The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children (11 page)

His walking stick was at hand. He struck viciously, excited by the squeals induced. The corrupt fist tensed white. Expensive paste of raw man.

When he, Allen, left the house, his face was decorated with a plastic smile. Dressed to the perfection of his taste, he strode to the flower garden. The carnations were in full bloom, their scent heavy through the air. Oliver was there, crawling amidst the stalks.

Allen, without speaking a word to the old gardener, plucked a blossom and stuck it in the button hole of his jacket. Whistling, he made his way to the garage, the shadow of his body crossing over the other man, a black mass; like some slow-moving buzzard that passed overhead.

X.

Like a rattlesnake are the cabasas, the hands holding them moving rhythmically through the cuffs of a garish gold shirt. There are four of these sentinels, men dressed like the sun, bodies jerking, swaying, aggregating, dispensing music Latin,—sticks and palms frolic on drums, fingers flit over keys, slam, press until knuckles bend. The voices join up, swelling Spanish, an inundation of ebon joy. Coloured lights flash pathetically over bobbing heads; smiles on most; a few serious men, lips gravitated to decorous frowns. One young man, in jeans skintight and a blousy shirt, moves his arms like a windmill, one leg bent, taut, angular. An older woman flings herself in tribal indecorum before a young partner of indeterminate sex. Limbs madly wag, pulsate and reach like a cage full of millipedes.

Li Chi sat at a corner table, slowly drinking a Corona. His eyes rested blankly on the dance floor, on Allen salsa dancing with a young woman in a tight red tank top. She thrust her small, pigeon-like breasts toward him, flapped her arms like chicken wings. Her eyebrows, extremely black, acted as bees floating above the ochre calyxes of her irises. Enchanted, Allen Hutton displayed his best footwork, took her by one hand, smiled as her arm passed over his head; her body quickly circumnavigated his.

He was slumming. Over the course of a few months he had passed through many of the low bars and dancehalls, discothèques, drunk. movement. energy. design. The folk dances of the peasants, vulgar cha-cha, salsa at Enrico’s, the waltz, a resurgence of the fashion of ballroom dancing. . . . The earliest form of artistic and personal expression; the prehistorics thus worshipped gods, petitioned for success on the battlefield, the hunting ground; to celebrate birth, heal the sick, mourn for the dead. . . . Allen practised the various mudras of the art, thought himself rather brave to frequent spheres where most were of darker coloured skin than he, the rich and delicate white man. . . . A cloud, infectious heat, the people, heady vapour of nescience.

Plato recommended, urged, all Greek citizens to take up the art.

XI.

A)

Nephew, when you came, into my room of a sudden. . . . I blush at the recollection. —Let me admit it, my shame is streaked with pleasure.

What did you think though, of your aunt revealed, of her desire unsheathed.

Child, child.

B)

Because she, not unlike some strange and enormous unfertilized insect, virgin martyr, first in awe of her older brother, Ralph Hutton (intrigued by, almost attracted to his wife) and then (when that one was no more) a profoundly tender and passionate affection developed within her for pale young Allen (he saw her without the usual covering, the usual pastels, flower-patterned dress; atrocious accident). . . . The woman’s feelings existing in a strange no-man’s-land, unclaimed, impossible to define, intelligent thought certainly mixed with dark unsexed lusts and animal hungers, that haze of secret desires which never was exposed to the world, but which stewed constantly within her, made her bosom swell.

XII

The invitations to Allen’s debut caused more than a few eyebrows to rise in the best society. Yet, an evening’s amusement was a given; for amusing it
would
be.

So, as gentlemen knotted their ties before mirrors and women felt the sheerness of the stockings ascend their legs, conjecture was given as to the nature of the entertainment. The little square of gilt-edged, maroon invitation received through the mail described it simply as “A Musical and Theatrical Extravaganza.”

*

Against a background of painted profiles, sandy stone and a distant oasis, he appears, the Queen of the Nile. A tight dress of hand-dyed cotton sets off his slim yet not unmanly figure, from beneath which emerge two feet adorned in simple sandals; a reddish-gold headdress serves as crown; precious jewellery adorns his waist, wrists, neck and ears; the nails of his fingers and toes are painted the colour of claret, while, beneath his thick moustache, abide lips painted a dark shade of pink; eyes outlined in circles of swamp-green, eyebrows coloured leaden-grey.

Music strikes up, serpentine, flute and violin, rattle and tabla.

Rather a ditch in Egypt be gentle grave unto me! Rather on Nilus’ mud lay me stark nak’d, and let the water-flies blow me into abhorring! Rather make my country’s high pyramids my gibbet, and hang me up in chains!

Next tableau:

The curtains glide open.

He appears, cane in hand, in black coat and tails, bow tie, top hat, tipped negligently to one side, and spats.

The orchestra bursts forth, coolly, his mouth drops open, utters words of song, strangely pathetic, ridiculously melancholy.

guests twist

that embarrassed sweat

glistening brows of red madness

Stepping out with my baby . . .

The cane toyed with, an extension of the procreative obsession, violins

waves of colourful insects.

smooth sailing ’cause I’m trimming my sails . . .

Third:

From the sidelines a dulcet but delusively virile voice:

Down in the West Texas town of El Paso . . .

He emerges, from the cactus-flecked desert, grimly romantic, in a tight and black silk dress flaring out at the base, over the clicking heels . . .

I fell in love with a Mexican girl.

Gliding across the stage, ultra-serious, eyes half closed in fervour . . .

Nighttime would find me at Rosa’s cantina . . .

The dance is performed, strongly reminiscent of the death throws of a butterfly, a burnt insect.

. .
. nice señorita
. . .

The bellows huffing in the fear, well guarded panic,

taps, bullets of decadence

the porcelain shatters

his eyes left lidless

independent and moist beings.

XIII.

He sat, looking at the room around him, the high ceilings, oblong blocks of light thrust through the windows, shaded darker where intercepted by the bangs of curtain. The pedestal on which sat the bronze hands did nothing for him; he had paid one hundred thousand dollars; Bruce Nauman’s name was a name, but his hands, at that moment, were empty of life, let alone lust for it.

He looked at his own, bony, white, ten tentacles of sensitive desperation; a wedding ring still banded to one, from that farce; lunacy.

Rising, his legs circumambulated the chamber, past the coffee table, select magazines spread in fan-shaped perfection, the stone statue of Uma, the flamboyant Gilbert & George. . . . He caressed the leaves of a few tropical plants, and looked fondly at the Venus’ fly trap, the fanged chartreuse. . . . In front of the high windows he found himself, overlooking the estate, the gardens.

He could see Oliver out there, under a straw hat, back bent, hands moving in slow, regular motions. The ageing man had spent those years there, amongst the plants, a friend of the trees, collecting soil beneath his fingernails, his face webbed with wrinkles from the sun.

There are these creatures, believed Allen, who take up tasks, work at contemptible, obscure trades, squeezed like rags, swept aside like dirt. Before the dawn breaks they crawl out of their kennels, wear their heels thin against abrasive streets—some off to waitress in diners to the smell of burnt suet—delivery boys eking out a pittance hauling ill burgers and sandwiches up through high rises, skyscrapers—scroungers, cripples, begging for quarters . . . men who pick up trash for a living . . . butchers whacking at thick red meat. . . . There are those who lay bricks, paint houses, mix cement, clothes worn and splattered, arms thick with plebeian strength. Others, women, selling wares behind counters, answering telephones, putting on bright, silly smiles, for what they call a wage, for a few worthless rectangles of paper. . . . Yes, people sew and set bones, try cases in miserable court, douse out fires, cuff criminals, tinker on ridiculous machinery, scrambling like insects, poisoned like roaches. . . . And then there are groundskeepers, gardeners. . . . And those who keep them and watch them sweat.

Later he saw his aunt. They dined together. He talked, tried to give voice to his emptiness, said that he felt like a hollow pot.

Aunt Margaret’s nostrils quivered. Her eyes were moist, languorous. “Yes,” she murmured, placing her hand atop Allen’s, “my life also seems empty.”

Allen, self-involved, self-centred, did not seem to notice the relative’s half muffled, fully desperate emotion.

“
There is always travel,” he said.

“
Yes . . . we could . . . you might . . . travel.”

“
India.” Thinking of the land of self-revelation; for one pampered since birth on every material object conducive to sumptuous living the raw struggles of the world held a sudden attraction, as some cheeses, offensive of smell and crawling with maggots, are the most savoury; with vague images of renunciation coated in pink sugar and perfumed with sandalwood, served with smooth blue-skinned youths stuffed with juicy slices of bright orange mango.

“
. . . to discover myself . . . travel alone . . . I believe that is requisite for a spiritual sort of quest.”

“
Yes,” said Aunt Margaret, “I believe it is,” and she felt her lips grow cold, could hardly keep from uttering inarticulate sounds of suffering, keep from letting drops of saline, watery fluid flow from her eyes, throwing herself wildly at his feet even if it meant being butchered by his scorn.

XIV.

“
Would you like something to drink with your meal?” asked the first-class stewardess, displaying the seemingly prefabricated smile of her trade.

The meal consisted of a slight mound of diced vegetables of questionable origin, tasting as if seasoned with ground copper, cooked by some nefarious process. . . . A chunk of flesh abiding beneath a semenish sauce,—poultry produced in a test tube, devoid alike of skin, bone, texture and flavour. . . . A salad of sickly forage, hardly fit for the snout of a pig. . . . Dessert, a brownie, chemically sweet.

The man sitting next to Allen—a hairless cranium loosely placed on a great ball of fat—had set to the mastication process with undisguised vigour, apparently well satisfied with the fare. . . . Allen merely dipped his fork into the substance; the odour made him undeniably queasy. He regretted having not arranged for a private flight.

“
A cloudberry liqueur,” he told the young woman, his pale temples dewed with perspiration.

When the head of blonde hair shook, negating his request, and strawberry-coloured lips opened, expressing the actual state of the alcohol selection, Allen knew that he was amidst savages, on a downward course through trials and sufferings.

Sufficing himself, morosely, with a whisky sour, he curled up toward the window, withdrawing his organ of smell away from the bovine aroma that surrounded his neighbour. Down below he could see what he believed to be Pakistan, or Iran, an immense stretch of desert, pock-marked like the surface of the moon,—dried up canals scoring it, lonely hills casting blotches of shadow,—yellows, reds and browns, —tranquil, verdureless landscape.

He swallowed at the mixture in his hand, trying hard, desperately, to repress all thought. . . . The reason he was flying. Uncertainty, crawling through him like a caterpillar. Images entering, then fleeing his mind . . . of debauch, power, shame.

XV.

When he returned, his cheeks were hollow, his moustache an enormous black and misshapen patch, like Indian ink spilt on fresh-fallen snow. The wilderness of his eyes revealed nothing,—they were inscrutable, at times shining like tin in the sun, then becoming suddenly dull, lifeless as those of a frozen fish.

A solid gold Genesh now hung from his neck, its four arms swimming beneath his throat, its trunk and the viper curling around its body seeming to curve with undulations of mystical life. When Li Chi innocently asked about it, Allen’s face grew ashen, his lips tightened, he drew further into himself, scurrying off, shutting his unsteady body within the walls of the library, out of which were heard groans and the sound of weeping.

Later, he emerged like a beast, threw a half dozen of his best suits in the fireplace and ignited them. With quick, whip-like words he dismissed all but the most necessary staff. He wrote a cheque for a large sum, flung it at Li Chi, and, with a voice shrill as a bird’s cry, sent him packing.