by Don DeLillo
“Because this is a pivotal time in the music business and in the future of the country as a whole.”
“Don’t call back.”
“Abuse me, I love it Spit on my clothes, I’ll never get them martinized. Nobody’s happier than I am to dine in four-star restaurants with the spittle of a genius on my hand-tailored polyester checks. But one thing you should know about, Bucky.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“You were seen stealing a can of pineapple chunks in a supermarket in Fresno.”
15
THE PACKAGE contained the mountain tapes. This was how Opel had chosen to mark the day of my birth.
On the tapes were twenty-three songs, all written and sung by me, all played by me (without accompaniment) on an old acoustic guitar, the first I’d ever owned. The songs were the most recent things I’d done. I’d taped them about fourteen months earlier, alone in the mountains, sitting down with the guitar and tape recorder and making up lyrics as I went along. I had just come off a world tour and my voice was weary and scorched, no sound nearer to my mind than the twang of baby murders in patriarchal hamlets. In time a visitor came upon the tapes and played them. Word got out, distorted of course, shaped by rumor and speculation. I refused to discuss the tapes with anyone. I declined to release them, to re-record the songs, to accept any offer concerning this material. I didn’t understand the nature of my own labor. The guitar work was recognizable but the voice didn’t seem to be mine. It possessed an extraordinary childlike blandness, a bit raw at times in its acknowledgments to pain, but mostly lonesome, homeless and dull, lacking true crudeness as well as any other distinctive quality. Beyond this were the lyrics themselves, strange little autistic ramblings. Perhaps because the words had never been put on paper, or even thought about for the briefest moment, these songs conveyed a special desolation, a kind of abnormal naturalness. In the past there had been a mind behind every babble and moan I’d ever produced. But the mountain tapes were genuinely infantile. I had no idea whether this was good or bad. I didn’t know whether the songs were supposed to be redemptive, sardonic or something completely different. Tributes to my own mute following. Cheap plastic tricks. Ironic sonnets to the nation’s crazed statesmen. Main Street parade noises. Commercials for baby food. Beseech-ings and calumets. Sequels to the ballads of the dead revolution. Whatever they were, the songs had come oozing out, one after another, over a period of two or three sleepless days. I had no clear memory of that period. The tapes themselves served as confirmation of what had taken place. Every reel was full of repetitions, mistakes and slurred words. There were long incoherent vocal passages interspersed with the sounds of eating, drinking and talking back to the TV. I played the tapes a number of times but their essence continued to elude me and so I simply put them away, preferring to forget what had been, after all, just a few days of unremembered effort — a collection of songs whose release would be sure to cause vast confusion. After that, mention of the tapes was made only by close friends or fetishistic rock scholars dressed like Superman. I was younger then and felt an obligation to my audience. I wasn’t fully aware of the uses to which confusion might be put. Fame is treble and bass, and only a rare man can command the dial to that fractional point where both tones are simultaneously his. Opel had put a murmur in my head. I didn’t know when she had lifted the tapes from my house in the mountains and at first I thought she was being merely playful in returning them. Conjuring up my own past confusions. But of course there was more to it than that. I remembered several things she’d either said herself or instructed Hanes to say.
(1) The gift is a stroke of true bitch genius.
(2)It is to be referred to as the product.
(3) It is not to be opened until Globke starts maneuvering for his star’s return.
Opel saw the tapes as my way back out. She’d known exactly what I needed. I’d told her my own designs were too evil for a mere dealer to understand. Now she was daring me to prove it, even giving me the means. Wunder’s last lick. It was the chance to remake himself, lean man of mystery, returning with the fabled tapes for all to hear, luring his crowds to new silence, their fear in baby bottles under their seats. I didn’t even have to create new material. That was part of the point of it all.
Watney called from the airport. He was on his way in to see me. England’s anti-king and duplicate bishop of hallucination. Watney was in the fifth or sixth year of his semi-retirement. He’d done very few concerts and recordings in that time, preferring to study, meditate and gross millions. His sources of income were obscure and apparently varied. Money came to him in undetected torrents from the north of England, from the south of France, from secret places in the low wallowy bogs of Europe. When I asked him what he wanted to see me about, he said we’d have to discuss it in person. Man to man. Face to face. Hands across the table, as it were.
I repacked the tapes and put them back in the trunk. Opel’s mind seemed present in the room. (“Evil is movement toward void.”) I took off my shoes and socks, then sat on the bed and counted my toes. In not too long I’d be ready to learn firsthand what rages were ahead, boys and girls nibbling at my loins, season of gray space and unknowable words. Things to be figured out first, bits and pieces, some time to spend putting all together. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, counting eyes, ears, nostrils and teeth.
16
WATNEY’S MANSERVANT Blessington was a portly boy with pink hands and the shuffling manner of someone who works in the subways. I watched him come up the stairs, four suitcases in his grasp and an airline bag around his neck. Watney followed, wearing blue suede shoes. He shook my hand, looked around the room and took the chair near the window, sniffing once through each nostril. Blessington sat on the floor amid luggage.
“We’ve got a limousine all right,” Watney said. “It’s parked right downstairs. Three rooms and a dining alcove. But at the same time fairly inconspicious. Black. Solid black. Black inside and out. See, I wanted something inconspicuous. That’s the way I like to travel. No point in being ostentatious. Given the two choices, inconspicuous or ostentatious, I would never hesitate past the natural reaction time for making a pointblank decision. But you’re wondering why I’ve had the luggage brought upstairs. We’ve got a limousine all right. But I didn’t want the luggage getting nicked. That’s it then. I didn’t want some rampant New York junkie ripping off my accumulated luggage. You see, the car’s all right. The car’s got a driver inside. We didn’t trust the driver with the luggage. But we trust him with the car. That’s his job, innit? The luggage is mine. The car is his. We trust him to look after the car.”
“What’s the noise in England?” I said.
“Haven’t been there for a while. I’m headed there next. I’m coming from the other way, you see. Sneaking up on the notorious Bucky Wunderlick from an unlikely direction. Your manager gave me the details of your whereabouts and every single digit of your phone number. So I says to myself I shall ring him from the airport this very second. He’s a decent sort he is, your Globke. Shut up, twit.”
“What, me?” Blessington said. “I’m ultra-silent all this while.”
“I anticipate your digressions.”
“I’m sitting here quiet-like minding the bags. I’m sitting here like I used to sit in me own mum’s sitting room. We used to sit we did. Two of us. Her with her pint. Me flashing me privates at the telly. Two of us. Sitting in the sitting room.”
“I could have gone back direct,” Watney said. “But instead I flew down from Toronto for a visit with my brother musician. Not that I’m flogging the old Gretsch too often. I’m into sales, procurement and operations now. I represent a fairly large Anglo-European group. That’s my predominant area of interest. That’s where I get my leverage. I still do the odd concert, you know. Keep my hand in, all that. But not like the old days when they drove us city to city like bloody oxen. It was crazy then, wunnit?”
“Still is,” I said.
“I remem
ber America. Touring the states. That was something then. That was the pinnacle of insanity. Everybody was crazy. They were all crazy.”
“It hasn’t changed that much.”
“We got stuck in new levels of madness every day. All over the country there was nothing but madness. America was the sheer peak. They were all crazy one way or another. It was guns, sex and politics. It was dope and color. It was motorcycles, garbage and hand-to-hand fighting. The one thing I couldn’t take was polluting the environment. In England we’ve got a man who sees to that.”
“Did you get to California this trip?”
“Did Canada this trip. It was an all-Canada operation. Laying some groundwork. Feeling things out. New territory more or less. No, missed California this trip. Good friends out there. Out there’s different. I liked California. Not the same kind of edgy pace.”
“They drink human blood,” I said.
“But the weather,” he said. “Fantastic streak of weather last time.”
“They tear the entrails out of dogs and cats and offer them up as devotions to dead movie stars.”
“The weather’s the thing out there. I remember the weather.”
“California weather,” I said.
“That’s it, California weather. That’s just how I’d describe it myself. Good friends in L.A. Nordquist and that lot. Kept getting busted. He came to London, you know, Nordquist did. Got busted right off. They had him sewing mailbags. He went to Sweden after that. Bang, got put right into one of their experimental prisons. You can fuck on the grounds and all. Good friends in L.A.”
“The sun shines right through the night.”
“That’s the feeling you get, innit? That’s the mental picture the whole scene brings to mind.”
“Warm and bright and never rains.”
“That’s it,” he said.
“They eat their offspring. They have multimedia human sacrifices. Records, tapes, films, light shows, puppet shows, blinking neon drugstore signs, copulating farm animals. People devour their own babies.”
In the days of his fame Watney had been able to work a mean streak into the nerve centers of entire cities. His band was called Schicklgruber and wherever they went the village elders consulted local ordinances trying to find a technicality they might use to keep the band from performing or at the very least to get the band out of town the moment the last note sounded. Watney played an icy guitar, enticing his sounds through merciless progressions. Bitch-picking, he called it. But Schicklgruber’s true impact was extramusical. Watney ranged across the stage, primed to a tailored flash, his costume derived from leotards one night, pedal pushers the next, outrageous in the parodies he devised. This was his art, to take a tiny stitch and rip it wide, blinking while the blood flowed, society’s uncoiled parts left without their package. The band didn’t arouse the violent appetites of the young as much as it killed all appetite, causing a dazed indifference to just about everything. Watney wrote his lyrics in the back seats of limousines. “I’m a buyer. But sometimes I sell. I’m a buyer who sometimes sells. That’s where I get my leverage. We’ve got footholds in a number of places. We’re Anglo-European by and large. Fulfillment. See, that’s the thing I’m after. I wasn’t getting my fulfillment with music. It’s like everybody’s got a.fulfillment quota and mine wasn’t being satisfied. I had no real power in the music structure. It was all just show. This thing about my power over kids. Watney the transatlantic villain. Schicklgruber the assassin of free will. It was just something to write, to fill up the newspapers with. I had no power, Bucky. I just dollied about on stage with my patent leather pumps and my evil leer. It was a good act all right. But it was all just an act, just a runaround, just a show. So now I’m doing sales and procurements and operations and I’m here to bid on the product you’re holding.”
“You’re doing more than operations,” I said. “You’re running the thing, aren’t you?”
“It’s a question of territories, see. I hold up the British end. I run the British side of things.”
“What things?”
“Right now the biggest item is the microdot. The microdot is definitely number one at the moment. Our choicest item. It’s going faster than we can replenish our supply. Of course you get the odd fatality with microdots. You get the odd jumper-off-a-bridge or runner-into-speeding-train. That’s what gives microdots their bad name. The stuff makes you want to dash across the tracks into a speeding train. Fear and terror, terror and fear. These elements are at the very heart of the human drama. Eh, Blessington? Read your Kafka. Read your bloody Orwell. The state creates fear through force. The state uses force eight thousand miles away in order to create fear at home. Do you know what NTBR means?”
“No,” I said.
“Blessy, do you know what NTBR means?”
“Me mum never taught me the alphabet.”
“NTBR means not to be resuscitated. Certain patients in certain hospitals throughout England are marked NTBR. These patients include the elderly, the malignant and the chronic. In the event of heart stoppage, such patients are left un-re-suss-ee-tay-ted. What’s your opinion of this practice? Speak into the microphone please.”
“My opinion of this practice,” Blessington said. “Is that the question?”
“Submoronic twit.”
“I love England I do. I will never say a word against her.”
“Does NTBR mark the true beginning of the killer state?”
“Tell me what to say and I’ll say it.”
“Slobber, don’t you, when the piercing questions are asked. Cringe and snivel in the face of the heavy pressures. A dim thing, Blessy, that’s what you be. Slow. All too bloody slow.”
“Prenatal malnutrition,” Blessington said.
“You’ve long since tipped the balance the other way, haven’t you, piggeldy-wiggeldy?”
“Don’t you go insulting me again.”
“A right rosy piglet you are. Ready for the spit.”
“Don’t you go saying that now, I’ll hold my breath I will. Then you’ll be sorry. Then you’ll see the error of your ways.”
“Turning, turning, turning. Burning, burning, burning. Melting in the mouth like fresh farm butter.”
“You’ll go too far one day. The way mum went too far with poor old dad every time dad sat himself in the sitting room to read the adverts. You’ll give me a stroke you will. How would you like it if I had a stroke that paralyzed one side of my body? Who would cook for you and see to your luggage and clean the house and offer unstinting companionship?”
“The other side of your body,” Watney said.
“Poo on you, mate.”
“Back to the question at hand. Given the choice, Blessy, would you rather be an elderly, a malignant or a chronic? Into the microphone if you would.”
“My solicitor instructs me to say nothing at this time.”
“Crafty little brute. He’s a crafty little brute, this one is. We have our small entertainments, Bucky. You’re all done with traveling but we’re still inveterate travelers. We have to have our entertainments. We need something to while away the time, we inveterates of the travel game. Is the product in this room, Bucky? If not, why not?”
“Which product is that?”
“I’m here to make a serious bid,” Watney said. “We Anglo-Europeans are serious businessmen. We cling to the old methods, the old ways, the old traditions. None of your slick trading here. We make a solid offer and we stick to it. We are solid business people. We have various interests and a vast number of operations. We aren’t larky boys out for a bit of a punch-up. We’re after money, not thrills. Our operations are solid operations. We don’t use unorthodox methods and we don’t employ maniacs, sadists and addicts. This is our way. The orthodox way. The Anglo-European way.”
“Tell him about the Malta deal,” Blessington said.
17
IN THE NIGHT I passed people trooping home with their newspapers, bearers of a weight that went beyond simple pounds and ounc
es. They headed up a street still blistered with neon and other watery sores, men and women almost single file, leaning into the wind, mountain guides trained against complaint, hired to carry home this swollen load and undress it section by section until the only thing left was the blur of faint print on their fingers. Against the moral obligations of their Saturday night, only yards from the newsstand, they had to walk around a man burning wooden crates, standing almost in the fire, looking at no one, a man dressed in a black coat with pockets torn away, leaving streaks of white lining at his hips. I held my hands for a moment over the flames. The man’s own hands were furled in each other, held high on his chest, fingernails of rust and chiseled silver, half-moon scar, shredded skin at the knuckles, luxuriant gash the length of one thumb. Easy to imagine a hundred miles of lines crosshatching his palms. Covering the man’s head was a football helmet, Miami Dolphins, complete with face mask.
“Retractable ball points,” he said. “Thirty-five cents.”
Down Second Avenue, darker here in its plodding Ukrainian sleep, I saw a small woman about to cross the street. She pointed at the opposite corner, holding her right arm perfectly straight, index finger extended. Then she lowered the arm and walked swiftly across the street in the direction she’d indicated. Here she made a sharp left turn, raised her arm, pointed over the speckled concrete to the end of the block and walked in that direction. Turn, point, march. I watched her stop at the far corner, turn to the right and point again. A Good Humor truck, stripped and gutted, sat in a lot near the Bowery. I walked slowly west. For a second nothing moved. There were no people in sight and traffic was nonexistent. I stopped on the corner and looked all around me. The wind took papers and boxes. Then, finally, about two blocks south, I saw men with rags go out into the middle of the street to await the next cycle of traffic, men with rags to clean the windshields, going out slowly from doorways and side streets, clean the windshields for a fee, men limping into the street, about a dozen of them, and then the first car came into view, moving north from one of the bridges or from Chinatown or Little Italy or the bank buildings, the first car followed by others, their lights rising over humps in the street, scores of cars coming up the Bowery toward the wild men with rags.