By the time my friend served up the pesto genovese, on a side table which became dining-sized by the elevation of two hinged panels, I was a bit pissed from having gulped the wine into a stomach lately agitated by my passionate encounter with Olga. He had given each of us a mound of greenflecked spaghetti that rose from tabletop to eye-level, and now, before I could so much as approach my portion with a weary hand, he had reduced his own by half, in the consuming of which he lowered his head, tucked the fork into the side of the heap, and shoveled violently while his lips produced a suction that a Hoover might have envied.
I finally wound a few strands onto my fork and ingested them: very tasty. I took another slug of red.
“I haven’t been over here for long,” I said, “but I’ve already been exposed to a number of Sebastiani phenomena, and thus far what I’ve learned seems to cancel itself out in every respect. The prince is in theory a tyrant from a much earlier epoch, but in practice he is apparently harmless. He does nothing but eat rich food. His sexual tastes are pederastic. None of his subjects can be in want, for they enjoy unlimited credit.
“Now the Blonds may be second-class citizens and condemned to the menial work, waiting on tables, pulling rickshaws, and so on, but according to the prince they also practice law and certain other professions that are more or less honorific elsewhere. Their women are obliged to have sexual relations with anyone who asks them, but the only Blond female with whom I am acquainted virtually raped me, so one might question how onerous they consider the obligation, for I was all but a stranger to her. And it should be noted that the Blonds are splendid physical specimens, tall and strong and comely, unlike any other oppressed people on record.”
During my remarks the large man nodded frequently but continued to gorge on pesto, refilling his own plate and raising his heavy eyebrows when he looked at mine, still loaded from the first serving. To be polite I gobbled up a few lengths and washed them down with another flood of wine, which I saw was, according to the label, a local estate-bottled vintage of something called Valpolifella (sic) and could be characterized as being red and wet.
I resumed. “The scholars of Saint Sebastian are lazy buffoons, and the male writers are a pack of swine. Incidentally, the pornography is allegedly written only by Blond females, but I haven’t checked this out for myself, and I must say I wouldn’t place much credence in the unsupported word of any of the scribblers I have met. On the other hand, again I can’t see that much actual harm is done by any of these gentry, for only a few people read, and according to the official librarian, himself an illiterate, what each reads is the same book, over and over again.
“The law-enforcement procedure is ridiculous. People are punished harshly for rudeness, but on the other hand, anybody can accuse anyone else of any crime and be believed by the police.”
My host raised a full tumbler of wine and poured it down his throat with the sound of a flushing toilet. He smacked his lips and rose to carry his empty plate to the spaghetti pot, which had remained on the stove, looked within, and finding nothing left, sighed massively and went to the wardrobe, where he removed the jacket and vest of the black serge suit he wore, but retained his white shirt and dark necktie. He put on a maroon silk dressing gown and tied its tasseled belt around his tremendous midsection. After politely bowing to me, he loosened his collar, strapped across his eyes the black sleep-mask he took from a pocket in the robe, and lay down upon the bed, which sagged until its mattress-springs almost touched the floor.
Obviously it was time to terminate my exterior monologue. I had got some profit from drawing up the oral bill of particulars with respect to the country I found myself in. I had confirmed my suspicion that Saint Sebastian was an unusually difficult place about which to generalize. No doubt this was true of every society: e.g., how to characterize a city shared at once by the South Bronx junkie, the gilded tenant of Trump Tower, the cop from Queens, and the Broadway headliner? But I had yet to see a significant relation between any two of the Sebastiani milieus, including the court and the Blonds, each of which would seem to have only a theoretical reality for the other. And I thought I could remember from my college reading of history that it is never the oppressed people which make a revolution, but rather the class between the rulers and those at the bottom: viz., the very class which was not in evidence in any large numbers in Saint Sebastian... but then, human beings of any kind were in short supply, owing to the current contrast to the clamorous Manhattan throng amidst which I normally pursued my destiny. On my first day in the capital city I had seen, all told, not as many mortals as one would encounter in a midday walk from my old loft to Rothman’s delicatessen.
Rothman’s Deli! Never when it was accessible did I dream that one day in a far-off land a mental reference to it would move me to nostalgia. Given the difference in time, back home it would be morning now, and the customers would be coming in for their fresh bagels and bialys, milk-blue coffee in bone-white containers, and sweating prune Danish. The street criminals would have wiped the gore from their switchblades, put their Saturday Night Specials on safety, and slunk, or more likely swaggered, to their lairs for a well-earned rest. The tarts were in bed at last to sleep, and the derelicts had not yet risen from their doorways. Here and there a leashed dog would be enjoying his matutinal bowel movement; a few would even be doing it legally, below the curb. The vehicular traffic would not yet have begun to accelerate towards the homicidal mania of noon. Perhaps the odd cabdriver would suggest, with spasmodic gestures and abrupt sounds, the hysteria that would claim him absolutely later in the day, but seen so early the display might be taken for harmless, even charming verve. And at this hour the sidewalk pedestrian undoubtedly ran the least risk all day of being called “motherfucker” by another human being who was an utter stranger to him.
In short, I was astonished to discover that I missed New York, perhaps not to the degree that I was ready to sing that fatuous song rendered, at the behest of the Tourist Bureau, by show-biz celebs who love Gotham so ardently as to reside in California, but I did identify in myself a homesickness, if it could be so termed, for the quotidian life of Manhattan as opposed to what I had thus far encountered over here, where everything was so foreign. Could I have been turning into what, as a man of culture, I had, my adult life long, despised: viz., the provincial xenophobe?
I pushed away the now cold pesto, went to the door, opened it a crack, and took the lie of the land. It would have been less kind to awaken the enormous man from his nap, I thought, than to leave quietly without tendering my thanks. I had decided to repair to the cable office, if I could elude Olga, and send a message to Rasmussen demanding that he withdraw me from this country where I could not be protected from its capricious nationals.... No, such a negative appeal would never succeed with a sadistic superior. I had it: I would rather employ some such strategy as more than one grim wit had suggested “we” should have done in Vietnam: i.e., simply declare victory and leave. I would assure Rasmussen I had seen enough to write an authoritative report on Saint Sebastian, and suggest what American policy should be towards the little principality: neglect, and rather more indifferent than benign.
7
“AH,” SAID THE CONCIERGE as I passed through the lobby, “I do hope you are now eliminating your stools painlessly, my dear sir, and will not again require the services of your Blond colonic irrigationist.”
“By the way,” I replied, “did you see her leave?”
“I have not,” said he. “But I’m sure she has done so if she’s not with you. She would certainly know the consequences if found in the hotel without authorization.”
“Would you mind telling me what those consequences would be?”
He frowned and then said, “I really haven’t the slightest idea. It’s the sort of thing one says.”
“Much of Sebastiani existence consists in such statements, does it not? You people speak on the extravagant side, but so far as I can see, the reality is much tamer.”
&nb
sp; He looked crestfallen. I hastened to say, “I’m not criticizing, mind you! It’s certainly preferable to a state of affairs in which violence is commonplace, as it is where I come from, where furthermore it’s fashionable in certain milieus to pretend that at any given time the situation is all that it should be.” Already I was less homesick. “I once lived in an apartment building every tenant of which was robbed at gunpoint, in the lobby, by a band of neighborhood thugs who were contestants in an all-city mugging competition. When our hooligans lost to the Kip’s Bay team, the victims were indignant and gave the criminals a consolation party.”
“Well, then,” he said bitterly, “isn’t everything always more colorful in New York?”
I had perhaps gone too far and hurt his feelings. “I wonder whether you get my meaning?” I asked. “I’m flattering you, by contrast.”
His greasy smile instantly reappeared. “I understand perfectly. Now would you like a boy?”
“No, thank you, and kindly never ask me that question again. What you might do however is tell me why I see so few people wherever I go in Saint Sebastian? And most of those people I do encounter are working at some kind of job that serves the public. But no public is in evidence.” I specified the open-air markets.
He thought for a moment, the tip of a finger at his pursed lips. “I have it! Those who sell fruit buy pets from the bird people, who in turn purchase cheese, and so on.” He wore a self-congratulatory expression, which I did not wish to darken by expressing dubiety.
I left the hotel. Unless Olga was still looking for me in the hallways upstairs, she had made an exit unobserved by the concierge and might attempt to waylay me in the street. I hugged the walls of the building on the short route to the cable office and saw neither her nor anyone else.
The bespectacled clerk was at the counter when I entered the office.
I obtained a cable form from him, as well as the stub of a pencil, unpleasantly marked as if by gnawing. The feckless Rasmussen had not provided me with a code in which to communicate with him. True, what I had to say was hardly the information that men would kill to get, but to be plainspoken in this context would seem unprofessional and might, if discovered, be used by the Firm’s congressional critics as a pretext for appropriation-cutting.
The message I came up with was crafted from bygone slang of the 1930’s and ‘40’s, which would be instantly intelligible to any Yank however young, owing to nostalgia-film programs, but would surely be nonsensical language to one who had learned his English abroad.
SCREWBALLS VS. GOOFS. WOULD
NIX MOOLAH FOR ALL. UNCLE
DUDLEY FEELS LIKE SAP, WANTS
TO TAKE POWDER.
I handed the form to the clerk. “Please send this literally, letter by letter. Don’t worry if it doesn’t seem to say anything understandable to you, even if you think you’re fluent in English.”
He took it and held it high, in two hands, for a perusal. When he was done he winced and shook his head. “I’d think the Firm might have come up with a better code than this.”
“What do you know about it?” I asked hotly. “That’s impenetrable, if I do say so myself.”
“I’m afraid no one else would,” said he. “It’s pathetically pellucid. You dismiss them all as eccentrics and wouldn’t give money to any of them. You feel like a fool and want to go home.”
I scowled at him. “Are you another ex-GI who was stranded here when the war ended?”
“I’m too young for that. But I have seen many of your motion pictures, including the excellent Boston Blackie films starring Chester Morris. Also those of Mary Beth Hughes, Jane Frazee, Vera Hruba Ralston—”
“Just a moment,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “What do you take me for? You’re making up those names. I’m a native American filmgoer, yet I’ve never heard of these people.”
“So much the worse for you,” said the clerk. “May I suggest you visit one of our cinemas during your stay in Saint Sebastian and acquire an education in your own movies. We have the very latest. Showing at the moment is the latest in the series about Rosie the Riveter. There’s a new Western starring Johnny Mack Brown, and others with Charles Starrett, Bob Steele...”
These names being meaningless to me (I who, along with everyone else of a certain culture in New York, regard myself as a scholar of the films of Bogie, Bette, Coop, Hitch, et al.), I asked, “Are you speaking in some kind of code?”
He sighed. “What can I say if the leading artists of your own country are unknown to you, except that frankly I am shocked. Those names are household words in Saint Sebastian, I assure you. Every child can recite them and more.”
“But are there any children in this country?” I asked resentfully. “I’ve seen hardly any.”
“Of course you haven’t,” said the clerk. “They’re at the cinema all day.”
I concluded that he was pulling my leg for certain. “And these moviehouses are everywhere, though I have yet to see a marquee?”
“Indeed they are,” said he. “And they have no marquees. Public advertising of any kind, beyond the simple descriptive legend on a shop window, is illegal in Saint Sebastian. Everybody knows where the motion-picture houses are. There’s one close by wherever you live, generally in the same street, and weekly schedules are sent to every household and of course posted in the outer lobbies of the cinemas.” He smiled. “Oh yes, the movie theaters are in buildings which were formerly schools and churches.”
“Aha.” I was still far from sure he was not jesting. “That’s why one sees so few people on the streets? They’re all at the movies?”
“Except for those of us who are not so fortunate,” said he, making a lantern jaw of self-pity. “I can’t go until after business hours.”
I leaned on the counter. “You’re telling me that most of the population of this country, adults and children, spend most of their days at the movies?”
“Sure Mike!” he said with energy. “That’s where all the bozos are, and the tomatoes and the small fry too. I don’t mean maybe.”
However reluctantly, I began to believe him. It was at any rate established that he was conversant in jargon that could have fooled me. I was embarrassed, and briefly considered, with a purpose to regain some ground, performing my Cagney imitation, but soon decided that that was all too routine even amongst native Americans who did not have the exotic cinematic lore at his command. I must be more ingenious to hold my own with this fellow. I decided I had no choice but to invent, to cut from the whole cloth, an actor who never existed, and to imitate him for the cable clerk.
“Tell me who this is.” I screwed my mouth up, made one eyelid sufficiently heavy to lower itself halfway, and spoke in a droning tone: “If you mugs think you can make a monkey outa me you got rocks inna head.”
The clerk narrowed his eyes. “Just a minute.... That’s not Barton MacLane? No, let me...Jack LaRue? No... Charles Bickford?”
“You’ll be guessing all night,” I told him triumphantly. “You see, I—”
“No, no, give me another chance! Did I hear a little bit of accent? Eduardo Ciannelli?”
“Believe me, you should give up,” I said quickly. “It’s an actor who made only a couple of low-budget pictures by comparison with which a Republic horse-opera was Aïda. Uh, his name was, uh, Ben Spinoza.”
“Latin type?”
“You could say so.”
The clerk snapped his fingers. “Yes, of course! He’s playing in a film that just opened at the Linden Street cinema: Gats ‘n’ Gals.” He pouted. “I haven’t been able to get there yet because of this damned job of mine.”
I started to say, “That’s imposs—” but decided it was really beneath me to keep this up. Instead I said coolly, “Please send this cable as soon as possible.”
“To the Firm?”
I had yet to mention to whom it would be sent. Again I wondered whether this know-it-all was more than he seemed, but I decided against asking him, for whether or not he was, he
would be certain to pretend to be—if that syntax will hold. Perhaps he had got that modus operandi from those old American movies, in which the heroes are invariably yea-sayers whose strides are jaunty, whose fedoras are cocked over one eye, and whose initially saucy girlfriends eventually go soft (“Aw, you big lug,” etc.). But then I was thinking of the mainstream pictures: God knows what went on in the obscure B flicks so popular in Saint Sebastian.
“Yes, the Firm, Washington, DC.”
“Isn’t it rather Langley, VA?”
Again I was briefly suspicious, but on reflection I decided that McCoy had probably used the same channel of communication with the home office, a shockingly primitive one for an intelligence agency of a major world power, but no doubt that was just the point: the enemy would never look for such simplicity, which made impotent their computerized decoders. Anyway, it was a theory.
I sighed and told him to proceed. “Say, while I’m here: what’s your position on the Blonds?”
“Aha. Well, personally I am incapable of bigotry. I think a fairhaired individual is quite as good as anybody else. I wouldn’t want one for a friend, maybe, but—”
“Just a moment. You wouldn’t?”
“A man has a right, has he not, to make the pals he chooses? I don’t have the slightest interest in the culture of the Blonds. Why should I be forced to have an intimate who plays chess, a game I have never been able to understand; eats vegetables, which I loathe; and never has a cold, whereas the one I feel coming on at the moment will continue for months.”