Snow White
Additional reactions to the hair: “To be a horsewife,” Edward said. “That, my friends, is my text for today. This important slot in our society, conceptualized by God as very nearly the key to the whole thing as Thomas tells us, has suffered in recent months and in this house a degree of denigration. I have heard it; I have been saddened by it. So I want today if I can to dispel some of these wrong ideas that have been going around, causing confusion and scumming up the face of the truth. The horsewife! The very base-bone of the American plethora! The horsewife! Without whom the entire structure of civilian life would crumble! Without the horsewife, the whole raison d’être of our existences would be reduced, in a twinkling, to that brute level of brutality for which we so rightly reproach the filthy animals. Were it not for her enormous purchasing power and the heedless gaiety with which it is exercised, we would still be going around dressed in skins probably, with no big-ticket items to fill the empty voids, in our homes and in our hearts. The horsewife! Nut and numen of our intersubjectivity! The horsewife! The chiefest ornament on the golden tree of human suffering! But to say what I have said, gentlemen, is to say nothing at all. Consider now the horsewife in another part of her role. Consider her sitting in her baff, anointing her charms with liquid Cheer and powdered Joy which trouble, confuse and drown the sense in odors. Now she rises chastely, and chastely abrades herself with a red towel. What an endearing spectacle! The naked wonder of it! The blue beauty of it! Now I ask you, gentlemen, what do we have here? Do we have a being which regards itself with the proper amount of self-love? No. No, we do not. Do we have a being which regards itself with the appropriate awe? No. No, we do not. We have here rather a being which regards itself, qua horsewife, with something dangerously akin to self-hatred. That is the problem. What is the solution.” Dan spoke up, then. “I could cut your gizzard out, Edward. You are making the whole damned thing immensely more difficult than it has to be. I put it to you that, without your screen of difficulty-making pseudo-problems, the whole damned thing can be resolved very neatly, in the following way. Now, what do we apprehend when we apprehend Snow White? We apprehend, first, two three-quarter-scale breasts floating toward us wrapped, typically, in a red towel. Or, if we are apprehending her from the other direction, we apprehend a beautiful snow-white arse floating away from us wrapped in a red towel. Now I ask you: What, in these two quite distinct apprehensions, is the constant? The factor that remains the same? Why, quite simply, the red towel. I submit that, rightly understood, the problem of Snow White has to do at its center with nothing else but red towels. Seen in this way, it immediately becomes a non-problem. We can easily dispense with the slippery and untrustworthy and expensive effluvia that is Snow White, and cleave instead to the towel. That is my idea, gentlemen. And I have here in this brown bag . . . I have taken the liberty of purchasing . . . here, Edward, here is your towel . . . Kevin . . . Clem. . . .” Chang watched sourly. That was the trouble with being a Chinese. Too much detachment. “I don’t want a ratty old red towel. I want the beautiful snow-white arse itself!”
SNOW WHITE regarded her hair hanging out of the window. “Paul? Is there a Paul, or have I only projected him in the shape of my longing, boredom, ennui and pain? Have I been trained in the finest graces and arts all my life for nothing but this? Is my richly-appointed body to go down the drain, at twenty-two, in this horribly boresome milieu, which even my worst enemi would not wish upon me, if she knew? Of course there is a Paul! That Paul who was a friend of the family, who had, at that point, not yet assumed the glistering mantle of princeliness. There is a Paul somewhere, but not here. Not under my window. Not yet.” Snow White looked out of the window, down the hair, at the two hundred citizens on the ground, agape. “Ugh! I wish I were somewhere else! On the beach at St. Tropez, for example, surrounded by brown boys without a penny. Here everyone has a penny. Here everyone worships the almighty penny. Well at least with pennies one knows what they add up to, under the decimal system. No ambiguity there, at least. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Thy daughters are burning with torpor and a sense of immense wasted potential, like one of those pipes you see in the oil fields, burning off the natural gas that it isn’t economically rational to ship somewhere!”
“Informal statements the difficulties of ownership and customs surprises you by being Love exchanges paint it understanding brown boys without a penny I was bandit headgear And the question of yesterday waiting members clinging clear milk of wanting fever hidden melted constabulary extra innings of danger hides under the leg résumé clip chrome method decision of the sacred Rota muscular dream basket gesture Kiss the paper with it tufts more interesting than children painful texture of interesting children offensive candor lesion hanging mirror They only want window boxes moving with clean, careful shrubs Manner in which the penetration was Excited groans stifled under blankets upset A parliament of less-favored glass doors closed extra”
THE bishop in his red mantlepiece strode forward. “Yes, we are in a terrible hurricane here,” he acknowledged to the wrecked cries of the survivors. “If we can just cross that spit of land there” (gesture with fingers, glitter of episcopal rings) “and get to that harlot over there” (sweep of arm in white lacy alb) “pardon I meant hamlet, we can perhaps find shelter against this particular vicissitude sent by God to break our backs for our sins.” The “flock” moaned. They had been eight days without . . . The sudden pall on the fourth day had been the worst. There was a silence. Silence. Everything silent. Not a sound for six hours. Nothing. “This is the worst,” they murmured to one another in sign language, not wanting to . . . break the. . . . A few young men of good family crawled away into the night to find help (tingle of mace against bone). The Marchesa de G. had fainted again. Blockflutes were heard. “So this is Spain!” Paul said to himself. “I never thought I would live to see it. It is intelligent of me to hide from the Order here, in the episcopal entourage. And it is intelligent of me to hide from the Order here in this hurricane. So much intelligence! So little of God’s grace!”
SELF-REGARD is rooted in breakfast. When you have had it, then lunch seems to follow naturally, as if you owned not only the fruits but the means of production in a large, faux-naïf country. This is doubted only by eccentrics, and on the present occasion their views need not be taken into account. That country in which you are loved for yourself is expanding now with the further development of books, a new kind capable of satisfying the tactile wishes even of old people. Our engineers are at a loss to understand what their engineers have done. Still, insofar as they are trying to sketch future trends, even the most rigid empiricists among them are obliged to make projections, and then plans. Such is the impact of technology upon the fabric of inherited social institutions that breakfast is almost forgotten, in some countries; they paint pictures instead. I read Dampfboot’s novel although he had nothing to say. It wasn’t rave, that volume; we regretted that. And it was hard to read, dry, breadlike pages that turned, and then fell, like a car burned by rioters and resting, wrong side up, at the edge of the picture plane with its tires smoking. Fragments kept flying off the screen into the audience, fragments of rain and ethics. Hubert wanted to go back to the dog races. But we made him read his part, the outer part where the author is praised and the price quoted. We like books that have a lot of dreck in them, matter which presents itself as not wholly relevant (or indeed, at all relevant) but which, carefully attended to, can supply a kind of “sense” of what is going on. This “sense” is not to be obtained by reading between the lines (for there is nothing there, in those white spaces) but by reading the lines themselves—looking at them and so arriving at a feeling not of satisfaction exactly, that is too much to expect, but of having read them, of having “completed” them. “Please don’t talk,” Snow White said. “Say nothing. We can begin now. Take off the pajamas.” Snow White took off her pajamas. Henry took off his pajamas. Kevin took off his pajamas. Hubert took off his pajamas. Clem took off his pajamas. Dan took off his pajamas. Edward took off
his pajamas. Bill refused to take off his pajamas. “Take off your pajamas Bill,” Snow White said. Everyone looked at Bill’s pajamas. “No, I won’t,” Bill said. “I will not take off my pajamas.” “Take off your pajamas Bill,” everyone said. “No. I will not.” Everyone looked again at Bill’s pajamas. Bill’s pajamas filled the room, in a sense. Those yellow crêpe-paper pajamas.
“WHAT is that apelike hand I see reaching into my mailbox?” “That’s nothing. Think nothing of it. It’s nothing. It’s just one of my familiars mother. Don’t think about it. It’s just an ape that’s all. Just an ordinary ape. Don’t give it another thought. That’s all there is to it.” “I think you dismiss these things too easily Jane. I’m sure it means more than that. It’s unusual. It means something.” “No mother. It doesn’t mean more than that. Than I have said it means.” “I’m sure it means more than that Jane.” “No mother it does not mean more than that. Don’t go reading things into things mother. Leave things alone. It means what it means. Content yourself with that mother.” “I’m certain it means more than that.” “No mother.”
SNOW WHITE received the following note from Fred, tossed over the wall:
Madonna,
My men have left me now. They have gone I suspect to the union hall to institute proceedings against me. But I don’t care. There is nothing in life for me except being in your power. I have swooned several times this morning, sitting on a bench in the square, thinking of you and feeling those iron bolts with which our souls are bolted together forever. Will you speak to me? I will be in the square at four o’clock by the cathouse clock. Dare I expect, that you will come?
FRED
Hubert picked up the note in the yard. “What is this note doing here, wrapped about a box of Whitman’s chocolates? For whom is it intended? After I have read it, I will know.” Silently Hubert opened the box of chocolates. “Should I take one of the ones covered with gold foil, always the tastiest? Or should I instead take one of the plain American ones?” Hubert sat down in the yard and looked into the box, trying to make up his mind.
THEN we had a fantasy, a fantasy of anger and malevolence. We were dreaming. We dreamed we burned Snow White. Burned is not the right word, cooked is the right word. We cooked Snow White over the big fire, in the dream. You remember the burning scene in Dreyer’s The Burning of Joan of Art. It was like that, only where Dreyer was vertical, we were horizontal. Snow White was horizontal. She was spitted on a spit (large iron bar). The spit was suspended over the big fire. Kevin threw more wood on the fire, in the dream. Hubert threw more wood on the fire. Bill threw more wood on the fire. Clem basted the naked girl with sweet-and-sour sauce. Dan made the rice. Snow White screamed. Edward turned the crank which made the meat revolve. Was she done enough? She was making a lot of noise. The meat was moving toward the correct color, a brown-red. The meat thermometer registered almost-enough. “Turn the crank Edward,” Bill said. Hubert threw more wood on the fire. Jane threw more wood on the fire. The smoke was acrid, as it always is. Antonin Artaud held out a crucifix at the end of a long pole, in the smoke. Snow White asked if we would remove the spit. “It hurts,” she said. “No,” Bill said. “You are not done yet. It is supposed to hurt.” Jane laughed. “Why are you laughing Jane?” “I am laughing because it is not me burning there.” “For you,” Henry said, “we have the red-hot iron shoes. The plastic red-hot iron shoes.” “This has nothing to do with justice,” Bill said. “This has to do with animus.” We regarded Snow White rotating there, in her pain and beauty, in the dream.
SNOW WHITE saw her hair black as ebony hanging out of the window. “I suppose I must respond in some way to the new overture from the seven men. They think they are so merveilleux, with their new shower curtain. They have been posing in front of it all day. As if I could be swayed, in my iron resolve, by a new shower curtain, however extraordinary and fine! I wonder what it looks like?”
BILL has dropped the money. He was carrying the money neatly separated into 10’s, 20’s, 50’s and so forth, a bundle totaling a great deal of money I can tell you that. He was on his way to the vault with the money bundled into his armpit, wrapped in a red towel. Henry had wrapped it in a red towel. Hubert had bundled it into Bill’s armpit. Dan had opened the door. Kevin had pointed Bill toward the vault. Clem had given Bill a kick in the back, to get him started. And Edward had said, “Don’t forget the receipt.” Then Bill had moved through the door out into the daylight in the direction of the vault. But somewhere between the house and the vault the money hurled itself out of his armpit in a direction known only to it. “Where is the deposit slip, Bill?” Edward asked, when Bill returned. “Deposit slip?” Bill said. “The bundle,” Dan said. “The bundle?” “The money,” Kevin said. “The money?” We all rushed out into the air, then, to recover the bundle. But it was nowhere. We retraced Bill’s steps as best we could. Some of Bill’s steps led into a bar & grill, The Fire Next Time Bar & Grill. We retraced there a hot pastrami sandwich and eight bottles of Miller High Life. But of the bundle there was not a trace. Luckily the matter is not serious, because we have more money. But the loss of equanimity was serious. We prize equanimity, and a good deal of equanimity leaked away, that day.
“ALL right Jane get into the car.” “Hogo you are making stains on my new white-duck love seat with pillows of white-on-white Indian crewel!” Jane regarded the large black stains. “That’s all you know Hogo isn’t it. How to take a thing that was white, and stain it until it is black. That’s a pretty strong metaphor Hogo of what you would like to do with me, too. I understand. If you think for one moment that your capability of staining the thing you love has escaped me, from the very beginning, you have grossly misperceived our situation. Get out of here Hogo forever!” “All right Jane get into the car.”
PAUL was explaining music to the French citizens. “When we turn our amplifiers on,” he said, “already cant is forming over some people’s minds, like the brown crust on bread, or the silence that ‘crusts over’ inappropriate remarks. I think there ought to be, and remember I’m talking normatively here, I think what ought to obtain is a measure of audacity, an audacity component, such as turning your amplifier up a little higher than anybody else’s, or using a fork to pick and strum, rather than a plectrum or the carefully calloused fingertips, or doing something with your elbow, I don’t care what, I insist only that it be relevant, in a strange way, to the scene that has chosen to spread itself out before us, the theatre of our lives. And if you other gentlemen will come with me down to the quai, carrying your amplifiers in boxes, and not forgetting the trailing cords, which have to be ‘plugged in,’ so that we can ‘turn on’ . . .”
ROME. ANOTHER DEFEAT. PAUL HANDS OVER THE GREEN-AND-GOLD ARMBAND. THE ITALIAN POSTAL SERVICE ABIDES NO RINGERS IN ITS RANKS.
WELL Paul is back and he has decided to stop fleeing his destiny and he has given himself up at the Nevada monastery and drawn his robes from the supply room and now he is home on leave in his robes. Paul came to the party in his robes. He wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything, or say anything. That was the Rule. We went to the howling party sitting primly along the side of the room in a row, the seven of us and Snow White. Our social intercourse for the quarter. We discussed the bat theory of child-raising with the mothers there meanwhile paying attention to a vat of rum under the harpsichord. Edward didn’t want to discuss the bat theory of child-raising (delicate memories) so he discussed Harald Bluetooth, king of Scandinavia during a certain period, the Blue-tooth period. But the mothers wanted to talk. “Spare the bat and the child rots,” said the mothers. “Rots inside.” “But how do you know when to employ it? The magic moment?” “We have a book which tells us such things,” the mothers said. “We look it up in the book. On page 331 begins a twelve-page discussion of batting the baby. A well-worn page.” We got away from those mothers as fast as we could. There were a lot of other people talking there, political talk and other kinds of talk. A certain contempt for the institutions of society was exh
ibited. Clem thrust his arm into the bag of consciousness-expanding drugs. His consciousness expanded. He concentrated his consciousness upon a thumbtip. “Is this the upper extent of knowing, this dermis that I perceive here?” Then he became melancholy, melancholy as a gib cat, melancholy as a jugged hare. “The content of the giraffe is giraffe meat. Giraffes have high blood pressure because the blood must plod to the brain up ten feet of neck.” There were more perceptions and blague. Edgar and Charles wanted some too. But they were not allowed to have any. All they were allowed to do was hold Paul’s robes, when he walked around. “Take me home,” Snow White said. “Take me home instantly. If there is anything worse than being home, it is being out.”