bears crossing Arctic ice pans? That sounds like a herd of musk ox in full flight? That sounds like male walruses diving to the bottom of the sea? That sounds like fumaroles smoking on the slopes of Mt. Katmai? That sounds like the wild turkey walking through the deep, soft forest? That sounds like beavers chewing trees in an Appala marsh? That sounds like an oyster fungus growing on an aspen trunk? That sounds like a mule deer wandering a montane of the Sierra Nevada? That sounds like prairie dogs kissing? That sounds like witchgrass tumbling or a river meandering? That sounds like manatees mung seaweed at Cape Sable? That sounds like undis moving in packs across the face of Arkansas? That sounds like --"
"Good?9９ｌｉｂ? God, its Hokie! Even with a cup mute on, hes blowing Hideht off the stand!"
"Hideos playing on his knees now! Good God, hes reag into his belt for a large steel sword -- Stop him!"
"Wow! That was the most exg Cream ever played! Is Hideo all right?"
"Yes, somebody is getting him a glass of water."
"Youre my man, Hokie! That was the dadblahing I ever saw!"
"Youre the king of jazz once again!"
"Hokie Mokie is the most happening thing there is!"
"Yes, Mr. Hokie sir, I have to admit it, you blew me right off the stand. I see I have many years of work and study before me still."
"Thats O.K., son. Dont think a thing about it. It happens to the best of us. Or it almost happens to the best of us. Now I want everybody to have a good time because were gonna play Flats. Flats is ."
"With your permission, sir, I will return to my hotel and pack. I .am most grateful for everything I have learned here."
"Thats O.K., Hideo. Have a nice day. He-he. Now, Flats. "
The Question Party
"Yes, Maria, we will give the party ohursday night and I have an agreeable surprise in plation for all our old friends who may be here." The pleasant air about Mrs. Teach as she ehe parlor where her daughter was seated betokehe presence of something on her mind that gave her great satisfa. The daughter had been importuning her mother for a party which after due deliberation she had decided to give and to make the evening more eaining she had determio introduce a new feature which she thought would create some excitement in the circle of her acquaintances and afford them the means of much amusement. She had just hit upon the plan before entering the room and the smile of satisfa upon her face was noticed by her daughter.
"Shall we, Mother? I am so glad!" she answered. "But what is it you are preparing for our friends? Are you going to sing?"
"No, Miss, I am going to do no such foolish thing! And, for your quizzing, you shall not know what it is until the evening of the party!"
"Now, Mother, that is too bad. You are too hardhearted. You know the extent of womans curiosity a you will not gratify me. Are you going to introduce a new polka?"
"There is no use in your questioning; I shall not tell you anything about it, so you may as well save your breath."
"Do you intend showing your album quilt?" perseveringly inquired Maria.
"Now do not provoke me to cel my promise by your pertinacity. I tell you as a punishment for quizzing your mother you shall not know until Thursday what it is."
"M or evening, Mother?"
"Evening, Miss. So no more questions but get about writing your invitations."
Maria proceeded to the bookcase and taking from it her notepaper and envelopes enced writing.
Eight oclo the evening of the party. The first who were ushered into the parlor were Mrs. Jawart awo daughters, who were always the first at the reunions. The younger Miss Jawart was somewhere out of her teens, and the elder, although her face rofusely bedecked with curls -- the inal owner of which, being dead, had no further use for them -- could not ceal that she was much older than she wished to be sidered. Mr. and Mrs. White came , the lady someompous in her manner, and the gentleman quite so. An i in a al boat had placed him, in his own view, among shipping merts, and some of his acquaintances broadly hihat if he were cut up in small pieces aailed out for starch, he would be fulfilling his destiny. The two Misses Jennings and brother came . These young ladies, the oeen and the other twenty, seemed somewhat disappointed, when they ehe room, at the absence of some of their young beaux, whom they expected to find there; this feeling was dispelled in a few moments, when a matched pair of the latter presehemselves.
Mr. Lynch, a bachelor of fifty, was the o claim the attention of the pany. He was a short, thickset man, with a small pair of whiskers that curled up on his cheekbones as if etp://.. to cultivate an acquaintah his eyes. A few gray hairs in them, overlooked by the owner -- his attention to them was exemplary -- had been, in his toilet for the evening, elbowed, as it were, by the others to the fore, possibly to attract the attention of a few of the same color which peeped from behind the false hair of Miss Jawart. A standing collar formed a semi-wall around his neck, and shoes of the brightest polish graced his feet. At about half past hen, all the guests had assembled, filling fortably both parlors and rendering the place vocal with their animated versation.
The pany had been engaged some time in singing when there was a call for a polka. In a few moments partners were selected and everyone was hopscotg through the figures at a lively rate, reminding orongly of a group in a state of advanced intoxication. The mind of Maria suddenly became abstracted to su extent by thoughts of the surprise that her mother had promised that she fot her time and the dancers were pelled to stop and reprove her jokingly for her remissness. Just at that moment Mrs. Teachs voice could be heard, above the general din of laughter and music, calling for everyone, without exception, to e into the front parlor as she had something to show them which she thought would amuse. In her haste to get into the room Maria almost knocked one of t?９９ｌiｂ. Misses Jennings over.
The pany after much fusion beied, Mrs. Teach took from the ter table a handsome marble card basket taining a pack of plain, gilt-edged cards and explaihat she had prepared an i aertaining amusement for them which she hoped would prove iing.
"Maria," she tinued, "will you pass around this basket, my dear, a eae of the pa from it one of the cards?"
Maria did as her mother requested.
"I shall propose a question," said Mrs. Teach, "to >９９lib.hich eaust write an answer on the card they have. Which cards shall be placed in this vase on the pedestal behind me. After they are all deposited I will draw them out singly and will read them aloud. There is to be no mark upon the response by which its author may be known."
There was a general mustering of pencils at this annou and an evident curiosity was immediately raised in regard to the subject which would be propounded.
"As there is a majority of ladies here, I shall propose for the first question: What is a bachelor?"
For the space of a quarter of an hour the pencils of the pany made desperate attacks upon the faces of the cards which left them covered over with black lihe last answer written and deposited in the vase, Mrs. Teach, with a smile, ehe task of reading them aloud.
"A target for fair hands to shoot at," she read.
A general laugh greeted this response.
"I beg of you, ladies," said Mr. Lynch, "not to shoot too close to me, but I know that my prayer is to no avail since your arrows are already in that vase."
The sed card was drawn forth.
"Any icy peak, on the mountain of humanity, that the sun of womans love has never melted," read Mrs. Teach.
"Then I will nip you with my frost," said Mr. Lynch, putting his arms playfully around one of the Misses Jennings.
"How do you know it was my answer?" she cried, releasing herself from him.
"I read it in your face this moment," he replied.
"Then we must turn our faces from you, or we shall all betray ourselves, if you are su excellent face reader," said the elder Miss Jawart.
"I beg you, do not!" exclaimed Mr. Lynch. "For that would deprive me of much pleasure."
"An old maids forlorn hope," said Mrs. Teach, reading the respohe aptness of which was felt by all -- yet a sense of propriety restrained any aowledgment of this. Another card was instantly drawn to divert attention from it, and to relieve Miss Jawart from her unpleasant dilemma.
"A fox longing for the grapes he pronounces sour."
"Now I really do object!" said Mr. Lynch. "I could never find it in my heart to pronouny lady sour."
"Heart, ihis is the first time I ever knew you to aowledge the possession of su article," Mrs. Teach quickly replied.
"There you do me wrong, for, see! I have one now which you gave me," said Mr. Lynch, taking from his pocket a handsomely worked velvet heart. "And observe, there are as many pins in it as you are endeav to plant thorns in its partner here," he went on, plag his hand over that part of his coat which covered the real article.
The laugh was turned on Mrs. Tead she drew forth another card.
"A creature whose miseries might be pitied had he not the remedy within his reach."
"It must be you, Miss Bookly," said Mr. Lynch, "as you are sitting closest to me."
"I did not write it," said Miss Bookly. "And besides, Miss Jennings was sitting closest to you before she moved away after you put your arms around her.
"That is true," he said with a mock sigh.
Another card termihe versation on that subject.
"Just like Mr. Lynch."
The merriment of the pany knew no bounds at this answer. Mr. Lynch joihe rest with great zeal, and in a few moments exclaimed, "Well! I really do think you are makiarget to shoot at tonight. It is well for you that I am good-natured, else I might retaliate with some formulations of my own."
This is really a dumb game, thought Maria.
Mrs. Teach dipped into the vase for the card.
"One who boasts of liberty but sighs for the slavery he ns."
"That would be acute," Mr. Lynch said thoughtfully, "had I ever boasted. But I recall no such occasion. There is, in fact, a kind of shame and horror attached to the bachelor state -- an odium bined with a tedium. Sleeping with strumpets is not the liveliest business in the world, I assure you."
"What are they like, really?" asked Miss Bookly.
"Some are choice, some are not," said Mr. Lynch.
"For heavens sakes, man, be silent!" exclaimed Mr. White.
"A bit of fresh, as the expression runs," said Mr. Lynch, " --"
Mr. White drew forth his pistol and shot Mr. Lynch dead with it.
"Good Lord! He is dead!" cried Mrs. Teach.
Dr. Balfour k over the body. "Yes, he is dead," he said. All assisted the Doctor in plag the carcass on the sofa.
"There is but one more card in the vase," said Mrs. Teach, peering into the article iion. "Dare we look at it?"
"Yes, yes," was the answer, in a subdued murmur. "I sincerely hope that it may be a favorable one," said Mrs. Teach, "for I fear we have dealt harshly with our late friend tonight."
The last card was drawn from the vase. Mrs. Teach exami closely on both sides and then proclaimed, "Blank!"
"A prophecy," said the younger Miss Jennings. "Who could have foreseen what was to happen?"
"It was not a matter of foreknowledge," said Maria. "The card is mine. I couldnt think of anything to write."
"Well," said Mrs. Teach, "I am irely satisfied with my little experiment this evening, and so shall leave it to ao choose the eai for our ."
"Not at all," said Mr. White. "The evening, despite its sad but necessary sequences, has been most delightful. I t recall when more iing things have been said or done, in all the years of my residen this city. And as I shall have the pleasure of giving the party, I shall most certainly adopt your little experiment, as you call it."
"What will the question be?" asked Miss Jawart.
"Something dangerous," said Mr. White, with a twinkle.
"Parties are always dangerous," said Miss Jawart.
"I am inviting Geronimo, chief of the Apache Indians, who happens to be in town," said Mr. White.
"That will make it all the more dangerous," said Mrs. Teach, "as I am told that he is extremely cruel to his enemies."
"He is extremely cruel to everyone," said Mr. White.
Yes, it was an agreeable party after all, Maria thought. My mother is not dumb. My mother is surprisingly intelligent. It was wrong of me to think ill of her. Now no one will ever know that Mr. Lynch was the man who -- How strange is justice! How artful woman!
Authors his piece is an objet trouvé. It was inally published in Godeys Ladys Book in 1850, uhe byline of a Hickory Broom. I have cut it and added some three dozen lines.
Belief
>?A group of senior citizens on a ben Washington Square Park in New York City. There were two female senior citizens and two male senior citizens.
"Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit," one of the women said suddenly. She turned her head to each of the four ers of an imaginary room as she did so.
The other senior citizens stared at her.
"Why did you do that?" one of the men asked.
"Its the first of the month. If you say rabbit four times, oo each er of the room, or the space that you are in, on the first of the month before you eat lunch, then you will be loved in that month."
Some angry black people walked by carrying steel-band instruments and bunches of flowers.
"I dont think thats true," the sed woman senior citizen said. "I never heard it before and Ive heard everything."
"I think its probably just an old wives tale," one of the men said. The other male senior citizen cracked up.
"Shall we discuss old men?" the first woman asked the sed woman.
The two men looked at the sky to make sure all of our trys satellites were in the right places.
"What about your daughter the nun?" the sed woman, whose name was Elise, asked the first, whose name was Kate. "You havent heard from her?"
"My daughter the nun," Kate said, "you wouldnt believe."
"Where is she?" Elise asked. "Geia or somewhere, you told me but I fot. Going to school you said."
"Shes getting her masters," Kate said, "they send them. Shes a rambling wreck from Geia Tech. I was going down to visit at Thanksgiving."
"But you didnt."
"I called her and said I was ing and she said but Thanksgiving Day is the game. So I said the game, the game, O.K. Ill go to the game, I dont mind going to the game, get me a ticket. And she said but Mother Im in the flash card sey daughter the nun."
"Theyre different now," Elise said, "youre lucky shes not keeping pany with one of those priests with his hair in a pigtail."
"Who tell?" said Kate. "Id be the last to know."
One of the men leaned around his partner and asked: "Well, is it w? Are you loved?"
"There was ahing we used to do," Kate said calmly. "You and yirl friend each wrote the names of three boys on three slips of paper, on the first day of the month. The names of three boys you wao ask you to go out with them. Then yirl friehe three slips of paper in her cupped hands and you closed your eyes and picked --"
"I dont believe it," said the seale senior citizen, whose name was Jerome.
"You closed your eyes and picked one and put it in your shoe. And you did the same for her. And then that boy would e around. It always worked. Invariably."
"I dont believe it," Jerome said again. "I dont believe in things like that and never have. I dont believe in magid I dont believe in superstition. I dont believe in Judaism, Christianity, or Eastern thought. None of em. I didnt believe in the First World War even though I was a child in the First World War and youll go a long way before you find somebody who didnt believe in the First World War. That was a very popular war, where I lived. I didnt believe in the Sed World War either and I was in it."
"How could you be in it if you didnt believe in it?" Elise asked.
"My views were not sulted," Jerome said. "They didnt ask me, they told me. But I still had my inner belief, which was that I didnt believe in it. I was in the MPs. I rose through the ranks. I rovost marshal, at the end. I once shook down aire battalion of Seabees, six hundred men."
"What is shook down?"
"Thats when you and your people gh their foot lockers and sea bags and personal belongings looking for stuff they shouldnt have."
"What shouldnt they have?"
"Black market stuff. Booze. Dope. Gover property. Unauthorized ons." He paused. "What else didnt I believe in? I didnt believe iom bomb but I was wrong about that. The unions."
"You were wrong about that too," said the other man, Frank. "I was a linotype operator when I was een and I was a linotype operator until I was sixty a me tell you, mister, if we hadnt had the union all we would have got was nickels and dimes. Nickels and dimes. Period. So dont say anything against the trade union movement while Im sitting here, because I know what Im talking about. You dont."
"I didnt believe in the unions and I didnt believe in the gover whether Republi or Democrat," Jerome said. "And I didnt believe in --"
"The I.T.U. is sidered a very good union," Elise said. "I once went with a man i.U. ..He was a posing-room foreman and his name was Harry Foreman, that was a ce, and he made very good money. We went to Luchows a lot. He liked German food."
"Did you believe iernational unist spiracy?" Frank asked Jerome.
"Nope."
"You t read," Frank said, "youre blind."
"Maybe."
"I havent decided about whether there is an iional unist spiracy," Elise said. "Im still thinking about it."
"Whats to think about?" Frank asked. "There was Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia says it all."
Some street people walked past the group of senior citizens but decided that the senior citize worth asking for small ge. The decision lain on ?their faces.
"When I was a girl, a little girl, I had to go into my fathers bar to get the butter," Kate said. "My father had a bar in Brooklyn. The icebox was in the bar. The only iy mother sent me downstairs to get the butter. All the men turned and looked at me as I ehe bar."
"But your father bounded out from behind the bar and got you the butter meanwhile looking sternly at all the other people in the bar to keep them from looking at you," Elise suggested.
"No," Kate said. "He was on his ass most of the time. What they say about bartenders not drinking is not true."
"Also I didnt believe in the United Nations and before that I didnt believe in the League of Nations," Jerome said. "Furthermore," he said, giving Kate a meaningful glance, "I didnt believe women should be givee."
Kate gazed at Jeromes coat, which was old, at his shirt, old, then at his pants, which were quite old, and at his shoes, which were new.
"Do you have prostate trouble?" she asked.
"Yes," Jerome said, with a startled look. "Of course. Why?"
"Good," Kate said. "I dont believe in prostate trouble. I dont believe there is such a thing as a prostate."
She gave him a generous and loving smile.
"You mean to tell me that if you put the piece of paper with the boys name on it in your shoe on the first day of the month he invariably came aro.und?" Elise asked Kate.
"Invariably," Kate said. "Without fail. Worked every time."
"Goddamn," Elise said. "Wish Id known that."
"There was ohing I believed," Jerome said.
"What?"
"Its religious."
"What is it?"
"My pal the rabbi told me, hes dead now; He said it was a Hasidic writing."
"So?" said Elise. "So, so, so?"
"It is forbidden to grow old."
The old people thought about this for a while, on the bench.
"Its good," Kate said. "I could do without the irony."
"Me too," Elise said. "I could do without the irony."
"Maybe its not so good?" Jerome asked. "What do you think?"
"No," Kate said. "Its good." She gazed about her at the new life sprouting in sandboxes and jungle gyms. "Wish I had some kids to yell at."
Tales of the Swedish Army
Suddenly, turning a er, I ran into a unit of the Swedish Army. Their vehicles were parked in orderly rows and filled the street, mostly six-by-sixes and jeeps, an occasional APC, all painted a sand color quite different from the Ameri Armys dark green. To the left of the vehicles, on a big school playground, they had set up two-mas of the same sand color, and the soldiers, blond red-faced men, lounged about among the tents, making not muoise. It was strao see them there, I assumed they were on their way to some sort of joint maneuvers with our own troops. But it was strao see them there.
I began talking to a lieutenant, a young, pleasant man; he showed me a portable chess clock hed made himself, which was for some reason covered in matchstick bamboo painted purple. I told him I was building an addition to the rear of my house, as a matter of fact I had with me a carpenters level Id just bought, and I showed him that. He said he had some free time, and asked if I needed help. I suggested that probably his unit would be moving out fairly soon, but he waved a hand to indicate that their departure was not immi. He seemed genuinely ied in assisting me, so I accepted.
His name was Bengt and he was?9９lｉｂ? from Uppsala, Id been there so we talked about Uppsala, then about Sto and Bornholm and Malmo. I asked him if he khe work of the Swedish poet Bodil Malmsten; he didnt. My house (not really mine, my sisters, but I lived there and paid rent) wasnt far away, we stood in the garden looking up at the rear windows on the parlor floor, I utting new ones in. So I climbed the ladder and he began handing me up one of the rather heavy prefab window frames, and my hammer slid from the top of the ladder and fell and smashed into his chess clock, which hed carefully placed on the ground, against the wall.
I apologized profusely, a told me not to worry, it didnt matter, but he kept shaking the chess clod turning it over in his hands, trying t it to life. I rushed down the ladder and apologized again, and looked at it myself, both dials were shattered and part of the purple matchstick g had e off. He said again not to worry, he could fix it, and that we should get on with the job.
After a while Bengt on the ladder tag the new frames to the two-by-fours with sixteen-penny nails. He was very skillful and the work was going quickly; I was standing in the garden steadying the ladder as he was sometimes ..required to lean out rather far. He slipped and tried to recover, and bashed his face against the wall, and broke his nose.
He stood in the garden holding his h both hands, the hands as if clasped in prayer over his nose. I apologized profusely. I ran into the house and got some ice cubes and paper towels and told him Id take him to the hospital right away but he shook his head and said no, they had doctors of their own. I wao do something for him so I took him in and sat him down and cooked him some of my fried chi, which is rather well-known although the secret isnt much of a secret, just lots of lemon-pepper marinade and then squeezing fresh lemon juice over it just before serving. I could see he was really very disced about his nose and I had to keep giving him fresh paper towels but he plimented me very highly on the chi and gave me a Swedish recipe for chi stuffed with parsley and butter and stewed, which I wrote down.
The told me various things about the Swedish Army. He said that it was a tough army and a sober one, but small; that everybody in the army pretty well knew everybody else, and that they kept their Saab jets in deep caves that had been dug in the mountains, so that if there was a war, nothing could happen to them. He said that the part Id seen was just his pany, there were two more plus a heavy-ons pany bivouag at various spots iy, making up a full battalion. He said the soldiers were mostly Lutherans, with a few Presbyterians and Evangelicals, and that drugs were not a problem but that people sometimes overslept, driving the sergeants crazy. He said that the Swedish Army was thought to have the best weapons in the world, and that they kept them very . He said that he probably didnt have to heir principal potential enemy, because I k already, and that the army-wide favorite musical group was Abba, which could sometimes be seen on Ameri television late at night.
By now the table was full of bloody towels and some blood had gotten on his camouflage suit, which was in three shades of green and brotly, with a manly gesture, Bengt informed me that he had fallen in love with my sister. I said that was very curious, in that he had never met her. "That is no difficulty," he said, "I see by looking around this house what kind of a woman she must be. Very tall, is she not? And red hair, is that not true?" He went on describing my sister, w９9ｌib?hose name is Catherine, with a disturbing accurad increasihusiasm, correctly identifying her as a teacher and, furthermore, a teacher of painting. "These are hers," he said, "they must be," and rose to i some oils in Kulicke frames on the walls. "I k. From these, dear friend, a great deal be known of the temperament of the painter, his or her essential spirit. I will divorce my wife immediately," he said, "and marry Catherine as soon as it is legally possible."
"Youre already married!" I said, and he hung his head and admitted yes, that it was so. But in Sweden, he said, many people were married to each other who, for one reason or another, no longer loved each other. . . I said that happened in our own try too, many cases personally known to me, and that if he wished to marry Catherine I would not stand in his way, but would, on the trary, do everything in my power to further the project. At this moment the bell rang; I answered it and Catheriered with her new husband, Richard.
I took Bengt back to his unit in a cab, one hand clutg his he other his heart, the remains of his chess clo his lap. We got there just in time, a review was in progress, the King of Sweden resent, a handsome young man in dress uniform with a silver sword, surrounded by aides similarly clad. A crowd had gathered as pany paraded by, looking vastly trim and effit in their polished boots and red berets, and a very pretty little girl came out of the crowd and shyly hahe King a small bouquet of flowers. He bent graciously to accept them, beautiful small yellow roses, and a Rocky Mountain spotted-fever tick leaped from a rose and bit him on the cheek. I was horrified, and the King slapped his cheek and swore that the Swedish Army would never e to visit us again.
The Abduction from the Seraglio
I was sitting in my brand-new Butler building, surrounded by steel of high quality folded at y-degree ahe only thing prettier than ladies is an I-beam painted bright yellow. I told em I wanted a big door. A big door in front where a girl could hide her car if she wao evade the gaze of her husband the rat-poison salesman. You ever been out with a rat-poison salesman? They are fine fellows with little red eyes.
I laying with my forty-three-foot overhead traveling e which is painted bright yellow. I ractig knog over the stepladder with the hook. I was at a low point. Id been thinking about bread, colored steel bread, all kinds of colors of steel bread -- red yellow purple green brown steel bread -- then I thought no, thats not it. And Id already made all the welded-steel four-thousand-pound artichokes the world could aodate that week, and they would me drink no more, only a little Loar beer now and then which I bbr>9９ｌib.dont much care for. And my new Waylon Jennings record had a scrat it, went crack crack crack across the whole width of Side O was the kind of impasse us creative people reach every Thursday, some prefer other days. So I figured that in order not to totally waste this valuable time of my life, I had better get oid bust sta of the seraglio.
Chorus:
Oh stanze oh stanze
What you doin in that se-rag-li-o?
I been poppin Darvon and mothballs
Poppin Darvon and mothballs
Ever since I let you go.
Well, I motored out to the seraglio, got blindsided on the Freeway by two huhousand guys trying to get home from their work at the rat-poison factories, all two huhousand tape decks playin the same thing, some kind of roll-on-down-the-road song
rollin
rollin
rollin
rollin
but there wasnt just a hell of a lot of actual forward motioe this hymn to possibility. The seraglio turned out to be a Butler building too, much like mine only vaster of course, that son of a bitch. I spent a little while admiring that fine red-paieel that you put the pieces together of out of a catalogue a her down on your slab and be barbeg your flank steak from the A.& P. by five oclo the same day. The Pasha didnt have any great big doors in his, just otle tee-ninesy door with a picture of an unfed-retly Doberman pasted on it, I took that as a hint and I thought stanze, stanze, how could you be so dumb?
The thing is, and I hate to admit it, stanzes a little dumb. Shes not so dumb as a lady I onew who thought the Mark of Zorro was an N, but shes not perfect. You tell her you heard via the jungle drums that theres a va Willie Jake Johnsons bed and her eyes will cut to the side just for a moment, which means shes thinking. Shes not servative. Im some kind of an artist, but Im servative. Min..e is the art of the possible, plus two. She, on the trary, spent many years as a talented and elegant try-music groupie. She knows things I do not knoy dust is $1,900 an ounow, I hear tell -- shes tasted it, I havent. Its a small thing, but irritating. Shes dumb in what she knows, if you follow me.
Chorus:
Oh stanze oh stanze
What you doin in that se-rag-li-o?
I been sleepin on paper towels
Sleepin on paper towels and
Drinkin Sea & Ski
Ever since I let you go.
The Pasha is a Plymouth dealer, actually. He has this mysterious power over people as which is called ten million dollars a year, gross. About the only thing we share in the way of on humanity is four welded-steel artichokes, which he bought right from the studio, which is where he saw stahe artichoke is a beautiful form, maybe too mannerly, I roughen mine up some, thats where the i is. I dont even mind the damn Plymouth, as a form, but what I t stand is a dealer. In anything. I know that this is a small picky-minded dumb-ass prejudice, but its been earned. Anyhow the Pasha, as we call him, noticed that stanze was some beautiful, in fact semi-incredible looking, with black hair. He turned her head, as used to be said. Hed got to the left of flank steak, and he employed that. If were having Neiman-Marcus time, I t pete. (In all hoy I have to cede that he is fairly handsome, for a Pasha, and excels in a number of expensive sports.) He put her in a Butler building just to mock me and because shes not so dumb shed be caught dead in a big fancy layout in River Oaks or somewhere. Shes got values. What Im trying to suggest is, shes in a delicate relation to the real.
I t uand this. She is so great. When we go partying she always takes care to dah Bill Crays four-year-old girl, whos a fool for dang. She made me read eace, which struck me at first glance as terrible thick. She renews my subscription to the Texas Observer every year. She tributes regularly to the United Way and got gassed i cities a time or two while expressing her opinion of the ret war. Shes kind to rat-poison salesmen. Shes afraid of the dark. She took care of me that time I had my little psychotic episode. She is so great. Once I saw her slug a guy in a supermarket hag his kid, his legal right, with uhusiasm. The really dreadful thought>, to me, is that her real might be the real one.
Well, I opehe door. The Doberman came at me raging and snarling and generally carrying on in the way he felt was expected of him. I threw him a fifty-five-pound reinforced-crete pork chop whiocked him silly. I spoke to stanze. We used to walk dowreet together bumping our hipboogether in joy, befod and everybody. I wao float in the air again some feeling of that. It dibbr>.dnt work. Im sorry. But I guess, as the architects say, theres no use g over spilt marble. She will undoubtedly move on and up and down and around in the world, New York, Chicago, and Temple, Texas, making everything siderably better than it was, for short periods of time. We advehats not bad.
Chorus:
Oh stanze oh stanze
What you doin in that se-rag-li-o?
How I miss you
How I miss you
The Death of Edward Lear
The death of Edward Lear took pla a Sunday m in May 1888. Invitations were sent out well in advahe invitations read:
Mr. Edward LEAR
Nonsense Writer and Landscape Painter
Requests the Honor of Your Presence
On the Occasion of His DEMISE.
San Remo 2:20 a.m.
The 29th of May Please reply
One imagihe feelings of the recipients. Our dear friend! is preparing to depart! and such-like. Mr. Lear! who has given us so much pleasure! and such-like. Oher hand, his years were sidered. Mr. Lear! who must be, now let me see. . . And there was a good deal of, I remember the first time I (dipped into) (was seized by). . . But on the whole, Mr. Lears acquaintances approached the occasion with a mixture of solemnity and practiess, perhaps remembering the words of ..Lears great friend, Tennyson:
Old men must die,
or the world would grow mouldy
and:
For men may e and men may go,
But I go on forever.
People prepared to attend the death of Edward Lear as they might have for a day in the try. Piic baskets were packed (for it would be wrong to expeur. Lears hospitality, uhe circumstances); bottles of wine were ed in white napkins. Toys were chosen for the children. There were debates as to whether the dog ought to be taken or left behind. (Some of the dogs actually present at the death of Edward Lear could not restrain themselves; they frolicked about the dying mans chamber, tugged at the bedclothes, and made suuisances of themselves that they had to be removed from the room.)
Most of Mr. Lears friends decided that the appropriate time to arrive at the Villa would be midnight, or in that neighborhood, in order to allow the old gentleman time to make whatever remarks he might have in mind, or do whatever he wao do, before the event. Everyone uood what the time specified in the invitatio. And so, the visitors found themselves being handed down from the?9９ｌｉb.ir carriages (by Lears servant Giuseppe Orsini) in almost total darkness. Pausing to greet people they knew, or to corral straying children, they were at length ushered into a large room on the first floor, where the artist had been aced to exhibit his watercolors, and thence by a fortably wide staircase to a similar room on the sed floor, where Mr. Lear himself waited, in bed, wearing an old velvet smoking jacket and his familiar silver spectacles with tiny oval lenses. Several dozen straight-backed chairs had been arranged in a rough semicircle around the bed; these were soon filled, and later arrivals stood along the walls.
Mr. Lears first words were: "Ive no money!" As eaew group of guests ehe room, he repeated, "Ive no money! No money!" He looked extremely tired, yet calm. His ample beard, gray yet retaining patches of black, had evidently not been trimmed in some days. He seemed nervous and immediately began to discourse, as if to prevent anyone else from doing so.
He began by thanking all those present for attending and expressing the hope that he had not put them to too great an invenience, aowledging that the hour was "an unusual one for visits!" He said that he could not find words suffit to disclose his pleasure in seeing so many of his friends gathered together at his side. He then delivered a pretty little lecture, of some twelve minutes duration, on the produ of his various writings, of whio one has been able to recall the substance, although everyone agreed that it was charming, graceful, and wise.
He then startled his guests with a question, uttered in a kind of shriek: "Should I get married? Get married? Should I marry?"
Mr. Lear offered a short homily on the subject Friendship. Friendship, he said, is the most golden of the affes. It is also, he said, oftero of human ties, surviving strains and tempests fatal to less sublime relations. He hat his own many friendships stituted the richest memory of a long life.
A disquisition on Cats followed.
When Mr. Lear reached the topic Children, a certailessness was observed among his guests. (He had not ceased to shout at intervals, "Should I get married?" and "Ive no money!") He then displayed copies of his books, but as everybody had already read them, not more than a polite i was geed. he held up, one by one, a sele of his watercolors, views of various antiquities and picturesque spots. These, too, were familiar; they were the same watercolors the old gentleman had been for sale, at ￡5 and ￡10, for the past forty years.
Mr. Lear now sang a text of Tennysons in a setting of his own, apanying himself on a mandolin. Although his voice was thin and cracked frequently, the soed vigorous applause.
Finally he caused to be hauled into the room by servants an enormous oil, at least seve by teing Mount Athos. There was a murmur of appreciation, but it did not seem to satisfy the painter, for he assumed a very black look.
At 2:15 Mr. Lear performed a series of as the meaning of which was obscure to the spectators.
At 2:20 he reached over to the bedside table, picked up an old-fashioned pen which lay there, and died. A death mask was immediately taken. The guests, weeping uedly, moved in a long line back to the carriages.
People who had attehe death of Edward Lear agreed that, all in all, it had been a somewhat tedious performance. Why had he seen fit to read the same old verses, sing again the familiar songs, show the well-known pictures, run through his repertoire once more? Why invitations? Then something was uood: that Mr. Lear had been doing what he had always done and therefore, not doing anythiraordinary. Mr. Lear had transformed the extraordinary into its opposite. He had, in point of fact, created a gentle, genial misuanding.
Thus the guests began, as time passed, tard the affair in an historical light. They told their friends about it, reenacted parts of? it for their children and grandchildren. They would reproduce the way the old man had piped "Ive no money!" in a ical voice, and quote his odd remarks about marrying. The death of Edward Lear became so popular, as time passed, that revivals were staged in every part of the try, with siderable success. The death of Edward Lear still be seen, in the smaller cities, in versions enriched by learned interpretatioual emendation, and ging fashion. One modification is curious; no one knows how it came about. The supp pany plays iraditional way, but Lear himself appears shouting, shaking, vibrant with rage.
Concerning the Bodyguard
Does the bodyguard scream at the woman who irons his shirts? Who has inflicted a brown burn on his yellow shirt purchased expensively from Yves St. Laurent? A great brown burn just over the heart?
Does the bodyguards principal make versation with the bodyguard, as they wait for the light to ch.ange, in the dull gray Citro?n? With the sed bodyguard, who is driving? What is the tone? Does the bodyguards principal ent on the brown young women who flock along the boulevard? On the young men? Oraffic? Has the bodyguard ever enjoyed a serious political discussion with his principal?
Is the bodyguard frightened by the initials D.I.T.?
Is the bodyguard frightened by the initials .D.?
Will the bodyg..uard be relieved, today, in time to see the film he has in mind -- Emmanuelle Around the World? If the bodyguard is relieved in time to see Emmanuelle Around the World, will there be a queue for tickets? Will there be students in the queue?
Is the bodyguard frightened by the slogan Remember 17 June? Is the bodyguard frightened by black spray paint, tall letters ghostly at the edges, on this wall, on this wall? At what level of education did the bodyguard leave school?
Is the bodyguard suffitly well-paid? Is he paid as well as a maist? As well as a foreman? As well as an army sergeant? As well as a lieutenant? Is the Citro?n armored? Is the Mercedes armored? What is the best speed of the Mercedes? it equal that of a BMW? A BMW motorcycle? Several BMW motorcycles?
Does the bodyguard gauge the importance of his principal in terms of the number of bodyguards he requires? Should there not be other cars leading and following his principals car, these also filled with bodyguards? Are there sometimes such additional precautions, and does the bodyguard, at these times, feel himself part of an o of bodyguards? Is he exalted at these times? Does he wish for even more bodyguards, possibly flanking cars to the right a and a point car far, far ahead?
After leaving teical school, in what sort of enterprises did the bodyguard engage before accepting his present post? Has he ever been in jail? For what sort of offense? Has the bodyguard acquired a fondness for his principal? Is there mutual respect? Is there mutual pt? When his principal takes tea, is the bodyguard offered tea? Beer? Who pays?
the bodyguard addustances of professional success?
Had he a previous t?
Is there a new bodyguard in the group of bodyguards? Why?
How much does pleasing matter? What services does the bodyguard provide for his principal other than the primary one? Are there services he should not be asked to perform? Is he heless asked from time to time to perform such services? Does he refuse? he refuse? Are there, in addition to the bodyguards agreed-upon pensation, tips? Of what size? On what occasions?
In the restaurant, a good table for his principal and the distinguished gray man with whom he is ferring. Before it (betweeable with the two principals and the door), a table for the four bodyguards. What is the quality of the versatioweewo sets of bodyguards? What do they talk about? Soccer, perhaps, Holland vs. Peru, a match which they have all seen. Do they rehearse the savaging of the Dutch goalkeeper Piet Schrijvers by the bastard Peruvian? Do they discuss Schrijverss replat by the brave Jan Jongbloed, and what happened ? Has the bodyguard he differen quality between his suit and that of his principal? Between his shoes and those of his principal?
In every part of the try, large cities and small towns, bottles of champagne have been iced, put away, reserved for a celebration, reserved for a special day. Is the bodyguard aware of this?
Is the bodyguard tired of waking in his small room on the Calle Caspe, smoking a Royale Filtre, theing out of bed and throwing wide the curtains to discai people standing at the bus stop across the street in postures of depression? Is there on the wall of the bodyguards small room a poster showing Bruce Lee in a white robe with his feet positioned in sud-such a way, his fingers outstretched in sud-such a way? Is there a rosary made of apple beads hanging from a nail? Is there a mirror whose edges have begun to craze and flake, and are there small blurrish Polaroids stuck along the left edge of the mirror, Polaroids of a woman in a dark-blue scarf and two lean children in red pants? Is there a pair of dark-blue trousers plus a long-sleeved white shirt (worn once already) hanging in the dark-brown wardrobe? Is there a color foldout of a naked young woman torn from the magazine VIR taped ihe wardrobe door? Is there a bottle of Long John Scotch atop the cheese-colored mini-refrigerator? Two-burner hotplate? Dull-green ceramic pot on the windowsill taining an uhy plant? A copy of Explication du Tai Chi, by Bruce Tegner? Does the bodyguard read the neer of his principals party? Is he persuaded by what he reads there? Does the bodyguard know which of the great blocs his try aligself with during the Sed World War? During the First World War? Does the bodyguard know which tries are the preemirading partners of his own try, at the present time?
Seated in a restaurant with his principal, the bodyguard is served, involuntarily, turtle soup. Does he recoil, as the other eats? Why is this near-skeleton, his principal, of such importao the world that he deserves six bodyguards, two to a shift with the shifts ging every eight hours, six bodyguards of the first petence plus supplemental on occasion, two armored cars, stun grenades ready to hand uhe fro? What has he meant to the world? What are his plans?
Is the retirement age for bodyguards calculated as it is for other citizens? Is it earlier, fifty-five, forty-five? Is there a pension? In what amount? Those young men with dark beards staring at the Mercedes, or staring at the Citro?n, who are they? Does the bodyguard pay heed to the plaints of his fellow bodyguards about the hours spent waiting outside this or that Ministry, this or that Headquarters, hours spent propped against the fenders of the Mercedes while their principal is within the (secure) walls? Is the thick glass of these specially prepared vehicles thiough? Are his fellow bodyguards reliable? Is the new one reliable?
Is the bodyguard frightened by young women of good family? Young women of good family whose handbags tain God knows what? Does the bodyguard feel that the situation is unfair? Will the son of the bodyguard, living with his mother in a city far away, himself bee a bodyguard? When the bodyguard delivers the son of his principal to the school where all of the children are delivered by bodyguards, does he stop at a grocers on the way and buy the child a peach? Does he buy himself a peach?
Will the bodyguard, if tested, be equal to his task? Does the bodyguard know which fn was the successful bidder for the stru of his trys nuclear reprocessing plant? Does the bodyguard know which ses of the National Banks yearly report o service have been falsified? Does the bodyguard know that the general amy of April cided with the rearrest of sixty persons? Does the bodyguard know that the new, liberalized press laws of May were a provocation? Does the bodyguard patronize a restaurant called the Crocodile? A place packed with young, loud, fat unists? Does he spill a drink, to disclose his spite? Is his gesture uood?
Are the streets full of stilt-walkers? Stilt-walkers weaving te above the crowd i papier-maché bird heads, blad red es, whipping thirty feet of colored cloth above the heads of the crowd, miming the rape of a young female personage symbolizing his try? In the Mercedes, the bodyguard and his colleague stare at the hundreds, men and women, young and old, who move around the Mercedes, stopped for a light, as if it were a ro a river. In the rear seat, the patron is speaking into a telephone. He looks up, puts dowelephohe people pressing around the car ot be ted, there are too many of them; they ot be known, there are too many of them; they ot be predicted, they have volition. Then, an opening. The car accelerates.
Is it the case that, on a certain m, the garbage s of the city, the garbage s of the entire try, are overflowing with empty champagtles? Which bodyguard is at fault?
The Zombies
In a high wind the leaves fall from the trees. The zombies are standing about talking. "Beautiful day!" "Certainly is!" The zombies have e to buy wives from the people of this village, the only village for miles around that will sell wives to zombies. "Beautiful day!" "Certainly is!" The zombies have brought many cattle. The bride-price to a zombie is exactly twice that asked of an ordinary man. The cattle are also zombies and the zombies are in terror lest the people of the village uand this.
These are good zombies. Gris Grue said so. They are painted white all over. Bad zombies are unpainted and weep with their heir nostrils spewing tears. The village chief calls the attention of the zombies to the fine brick buildings of the village, some of them ohousand bricks high -- daughters peering from the windows, green plants in some windows and, in others, daughters. "You must promise not to tell the Bishop," say the zombies, "promise not to tell the Bishop, beautiful day, certainly is."
The white-painted zombies chatter madly, in the village square, in an impersonation of gaiety. "Bought a new coat!" "You did!" "Yes, bought a new coat, this coat Im wearing, I think its very fine!" "Oh it is, it is, yes I think so!" The cattle kick at the -link fence of the corral. The kiss of a dying animal, a dying horse , transforms an ordinary man into a zombie. The owner of the ice-cream shop has two daughters. The crayfish farmer has five daughters, and the captain of the soccer team, whose parents are dead, has a sister. Gris Grue is not here. He is away in another try, seeking a specific for deadly nightshade. A zombie with a rectal thermometer is creeping around in the corral, uhe bellies of the large, bluish-brown animals. Someone says the Bishop has been seen riding in his car at full speed toward the village.
If a bad zombie gets you, he will weep on you, or take away your whiskey, or hurt your daughters bohere are too many daughters in the square, in the windows of theafé au lait! Wednesday! Iced figs Wheatena pies with sauce tartare potato chips broiled ham scrambled eggs French toast and café au lait! Thursday! Bananas with cream oatmeal broiled patassas fried liver with ba poached eggs on toast waffles with syrup and café au lait! Friday! Strawberries with cream broiled oysters on toast celery fried perch lyonatoes bread with syrup and café au lait! Saturday! Muskmelon on ice grits stewed tripe herb omelette olives snipe on toast flannel cakes with syrup and café au lait!" The zombie draws a long breath. "Sunday!" he says. "Peaches with cream cracked wheat with milk broiled Spanish mackerel with sauce ma?tre dh?tel creamed chi beaten biscuits broiled woodco English muffin rice cakes potatoes à la duchesse eggs Be oysters on the half shell broiled lamb chops pound cake with syrup and café au lait! And imported champagne!" The zombies look anxiously at the women to see if this prospect is pleasing.
A houngan (zombie-maker) grasps a man by the hair and forces his lips close to those of a dying cat. If you do heavy labor for a houngan for ten years, then you are free, but still a zombie. The Bishops car is w well. No daughter of this village has had in human memory a true husband, or anything like it. The daughters are tired of kissing each other, although some are not. The fathers of the village are tired of paying for their daughters sewing maes, lowboys, and towels. A bald zombie says, "Oh what a pretty lady! I would be o her! Yes I would! I think so!" Bad zombies are leaning against the walls of the buildings, watg. Bad zombies are allowed, by >law, to mate only with sheep ticks. The women do not want the zombies, but zombies are their portion. A woman says to another woman: "These guys are zombies!" "Yes," says the sed woman, "I saw a handsome man, he had his picture in the paper, but he is not here." The zombie in the corral finds a temperature of a hundred and ten degrees.
The villagers are beating upon huge drums with mops. The Bishop arrives in his great car with white episcopal flags flying from the right a fenders. "Forbidden, forbidden, forbidden!" he cries. Gris Grue appears on a silver sled and places his hands over the Bishops eyes. At the moment of suhe couples, two by two, are wed. The corral shudders as the cattle collapse. The new wives turn to their new husbands and say: "No matter. This is what we must do. We will paste photographs of the handsome man in the photograph on your faces, when it is time to go to bed. Now let us cut the cake." The good zombies say, "Youre wele! Youre very wele! I think so! Undoubtedly!" The bad zombies place sheep ticks in the Bishops car. If a bad zombie gets you, he will scarify your hide with chisels and rakes. If a bad zombie gets you, he will make you ast a beautiful breast without even notig.
Morning
-- Say youre frightened. Admit it.
-- In Colorado, by the mountains. In California, by the sea. Everywhere, by breaking glass.
-- Say youre frightened. fess.
-- Timid as a stag. Theyve got a meter wired to my sheet, I dont know what it measures. I get a dollar a night. When I wake suddenly, I notice its there. I watch my hand aging, sing a little song.
-- Were you io the party?
-- Yes, I was. Stood there smiling. I thought, Those are tight pants, how kind of her. Wondered if she was e underh. What shall we do? Call up Mowgli? Ask him９9ｌｉb? over? Do you like tongue? Sliced? With mushrooms? Is it a private matter? Is Scriabin as smart as he looks? This mans a fool -- why are you talking to him? Yes, his clothes are iing, but inside are dull bones. -- This gray light, I dont see how you stand it. -- A firestorm of porn all around -- e images, dunes as. Bursts of quarreling through the walls. I wonder who the people are? I tried that Cuisine Minceur, didnt like it. Oh, it looks pretty --
-- Say youre frightened.
-- Im frightened. By flutes and flirls and sirens. We get a lot of sirens because of the hospita?
ile letting other people in.
-- We got a Coushatta Indian in there, real full-blooded Coushatta Indibbr>９9ｌｉb?an.
-- In there?
-- Yes. He does hanging walls out of scraps of fabrid twigs, very beautiful, and he does sand paintings and plays on whistles of various kinds, sometimes he ts, and he bangs on a drum, works in silver, and hes also a weaver, aranslates things from Coushatta into English and from English into Coushatta and hes also a crack shot and bulldog steers and catch catfish on trotlines and ride barebad make medie out of on ingredients, aspirin mostly, and he sings and hes also an actor. Hes very talented.
-- My whole life depends on it.
-- Listen Hilda maybe you could be an Associate. We have this deal whereby you pay twelve bucks a year and that makes you an Associate. You get the Circular and have all the privileges of an Associate.
-- What are they?
-- You get the Circular.
-- Thats all?
-- Well I guess youre right.
-- Im just going to sit here Im not going to go away.
-- Your distress is poignant to me.
-- Ill have the baby right here right on these steps.
-- Well maybe therell be good news one of these days.
-- I feel like a dead person sitting in a chair.
-- Youre still pretty and attractive.
-- Thats good to hear Im pleased you think that.
-- And warm youre warm youre very warm.
-- Yes I have a warm nature very warm.
-- Werent you in the Peace Corps also years ago?
-- I was and drove ambulaoo down in Nicaragua.
-- The servatory life is just as hal as you imagi -- precisely so.
-- I guess Ill just have to go bay house and up, take out the papers and the trash.
-- I guess that kidll be born one of these days, right?
-- ti..nue w on my études no matter what they say.
-- Thats admirable I think.
-- The thing is not to let your spirit be quered.
-- I guess that kidll be born after a while, right?
-- I guess so. Those boogers are really gonna keep me out of there, you know that?
-- Their minds are inflexible and rigid.
-- Probably because Im a ponant woman dont you think?
-- You said you didhem.
-- But maybe theyre very shrewd psychologists and they could just look at my fad tell.
-- No it doesnt show yet how many months are you?
-- Two and a half just about you tell when I take my clothes off.
-- You didnt take your clothes off did you?
-- No I was wearing you know what the students wear. Jeans and a sarape. I carried a green book bag.
-- Jam-packed with études.
-- Yes. He asked where I had gotten my previous training and I told him.
-- Oh boy I remember when it was flat, flat as the deck of something, a boat or a ship.
-- Youre not important, they told me.
-- Oh sweetie I am so sorry for you.
-- We parted then I walking through the geous servatory light into the foyer and then through the great black ironwork servatory doors.
-- I was a fa the other side of the glass.
-- My aspect as I departed most dignified and serene.
-- Time heals everything.
-- No it doesnt.
-- Cut lip fat lip puffed lip split lip.
-- Haw! haw! haw! haw!
-- Well Hilda there are other things in life.
-- Yes Maggie I suppose there are. hat I want.
-- Non-servatory people have their own lives. We servatory people dont have much to do with them but we are told they have their own lives.
-- I suppose I could file an appeal if theres ao file an appeal to. If theres anywhere.
-- Thats an idea we get stacks of appeals, stacks and stacks.
-- I wait all night. Here oeps.
-- Ill sit with you. Ill help you formulate the words.
-- Are they looking out of the windows?
-- Yes I think so. What do you want to say?
-- I want to say my whole life depends on it. Something like that.
-- Its against the rules for servatory people to help non-servatory people you know that.
-- Well Goddammit I thought you were going to help me.
-- Okay. Ill help you. What do you want to say?
-- I want to say my whole life depends on it. Something like that.
-- We got man naked models and woman naked models, harps, giant potted plants, and drapes. There are hierarchies, some people higher up and others lower down. These mingle, in the geous light. We have lots of fun. Theres lots of green furniture you know with paint on it. Wreen paint. Gilt lines one-quarter inch from the edges. Wilt lines.
-- And probably flambeaux in little niches in the walls, right?
-- Yeah we got flambeaux. Whos the father?
-- Guy named Robert.
-- Did you have a good time?
-- The affair ran the usual course. Fever, boredom, trapped.
-- Hot, rinse, spin dry.
-- Is it wonderful in there Maggie?
-- I have to say it is. Yes. It is.
-- Do you feel great, being there? Do you feel wonderful?
-- Yes, it feels pretty good. Very often there is, uporay, a rose.
-- I will never be admitted to the servatory.
-- You will never be admitted to the servatory.
-- How do I look?
-- Okay. Not bad. Fine.
-- I will never get there. How do I look?
-- Fine. Great. Time heals everything Hilda.
-- No it doesnt.
-- Time heals everything.
-- No it doesnt. How do I look?
-- Moot.
The Leap
-- Today we make the leap to faith. Today.
-- Today?
-- Today.
-- Were really going to do it? At last?
-- Spent too much time fooling around. Today we do it.
-- I dont know. Maybe were not ready?
-- I am cheered by the wine of possibility and the growing popularity of light. Todays the day.
-- Youre serious.
-- Intensely. First, we examine our sces.
-- I am a double-minded man. Have always been a double-minded man.
-- Each examining his own sce, rooting out, naming, remembering and re-experieng every last little k and wrinkle. Root and branch.
-- Smiting each sce hip and thigh.
-- Thigh and hip. Smite! Smite!
-- God is good and we are but poor wretches who --
-- Wait.
-- Poor slovening wretches who but for the goodness of God would --
-- Wait. This will be painful, you know. A bit.
-- Oh my God.
-- What?
-- I just had a thought.
-- A prick of sce.
-- Yes. Item 34.
-- Whats Item 34?
-- An unkindness. One of a series. Series long as your arm.
-- You list them separately.
-- Yes.
-- You dont just throw them all together into a great big trash bag labeled --
-- No. I sweat eae. Seriatim.
-- I said it would be painful.
-- Might we postpo?
-- Meditate instead on His works? Their magnifice.
-- Not that we could in a hundred million years exhaust --
-- Its a sort of if-a-bird-took-one-grain-of-sand-and-flew-all-his-life-and-then-another-bird-took-anrain-of-sand-and-flew-all-his-life situation.
-- plate only the animals. Restrict the field. Course we got over a million species, so far. New ones being identified every day. Is, mostly.
-- I like plants better than animals.
-- Animals give you a lot of warmth. A dog would be an example.
-- I like people better than plants, plants better than animals, paintings better than animals, and music better than animals.
-- Praising the animals, then, would not be your first impulse.
-- I respect the animals. I admire the animals. But could we plate something else?
-- Take a glass of water, for example. A glass of water is a miraculous thing.
-- The blue of the sky, against which we find the shog green of the leaves of the trees.
-- The trees. "I think that I shall never see slash A poem lovely as a tree."
-- "A tree whose hungry mouth is prest slash Against the earths sweet flowing breast."
-- Why "mouth"?
-- Why "breast"?
-- The w of the creative mind.
-- An unfathomable mystery.
-- o be fathomed.
-- I wouldnt even want to fathom it. If ohomed it, who say what frightful things might thereupohomed?
-- Fathoming such is beyond the powers of poor ravening noodles like ourselves, who but for the --
-- And ahing. The human voice.
-- My God youre right. The human voice.
-- Bessie Smith.
-- Alice Babs.
-- Joan Armatrading.
-- Aretha Franklin.
-- Each voice testifying to the greater honor and glory of God, ea its own w?ay.
-- Damn straight.
-- Sweet Emma Barrett the Bell Gal.
-- Got you.
-- Das Lied von der Erde.
-- I couldnt agree more.
-- Then there are the bad things. cer.
-- An unfathomable mystery, at this point. But one which must iably succumb to the inexorable forward march of stific progress.
-- Eiequality.
-- In my view, this will be ameliorated in the near future by the pressure of population growth. Pressure of population growth being such that eiequality simply ot endure.
-- What about Z.P.G.?
-- An ideal rather than a social slash political reality.
-- So Gods creatures, in your opinion, multiplying and multiplying and mul..tiplying as per instru, will --
-- Propagate fiercely until the sum total of what has been propagated yields a pressure so intehat every feature great or small of every life great or small is instantly scrutinized weighed judged decided upon and disposed of by the sum total of ones peers in doubtless eleigoing all-seeing everlasting gress assembled. Thus if one guy has a little advantage, a little edge, it is instantly taken away from him and similarly if anuy has a little lack, some little lack, this little lack is instantly supplied, by the arbiters. Things ot be otherwise. Because theres not going to be any room to fug move, man, do you follow me? theres not going to be any room to fug sneeze, without youre sneezing on somebody. . .
-- This is the Divine plan?
-- Who know the subtle ws of His mind? But it seems to be the way events are --
-- Thats ahing. The human mind.
-- Good God yes. The human mind.
-- The human mind which is in my judgment the fi of our human achievements.
-- Much the fi. I think of nothiely parable.
-- Is a flower, however beautiful and iing, parable to the human mind? I think not.
-- Matter of higher and lower levels of plexity.
-- I cur. This is not to knock the flower.
-- This is not to say that the beautiful, iing flower is not, in its own terms, entirely fantastic.
-- The toast of the earth. Did I ever tell you about that time when I was in Korea and Cardinal Spellman came to see us at Christmas and his plane receded by another plane broadcasting sacred music over the terrain? Spraying the terrain as it were with sacred music?
-- So that those oh could hear and be edified.
-- "O Little Town of Bethlehem."
-- Yes, the human mind deserves the greatest respeot so good of course as the Divine mind, but not bad.
-- Leibniz. William of Ockham. Maimohe Vienna Circle. The Frankfurt Sanichaeus. Peirce. Occasionalism. A pretty array. I believe Occasionalisms been discredited. But let it stand. It was a ry, and philosophy, as my dear teacher taught me so long long ago, is not to be regarded as a graveyard of dead systems.
-- The question of suicide. Self-slaughter. Maybe we ought to think about it?
-- Whats to think about?
-- Look at this.
-- What is it?
-- The bill.
-- For what is it the bill?
-- A try.
-- Whose?
-- An acquaintance.
-- Good God.
-- Yes.
-- Ought two slash twenty-four electrram ought two ought ought ought ought ohirty-five bucks.
-- Ought two slash twenty-four cardiopulmonary two ought ought ought ought ought one, forty bucks.
-- Ought two slash twenty-four inhalation therapy one fht ought ought ought one, sixty bucks.
-- Ought two slash twenty-four room four nine one five, a oy.
-- It goes on for miles.
-- Whats the total?
-- Shade uwo thousand. een hundred and two dollars and y ts.
-- Youd think theyd give you the y ts.
-- Youd think they would.
-- And the acquaintance?
-- Shes well.
-- This being an example of the leap away from faith.
-- Exactly. You jump either way.
-- Shall we examine our sow?
-- You are mad with hurry.
-- We are but poor lapsarian futiles whose preen glands are all out of whad who but for the grace of Gods goodness would --
-- Do you think He wants us to grovel quite so much?
-- I dont think He gives a rap. But its traditional.
-- We hang by a slehread.
-- The fire boils below us.
-- The pit. Crawling with roaches and other things.
-- Tortures unimaginable, but the worst the torture of knowing it could have been otherwise, had we shaped up.
-- Purity of heart is to will ohing.
-- No. Here I differ with Kierkegaard. Purity of heart is, rather, to will several things, and not know which is the better, truer thing, and to worry about this, forever.
-- A tinuing itch of the mind.
-- Sometimes assuagable by timely masturbation.
-- I fot. Love.
-- Oh my God, yes. Love. Both human and divine.
-- Love, the highest form of human endeavor.
-- ing oing, the absolute zenith.
-- Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard?
-- Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.
-- Love, which is a kind of permission to e closer than ordinary norms of good behaviht usually san.
-- Back rubs.
-- Whiables us to see each other without clothes on, for example, in lust and shame.
-- Examining perfes, imperfes.
-- Which allows us to say wounding things to each other which would not be kosher uhe ordinary rules of civilized discourse.
-- Walkin my baby bae.
-- Love which allows us to live together male and female in small grubby apartments that would only hold one sane person, normally.
-- Misting the plants together -- the handsome, talented plants.
-- He who hath not love is a sad cookie.
-- This is the way, walk ye in it. Isaiah 30:21.
-- t make it, man.
-- What?
-- I t make it.
-- The leap.
-- t make it. I am a double-minded man.
-- Well.
-- An incibly double-minded man.
-- What then?
-- Keep ?
-- Yes. We must.
-- Try again another day?
-- Yes. Another day when the plaid cactus is watered, when the hares-foot fern is watered.
-- Seeds tingling in the barrens as.
-- Garden peas yellreen wrinkling or rounding.
-- Another day when locust wings are baled for shipment to Singapore, where folks like their little hit of locust-wing tea.
-- A jug of wihen an.
-- The Brie-with-pepper meeting the toasty loaf.
-- Another day when some eighty-four-year-old guy plains that his wife no lives him presents.
-- Small boys bumping into small girls, purposefully.
-- Cute little babies crag people up.
-- Another day when somebody finds a new bohat proves we are even aer thahought we were.
-- Gravediggers w in the cool early m.
-- A walk in the park.
-- Another day when the singing sunlight turns you every way but loose.
-- When you actally notice the sublime.
-- Somersaults and duels.
-- Another day when you see a woman with really red hair. I mean really red hair.
-- A wedding day.
-- A plain day.
-- So well try again? Okay?
-- Okay.
-- Okay?
-- Okay.
-- When I was a little girl I made mud pies, darings down crayfish holes hoping the idiot crayfish would catch hold and allow themselves to be hauled into the light. Snarled and cried, ate ice cream and sang "How High the Moon." Popped the wings off crickets and floated stray Scrabble pieces in ditch water. All perfed ordinary and perfect.
-- Featherings of ease and bliss.
-- I reparing myself. Getting ready for the great day.
-- Icy day with salt on all the sidewalks.
-- Sketg attitudes and f pretty speeches.
-- Pitg pe a line scraped in the dust.
-- Doing and redoing my lustrous abundant hair.
-- Man dower and O.
-- Tied flares to my extremities and wound dy es into my lustrous, abundant hair. Getting ready for the great day.
-- For I do not deny that I am a little out of temper.
-- Glitches in the system as yet unapprehended.
-- Oh that band. Oh its sweet strains.
-- Most excellent and dear friend. Who the silly seasons named for.
-- My demands were not met. Owo, three, four.
-- I admire your dash and address. But regret your fear and prudence.
-- Always worth making the effort, always.
-- Yes thats something we do. Our dam. They t take that away from us.
-- The Secretary of State cares. And the Secretary of erce.
-- Yes theyre clued in. We are not unprotected. Soldiers and poli.
-- Man down. er of Mercer and One Six.
-- Paying lots of attention. A clear vision of what and t be done.
-- Progress extending far into the future. Dams and aqueducts. The amazing strength of the powerful.
-- anizing our deepest wishes as a mother fhtedly visits a store that will be closed tomorrow.
-- Friendships the best thing.
-- One of the best things. One of the very best.
-- I performed in a hall. Alone uhe burning lights.
-- The hall ganged with admiring faces. Except for a few.
-- Julia was there. Rotten Julia.
-- But I mean you really like her dont you?
-- Well I mean who doesnt like violet eyes?
-- Got to make the effort, scratch where it itches, plans, schemes, directives, guidelines.
-- Well I mean who doesnt like frisky knees?
-- Yes shes lost her glow. Goerly.
-- The strains of the city w upon an essentially non-urban sensibility.
-- But I love the city and will not hear it traduced.
-- Well, me too. But after all. But still.
-- Think Julias getting it on with Bally.
-- Yeah I heard about that hes got a big mouth.
-- But handsome hip bones got to give him that.
-- I remember, I feel them still, pressing into me as they once did on hot afternoons and cool nights and feverish first-thing-in-the-ms.
-- Yes, Bally is a regal memory for everyone.
-- My best ghost. The ohink about, in bitter times and good.
-- Trying to get my colors together. Trying to play one off against arying for cellation.
-- I respect your various phases. Your sweet, even discourse.
-- I spent some time away and found everyohere affable, gentle, and good.
-- Nonculminating kind of ultimately affectless activity.
-- Whiime so gracefully in auditoria large and small.
-- A with my really wizard! good humor and cheerful thoughtless mien, I have caused a lot of trouble.
-- I suppose thats true. Strictly speaking.
-- Bounding into the woods on all fours barking like a mother biting at whatever moves in front of me --
-- Do you also save string?
-- On my free evenings and paid holidays. Making the most of the time I have here on this earth. Knotting, sewing, weaving, welding.
-- Naming babies, Lou, Lew, Louis.
-- And his toes, wonderful toes, that man has got toes.
-- Decorated with rings and rubber bands.
-- Has a partiality for white. White gowns, shifts, aprons, flowers, sauces.
-- He was a salty dog all right. Salty dog.
-- I was out shooting with him once, pheasant, he got one, with his fancy shotgun. The bird bursting like an exploding pillow.
-- Have to stand there and watch them, their keen eyes sing the whatever. And then say "Good shot!"
-- Oh I could have doer, better, I was lax.
-- Or worse, dont fret about it, could have put your cute little butt in worse places, in thrall to dismaler personalities.
-- I was making an effort. What I do best.
-- You are excellent at it. Really first-rate.
-- Never fail to knock myself out. Put pictures on the walls and pads uhe rugs.
-- I really admire you. I really do. To the teeth.
-- Bust your ass, its the only way.
-- As we learn from studying the careers of all the great figures of the past. Heraclitus and Lau du Lac.
-- Polish the doorknobs with Brasso and bring in the sea bass in its of seaweed.
-- And not only that. And not only that.
-- Tig them when they want to be tickled. Abstaining, when they do not.
-- Large and admirable men. Not ing the small and ignoble. Dealing evenhandedly with every situation on a case-by-case basis.
-- Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.
-- Knew a guy wore his stoma his sleeve. I dealt with the problem using astrology in its medical aspects. His stomach this, his stomach that, God Almighty but it was tiresome, tiresome ireme. I dealt with it by using astrology in its medical aspects.
-- To each his own. Handmade bread and individual attention.
-- Youve got to have something besides yourself. A cat, too often.
-- I could have doer but I was dumb. When youre young youre sometimes dumb.
-- Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. I remember.
-- Well lets have a drink.
-- Well I dont mind if I do.
-- I have Goldwasser, Bombay gin and Old Jeb.
-- Well I wouldnt mind a Scotch myself.
-- I have that too.
-- Growing older and with age, less beautiful.
-- Yeah Ive noticed that. Losing your glow.
-- Just gonna sit in the wrinkling house and wrinkle. Get older and worse.
-- Once you lose ylow you never get it back.
-- Sometimes by virtue of the sun on a summers day.
-- Wrinkling you so that you look like a roast turkey.
-- As is the case with the Oni of Ife. Saw him on television.
-- Let me show you this picture.
-- Yes thats very lovely. What is it?
-- Its "Vul and Maia."
-- Yes. Hes got his hooks into her. Shes struggling to get away.
-- Vigorously? Vigorously. Yes.
-- Whos the artist?
-- Spranger.
-- Never heard of him.
-- Well.
-- Yes, you may hang it. Anywhere you like. On that wall or that wall or that wall.
-- Thank you.
-- Probably I get ahead by w hard, paying attention to detail.
-- I thought that. Ohought that.
-- Reading a lot of books and having good ideas.
-- Well thats not bad. I mean its a means.
-- Do something wonderful. I dont know what.
-- Like a bass player plug the great thick strings of his instrument with powerful plucks.
-- Blood vessels bursting in my face just uhe skin all the while.
-- Hurt by malicious criticisms all very well grounded.
-- Washing and rewashing my lustrous, abundant hair.
-- For Leatherheart, I turn my back. My lustrous, abundant back.
-- That cracks them up does it?
-- At least they know Im in town.
-- Ease myself into bed of an evening brain jumping with hostile fluids.
-- Its greens in a pot.
-- Its fetti in the swimming pool.
-- Its U-joints in the vichyssoise.
-- Its staggers uhe moon.
-- He told me terrible things in the evening of that day as we sat side by side waiting for the rain to wash the water-colors from his watercolor paper. Waiting for the rain to wash the paper , quite .
-- Took me by the hand and led me through all the rooms. Many rooms.
-- I know all about it.
-- The kit is especially splendid.
-- Quite so.
-- A dozen Filipinos with trays.
-- Close to that figure.
-- Trays with edibles. Wearables. Readables. Collectibles.
-- Ah, youre a fool. A damned fool.
-- Goodbye, madame. Dip if you will your hand in the holy water font as you leave, and attend as well to the poor box just to the right of the door.
-- Figs and kiss-me-nots. I would meet you upon this holy.
-- I went far beyond the time normally allotted for a speaker. Far.
-- In Mexico City. Wearing the black jacket with the silver chos. And trousers of fire pink.
-- Visited a health club there, my rear looked like two pocketbooks, they worked on it.
-- You were making an effort.
-- Run in the ms too, take gree noon, study household ma, finance, repair of devices.
-- Born with a silver hoe in your mouth.
-- Yes. Got to get going, got to make some progress.
-- Followed by development of head banging in the child.
-- I went far beyond the time normally allotted to, or for, a speaker. It is fair to say they were enthralled. And transfixed. Inappropriate laughter at some points but I didnt mind that.
-- Did the Eminence arrive?
-- In a cab. In his robes of scarlet.
-- He does a tough Eminence.
-- Yes very tough. I was allowed to kiss the ring. He sat there, in the audience, just like another member of the audience. Just like anybody. Transfixed ahralled.
-- Whirling and jigging in the red light and throwing veils on the floor and throwing gloves on the floor --
-- One of my fi. They roared for ten minutes.
-- I am so proud of you. Again and again. Proud of you.
-- Oh well, yes. I agree. Quite right. Absolutely.
-- What? Are you sure? Are you quite sure? Let me show you this picture.
-- Yes thats quite grand. What is it?
-- Its "Tancred Succored by Ermina."
-- Yes shes sopping up the blood there, got a big rag, seems a sweet girl, God hes out of it isnt he, dead or dying horse at upper left. . . Whos the artist?
-- Ricchi.
-- Never heard of him.
-- Well.
-- Ill take it. You may stack it with the others, against that wall or that wall or that wall --
-- Thank you. Where shall I send the bill?
-- Send it anywhere you like. Anywhere your little heart desires.
-- Well I hate to be put in this position. Bending and subservient.
-- Heavens! Id not noticed. Let me raise you up.
-- Maybe in a few days. A few days or a few years.
-- Lave you with bee jelly and bone oil.
-- And if I have ever fiven you your astonishing successes --
-- Mine.
-- And if I have ever been able to stomach your serial triumphs --
-- The sky. A regle of gray in the fround and behind that, a regle of puce. And behind that, a square of silver gilt.
-- Got to get it together, get the big bucks.
-- Yes Im thinking hard, thinking hard.
-- Frolid detour.
-- Whats that mean?
-- I dont know just a bit of legal language I picked up somewhere.
-- Now that I take a long look at you --
-- In the evening by the fireside --
-- I find you utterly delightful. Abide with me. Well have little cakes with smarm, yellow smarm on them --
-- Yes I just feel so fresh and free here. One doeshat way every day, or every week.
-- Last night at two the barking dog in the apartment above stopped barking. Its owners had returned. I went into the kit and barked through the roof for an hour. I believe I was uood.
-- Man down. er of Water a Nine.
-- Another wallow?
-- Ive wallowed for today thank you. trol is the thing.
-- trol used to be the thing. Now, abandon.
-- Ill never achieve abandon.
-- Work hard and trate. Try , Baby, Hell-hag, Witch, the Laughing Cavalier. The Lord helps those --
-- Purple bursts in my face as if purple staples had been stapled there every which way --
-- Hurt by malicious criticisms all very well grounded --
-- Oh that band. Oh its sweet strains.
-- The sky. A regle of glister. Behind which, a serene brown. A yellow bar, vertical, in the upper right.
-- I love you, Harmonica, quite exceptionally.
-- By gum I think you mean it. I think you do.
-- Its "Portia Woundihigh."
-- Its "Wolfram Looking at His Wife Whom He Has Imprisoned with the Corpse of Her Lover."
-- If you need a friend Im yours till the end.
-- Yracious and infinitely aodating presence.
-- Julias is the best. Best Ive ever seen. The fi.
-- The muscle of jealousy is not in me. Nowhere.
-- Oh it is so fine. Inparable.
-- Some think ohing, some another.
-- The very dam believe me.
-- Well I dont know, I havent seen it.
-- Well, would you like to see it?
-- Well, I dont know, I dont know her very well do you?
-- Well, I know her well enough to ask her.
-- Well, why dont you ask her if its not an invenience or this isnt the wrong time or something.
-- Well, probably this is the wrong time e to think of it because she isnt here and some time when she is here would probably be a better time.
-- Well, I would like to see it right now because just talking about it has got me in the mood to see it. If you know what I mean.
-- She told me that she didnt like to be called just for that purpose, people she didnt know and maybe wouldnt like if she did know, Im just warning you.
-- Oh.
-- You see.
-- I see.
-- I could have doer. But I dont know how. Could have doer, ed better or cooked better or I dont know. Better.
-- You smile. And the angels sing. La la la la la la la la la la la la.
-- Blew it. Blew it.
-- Had a at the wedding he officiated standing there in his voluptuous white e his drum and trumpet at his feet. He said, "Do you, Harry. . ." and all that. The guests applauded, the band played, it was a brilliant occasion.
-- Our many moons of patiend aodation. Tricks and stunts unknown to on ts.
-- The guests applauded. Above us, a great tent with red and yellow stripes.
-- The unexploded pillow and the simple, blunt sheet.
-- I was fed, savagely so.
-- Painting dead women by the hundreds in passionate imitation of Delacroix.
-- Sailing after lund after sailing, gin.
-- Do not go into the red barn, he said. I went into the red barn. Julia. Swinging on a rope from hayloft to ta. Gazed at by horses with their large, accepting eyes. They somehow looked as if they knew.
-- You packed hastily reag the station just before midnight ting the pennies in your purse.
-- Yes. Regaining the city, plunged once more into activities.
-- Youve got to have something besides yourself. A cause, i, oal.
-- Made myself knowledgeable iain areas, owo, three, four. Studied the Value Line and dipped into cocoa.
-- The kind of thing you do so well.
-- Acquired busts of certain notables, marble, silver, brohe Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
-- Wailed a bit now and then into the ears of friends and caverns of the telephone.
-- But I rallied. Rallied.
-- Made an effort. Made the effort.
-- To make soft what is hard. To make hard the soft. To ceal what is black with use, under new paint. Check the tomatoes with their red times, in the manual. To enspirit the spiritless. To get me a jug and go out behind the barn sharing with whoever is out behind the barn, peasant or noble.
-- Sometimes I have luck. In plazas or taverns.
-- Right as rain. I mean okey-dokey.
-- Uhe partit affirmatively elects otherwise.
-- What does that mean?
-- Damfino. Just a bit of legal language I picked up somewhere.
-- You are the sunshine of my life.
-- Toys toys I want more toys.
-- Yes, I should think you would.
-- That wallow iainty called the love affair.
-- The fading gray velvet of the sofa. He ed with my panties in his teeth. Walked around that way for half an hour.
-- Whats this gunk here in this bucket?
-- Bread in milk, have some.
-- I think I could eat a little something.
-- A mistletoe salad we whipped up together.
-- Stick to it, keep after it. Only way to go is all the way.
-- Want to buy a garter belt? Have ohanks. Cut your losses, try aown, split for the tall timber.
-- Well its a afternoon, heavy on the azaleas.
-- Yes they pride themselves on their azaleas. Have >mpetitions, cups.
-- I dashed a hope and dimmed an ardor. Promises shimmering like shrimp in light just uhe surface of the water.
-- Peered into his dental arcade noting the health of his pink tissue.
-- Backed into a small table which overturned with a scattering of ashtrays and back copies of important journals.
-- What ought I to do? What do you advise me? Should I try to see him? What will happen? you tell me?
-- Yes its g and being kind. We have dodgers too and blood sausage.
-- Lasciviously offered a something pure and white.
-- But he hastily with an embarrassed schottische of the hands covered you up again.
-- Much like that. Every day. I dont mind doing the work if I get the results.
-- We had a dog because we thought it would keep us together. A plain dog.
-- Did it?
-- Naw it was just another of those dumb ideas we had we thought would keep us together.
-- Bone ignorance.
-- Saw him once more, he was at a meeting I was at, had developed an annoying habit of coughing into his coat collar whenever he --
-- Coughed.
-- Yes hed lift his coat collar and cough into it odd mannerism very annoying.
-- Then the dles going out one by one --
-- The last dle hidden behind the altar -
-- The tabernacle door ajar --
-- The clapping shut of the book.
-- I got ready for the great day. The great day came, several times in fact.
-- Each time with memories of the last time.
-- No. These do not in fatrude. Maybe as a slight shimmer of the over-and-doh. Each great day is itself, with its own war maes, rattles, and green lords. There is the hesitation that the particular day wont be what it is meant to be. Mostly it is. Thats peculiar.
-- He told me terrible things in the evening of that day as we sat side by side waiting for the rain to wash his water-color paper . Waiting for the rain to wash the water-colors from his watercolor paper.
-- What do the children say?
-- Theres a thing the children say.
-- What do the children say?
-- They say: Will you always love me?
-- Always.
-- Will you always remember me?
-- Always.
-- Will you remember me a year from now?
-- Yes, I will.
-- Will you remember me two years from now?
-- Yes, I will.
-- Will you remember me five years from now?
-- Yes, I will.
-- Knoock.
-- Whos there?
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