God, said the Radcliffe muse, meaning it.
Gnossos watched the flaming sky, his mouth contorted in a twisted grin he could no longer bring under control, his shoulders hunched, teeth chattering, rucksack gone weightless, the stem of his glass clamped perilously in a needle-thin vise of thumb and forefinger.
God Bless America, he thought finally, clamping his eyes shut, unable to do anything physical about the demonic, possessed expression in his soul.
“And all the ships at sea,” he added now, out loud. He was standing in the saddle of a small sidehill, high on the main slope above David Grün’s farm, the composer’s sixteen-gauge shotgun resting with its stock balanced on his shoulder, barrel closed in his gloved hand. Somewhere on the rim of the saddle, Grün’s beagle was swinging in a wide circle, calling back hoarse, snappy barks.
The rabbit broke free and skipped down into the saddle, powdering up snow as it jumped, fur still white from winter. Hopping along, ears up, straight at me, not seeing, thinking only of the dog. Where? Shit, too close behind. Turn it.
Gnossos stamped his foot and the rabbit heard the sound, paused, and leapt to the right, the beagle closing fast, yapping furiously, big nose whipping back and forth over the ground. Lead wide, better in the head, meat for the morrow, full choke, David said, squeeeeeze.
The gun whomped, the dog slammed to a momentary halt and the rabbit flopped into the air, its hind legs thumping spasmodically at nothing. There was a single, joyous bark, then the dog sprinted again and continued sniffing, even though he’d seen the animal tumble to a halt. Gnossos let him poke it after he’d done the location by scent, then watched as he tossed it over his end. “Okay, beagle,” he said aloud, “that’ll do.”
He used Pamela’s abalone-handled stiletto for the gutting, wincing again in guilt, thinking of his own hair-lined belly, cutting away a front foot for his rucksack. Placate all the gods and demons, finger in every mystical pie. Finally he passed one rear leg through the other at the hock, picked up the carcass with a finger, and stood while the beagle pranced around for a new scent, coaxing the command that would send him off again. Gnossos failing to give it, looking instead at the gray and tepid innards he had scooped out. They steamed in the cool air and melted in an ugly, uneven pile, down into the snow.
Heffalump was waiting in his stripey French seaman’s jersey and faded Levis, rolling with three of David’s six daughters before the open, hissing fire. The house was warm and cozy, giving off an odor of children and good food. Gnossos setting the gun, rucksack, and rabbit by the back door just as Grün and Catbird shuffled in from the kitchen with trays of coffee, shortbread, and apple-crumb delights. Everyone smiled.
“So?” asked Catbird, teasing, her hair rolled tightly in a black bun, “you got a bunny?”
“Where where?” squealed the girls, jumping up in pigtails, abandoning the disheveled Heffalump, running to him.
“Goodness’ sakes,” said David, “such a convention of noises, such a commotion. By the back door, look.” The girls scampered away to see as he set his tray by the fire, holding his thick glasses against his nose with a pinky to keep them from falling as he leaned over. Old master of the beer hall, all right. Those sloppy, rummage-sale trousers; always the orange shirt and red suspenders. Catbird slicing the apple strudel, handing out spoons, being efficient, smoothing her flowered peasant dress, padding about shoeless in white ankle socks.
“So?” asked David, “how was young beagle here? He behaves himself properly, comes when you call?”
“He’s okay, man, little independent maybe, but we knew things together.”
“Ha,” murmured Heffalump, cynically.
Grüm winked. “So?” looking up while pouring, cheeks red and shiny. “Next fall you use him, then. Come often.”
“Next fall?” asked Heff. He’d been testing the texture of a woolen scatter rug, with twisting fingers. “Who’s going to be here next fall, I want to know?”
“Me, baby. Ten years, like Oeuf. Safe and warm.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Please,” said Catbird, “not like Oeuf. And have some strudel, good and tart.”
Gnossos taking the plate from her, asking Heff, “Why ‘oh yeah’?”
“I got an insight is all.”
“Well save it, you’ll need the energy for Cuba.”
“It’ll keep, don’t worry.”
“Sugar?” asked David. “Cream?”
The high-ceilinged living room of the old house papered with children’s crayoned drawings: improbable long-legged horses wearing happy grins, pumpkins making scary faces, David and Catbird in a sailboat, the house itself, each member of the family waving a flag out his window. All manner of mobiles dangling from the ceiling, Gnossos recalling last year’s Halloween, balancing unsteadily on a ladder, roll of masking tape in his hand, brain awash with wassail, willing himself into the childhood that never was, superimposing pictures on his gloomy Brooklyn beginnings: the shifting image of a stocking-capped Greek farmhand boy puttering about in a Grandma Moses seasonal celebration, head in a sky of bottlecap mobiles, boxtop mobiles, mobiles made from seashells, straw flowers, paper rooks and storks, cutout dolls in printed undies, spools of thread, hatpins with rhinestones, earrings, brooches, rice-crispie necklaces, popcorn clusters, dolls’ coathangers, miniature mandolins with pegs that turned.
The real instruments were hung around the wood-paneled walls wherever there was an open space, upside down, sideways, right side up, every which way: zithers from Austria, autoharps with painted roses from Sears, plastic ukeleles, guitars, one with twelve strings that David got from Leadbelly, fretless banjos, five-string banjos, banjos with Scruggs pegs, Appalachian dulcimers, lutes, bazoukis, a contra bassoon, two oboes, an alto saxophone, four flutes of different lengths, an Irish harp next to the piano, bongo drums on the mantel, Nigerian talking drums, tablas that Blacknesse had sent from Bombay, a colonial snare drum with peeling, gilded eagles, and a foot-long chromatic harmonica. Children’s shoes scattered everywhere, tiny mirrors and combs, dolls by the score, toy baby carriages, building blocks, five colors of edible modeling clay, finger paints, nail polish, pastel beads with holes for stringing, lacquered gourds, dehydrated pomegranates, toppled tricycles, and special jars which could only be meant to contain all the millions shapes, contours, facets, and hopelessly lost memories of juvenescence.
My heyday never truly known, stolen away when my tomtit back was turned, stuffed in a cheesecloth sack, weighted with lead mortality sinkers, sunk in the fetid Gowanus Canal. Offspring the only chance, little Gnossi, but without love, the membrane holds. How long? Unborn children congealing, opiated brain cells whispering “waste,” bowels thick with constipated horror. Oh, Thanatos baby, come give your easy kiss, old steel tongue into my mouth, taste the sweet oxide, bury me on a bunny-rabbit sidehill, Grün’s pigtailed daughters sprinkling petals on my cindered grave. But nothing grows.
After coffee and strudel David led them on a little walk, nearly a tradition now, old owl knows I need it. Catbird to the kitchen, pots and pans all day, eight mouths to feed, water boiling, formulas brewing, puddings cooking up, meat marinating, lentils soaking, cider aging, things to do.
The greenhouse was moist and warm, smelling of musk and botanical secrets. They entered slowly, David letting Gnossos go first, Towhee still clinging tightly around his neck. There was a feeling of sudden movement among the plants, then nothing. Inside, the floor was a cushion of Irish moss, gleaming with moisture.
“What moved?” asked Gnossos.
“Snakes and frogs,” said Tern, squirming ahead now, leading the way into her private domain. “And a toad we got from Fall Creek, me and Kim.”
“For insects,” explained David. Heffalump had quite suddenly gone pale and was looking over his shoulders, lifting each foot carefully to check what he’d been stepping on. “Geep,” he said nervously, looking for an ally, “snakes. Not nice at all.”
But fig trees grew, and poinsettias. Wild tulip
s, windflowers, jasmine, foxgloves, bearberries, pink carnations, sweet sultans, marsh mallows, Syrian mallows, fuchsias, candy tufts, tiger lilies, rhododendron, St.-John’s-worts, mimosa, lavender, half a hundred buds and genera Gnossos failed to know. “What’s that one?” asked Heffalump, pointing, trying to distract the attention of Sparrow, who was intrigued by the kinky texture of his hair, making a tunnel with her finger.
“From the Papaveraceae,” said David. “A herb really, with bristles, if you look closely. A poppy.”
“Poppy?” asked Gnossos, peering.
“From the corn poppy,” he answered, smiling, lifting Kiwi from his shoulders to the ground, picking up the red-flowered plant, and bringing it under each nose for a sniff. “See? Not the dreamy one, the Eurasian flower. That has white petals, sometimes purple; they give, with a capsular fruit, a milky kind of juice.”
Motherball’s Summer Snow. “Capsular fruit,” said Gnossos. “That’s where it’s at, babies.”
“Unh!” yelled Heffalump, leaping into the air. An obese black snake had wormed its way across the space left by the poppy plant, pausing to lift its head and look at them. Tern picked it up, allowed it to glide in a coil around her throat, and said, “Don’t be afraid, he won’t hurt.” Sparrow picking the moment to try and unravel a particularly tight kink of hair. “C’mon, Sparrow, it’s only my head!”
“What about my grass?” asked Gnossos, “how’s it doing?”
“Ah. Miraculous, you know. Here, see?” David picking up a long-stalked dark green plant with tiny buds on the ends. “Three weeks only, and in such poor soil.”
“From little acorns,” Gnossos said.
“Under the light, you see, sun in the day, very little water, zoop, it grows.”
Gnossos running the palms of his hands around the moist clay pot, gazing with satisfaction. Not too long before harvest, have a country feast, invite the local farmers, do the Brueghel.
“You sure have funny hair,” Sparrow finally told Heffalump. He blushed furiously and put her down, pretending interest in a creeper vine.
“Look what I’ve got,” said Kiwi with a wicked smile, walking forward on tiptoes, cupping her hands together in a suspicious ball. She lifted the top hand off and a brown toad croaked, belly bulging in and out. “He eats the nasty worms. And the slugs.”
“Eccch,” from Heff.
Gnossos looking happily at the flowers again, setting down the pot of blooming marijuana, running his fingertips along some of the leaves. The girls returned the snakes, frogs, and toads to their secret hiding places and gathered around Heffalump, who was trying miserably to escape out the door without losing face. They teased him with imaginary spiders and crawly things, giggling, sneaking glances at the other men. “C’mon,” he tried, “let’s go have some ice cream. Anybody want Eskimo pies?”
Catbird joined them on the balustraded porch, holding the new baby, Robin, wrapped in a patchwork quilt. Bobwhite was at her side, clutching her dress, holding a security pillow against her cheek, and sucking a thumb. The sight left Gnossos suddenly delirious. An old dinner bell hung from the side of the house, painted black, the size of a monster pumpkin. He danced up to it, head spinning, legs clearing the heads of the girls as he passed, and swung the clapper with a joyous lunge. The clang was deafening and everyone held his ears.
“David baby,” he yelled happily, throwing out his arms, “you old benevolent motherjumper, I love you!”
But the harsh, reverberating noise of the bell woke the baby. She surprised them all with a startling scream of protest.
“There there,” from Catbird, soothingly, “it’s only Gnossos.”
And Tern, acting as spokesman for the other girls, looked at her father—who was adjusting red suspenders so his rummage-sale trousers wouldn’t fall down—and asked, “Daddy, what’s a motherjumper?”
He wondered, on the way to the town of Dryad, but only a single image occupied his mind’s eye and he turned it away. Can’t exactly win them all.
They walked together along the moonless road, close against the roadside fence for company of the nighttime traffic, cinders crunching under their boots. Now and again they heard the grunt of an insomniac cow, the sinister croaks of invisible crows flying low above their heads. Gnossos with his rucksack slapping his back, the parka hood around his head giving him the air of a shuffling Carthusian. Heffalump with an army jacket borrowed from David, long skinny hands tucked under his armpits for warmth, squinting ahead of him in the dark, readying a question:
“Why don’t we cool this whole thing and go to Guido’s, Paps?”
“Guido’s is debilitating, man, nothing ever happens at Guido’s. You need an Equanil?”
“Skip the crap, what are we even bothering for, parties come cheap.”
“Masochism, baby. Little evil.”
“Jesus.”
“It’s an alternative. Got to step up and talk to it, see what it has to say.”
“To you, maybe.”
“The cat’s probably out to make home movies of you and your old lady, different positions, variations on a theme, who knows? Did you see his microbus around town? Those zombis in the back? Creatures of the night, man, blooming in the moonshine.”
Heff ducking as a surprised crow flew directly at them and veered away. He nodded silently, hands going into pockets. “Zombis.”
“They’ve got it all down, Aquavitus man; even the cat with the opal in his forehead, from Havana, whatever they call him.”
“Buddha,” came the snappy reply, then a frown as he began walking faster. “C’mon, you think I got all night?”
“Stay loose, man.”
“Loose, that’s right. Ha,” spitting. Something wrong?
“Little meprobamate, just the thing for your head.”
“Take gas.”
“What’s up, man?”
His head shaking, foot kicking at the road.
“Heff?”
“What?”
“Something bugging you?”
“Nope.”
“It’s only that I thought something might be bugging you.”
Heff stopping suddenly at the sarcasm, turning to face Gnossos in the dark. “Look, Paps, you’re my ace buddy and all that but I’ve already told you about Jack, so cool it, okay?”
“What?”
“I dig the chic, I’m in love with her.”
“Hey, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Jack, I’m talking about Jack.”
“So?”
“So it’s bad enough she fools around with other chics without you talking about her and me and positions, that’s what.”
Gnossos catching on, booming out a surge of laughter, poking Heffalump forcefully in the stomach, making him double over and cough. “Oh, splendid Heffalump, decadent old boogie.”
Heff uncoiled at the word, hissed, and took off after Gnossos, who was bounding away, yelling back, “Help help, a heffable horralump; horr horr—”
Two cars came speeding around the turn at their backs, horns blasting, one passing the other, tires on the shoulder of the road. They had to leap out of the way, arms flying, both of them landing in a plowed but virgin snowdrift. They lay panting until the sound of the cars had vanished, Gnossos giggling to himself, chin tucked against his chest.
“Oh, you’re bad-ass shit, all right,” said Heff, raising himself momentarily out of the drift, not wanting to be there, then sinking back resignedly as his elbow slipped. Gnossos rose, still giggling, and strolled back the ten yards between them, flopping down again.
“Okay, baby, where’s the insight?”
Silence. Then, in an annoyed voice: “Don’t provoke me.”
“I’m straight, I want to know whatever you meant at Grün’s.”
Heff checking for facial expression, inflection. “You’re provoking me.”
“No, man, I’m the soul of nonviolence. Dig me lying here in the wet, at peace.”
“You said you’d be around
next fall, that’s all.”
Gnossos giggling again, making a wet snowball, tossing it out on the road. “Oeuf does it, no reason why I can’t.”
“No, I guess not.”
“C’mon, wise-ass.”
“And what about all these maniac hangups you’ve got—secretly, mind you, but got all the same—with Morality and Conduct, and like that?”
“Hangups?”
“This whole neurotic syndrome about love. What’s going to happen is you’ll get dosed, as if I’m telling you something you don’t already know. And you can’t just say you’re making this party tonight because of some clinical interest in Mojo and his weirdo helper. That’s a lot of crap too. You’ll fall by just on the off-chance you’ll meet the absolutely A-number-one apocalyptic love of your life, and walk off into a field of cherry blossoms or some shit. Man, you know you’re pulling for the big one and don’t tell me different.”
“Oh come on, Heff.”
“Or maybe not cherry blossoms, maybe Oriental poppies with that corpuscular fruit.”
“Capsular.”
“All the same junk. So why couldn’t you get hung up on this Pamela chic and save yourself a lot of dosing? Least you can do, a little expiation for the blood on your hands, Seymour, Simon, whatever the cat’s name was—which you can’t pretend you’re not a little paranoiac about. Fitzgore’ll grab her while you’re waiting.”
“Hey look—”
“Probably you’re not able to, excuse the expression, love her any, ’cause you’re worried that your approach was too crude to begin with— stomping in on her the way you did. And what the hell are you going to do for a living when you get out of here? You don’t have a dime, sweetheart, and you never did, outside of those scholarships you somehow conned—”
“Won, baby,” corrected Gnossos, “in competitive exams—”
“—and nobody,” continued Heff, barreling right over him, “nobody’s going to give you squat, and you know it.”
“Stipend. Grants. The Ford Fruit, the Guggenheim Vine.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What for, man, where’s the percentage?” Gnossos falling silent momentarily as another set of headlights glowed dully on the horizon, grew brighter, then poked away into the night. “You’re out to bring me down. You have any grass with you, by the way?”