Snow White

  “I AM princely,” Paul reflected in his eat-in kitchen. “There is that. At times, when I am ‘down,’ I am able to pump myself up again by thinking about my blood. It is blue, the bluest this fading world has known probably. At times I startle myself with a gesture so royal, so full of light, that I wonder where it comes from. It comes from my father, Paul XVII, a most kingly man and personage. Even though his sole accomplishment during his long lack of reign was the de-deification of his own person. He fluttered the dovecotes with that gesture, when he presented himself as mortal and just like everybody else. A lot of people were surprised. But the one thing they could not take away from him, there in that hall bedroom in Montreaux, was his blood. And the other thing they could not take away from him was his airs and graces, which I have inherited, to a sickening degree. Even at fifty-five he was still putting cologne in his shoes. But I am more experimental than he was, and at the same time, more withdrawn. The height of his ambition was to tumble the odd chambermaid now and then, whereas I have loftier ambitions, only I don’t know what they are, exactly. Probably I should go out and effect a liaison with some beauty who needs me, and save her, and ride away with her flung over the pommel of my palfrey, I believe I have that right. But on the other hand, this duck-with-blue-cheese sandwich that I am eating is mighty attractive and absorbing, too. He was peculiar, my father. That much can safely be said. He knew some things that other men do not know. He heard the swans singing just before death, and the bees barking in the night. That is what he said, but I didn’t believe him, then. Now, I don’t know.”

  HENRY was noting his weaknesses on a pad. Process comparable to searching a dog’s underbelly for fleas. The weaknesses pinched out of the soul’s ecstasy one by one. Of course “ecstasy” is being used here in a very special sense, as misery, something that would be in German one of three aspects of something called the Lumpwelt in some such sentence as, “The Inmitten-ness of the Lumpwelt is a turning toward misery.” So that what is meant here by ecstasy is something on the order of “fit,” but a kind of slow one, perhaps a semi-arrested one, and one that is divisible by three. “Should I go to Acadia and remove my parents from there? From that parking place where they have been parked since 1936? It is true that they are well connected to the ground now, with gas and water lines and geraniums. The uprooting would be considerable. The fear of the father’s frown. That deters me. He is happy there, as far as I know; still I have this feeling that he ought to be rescued. From that natural beauty.” Then Dan came in. “Dan, what is an interrupted screw?” Henry asked. “An interrupted screw,” Dan said, “is a screw with a discontinuous helix, as in a cannon breech, formed by cutting away part or parts of the thread, and sometimes part of the shaft. Used with a lock nut having corresponding male sections.” “This filthy,” Henry said, “this language thinking and stinking everlastingly of sex, screw, breech, ‘part,’ shaft, nut, male, it is no wonder we are all going round the bend with this language dinning forever into our eyes and ears . . .” “I am not going round the bed,” Dan said, “not me.” “Round the bend,” Henry said, “the bend not the bed, how is it that I said ‘bend’ and you heard ‘bed,’ you see what I mean, it’s inescapable.” “You live in a world of your own Henry.” “I can certainly improve on what was given,” Henry said.

  “THOSE men hulking hulk in closets and outside gestures eventuating against a white screen difficulties intelligence I only wanted one plain hero of incredible size and soft, flexible manners parts thought dissembling limb add up the thumbprints on my shoulders Seven is too moves too much and is absent partly different levels of emotional release calculated paroxysms scug dissolve thinking parts of faces lower area of Clem from the nose’s bottom to the line, an inch from the chin cliff not enough ever Extra difficulty! His use of color! Firmness mirror custody of the blow scale model I concede that it is to a degree instruments adequate distances parched to touch each one with invisible kindly general delivery hands, washing motions mirror To take turns and then say “Thank you” congress of eyes turning with a firm, soft glance up Edward never extra density of the blanched product rolling tongue child straight ahead broken exterior facing natural gas To experience a definition placed neatly where you can’t reach it and higher up Daytime experiences choler film bliss”

  JANE replaced the Hermes Rocket on the shelf. Another letter completed. That made twenty-five letters completed. Only eighteen more letters to complete. She had tried to make them irritating in the extreme. She reread the last letter. She was trembling. It was irritating in the extreme. Jane stopped trembling. There was Hogo to think about, now, and Jane preferred to think about Hogo without trembling. “He knows when I tremble. That is what he likes best.” Hogo drove Jane down Meat Street in his cobra-green Pontiac convertible. Nobody likes Hogo, because he is loathsome. He always has a white dog sitting upright in the front seat of the car, when Jane is not sitting there. Jane likes to swing from the lianas that dangle from the Meat Street trees, so sometimes she is not sitting there and the dog is sitting there instead. “For God’s sake can’t you stay put?” “Sorry.” Jane fingered her amulet. “That canaille Hogo. If he wants an exotic girl like me then he has to put up with a few irregularities from time to time.” Hogo is not very simpatico—not much! He changed his name to Hogo from Roy and he wears an Iron Cross t-shirt and we suspect him of some sort of shady underground connection with Paul—we haven’t figured out exactly what yet. “Hogo can I have an ice cream—a chocolate swirl?” Hogo took the chocolate swirl and jammed it into Jane’s mouth, in a loathsome way. His mother loved him when he was Roy, but now that he is Hogo she won’t even speak to him, if she can help it.

  “IT is marvelous,” Snow White said to herself. “When the water falls on my tender back. The white meat there. Give me the needle spray. First the hot, and then the cold. A thousand tiny points of perturbation. More perturbation! And who is it with me, here in the shower? It is Clem. The approach is Clem’s, and the technique, or lack of it, is Clem, Clem, Clem. And Hubert waits outside, on the other side of the shower curtain, and Henry in the hall, before the closed door, and Edward is sitting downstairs, in front of the television, waiting. But what of Bill? Why is it that Bill, the leader, has not tapped at my shower-stall door, in recent weeks? Probably because of his new reluctance to be touched. That must be it. Clem you are down-right anti-erotic, in those blue jeans and chaps! Artificial insemination would be more interesting. And why are there no in-flight movies in shower stalls, as there are in commercial aircraft? Why can’t I watch Ignace Paderewski in Moonlight Sonata, through a fine mist? That was a picture. And he was president of Poland, too. That must have been interesting. Everything in life is interesting except Clem’s idea of sexual congress, his Western confusion between the concept, ‘pleasure,’ and the concept, ‘increasing the size of the herd.’ But the water on my back is interesting. It is more than interesting. Marvelous is the word for it.”

  THERE were some straw flowers there. Decor. And somebody had said something we hadn’t heard, but Dan was very excited. “I praise fruit and hold flowers in disdain,” Apollinaire said, and we contrasted that with what LaGuardia had said. Then Bill said something: “Torch in the face.” He was very drunk. Other people said other things. I smoked an Old Gold cigarette. It is always better when everybody is calm, but calm does not come every day. Lamps are calm. The Secretary of State is calm. Each day just goes so fast, begins and ends. The poignant part came when Edward began to say what everybody already knew about him. “After I read the book, I—” “Don’t say that Edward,” Kevin said. “Don’t say anything you’ll regret later.” Bill put a big black bandage over Edward’s mouth, and Clem took off all his clothes. I smoked an Old Gold cigarette, the same one I had been smoking before. There was still some of it left because I had put it down without finishing it. Alicia showed us her pornographic pastry. Some things aren’t poignant at all and that pornographic pastry is one of them. Bill was trying to keep the tiredness off his f
ace. I wanted to get out of this talk and look at the window. But Bill had something else to say, and he wasn’t going to leave until he had said it, I could see that. “Well it is a pleasure to please her, when human ingenuity can manage it, but the whole thing is just trembling on the edge of monotony, after several years. And yet . . . I am fond of her. Yes, I am. For when sexual pleasure is had, it makes you fond, in a strange way, of the other one, the one with whom you are having it.”

  SNOW WHITE was cleaning. “Book lice do not bite people,” she said to herself. She sprayed the books with a five-percent solution of DDT. Then she dusted them with the dusting brush of the vacuum cleaner. She did not bang the books together, for that injures the bindings. Then she oiled the bindings with neat’s-foot oil, applying the oil with the palm of her hand and with her fingers. Then she mended some torn pages using strips cut from rice paper. She ironed some rumpled pages with a warm iron. Fresh molds were wiped off the bindings with a clean soft cloth slightly dampened with sherry. Then she hung a bag containing paradichlorobenzene in the book case, to inhibit mildew. Then Snow White cleaned the gas range. She removed the pans beneath the burners and grates and washed them thoroughly in hot suds. Then she rinsed them in clear water and dried them with paper towels. Using washing soda and a stiff brush, she cleaned the burners, paying particular attention to the gas orifices, through which the gas flows. She cleaned out the ports with a hairpin, rinsed them thoroughly and dried them with paper towels. Then she returned the drip tray, the burners and grates to their proper positions and lit each burner to make sure it was working. Then she washed the inside of the broiler compartment with a cloth wrung out in warm suds, with just a bit of ammonia to help cut the grease. Then she rinsed the broiler compartment with a cloth wrung out in clear water and dried it with paper towels. The pan and rack of the broiler were done in the same way. Then Snow White cleaned the oven using steel wool on the tough spots. Then she rinsed the inside of the oven with a cloth wrung out in clear water and dried it with paper towels. Then, “piano care.”

  WHAT SNOW WHITE REMEMBERS:

  THE HUNTSMAN

  THE FOREST

  THE STEAMING KNIFE

  “I WAS fair once,” Jane said. “I was the fairest of them all. Men came from miles around simply to be in my power. But those days are gone. Those better days. Now I cultivate my malice. It is a cultivated malice, not the pale natural malice we knew, when the world was young. I grow more witchlike as the hazy days imperceptibly meld into one another, and the musky months sink into memory as into a slough, sump, or slime. But I have my malice. I have that. I have even invented new varieties of malice, that men have not seen before now. Were it not for the fact that I am the sleepie of Hogo de Bergerac, I would be total malice. But I am redeemed by this hopeless love, which places me along the human continuum, still. Even Hogo is, I think, chiefly enamored of my malice, that artful, richly formed and softly poisonous network of growths. He luxuriates in the pain potential I am surrounded by. I think I will just sit here on this porch swing, now, swinging gently in the moist morning, and remember ‘better days.’ Then a cup of Chinese-restaurant tea at 10 a.m. Then, back into the swing for more ‘better days.’ Yes, that would be a pleasant way to spend the forenoon.”

  AT the horror show Hubert put his hand in Snow White’s lap. A shy and tentative gesture. She let it lay there. It was warm there; that is where the vulva is. And we had brought a thermos of glittering Gibsons, to make us happy insofar as possible. Hubert remembered the Trout Amandine he had had the day the ball was sticking to Kevin’s leg. It had been extremely tasty, that trout. And Hubert remembered the conversation in which he had said that God was cruel, and someone else had said vague, and they had pulled the horse off the road, and then they had seen a Polish picture. But this picture was better than that one, allowing for the fact that we had experienced that one in translation, and not in the naked Polish. Snow White is agitated. She is worried about something called her “reputation.” What will people think, why have we allowed her to become a public scandal, we must not be seen in public en famille, no one believes that she is simply a housekeeper, etc. etc. These concerns are ludicrous. No one cares. When she is informed that our establishment has excited no special interest in the neighborhood, she is bitterly disappointed. She sulks in her room, reading Teilhard de Chardin and thinking. “My suffering is authentic enough but it has a kind of low-grade concrete-block quality. The seven of them only add up to the equivalent of about two real men, as we know them from the films and from our childhood, when there were giants on the earth. It is possible of course that there are no more real men here, on this ball of half-truths, the earth. That would be a disappointment. One would have to content oneself with the subtle falsity of color films of unhappy love affairs, made in France, with a Mozart score. That would be difficult.”

  Miseries and complaints of Snow White: “I am tired of being just a horsewife!”

  DEAR MR. QUISTGAARD:

  Although you do not know me my name is Jane. I have seized your name from the telephone book in an attempt to enmesh you in my concerns. We suffer today I believe from a lack of connection with each other. That is common knowledge, so common in fact, that it may not even be true. It may be that we are overconnected, for all I know. However I am acting on the first assumption, that we are underconnected, and thus have flung you these lines, which you may grasp or let fall as you will. But I feel that if you neglect them, you will suffer for it. That is merely my private opinion. No police power supports it. I have no means of punishing you, Mr. Quistgaard, for not listening, for having a closed heart. There is no punishment for that, in our society. Not yet. But to the point. You and I, Mr. Quistgaard, are not in the same universe of discourse. You may not have been aware of it previously, but the fact of the matter is, that we are not. We exist in different universes of discourse. Now it may have appeared to you, prior to your receipt of this letter, that the universe of discourse in which you existed, and puttered about, was in all ways adequate and satisfactory. It may never have crossed your mind to think that other universes of discourse distinct from your own existed, with people in them, discoursing. You may have, in a commonsense way, regarded your own u. of d. as a plenum, filled to the brim with discourse. You may have felt that what already existed was a sufficiency. People like you often do. That is certainly one way of regarding it, if fat self-satisfied complacency is your aim. But I say unto you, Mr. Quistgaard, that even a plenum can leak. Even a plenum, cher maître, can be penetrated. New things can rush into your plenum displacing old things, things that were formerly there. No man’s plenum, Mr. Quistgaard, is impervious to the awl of God’s will. Consider then your situation now. You are sitting there in your house on Neat Street, with your fine dog, doubtless, and your handsome wife and tall brown sons, conceivably, and who knows with your gun-colored Plymouth Fury in the driveway, and opinions passing back and forth, about whether the Grange should build a new meeting hall or not, whether the children should become Thomists or not, whether the pump needs more cup grease or not. A comfortable American scene. But I, Jane Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, am in possession of your telephone number, Mr. Quistgaard. Think what that means. It means that at any moment I can pierce your plenum with a single telephone call, simply by dialing 989-7777. You are correct, Mr. Quistgaard, in seeing this as a threatening situation. The moment I inject discourse from my u. of d. into your u. of d., the yourness of yours is diluted. The more I inject, the more you dilute. Soon you will be presiding over an empty plenum, or rather, since that is a contradiction in terms, over a former plenum, in terms of yourness. You are, essentially, in my power. I suggest an unlisted number.

  Yours faithfully,

  JANE

  PAUL: A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY

  “IS there someplace I can put this?” Paul asked indicating the large parcel he held in his arms. “It is a new thing I just finished today, still a little wet I’m afraid.” He wiped his hands which were covered with emul
sions on his trousers. “I’ll just lean it up against your wall for a moment.” Paul leaned the new thing up against our wall for a moment. The new thing, a dirty great banality in white, poor-white and off-white, leaned up against the wall. “Interesting,” we said. “It’s poor,” Snow White said. “Poor, poor.” “Yes,” Paul said, “one of my poorer things I think.” “Not so poor of course as yesterday’s, poorer on the other hand than some,” she said. “Yes,” Paul said, “it has some of the qualities of poorness.” “Especially poor in the lower left-hand corner,” she said. “Yes,” Paul said, “I would go so far as to hurl it into the marketplace.” “They’re getting poorer,” she said. “Poorer and poorer,” Paul said with satisfaction, “descending to unexplored depths of poorness where no human intelligence has ever been.” “I find it extremely interesting as a social phenomenon,” Snow White said, “to note that during the height of what is variously called, abstract expressionism, action painting and so forth, when most artists were grouped together in a school, you have persisted in an image alone. That, I find—and I think it has been described as hard-edge painting, is an apt description, although it leaves out a lot, but I find it very interesting that in the last few years there is a tremendous new surge of work being done in the hard-edge image. I don’t know if you want to comment on that, but I find it extremely interesting that you, who have always been sure of yourself and your image, were one of the earliest, almost founders of that school, if you can even call it a school.” “I have always been sure of myself and my image,” Paul said. “Sublimely poor,” she murmured. “Wall-paper,” he said. They kissed. We trudged to bed then singing the to-bed song heigh-ho. She was lying there in her black vinyl pajamas. “He is certainly a well-integrated personality, Paul,” she said. “Yes,” we said. “He makes contact, you must grant him that.” “Yes,” we said. “A beautiful human being.” “Carrying the mace is a bit much, perhaps,” we said. “We are fortunate to have him in our country,” she concluded.