Pricksongs & Descants (11 page)

Odd silence. You look up to discover the Moderator drumming his ringed fingers on the rostrum and staring blankly at you. Yes, yes, the moment
’
s come! They want to know I Cameras plunge, withdraw. Lamps blaze. You, pinned, sweat. Chilled by America
’
s enveloping blubber, heated by the Lady pink as salmon. Pink as dog rose. As dogberry.
All
’
s Well That Ends Well
? Hardly.

Still, in the silence, or so you tell yourself, so it seems: an aura of hope. Moderator relaxed, smiling kin
dly. Lifts brows in calm antici
pation. Audience suppressed to a patient murmur. Will he do it? Will you do it? Fat man, perishing, balloons and snorts. Lovely Lady watches, admires. Encourages. They need you. You take strength from their need, and clear your throat.

“
Oh, come, cornel
”
exclaims the Moderator.
“
Reckon you not this old refrain? To replicate is but to repent and lost is less recalled!
”

Applause and cheers greet his eloquence, accepting which he preens and smiles. But what does it mean?
what does it mean?
“
Muteness is mutinous and the mutable inscrutable!
”
cries the Moderator, warm ing to the moment now, riding on waves of grand hosannas.
“
Inflexibly same and
the lex of the game!
”

Nothing, nothing there at all. Think back. Wear and tear. Wary. Tarry. Salmonberry. Faster I Sticklestuff and Dryden
’
s belly. Crowd roars. Moderator stands to bow. Crimson semen green as—? Green as—? Faster! Could she wear it? Bear it? Bare it! That
’
s it! Keep it going! Keep it—
!

“
Too—!
”
gasps Mr. America, blind and flaccid, nearly faceless, and he has no breath to finish, yet his mouth gapes, struggling.

You speak:
“
I think—
”

“
Admirable
!
”
smiles the Moderator grimly, bringing caustic laughter from the Audience.
“
So what?
”

“
—That, if the subject is animal—
”

Unexpected crash of laughter. Lady blushes, lowers lashes.

Moderator, crimson with giggling and with tears in his eyes, cries:
“
Good God! I should hate to conceive of it otherwise!
”
Whoop! goes the Audience, louder than ever, and even the cameras twitch spasmodically.

“
Keep it clean, son!
”
cackles the Aged Clown.

“
But
—
!
”

“
I sa
id,
k
eep it clean
!
”

Immaculate butt? Incredible!

“
—Late!
”
concludes the fat man, releases wind, and dies. Dead. Only friend in the house. No loss felt, but no relief either. The challenge is still the same one.

“
Come, come, sir!
”
cries the Moderator, much amused, but rising now and pressing forward.
“
You
must
have contrived some concrete conjunctions from the incontrovertible commentary
qua
commentary just so conspicuously constituted!
”
Deafening applause.

Dig in! Tie it up! The truth is:
“
The truth is—
”

“
The truth is,
”
shouts the Moderator, jabbing at him with an angry finger,
“
you have lost
!
”

“
But I haven
’
t even—!
”

“
Why are you here
,
”
the Moderator explodes, losing all patience,
“
if not to endeavor to disentangle this entanglement? In short, Bad Sport, you would be wise to remember that
the saga of sagacity is the purse of pebspicacity!
”
Wild applause, cheers, hoots, screams.
“
Reason is the resin, the college of knowledge!
”
Uncontrollable uproar. Moderator rips off bowti
e
and flings it like a rose to the stamping shrieking crowd. Lamps flame up.
“
Failed! You have failed!
And you must pay the consequences
!
”

“
But the truth is—
”

“
The truth is,
”
crows the old Clown and leaps upon the table; Lovely Lady takes his quaking claw and hops up to join him:

“
There once was a young bellydancer—
”

Lady strips to half chemise as Audience whistles and heaves coins to the stage. Somewhere a brass band plays Eastern music. With her thumbs, she pushes the chemise to half-mast on her hips. Wear it: bare it, bright as berries, and the old dog rose
...

“
Who supposed that her art was the answer—
”

Above or below? Waist: waste. Scruples, pink as salmon. Crimson. Female belly, darts and thrusts
...

“
But one night in a bump,
She fractured her rump—
”

Lovely Lady halts abruptly, knees bent out, twitching like a spastic, navel aimed at you: Eye of the World—then staggers, thus in mid-bump, about the table, eyes wide and mouth puckered, to the con vulsive delight of the entire world, then drops—bam!—stiff as a scute to the table
...

“
—And perished grotesquely of cancerl
”

Audience paroxysms reach new frenzies as Lady vibrates in last throes and ossifies, legs up toward the lenses.
“
Yes, the truth is,
”
gasps the guffawing Moderator when he
’
s able, wiping his eyes with a linen cloth:

“
Don
’
t twiddle or piddle
Or diddle your middle
While riding a riddle, old Sport
—

Lov
e
ly Lady miraculously revives, and with a wink of the Eye of the World, lures you to the tabletop. Laughs crash and thunder. Whistles, catcalls, hostile hoots.
Cameras crouch, pounce, jab, re
tract. The fat man, you see, was not Mr. America after all, but Mr. Amentia. Should
have known. Changes everything…

“
—For the frame is the same In fame or in shame And the name of the game—
”

Clown and Lady grip an arm apiece
.
A noose descends—yes, yes, it all depends
...

“
—is La
Mort!
”

“
I thought—
”
But the Audience drowns you out. Well, they ar
e
happy, think about that. The noose is fitted.

“
You thought—?
”
asks the Moderator and the crowd subsides.

“
I thought it was all for fun.
”

“
That is to say,
”
smiles the Moderator wearily,
“
much ado about nothing.
”

“
That
’
s it
!
that
’
s it!
Yes!
that
’
s
what I was
trying
to—!
”

The Moderator shakes his head. At heart, a tough old boy.

“
Sorry.
”
He rests his chins in his pudgy fist, smile informed by a surfeit of knowledge. Nods gravely at Clown and Lady.

“
Keep it clean, son!
”
rattles the old Clown, jabbing you goodhumoredly with his elbow. Well of laughter. Always the laughter. A second constant.

Noose is scratchy. Tickles your throat. Swallow. Can
’
t swallow.

Lovely Lady
’
s scented breath is in your ear.
“
Don
’
t be gone long, darling,
”
she coos and dispatches you with a parting goose.

Whoop!
Off you go!

The dog rose and there depended
Lamps expand—
whap
!

burst into crimson flares
...

Eyes o
f
the

So long, Sport.

○ ○? ○

2

The Marker

Of the seven people (Jason, his wife, the police officer, and the officer
’
s four assistants), only Jason and his wife are in the room. Jason is sitting in an armchair with a book in his hand, a book he has doubtless been reading, although now he is watching his wife get ready for bed. About Jason: he is tall and masculine, about 35, with strong calloused hands and a sensitive nose; he is deeply in love with his wife. And she: she is beautiful, affectionate, and has a direct and charming manner of speaking, if we were to hear her speak. She seems always at ease.

Nude now, she moves lightly about the room, folding a sweater into a drawer, hanging up Jason
’
s jacket which he had tossed on the bed, picking up a comb from the floor where it had fallen from the chest of drawers. She moves neithe
r pretentiously nor shyly. What
ever meaning there might be in her motion exists within the motion itself and not in her deliberations.

At last, she folds back the blankets of the bed (which is across the room from Jason), fluffs her short blonde hair, crawls onto the fresh sheets on her hands and knees, pokes gently at the pillows, then rolls down on her back, hands under her head, gazing across the room at Jason. She watches him, with the same apparent delight in least motions, as he again picks up his book, finds his place in it, and inserts a marker. He stands, returns her gaze for almost a minute without smiling, and then does smile, at the same time placing his book on the table. He removes his clothes, hooking his trousers over the back of the armchair and tossing the other things on the seat cushion. Before extinguishing the light behind his chair, he glances across the room at his wife once more, her tanned body gay and relaxed, a rhythm of soft lines on the large white canvas of the bed. She smiles, in subtle recognition perhaps of the pleasure he finds in her. He snaps out the light.

In the darkness, Jason pauses a moment in front of the armchair. The image of his wife, as he has just seen her, fades slowly (as when, lying on a beach, one looks at the reflection of the sun on the curving back of the sea, then shuts tight his eyes, letting the image of the reflected sun lose its brilliance, turn green, then evaporate slowly into the limbo of uncertain associations), gradually becoming transformed from that of her nude body crackling the freshness of the laundered sheets to that of Beauty, indistinct and untextur
e
d, as though still emerging from some profound ochre mist, but though without definition, an abstract Beauty that contains somehow his wife
’
s ravaging smile and musical eyes. Jason, still facing the bed, walks steadily toward it, his right hand in front of him to feel for it in the dark. When he has reached the spot where he expects the bed, he is startled not to find it. He retraces his steps, and stumbles into
...
what? the chest of drawers! Reoriented now by the chest of drawers, he sets out again and, after some distance, touches a wall. He starts to call out to his wife, but hears her laugh suddenly: she is up to some kind of joke, he says to himself with a half-smile. He walks boldly toward the laugh, only to-find himself—quite by surprise—back at the armchair! He fumbles for the lamp and snaps the switch, but the light does not turn on. He snaps the switch several times, but the lamp definitely does not work. She has pulled the plug, he says to himself, but without really believing it, since he could not imagine any reason she would have for doing so. Once

again, he positions himself in front of the armchair and crosses the room toward the bed. This time,
however, he does not walk confi
dently, and although almost expecting something of the sort, is no less alarmed when he arrives at, not the bed, but a door. He gropes along the wall, past a radiator and a wastebasket, until he reaches a corner. He starts out along the second wall, working methodically now, but does not take more than five steps when he hears his wife
’
s gentle laugh right in his ear. He turns around and finds the bed
...
just behind him!

Although in the strange search he has lost his appetite for the love act, he quickly regains it at the sound of her happy laugh and the feel, in the dark, of her cool thighs. In fact, the experience, the anxiety of it and its riddles, seems to have created a new urgency, an almost brutal wish to swallow, for a moment, reason and its inadequacies, and to let passion, noble or not, have its hungry way. He is surprised to find her dry, but the entry itself is relaxed and gives way to his determined penetration. In a moment of alarm, he wonders if this is really his wife, but since there is no alternate possibility, he rejects his misgivings as absurd. He leans down over her to kiss her, and as he does so, notices a strange and disagreeable odor.

At this moment, the lights come on and the police officer and his four assistants burst into the room.
“
Really!
”
cries the police officer, pulling up short.
“
This is quite disgusting!
”

Jason looks down and finds that it is indeed his wife beneath him, but that she is rotting. Her eyes are open, but glazed over, staring up at him, without meaning, but bulging as though in terror of him. The flesh on her face is yellowish and drawn back toward her ears. Her mouth is open in a strangely cruel smile and Jason can see that her gums have dried and pulled back from her teeth. Her lips are black and her blonde hair, now long and tangled, is splayed out over the pillow like a urinal mop spread out to dry. There is a fuzzy stuff like mold around the nipples of her shrunken breasts. Jason tries desperately to get free from her body, but finds to his deepest horror that he is stuck!
“
This woman has been dead for three weeks,
”
says the officer in genuine revulsion.

Jason strikes wildly against the thighs in his effort to free himself, jolts one leg off the bed so that it dangles there, disjointed and swinging, the long yellow to
e
nails scratching on the wooden floor. The four assistants seize Jason and wrench him forcibly away from the corpse of his dead wife. The body follows him punishingly in movement for a moment, as a sheet of paper will follow a comb after the comb has been run through hair; then, freed by its own weight, it falls back in a pile on the badly soiled sheets. The four men carry Jason to the table where his book still lies with its marker in it. They hold him up against the table and the police officer, without ceremony, pulls Jason
’
s genitals out flat on the tabletop and pounds them to a pulp with the butt of his gun.

He leaves Jason writhing on the floor and turns to march out, along with his four assistants. At the door he hesitates, then turns back to Jason. A flicker of compassion crosses his face.

“
You understand, of course,
”
he says,
“
that I am not, in the strictest sense, a traditionalist. I mean to say that I do not recognize tradition qua tradition as sanctified in its own sake. On the other hand, I do not join hands with those who find inherent in tradition some malignant evil, and who therefore deem it of terrible necessity that all custom be rooted out at all costs. I am personally convinced, if you will permit me, that there is a middle road, whereon we recognize that innovations find their best soil in traditions, which are justified in their own turn by the innovations which created them. I believe, then, that law and custom are essential, but that it is one
’
s constant task to review and revise them. In spite of that, however,
some things still make me pu
k
e
!
”
He turns, flushed, to his four assistants.
“
Now get rid of that
fucking
corpse!
”
he screams.

After wiping his pink brow with a handkerchief, he puts it to his nose and turns his back on the bed as the men drag away, by the feet, the unhinged body of Jason
’
s wife. The officer notices the book on the table, the book Jason has been reading, and walks over to pick it up. There is a slight spattering of blood on it. He flips through it hastily with one hand, the other still holding the hand kerchief to his nose, and although his face wears an expression of mild curiosity, it is difficult to know if it is sincere. The marker falls to the floor beside Jason. The officer replaces the book on the table and walks out of the room.

“
The marker!
”
Jason gasps desperately, but the police officer does not hear him, nor does he want to.