天涯在线书库《www.tianyabook.com》 《Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts》 The Indian Uprising WE DEFEHE CITY as best we could. The arrows of the anches came in clouds. The war clubs of the anches clattered on the soft, yellow pavements. Th
ere were earthworks along the Boulevard Mark Clark and the hedges had been laced with sparkling wire. People were trying to uand. I spoke to Sylvia. "Do you think this is a good life?" The table held apples, books, long-playing records. She looked up. "No." Patrols of paras and volunteers with armbands guarded the tall, flat buildings.藏书网 We interrogated the captured awo of us forced his head back while another poured water into his nostrils. His body jerked, he choked a. Not believ?ing a hurried, careless, and exaggerated report of the number of casualties ier districts where trees, lamps, swans had been reduced to clear fields of fire we issued entreng tools to those who seemed trustworthy and turhe heavy-ons panies so that we could not be surprised from that dire. And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love. We talked. "Do you know Faures Dolly?" "Would that be Gabriel Faure?" "It would." "Then I know it," she said. "May I say that I play it at certain times, when I am sad, or happy, al?though it requires four hands." "How is that managed?" "I accelerate," she said, "ign the time signa?ture." And when they shot the se in the bed I won?dered how you felt uhe eyes of the camera?men, grips, juicers, men in the mixing booth: ex?cited? stimulated? And when they shot the se in the shower I sanded a hollow-core door w carefully against the illustrations is and whis?pered instrus from one who had already solved the problem. I had made after all other tables, one while living with Nancy, one while liv?ing with Alice, one while living with Eunice, one while living with Marianne. Red men in wa９９ｌiｂ?ves like people scattering in a square startled by something tragic or a sudden, loud noise accumulated against the barricades we had made of window dummies, silk, thoughtfully planned job descriptions (including scales for the orderly progress of other colors), wine in demi?johns, and robes. I analyzed the position of the barricade me and found two ashtrays, ce?ramie dark brown and one dark brown with an e blur at the lip; a tin frying pan; two-litre bottles of red wihree-quarter-litre bottles of Black & White, aquavit, ac, vodka, gin, Fad #6 sherry; a hollow-core door in birch veneer on black wrought-iron legs; a bla, red-e with faint blue stripes; a red pillow and a blue pillow; a woven straw wastebasket; two glass jars for flow?ers; corkscrews and openers; two plates and two cups, ceramic, dark brown; a yellourple poster; a Yugoslavian carved flute, wood, dark brown; and other items. I decided I knew nothing. The hospitals dusted wounds with powders the worth of which was not quite established, other supplies having been exhausted early in the first day. I decided I knew nothing. Friends put me in touch with a Miss R., a teacher, unorthodox they said, excellent they said, successful with difficult cases, steel shutters on the windows made the house safe. I had just learned via an Iional Distress Coupon that Jane had beeen up by a dwarf in a bar on Tenerife but Miss R. did not allow me to speak of it. "You know nothing," she said, "you feel nothing, you are locked in a most savage and terrible ignorance, I despise you, my boy, mon cher, my heart. You may attend but you must not attend now, you must attend later, a day or a week or an hour, you are making me ill. . . ." I nonevaluated these remarks as Korzybski in?structed. But it was difficult. Then they pulled ba a feihe river and we rushed into that sector with a reinforced battalion hastily formed among the Zouaves and cabdrivers. This unit was crushed iernoon of a day that began with spoons aers in hallways and under windows where men tasted the history of the heart, e-shaped muscular an that maintains circulation of the blood. But it is you I want now, here in the middle of this Uprising, with the streets yellow and threaten?ing, short, ugly lances with fur at the throat and inexplicable shell money lying in the grass. It is when I am with you that I am happiest, and it is for you that I am making this hollow-core door table with black wrought-iron legs. I held Sylvia by her bear-claw necklace. "Call off your braves," I said. "We have many years left to live." There was a sort of muck running iters, yellow?ish, filthy stream suggesting excrement, or nervous?ness, a city that does not know what it has doo deserve baldness, errors, iy. "With luck you will survive until matins," Sylvia said. She ran off down the Rue Chester Nimitz, uttering shrill cries. Then it was learhat they had infiltrated hetto and that the people of the ghetto instead of resisting had joihe smooth, well-coorditack with zipguns, telegrams, lockets, causing that portion of the line held by the I.R.A. to swell and collapse. We sent more heroin into the ghetto, and hyaths, another huhousand of the pale, delicate flowers. On the map we ?sidered the situation with its strung-out inhabitants and merely persoions. Our parts were blue and their parts were green. I showed the blue-and-green map to Sylvia. "Your parts are green," I said. "You gave me heroin first a year ago," Sylvia said. She ran off down Gee C. Marshall. Alice, utter?ing shrill cries. Miss R. pushed me into a large room painted white (jolting and dang in the soft light, and I was excited! and there were people watg!) in which there were two chairs. I sat in one chair and Miss R. sat iher. She wore a blue dress taining a red figure. There was noth?ing exceptional about her. I was disappointed by her plainness, by the bareness of the room, by the absence of books. The girls of my quarter wore long blue mufflers that reached to their knees. Sometimes the girls hid anches in their rooms, the blue mufflers to?gether in a room creating a great blue fog. Block opehe door. He was carrying ons, flow?ers, loaves of bread. And he was friendly, kihusiastic, so I related a little of the history of torture, reviewing the teical literature quoting the best modern sources, French, German, and Ameri, and pointing out the flies which had gathered in anticipation of some new, cool color. "What is the situation?" I asked. "The situation is liquid," he said. "We hold the south quarter and they hold the north quarter. The rest is silence." "Ah?" "That girl is not in love with Keh," Block said frankly. "She is in love with his coat. When she is not wearing it she is huddling u. Once I caught it going dowairs by itself. I looked inside. Sylvia." Once I caught Kehs coat going dowairs by itself but the coat was a trap and inside a anche who made a thrust with his short, ugly k my leg which buckled and tossed me over the balustrade through a window and into another situation. Not believing that your body brilliant as it was and your fat, liquid spirit distinguished and angry as it was were stable quantities to whie could return on wires more than owice, or another number of times I said: "See the table?" In Skinny Wainwright Square the forces of green and blue swayed and struggled. The referees ran out on the field trailing s. And then the blue part would be enlarged, the green diminished. Miss R. began to speak. "A former king of Spain, a Bona?parte, lived for a time in Bordentown, New Jersey. But thats no good." She paused. "The ardor aroused in men by the beauty of women only be satisfied by God. That is very good (it is Valery) but it is not what I have to teach you, goat, muck, filth, heart of my heart." I showed the table to Nancy. "See the table?" She stuck out her tongue red as a cardinals hat. "I made such a table once," Block said frankly. "People all over America have made such tables. I doubt very much whether one enter an Ameri home without finding at least one such table, or traces of its havihere, such as faded places in the carpet." And afterward in the garden the men of the 7th Cavalry played Gabrieli, Albinoni, Marcello, Vivaldi, Boccherini. I saw Sylvia. She wore a yellow ribbon, under a long blue muffler. "Which side are you on," I cried, "after all?" "The only form of discourse of which I approve," Miss R. said in her dry, tense voice, "is the litany. I believe our masters and teachers as well as plain citizens should fihemselves to what safely be said. Thus when I hear the words pewter, sea, Fad #6 sherry, serviette, feration, , blue ing from the mouth of some public official, or some raw youth, I am not disappointed. Vertical anization is also possible," Miss R. said, "as in pewter snake tea Fad #6 sherry serviette feration blue. I run to liquids and colors," she said, "but you, you may run to something else, my virgin, my darling, my thistle, my poppet, my own. Young people," Miss R. said, "run to more and more unpleasant binations as they sehe nature of our so?ciety. Some people," Miss R.99lib? said, "run to ceits or wisdom but I hold to the hard, brown, nutlike word. I might point out that there is enough aes?thetic excitemeo satisfy a a damned fool." I sat in solemn silence. Fire arrows lit my way to the post offi Patton Place where members of the Abraham Lin Brigade offered their last, exhausted letters, post?cards, dars. I opened a letter but inside was a anche flint arrolayed by Frank Wede -- kind in a gold and gratulations. Your earring rattled against my spectacles when I leaned forward to touch the soft, ruined place where the hearing aid had been. "Pack it in! Pack it in!" I urged, but the men in charge of the Upris?ing refused to listen to reason or to uand that it was real and that our water supply had evapo?rated and that our credit was no longer what it had been, once. We attached wires to the testicles of the cap?tured anche. And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love. Whehrew the switch he spoke. His name, he said, was Gustave Asbach. He was born at L--, a try town in the province of Silesia. He was the son of an upper official in the judicature, and his forebears had all been officers, judges, de?partmental funaries. . . And you ever touch a girl in the same way more than owice, or another number of times however muay wish to hold, , or otherwise fix her hand, or look, or some other quality, or i, known to you previously. In Swedetle Swedish children cheered when we managed nothing more remarkable thaing off a bus burdened with packages, bread and liver-paste and beer. We went to an old churd sat in the royal box. The anist ractig. And then into the grave?yard o the church. Here lies Anna Pedersen, a good woman. I threw a mushroom on the grave. The officer anding the garbage dump re?ported by radio that the garbage had begun to move. Jane! I heard via an Iional Distress Cou?pon that you were beaten up by a dwarf in a bar on Tenerife. That doesnt sound like you, Jane. Mostly you kick the dwarf in his little dwarf groin before he get his teeth into your tasty and nice-looking leg, dont you, Jane? Your affair with Har?old is reprehensible, you know that, dont you, Jane? Harold is married to Nancy. And there is Paula to think about (Harolds kid), and Billy (Harolds other kid). I think your values are peculiar, Jarings of language extend in every di?re to bind the world into a rushing, ribald whole. And you ever return to felicities in the same way, the brilliant body, the distinguished spirit re?capitulating moments that occur owice, or another number of times in rebellions, or water. The rolling sensus of the aion smashed our inner defenses on three sides. Block was firing a greasegun from the upper floor of a building designed by Emery Roth & Sons. "See the table?" "Oh, pack it in with your bloody table!" The city officials were tied to trees. Dusky war?riors padded with their forest tread into the mouth of the mayor. "Who do you want to be?" I asked Keh and he said he wao be Jean-Luc Godard but later when time permitted versa?tions in large, lighted rooms, whispering galleries with blad-white Spanish rugs and problematic sculpture on calm, red catafalques. The siess of the quarrel lay thi the bed. I touched your back, the white, raised scars. We killed a great many in the south suddenly with helicopters and rockets but we found that those we had killed were children and more came from the north and from the east and from other places where there are children preparing to live. "Skin," Miss R. said softly in the white, yellow room. "This is the Clemenittee. And would you remove your belt and shoelaces." I re?moved my belt and shoelaces and looked (rain shattering from a great height the prospects of silend clear, rows of houses in the sub?divisions) into their savage black eyes, paint, feathers, beads. The Balloon The balloon, beginning at a point on Fourteenth Street, the exact location of which I ot reveal, expanded northward all one night, while people were sleeping, until it reached the Park. There, I stopped it; at dawn the northernmost edges lay over the Plaza; the free-hanging motion was frivo?lous ale. But experieng a faint irritation at stopping, even to protect the trees, and seeing no reason the balloon should not be allowed to expand upward, over the parts of the city it was already c, into the "air space" to be found there, I asked the engio see to it. This expan?sion took place throughout the m, soft imperceptible sighing of gas through the valves. The balloon then covered forty-five bloorth-south and an irregular area east-west, as many as six crosstown blocks oher side of the Avenue in some places. That was the situation, then. But it is wrong to speak of "situations," implyis of circumstances leading to some resolution, some escape of tension; there were no situations, simply the balloon hanging there -- muted heavy grays and browns for the most part, trasting with walnut and soft yellows. A deliberate lack of finish, enhanced by skillful installation, gave the surface a rough, fotten quality; slidis on the inside, carefully adjusted, anchored the great, vari-shaped mass at a number of points. Now we have had a flood inal ideas in all media, works of singular beauty as well as signifit mile?stones in the history of inflation, but at that moment there was only this balloon, crete particular, hanging there. There were reas. Some people found the balloon "iing." As a respohis seemed ie to the immensity of the balloon, the suddenness of its appearance over the city; oher hand, in the absence of hysteria or other societally-induced ay, it must be judged a calm, "mature" ohere was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the "meaning" of the balloon; this subsided, because we have learned not to insist on meanings, and they are rarely even looked for now, except in cases involving the simplest, safest phenomena. It was agreed that sihe meaning of the balloon could never be known absolutely, extended discussion ointless, or at least less purposeful thaivities of those who, for ex?ample, hung green and blue paper lanterns from the warm gray underside, iain streets, or seized the occasion to write messages on the sur?face, announg their availability for the perfor?mance of unnatural acts, or the availability of acquaintances. Daring children jumped, especially at those points where the balloon hovered close to a build?ing, so that the gap between balloon and building was a matter of a few inches, or points where the balloon actually made tact, exerting an ever-so-slight pressure against the side of a building, so that balloon and building seemed a unity. The upper surface was so structured that a "landscape" resented, small valleys as well as slight knolls, or mounds; oop the balloon, a stroll os?sible, or even a trip, from one place to ahere leasure in being able to run down an ine, then up the opposing slope, both gently graded, or in making a leap from one side to the other. Boung ossible, because of the picity of thebbr> surface, and even falling, if that was your wish. That all these varied motions, as well as others, were within ones possibilities, in experieng the "up" side of the balloon, was extremely exg for children, aced to the citys flat, hard skin. But the purpose of the balloon was not to amuse children. Too, the number of people, children and adults, who took advantage of the opportunities described was not se as it might have been: a certain timidity, lack of trust in the balloon, was seen. There was, furthermore, some hostility. Because we had hidden the pumps, which fed helium to the interior, and because the surface was so vast that the authorities could not determihe point of entry -- that is, the point at which the gas was ied -- a degree of frustration was evidenced by those city officers into whose province such maions normally fell. The apparent purposelessness of the balloon was vexing (as was the fact that it was "there" at all). Had we painted, i letters, "LABORATORY TESTS PROVE" or "18% MORE EFFECTIVE" on the sides of the balloon, this diffi?culty would have been circumvented. But I could not bear to do so. On the whole, these officers were remarkably tolerant, sidering the dimensions of th藏书网e anomaly, this tolerance being the result of, first, secret tests ducted by night that vihem that little or nothing could be done in the way of removing or destroying the balloon, and, sedly, a public warmth that arose (not uncolored by touches of the aforementioned hostility) toward the balloon, from ordinary citizens. As a single balloon must stand for a lifetime of thinking about balloons, so each citizen expressed, iitude he chose, a plex of attitudes. One man might sider that the balloon had to do with the notion sullied, as in the sentehe big balloon sullied the otherwise clear and radiant Manhattan sky. That is, the balloon was, in this mans view, an imposture, something inferior to the sky that had formerly been there, something inter?posed between the people and their "sky." But in fact it was January, the sky was dark and ugly; it was not a sky you could look up into, lying on your ba the street, with pleasure, unless pleasure, for you, proceeded from havihreatened, from having been misused. And the underside of the balloon leasure to look up into, we had seen to that, muted grays and browns for the most part, trast?９9ｌiｂ?t>ed with walnut and soft, fotten yellows. And so, while this man was thinking sul?lied, still there was an admixture of pleasurable ition in his thinking, struggling with the i?nal perception. Another man, oher hand, might view the balloon as if it were part of a system of unantici?pated rewards, as when ones employer walks in and says, "Here, Henry, take this package of money I have ed for you, because we have been doing so well in the business here, and I admire the way you bruise the tulips, without which bruis?ing your department would not be a success, or at least not the success that it is." For this man the balloon might be a brilliantly heroic "muscle and pluck" experience, even if an experience poorly uood. Another man might say, "Without the example of ____, it is doubtful that ____ would exist today in its present form," and find many to agree with him, or tue with him. Ideas of "bloat" and "float" were introduced, as well as cepts of dream and responsibility. Others engaged in re?markably detailed fantasies having to do with a wish either to lose themselves in the balloon, or to enge it. The private character of these wishes, of their ins, deeply buried and unknown, was such that they were not much spoken of; yet there is evidehat they were widespread. It was alsued that what was important was what you felt when you stood uhe balloon; some people claimed that they felt sheltered, warmed, as never before, while enemies of the balloo, or re?ported feeling, strained, a "heavy" feeling. Critical opinion was divided: "monstrous ps" "harp" XXXXXXX "certain trasts with darker po..ions" "inner joy" "large, square ers" "servative eclecticism that has soverned modern balloon design" ::::::: "abnormal vigor" "warm, soft, lazy passages" "Has unity been sacrificed for a sprawling quality?" "Quelle catastrophe!" "mung" People began, in a curious way, to locate them?selves iion to aspects of the balloon: "Ill be at that place where it dips down into Forty-seventh Street almost to the sidewalk, he Alamo Chile House," or, "Why dont we go stand on top, and take the air, and maybe walk about a bit, where it forms a tight, curving lih the facade of the Gallery of Modern Art --" Marginal interses offered entrances within a given time duration, as well as "warm, soft, lazy passages" in which. . . But it is wrong to speak of "marginal interses," eaterse was crucial, none could be ig?nored (as if, walking there, you might not find someone capable of turning your attention, in a flash, from old exercises to new exercises, risks and escalations). Eaterse was crucial, meet?ing of balloon and building, meeting of balloon and maing of balloon and balloon. It was suggested that what was admired about the balloon was finally this: that it was not limited, or defined. Sometimes a bulge, blister, or sub?se would carry all the way east to the river on its own initiative, in the manner of an armys movements on a map, as seen in a headquarters remote from the fighting. Then that part would be, as it were, thrown back again, or would withdraw into new dispositions; the m, that part would have made another sortie, or disappeared altogether. This ability of the balloon to shift its shape, to ge, was very pleasing, especially to people whose lives were rather rigidly patterned, persons to whom ge, although desired, was not available. The balloon, for the twenty-two days of its existence, offered the possibility, in its randomness, of mislocation of the self, in tradistinc?tion to the grid of precise, regular pathways under our feet. The amount of specialized training currently needed, and the sequent desirability of long-term itments, has been occasioned by the steadily growing importance of plex ma?ery, in virtually all kinds of operations; as this tendencreases, more and more people will turn, in bewildered inadequacy, to solutions for which the balloon may stand as a prototype, or &quh draft." I met you uhe balloon, on the occasion of your return from Norway; you asked if it was mine; I said it was. The balloon, I said, is a spontaneous autobiographical disclosure, having to do with the unease I felt at your absence, and with sexual de?privation, but now that your visit ten has been terminated, it is no longer necessary or appro?priate. Removal of the balloon was easy; trailer trucks carried away the depleted fabric, which is now stored i Virginia, awaiting some other time of unhappiness, sometime, perhaps, when we are angry with one another. This Newspaper Here Again today the little girl came along dang doggedly with her knitting needle steel-blue knitting needle. She knows I t get up out of this chair theoretically and sticks me, here and there, just to make me yell, tle girl from down the bloewhere. Once I corrected her sharply saying "dont fods sake leasure is there hearing me scream like this?" She was wearing a blue Death of Beethoven printed dress and white shoes which mama had whited for her that day before noon so white were they (shoes). I judged her to be eleven. The kn.9９ｌｉｂ?itting needle in the long thrust and hold position she said "torment is the answer old pappy man its torment that is the games hat Im learning about under labo?ratory ditions. Torment is the proper study of children of my age class and median ine and you dont matter in any case youre through dirty old man t eve out of rotten old chair." Summed me up she did in those words which I would much rather not have heard so prettily put as they were heless. I hate it here in this chair in this house warm and green with Social Security. Do you know how little it is? The little girl jabbed again hitting the thin thigh that time and said "we kly how little it is and even that is money down the drain why dont you die damn you dirty old man what are you tributing?" Then I ex?plained about this neer here sprinkled with rare lies and photographs incorrectly captioned accumulated along a lifetime of disappois and some fun. I boasted saying "one knows just where nerves cluster uhe skin, how to pinch them so citizens jump as in dreams when opened suddenly a door and there see two flagrantly. . ." But I realize then her dreams are drawn in ways which differ so that we ot read them together. I threw then jam jar (black currant) catg her nicely on kneecap and she ran howling but if they e to object I have jab marks ienuation. tle girl from down the bloewhere. The reason I like to read this neer here the one in my hand, is because I like what it says. It is my favorite. I would be pleased really quite if you could read it. But you t. But some . It es in the mail. I give it to a fellow some time back, put it in his hand and said "take a look." He took a look took a look but he couldnt see anything strawdinary along this neer here, could. And he says "so what?" Of course I once was in this business myself making neers in the de?pression. We had fuhis fellow I give it to to take a look some time back he that said "so what" is well educated reads good travels far drinks deep gin mostly talks to dolphins click click click click. A professor of ethnology at the Uy of California at Davis. Not in fine a dullard in any se he couldnt see anything strawdinary along this neer here. I said look there page 2 the amusing story of the plain girl fair where the plain girls e to vend their wares but he said "on my page 2 this neer here talk about the EEC." Then I took it from his hand and showed him with my finger pointing the plain girl fair story. Then he eo read aloud from under my fihere some singsong about the EEC. So I ihat he is one who t. So I let the matter drop. I went to the plain girl fair out Route 22 figuring I could get one if I just put on a kind face. This neer here had advertising the aspidistra store not far away by car where I went then and bought oo carry along. At the plain girl fair they were standing in suddeh decolletage and brown arms everywhere. As you passed along into the tent after paying your dollar fifty carrying your aspidis?tra a blinding flash of some hundred tact lenses came. And a quality of dental work to shame the VA Hospital it was so fine. One fell in love tempo?rarily with all this hard work and money spent just to please to improve. I was sad my dolphin friend was not there to see. I took one by the hand and said "e with me I will buy you a lobster." My real face behind my kind face smiling. And the irls on their pedestals waved and said "good?bye Marie." And they also said "have a nice lob?ster," and Marie waved bad said "bonne ce!" We motored to the lobster place over to Barwick, then danced by the light of the moon for a bit. And then to my hay where I tickled the naked soles of feet with a piece of it and admired her gestures of marvellous gaucherie. In my mind. Of course I once was in this business myself making neers in the depression. So I know some little some about it, both the ba and the front room. If you got in the makeups way theyd yell "dime waitin on a nickel." But this here and now neer I say a thing of great formal beauty. Sometimes on dull days the positors play which makes paragraphs like (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / o : o : o : o : o : o : o : o : o : o : o : o : ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / ? / * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) (!) refreshing as rocks in this neer here. And then you e along a page solid bright? ag e sometimes and parts printed in alien lan?guages and invisible inks. This neer here fly away fly away through the mails to names from the telephone book. Have you seen my library of telephone books I keep i with names from Greater Memphis Utica Key West Toledo Santa Barbara St. Paul Juneau Missoula Taa and every which where. It goes third class because I print HOTELS-MOTELS RAINED MEN AND WOMEN AMAZING FREE OFFER on the er. As a disguise. Then a learned man e to call saying "this with the neer is not kosher you know that." He had several degrees in Poligineering and the like and his tiny gu in his armpit like the growths described by Defoe in Journal of the Plague Year. I judged him to be with some one of the govers. Not overfond of him in my house but I said in a friendly way " I see it." He took out the tiny black gun and held it in his hand, then slapped me up against the head with it in a friendly way. He coughed and looked at the bottle of worrywiting oable on the neer saying "and we hear the presses in the basement with sensitive secret rec devices." And finally he said sighing "we know its you why dont you sim?ply take a few months off, try Florida or Banff which is said to swing at this season of the year and well pay everything." I told him smiling I didhe reference. He was almost g it seemed to me saying "you know it excites the peo?ple stirs them up exacerbates hopes we thought laid to rest geions ago." He o agree with himself laying soft hands around the windpipe of the gramophoomatically feeling for ?ter-bugs down its throat saying "we dont uand what it is youre after. If you dont like our war you dont have to e to it, too old anyway you used-up old poop." Then he slapped me up alongside the head couple more times with his ex?quisite politesse kig my toothpick scale model of Heinrich vo in blue velvet to splinters on the way out. you imagine some fellow waking at dawn in Toledo looking at his red alarm clod then thinking with wonder of a picture drawn in this neer here by my friend Golo. When we were in Paris Golo was a famous one because he drew with his thumbs in black black paint which was not then do mu broer and it made people stop. Now Golo has altered his name because he is wanted. Still he sends me drawings on secular subjects from here and there, when they irritate me I put them in. It is true that I dislike their war and have pointed out that the very postage stamps shimmer with dangerous ideological radiation. They hated that. I run coupons to clip Magnifit Butterfly Wing Portraits Send Photo, Transistorized Personal Sun Tanner, How to Develop a He-Man Voice, Darli Monkey Show It Affe and Enjoy Its pany, British Shoes fentlemen, Live Seahorses $1 Each, Why Be Bald, Electric Roses Never Fade or Wither, Hotels-Motels rained Men and藏书网 Women. And I keep the money. But what else I do? Making this neer here I hold a prerequisite to eludih which is looking for me dont you know. Girl with knitting needle simply sent to soften me up, a probing ac?tion as it were. My neer warm at the edges fade in fade out a tissue of hints whispers glimpses uainties, zoom in zoom out. I sidered in aorial the idea that the world is an error on the part of God, one of the earliest and fi here?sies, they hated that. Ringle from the telephone "what do you mean the world is a roar on the part of God," which pleased me. I said "madam is your name Marie if so I will dangle your health in very merrywihis very eve blast me if I will not." She said into the telephone "dirty old man." Who ha who ha. I sit here rock around the cloterview?ing Fabian on his plateglass window i in my mind. Sweet to know your facut and un?abridged. Who ha who ha dirty old man. Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning K. at His Desk He is her abrupt with nor excessively kind to associates. Or he is both abrupt and kind. The telephone is, for him, a whip, a lash, but also a duit for soothing words, a sink into which he hurl gallons of syrup if it es to that. He reads quickly, scratg brief ents ("Yes," "No") in ers of the paper. He slouches in the leather chair, looking about him with a slightly irritated air for new visitors, new difficul?ties. He spends his time sending and receiving messengers. "I spend my time sending and receiving messen?gers," he says. "Some of these messages are im?portant. Others are not." Described by Secretaries A: "Quite frankly I think he fets a lot of things. But the things he fets are those which are iial. I even think he might fet delib?erately, to leave his mind free. He has the ability to get rid of unimportaails. And he does." B: "Once when I was sick, I hadnt heard from him, and I thought he had fotten me. You know usually your boss will send flowers or something like that. I was in the hospital, and I was mighty blue. I was in a room with anirl, and her boss had her anythiher. Then sud?denly the door opened and there he was with the biggest bunch of yellow tulips Id ever seen in my life. And the irls boss was with him, and he had tulips too. They were standing there with all those tulips, smiling." Behind the Bar At a crowded party, he wanders behind the bar to make himself a Scotd water. His hand is otle of Scotch, his glass is waiting. The bar?tender, a small man in a beige uniform with gilt buttons, politely asks K. to return to the other side, the guests side, of the bar. "You let one be?hind here, they all be behind here," the bartender says. K. Reading the Neer His reas are impossible to catalogue. Often he will find a hat amuses him endlessly, some ae involving, say, a fireman who has pro?pelled his apparatus at record-breaking speed to the wrong address. These small stories are clipped, carried about in a pocket, to be produced at appropriate moments for the pleasure of friends. Other maions please him less. An at of ahquake in Chile, with its thousands of dead and homeless, may depress him for weeks. He memorizes the terrible statistics, quoting them everywhere and saying, with a grave look: "We must do something." Important as often fol?low, s９９ｌib?ometimes within a matter of hours. (Oher hand, these two kinds of responses may be, on a given day, inexplicably reversed.) The more trivial aspects of the daily itemization are skipped. While reading, he maintains a rapid drumming of his fiips on the desktop. He re?ceives twelve neers, but of these, only four are regarded as serious. Attitude Toward His Work "Sometimes I t seem to do anything. The work is there, piled up, it seems to me an insur?mountable obstacle, really out of reach. I sit and look at it, w where to begin, how to take hold of it. Perhaps I pick up a piece of paper, try to read it but my mind is elsewhere, I am thinking of something else, I t seem to get the gist of it, it seems meaningless, devoid of i, not having to do with human affairs, drained of life. Then, in an hour, or even a moment, everything ges suddenly: I realize I only have to do it, hurl myself into the midst of it, proceed meically, the first thing and then the sed thing, that it is simply a matter of moving from oep to the , plow?ing through it. I bee ied, I bee ex?cited, I work very fast, things fall into place, I am exhilarated, amazed that these things could ever have seemed dead to me." Sleeping oones of Unknown Towns (Rim?baud) K. is walking, with that familiar slight dip of the shoulders, through the streets of a small city in France ermany. The shop signs are in a lan?guage which alters when ied closely, MoBEL being MEUBLES for example, and the citizens mutter to themselves with dark virtuosity a mixture of languages. K. is very ied, looks closely at everything, at the shops, the goods displayed, the clothing of the people, the tempo of street life, the citizens themselves, w about them. What are their water needs? "In the West, wisdom is mostly gai lunch. At lunch, people tell you things." The nervous eyes of the waiters. The tall bald cook, white apron, white T-shirt, grinning through an opening in the wall. "Why is that cook looking at me?" Urban Transportation "The transportation problems of our cities and their rapidly expanding suburbs are the most ur?gent and ed transportation problems ?fronting the try. In these heavily populated and industrialized areas, people are depe on a system of transportation that is at onplex and ie. Obsolete facilities and growing demands have created seemingly insoluble difficul?ties and presehods of dealing with these difficulties offer little prospect of relief." K. Peed with Sadness He hears something playing on someone elses radio, in another part of the building. The music is wretchedly sad; now he (barely) hear it, now it fades into the wall. He turns on his own radio. There it is, on his own radio, the same music. The sound fills the room. Karsh of Ottawa "We sent a man to Karsh of Ottawa and told him that we admired his work very much. Especially, I dont know, the Churchill thing and, you know, the Hemingway thing, and all that. Aold him we wao set up a sitting for K. sometime in June, if that would be ve for him, and he said yes, that was okay, June was okay, and where did we want to have it shot, there or in New York or where. Well, that roblem because we didnt kly what K.s schedule would be for Ju in the air, so we tentatively said New York around the fifteenth. And he said, that was okay, he could do that. And he wao know how much time he could have, and we said, well, how much time do you need? And he said he didnt know, it varied from sitter to sitter. He said some people were very restless and that made it difficult to get just the right shot. He said there was one shot in each sitting that was, you know, the key shot, the right one. He said hed have to see, wheime came." Dress He is ly dressed in a mahat does not call attention to itself. The suits are soberly cut and in dark colors. He must at all times present an aspect of freshness difficult to sustain because of frequent movements from place to plader ?ditions which are not always the most favorable. Thus he ges clothes frequently, especially shirts. In the course of a day he ges his shirt many times. There are always extra shirts about, in boxes. "Which of you has the shirts?" A Friend ents: K.s Aloneness "The thing you have to realize about K. is that essentially hes absolutely alone in the world. Theres this terrible loneliness which prevents peo?ple from getting too close to him. Maybe it es from something in his childhood, I dont know. But hes very hard to get to know, and a lot of people who think they know him rather well dont really know him at all. He says something or does some?thing that surprises you, and you realize that all along you really didnt know him at all. "He has surprising facets. I remember once we were out in a small boat. K. of course was the cap?tain. Sh weather came up and we began to head ba. I began w about pig up a landing and I said to him that I didnt think the anchor would hold, with the wind and all. He just looked at me. Then he said: Of course it will hold. Thats what its for. " K. on Crowds "There are exhausted crowds and vivacious crowds. "Sometimes, standing there, I sense whether a particular crowd is ohing or the other. Some?times the mood of the crowd is disguised, some?times you only find out after a quarter of an hour what sort of croarticular crowd is. "And you t speak to them in the same way. The variations have to be taken into at. You have to say something to them that is meaningful to them in that mood." Gallery-going K. enters a large gallery on Fifty-seventh Street, in the Fuller Building. His ente includes sev?eral ladies alemen. Works by a geometricist are on show. K. looks at the immense, rather theo?retical paintings. "Well, at least we know he has a ruler." The group dissolves in laughter. People repeat the remark to one another, laughing. The artist, who has been standing behind a dealer, regards K. with hatred. K. Puzzled by His Children The children are g. There are several chil?dren, one about four, a boy, then another boy, slightly older, and a little girl, very beautiful, wear?ing blue jeans, g. There are various objects on the grass, aric train, a picture book, a red ball, a plastic bucket, a plastic shovel. K. frowns at the children whose distress issues from no source immediately available to the eye, which seems indeed uncaused, vat, a general anguish. K. turns to the mother of these children who is standing nearby wearing hip-huggers which appear to be made of linked marshmallows studded with diamonds but then I am a notoriously poor observer. "Play with them," he says. This mother of ten quietly suggests that K. him?self "play with them." K. picks up the picture book and begins to read to the children. But the book has a Germa. It has bee behind, perhaps, by some fn visitor. heless K. perseveres. "A ist der Affe, er isst mit der Pfote." ("A is the Ape, he eats with his Paw.") The g of the children tinues. A Dream e trees. Overhead, a steady stream of strange aircraft which resemble kit implements, bread boards, cookie sheets, ders. The shiny aluminum instruments are on their way to plete the bombing of Sidi-Madani. A farm in the hills. Matters (from an Administrative Assistant) "A lot of matters that had been pending came to a head right about that time, moved to the front burhings we absolutely had to take care of. And we couldnt find K. Nobody knew where he was. We had looked everywhere. He had just with?drawn, made himself unavailable. There was this oter that robably more pressing than all the rest put together. Really crucial. We were all standing around w what to do. We were getting pretty nervous because this thing was really. . . Then K. walked in and disposed of it with a quick phone call. A quick phone call!" Childhood of K. as Recalled by a Former Teacher "He was a very alert boy, very bright, good at his studies, very thh, very stious. But thats not unusual; that describes a good number of the boys who pass through here. Its not unusual, that is, to find these qualities which are after all the qualities that we look for and ence in them. What was unusual about K. was his passion, something very rare for a boy of that age -- even if they have it, theyre usually very careful not to display it for fear of seeming soft, girlish. I remem?ber, though, that in K. this particular attribute was very marked. I would almost say that it was his stro characteristic." Speaking to No O Waiters, He -- "The dandelion salad with ba, I think." "The rysstafel." "The poached duck." "The black bean puree." "The cod fritters." K. Explains a Teique "Its an expedient in terms of how not to destroy a situation which has been a long time gestating, ain, how to break it up if it appears that the situation has ged, during the gestation period, into one whose implications are not quite what they were at the beginning. What I mean is that in this busihings are stantly altering (usually for worse) and usually you want to give the im?pression that youre not watg this particular situation particularly closely, that youre paying no special attention to it, until youre ready to make your move. That is, its best to be sudden, if you ma. Of course you t do that all the time. Sometimes youre just pletely wiped out, ed out, totaled, and then the only thing to do is shrug and fet about it." K. on His Own Role "Sometimes it seems to me that it doesnt matter what I do, that it is enough to exist, to sit some?where, in a garden for example, watg whatever is to be seen there, the small events. At other times, Im aware that other people, possibly a great num?ber of other people, could be affected by what I do or fail to do, that I have a responsibility, as we all have, to make the best possible use of whatever talents Ive been given, for the on good. It is not enough to sit in that garden, however restful or pleasurable it might be. The world is full of un?solved problems, situations that demand careful, reasoned and intelligent a. In Latin America, for example." As Entrepreneur The inal cost estimates for burying the North Sea pipeline have been exceeded by a siderable margin. Everyone wonders what he will say about this tretemps which does not fail to have its dangers for those responsible for the costly miscal?culations, which are viewed in many minds as in?excusable. He says only: "Exceptionally difficult rock ?ditions." With Young People K., walking the streets of unknown towns, finds himself among young people. Young people lihese streets, narrow and curving, which are theirs, dedicated to them. They are everywhere, resting on the embas, their guitars, small radios, long hair. They sit on the sidewalks, back to back, heads turo stare. They stand implacably on street ers, in doorways, or lean on their elbows in windows, or squat in small groups at that place where the sidewalk meets the walls of buildings. The streets are filled with these young people who say nothing, reveal only a limited i, refuse to declare themselves. Street after street tains them, a great number, more displayed as ourns a er, rank upon rank stretg into the dis?tance, drawn from the arcades, the plazas, staring. He Discusses the French Writer, Poulet "For Poulet, it is not enough to speak of seizing the moment. It is rather a question of, and I quote, reizing in the instant which lives and dies, which surges out of nothingness and whids in dream, an iy ah of significe which ordinarily attaches only to the whole of existence. "oulet is describing is her ahior a prescription but rather what he has discovered in the work of Marivaux. Poulet has taken up the Marivaudian and squeezed it with both hands to discover the essence of what may be called the Marivaudian being, oulet in fact calls the Marivaudian being. "The Marivaudian being is, acc to Poulet, a pastless futureless man, bor every in?stant. The instants are points which ahem?selves into a line, but what is important is the instant, not the lihe Marivaudian being has in a sense no history. Nothing follows from what has gone before. He is stantly surprised. He ot predict his owion to events. He is stantly being overtaken by events. A dition of breathlessness and dazzlement surrounds him. In se?quence he exists in a certain freshness which seems, if I may say so, very desirable. This freshness Poulet, quoting Marivaux, describes very well." K. Saved from Drobbr>?wning K. ier. His flat black hat, his black cape, his sword are on the shore. He retains his mask. His hands beat the surface of the water which tears and rips about him. The white foam, the greehs. I throw a lihe coils leaping out over the surface of the water. He has missed it. No, it ap?pears that he has it. His right hand (sword arm) grasps the lihat I have thrown him. I am on the bank, the rope wound round my waist, braced against a rock. K. now has both hands on the line. I pull him out of the water. He stands now on the bank, gasping. "Thank you." Report roup is against the war. But the war goes on. I was sent to Cleveland to talk to the engineers. The engineers were meeting in Cleveland. I was supposed to persuade them not to do what they are going to do. I took Uniteds 4:45 from LaGuardia arriving in Cleveland at 6:13. Cleveland is dark blue at that hour. I went directly to the motel, where the engineers were meeting. Hundreds of engineers attehe Clevelaing. I no?ticed many fractures among the engineers, ban?dages, tra. I noticed peared to be frac?ture of the carpal scaphoid in six examples. I notiumerous fractures of the humeral shaft, of the oscalcis, of the pelvic girdle. I noticed a high ince of clay-shovellers fracture. I could not at for these fra>tures. The engineers were making calculations, taking measurements, sketg on the blackboard, drinking beer, throwing bread, buttonholing employers, hurling glasses into the fireplace. They were friendly. They were friendly. They were full of love and information. The chief engineer wore shades. Pa?tella in Monks tra, clamshell fracture by the look of it. He was standing in a slum of beer bottles and microphone cable. "Have some of this chi a la Isambard Kingdom Bruhe Great Ingineer," he said. "And declare who you are and what we do for you. What is your line, distinguished guest?" "Software," I said. "In every sense. I am here representing a small group of ied parties. We are ied in your thing, which seems to be funing. In the midst of so much dysfun, fun is iing. Other peoples things doo be w. The State Departments thing doeso be w. The U.N.s thing doeso be w. The democratic lefts thing doeso be w. Buddhas thing --" "Ask us anything about our thing, which seems to be w," the chief engineer said. "We will open our hearts and heads to you, Software Man, because we want to be uood and loved by the great lay publid have our marvels appre?ciated by that public, for which we daily unsung produce tons of new marvels each more life-en?hang than the last. Ask us anything. Do you want to know about evaporated thin-film metal?lurgy? Monolithid hybrid ied-circuit processes? The algebra of inequalities? Optimiza?tion theory? plex high-speed miiniature closed and open loop systems? Fixed variable mathematical cost searches? Epitaxial deposition of semi-duaterials? Gross interfaced space gropes? We also have specialists in the cuckoo?flower, the doctorfish, and the dumdum bullet as these relate to aspects of todays expanding teology, and they do in the dam ways." I spoke to him then about the war. I said the same things people always say when they speak against the war. I said that the rong. I said that large tries should not burn down small tries. I said that the gover had made a series of errors. I said that these errors once small and fivable were now immense and unfivable. I said that the gover was at?tempting to ceal its inal errors under layers of new errors. I said that the gover was sick with erriddy with it. I said that ten thousand of our soldiers had already been killed in pursuit of the govers errors. I said that tens of thou?sands of the enemys soldiers and civilians had been killed because of various errors, ours and theirs. I said that we are responsible for errors made in our name. I said that the gover should not be allowed to make additional errors. "Yes, yes," the chief engineer said, "there is doubtless much truth in what you say, but ossibly lose the war, we? And stopping is los?ing, isnt it? The war regarded as a process, stop?ping regarded as an abort? We dont know how to lose a war. That skill is not among our skills. Our array smashes their array, that is what we know. That is the process. That is what is. "But lets not have any more of this dispiriting dow terproductive talk. I have a few new marvels here Id like to discuss with you just briefly. A few new marvels that are just about ready to be gaped at by the admiring layman. sider for instahe area of realtime online puter-trolled wish evaporation. Wish evaporation is going to be crucial iing the rising expecta?tions of the worlds peoples, which are as you know risiirely too fast." I noticed then distributed about the room a great many transverse fractures of the ulna. "The devel?opment of the pseudo-ruminant stomach for under-developed peoples," he went on, "is one of our iing things you should be ied in. With the pseudo-ruminant stomach they chew cuds, that is to say, eat grass. Blue is the most popular color worldwide and for that reason we are work?ing with certain strains of your native Kentucky Poa pratensis, or bluegrass, as the staple input for the p/r stomach cycle, which would also give a shot in the arm to our balance-of-payments thing dont you know. . ." I noticed about me then a great number of metatarsal fractures in banjo splints. "The kangaroo initiative. . . eight huhou?sand harvested last year. . . highest pertage of edible protein of any herbivore yet studied. . ." "Have new kangaroos been planted?" The engineer looked at me. "I intuit your hatred and jealousy of our thing," he said. "The iual always hate our thing and speak of it as anti-human, which is not at all a meaningful way to speak of our thing. Nothing meical is alien to me," he said (amber spots making bursts of light in his shades), "because I am human, in a sense, and if I think it up, then it is human too, whatever it may be. Let me tell you, Software Man, we have been damned forbearing iter of this little war you declare yourself to be ied in. Fun is the cry, and our thing is funing like crazy. There are things we could do that we have not doeps we could take that we have not taken. These steps are, regarded in a certain light, the light of our enlightened self-inter?est, quite justifiable steps. We could, of course, get irritated. We could, of course, lose patience. "We could, of course, release thousands upon thousands of self-powered crawling-along-the-grouhs of titanium wire eighteen inches long with a diameter of .0005 timetres (that is to say, invisible) which, sting an enemy, climb up his tr and themselves around his neck. We have developed those. They are within our capabilities. We could, of course, release in the arena of the upper air our new improved pufferfish toxin which precipitates ay crisis. No spe?cial teical problems there. That is almost laugh?ably easy. We could, of course, place up to two million maggots in their rice withiy-four hours. The maggots are ready, massed i staging areas in Alabama. We have hypodermic darts capable of piebalding the enemys pigmenta?tion. We have rots, blights, and rusts capable of attag his alphabet. Those are dandies. We have a hut-shrinking chemical which pees the fibres of the bamboo, causing it, the hut, tle its octs. This operates only after 10 P.M., when people are sleeping. Then: mathematics are at the mercy of a suppurating surd we have ied. We have a family of fishes traio attack their fishes. We have the deadly testicle-destroying telegram. The cable panies are cooperating. We have a green substahat, well, Id rather not talk about. We have a secret word that, if pro?nounced, produces multiple fractures in all living things in ahe size of four football fields." "Thats why --" "Yes. Some damned fool couldnt keep his mouth shut. The point is that the whole structure of enemy life is within our power to rend, vitiate, devour, and crush. But thats not the iing thing." "You ret these possibilities with unon relish." "Yes I realize that there is too much relish here. But you must realize that these capabilities repre?sent in and of themselves highly teical and ?plex and iing problems and hurdles on which our boys have expended many thousands of hours of hard work and brilliance. And that the effects are often grossly exa藏书网ggerated by irrespon?sible victims. And that the whole thing represents a fantastic series of triumphs for the multi-disci?plined problem-solving team cept." "I appreciate that." "We could unleash all this teology at once. You imagine what would happen then. But thats not the iing thing." "What is the iing thing?" "The iing thing is that we have a moral se is on punched cards, perhaps the most advanced aive moral sehe world has ever known." "Because it is on punched cards?" "It siders all siderations in endless and subtle detail," he said. "It even quibbles. With this great new moral tool, how we g? I ?fidently predict that, although we could employ all this splendid neonry Ive been telling you about, were not going to do it." "Were not going to do it?" I took Uniteds 5:44 from Cleveland arriving at Newark at 7:19. New Jersey is bright pink at that hour. Living things move about the surface of New Jersey at that hour molesting each other only in traditional ways. I made my report to the group. I stressed the friendliness of the engineers. I said, Its all right. I said, We have a moral sense. I said, Were not going to do it. They didnt believe me. The Dolt EDGAR REPARING TO TAKE the National Writ?ers Examination, a five-hour fifty-minute examina?tion, for his certificate. He was in his room, fright?ehe prospect of taking the exam again put him in worlds of hurt. He had taken it twice before, with evil results. Now he was studying a book which tained not the actual questions from the examination but similar questions. "Barbara, if I dont knock it for a loop this time I dont know what well do." Barbara tio address her?self to the ironing board. Edgar thought about say?ing something to his younger child, his two-year-old daughter, Rose, earing a white terry-cloth belted bathrobe and looked like a tiny fighter about to climb into the ring. They were all in the room while he was studying for the examination. "The written part is where I fall down," Edgar said morosely, to everyone in the room. "The oral part is where I do best." He looked at the back of his wife which oi him. "If I dont kick it in the head this time I dont know what were going to do," he repeated. "Barb?" But she failed to respond to this implied question. She felt it was a false hope, taking this examination which he had already failed miserably twid which always got him very worked up, black with fear, before he took it. Now she didnt wish to withe spec?tacle any more so she gave him her back. "The oral part," Edgar tinued encingly, "is A-okay. I for instance give you a list of answers, I know it so well. Listen, here is an an?swer, you tell me the question?" Barbara, who was very sexually attractive (that was what made Edgar tap on her for a date, many years before) but also deeply mean, said nothing. She put her mind on their silent child, Rose. "Here is the answer," Edgar said. "The answer is Julia Ward Howe. What is t..he question?" This answer was too provocative for Barbara to resist long, because she khe question. "Who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic?" she said. "There is not a grown person in the Uates who doesnt know that." "Youre right," Edgar said unhappily, for he would have preferred that the answer had been a little more recherche, ohat she would not have known the question to. But she had been a hooker for a period before their marriage and he could resort to this area if her triumph grew too great. "Do you want to try another one?" "Edgar I dont believe in that examination any more," she told him coldly. "I dont believe in you Barbara," he tered. This remark filled her with remorse and anger. She sidered momentarily letting him have one upside the head but fear prevented her from doing it so she turned her back again and thought about the vaunted certificate. With a certificate he could write for all the important and great periodicals, and there would be some money in the house for a ge instead of what they got from his brother and the Unemployment. "It isnt you who has to pass this National Writ?ers Examination," he shot past her. Then, to mol?lify, he gave her another answer. "Brand, tuck, glave, claymore." "Is that an answer?" she asked from behind her back. "It is indeed. Whats the question?" "I dont know," she admitted, slightly pleased to be put ba a feminine position of not knowing. "Those are four names for a sword. Theyre archaic." "Thats why I didnt know them, then." "Obviously," said Edgar with some malice, for Barbara was sometimes given to saying things that were obvious, just to fill the air. "You put a word like that in now and then to freshen your line," he explained. "Even though its an old word, its so old its new. But you have to be careful, the text has to let people know what the thing is. You dont want to be simply obscure." He liked explain?ing the tricks of the trade to Barb, who made some show of i in them. "Do you wao read you what Ive written for the written part?" Barb said yes, with a look of pain, for she still felt acutely what he was trying to do. "This is the beginning," Edgar said, preparing his yellow manuscript paper. "What is the title?" Barbara asked. She had turo face him. "I havent got a title yet," Edgar said. "Okay, this is the beginning." He began to read aloud. "Iown of A--, in the district of Y--, there lived a certain Madame A--, wife of that Baron A-- who was in the service of the young Friedrich II of Prussia. The Baron, a man of unon ability, is chiefly remembered for his notorious and inexplic?able blu the Battle of Kolin: by withdrawing the n under his and at a crucial mo?ment in the fighting, he earned for himself the greatest part of the blame for Friedrichs defeat, which resulted in a loss, on the Prussian side, of 13,000 out of 33,000 men. Now as it happehe chateau in which Madame A-- was sheltering lay not far from the battlefield; in fact, the removal of her husbands corps placed the chateau itself in the gravest danger; and at the moment Madame A-- learned, from a Captain Orsini, of her hus?bands death by his own hand, she was also told that a detat of pandours, the brutal and much-feared Hungarian light irregular cavalry, was ham?mering at the chateau gates." Edgar paused to breathe. Barb looked at him in some surprise. "The be?ginning turns me on," she said. "More than usual, I mean." She began to have some faint hope, and sat down on the sofabed. "Thank you," Edgar said. "Do you wao read you the development?" "Go ahead." Edgar drank some water from a glass o hand. "The man whht this terrible news en?joyed a peculiar status in regard to the lady; he was her lover, and he was not. Giao Orsini, sed son of a noble family of Siena, had as a young man a religious vocation. He had bee a priest, not the grander sort of priest who makes a career in Rome and i houses, but a modest village priest in the north of his try. Here be?fell him a singular misfortu was the pleasure of Friedrich Wilhelm I, father of the present ruler, to assemble, as is well known, the fi army in Europe. Tiny Prussia was uo supply men in suffit o satisfy this ambition; his re?cruiters ranged over the whole of Europe, and those whom they could not persuade, with prom?ises of liberal bounties, into the kings service, they kidnapped. Now Friedrich was above all else fond of very tall men, and had created, for his personal guard, a regiment of giants, much mocked at the time, but heless a brave and formidable sight. It was the bad luck of the priest Orsini to be a very tall man, and of impressive mien and bearing withal; he was abducted straight from the altar, as he was saying mass, the Host in his hands --" "This is very exg," Barb broke in, her eyes showing genuine pleasure ahusiasm. "Thank you," Edgar said, and tinued his read?ing. "-- and served ten years in the regiment of giants. On the death of Friedrich Wilhelm, the regiment was disbanded, among other eies; but the former priest, by now habituated to military life, and eve..ful for it, enlisted uhe new young king, with the rank of captain." "Is this historically accurate?" Barbara asked. "It does not tradict what is known," Edgar assured her. "Assigo the staff of Baron A--, and mu the tatters house in sequence, he was thrown in with the lovely Inge, Madame A--, a woman much youhan her husband, and possessed of many excellent qualities. A deep sympathy estab?lished itself between them, with this idiosyncrasy, that it was never pressed to a clusion, on his part, or aowledged in any way, on hers. But both were aware that it existed, and drew secret nourishment from it, and took much delight in the nearness, oo the other. But this pleasant state of affairs also had a melancholy aspect, for Orsini, although exerg the greatest restraint iter, heless sidered that he had, in even admitting to himself that he was in love with Madame A--, damaged his patron the Baron, whom he ko be a just and honorable man, and one who had, moreover, done him many kind?nesses. In this humor Orsini saw himself as a son of jackal skulking about the periphery of his bene?factors domestic life, which had been harmonious and whole, but was now, in whatsoever slight de?gree, promised." Rose, the child, stood in her white bathrobe look?ing at her father who was talking for such a long time, and in such a dramatic shaking voice. "The Baron, on his side, was not at all insensible of the passion that resent, as it were in a ?dition of latency, between his young wife and the handsome Sienese. In truth, his knowlbbr>藏书网edge of their intercourse, which he imagined had ripened far beyond the point it had actually reached, had flung him headlong into a horrible crime: for his with?holding of the decisive troops at Kolin, for which history has judged him so harshly, was her an error of strategy nor a display of pusillanimity, but a willful act, having as its purpose the exposure of the chateau, and thus the lovers, whom he had caused to be together there, to the bloodlust of the pandours. And as for his alleged suicide, that too was a cruel farce; he lived, in a hidden place." Edgar stopped. "Its swift-moving," Barbara plimented. "Well, do you wao read you the end?" Edgar asked. "The end? Is it the end already?" "Do you wao read you the end?" he repeated. "Yes." "Ive got the end but I dont have the middle," Edgar said, a little ashamed. "You dont have the middle?" "Do you wao read you the end or dont you?" "Yes, read me the end." The possibility of a semi-professional apartment, which she had eained briefly, w.9９liｂ?as falling out of her head with this news, that there was no middle. "The last paragraph is this: "During these events Friedrich, to sole him?self for the debacle at Kolin, posed in his castle at Berlin a flute sonata, of which the critic Guilda has said, that it is not less lovely than the sonatas of Ge Philip Telemann." "Thats ironic," she said knowingly. "Yes," Edgar agreed, impatient. He was as vola?tile as pop. "But what about the middle?" "I dont have the middle!" he thundered. "Something has to happeween them, Inge and whats his name," she went on. "Otherwise theres no story." Looking at her he thought: she is still streety although wearing her housewife gear. The child erfect love, however, and couldold from the children of success. Barb then began telling a story she khat had happeo a friend of hers. This girl had had an affair with a man and had bee pregnant. The man had gone off to Seville, to see if hell was a city much like it, and she had spontaneously aborted, in Chicago. Then she had flowo parley, and they had walked ireets and visited elderly churches and like that. And the first church they went into, there was this tiny little white coffin covered with flowers, right in the sanctuary. "Banal," Edgar pronounced. She tried to think of another ae to deliver to him. "Ive got to get that certificate!" he suddenly called out desperately. "I dont think you pass the National Writers Examination with what you have on that paper," Barb said then, with great regret, because even though he was her husband she didnt want to hurt him unnecessarily. But she had to tell the truth. "Without a middle." "I wouldnt have bee, even with the cer?tificate," he said. "Your views would have bee known. You would have been something." At that moment the son maered the room. The son manque was eight feet tall and wore a scrape woven out of two huransistor ra?dios, all turned on and tuo different stations. Just by looking at him you could hear Portland and Nogales, Mexico. "No grass in the house?" Barbara got the grass which was kept in one of those little yellow and red metal isters made for sending film back to Eastman Kodak. Edgar tried to think of a way to badmouth this immense son leaning over him like a large blaring building. But he couldnt think of anything. Think?ing of anything was beyond him. I sympathize. I myself have these problems. Endings are elusive, middles are o be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin. The Police Band It was kind of the Department to think up the Police Band. The inal impulse, I believe, was creative and humanitarian. A better way of doing things. Unpleasant, bloody things required by the line of duty. Even if it didnt work out. The issiohe old issioner, not the ohey have now) brought us up the river from Detroit. Where our members had been, typi?cally, w the Sho Bar two nights a week. Sometimes the Glass Crutch. Friday and Saturday. And the rest of the time wandering the streets dis?guised as postal employees. Bitten by dogs and burdened with third-class mail. What are our duties? we asked at the interview. Your duties are to wail, the issioner said. That only. We admired our new dark-blue uni?forms as we came up the river in oes like In?dians. We plan to use you iain situations, certain teuations, to alleviate tensions, the issioner said. I visualize great success with this new method. And would you play "En?tropy." He ale, with a bad liver. We are subtle, the issioner said, never fet that. Subtlety is what has previously been lag in our line. Some of the old ohe is?sioner said, all they know is the club. He took a little pill from a little box >and swallowed it with his Scotch. Whe to town we looked at those Steve yon recruiting posters and wondered if we re?sembled them. Henry Wang, the bass man, looks like a ese Steve yht? The other cops were friendly in a suspicious way. They liked to hear us wail, however. The Police Band is a very sensitive highly trained and ruggedly anti-unist unit whose efficacy will be demonstrated iime, the is?sioner said to the Mayor (the old Mayor). The Mayor took a little pill from a little box and said, Well see. He could tell we were musis because we were holding our instruments, right? Emptying spit valves, giving the horn that little shake. Or ing in at letter E with some sly emotion stolen from another life. The old issioners idea was essentially that if there was a disturban the citys streets -- some ethnic group cutting up some other ethnic group on a warm August evening -- the Police Band would be sent in. The handsome dark-green band bus arriving with sirens singing, red lights whirling. Hard-pressed men on the beat in their white hats raising a grateful cheer. We stream out of the ve?hicle holding our instruments at high port. A skir?mish line fronting the angry crolay "Perdido." The crowd washed with new and true emotion. Startled, they listen. Our emotion stroh?an their emotion. A triumph of art ood sense. That was the idea. The old issioners mu?sical ideas were not very iing, because after all he , right? But his police ideas were iing. We had drills. Poured out of that mother-loving bus onto vat lots holding our instruments at high port like John Wayne. Felt we were heroes already. Playing "Perdido," "Stumblin," "Gin Song," "Peebles." Laving the terrain with emotion stolen from old busted-up loves, broken marriages, the needle, eic deprivation. A few old ladies leaning out of high windows. Our emotion washing rusty Rheingold s and parts of old doors. This city is too much! Wed be walking dowreet talking about our teiques and wed see out of our eyes a woman standing iter screaming to herself about what we could not imagine. A drunk trying tle a dog somebodyd left leashed to a parkier. The drunk and the dog screaming at each other. This city is too much! We had drills and drills. It is true that the best musis e from Detroit but..here is some?thihat you have to get in your playing and that is simply the scream. We got that. The issioner, a sixty-three-year-old hippie with no doubt many graft qualities and unpleasant qual?ities, heless uood that. When wed play "ugly," he uood that. He uood the ris?ing expectations of the worlds peoples also. That our black members didnt feel like toting junk mail arouroit forever until the ends of their lives. For some strange reason. He said one of our funs would be to be sent out to play in places where people were trembling with fear iheir houses, right? To inspirit them in difficult times. This was the pla up ireet. Henry Wang grabs hold of his instrument. He has a four-bar lead-in all by him?self. Then the whole group. The iron shutters raised a few inches. Shorty Alanio holding his horn at his characteristigle (sideways). The reeds dropping lacy little fill-ins behind him. Were cook?ing. The crowd roars. The Police Band was an idea of a very romantid. The Police Band was ahat didnt work. When they retired the old issioner (our issioner), who it turned out had a little drug problem of his own, they did us even drill anymore. We have never been used. His idea was ..a romantic idea, they said (right?), which was not adequate to the rage currently around in the world. Rage must be met with rage, they said. (Not in so many words.) We sit around the pre?ct houses, uhe filthy lights, talking about our teiques. But I thought it might be good if you khat the Department still has us. We have a good group. We still have emotion to be used. Were still here. Edward and Pia EDWARD LOOKED AT HIS RED BEARD iablekhen Edward and Pia went to Sweden, to the farm. In the mailbox Pia found a check for Willie from the gover of Sweden. It was for twenty-three hundred s and had a rained-on look. Pia put the che the pocket of her brown coat. Pia regnant. In London she had been sick every day. In London Pia and Edward had seen the Marat/Sade at the Aldwych Theatre. Edward bought a bottle of white stuff for Pia in London. It was supposed to make her stop vomiting. Edward walked out to the wood barn and broke up wood for the fire. Snow in patches lay on the ground still. Pia ed cabbage leaves around chopped meat. She was still wearing her brown coat. Willies check was still in the pocket. It was still Sunday. "What are you thinking about?" Edward asked Pia and she said she was thinking about Willies hand. Willie had hurt his hand in a mae in a factory in Markaryd. The check was for pen?sation. Edward turned away from the window. Edward received a cable from his wife in Maine. "Many happy birthdays," the cable said. He was thirty-four. His father was in the hospital. His mother was in the hospital. Pia wore white plastic boots with her brown coat. When Edward inhaled sharply -- a sharp intake of breath -- they could hear a peculiar noise in his chest. Edward inhaled sharply. Pia heard the noise. She looked up. "When will you go to the doctor?" "I have to get something to read," Edward said. "Something in En?glish." They walked to Markaryd. Pia wore a white plastic hat. At the train station they bought a Life magazih a gold-painted girl on the cover. "Shall we eat something?" Edward asked. Pia said no. They bought a crowbar for the farm. Pia was si the way back. She vomited into a ditch. Pia and Edward walked the streets of Amster?dam. They were hungry. Edward wao go to bed with Pia but she didnt feel like it. "Theres something wrong," he said. "The wood isnt catg." "Its too wet," she said, "perhaps." "I know its too wet," Edward said. He went out to the wood barn and broke up more wood. He wore a leather glove on his right hand. Pia told Edward that she had been raped once, when she was twenty-two, ianical Gardens. "The man that raptured me has a shop by the Round Tower. Still." Edward walked out of the room. Pia looked after him placidly. Edward reehe room. "How would you like to have some Southern fried chi?" he asked. "Its the most marvellous-tasting thing in the world. Tomorrow Ill make some. Dont say rapture. In English its rape. What did you do about it?" "Nothing," Pia said. Pia wreen rings, dresses with green sleeves, a gree skirt. Edut flour in a paper bag and then the pieces of chi, which had been dipped in milk. Then he shook the paper bag violently. He stood behind Pia and tickled her. Then he hugged her tightly. But she didnt want to go to bed. Edward decided that he would never go to bed with Pia again. The teleph. It was for Fru Schmidt. Edward explaihat Fru Schmidt was in Rome, that s.９9liｂ.t>he would return in three months, that he, Edward, was renting the flat from Fru Schmidt, that he would be happy to make a note of the callers name, and that he would be delighted to call this o the attention of Fru Schmidt wheurned, from Rome, in three months. Pia vomited. Pia lay on the bed sleeping. Pia wore a red dress, green rings on her fingers. Then Edward and Pia went to the ema to see an Eddie stantine picture. The film was very funny. Eddie stantine broke up a great deal of furniture chasing iional bad guys. Ed?ward read two books he had already read. He didnt remember that he had read them until he reached the last page of each. Then>藏书网 he read four paperback mysteries by Ross Maald. They were excellent. He felt slightly sick. Pia walked about with her hands clasped together in front of her chest, her shoulders bent. "Are you cold?" Ed?ward asked. "What are you thinking about?" he asked her, and she said she was thinking about Amboise, where she had trived to get locked in a chateau after visiting hours. She was also think?ing, she said, about the green-and-gold wooden horses they had seen in Amsterdam. "I would like enormously to have one for this flat," she said. "Even though the flat is not ours." Edward asked Pia if she felt like making love now. Pia said no. It was Sunday. Edward went to the bakery and bought bread. Then he bought milk. Then he bought cheese and the Sunday neer, which he couldnt read. Pia was asleep. Edward made coffee for himself and looked at the pictures in the neer. Pia woke up and groped her way to the bathroom. She vomited. Edward bought Pia a white dress. Pia made herself a necklace of white glass and red wood beads. Edward worried about his drinking. Would there be enough gin? Enough ice? He went out to the kit and looked at the bottle of Gordons gin. Two inches of gin. Edward and Pia went to Berlin orain. Pias father thrust flowers through the train win?dow. The flowers were ed in green paper. Edward and Pia climbed into the Mercedes-Benz taxi. "Take us to the Opera if you will, please," Edward said to the German taxi-driver in En?glish. "Ich verstehe nicht," the driver said. Edward looked at Pias belly. It was getting larger, all right. Edaid the driver. Pia wondered if the Ger?mans were as loud in Germany as they were abroad. Edward and Pia listened for loudness. Edward received a letter from London, from Bedford Square Office Equipment, Ltd. "We have now pleted fitting new parts and adjusting the Olivetti portable that was unfortunately dropped by you. The sum total of parts and labour es to ￡7.10.0 and I am adding ￡1.00.0 hire charges, which leaves a balance of ￡1.10.0 from your initial deposit of ￡10. Yours." Yours. Yours. Edward re?ceived a letter from Rome, from Fru Schmidt, the owner of the flat in Frederiksberg Alle. "Here are many Ameris who have more opportuo wear their mink capes than they like, I guess! I wish I had one, just one of rabbit or cat, it is said to be just as warm! but I left all my mink clothes behind me in Denmark! We spend most of our time in those horrible subways -- metros which are like the rear entrao Hell and what you see of a city from there? Well you are from New York and so are used to it but I was born as a human being and not as a --" Here there was a sketch of a rat, in plan. Kurt poured a fresh cup of coffee for Edward. There were three people Pia and Edward did not know in the room, two men and a woman. Everyoched Kurt p a cup of coffee for Edward. Edward explaihe Ameri position in South Vietnam. The others looked dubious. Ed?ward and Pia discussed leaving each other. Pia slept on the couch. She had pulled the red-and-brown bla up over her feet. Edward looked in the window of the used-radio store. It was full of used radios. Edward and Pia drank more sherry. "What are you thinking about?" he asked her and she said she was w if they should separate. "You dont seem happy," she said. "You dont seem happy either," he said. Edward tore the cover off a book. The book cover showed a dogs head surrounded by flowers. The dog wore a blaino. Edward went to the well for water. He lifted the heavy wooden well cover. He was wearing a glove on his right hand. He carried two buckets of water to the kit. Then he went to the back of the farmhouse and built a large wooden 99ｌib?veranda, roofed, thirty metres by res. Fortuhere was a great deal of new lumber stacked in the barn. In the Frederiksberg Alle apartment in hageared at the brass mail slot in the door. Sometimes red-and-blue airmail envelopes came through the slot. Edut his hands on Pias breasts. The nip?ples were the largest he had ever seen. Then he ted his money. He had two hundred and forty s. He would have to get some more money from somewhere. Maurice came in. "My house is three times the size of this one," Maurice said. Maurice was Dutch. Pia and Edward went to Maurices house with Maurice. Maurices wife Randy made coffee. Maurices soer cried in his wooden box. Maurices cats walked around. There en fire in Maurices kit. There were forty empty beer bottles in a er. Randy said she was a witch. She pulled a long dark hair from her head. Randy said she could tell if the baby was to be a birl. She slipped a g from her ringer and, suspending the ring on the hair, da over Pias belly. "It has to be real gold," Randy said, referring to the ring. Randy was rather pretty. Pia and Edward and Ole and Anita sat on a log in France drinking white Algerian wine. It was barely drinkable. Everyone wiped the mouth of the bottle as it assed from hand to hand. Edward wao sleep with Pia. "Yes," Pia said. They left the others. Edward looked at his red beard in the shiny bottom part of the kerosene lantern. Pia thought about her first trip to the Soviet Union. Edward sat at the bar iomorph listening to the music. Pia.. thought about her first trip to the Soviet Union. There had been a great deal of singing. Edward listeo the music. Don Cherry laying trumpet. Steve Lacey laying soprano sax. Kenny Drelaying piano. The drummer and bassist were Sdina?vians. Pia remembered a Russian boy she had known. Edward talked to a Swede. "You want to know who killed Kennedy?" the Swede said. "You killed Kennedy." "No," Edward said. "I did not." Edward went back to Frederiksberg Alle. Pia was sleeping. She was naked. Edward lifted the blas and looked at Pia sleeping. Pia moved in the bed and grabbed at the blas. Edward went into the other room and tried to find something to read. Edward had peculiar-looking hair. Parts of it were too short and parts of it were too long. Edward and Pia telephoned friends in another city. "e stay with us," Edward and Pia said. "Please!" Edward regarded Pia. Pia felt sick: "Why doesnt he leave me alone sometimes?" Edward told Pia about Harry. Once he had gotten Harry out of jail. "Harry was drunk. A cop told him to sit down. Harry stood up. Blam! Five stitches." "What are stitches?" Edward looked it up in the Dansk-Engelsk . Edward had several ma?hat were desigo have an effe Pia. One of them was washing the dishes. At other times he was sour for several hours. In Leningrad they visited Pias former lover, Paul. The streets in Leningrad are extremely wide. Paul called his friend Igor, who played the guitar. Paul called Igor oelephone. Pia and Paul were happy to see each ain. Paul talked to Edward about South Vietnam. There was tea. Edward thought that he, Edward, robably being foolish. But how could he tell? Edward washed more dishes. Igors fingers moved quickly among the frets. Ed?ward had drunk too much tea. Edward had drunk too much brandy. Edward was in bed with Pia. "You look beautiful," Edward said to Pia. Pia thought: I feel sick. In hagen Edward bought The Penguin English Diary. Sixteen s. Pia told a story about one of the princesses. "She is an archeologist, you know? Her picture es in the neer standing reat hole with her end stig up in the air." Pias little brother wore a black turtleneck sweater and sang "We Shall Overe." He played the guitar. Kurt played the guitar. Kirsten played the guitar. Anita and Ole played the guitar. Deborah played the flute. Edward read Time and Newsweek. On Tuesday Edward read Newsweek, and on Wednesday, Time. Pia bought a book about babies. Then she painted her nails silver. Pias nails were very long. an music played by Finn Videro was heard on the radio. Edward suggested that Pia go back to the univer?sity. He suggested that Pia study French, Russian, English, guitar, flute, and cooking. Pias cooking was rotten. Suddenly she wished she was with some other man and not with Edward. Edward was lis?tening to the peculiar noise inside his chest. Pia looked at Edward. She looked at his red beard, his immense spectacles. I dont like him, she thought. That red beard, those immense spectacles. SAAB jets roared overhead. Edward turned off the radio. Pia turned on the radio. Edward made himself a dry vermouth on the rocks with two onions. It was a way of not drinking. Edward felt sick. He had been reading Time and Newsweek. It was Thurs?day. Pia said to Edward that he was the only per?son she had ever loved for this long. "How long is it?" Edward asked. It was seven months. Edward cashed a check at Ameri Express. The girl gave him green-and-blue Sdinavian money. Edward leased. Little moans of pleasure. He cashed another check at Cooks. More money. Edward sold Pias farm fhteen thousand s. Muoney. Pia leased. Edward sold Pias piano for three thousand s. General rejoig. Klaus opehe door. Edward showed him the money. Pia made a chocolate cake with little red-and-white flags oop. Pia lay in bed. She felt sick. They plugged in aric heater. The lights went out. Herr Kepper knocked on the door. "Is here aric heater?" Edward showed him the money. Pia hid the electric heater. Edward watched the brass slot on the door. Pia read to Edward from the neer. She read a story about four Swedes sent to prison for rapture. Edward asked Pia if she wao make love. "No," she said. Edward said something funny. Pia tried to laugh. She was holding a piece of cake with a red-and-white flag on top. Edward bought a flashlight. Pia laughed. Pia still didnt want to go to bed with Edward. It was being annoying. He owed the gover bae a thousand dollars. Edward laughed and laughed. "I owe the gover a thousand dollars," Edward said to Pia, "did you know that?" Edward laughed, Pia laughed. They had anlass of wine. Pia regnant. They laughed and laughed. Edward turned off the radio. The lights went out. Herr Kepper knocked on the door. "The lights went out," he said in Danish. Pia and Edward laughed. "What are you thinking about?" Edward asked Pia and she said she couldnt tell him just then because she was laughing. A Few Moments of Sleeping and Waking EDWARD WOKE up. Pia was already awake. "What did you dream?" "You were my brother," Pia said. "We were mak?ing a film. You were the hero. It was a e film. You had a cape and a sword. You were jump?ing about, jumping on tables. But in the sed half of the film you had lost all your weight. You were thin. The film was ruihe parts didnt match." "I was your brother?" Scarlatti from the radio. It was Sunday. Pete sat at the breakfast table. Pete was a doctor on an Ameriuclear submarine, a psychiatrist. He had just e off patrol, fifty-eight days uhe water. Pia gave Pete scrambled eggs with mush?rooms, wienerbrod, salami with red wine in it, ba. Pete interpreted Pias dream. "Edward was your brother?" "Yes." "And your real brother is going to Italy, you said." "Yes." "It may be something as simple as a desire to travel." Edward and Pia ae went for a boat ride, a tour of the hagen harbor. The boat held one hundred and twenty tourists. They sat, four tour?ists abreast, oher side of the aisle. A guide spoke into a microphone in Danish, French, Ger?man, and English, telling the tourists what was in the harbor. "I interpreted that dream very sketchily," Pete said to Edward. "Yes." "I could have done a lot more with it." "Dont." "This is the Danish submarine fleet," the guide said into the microphone. Edward and Pia ae regarded the four black submarihere had been a flick every night oes submarine. Pete discussed the fifty-eight flicks he had seee sat on Edwards couch discussing "The Sound of Music." Edward made drinks. Roses Lime Juice fell into the Gimlet glasses. Then Edward and Pia took Pete to the airport. Pete flew away. Edward bought The Interpretation of Dreams. Pia dreamed that she had jouro a great house, a castle, to sing. She had found herself a bed in a room overlooking elaborate gardens. Then anirl appeared, a childhood friend. The new girl demanded Pias bed. Pia refused. The irl insisted. Pia refused. The irl began to sing. She sang horribly. Pia asked her to stop. Other singers appeared, demanding that Pia sur?rehe bed. Pia refused. People stood about the bed, shouting and singing. Edward smoked a cigar. "Why didnt you just give her the bed?" "My honor would be hurt," Pia said. "You know, that girl is not like that. Really she is very quiet and not asserting -- asserting? -- asserting herself. My mother said I should be more like her." "The dream was saying that your mother was wrong about this girl?" "Perhaps." "What else?" "I t remember." "Did you sing?" "I t remember," Pia said. Pias brother Soren rang the doorbell. He was carrying a pair of trousers. Pia sewed up a split in the seat. Edward made instant coffee. Pia explained blufaerdighedskraenkelse. "If you walk with your trousers open," she said. Save Edward and Pia "The ?Joan Baez Songbook." "It is a very good one," he said in English. The doorbell rang. It ias father. He was carrying a pair of shoes Pia had left at the farm. Edward made more coffee. Pia sat on the floor cutting a dress out of blue, red, and green cloth. Ole arrived. He was carrying his guitar. He began to play something from "The Joan Baez Songbook." Edward regarded Oles Mowgli hair. We be of one blood, thee and I. Ed?ward read The Interpretation of Dreams. "In cases where not my ego but only a strange person ap?pears in the dream-tent, I may safely assume that by means of identifiy ego is cealed behind that person. I am permitted to supplement my ego." Edward sat at a sidewalk cafe drinking a beer. He was wearing his brown suede shoes, his black dungarees, his blad-white checked shirt, his red beard, his immense spectacles. Edward re?garded his hands. His hands seemed old. "I am thirty-three." Tiny girls walked past the sidewalk cafe wearing skintight black pants. Then large girls in skintight white pants. Edward and Pia walked along Frederiksberg A116, uhe queer box-cut trees. "Here I was knocked off my bicycle when I was seven," Pia said. "By a car. In a snowstorm." Edward regarded the famous interse. "Were you hurt?" "My bicycle was demolished utterly." Edward re９９lib.ad The Interpretation of Dreams. Pia bent over the sewing mae, sewing blue, red, and green cloth. "Freud turned his friend R. into a disreputable uncle, in a dream." "Why?" "He wao be an assistant professor. He was bug for assistant professor." "So why was it not allowed?" "They didnt know he was Freud. They hadhe movie." "Youre joking." "Im trying." Edward and Pia talked about dreams. Pia said she had been dreaming about unhappy love affairs. In these dreams, she said, she was very unhappy. Then she woke, relieved. "How long?" "For about two months, I think. But then I wake up and Im happy. That it is not so." "Why are they unhappy love affairs?" "I dont know." "Do you think it means you want new love affairs?" "Why should I want unhappy love affairs?" "Maybe you want to have love affairs but feel guilty about wanting to have love affairs, and so they bee unhappy love affairs." "Thats subtle," Pia said. "Youre insecure." "Ho!" Edward said. "But why then am I happy when I wake up?" "Because you dont have to feel guilty anymore," Edward said glibly. "Ho!" Pia said. Edward resisted The Interpretation of Dreams. He read eight novels by Anthony Powell. Pia walked dowreet in Edwards blue sweater. She looked at herself in a shop window. Her hair was rotten. Pia went into the bathroom and played with her hair for one hour. Then she brushed her teeth for a bit. Her hair was still rotten. Pia sat down and began to cry. She cried for a quarter hour, without making any noise. Everything was rotten. Edward bought Madam Cherokees Dream Book. Dreams in alphabetical order. If you dream of black cloth, there will be a death in the family. If you dream of scissors, a birth. Edward and Pia saw three films by Jean-Luc Godard. The landlord came and asked Edward to pay Danish iax. "But I dont make any money in Denmark," Ed?ward said. Everything was rotten. Pia came home from the hairdresser with black varnish around her eyes. "How do you like it?" "I hate it." Pia was chopping up an enormous cabbage, a cabbage big as a basketball. The cabbage was of araordinary size. It was a big cabbage. "Thats a big cabbage," Edward said. "Big," Pia said. They regarded the enormous cabbage God had placed in the world for supper. "Is there vinegar?" Edward asked. "I like. . . vinegar. . . with my. . ." Edward read a magazine for men full of colored photographs of naked girls living normal lives. Edward read the ates?man, with its letters to the editor. Pia appeared in her new blue, red, and green dress. She looked wonderful. "You look wonderful." "Tak." "Tables are women," Edward said. "You remem?ber you said I was jumping on tables, in your dream. Freud says that tables are figures for women. Youre insecure." "La vache!" Pia said. Pia reported a new dream. "I came home to a small town where I was born. First, I ran around as a tourist with my camera. Then a boy who was selling something -- from one of those little wagons? -- asked me to take his picture. But I couldnt find him in the photo apparat. In the view glass. Always other people got in the way. Everyone in this town was divorced. Everybody I khen I went to a ladies club, a place where the women asked the men to dance. But there was only one man there. His picture was on an advertisement outside. He was the gigolo. Gigolo? Is that right? Then I called up people I knew, oelephone. But they were all divorced. Everybody was di?vorced. My mother and father were divorced. Helle and Jens were divorced. Everybody. Every?body was floating about in a strange way." Edward groaned. A palpable groan. "What else?" "I t remember." "Nothing else?" "When I was on my way to the ladies club, the boy I had tried to take a picture of came up and took my arm. I was surprised but I said to myself something like, Its ssary to have friends here." "What else?" "I t remember." "Did you sleep with him?" "I dont remember." "What did the ladies club remind you of?" "It was in a cellar." "Did it remind you of anything?" "It was rather like a place at the uy. Where we used to dance." "What is ected with that pla your mind?" "Once a boy came through a window to a party." "Why did he e through the window?" "So he didnt pay." "Who was he?" "Someone." "Did you dah him?" "Yes." "Did you sleep with him?" "Yes." "Very often?" "Twice." Edward and Pia went to Malmo on the flying boat. The hydrofoil leaped into the air. The feeling was that of a plane lab down an interminable runway. "I dreamed of a roof," Pia said. "Where was kept. Where it was stored." "What does that --" Edward began. "Also I dreamed s. I was beating a rug," she went on. "And I dreamed about horses, I was riding." "Dont," Edward said. Pia silently rehearsed three additional dreams. Edward regarded the green leaves of Malmo. Ed?ward and Pia moved through the rug department of a department store. Surrounded by exg rugs: Rya rugs, Polish rugs, rag rugs, straw rugs, area rugs, wall-to-wall rugs, rug remnants. Edward was thinking about ohat cost five hundred s, in seven shades of red, about the size of an opened-up Herald Tribune, Paris edition. "It is too good for the floor, clearly," Pia said. "It is to be hung on the wall." Edward had four hundred dollars in his pocket. It was supposed to last him two months. The hid?eously smiling rug salesman pressed closer. They burst into the street. Just in time. "God knows theyre beautiful, however," Edward said. "What did you dream last night?" Edward asked. "What did you dream? What?" "I t remember." Edward decided that he worried too much about the dark side of Pia. Pia regarded as a moon. Ed?ward lay irying to remember a dream. He could not remember. It was eight oclock. Edward climbed out of bed to see if there was mail on the floor, if mail had fallen through the door. No. Pia awoke. "I dreamed of beans." Edward looked at her. Madam Cherokees Dream Book flew into his hand. "To dream of beans is, in all cases, very unfor?tunate. Eating them means siess, preparing them means that the married state will be a very difficult one for you. To dream of beets is oher hand a happy omen." Edward and Pia argued about "Mrs. Miniver." It was not written by J. .B. Priestley, Edward said. "I remember it very well," Pia insisted. "Errol Flynn was her husband, he was standing there with his straps, his straps" -- Pia made a holding-up-tresture -- "hanging, and she said that she loved Walter Pidgeon." "Errol Flynn was not even in the picture. You think J. B. Priestley wrote everything, dont you? Everything in English." "I dont." "Errol Flynn was not even in the picture." Ed?ward was drunk. He was shouting. "Errol Flynn was not even. . . in. . . the goddam picture!" Pia was not quite asleep. She was standing on a street er. Women regarded her out of the ers of their eyes. She was holding a string bag taining strawberries, beer, razor blades, turnips. An old lady rode up on a bicycle and stopped for the traffic light. The old lady straddled her bicycle, seized Pias string bag, and threw it into the gutter. Then she pedalled away, with the ging light. People crowded around. Someone picked up the string bag. Pia shook her head. "No," she said. "She just. . . I have never seen her before." Someone asked Pia if she wanted him to call a poli. "What for?" Pia said. Her father was standing there smiling. Pia thought, These things have no significe really. Pia thought, If this is to be my dream for tonight, then I dont want it. Can We Talk I WENT TO THE BANK to get my money for the day. And they had pai yellow. Under cover of night, I shrewdly supposed. With white plaster letters saying CREDIT DEPARTMENT. And a row of new vice藏书网-presidents. But I have resoury own, I said. Sulphur deposits in Texas and a great humming factory off the coast of Kansas. Where we make little things. Thinking what about artichokes for lunch? Pleased to be in this yellow bank at 11:30 in the m. A black man cashing his che a Vassar College sweatshirt. A blue poli with a St. Christopher pio his gu. Thinking I need a l?９９lｉｂ?ittle leaf to rest my artichokes upon. The lady stretg my moo make sure none of hers stuck to it. Fourteenth Street gay with Judy Bond Dresses Are On Strike. When I leaned out of yh window in my shorts, did you really think I had hurtling to destru in mind? I was imagining a loudspeaker-and-leaflet unit that would give me your undivided attention. When I leaned out of yh window in my shorts, did you think why me? Into his bank I thought I saw my friend Keh go. To get his money for the day. L outside in my painted shoes. sidering my pros?pects. A question of buying new underwear oing to the laundromat. And when I put a nickel in the soap mae it barks. When I leaned out of yh window in my shorts, were you nervous because you had just met me? I said: Your eyes have not been surpassed. The artichokes in their glass jar from the arti?choke heart of the world, Castroville, Calif. I asked the man for a leaf. Just one, I said. We dohem in ones, he said. we iate, I asked. Breathing his disgust he tucked a green leaf into my yellow vest with his brown hands. When I asked you why you didnt marry Harry you said it was because he didnt like you. Then I told you how I cheated the Thai lieutenant who was my best friend then. Posing with my leaf against a plastic paper plate. Hoping cordially that my friend Viaking money in his building. Theichokes one by one. Yes, you said, this is the part they call Turtle Bay. Coffee w what my end would be. Think?ing of my friend Roger killed in the crash of a Link Trai Randolph Field in 43. Or was it breakbone fever at Walter Reed. Then out into the street again and uptown for my feng lesson. Stopping on the way to give the underwear man a ten. Because he looked about to bark. When I reached to touch your breast you said you had a cold. I believed you. I made more pop?. Thinking of my friend Max who looks like white bread. A brisk bout with my head in a wire cage. The Slash Waltz from "The Mark of Zorro." And in the shower a ten for Max, because his were the best two out of three. He put it in his lacy shoe. With his watd his application to the Colorado School of Mines. In the shower I refrained from speaking of you to anyone. The store where I buy news buttoned up tight. Because the owners are in the mountains. Where I would surely be had I not decided to make us miserable. I said: I seem to have lost all my manuscripts, in which my theory is proved not once >but again and again and again, and now when people who dont believe a vertical monorail to Venus is possible shout at me, I have nothing to say. You peered into my gloom. My friend Hermans house. Where I tickle the bell. It is me. Io put a vacuum er to?gether. The parts on the floor in alphabetical order. Herman away, making money. I hug his wife Agnes. A beautiful girl. And when one hugs her tightly９9ｌiｂ?, her eyes fill. When I asked you if you had a private ine, you said something intelligent but I fet what. The skin sg off my back from the week at the beach. Where I lay without knowing you. Discussing the real estate game, Agnes and I. Into this game I may someday go, I said. Building cheap aing dear. With a doorman to front for me. Tons of money in it, I said. When my falli ostponed, were you disappointed? Did you experience a disillusio event? Hunted for a Post. To lean upon in the black hours ahead. And posed a brochure to lure folk into my new building. Titled "The Huma In flict With Itself." Promising 24-hour iion. And other features. Dang on my parquet floor in my parquet shorts. To Mahler. After you sent me home you came down in your elevator to be kissed. You knew I would be sitting oeps. Game SHOTWELL KEEPS THE JACKS and the rubber ball in his attache case and will not allow me to play with them. He plays with them, alone, sitting on the floor he sole hour after hour, t?ing "owosies, threesies, foursies" in a pre?cise, well-modulated voiot so loud as to be annoying, not so soft as to allow me tet. I point out to Shotwell that two derive more enjoyment from playing jacks than one, but he is not ied. I have asked repeatedly to be al?lowed to play by myself, but he simply shakes his head. "Why?" I ask. "Theyre mine," he says. And when he has finished, when he has sated himself, back they go into the attache case. It is unfair but there is nothing I do about it. I am ag to get my hands on them. Shotwell and I watch the sole. Shotwell and I live uhe ground and watch the sole. If certais take place upon the sole, we are to i our keys in the appropriate locks and turn our keys. Shotwell has a key and I have a key. If we turn our keys simultaneously the bird flies, cer?tain switches are activated and the bird flies. But the bird never flies. In one huhirty-three days the bird has not flown. Meanwhile Shotwell and I watch each other. We each wear a .45 and if Shotwell behaves strangely I am supposed to shoot him. If I behave strangely Shotwell is supposed to shoot me. We watch the sole and think about shooting each other and think about the bird. Shotwells behavior with the jacks is strange. Is it strange? I do not know. Perhaps he is merely a selfish bastard, perhaps his character is flawed, per?haps his childhood was twisted. I do not know. Each of us wears a .45 and each of us is sup?posed to shoot the other if the other is behaving strangely. How strangely is strangely? I do not know. In addition to the .45 I have a .38 which Shotwell does not know about cealed in my attache case, and Shotwell has a .25 calibre Beretta which I do not know about strapped to his right calf. Sometimes instead of watg the sole I pointedly wa9９liｂ?ch Shotwells .45, but this is simply a ruse, simply a maneuver, iy I am watg his hand when it dangles in the viity of his right calf. If he decides I am behaving strangely he will shoot me not with the .45 but with the Beretta. Similarly Shotwell pretends to watch my .45 but he is really watg my haing idly atop my attache case, my haing idly atop my attache case, my hand. My haing idly atop my attache case. In the beginning I took care to behave normally. So did Shotwell. Our behavior ainfully nor?mal. Norms of politeness, sideration, speech, and personal habits were scrupulously observed. But then it became apparent that an error had been made, that out relief was not going to arrive. Ow?ing to an ht. Owing to an ht we have been here for one huhirty-three days. When it became clear that an error had been made, that we were not to be relieved, the norms were relaxed. Definitions of normality were redrawn in the agree?ment of January 1, called by us, The Agreement. Unifulations were relaxed, aimes are no lorously scheduled. We eat when we are hungry and sleep when we are tired. ?siderations of rank and prece were tempo?rarily put aside, a handsome cession on the part of Shotwell, who is a captain, whereas I am only a first lieutenant. One of us watches the sole at all times rather than two of us watg the ?sole at all times, except when we are both on our feet. One of us watches the sole at all times and if the bird flies then that one wakes the other aurn our keys in the locks simultaneously and the bird flies. Our system involves a delay of per?haps twelve seds but I do not care because I am not well, and Shotwell does not care because he is not himself. After the agreement was signed Shotwell produced the jacks and the rubber ball from his attache case, and I began to write a series of descriptions of forms in nature, such as a shell, a leaf, a stone, an animal. On the walls. Shotwell plays jacks and I write descriptions of natural forms on the walls. Shotwell is enrolled in a USAFI course which leads to a masters degree in business administra?tion from the Uy of Wissin (although we are not in Wissin, we are in Utah, Montana or Idaho). When we went down it was iher Utah, Montana or Idaho, I dont remember. We have been here for one huhirty-three days owing to an ht. The pale green reinforced crete walls sweat and the air ditioning zips on and off erratically and Shotwell reads Introduc?tion to Marketing by Lassiter and Munk, making notes with a blue ballpoint pen. Shotwell is not himself but I do not know it, he presents a calm asped reads Introdu to Marketing and makes his exemplary notes with a blue ballpoint pen, meanwhile trolling the .38 in my attache case with ohird of his attention. I am not well. We have been here one huhirty-three days owing to an ht. Although now we are not sure what is ht, what is plan. Perhaps the plan is for us to stay here permaly, or if not permaly at least for a year, for three hun?dred sixty-five days. Or if not for a year for some number of days known to them and not known to us, such as two hundred days. Or perhaps they are our behavior in some way, sensors of some kind, perhaps our behavior determihe number of days. It may be that they are pleased with us, with our behavior, not in every detail but in sum. Perhaps the whole thing is very successful, perhaps the whole thing is an experiment and the experiment is very successful. I do not know. But I suspect that the only way they persuade sun-loving creatures into their pale greeing re?inforced crete rooms uhe ground is to say that the system is twelve hours on, twelve hours off. And then lock us below for some number of days known to them and not known to us. We eat well although the frozen enchiladas are damp when defrosted and the frozen devils food cake is sour and untasty. We sleep uneasily and acrimo?niously. I hear Shotwell shouting in his sleep, ob?jeg, denoung, cursing sometimes, weeping sometimes, in his sleep. When Shotwell sleeps I try to pick the lo his attache case, so as to get at the jacks. Thus far I have been unsuccessful. Nor has Shotwell been successful in pig the loy attache case so as to get at the .38. I have seen the marks on the shiny surface. I laughed, irine, pale green walls sweating and the air ditioning whispering, irine. I write descriptions of natural forms on the walls, scratg them oile surface with a diamond. The diamond is a two and one-half carat solitaire I had in my attache case when we went down. It was for Lucy. The south wall of the room tain?ing the sole is already covered. I have de?scribed a shell, a leaf, a stone, animals, a baseball bat. I am aware that the baseball bat is not a natural form. Yet I described it. "The baseball bat," I said, "is typically made of wood. It is typically oer ih or a little longer, fat at one end, tapering to afford a fortable grip at the other. The end with the handhold typically offers a slight rim, or lip, at the her extremity, to prevent slip?page." My description of the baseball bat ran to 4500 words, all scratched with a diamond on the south wall. Does Shotwell read what I have writ?ten? I do not know. I am aware that Shotwell re?gards my writing-behavior as a little strange. Yet it is ner than his jacks-behavior, or the day he appeared in black bathing trunks with the .25 calibre Beretta strapped to his right calf and stood over the sole, trying to span with his two arms outstretched the distaween the locks. He could not do it, I had already tried, standing over the sole with my two arms outstretched, the distance is too great. I was moved to ent but did not ent, ent would have provoked ter-?t>ent, ent would have led God knows where. They had in their infiience, in their infinite fht, in their infinite wisdom already imagined a man standing over the sole with his two arms outstretched, trying to span with his two arms outstretched the distaween the locks. Shotwell is not himself. He has made certaiures. The burden of his message is not clear. It has something to do with the keys, with the locks. Shotwell is a strange person. He appears to be less affected by our situation than I. He goes about his business stolidly, watg the sole, studying Introdu to Marketing, boung his rubber ball on the floor in a steady, rhythmical, stious manner. He appears to be less af?fected by our situation than I am. He is stolid. He says nothing. But he has made certaiures, certaiures have been made. I am not sure that I uand them. They have something to do with the keys, with the locks. Shotwell has some?thing in mind. Stolidly he shucks the shiny silver paper from the frozen enchiladas, stolidly he stuffs them into the electric oven. But he has something in mind. But there must be a quid pro quo. I insist on a quid pro quo. I have something in mind. I am not well. I do not know our target. They do not tell us for which city the bird is targeted. I do not know. That is planning. That is not my respon?sibility. My responsibility is to watch the sole and wheais take place upon the ?sole, turn my key in the lock. Shotwell bouhe rubber ball on the floor in a steady, stolid, rhythmi?cal manner. I am ag to get my hands on the ball, on the jacks. We have been here one huhirty-three days owing to an ht. I write on the walls. Shotwell ts "owo-sies, threesies, foursies" in a precise, well-modu?lated voiow he cups the jacks and the rubber ball in his hands and rattles them suggestively. I do not know for which city the bird is targeted. Shotwell is not himself. Sometimes I ot sleep. Sometimes Shotwell ot sleep. Sometimes when Shotwell cradles me in his arms and rocks me to sleep, singing Brahms "Guten abend, gute Nacht," or I cradle Shotwell in my arms and rock him to sleep, singing, I uand what it is Shotwell wishes me to do. At suents we are very close. But only if he will give me the jacks. That is fair. There is some?thing he wants me to do with my key, while he does something with his key. But only if he will give me my turn. That is fair. I am not well. Alice Twirling around on my piano stool my head begins to swim my head begins to swim twirling around on my piano stool twirling around on my piano stool a dizzy spell eventuates twirling around on my piano stool I begin to feel dizzy twirling around on my piano stool I want to fornicate with Alice but my wife Regine would be insulted Alices husband Buck would be insulted my child Hans would be insulted my an?swering service would be insulted tingle of insult running through this calm lovihy produc?tive tightly-knit th藏书网e hinder portion scalding-house good eating Curve B in addition to the usual baths and ablutions mili?tary police sumptuousness of the washhouse risking misstatements kept distances iris to iris queen of holes damp, hairy legs note of anger ting and shouting konk sense of "mold" on the "muff" sense of "talk" on the "surface" konk2 all sorts of chemical girl who delivered the letter give it a bone plummy bare legs saturated in every belief and ignoraional living private t bad bosom uain workmen mutton-tugger obedieo the rules of the logical system Lord Muck hot tears harmonica rascal thats chaos you produce chaos? Alice asked certainly I produce chaos I said I produced chaos she regarded the chaos chaos is handsome and attractive she said and more durable than re?gret I said and more nourishing tha she said I want to fornicate with Alice but it is a doomed project fornig with Alice there are obstacles impediments preclusiooppels I will exhaust them for you what a gas see cruel deprivements SE SEVEN moral ambiguities SE EEN Alices thighs are like SE TWENTY-ONE I am an OB I obstetricate ladies from predits holding the bucket I carry a device ected by radio to my answering service bleeps when I am wanted t even go to the films now for fear of bleeping during filmic highpoints I in ?sce turn off while fornig with Alice? Alice is married to Buck I am married tine Buck is my friend Regine is my wife regret is battol?ogized iIONS SIX THROUGH TWELVE and the actual intercourse intrudes somewhere iION FORTY-THREE I maintain an air of serenity which is spurious I mahis by limping my limp artful creation not an abject limp (Quasimodo) but a proud limp (Byron) I move slowly solemnly through the world miming a stiff leg this enables me to ehe gaze of strahe hatred of pediatris we discuss discuss and discuss important sider?ations swarm and dither for example in what house I fornicate with Alice? in my house with Hans pounding on the bedroom door in her house with Buck shedding his sheepskin coat i in some temporary rented house what joy Alice fornicate without her Malachi record playing? will Buck miss the Malachi record which Alice will have taken to the rented house? will Bueel before the rows and rows of records in his own house running a finger along the spines looking for the Malachi record? poignant poignant Buck the ho architect with his acres of projects his mobs htsmen the alarm bell which goes off in his office whehe gover decides to renovate a few blocks of blight Buck object if I decide to renovate Alice? and what of the boil on my ass the right buttock I lounge in the bed in the rented house in such a way that Alice will not see will not start away from ierror revulsion and what s should I rug the rented house and what of cups what of leaning on an elbow in the Hertz Rent-All bed having fornicated with Alid desiring a cup of blad what of the soap powder dish towels such a cup implies and what of a det respect for the opinions of mankind and what of the hammer throw I was a heavy man with the hammer once should there be a spare hammer for spare moments? Alices thighs are like great golden varnished wooden oars I assume I havehem chaos is tasty AND USEFUL TOO colored clothes paper handke９９lib.rchiefs super cartoons bit of fresh the Popes mule inmission do such poor work together in various Poujadist maiooned blacks waivers play to the gas Zentral-bibliothek Zurich her bare ass with a Teddy bear blatty stri in a state of suspeension by a weight cut from the backs of alligators you do it too its as easy as it looks there is no game for that particular player white and violet over hedge and ditch clutg airbrush still si wearing a ring the dry a better "feel" in use preteo be doing it quite un?sciously fishes hammering long largish legs damp fier dancer, strains of music, expenses of the flight Swiss emotion transparent thin alkaline and very slippery fluid danger for white rats little ?try telephone booths brut insults brought by mouth famous is in bed regarding Alices stomach it will be a hand?some one Im sure but will it not also resemble some others? or would it be possible in the rented house to dis?peh a bed to have only a mattress on the floor with all the values that attach to that or per?haps only a pair of blas or perhaps only the skin of some slow-moving animal such as the slug the armadillo or perhaps only a pile of read neers wise Alice tells you things you hadnt heard before in the world in Paris she reizes the Ritz from the Babar books oh yes thats where the elephants stay or would it be possible to use other peoples houses at hours when these houses were empty would that be erotic? could love be made in doorways under hedges uhe sprinting chestnut tree? Alice fo her Malachi record so that Bueeling before the rows of records in his empty deserted abandoned and pace-setting house fingering the galore of spihere would find the Malachi rec?ord with little peeps of gree peeps ood for Buck! shit Magritte what is good about Alice is first she likes chaos what is good about Alice is sed she is a friend of Tom SE EEN TOM plaster thrashing gumbo of explanations grease oinguely new plays seal songs sudden torrential rains car?bon projects evidence of eroticism flict between zones skin, ambiguous movements baked on the blue table 3 mm. a stone had broken my windshield hurrie damage impulsive behavior knees folded back lines on his toh a Magic Marker gape e tips ligamenta lata old men buried upright delights of everyones life uing variations pygmy owl assumes the quadrupedal position in which the iines sink forward measurement of kegs other sces megapod nursemaid said very studied, hostile things she had long been saving up breakfast dream wonderful loftirank red clover uterine spasms guided by reason bla?velopes highly esteemed archers wet leg critical menials makiures chocolate ice pink and green marble weight of the shoes I was howling i Tom was howling in the hall white and violet over hedge and ditch clutg oolfoo quiet street suburban in flavor quiet crowd only slightly restive as reports of the letters from Japan circulate I am whispering to my child Hans my child Hans is whispering to me Hans whispers that I am faced with a problem ihics the systems of the axiologicalists he whispers the systems of the deontologicalists but I am not privy to these systems I whisper try the New School he whispers the small devi my coat pocket goes bleep! nights of ethics at the New School is this "middle life"? I hurry on to "old age"? I see Alice walking away from me carrying an A & P shopping bag the shopping bag is full of haunting melodies grid coordinates great expecta?tions French ticklers magic marks nights of ethics at the New School "good" and "bad" as terms with only aive meaning I like the Walrus best Alice whispered he ate more than the Carpehough the instructor whispered then I like the Carpenter best Alice whispered but he ate as many as he could get the instructor whis?pered yellow brick wall visible from rear bedroom win?dow of the rented house I see Alice walking away from me carrying a Pri?mary Structure MOVEMENT OF ALICES ZIPPER located at the rear of Alices dress runnin..g from the neckhole to the bumhole yes I know the first is an attribute of the dress the sed an attribute of the girl but I have located it for you in sh way the zipper you could find it in the dark a few es are standing about o them are some louts the es and louts are talking about the movement of Alices zipper rap Ali the rump standing in the rented bed?room I have a roller and a bucket of white paint requires a sed coat perhaps a third who knows a fourth and fifth I sit on the floor o the paint bucket regarding the yellow brick wall visible there a subway token on the floor I pick it up drop it into the paint bucket slow circles on the surface of the white paint insurance? fess that for many years I myself took no other measures, followed obediently in the footsteps of my teachers, copied the procedures I observed painted animals, frisky iions, thwarted pa?trons, most great hospitals and ics, gray gauzes transparent plastitainers Presidential dining room about 45 cm. coquetry and flirtation knit games beautiful tensioeal catch-penny devices impersonal panic Klingers nude iig nose of bear with long branch or wand unbutton his boots fairly broad duct, highly elastic walls peerless piece "rag" Dr. Haacke has poppy-show pulled me down on the bed and started two ceiling-high trees astonishing and little known remark of B?alzacs welter this field of honor financial difficulties what sort of figure did these men cut? Alices husband Buck calls me will I gather with him fame of golf? I accept but on the shoe shelf I ot find the correct shoes distraess stupidity weak memory! I am b myself what should be the punishment I am forbidden to pick my nose forevermore Buck is rushing toward me carrying pieces of car?bon paper big as bedsheets what is he hinting at? duplicity bleep! it is the tipped uterus from Carson City calling SE FORTY-THREE then I began chewing upon Alices long and heavy breasts first oheher the nipples brightened freshehen I turned her oomad rubbed her back first slow then fast first the shoulders the?tocks possible attitudes found in books 1) I dont know whats happening to me 2) what does it mean? 3) seized with the deepest sadness, I know not why 4) I am lost, my head whirls, I know not where I am 5) I lose myself 6) I ask you, what have I e to? 7) I no longer know where I am, what is this try? 8) had I fallen from the skies, I could not be middy 9) a mixture of pleasure and fu?sion, that is my state 10) where am I, and when will this end? 11) what shall I do? I do not know where I am but I do know where I am I am o Eleventh Street shot with lust I speak to Ali the street she is carrying a shopping bag I attempt to see what is in the shopping bag but she ceals it we turn to savor rising over the Womens House of Detention a particularly choice bit of "sisters" sta?tisti the loy of life angelism straight as a loons leg ceals her face behind piques hurled unopened scream the place down tuck mathematical models six hours in the fessional psychological parisons scream the plaars yellow plights make micefeet of old cowboy airs flakes people pointing to the sea overboots nasal tact 7 cm. pruhe audience dense car correctly identify chemical junk blooms of iron wonderful loftiness se populations A Picture History of the War Kellerman, gigantic with gin, runs through the park at noon with his naked father slung under one arm. Old Kellerman covers himself with both hands and howls iearing wind, although sometimes he sings in the bursting sunlight. Where there is tearing wind he howls, and where there is bursting sunlight he sings. The park is empty except for a pair of young mothers icoats who stand, pressed together in a rapturous embraear the fountain, "What are those mothers doing there," cries the general, "he fountain?" "That is love," replies the son, "which is found everywhere, healing aiful." "Oh what a desire I have," cries the general, "that there might happen some great dispute among nations, some great anger, so that I might be myself again!" "Think of the wrack," replies the son. "Empty saddles, boots re?versed iirrups, tasteful eulogies --" "I want to tell you something!" shrieks the general. "On the field where this battle was fought, I saw a very wonderful thing which the natives pointed out to me!" On the night of the sixteenth, Wellington lin?gered until three in the m in Brussels at the Duchess of Rids ball, sitting in the front row. "Showing himself very cheerful," acc to Muffling. Then with Muffli out for the windmill at Brye, where they found Marshal Bliicher and his staff. Kellerman, followed by the young mothers, runs out of the park and into a bar. "Eh, hello, Mado. A Beaujolais." "Eh, hello, Tris-Tris," the barmaid replies. She is wiping the zinc with a dirty handkerchief. "A Beaujolais?" "Cut the seality, Mado," Kellerman says. "A Beaujolais. Listen, if anybody asks for me --" "You havent been in." "Thanks, Mado. Youre a good sort." Kellerman knocks back the Beaujolais, tucks his naked father under his arm, and runs out the door. "You were rude with that woman!" the general cries. "What is the rationale?" "Its a vention," Kellerman replies. The Bel?gian regiments had been tampered with. In the melee, I was almost instantly disabled in both arms, losing first my sword, and then my reins, and fol?lowed by a few men, who were presently cut down, no quarter being asked, allowed, iven, I was carried along by my horse, till, receiving a blow from a sabre, I fell senseless on my face to the ground. Kellerman runs, reading an essay by Paul Goodman in entary. His eye, caught by a line in the last paragraph ("In a viable stitu?tion, every excess of power should structurally gee its own antidote"), has wandered back up the n of type to see what is being talked about ("I have discussed the matter with Mr. and Mrs. Beck of the Living Theatre and we agree that the followihods are tolerable"). "Whats that?" calls the first mother. "On the bench there, covered with the overcoat?" "Thats my father," Kellerman replies cour?teously. "My dad." "Isnt he cold?" "Are you cold?" "He looks cold to me!" exclaims the one in the red er. "Theyre funny-looking, arent they, when they get that old? They look like radishes." "Something like radishes," Kellerman agrees. "Dirty in the viity of the roots, if thats what you mean." "What does he do?" asks the one in the blue boots. "Or, rather, what did he do when he was of an age?" Kellerman falls to his knees in front of the bench. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I itted endoarchy two times, melanicity four times, encropatomy seven times, and preprocity with ig?neous i, pretolemicity, and overt ialism once each." "Within how long a period?" "Since Monday." "Did you enjoy it?" "Which?" "Any of it." "Some of it. Melanicity iernoon pro?motes a kind of limited joy." "Have you left anything out?" "A great deal." On the field where this battle was fought I saw a very wonderful thing which the natives pointed out to me. The bones of the slain lie scattered upon the field in two lots, those of the Persians in one place by themselves, those of the Egyptians in another place apart from them. If, then, you strike the Persian skulls, even with a pebble, they are so weak, that you break a hole in them; but the Egyptian skulls are s, that you may smite them with a stone and you will scarcely break them in. "Oh what a desire I have," cried the general, "that my son would, like me, jump out of airplanes into aggressor terrain and find farmers with pitch?forks poised to fork him as he drifts into the trees! And the farmers dog, used for chivying sheep usually -- how is it possible that I have a son who does not know the farmers dog? And then calling out in the night to find the others, voices in the night, its incredibly romantic. I gave him a D-ring for a teething toy and threw him up in the air, higher than any two-year-old had ever been, and put him on the mantel, and said, Jump, you little bastard, and he jumped, and I caught him -- this when I was only a captain and chairman of the Mae Gun ittee at Benning. He had ex?pensive green-gold grenadiers from F.A.O. Schwarz and a garrote I made myself from the E flat on his mothers piano. Firefights at dusk on the back lawn at Leonard Wood. Superior numbers in the shower room. Give them a little mrape, Captain Gregg, uhe autumnal moon." "Now, Agnes, dont start g! We better go see Uncle Rene all together right away, and hell ex?plain anything you o know." "Iing point of view," the ladies remarked. "Does he know anything about skin?" "Everything." Touched by the wind, the general howls. "He was a jumping general," Kellerman explains to the ladies, "who jumped out of airplanes with his men to fall on the aggressor rear with sudden surprise and great hurt to that rear. He jumped in Sicily with the One-Oh-Bloody-One Airborhe Germaery at Pomezia has twenty-seven thousand four hundred graves," Kellerman de?clares. "What could he have been thinking of, on the way down? pare if you will the se with the se at the battle of Borodino, at the battle of Arbela, at the battle of Metaurus, at the battle of Chalons, at the battle of Pultowa, at the battle of Valmy --" "Eh, hello, Mado. A Beaujolais." "Eh, hello, Tris-Tris. A Beaujolais?" "Listen, Mado, if anybody asks for me --" "You havent been in." "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I wao say a certain thing to a certain man, a certain true thing that had crept into my head. I opened my head, at the place provided, and proceeded to pronouhe true thing that lay languishing there -- that is, proceeded to propel that trueness, that felicitous trularity, from its plaside my head out into world life. The certain man stood waiting to receive it. His face reflected an eager acceptingness. Everything was right. I propelled, using my mind, my mouth, all my muscles. I propelled. I propelled and propelled. I felt that trularity inside my head moving slowly through the passage pro?vided (stained like the caves of Lascaux with gar?litihistamines, Berlioz, a history, a history) to?ward its debut on the world stage. Past my teeth, with their little browers knitted of gin and cigar smoke, toward its leap to critical scrutiny. Past my lips, with their tendency to flake away in cold weather -- "Father, I have a few questions to ask you. Just a few questions about things that have been both?eriely." In the melee, I was almost in?stantly disabled in both arms. Losing first my sword, and then my reins. And followed by a few men, who were presently cut down, no quarter being asked, allowed, iven, I was carried along by my horse, till -- "Who is fit for marriage? What is the art of love? hysiental ail?ments be hereditary? What is the best age for marriage? Should marriage be postponed until the husband alone support a family? Should a per?son who is sterile marry? What is sterility? How do the male reproductive ans work? Is a human egg like a birds? What is a false pregnancy? What is artificial insemination? What happens if the sex glands are removed? In the male? In the female? Is it possible to tell if a person is emotionally fit for marriage? remarital medical exami?nations important? What is natural childbirth? What is the best size for a family? interfaith marriages be successful? a couple know in advance if they have children? Are there any physical standards to follow in choosing a mate? How soon after ception a woman tell if she is pregnant? What is the special fun of the sex hormones? What are the causes of barrenness? How reliable are the various traceptive devices? If near relatives marry will their children be abnor?mal? Do the first sex experiences have a really im?portant bearing upon marital adjustment? im?potence be cured? the sex of a child be pre?dicted? How often should intercourse be practiced? How long should it last? Should you turn out the lights? Should music be played? Is our culture sick? Is a human egg like a birds?" Kellerman stops at the ginstore. "We t use any of those," the ginstoreman says. "Those what-ever-it-ises youve got under your arm there." "Thats my dad," Kellerman says. "Formerly known as the Hammer of Thor. Now in reduced circumstances." "I thought it was radishes," the ginstoreman says. "A bunch of radishes." Kellerman kneels on the floor of the ginstore. "Bless me, Father, for I have sihat one was venial. But in respeortal sins, I would annouhe following sins. Their mortalaciousness will not disappoint, is in fact so patent, so demonstrable, that the mea fessor would, with a shy wave of the hand, accept and five them, in the manner of a s ior running his hand generously, fivingly around the inside of a Valpak presented by a pretty girl." "What do you do?" the mothers ask. "You your?self." "Im a bridge expert," Kellerman says kindly. "The father of a book on the subject, Greater Bridge, which attempts to make plex the simple, so that we will not be bored. A Bible e, if you take my meaning. Some of our boys carried it in the pockets over their hearts during the war. As they dropped through the air. Singing Johnny Got a Zero. " All deliriously pretty and sexy mothers in brawny el tweeds. Blad-white hounds-tooth checks, say; blad-white silk Paisley blouses; gleaming little pairs of white kidskin gloves. Very correct hang to the jackets. Short skirts with a clochelike slide over the hip, lots of a at the hemline -- couldter. Cafe-ed mouths, shiny e-brown cheeks, rib?bons of green enamel eye makeup. Mrs. Subways. "Im cold," old Kellerman says. "Cold," the ladies remark, pointing. Kellerman pulls out his flask. "Winter gin," he says, "it absumeth the geniture." "Say something professional," the ladies request. "?6 ?K Q J 9 4 ?A K 8 5 ?K Q 2," Kellerman says. Ohird, Hoods main army was in the neighborhood of Lost Mountain. Stewarts Corps was sent to strike the railway north of Marietta and to capture, if possible, Allatoona. Steward, on the m of the fifth, rejoined Hood, haviroyed two small posts on the railroad and hav?i Frenchs division to capture Allatoona aroy the Etowah Bridge. The Army of the Cum?berlahe pursuit, and on the evening of the fourth it was bivouag at the foot of Kenesaw Mountain. "And many others," Kellerman says. "Just as steamy and sordid as that one. Each sin preserved in amber in the vaults of the Library of gress, uhe ma of the Registrar of Chts." "With all the sticky details?" "Rife with public hair," Kellerman says, "just to give you a whiff of the sordidness possible sihe perfe of modern high-speed offset lithog?raphy." "O sin," exclaims the general from his bench, "in which fear and guilt endulate (or are endulated by) each other to mess up the real world of objects with a film of nastiness and dirt, how well I uand you! Standing there! How well I uand your fual motifs! How ill I uand my fual motifs! Why are ob?jects preferable to parables? How did I get so old so suddenly? In what circumstances is fusion a virtue? Why have I never heard of Yusef Lateef? 1. On flute, Lateef creates a pletely distinctive sound -- sensitive, haunting, but filled with a firm and passiorength unequalled among jazz flut?ists. 2. On tenor saxophone, Yusef is again thhly aingly individual, bining bril?liantly modern ception with a big, deep, pellingly full-throated tone. 3. The oboe, as played by Lateef, undergoes a startling transformation into a valid jazz instrument, wailing with a rid fer?vently funky blues quality. 4. What is wailing? What is funky? Why does language subvert me, subvert my seniority, my medals, my oldness, whe gets a ce? What does language have against me -- me that has been good to it, re?speg its little peculiarities and nicilosities, for sixty years? 5. What do years have against me? Why have they stuck stones in my kidneys, devalu?ated my tumulosity, retracted my hair? 6. Where does hair go when it dies?" Kellerman is eating one of his fifty-two-t lunches: a 4 1/2 oz. of Sells Liver Pate (thirty-os) and a box of Nabisco Saltiwenty-os), washed down with the last third of a bottle of leftover Chablis. He lifts the curiously ugly e wineglass, one of four (the fourth de?stroyed in the dishwasher) sent to Noelie at Christ?mas by her on aunt. He is reading an essay by Paul Goodman in entary. His eye, caught by a line in the last paragraph ("In a viable stitu?tion, every excess of power should structurally gee its own antidote"), has wandered back up the page to see what is being talked about ("I have discussed the matter with Mr. and Mrs. Beck of the Living Theatre and we agree that the followihods are tolerable"). He nicks the little hump of pate with the sharp edge of a Saltine. He ?gratulates himself on the eical elegance of the meal. Gregg meantime has attacked Fitzhugh Lee on the Louisa Courthouse road and has driven him bae distance,?９９ｌｉｂ? pursuing until nightfall. Near one of the hedges of the Hougoumont farm, without even a drummer to beat the rappel, we succeeded in rallying uhe enemys fire 300 men; I made a villager act as uide, and bound him by his arm to my stirrup. Kellerman stands before a chalkboard with a long wooden pointer in his hand. The general has been folded into a schoolchilds desk, sitting in the front row. On the board, in chalk, there is a dia?grammatic sketch of a suit of armor. Kellerman points. "A.: Palette." "Palette," the old mas. "Covers the shoulder joint," Kellerman says. "The armpit?" the old man suggests. "The shoulder joint," Kellerman says. "Are you certain?" "Absolutely." The general writes in his tablet. Kellerman points. "B.: Breastplate." His father scribbles. "Covers the --" "Breast," old Kellerman says. "Chest," Kellerman says. "Mustard plaster," the old man says. &qu to break up the clog in your little lung. Your mother and I. All through the night. Tears in her eyes. The doctor forty miles away." "C.: Tasset." "Semolina pudding you wanted. No, I said. Later, I said. Bad for the gut, I said. You cried and cried." "Tasset," Kellermas. "For the upper thigh. Suspended from the late by straps." "Strap. Ah, strap!" "D.: Cuisse." "I was good with the strap. Fast, but careful. Not too muot too little. Calculating the angles, wind velocity, air-spriy, time of day. My windup a perfect hyperbolic paraboloid." "Covers the thigh proper," Kellerman says. "Fas?tened by means of --" "Strap," the general says, with satisfa. "Un?pleasant duty. When in the course of humas it bees necessary--" "You loved it!" Kellerman says, shouting. The Belgian regiments had been tampered with. In the melee, I was almost instantly disabled in both arms, losing first my sword, and then my reins, and followed by a few men, who were presently cut down, no quarter being asked, allowed, iven, I was carried along by my horse, till, receiving a blow from a sabre, I fell senseless on my face to the ground. Germany was unspeakably silly. Teically, I was a radar operator on the guidance system. It was a rotten job. Ten hours a day of solid boredom. I did get orip to the wild Hebrides for the annual firing of the missile (its called a Corporal). fidentially, it doesnt work worth a damn. We have a saying: Its effective range is thirty-five feet -- its length. If it falls on you, it be lethal. "There are worms in words!" the general cries. "The worms in words are, like Mexi? jumping beans, agitated by the warmth of the mouth." "Flaming gel," Kellerman says. "You were fond of flaming gel." "Not overfond," the general replies. "Not like some of them." "Whats that you have there, under your arm?" asks the bookstoreman. "The Blaight," Kellerman says. "I want one of those Histomaps of Evolution that you have in the window there, showing the swelling of the unsegmented worms -- flatworms, ribbon worms, arrow worms, wheelworms, spring heads, and so forth." "Worms in words," the general repeats, "agitated by the warmth of the mouth." "Im not accepting any more blame, Papa," Kel?lerman says finally. "Blame would in my. . ." He hands round the pate. "I love playing with mugged-up cards," Kellerman says, to the mother. She is wearing a slim sand-tweed coat with two rows of gilt buttons and carrying a matchbook that says (black lettering, rose-blush ground) "VD Is On the Rise In New York City." "The four of fans, the twelve of wands, the deuce of kidneys, the Jack of Brutes. And shaved decks and readers of various kinds, they make the game worthy of the name." And it was true that his wife pulled 1 hair out of his sleeping head eaight, but what if she decided upon 2, or 5, or even 11? Of those who remained and fought, none were so rudely handled as the s, who displayed prodigies of valor, and disdaio play the part of cowards. The order and harmony of the uni?verse, what a beautiful idea! He was obsessed by a vision of beauty -- the shimmering, golden Temple, more fasating than a woman, more eternal than love. And because he was ugly, evil, impotent, he determined someday to possess it. . . by destru. He had used the word incorrectly. He had mispronouhe word. He had misspelled the word. It was the wrong word. "Eh, hello, Mado. A Beaujolais." "Eh, hello, Tris-Tris. A Beaujolais?" Kellerman runs down the avenue, among the cars, in and out. There are sirens, there is a fire. The huge pieces of apparatus clog the streets. Hoses are run this way and that. Hundreds of firemen stand about, looking at each other, asking each other questions. Kellerman runs. There is a fire somewhere, but the firemen do not know where it is. They stand, giganti their black slickers, yellow-liheir black hats c the back of the neck, holding shovels. The street is full of firemen, gigantic, standing there. Kellerman runs up to a group of firemen, who look at him with fright?ened eyes. He begins asking them questions. "Should a person who is sterile marry? What is sterility? What is a false pregnancy? How do the male reproductive ans work? What is natural childbirth? a couple know in advance if they have children? impotence be cured? What are the causes of barrenness? Is a human egg like a birds?" The President I am not altogether sympathetic to the new President. He is, certainly, a strange fellow (only forty-eight inches high at the shoulder). But is strangeness alone enough? I spoke to Sylvia: "Is strangeness alone enough?" "I love you," Sylvia said. I regarded her with my warm kind eyes. "Your thumb?" I said. Ohumb was a fiasco of tiny crusted slashes. "Pop-top beer s," she said. "He is a strange fellow, all right. He has some magic charisma which makes people --" She stopped and began again. "When the band begins to launto his campaign song, Struttin with Some Barbecue, I just. . . I t. . ." The darkness, strangeness, and plexity of the new President have touched everyohere has been a great deal of fainting lately. Is the President at fault? I was sitting, I remember, in Row EE at City ter; the opera was "The Gypsy Baron." Sylvia was singing in her green-and-blue gypsy e in the gypsy encampment. I was thinking about the President. Is he, I wondered, right for this period? He is a strange fellow, I thought -- not like the other Presidents weve had. Not like Garfield. Not like Taft. Not like Harding, Hoover, either of the Roosevelts, or Woodrow Wilson. Then I noticed a lady sitting in front of me, holding a baby. I tapped her on the shoulder. "Madam," I said, "your child has I believe fainted." "Charles!" she cried, rotating the babys head like a dolls. "Charles, what has happeo you?" The Presi?dent was smiling in his box. "The President!" I said to Sylvia ialiaaurant. She raised her glass of warm red wine. "Do you think he liked me? My singing?" "He looked pleased," I said. "He was smiling." "A bril?liant whirlwind campaign, I thought," Sylvia stated. "Winning was brilliant," I said. "He is the first President weve had from City College," Sylvia said. A waiter fainted behind us. "But is he right for the period?" I asked. "Our period is perhaps not so choice as the previous period, still --" "He thinks a great deal about death, like all people from City," Sylvia said. "The death theme looms large in his sciousness. Ive known a great many people from City, and these people, with no signifit exceptions, are hung up on the death theme. Its an obsession, as it were." Other waiters carried the waiter who had fainted out into the kit. "Our period will be characterized in future his?tories as a period of tentativeness and uainty, I feel," I said. "A kind of parenthesis. When he rides in his black limousih the plastic top I see a little boy who has blown an enormous soap bubble which has trapped him. The look on his face --" "The other didate was dazzled by his strangeness, newness, smallness, and philosophical grasp of the death theme," Sylvia said. "The other didate didnt have a prayer," I said. Sylvia ad?justed her green-and-blue veils ialiaaurant. "Not having goo City College and sat around the cafeterias there, discussih," she said. I am, as I say, irely sympathetic. Certain things about the new President are not clear. I t make out what he is thinking. When he has finished speaking I ever remember what he has said. There remains only an impression of strangeness, darkness. . . On television, his face clouds when his name is mentioned. It is as if hearing his name frightens him. Theares directly into the cam?era (an actors preempting gaze) and begins to speak. One hears only ces. Neer ac?ts of his speeches always say only that he "touched on a number of matters in the realm of. . ." When he has finished speaking he appears nervous and unhappy. The camera credits fade in over an image of the President standing stiffly, with his arms rigid at his sides, looking to the right and to the left, as if awaiting instrus. Oher hand, the handsome meliorist who ran against him, all zest and programs, was defeated by a fantastic margin. People are fainting. On Fifty-seventh Street, a young girl dropped iracks in front of Henri Bendel. I was shocked to discover that she wore only a garter belt under her dress. I picked her up and carried her into the store with the help of a Salvation Army major -- a very tall man with an e hairpiece. "She fainted," I said to the floor?walker. We talked about the new President, the Salvation Army major and I. "Ill tell you what I think," he said. "I think hes got something up his sleeve nobody knows about. I think hes keeping it under s. One of these days. . ." The Salvation Army major shook my hand. "Im not saying that the problems he faces arent tremendous, stagger?ing. The awesome burden of the Presidency. But if anybody -- any one man. . ." What is going to happen? What is the President planning? No one knows. But everyone is ?vihat? he will bring it off. Our exhausted age wishes above everything to pluo the heart of the problem, to be able to say, "Here is the diffi?culty." And the new President, that tiny, strange, and brilliant man, seems kered and difficult enough to take us there. In the meantime, people are fainting. My secretary fell in the middle of a sentence. "Miss Kagle," I said. "Are you all right?" She was wearing an a of tiny silver circles. Each tiny silver circle held an initial: @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@. Who is this person "A"? What is he in your life, Miss Kagle? I gave her water with a little brandy in it. I spec?ulated about the Presidents mother. Little is known about her. She presented herself in var?ious guises: A little lady, 5 2", with a e. A big lady, 7 1", with a dog. A wonderful old lady, 4 3", with an indomitable spirit. A noxious old sack, 6 8", excaudate, because of aion. Little is known about her. We are assured, how?ever, that the same damnable involvements that obsess us obsess her too. Copulation. Strangeness. Applause. She must be pleased that her son is what he is -- loved and looked up to, a mode of hope for millions. "Miss Kagle. Drink it down. It will put you on your feet again, Miss Kagle." I regarded her with my warm kind eyes. At Town Hall, I sat reading the program o "The Gypsy Baron." Outside the buildi mounted poli collapsed en bloc. The well-trained horses plaheir feet delicately among the bodies. Sylvia was singing. They said a small man could never be President (only forty-eight inches high at the shoulder). Our period is not the one I would have chosen, but it has chosehe new President must have certain intuitions. I am vihat he has these intuitions (although I am certain of very little else about him; I have reservations, I am not sure). I could tell you about his mothers summer journey, in 1919, to western Tibet -- about the dandymen and the red bean, and how she told off the Pathan headman, instrug him furiously to rub up his English et out of her service -- but what order of knowledge is this? Let me instead simply note his smallness, his strangeness, his brilliance, and say that we ex?pect great things of him. "I love you," Sylvia said. The President stepped through the r curtain. lauded until our arms hurt. We shouted until the ushers set off flares enf silehe orchestra tuself. Sylvia sang the sed lead. The President was smiling in his box. At the fihe entir.e cast slipped into the orchestra pit in a great, swooning mass. We cheered until the ushers tore up our tickets. See the Moon? I KNOW YOU THINK Im wasting my time. Youve made that perfectly clear. But Im dug these very important lunar hostility studies.藏书网 And its not you wholl have to leave the warm safe capsule. And dip a toe into the threatening lunar surround. I am still wearing my yellow flower which has lasted wonderfully. My methods may seem a touch irregular. Have to do chiefly with folded paper airpla pres?ent. But the paper must be folded in the right way. Lots of calculations and w about edges. Show me a man who worries about edges and Ill show you a natural-born winner. Cardinal Y agrees. bus himself worried, the Admiral of the O Sea. But he kept it quiet. The sun so warm on this sed porch, it re?minds me of my grandmothers pla Tampa. The same rusty creaky green glider and the same faded colored vas cushions. And at night the moon graphed by the s wire, if you squint. The Sea of Tranquillity occupying squares 47 through 108. See the moon? It hates us. My methods are homely but remember on and the apple. And when Rutherford started out he didnt even have a detly heated laboratory. And then theres the matter of my security check -- Im waiting for the gover. Somebody told it Im insecure. Thats true. I suffer from a frightful illness of the mind, light-mindedness. Its not catg. You shrink. Youve noticed the wall? I pin things on it, souve?nirs. There is the red hat, there the book of in?strus for the Ant Farm. And this is a traffic ticket written on a saints day (which saint? I dont remember) in 1954 just outside a fat little town (which town? I dont remember) in Ohio by a cop who asked me what I did. I said I wrote poppy?cock for the president of a uy, true then. You see how far Ive e. Lunar hostility studies arent for everyone. Its my hope that these. . . souvenirs. . . will someday merge, blur -- cohere is the word, maybe -- into something meaningful. A grand word, mean?ingful. What do I look for? A work of art, Ill not accept anything less. Yes I know its shatteringly ingenuous but I wao be a paihey get away with murder in my view; Mr. X. oimes agrees with me. You dont know how I envy them. They pick up a Baby Ruth er oreet, glue it to the vas (in the right place, of course, theres that), and lo! people crowd about and cry, "A real Baby Ruth er, by God, what could be realer than that!" Fantastic metaphysical advantage. You hate them, if youre am?bitious. The Ant Farm instrus are a souvenir of Sylvia. The red hat came from Cardinal Y. Were friends, in a way. I wao be one, when I was young, a painter. But I couldnt stand stretg the vas. Does things to the fingernails. And thats the first place people look. Fragments are the only forms I trust. Light-minded or no, Im. . . riotous with mental health. I measure myself against the Russians, thats fair. I have here a clipping datelined Mos?cow, four young people appreherangling a swan. Thats boredom. The swans name, Borka. The sentences as follows: Tsarev, metalworker, served time previously for stealing public prop?erty, four years in a labor camp, strict regime. Roslavtsev, electri, jailed previously for taking a car on a joyride, three years and four months in a labor camp, semi-strict regime. Tatyana Voblikova (only een and a Komsomol member too), tei, one and a half years in a labor camp, degree of striess unspecified. Anna G. Kirushina, teical worker, fine of twenty per t of salary for one year. Anna objected to the strangula?tion, but softly: she helped stuff the carcass in a bag. The clipping is tacked up on my wall. I i it from time to time, drawing the moral. Strangling swans is wrong. My brother who is a very distinguished pianist . . . has no fingernails at all. Dont look its horrible. He plays under another name. And tunes his piano peculiarly, some call it sour. And renders ragas he wrote himself. A night raga played at noon cause darkness, did you know that? Its extraordi?nary. He wao be an Untouchable, Paul did. That was his idea of a porary career. But then a girl walked up and touched him (slapped him, actually; its a plicated story). And he joined us, here in the imbroglio. My father oher hand is perfectly ?fortable, and thats not a criticism. He makes flags, banners, bunting (sometimes runs me up a shirt). There was never any question of letting my father drink from the public well. He was on the Well ittee, he decided who dipped and who didnt. Thats not a criticism. Exercises his creativ?ity, nowadays, courtesy the emerging nations. Green for the veldt that nourishes the gracile Grants gazelle, white for the purity of our revolutionary aspirations. The red for blood is uood. Thats not a criticism. Its what they all ask for. A call tonight frory, my son by my first wife. Seventeen and at M.I.T. already. Retly hes been asking questions. Suddenly hes scious of himself as a being with a history. The telephs. Then, without a greeting: Why did I have to take those little pills? What little pills? Little white fills with a "W" on them. Oh. Oh yes. You had some kind of a nervous disorder, for a while. How old was I? Eight. Eight or nine. What was it? Was it epilepsy? Good God no, noth?ing so fancy. We never found out what it was. It went away. What did I do? Did I fall down? No no. Your mouth trembled, that was all. You couldnt trol it. Oh, O.K. See you. The receiver clicks. Or: What did my great-grandfather do? For a living I mean? He was a ballplayer, semi-pro ball?player, for a while. The into the building business. Whod he play for? A team called the St. Augustine Rowdies, I think it was. Never heard of them. Well. . . Did he make any money? In the building business? Quite a bit. Did your father i it? No, it was tied up in a lawsuit. When the suit was over there wasnt anythi. Oh. What was the lawsuit? Great-grandfather diddled a man in a land deal. So the stoes. Oh. When did he die? Lets see, 1938 I think. What of? Heart attack. Oh. O.K. See you. End of versation. Gregory, you didnt listen to my advice. I said try the Vernacular Isles. Where fish are two for a penny and women two for a fish. But you wanted M.I.T. aron-spin-resonance spectroscopy. You didnt even crack a smile in your six-ply heather hopsag. Gregory yoing to have a half brother now. Youll like that, wont you? Will you half like it? We talked about the size of the baby, Ann and I. What could be deduced from the outside. I said it doesnt look very big to me. She said its big enough for us. I said we dont need such a great r big oer all. She said they cost the earth, those extra-large sizes. Our holdings in Johnsons Baby Powder to be sidered too. Wed need acres and acres. I said well put it in a Skinner box maybe. She said no child of hers. Displayed under glass like a rump roast. I said you have lately. She said I keep getting bigger whether I laugh or cry. Dear Ann. I dont think youve quite. . . What you dont uand is, its like somebody walks up to you and says, I have a battleship I t use, would you like to have a battleship. And you say, yes yes, Ive never had a battleship, Ive always wanted one. And he says, it has four six-teen-inch guns forward, and a catapult for laung sco.ut planes. And you say, Ive always wao launch scout planes. And he says, its yours, and then you have this battleship. And then you have to paint it, because its rusting, and it, be?cause its dirty, and anchor it somewhere, because the Police Department wants you to get it off the streets. And the crew is g, and there are silverfish in the chartroom and a funny knog noise in Fire trol, water rising in the No. 2 hold, and the chaplain t find the Palestrina tapes for the Sunday service. And you t get anybody to sit with it. And finally you discover that what you have here is this great, big, pink-and-blue rockabye battleship. Ann. Im going to keep her ghostly. Just the odd bit of dialogue: "What is little Gog doing." "Kig." I dont want her bursting in on us with the fresh?ness and inality of her observations. What we need here is perspective. Shes good with Gregory though. I think he half likes her. Dont go. The greased-pig chase and balloon laungs e . I romising once. After the Elgar, a summa cum laude. The uy roud of me. It was a bright shy white new uy on the Gulf Coast. Gulls and oleanders and quick howling hur?ries. The teachers brown burly men with power boats and beer s. The president a retired ad?miral whod doiful things in the Coral Sea. "You will be a credit to us, Gee," the admiral said. Thats not my name. Im proteg my iden?tity, what there is of it. Applause from the stands filled with mothers and brothers. Then following the ma a long line back to the field house to ungown. Ready to take my place at the top. But a pause at Pusan, and the toy train to the Chorwon Valley. Walking down a road wearing green clothes. Kreen and blad silent. The truce had been signed. I had a carbio carry. My buddy Bo Tagliabue the bonus baby, for whom the Yanks had paid thirty thousand. We whitewashed rocks to enhance our area. els came crowding to feel Bos hurling arm. Mihe whitest rocks. I lunched with Thais from Thailand, hot curry from great galvanized washtubs. Engineers bang?ing down the road in six-by-sixes raising red dust. My friend Gib Mandell calling Elko, Nevada on his vas-covered field telephone. "Operator I crave Elko, Nevada." Then I was a sergeant with stripes, getting the troops out of the sun. Tagliabue a sergeant too. Triste ienea Room in Tokyo, yakking it up in Yokohama. Then back to our little tent town on the side of a hill, boosting fifty-gallon drums of heating oil tentward in the snow. Ozzie the jeep driver waking me in the middle of the night. "They got Julian iango Tank." And up and alert as they taught us in Leadership School, over the hills to Tango, seventy miles away. Whizzing through Teapot, Tempest, Toreador, with the jeeps vas top flapping. Pfc. Julian drunk and disorderly aen up. The M.P. sergeant held out a receipt book. I signed for the bawdy remains. Back over the pearly Pacifi a great vessel decorated with es. A trail e peel on the pla surface. Sitting in the bow fifty miles out of San Francisco, listening to the Stateside disc jockeys chattering cha cha cha. Ready to grab my spot at the top. My clothes looked old and wrong. The city looked new with tall buildings raised while my back was turned. I rushed here and there visiting friends. They were burning beef in their back yards, brown burly men with beer s. The beef bla the outside, red on the inside. My friend Horace had fidelity. "Listen to that bass. Thats sixty watts worth of bass, boy." I spoke to my father. "How is business?" "If Alaska makes it," he said, "I buy a Hasselblad. And were keeping an eye on Hawaii." Then he photographed my veteran face, f.6 at 300. My fa?ther once a cheerleader at a great Eastern school. Jumping in the air and making fiergry down-the-field gestures at the top of his leap. Thats not a criticism. We have to have cheer?leaders. I presented myself at the Plat Office. I was on file. My pertile was the pertile of choi>９９ｌiｂ?. "How e you were headman of only ou?dent anization, Gee?" the Plat Officer asked. Many hats for top folk was the fashion then. I said I was rounded, and showed him my slash. From the Feng Club. "But you served your try in an overseas post." "And regard my career plan oly typed pages with wide margins." "Exemplary," the Plat Officer said. "You seem married, mature, malleable, how would you like to affiliate yourself with us here at the old school? We have a spot for a poppyan, to write the admirals speeches. Have you ever done poppycock?" I said no but maybe I could fake it. "Excellent, excellent," the Plat Officer said. "I see you have grasp. And you sup at the Faculty Club. And there is a ten-per-t dist on tickets for all home games." The admiral shook my hand. "You will be a credit to us, Gee," he said. I wrote poppycock, sometimes cockypap. At four oclock the faculty hoisted the cocktail flag. We drank Daiquiris on each others sterns. I had equipped myself -- a fibreglass runabout, someplace to think. Iadia of friendly shy new uies we went down the field on Gulf Coast afternoons with gulls, or excit?ing nights uhe tall toothpick lights. The crowd roared. Sylvia roared. Gregrew. There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising. Moonstruck I was, after a fashion. Sitting on a bench by the practice field, where the jocks ted secret signals in their underwear behind tall vas blinds. Layabout babies loafing on blas, some staked out on twelve-foot dog s. Brown mothers squatting ko knee in shifts of scarlet and green. I stared at the moons pale day?time prese seemed. . . inimical. Moonstruck. Were playing Flinch. You flinched. The simplest things are the most difficult to ex?plain, all authorities agree. Say I was tired of p***yc**k, if that pleases you. Its true enough. Sylvia went up in a puff of smoke. She didnt like unsalaried life. And couldnt bear a male ac?quaintance moon-staring in the light of day. Det people look at night. We had trouble with Gregory: who would get which part. She settled for three-fifths, and got I think the worst of it, the dreaming raffish Romany part that thinks sce will save us. I get matter-of-fact midnight telephone calls: My E.E. instructor shot me down. What happened? I dont know, hes an ass anyhow. Well that may be but still -- Whens the baby due? January, I told you. Yeah, I go to Mexico City for the holidays? Ask your mother, you know she -- Theres this guy, his old man has a villa. . . . Well, we talk about it. Yeah, was grandmother a unist? Nothing so distin?guished, she -- You said she was kicked out of Ger?many. Her family was anti-Nazi. Adler means eagle in German. Thats true. There was something called the Weimar Republic, her father -- I read about it. We had trouble with Gregory, we wao be stific. Toys from Procreative Playthings of Prion. ory, that Prion crowd got you ing and going. Procreative Playthings at one end and the Educational Testing Service at the other. And that serious-minded co-op nursery, that was a mistake. "A growing uandiween parent and child through shared group experi?ence." I still remember poor Henry Harding III. Under "Sibs" on the membership roll they listed his, by age: 26 25 23 20 19 15 10 9 8 6 O Mrs. Harding, havent you heard? They have these little Christmas-tree ors for the womb now, they work wonders. Did we do "badly" by Gregory? Will we do "better" with Gog? Such questions curl the hair. Its wiser not to ask. I mentioned Cardinal Y (the red hat). Hes a friend, in a way. Or rather, the subject of one of my little projects. I set out to study cardinals, about whom sows nothing. It seemed to me that cardinals could be known in the same way we know fishes or roses, by classification and eion. A per?verse project, perhaps, but who else has embraced this point of view? Difficult nowadays to find a point of view kinky enough to call ones own, with Sade himself being carried through the streets on the shoulders of sociologists, cheers and shouting, ticker tape unwinding from high windows. . . The why of Cardinal Y. Youre entitled to an explanation. The Cardinal rushed from the Residence waving in the air his hands, gloved in yellow pigskin it appeared, I grasped a hand, "Yes, yellow pigskin!" the Cardinal cried. I wrote in my book, yellow pigskin. Signifit detail. The pectoral cross tains nine diamonds, the scarlet soutane is laundered right on the premises. I asked the Cardinal questions, we had a ?versation. "I am thinking of a happy island more beautiful than be imagined," I said. "I am thinking of a golden mountain which does ," he said. "Upon what does the world rest?" I asked. "Upon an elephant," he said. "Upon what does the elepha?" "Upon a tortoise." "Upon what does the tortoise rest?" "Upon a red lawnmower." I wrote in my book, playful. "Is there any value that has value?" I asked. "If there is any value that has value, then it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case, for all that happens and is the case is actal," he said. He was not serious. I wrote in my book, knows the drill. (Oh I had heard reports, how he slunk about in the snow telling children he was Santa Claus, how he disbursed funds in unauthorized disbursements to unshaven men who came to the kit door, how his housekeeper pointedly rolled his red socks together and black socks together hinting red with red and black with black, the Cardinal patiently unrolling a red ball to get a red sod a black ball to get a black sock, which he then wore to?gether. . .) Cardinal Y. Hes sly. I was thh. I popped the Cardinal oella with a little hammer, and looked into his eyes with a little light. I tested the Cardinals stomach acidity using Universal Indicator Paper, a scale of oo ten, a spectrum of red to blue. The pH value was 1 indig high acidity. I measured the Cardinals egth using the Mia Multiphastic Muzzle Map, he had an M.M.M.M. of four over three. I sang to the Cardi?nal, the song was "Stella by Starlight," he did not rea any way. I calculated the number of gal?lons o fill the Cardinals bath to a depth of ten inches (beyond which depth, the Cardinal said, he never ventured). I took the Cardinal to the ballet, the ballet was "The servatory." The Car?dinal applauded at fifty-seven points. Afterward, backstage, the Cardinal danced with Plenosova, holdi arms length with a good will and an ill grace. The skirts of the scarlet soutaood out to reveal high-button shoes, and the stagehands clapped. I asked the Cardinal his views on the moon, he said they were the ventional ones, and that is how I know all I know about cardinals. Not enough perhaps to rear a sce of cardinalogy upon, but enough perhaps to form a basis for the iiga?tions of other iigators. My report is over there, in the blue binding, o my copy of La Geoma la Neomancie des Ans by the Sei?gneur of Salerno. Cardinal Y. One measure and measure and miss the most essential thing. I liked him. I still get the odd blessing in the mail now and then. Too, maybe I was trying on the role. Not for myself. When a child is born, the locus of ones hopes. . . shifts, slightly. Not altogether, not all at once. But you feel it, this displat. You speak up, strike attitudes, like the mother of a tiny Lollida. Drunk with possibility once more. I am still wearing my yellow flower which has lasted wonderfully. "What is Gog doing." "Sleeping." You see, Gog of mine, Gog o my heart, Im just trying to give you a little briefing here. I dont want you unpleasantly surprised. I t stand a startled loard me as a sort of Distant Early Warning System. Here is the world and here are the knowledgeable knowers knowing. What I tell you? What has been pieced together from the reports of travellers. Fragments are the only forms I trust. Look at my wall, its all there. Thats a leaf, Gog, stuck up with Scotch Tape. No no, the Scotch Tape is the shiny transparent stuff, the leaf the veined irregularly shaped. . . There are several sides to this axe, Gog, ?sider the photostat, "Mr. W. B. Yeats Presenting Mr. Gee Moore to the Queen of the Fairies." Thats a civilized gesture, I mean Beerbohms. And when the sculptor Aristide Maillol went into the printing business he made the paper by chewing the fibers himself. Thats dedication. And here is a Polaroid photo, shows your Aunt Sylvia ating an Ant Farm together. Thats how close we were in those days. Just an Ant Farm apart. See the moon? It hates us. And now es J. J. Sullivans e-and-blue Gulf Oil truck to throw keroseo the space heater. Driver in green siren suit, red face, blond shaved head, the following rich verbal transa: "Beautiful day." "Certainly is." And now settling ba this green glider with a copy of Man. Dear Ann when I look at Man I dont want you. Unfolded Ursala Thigpen seems ever so much more desirable. A girl too and with is, cooking, botany, praphiovels. Someoo show my slash to. In another month Gog leaps fully armed from the womb. What I do for him? I get him into A.A., I have influence. And make sure no harsh moonlight falls on his new soft head. Hello there Gog. We hope youll be very happy here.天涯在线书库《www.tianyabook.com》