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An outpost of civilization or human habitation. Dwellings i rows back to back to back to back. Children at play on roofs.Where are the streets? asked the Dead Father.
There appear to be none, said Julie.
Perhaps tunnels in the earth?
Or maybe they squeeze between the houses, making themselves all teensy-weensy and not fetting to gaze into the windows as they pass.
It is Planning, said Thomas, a own. One must achieve the rim to be killed by auto.
Circulation is not a big thing here, said a stander-by. Why is that man, that one of you, the distinguished-looking one, being dragged? What has he itted? Why are those een puffing and sweating away, on the cable? Why are you three not puffing and sweating away on the cable? I do not uand your table anization.
He is a father, said Thomas.
Terrible news, said the man, you t bring him in here.
He is fatigued. We are fatigued. ay.
Youll have to deballock him and wipe your feet o, said the man, whose face tained beardescules at odd points, such as the lips aer of the forehead. Do you need a deballog knife? Scissors? Razor? Paper cutter? Shard of glass? Letter opener? Fingernail clippers?
He is a sacred object, in a sehomas said. No more of your bubblegum. Which way is the flophouse?
There are two, the citizen said. The good one and the bad ohe bad one has the best girls. The good one has the best paté. The bad one has the best beds. The good one has the best cellar. The bad one has the best periodicals. The good one has the best security. The bad one has the best band. The good one has the best roaches. The bad one has the best martinis. The good one has the best credit cards. The bad one has the best table silver. The good one has the best views. The bad one has the best room service. The good one has the best reputation. The bad one has the best fa?ade. The good one has the best delier. The bad one has the best carpet. The good one has the best bathrooms. The bad one has the best bar. The good one has the best Dun & Bradstreet. The bad one has the best portraits. The good one has the best bellmen. The bad one has the best potted plants. The good one has the best ashtrays. The bad one has the best snails. The good one has the best postcards. The bad one has the best breakfast. The good one --
Between the good one and the bad one, Julie said, there appears to be little choice.
There are also private houses but none large enough or foolish enough to attempt to aodate your party, said the man. That thing there would scare the children out of their wigs, did they get but a glimpse of it.
He is talking about you, Emma said to the Dead Father.
The Dead Father beamed.
He says youll frighten the children.
Happiness of the Dead Father.
Him, the citizen said, him t be brought in without the fixing. I lend you a Skilsaw. ;
I would prefer not to, said the Dead Father.
He prefers not to, Thomas told the citizen.
Well damn and blast, said the citizen, who would imagiherwise? Yet a rule is a rule.
Edmund, Thomas called.
Edmund presented himself.
How would you like to buy a drink or so for this citizen of this fine unity? Thomas asked. You may charge it to me.
Tremble of happiness running through Edmund from top to bottom (bbr>?</abbr>visible).
Edmund and the citizen off to the alehouse arm-in-arm.
Now, Thomas said, lets ihe aodations.
After looking at the good ohey chose the bad one.
Julie and Thomas in their room, sitting on the bed. Picture on the wall, Death of Sigismur.
Amazing how he holds on to his balls, said Julie, that is a curious thing, I dont uand it.
I uand it, said Thomas.
Doesnt know when its time to hang it up, she said, how old do you think he is?
He claims one hundred and nine, said Thomas, but he may be stretg it. He may be shrinking it. I dont know.
Three of our people are es I think.
Which three?
The three with the red hair and the limp.
Thomas lay back upon the bed.
What a disgusting idea, he said.
How is it that you gave him back his leg after you had whacked it off?
Purely practical. He staggers better with it. We have ends in view.
So we do, she said, so we do.
A kno the chamber door.
Whos there? called a voice, from outside the door.
Shall we answer? Julie asked.
Whos there? the voice called again.
Who wants to know? Julie shouted.
There was a silence. Peter, the voice said, at length.
Do we know anyone named Peter?
I know no one named Peter.
What do you want, Peter? she called.
I have to mist the plant, Peter called.
Thomas looked about him. A cactus sat on the dressing table.
Does one mist a cactus? Julie asked.
Let him in, Thomas said.
Julie opehe door.
Some people know what they are doing, Peter said, and some dont.
He began i cheesecloth around the cactus.
Well there tall thin fellow, said Julie, why are you here?
I heard there were strangers. We dont ofterangers. I wao give it to you.
Wao give what to us?
He appears to be a dolt of some kind, Thomas said, sotto voce.
The book, Peter said.
What is the book about?
Peter had a frayed tattered disiing volume with showers of rats falling out of it clutched to his chest.
It is a manual, he said. Might be of some small use to you. Oher hand, might not.
Are you the author? Julie asked.
Oh no, said Peter. I am the translator.
From what language was it translated?
It was translated from English, he said, into English.
You must have studied English.
Yes I did study English.
Is it long? Thomas asked, looking at the thin book.
It is not long, Peter said, and at the same time, too long.
Then, furiously:
Do you know what translators are paid?
Not my fault, Julie said, as with much else in the world, not my fault.
Pennies! Peter proclaimed.
Are you selling us this book?
No, Peter said nobly, I am giving it to you as a gift. It is not worth selling.
He uned the cheesecloth from the cactus.
Edition of forty, he said, printed inally on pieces of pumperhis is the sed edition.
We must give you something, Thomas said, what it be?
You are strangers, Peter said. Your approval would be enough.
You have it, said Julie. She kissed Peter on the forehead.
I am justified, Peter said, for the time being. I struggle on, for the time being. I am reified, for the time being.
Exit of Peter.
He didnt ask much, said Thomas.
His bargaining position is not the best, Julie said. He is a translator.
They lay on their stomachs in the bed, looking at the book.
The book was titled A Manual for Sons.
The author was not credited.
"Translated from the English by Peter Scatterpatter" was found ole page.
They began to read the book.
A
MANUAL
FOR SONS
TRANSLATED FROM THE ENGLISH
BY PETER SCATTERPATTER
(1) Mad fathers
(2) Fathers as teachers
(3) On horseback, etc.
(4) The leaping father
(5) Best way to approach
(6) Ys
(7) Names of
(8) Voices of
(9) Sample voice, A B C
(10) Fanged, etc.
(11) Hiram or Saul
(12) Color of fathers
(13) Dandling
(14) A tongue-lashing
(15) The falling father
(16) Lost fathers
(17) Rescue of fathers
(18) Sexual ans
(19) Names of
(20) Yamos
(21) "Responsibility"
(22) Death of
(23) Patricide a poor idea, and summation
Mad fathers stalk up and down the boulevards, shouting. Avoid them, or embrace them, or tell them your deepest thoughts -- it makes no differehey have deaf ears. If their dress is covered with sewn-on tin s and their spittle is like a string of red boiled crayfish runnio-tail down the front of their tin s, serious impairment of the left brain is present. If, oher hand, they are simply barking (no tin s, spittle held securely in the pouch of the cheek), they have been driven to distra by the intricacies of living with o up to them, and, stilling their wooden clappers by putting your left haween the hinged parts, say youre sorry. If the barking ceases, this does not mean that they have heard you, it only means they are experieng erotic thoughts of abominable luster. Permit them to enjoy these images for a space, and then strike them sharply in the h the blade of your tanned right hand. Say youre sain. It wohrough to them (because their brains are mush) but in pronoung the words, your body will assume an attitude that veys, in every try of the world, sorrow -- this language they uand. Gently feed them with bits of leftover meat you are carrying in your pockets. First hold the meat in front of their eyes, so that they see what it is, and then point to their mouths, so that they know that the meat is for them. Mostly, they will open their mouths, at this point. If they do not, throw the meat iween barks. If the meat does not get all the way into the mouth but lands upon (say) the upper lip, hit them again in the neck, this often causes the mouth to pop open and the meat stig to the upper lip to fall into the mouth. Nothing may work out in the way I have described; in this eventuality, you do not much for a mad father except listen, for a while, to his babble. If he cries aloud, "Stomp it, emptor!" then you must attempt to figure out the code. If he cries aloud, "The fiends have killed your horse!" note down in your notebook the frequency with which the words "the" and "your" occur in his tirade. If he cries aloud, "The cats in its cassod flitter-te-hee moreso stomp it!" remember that he has already asked you oo "stomp it" and that this must refer to something you are doing. So stomp it.
Fathers are teachers of the true and not-true, and no father ever knowingly teaches what is not true. In a cloud of unknowing, then, the father proceeds with his instru. Tough meat should be hammered well between two stones before it is placed on the fire, and should be bed with a hairb and brushed with a hairbrush before it is placed on the fire. Iron lungs and cyclotrons are also useful for the purpose. On arriving at night, with thirsty cattle, at a well of doubtful character, one deepens the well first with a rifle barrel, then with a pigsticker, then with a pencil, then with a ramrod, then with an ice pick, &quing the well in" finally with needle and thread. Do not fet to your rifle barrel immediately. To find hoie a feather or straw to the leg of a bee, throw him into the air, and peer alertly after him as he flies slowly back to the hive. Nails, boiled for three hive off a rusty liquid that, when bined with oxtail soup, dries to a flame color, useful for warding off tuberculosis or attrag native women. Do not fet to hug the native women immediately. To preve from blistering, soap the inside of the stog with a lather of raw egg and steel wool, which together greatly soften the leather of the foot. Delicate instruments (such as surveying instruments) should be entrusted to a porter who is old and enfeebled; he will totter along most carefully. For a way of making an ass not to bray at night, lash a heavy child to his tail; it appears that when an ass wishes to bray he elevates his tail, and if the tail ot be elevated, he has not the heart. Savages are easily satisfied with cheap beads in the following colors, dull white, dark blue, and vermilion red -- expensive beads are often spurned by them. Non-savages should be given cheap books in the following colors, dead white, brown, and seaweed -- books praising the sea are much sought after. Satanic operations should not be ducted without first sulting the Bibliothèque Nationale. When Satan at last appears to you, try not to act surprised. The down to hard bargaining. If he likes her the beads nor the books, offer him a cold beer. Then --
Fathers teach much that is of value. Much that is not.
Fathers in some tries are like cotton bales; in others, like clay pots or jars; in others, like reading, in a neer, a long at of a film you have already seen and liked immensely but do not wish to see again, or read about. Some fathers have triangular eyes. Some fathers, if you ask them for the time of day, spit silver dollars. Some fathers live in old filthy s high in the mountains, and make murderous noises deep ihroats when their amazingly sharp ears detect, on the floor of the valley, an alien step. Some fathers piss either perfume or medial alcohol, distilled by powerful body processes from what they have been, all day long, drinking. Some fathers have only one arm. Others have ara arm, in addition to the normal two, hidden iheir coats. On that arms fingers are elaborately wrought golden rings that, when a secret spring is pressed, dispense charity. Some fathers have made themselves over into ving replicas of beautiful sea animals, and some into ving replicas of people they hated as children. Some fathers are goats, some are milk, some teach Spanish in cloisters, some are exceptions, some are capable of attag world eis and killing them, but have not yet done so, they are waiting for one last vital piece of data. Some fathers strut but most do not, except inside; some fathers pose on horseback but most do not, except in the eighteenth tury; some fathers fall off the horses they mount but most do not; some fathers, after falling off the horse, shoot the horse, but most do not; some fathers fear horses, but most fear, instead, women; some fathers masturbate because they fear women; some fathers sleep with hired women because they fear women who are free; some fathers never sleep at all, but are endlessly awake, staring at their futures, which are behind them.
The leaping father is not entered often, but exists. Two leaping fathers together in a room cause acts. The best idea is to heavy-duty truck tires to them, one in front, one in back, so that their leaps bee pathetic small hops. That is all their lives amount to anyhow, and it is good for them to be able to see, in the mirror, their whole life histories performed, in a sequence perhaps five minutes long, of upward movements which do not, really, get very far, or achieve very much. Without the tires, the leaping father has a nuisance value which may rapidly transform itself into a serious threat. Ambition is the core of this problem (it may even be ambition for you, in which case you are in eveer dahan had been supposed), and the ay be removed by open-liver surgery (the liver being the home of the humours, as we know). I saw a leaping father in the park, he was two feet off the ground and holding a one-foot-in-diameter, browher object that he ushing away from himself -- a sin of some sort, I judged. He was aiming it at a supported by a steel ring but the had no bottom, there was no way oh that the would retain the sin, even if the father had been able to place the sin safely i. The futility of his project saddened me, but this propriate emotion. There is something very sad about all leaping fathers, about leaping itself. I prefer to keep my feet on the ground, in situations where the ground has not been cut out from under me, by the tunneling father. The latter is usually piebald in color, and supremely notable for his nonflogitiousness.
The best way to approach a father is from behind. Thus if he chooses to hurl his javelin at you, he will probably miss. For i of twisting his body around, and drawing back his hurling arm, and sighting along the shaft, he will give you time to run, to make reservations for a flight to another try. To Rukmini, there are no fathers there. In that try virgin gods huddle together under a bla of ruby chips and flexible t, through the lo Rukminian winter, and in some way not known to us produce offspring. The new citizens are greeted with dalms aificates of worth, are led (or drawn on runnerless sleds) out into the zocalo, the main square of the try, and their augensheinlich parentages recorded upon a great silver bowl, and their fingerprints peeled away, so that nothing ever be proved. Look! In the walnut paneling of the dining hall, a javelin! The paneling is wounded in a hundred places.
I knew a father named Ys who had many many children and sold every one of them to the bone factories. The bone factories wi.ll not accept angry or sulking children, therefore Ys was, to his children, the ki and most amiable father imaginable. He fed them huge amounts of calcium dy and the milk of minks, told them iing and funny stories, ahem each day in their bone-building exercises. "Tall sons," he said, "are best." Once a year the bone factories sent a little blue van to Yss house.
The names of fathers. Fathers are named:
Aalbiel
Aariel
Aaron
Aba
Ababaloy
Abaddon
Aban
Abathur
Abbott
Abdia
Abel
Abiou
Achsah
Adam
Adeo
Adityas
Adlai
Adnai
Adoil
Adossia
Aeon
Aeshma
Af
Afkiel
Agason
Agwend
Albert
Fathers have voices, and each voice has a terribilità of its own. The sound of a fathers voice is various: like film burning, like marble being pulled screaming from the face of a quarry, like the clash of paper clips by night, lime seething in a lime pit, or batsong. The voice of a father shatter ylasses. Some fathers have tetchy voices, others tetched-in-the-head voices. It is uood that fathers, when not robed iher-role, may be farmers, heldentenors, tinsmiths, rag drivers, fist-fighters, or salesmen. Most are salesmen. Many fathers did not wish, especially, to be fathers, the thing came upon them, seized them, by act, or by someone elses careful design, or by simple clumsiness on someones part. heless this class of father -- the ient -- is often among the most tactful, light-handed, aiful of fathers. If a father has fathered twelve or twenty-seven times, it is well to give him a curious look -- this father does not loathe himself enough. This father frequently wears a blue wool watch cap, on stormy nights, to remind himself of a manly past -- a in the North Atlantic. Many fathers are blameless in all ways, and these fathers are either sacred relics people are touched with to heal incurable illnesses, or texts to be studied, geion after geion, to determine how this idiosyncrasy may be maximized. Text-fathers are usually bound in blue.
The fathers voice is an instrument of the most terrible pertinaciousness.
Sample voice A:
Son, I got bad news for you. You wont uand the whole purport of it, cause youre only six, a little soft in the head too, that fontanelle never did close properly, I wonder why. But I t delay it no longer, son, I got to tell you the news. There aint no mali it, son, I hope you believe me. The thing is, you got to go to school, son, a socialized. Thats the news. Youre turnin pale, son, I dont blame you. Its a terrible thing, but there it is. Wed socialize you here at home, your mother and I, except that we t stand to watch it, its that dreadful. And your mother and I who love you and always have and always will are a touch sensitive, son. We dont want to hear your howls and screams. Its going to be miserable, son, but you wont hardly feel it. And I know youll do well and wont do anything to make us sad, your mother and I who love you. I know youll do well and wont run away or fall down in fits either. Son, your little face is pitiful. Son, we t just let you roam the streets like some kind of crazy animal. Son, you got to get your natural impulses curbed. Youve got to get your ers knocked off, son, you got to get realistic. They going to vamp on you at that school, kid. They going to tear up your ass. They going to learn you how to think, youll get your letters there, your letters and yures, your verbs and all that. Your mother and I could socialize you here at home but it would be too painful for your mother and I who love you. Yoing to meet the stick, son, the stick going to walk up to you and say howdy-do. Yoing to learn about your try at that school, son, oh beautiful for spacious skies. They going to lay just a raft of stuff on you at that school and I caution you not to resist, it aint appreciated. Just take it as it es and youll be fine, son, just fine. You got to dht, son, you got to be realistic. Theyll be other kids in that school, kid, and ever last one of em will be after your lunch money. But dont give em your lunch money, son, put it in your shoe. If they e up against you tell em the other kids already got it. That way you fool em, you see, son? Whats the matter with you? And watch out for the custodian, son, hes mean. He dont like his job. He wao be president of a bank. Hes not. Its made him mean. Watch out for that sap he carries on his hip. Watch out for the teacher, son, shes sour. Watch out for her toll cut you. Shes got a bad mouth on her, son, dont balk her if you help it. I got nothin against the schools, kid, they just doin their job. Hey kid whats the matter with you kid? And if this school dont do the job well find ohat . Were right behind you, son, your mother and I who love you. Youll be gettin your sports there, your ball sports and your blood sports and watch out for the coach, hes a disappointed man, some say a sadist but I dont know about that. You got to develop your body, son. If they shove you, shove back. Dont take nothin off nobody. Dont show fear. Lay bad watch the guy o you, do what he does. <q></q>Except if hes a damn fool. If hes a damn fool youll know hes a damn fool cause everybodyll be hittin on him. Let me tell you bout that school, son. They do what they do cause I told them to do it. Thats why they do it. They didnt think up those ideas their own selves. I told them to do it. Me and your mother who love you, we told them to do it. Behave yourself, kid! Dht! Youll be fihere, kid, just fine. Whats the matter with you, kid? Dohat way. I hear the ice-cream man outside, son. You want to go ahe ice-cream man? Go get you an ice cream, son, and make sure you get your sprinkles. Go give the ice-cream man your quarter, son. And hurry back.
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