Travesty (11 page)

Well, by now you will have the scene in mind: a warm late night at
Chez Lulu
, Honorine and I seated together at a small wicker table at
the edge of the sand; the young accordian player and of course Lulu already making
spectacles of themselves on a low, crude, wooden stage facing away from the sea and
toward the animated crowd of Lulu’s favorite patrons old and young; the
protective matting of bamboo strips rustling above our heads; the colored lights
strung like a bright fringe about the perimeter of the place; the tide going out
beyond us in the sultry darkness; Lulu well-launched into the predictable early
stages of his exhibitionism . . . Yes, everything was conducive to what Lulu had
promised us would be a night of surprising and superlative entertainment.

Preliminary to this entertainment, a secret event he had been
anticipating for us the entire week, Lulu was in the midst of telling one of his
rare, evocative stories which always caused Honorine to smile and settle herself
more comfortably into her own special attitude of languor and expectation. The
story, as we began to discover, concerned a man who had been sent out by his
mistress one rainy afternoon to sell a spray of mimosa on one of the town’s
busiest thoroughfares. The mistress
was a beast of domesticity,
the rain was heavy, the street was crowded (mainly with children), the man had a
face of amazing scars and was so small and stolid that he was not much better than
an impressive dwarf. But most important of all, this maltreated and ridiculous
figure was the possessor of a left arm nipped off and drawn to a point at the elbow
by one of those familiar accidents of birth that are so prevalent in a nation that
still lies under the wing of medievalism.

On he talked, our Lulu, now contributing illustrative gestures to his
story, which was punctuated occasionally by a few disrespectful notes of the
accordian. Well, the stubborn and resentful lover, such as he was, attempted to sell
his enormous branch of mimosa in the rain. He held the mimosa first in his right
hand and then in a furious grip in the armpit of his offended partial arm, then in
an agony of self-consciousness he shifted the mimosa from armpit to angry hand and
back again. The children laughed (as did we of Lulu’s audience), the hatless
man was wet to the skin, a small but elegant automobile drove past with an enormous
heap of gleaming, yellow mimosa covering its entire roof. Well, this story had no
ending, of course, but afforded the perspiring Lulu a good many artful strokes along
with an increasing number of sour notes to the accordianist. And though Lulu wiped
his face and laughed and apologized for being unable to reach the moral of his
story, no matter how fast and sonorously he talked, still each and every member of
his audience
smiled in immediate and pleasurable recognition of
that moral, which says in effect that we are a nation of persons not only unashamed
of the handicapped but capable, as a matter of fact, of making fun of them.

But now came the moment of the rare entertainment that we were all so
primed to receive. The laughter faded, Lulu wiped his partially visible bare chest
as well as his face with his handkerchief, the accordianist bestowed upon us a
great, gleaming sweep of fanfare music, Lulu made a brief but enticing announcement
about the spectacle we were now to see. Then he turned and drew aside an ordinary
bed sheet which, throughout the story of the unglorious lover, had concealed the
rear portion of the small makeshift stage which, I may now assure you, is all that
remains of the long-since abandoned
Chez Lulu
.

But that night, and at that moment, already we saw no signs of
impending physical decay. To the contrary, because there before us on that little
stage stood three young girls who were delightfully natural, only moderately shy,
and appealingly dressed in the most casual of clothing—in undershirts
designed for boys, that is, and in tight denim pants. The families of those young
girls were in the audience, each member of the audience knew each one of those most
reputable young girls by sight. Need I mention the clapping that followed the
removal of the sheet? Need I say that the smallest and most attractive of the girls
was our own Chantal?

So she was, and barefooted, like the other two,
and like them attired to affect simplicity and to erase undesirable differences
between the three. As a matter of fact, Honorine and I were pleasantly and
simultaneously aware that these three young, innocent girls were already more
provocative, more indiscreetly revealed, than most professional seminude girls in a
chorus line. You can imagine the activity which this combination (the adolescent
amateurs, the public performance) sent rippling through the audience at
Chez
Lulu
that night. What, we wondered, had he trained our girls to do? And
what were we to make of the three large, orange carrots suspended small end downward
approximately a meter apart by lengths of ordinary white twine tied to a slender
beam affixed overhead? What “act” could Lulu possibly have in
mind?

Well, we had not long to wait. Lulu clapped his hands, the
accordianist set aside his great gaudy instrument, we of the audience craned or
crowded forward, some of us going so far as to leave our tables and sit informally
in the cool sand at the foot of the stage. And then, while the two men bustled
about, whispering to the girls and positioning them in an exact giggling line across
the impromptu stage, so that each one stood directly behind the particular dangling
carrot which had previously been designated as her own, suddenly and as if by
prearranged signal, all three girls knelt as one with their faces raised, their
knees apart, and their hands behind their upright backs. The tips of the immense
carrots hung barely within reach of the three sets of pretty
lips which, we noticed, had been freshly painted with a glistening red cosmetic for
this debut on the stage. There were whistles, random volleys of clapping, more
jockeying for better and closer locations from which to see. But what now, Honorine
and I asked each other with smiles and raised eyebrows, what now—
blindfolds?

Yes, they were indeed blindfolds, and at the first sight of them, and
while Lulu and his grinning assistant were tying them like broad, white bandages
over the eyes of the young trio kneeling as if awaiting the revolver of some brutal
executioner, the audience voiced its approval and curiosity in a new and sudden
spurt of informality. By now we knew what was coming, of course, and that we were
about to witness some sort of competition or game which would involve the men, the
girls, and the carrots. We could hardly have been more aroused or appreciative.

Lulu called for silence, and in the next moment one could hear even
the lapping of water against the flanks of an invisible sailboat or the sound of
insects in the bamboo matting overhead. All faces were admirably attentive. We
watched as the three girls, now illuminated in the bright beam of a single
spotlight, shifted nervously in their kneeling positions and gathered their muscles,
so to speak, and raised their pretty, blinded faces like sniffing rabbits. The girls
waited, Lulu raised his thick right arm, the assistant composed
himself behind two of the girls as might a sprinter. Already the three charming
contestants had begun to perspire. Music from a car radio came to us faintly across
the little midnight harbor.

Then Lulu shouted, flung down his arm, and thereby sent our trio of
sweet girls into an unbelievable flurry of agitation which, we saw immediately, was
all the more pronounced and even feverish because of the ground rules by which the
girls were forbidden to move their spread knees. In the previous few moments each of
us in the audience had made his firm choice, his loyal commitment, and had fixed
upon that particular young girl whose efforts he would champion to the very end. And
now, even at the mere outset of this simple sport, the shouts of encouragement were
deafening.

The rest is obvious, as most stories are. And yet there was indeed a
certain mounting excitement, because first it was necessary for each girl, to locate
her carrot, a process in which all three initially employed merely their good will,
their innocence, their straining young bodies (fixed to the rough planks at the
knees), the entirety of their groping faces. But as the game wore on, marked by
waves of clapping and held breaths, one by one the girls began to intuit what was
required of them, began to discover within themselves an abandon which they could
not possibly have known until now. That is, they began to grope for the tips of the
carrots with their open mouths, with their bright, red, girlish lips now puckered
into an oval shape, or at last
and skillfully enough began to
fish desperately for the fat carrots with their glistening tongues. In all this
there was a good deal of tension and comedy, as noses buffeted carrots or a flushed
cheek accidentally knocked one of the great orange creatures quite beyond reach. The
girls swayed and rose and fell on their spread knees; the carrots swayed in wild
circles; the two men became more pressing as pilots, so to speak, of the now hot and
sightless girls. Yes, Lulu was devoting all his efforts to Chantal while the
accordianist, poor fellow, was obliged to divide his attentions between the other
two now frantic girls. Of course it was only too apparent that Lulu and his
assistant were attempting to guide their charges toward possession of the unobliging
carrots not only with whispered words but with hands that were momentarily visible
on a wet and tender shoulder and then, for long periods, were quite invisible in
what could only have been their impatient grip on the seat of one of the pairs of
tight blue demin pants. The accordianist was not at all in sympathy with his own two
awkward girls while Lulu, on the other hand, appeared to be gaining impressive,
delicate control over our remarkably responsive Chantal. The black, pointed tip of
his shoe was visible between her knees, he crouched behind her like a ventriloquist
manipulating an erotic doll.

Well, the admirable young contestants searched in vain, caught the
tips of the carrots between eager lips, screamed joyously, thereby once again losing
the prize.
The carrots began to glisten, the denim pants grew
predictably shaded with perspiration, the girls cried out in glee or in a childish
mockery of frustration. We of the audience applauded whenever a carrot was
successfully trapped, we moaned when that same carrot bobbed away.

You know the rest: the object of the game, which was merely the clever
excuse for its existence, was to eat the carrot. And while the two other girls
nibbled and tossed themselves about and even shed pretty tears, it was Chantal, of
course, who finally understood the game and slowly, sinuously, drew the carrot
between her lips and sucked, chewed, reaching always upward with her small lovely
face, until the deed was quite beautifully done.

Can you see the hollow cheeks? The tendons in the youthful neck? The
traces of smeared lipstick on the now devoured carrot? I am sure you can.

Well, Lulu untied the blindfold and, perspiring himself, lifted our
happy Chantal to her bare feet to receive her ovation. And that, of course, is how
Chantal became the Queen of Carrots. It was only the next day that she found courage
enough to go for the first time bare-breasted to the beach where she spent the
morning as well as the afternoon exerting herself in one of the old, white,
cumbersome paddleboats. Her companion in the paddleboat was, as you will have
guessed, none other than the notorious Lulu. It was plain to Honorine and me that
Chantal had quite overcome her shyness and
that the gigantic
Lulu was enjoying to the full this first day with his little pink and amber
Queen.

So you think that my brain is sewn with the sutures of your
psychosis. So that’s what you think. But how very like you to require not a
single last resort but two. And if you will remember, I knew it was coming sooner or
later, this double-bladed effort first to persuade me of my own psychological
distraction, if that is the term, and second to entice me back to sanity, as only
you could express the idea, with promises of repose, forgiveness, your imminent
departure, the everlasting adoration of my wife and daughter. Of course I understand
that you have no alternative but to lay at my door this your actual last resort. As
I have said already, it is my opinion that you publicized and glamorized excessively
those few months in which you gave yourself over to the sullen immobility of the
mental patient. But I am sympathetic. I am well aware that in that short time they
so sutured the lobes of your brain with designs of fear and hopelessness that the
threads themselves emerged from within your skull to travel in terrible variety down
the very flesh of your face, pinching, pulling, and scoring your hardened skin as if
they, your attendants, had been engaged not in psychological but surgical
disfigurement. I appreciate all this. I regret that you were so abused and that you
took such dreadful
pleasure in the line that cracked your eye,
cleft your upper lip, stitched the unwholesome map of your brain to the mask of your
face. But we must remember that we are talking not about me but you. What I have
just been saying applies to you but not to me. Despite my theory of likenesses, as I
have called it, you are simply not to think that your former derangement has
reappeared in me and, at present, is driving all three of us to what the authorities
define as death by unnatural causes. I believe that if you have been listening you
will have heard in my words the dying breath of your own irrationality, not
mine.

Concentrate,
cher ami
. Concentrate. Because I know already
that I am “adored” by wife and daughter. It would never occur to me to
wish for your “imminent departure.” After all,
cher ami
it is
I who chose you to be present with me tonight. But on the last point I am even more
confident: you and I would always shun “repose” even if it in fact
existed and were not merely the phantom of all who refuse to present themselves to
the stillness of the open gate.