“BILL will you begin. By telling the court in your own words how you first conceived and then supported this chimera, the illusion of your potential greatness. By means of which you have managed to assume the leadership and retain it, despite tons of evidence of total incompetence, the most recent instance being your hurlment of two six-packs of Miller High Life, in a brown-paper bag, through the windscreen of a blue Volkswagen operated by I. Fondue and H. Maeght. Two utter and absolute strangers, so far as we know.” “Strangers to you perhaps. But not to me.” “Well strangers is not the immediate question. Will you respond to the immediate question. How did you first conceive and then sustain—” “The conception I have explained more or less. I wanted to make, of my life, a powerful statement etc. etc. How this wrinkle was first planted in my sensorium I know not. But I can tell you how it is sustained.” “How.” “I tell myself things.” “What.” “Bill you are the greatest. Bill you did that very nicely. Bill there is something about you. Bill you have style. Bill you are macho.” “But despite this blizzard of self-gratulation—” “A fear remained.” “A fear of?” “The black horse.” “Who is this black horse.” “I have not yet met it. It was described to me.” “By?” “Fondue and Maeght.” “Those two who were at the controls of the Volkswagen when you hurled the brown-paper bag.” “That is correct.” “You cherished then for these two, Fondue and Maeght, a hate.” “More of a miff, your worship.” “Of what standing, in the time dimension, is this miff?” “Matter of let’s see sixteen years I would say.” “The miff had its genesis in mentionment to you by them of the great black horse.” “That is correct.” “How old were you exactly. At that time.” “Twelve years.” “Something said to you about a horse sixteen years ago triggered, then, the hurlment.” “That is correct.” “Let us make sure we understand the circumstances of the hurlment. Can you disbosom yourself very briefly of the event as seen from your point of view.” “It was about four o’clock in the afternoon.” “What is your authority.” “The cathouse clock.” “Proceed.” “I was on my way from the coin-operated laundry to the Door Store.” “With what in view.” “I had in mind the purchasement of a slab of massif oak, 48″ by 60″, and a set of carved Byzantine legs, for the construction of a cocktail table, to support cocktails.” “Could you describe the relation of the High Life to the project, construction of cocktail table.” “I had in mind engorgement of the High Life whilst sanding, screwing, gluing and so forth.” “And what had you in mind further. The court is interested in the array or disarray of your mind.” “I had in mind the making of a burgoo, for my supper. Snow White as you know being reluctant in these days to—” “As we know. There was, then, in the brown-paper bag, material—” “There was in the brown-paper bag, along with the High Life, a flatfish.” “The flatfish perished in the hurlment we take it.” “The flatfish had perished some time previously. Murthered on the altar of commerce, according to the best information available.” “Proceed.” “I then apprehended, at the corner of Eleventh and Meat, the blue Volkswagen containing Fondue and Maeght.” “You descried them through the windscreen.” “That is correct.” “The windscreen was in motion?” “The entire vehicle.” “Making what speed.” “It was effecting a stop.” “You were crossing in front of it.” “That is correct.” “What then.” “I recognized at the controls, Fondue and Maeght.” “This after the slipping away of sixteen years.” “The impression was indelible.” “What then.” “I lifted my eyes.” “To heaven?” “To the cathouse clock. It registered hard upon four.” “What then.” “The hurlment.” “You hurled said bag through said windscreen.” “Yes.” “And?” “The windscreen shattered. Ha ha.” “Did the court hear you aright. Did you say ha ha.” “Ha ha.” “Outburst will be dealt with. You have been warned. Let us continue. The windscreen glass was then imploded upon the passengers.” “Ha ha.” “Cutaneous injurement resulted in facial areas a b c and d.” “That is correct. Ha ha.” “Fondue sustained a woundment in the vicinity of the inner canthus.” “That is correct.” “Could you locate that for the court.” “The junction of the upper and lower lids, on the inside.” “ ‘Inside’ meaning, we assume, the most noseward part.” “Exactly.” “A hair from which, the ball itself would have been compromised.” “Fatally.” “You then danced a jig on—” “Objection!” “And what might the objection be?” “Our client, your honesties, did not dance a jig. A certain shufflement of the feet might have been observed, product of a perfectly plausible nervous tension, such as all are subject to on special occasions, weddings, births, deaths, etc. But nothing that, in all charity, might be described as a gigue, with its connotations of gaiety, carefreeness—” “He was observed dancing a jig by Shield 333, midst the broken glass and blood.” “Could we have Shield 333.” “Shield 333 to the stand!” “Come along, fellow, come along. Do you swear to tell the truth, or some of it, or most of it, so long as we both may live?” “I do.” “Now then, Shield 333, you are Shield 333?” “I are.” “It was you who was officiating at the corner of Eleventh and Meat, on the night of January sixteenth?” “It were.” “And your mission?” “Prevention of enmanglement of school-children by galloping pantechnicons.” “And the weather?” “There was you might say a mizzle. I was wearing me plastic cap cover.” “Did you observe that man over there, known as ‘Bill,’ dancing a jig midst the blood and glass, after the hurlment?” “Well now, I’m nae sae gud on th’ dances, yer amplitude. I’m not sure it were a jig. Coulda been a jag. Coulda been what do they call it, th’ lap. Hae coulda been lappin’. I’m nae dancer meself. Hem from the Tenth Precinct. Th’ Tenth don’t dance.” “Thank you, Shield 333, for this inconclusive evidence of the worst sort. You may step down. Now, ‘Bill,’ to return to your entanglement of former times with Fondue and Maeght, in what relation to you did they stand, in those times.” “They stood to me in the relation, scoutmasters.” “They were your scoutmasters. Entrusted with your schoolment in certain dimensions of lore.” “Yes. The duty of the scoutmasters was to reveal the scoutmysteries.” “And what was the nature of the latter?” “The scoutmysteries included such things as the mystique of rope, the mistake of one animal for another, and the miseries of the open air.” “Yes. Now, was this matter of the great black horse included under the rubric, scoutmysteries.” “No. It was in the nature of a threat, a punishment. I had infracted a rule.” “What rule?” “A rule of thumb having to do with pots. You were supposed to scour the pots with mud, to clean them. I used Ajax.” “That was a scoutmystery, how to scour a pot with mud?” “Indeed.” “The infraction was then, resistance to scoutmysteries?” “Stated in the most general terms, that would be it.” “And what was the response of Fondue and Maeght.” “They told me that there was a great black horse, and that it had in mind, eating me.” “They did?” “It would come by night, they said. I lay awake waiting.” “Did it present itself? The horse?” “No. But I awaited it. I await it still.” “One more question: is it true that you allowed the fires under the vats to go out, on the night of January sixteenth, while pursuing this private vendetta?” “It is true.” “Vatricide. That crime of crimes. Well it doesn’t look good for you, Bill. It doesn’t look at all good for you.”
SNOW WHITE THINKS: THE HOUSE . . . WALLS . . . WHEN HE DOESN’T . . . I’M NOT . . . IN THE DARK . . . SHOULDERS . . . AFRAID . . . THE WATER WAS COLD . . . WANT TO KNOW . . . EFFORTLESSLY . . .
SNOW WHITE THINKS: WHY AM I . . . GLASS . . . HUNCHED AGAINST THE WELL . . . INTELLIGENCE . . . TO RETURN . . . A WALL . . . INTELLIGENCE . . . ON THE . . . TO RETURN . . . HE’S COLD . . . MIRROR . . .
“YOU have to learn to spell everything right,” Paul told Emily. “That is the first thing I found intolerable, in other countries. Who can spell Jeg føler mig daarligt tilpas? And all it means is I feel bad, and I already know that. That I feel bad. If it had meant, for example, The jug is folded under the darling tulips . . .” “I understand,” Emily said, but she didn’t, because she was an animal. Not human. Her problems
are not our problems. Forget her. “I try to be reasonable,” Paul said, “civil with the telephone company, brusque with the bank. That is what they have earned, that bank, brusqueness, and they can send me all the zinnia seeds in the world and I won’t change my opinion. But now that I am a part of the Abbey of Thélème, under the thumb of our fat abbot, I do what I will. That jolly rogue and thin pedant is drunk again, and does not know that I am here, at the catseller’s war, earning a penny as a correspondent for Cat World. Too bad Snow White is not here with me. It would be good for her, and good for me, and we could crawl behind that pile of used arquebus wads over there and tell each other what we are really like. I already know what I am really like, but I don’t know what she is really like. She is probably really like no other girl I have ever known—unlike Joan, unlike Letitia, unlike Mary, unlike Amelia. Unlike those old girls, with whom I spent parts of my youth, the parts that I left with all those priests, in all those dark boxes, with little curtains and sliding doors, before I threw in with the Thélèmites, and began to do what I would. In all sincerity, I am not sure that I am better now than I was then, in those old days. At least then I did not know what I was doing. Now, I know.”
“PAUL is frog. He is frog through and through. I thought he would, at some point, cast off his mottled wettish green-and-brown integument to reappear washed in the hundred glistering hues of princeliness. But he is pure frog. So. I am disappointed. Either I have overestimated Paul, or I have overestimated history. In either case I have made a serious error. So. There it is. I have been disappointed, and am, doubtless, to be disappointed further. Total disappointment. That’s it. The red meat on the rug. The frog’s legs on the floor.”
“I LOVE YOU, Snow White.” “I know, Hogo. I know because you have told me a thousand times. I do not doubt you. I am convinced of your sincerity and warmth. And I must admit that your tall brutality has made its impression on me, too. I am not unaffected by your Prussian presence, or by the chromed chains you wear looped around your motorcycle doublet, or by your tasteful scars on the left and right cheeks. But this ‘love’ must not be, because of your blood. You don’t have the blood for this ‘love,’ Hogo. Your blood is not fine enough. Oh I know that in this democratic era questions of blood are a little de trop, a little frowned-upon. People don’t like to hear people talking about their blood, or about other people’s blood. But I am not ‘people,’ Hogo. I am me. I must hold myself in reserve for a prince or prince-figure, someone like Paul. I know that Paul has not looked terribly good up to now and in fact I despise him utterly. Yet he has the blood of kings and queens and cardinals in his veins, Hogo. He has the purple blood of exalted station. Whereas you have only plain blood in your veins, Hogo, blood that anybody might have, the delivery boy from the towel service for example. You must admit that they are not the same thing, these two kinds of blood.” “But what about love? What about love which, as Stendhal tells us, seizes the senses and overthrows all other considerations in a giddy of irresponsibility?” “You may well say ‘a giddy of irresponsibility,’ Hogo. That is precisely the state I am not in. I am calm. As calm as a lamp, as calm as the Secretary of State. As calm as you are giddy.” “Well Snow White your blood arguments are pretty potent, and I recognize that there is a gap there, between my blood and the blood royal. Yet in my blood there is a fever. I offer you this fever. It is as if my blood were full of St. Elmo’s fire, so hot and electrical does it feel, inside me. If this fever, this rude but grand passion, in any measure ennobles me in your eyes, or in any other part of you, then perhaps all is not yet lost. For even a bad man can set his eyes on the stars, sometimes. Even a bad man can breathe and hope. And it is my hope that, as soon as you fully comprehend the strength of this fever in me, you will find it ennobling and me ennobled, and a fit consort suddenly, though I was not before. I know that this is a slim hope.” “No Hogo. It does not ennoble you, the fever. I wish it did, but it does not. It is simply a fever, in my view. Two aspirin and a glass of water. I know that this is commonplace, even cruel, advice, but I have no other advice. I myself am so buffeted about by recent events, and non-events, that if events give me even one more buffet, I will simply explode. Goodnight, Hogo. Take your dark appeal away. Your cunningly-wrought dark appeal.”
WE were sitting at a sidewalk café talking about the old days. The days before. Then the proprietor came. He had a policeman with him. A policeman wearing a black leather blackjack and a book by Rafael Sabatini. “You are too far out on the sidewalk,” the policeman said. “You must stay behind the potted plants. You must not be more than ten feet from the building line.” We moved back behind the building line then. We could talk about the old days on either side of the potted plants, we decided. We were friendly and accommodating, as is our wont. But in moving the table we spilled the drinks. “There will be an additional charge for the stained tablecloth,” the proprietor said. Then we poured the rest of the drinks over the rest of the tablecloth, until it was all the same color, rose-red. “Show us the stain,” we said. “Where is the stain? Show us the stain and we will pay. And while you are looking for it, more drinks.” We looked fondly back over the inches to where we had been. The policeman looked back over the inches with us. “I realize it was better there,” the policeman said. “But the law is the law. That is what is wrong with it, that it is the law. You don’t mind if I have just a taste of your stain?” The policeman wrung out our table-cover and tossed it off with a flourish of brass. “That’s good stain. And now, if you will excuse me, I intuit a felony, over on Pleat Street.” The policeman flew away to attend to his felony, the proprietor returned with more stain. “Who has wrinkled my tablecover?” We regarded the tablecover, a distressed area it was true. “Someone will pay for the ironing of that.” Then we rose up and wrinkled the entire sidewalk café, with our bare hands. It was impossible to tell who was wrong, when we had finished.
JANE gave Snow White a vodka Gibson on the rocks. “Drink this,” she said. “It will make you feel better.” “I don’t feel bad physically,” Snow White said. “Emotionally is another story of course.” “Go on,” Jane said. “Go on drink it.” “No I won’t drink it now,” Snow White said. “Perhaps later. Although something warns me not to drink it at all. Something suggests to me that it is a bad scene, this drink you proffer. Something whispers to me that there is something wrong with it.” “Well that’s possible,” Jane replied. “I didn’t make the vodka myself you know. I didn’t grow the grain myself, and reap it myself, and make the mash myself. I am not a member of the Cinzano Vermouth Company. They don’t tell me everything. I didn’t harvest the onions. I didn’t purify the water that went into these rocks. I’m not responsible for everything. All I can say is that to the best of my knowledge, this is an ordinary vodka Gibson on the rocks. Just like any other. Further than that I will not go.” “Oh well then,” Snow White said. “It must be all right in that case. It must be all right if it is ordinary. If it is as ordinary as you say. In that case, I shall drink it.” “This drink is vaguely exciting, like a film by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson,” Paul said. “It is a good thing I have taken it away from you, Snow White. It is too exciting for you. If you had drunk it, something bad would probably have happened to your stomach. But because I am a man, and because men have strong stomachs for the business of life, and the pleasure of life too, nothing will happen to me. Lucky that I sensed you about to drink it, and sensed that it was too exciting for you, on my sensing machine in my underground installation, and was able to arrive in time to wrest it from your grasp, just as it was about to touch your lips. Those lips that I have deeply admired, first through the window, and then from my underground installation. Those lips that—” “Look how he has fallen to the ground Jane!” Snow White observed. “And look at all that green foam coming out of his face! And look at those convulsions he is having! Why it resembles nothing else but a death agony, the whole scene! I wonder if there was something wrong with that drink after all? Jane? Jane?”
“ONE thing you can say about him,” Fred said, “is that Paul was straight. A straight arrow. And just by looking at him, on those occasions when our paths crossed, at the bus station for instance, or at the discount store, I could tell that Paul had a lot of ginger. He must have had a lot of ginger, to have dug that great hole, outside the house, and to have put all those wires in it, and connected all those dogs to the wires, and all that. That took a lot of mechanical ingenuity, to my way of thinking, and a lot of technical knowledge too, that shouldn’t be understated, when we are making our final assessment of Paul. I might mention the trust that Hogo placed in him, as evidenced by the large sum of money found on him, wrapped in one of Hogo’s bank statements, when they changed his clothes, at the funeral parlor. Of course some people say that this was get-out-of-town money Hogo had given him, but I don’t believe that. I choose to believe that Hogo placed a great deal of trust in Paul, more trust perhaps than the best judgment would suggest, strictly speaking. But I’m talking like a banker now, in a shrill and judicious way, and I don’t want to talk like that. Consider Amelia, who is sitting here in the front row with a black cloth over her face, waiting to see her late lover tucked away under the earth, in the box that has been prepared for him. Imagine one’s feelings at such a moment. No, it is too difficult. I shall not ask you to imagine them. I only ask that you empathize with this poor woman, who has been deprived, at a stroke of the Lord’s pen as it were, of a source of income and warmth and human intercourse, which we all regard so highly, and need so much. I leave that thought to stick in your minds. As for myself, I am only Fred, a former bandleader spitted on a passion for Snow White, that girl in the third row there, seated next to Jane. She will not even speak to me, even though I am in her power. It seems that being in someone’s power implies no obligation on the part of the one in whose power one is, not even the obligation of sparing one a word now and then, or a yellow half-smile. But that is my business, and not the business we are gathered together here in the sight of God to execute, which is the burning of Paul, and the putting of him into a vase, and the sinking of the vase into the ground, in the box that has been prepared for it. Some people like to be scattered on top, but Paul wanted to be put under the ground. That accords with what else we knew about him.”