Plexus

  At one end of the table sat our old President, Charlie Reilly; at the other end sat our real President, George Marshall. At a given signal they all rose solemnly, glasses upraised, and broke into a deafening cheer. “Bravo, Hen! Bravo!” they shouted. And with this they swooped down on us, gathered Helen by the arms and legs, and tossed her on to the Communion table. Charlie grasped my hand and repeated warmly, “Well done, Hen! Well done!” I now shook hands with each one in turn, and with each gave the old sign—tickling the palm with the forefinger. They were all exceedingly well preserved—I say “preserved” because, despite the warmth and the cordiality of their greeting there was something artificial, something waxlike about them. It was good, nevertheless, to see them all. Like old times, I thought to myself. Becker, with his worn fiddle case; George Gifford, pinched and shrunk, as always, and talking through his nose; Steve Hill, big and blustering, trying to make himself look even more important than ever; Woodruff, MacGregor, Al Burger, Grimmy, Otto Kunst, and Frank Carroll. I was so immensely pleased to see Frank Carroll. He had lavender-colored eyes with enormous lashes, like a girl’s. He spoke softly and gently, more with his eyes than his mouth. A cross between a priest and a gigolo.

  It was George Marshall who brought us back to reality. He was rapping the table with his gavel. “Meeting called to order!” He rapped again vigorously and we all filed to our respective places at the table. The circle was complete, the end like the beginning. United in brotherhood, inexorably. How clear it all was! Everyone was wearing his button on which was inscribed in letters of gold Fratres Semper. It was all just as it had always been, even to George Marshall’s mother who was trotting back and forth from the kitchen, her arms laden with tempting viands. Unconsciously I stared intently at her broad backside. Had he not said once, George Marshall, that the sun rose and set in her ass?

  There was only one disturbing note about this gathering, and that was the presence (in the nude) of Charlie Reilly’s wife. There she stood in the middle of the long table, as brazen and impudent as ever, a cigarette between her lips, waiting for her cue. However, and this was even more strange, more disturbing to me, no one seemed to give her a tumble. I looked in Charlie’s direction to see how he was taking it; he seemed unperturbed, unruffled, comporting himself in much the same way as he had when impersonating the President of these United States.

  George Marshall’s voice now made itself heard. “Before we go on with the reading of the minutes,” said he, “I want to present to you fellows a new member of the club. She’s our first and only female member. A real lady, if I must lie like a dog. Some of you may recognize her. I’m sure Charlie will, anyhow.” He gave us a slippery grimace, intended for a smile, then hurried on. “This is an important meeting, I want you fellows to understand. Hen here has just been to Tokyo and back—I won’t say what for just now. At the conclusion of this session, which is a secret one, by the way, I want you guys to present Hen with the little testimonial which we prepared for him. His was a dangerous mission and he followed it to the letter.… And now, before we get on with the business in hand, which is about the beer party to be held at Gifford’s home next Saturday night, I’m going to ask the little lady (a leer and a smirk here) to do one of her specialties. This number, I guess I don’t have to tell you, will be the well-known hoochee-koochee. She did it for the Mikado—no reason why she can’t do it for us. Anyway, you’ll notice she’s got nothing on, not even a fig leaf.” As an uproar threatened to break loose, he rapped sternly with his gavel. “Before she begins her number let me say this to you fellows—I expect you to observe the performance in strict decorum. We’ve arranged this stunt, Hen and I, in order to arouse more interest in the activities of the club. The last few meetings were thoroughly disheartening. The real club spirit seems to have oozed away. This is a special meeting to bring out the old spirit of fellowship.…”

  Here he gave three quick raps with the gavel, whereupon a phonograph in the kitchen started playing the St. Louis Blues. “Is everybody happy?” he cooed. “O.K. Helen, do your stuff! And remember, shake those ashes clean!”

  The candelabras were removed to a sideboard against the wall; all but two of the candles had been snuffed out. Helen began writhing and twisting in the grand manner of the ancients. On the other wall her shadow repeated her movements in exaggerated style. It was a Japanese version of the belly dance which she was giving. One would have said she had been trained to it since childhood. Every muscle of her body was under control. Even her facial muscles she used with extraordinary skill, especially when simulating the convulsive movements of the orgasm. Not one of us twelve members budged from his rigid upright position. We sat there like trained seals, our hands motionless, our eyes following every little movement, which, as we knew, had a meaning all its own. As the last note died away George Gifford fell off his chair in a dead faint. Helen sprang from the table and ran into the kitchen. George Marshall rapped savagely with his gavel. “Drag him out to the porch,” he ordered, “and douse his head in the bucket! Quick! We’ve got to get on with the minutes.” This precipitated some grumbling and growling. “Back to your places!” shouted George Marshall. “This is just the preliminary. Keep your shirts on and you’ll get a real treat. By the way, anyone who feels like jerking off can excuse himself and go to the can.”

  All but George Marshall and myself rose in a body and exeunted.

  “You see what we’re up against,” said George Marshall in a tone of utter despair. “No matter what we cook up for them it’s hopeless. I’m going to make a move to dissolve the club. I want it read into the minutes in the regular way.”

  “Jesus,” I begged, “don’t do that! After all, they’re only human.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” said George Marshall. “They’re all picked men, they should know better. Last time we didn’t even have a quorum.”

  “What do you mean, they should know better.”

  “Etiquette demands that you show no emotion. Nine of them are jerking off out there. The tenth one fainted. What are we coming to?”

  “Aren’t you just a bit severe?”

  “Have to be, Hen. We can’t coddle them forever.”

  “Just the same, I think.…”

  “Listen, Hen,” and he began to speak more rapidly, lowering his voice more and more. “Nobody knows except Charlie and me, what you went to Tokyo for. You did a good job. They know all about it up above. This is just a little racket I thought up to throw dust in their eyes. After the meeting breaks up you, Charlie and me we’re gonna take Helen and go on a little bust. I didn’t want them to lose control or they might have pawed her to death. She’s fixing herself up in there.…” He gave me a slippery wink.… “Douching herself.… A little alum, some Spanish fly. You know.… My mother’s giving her a massage now. Look!” He bent down to get something hidden under the table. “See this?” It was an enormous rubber penis filled with water. He gave a little squirt. “Get the idea? That’s for Charlie. Don’t say a word about it, it’s a surprise. Being President’s no fun. He hasn’t had his end in for over a year now. There’s enough water in this”—he shook the rubber penis lewdly—“enough to make her piss from ears, eyes and nose.”

  “This is gonna be fun, Hen. All on the q.t., of course. My mother’s in on it, but she won’t squawk. I told you once, remember, that the sun rises and sets in her ass.”

  Then he added something which completely dumbfounded me, so unlike George Marshall it was. “Get this, Hen,” he said, “it’s right up your street: the man of India loves to see the waist bend under the weight of the breasts and the haunches; he likes long tapering forms and the single wave of the muscles as a movement surges through the whole body. Heroism and obscenity appear no more important in the life of the universe than the fighting or mating of a pair of insects in the woods. Everything is on the same plane.”

  He gave me again that enormous, slippery horse-wink which had so terrified me. “Do you get it, Hen? As I was saying a moment
ago, the old urge is spent; we’ve got to find new blood. You and I are getting along in years; we can’t do these old tricks with the same verve and gusto. When the war comes I’m going to join the artillery.”

  “What war, George?”

  He replied: “No more of that trapeze business for me.”

  The other members were now trooping back from the can. Never in my life had I seen such haggard, spent, dilapidated looking buggers. “He’s right,” thought I to myself, “we’ve got to look for new blood.”

  Quietly they resumed their places at the table, their heads wilting like dead flowers. Some of them looked as if they were in a deep trance. Georgie Gifford was munching a stalk of celery—the very picture, saving the beard, of a silly old he goat. The whole damned bunch were a disgrace for sore eyes.

  A few raps of the gavel and the meeting was called to order. “Those who are awake give heed!” George Marshall began in a stern, peremptory voice. “Once you called yourselves The Deep thinkers. You banded together to form an enclave, the famous Xerxes Society. You are no longer worthy of membership in this secret society. You have degenerated. Some of you have atrophied. In a moment I am going to call for a vote in order to dissolve the organization. But first I have something to say to our old president, Charlie Reilly.” Here he gave the table a few vicious raps with the gavel. “Are you awake, you miserable toad? I’m talking to you. Sit up straight! Button your fly! Now listen.… In consideration of services rendered, I’m sending you back to the White House where you will serve another four years, if you’re re-elected. As soon as the meeting is over I want you to get into your cutaway and striped trousers and beat it. You have just about enough wits left to meet the demands of the War Office. By holding your tongue nobody will be the wiser. You’re demoted, dissolved, discredited.” Here he turned his head and fixed my attention. “How was that, Hen? All according to Hoyle, what?” He lowered his voice and, speaking with terrifying rapidity again, he whispered out of the corner of his mouth: “This is for you, a special.… Man will change nothing of his final destiny, which is to return sooner or later to the unconscious and the formless.”

  With this he rose and, pulling me along, we rushed to the kitchen. A pall of smoke greeted us. “As I was saying, Hen, we prepared a little surprise for you.” With this he blew the smoke away. On either side of the kitchen table sat Mona and that mysterious creature with the long black hair whom I had seen a photograph of.

  “What’s this?” I exclaimed.

  “Your wife and her friend. A couple of bull-dykers.”

  “Where’s Helen?”

  “Gone back to Tokyo. We’re using these as substitutes.” He gave me a terrific nudge and a slippery wink.

  “Cromwell will be here in a minute,” he said. “It’s him you’ve got to thank for this.”

  Mona and her lover were too busy playing euchre to even glance at us. They seemed hilarious. The strange creature with the long hair was double-jointed; she had a fine mustache, firm breasts, and wore velvet trousers with gold braid down the sides. Exotic to the fingertips. Every now and then they jabbed each other with the needle.

  “A fine pair,” I remarked. “They belong in the Hay-market.”

  “Leave it to Cromwell,” said George Marshall, “he’s got it all arranged.”

  He had no more than uttered the name when there was a rap at the door.

  “That’s him,” said George Marshall. “Always on the dot.”

  The door opened quietly, as if responding to a hidden spring. A man entered with a huge gory bandage wrapped around his skull. It was not Cromwell at all, it was Crazy Sheldon. I gave a shriek and fainted away.

  When I came to, Sheldon was seated at the table dealing out the cards. He had removed the bandage. From the tiny black hole in the back of his skull the blood trickled steadily, running over his white collar and down his back.

  Again I felt that I would faint. But George Marshall, sensing my discomfiture, quickly produced a little glass stopper from his vest pocket, inserted it in the bullet wound, and the blood stopped running. Sheldon now began to whistle gaily. It was a Polish lullaby. Now and then he broke the melody by spitting on the floor, whereupon he would hum a few bars, so softly, so tenderly, as though he were a mother with an infant at the breast. After he had hummed and whistled, after he had spat in every direction, he took to chanting in Hebrew, moving his head back and forth, wailing, doing the tremolo in a high falsetto, sobbing, moaning, praying. He sang in a powerful bass voice with a volume that was staggering. This went on for quite a time. He was like a man possessed. Suddenly he moved into another register, which gave his voice a peculiar metallic timbre, as though his lungs were made of sheet metal. He was singing in Yiddish now, a drunken tune filled with bloody oaths and filthy imprecations. “Die Hutzulies, farbrent soln sei wern.… Die Merder, geharget soln sei wern.… Die Gozlonem, unzinden soln sei sich….” His voice rose to a piercing screech. “Fonieganef, a miese meshine of sei!” With this, still screaming, the foam dribbling from his mouth, he rose to his feet and began whirling like a dervish. “Cossaken! Cossaken!” he repeated over and over, stamping his foot and emitting a stream of blood from his pursed lips. He slowed down a little, put his hand to his back trousers pocket and brought out the miniature knife with the pearl handle. Now he whirled faster and faster, and as he shrieked “Cossaken! Hutzulies! Gozlonem! Merder! Fonie-Ganef!” he stabbed himself over and over, in the arms, in the legs, in the stomach, eyes, nose, ears, mouth, until he was nothing but a mass of wounds. Suddenly he stopped, grabbed the two women by the throat and knocked their heads together—again and again, as if they were two coconuts. Then he unbuttoned his shirt, raised the police whistle to his lips, and gave a blast which made the walls shiver. With this the ten members of the Xerxes Society rushed to the door; as they stepped across the threshold Sheldon, who had drawn his automatic, shot them down one by one, yelling, “A miese meshine of sei.… Hutzulies, Gozlonem, Merder, Cossaken!”

  Only George Marshall and I were alive and breathing. We were too paralyzed to move. We stood with backs to the wall, waiting our turn. Walking over the bodies of the dead as if they were so much fallen timber, Sheldon slowly approached us with leveled gun, unbuttoning his fly with the left hand. “Shitty dogs!” he said in Polish, “this is your last chance to pray. Pray while I piss on you, and may my bloody piss scald your rotten hearts! Call on your Pope now, and your Virgin Mary! Call on that faker, Jesus Christ! The assassins will be gescheissen. How you stink, shitty Goyim! Fart your last fart!” And he poured over us his steaming red piss which ate into our skins like acid. Hardly had he finished when he fired point blank at George Marshall; the body fell to the floor like a sack of manure.

  I put up my hand to yell Stop! but Sheldon was already firing. As I sank to the ground I began to whinny like a horse. I saw him raise his foot and then I got it in the face. I rolled over on my side. I knew it was the end.

  7

  It was days before I could shake off the aftereffects of the dream. In some mysterious way it had affected Mona too, though I had told her nothing of it. We were unaccountably listless and dispirited. Having dreamed so violently about him, I looked forward to seeing Sheldon pop up, but neither hide nor hair of him did we lay eyes on. Instead we received a post card from O’Mara informing us that he was in the vicinity of Asheville where there was a boom on. Said he would notify us to join him as soon as things were properly under way.

  Out of sheer boredom Mona took another job in the Village, this time at a shady joint called The Blue Parrot. From Tony Maurer, a new admirer, she learned that the Milwaukee millionaire was due in town any day.

  “And who is Tony Maurer?” I asked.

  “A cartoonist,” she replied. “He was once a German cavalry officer. He’s a real wit.”

  “Never mind the rest,” I said. I was still in the doldrums. To summon even a flickering interest in one of her new admirers was beyond me. I was low, and I would stay that way until I hit bo
ttom. Even Elie Faure was too much for me. I couldn’t bring myself to concentrate on anything more important than a bowel movement.

  As for looking up my friends, out of the question. When depressed I rarely ever visited anyone, even a close friend.

  The few attempts I had made to do a little gold digging on my own had contributed to lower my morale. Luther Goering, the last man I had hit up—for a mere five spot—had taken the wind out of my sails. It wasn’t my intention to lay siege to him, seeing how he was almost one of the family, but running into him in the subway, as I did, I thought I might as well profit by the occasion. The mistake I made was to interrupt him in the middle of one of his interminable harangues. He had been telling me of the huge success he was enjoying (as an insurance salesman) through the application of Christ’s teachings. Having always looked upon me as an atheist, he was now delighted to be able to overwhelm me with proofs of the practical aspect of Christian ethics. Bored absolutely stiff, I listened for a while in cold silence, sorely tempted at moments to laugh in his face. Nearing our station I interrupted the monologue to ask if he would lend me five dollars. The request must have struck him as outrageously irrelevant for he flew into a tantrum. This time I could no longer control myself—I laughed in his face. For a moment I thought he would slap me in the face; he was livid with rage, his lips trembling, his fingers twitching uncontrollably. What was the matter with me, he demanded to know. Had I supposed that because he had at last succeeded in earning a good living I was at liberty to regard him as a charitable institution? True, the Bible did say: “Ask and it shall be given, knock and it shall be opened unto you,” but one was not to infer from these words that one was to give up work and become a panhandler. “God looks after me,” he said, “because I look after myself. I put in fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I don’t pray to God to put money in my pockets, I beg him to bless my work!” At this point he softened somewhat. “You don’t seem to understand,” he said. “Let me try to explain it to you. It’s really very simple.…”