by Don DeLillo
“The old gentleman wants you to present the roses.”
“I thought you were the old gentleman.”
“I’m Pitkin, who advises on the writings. I’m looking at the person he picked by hand to present him the roses face to face. He’s one sweetheart of a human being. I advise him on the mystical writings. But if they forced it out of me with hot tongs, I’d tell them I learn more from Shazar Ratner than I could ever teach if I live to be—go ahead, name me a figure.”
“A hundred.”
“Name me higher.”
“A hundred and fifty.”
“Stop there,” Pitkin said. “Many years ago he came back to his roots. Eastern Parkway. Strictness like you wouldn’t believe. But the old gentleman he was tickled to get back.”
“What kind of strictness?”
“The codes, the rules, the laws, the customs, the tablecloth, the silverware, the dishes.”
“So then you’re from Brooklyn, if your roots are Eastern Parkway. I’m surprised I never heard of the old gentleman, being from the metropolitan area myself.”
“He’s a living doll,” Pitkin said. “After you present the roses he has a word or two he wants to whisper up to you. You’re the youngest. He figures you’ll be worth telling. The others he wouldn’t give you two cents for the whole bunch. Science? He turned his back on science. Science made him a household word, a name in the sky, but he grew world-weary of it. He returned to the wellspring to drink. They assigned me then and there. I know the writings. Many years ago, long before a kid like you was even formed out of smelly mush in his mother’s tubes, I committed the writings to memory. They don’t know this, the other elders, because we’re not supposed to memorize. It’s considered cheating when you memorize. When you memorize you lose the inner meaning. But how else could a dumbbell like me become an elder? Name me a way and I’ll do it. Just between us chickens I did a little cheating. So what’s the damage? Show me who I harmed. Once in a while I sneak another look or two to refresh myself. But only once in a while and just to refresh. This I vow and you’re my sworn witness who I’m looking at. If I’m lying, may both your eyes drip vengeful pus.”
“Why my eyes?”
“Because that’s the oath,” Pitkin said. “I didn’t word the oath. Go ask who worded it why your eyes.”
“It must go way back, an oath like that, to when they believed in exact cruelty to each other’s parts of the body. Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth.”
“You know the writings?”
“Just something I heard.”
“To where did the old gentleman return to drink?”
“He returned to the wellspring to drink.”
“We all memorize. The memory is there, so where’s the harm in using it? Here I depart from the other elders. The elders say interpret the writings. Find the inner meanings. Seek the sacred rays from the world of emanations. The writings say the same thing. But not everybody can interpret. It’s hard for some people to interpret. You should pardon me but it’s true. Pitkin memorizes. If you can name me one thing wrong with this that I haven’t already figured out for myself, I’ll take off all my clothes and walk naked through Crown Heights.”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“So show a little mercy to someone whose whole life has been awe, fear and kilt.”
“Kilt?”
“Innocence and kilt.”
“You mean guilt. Awe, fear and guilt. There, that makes sense. You said ‘kilt.’ But it’s definitely pronounced guilt.”
“A corrector I got in front of me. I need this from a peewee quiz kid? This kind of talk I need from someone that I don’t even know if his little shvontzie got trimmed by the knife?”
“One second please.”
“Inches away from a filthy urinator and I have to listen to my spelling corrected by some smart aleck in arithmetic?”
“I was brought up to wash everywhere.”
“Filthy-impure, not filthy-dirty. Ritual filth, the worst kind. One thing I want to tell you even if it breaks my heart giving advice to a speller. A little advice free of charge straight from the mystical writings. You ready for this? Quiz kid, corrector, you want to be instructed from the writings or you want to go through life waving your shvontzie like a monkey?”
“I’m listening.”
“Learn some awe and fear.”
“Is that it?”
“White monkey, speller, keep your business out of other people’s noses.”
Billy began to imagine that under the beard and heavy dark clothes was a young fellow arrayed in the latest resort finery, a slick casual warm-up act who would end his comic routine by dressing up in shabby clothes, sticking on a beard and stepping out in Pitkin’s skin to do some involuted patter about ghetto life in stone-age Brooklyn.
“What did I say you should learn?”
“Some awe and fear.”
The bronze door opened and a doctor and nurse entered. The doctor held a huge syringe and the nurse was wheeling a device that consisted of a gallon bottle of colorless fluid and a thin black hose that extended from the bottle through a Pyrex vessel (filled with a semisolid material) and into a small clear cylindrical container. Paying no attention to the old man and boy, the doctor began to fill the syringe with fluid processed through the hose, vessel and tube. It was a complicated procedure and the doctor and nurse slapped at each other’s hands, although with no animosity, whenever a faulty move was made.
“Some doctor,” Pitkin whispered. “Only the worst cases he takes. If he sees you in the street having a heart attack, he walks right by. Tell him it’s a tsetse fly in your lungs, if you’re lucky he’ll stop. He makes so much money you couldn’t count that high. A house with grounds. Two big doors, front and back. A toaster that does four slices. His yacht he named it Transurethral Prostatectomy. Uses a colored nurse. See her? With the tube in her hand? Colored. Walk in any hospital right off the street and that’s what you see. Uniforms, shoes, folded hats. Like anybody. Only colored. A total specialist, Dr. Bonwit. The old gentleman swears by him. Only because of Bonwit he came for the torches all this way. With Bonwit along he’s willing to travel. Round trip we’re paying. Ratner, Bonwit, Pitkin, the organ player, the colored nurse. We took up collections in the neighborhood. This is the respect people have for the name Ratner both before and after he turned his back.”
“It’s a back problem?”
“Turned his back on science.”
“What’s wrong with him then to make him have to travel with a doctor?”
“Not just a doctor please. A specialist. Never please say doctor to his face. You don’t know this? What am I looking at here? How many kinds of genius did they tell me to watch out for? Pisher, where should you keep your business out of?”
“Other people’s noses.”
“A little awe and fear never hurt anybody.”
“But what’s the old gentleman suffering from?”
“Look it up,” Pitkin said. “Turn to any page in the medical book and there he is. Swollen tooth sockets. Brown eye. Urinary leakage. Hardening of the ducts. Hormone discolor. Blocked extremities. Seepage from the gums. The wind is bad. The lungs are on the verge. Bonwit gives the lungs two weeks. There’s no breathing except shallow labored. The lungs, the lungs.”
“What kind of wind?”
“Intestinal and digestive. Mixed wind. A little of each.”
“What else?”
“The skin, the bones,” Pitkin said.
“They must love him at Blue Cross.”
“How are you behaving that I said you shouldn’t behave like?”
“A white monkey.”
“What am I looking at here?”
“A pisher.”
“Moistness,” Pitkin said. “His whole body is moist. The doctor, you should see him, night and day he works to keep it dry. Dedication at that price is worthless. You need heavy machines to keep a man alive. The face, the mouth.”
Pitkin’s lips continued to move
and Billy wondered exactly how old this man Ratner must be if his advisor on the writings thought it suitable to refer to him as the old gentleman—an advisor with white hair growing out of his face at beard level and even above, crowding the eyes, and with lips that started moving before he spoke and did not stop until well after he was finished talking. Dr. Bonwit walked out now, syringe properly filled, and the nurse followed, wheeling the elaborate device.
“Is that for the old gentleman?”
“Nonclotting silicone,” Pitkin said. “He doesn’t like to see them fill up the needle, so they sneak around the nearest corner and do it there. Needles, who can look?”
“Didn’t I hear something once about silicone that has to do with bigger breasts?”
“Watch with the language in front of an elder.”
“Yes or no, are they injecting his breasts?”
“Get out from here.”
“What for?”
“With language like that you address an elder?”
“I’m only asking.”
“Get out from here.”
“I do no wrong.”
“They’re injecting his face,” Pitkin said. “His face collapsed coming over the ocean last night. A storm like nobody’s business. Eagles on their hats they had to fly right into it. So now Bonwit builds up the face with a little shot. Poof, it fills right out. This is instant silicone, according to Bonwit, that fills you out, that coats the lining, that heats up the tissue and makes the moisture run off that’s making trouble up and down the body. Good stuff. No clotting. He recommends.”
“Not just for anybody.”
“What can I say? He recommends. This is from his own words, Bonwit, that I memorized. With strictness like we got, who wouldn’t memorize? This I ask. You’re looking at an asker. If they put hot tongs on my body I might admit I could use another chance. Maybe with a second chance I could learn to interpret. Maybe it’s less impossible than I think, dumbbell or not. But I’m asking who did I hurt but myself? An old man asks. True, I did a little cheating. I memorized here and there. I didn’t look for the inner meanings. For years I’m sweating bullets over this thing. If they said I could have another chance I’d walk naked in the rush hour through a colored subway car. This I vow on a holy oath. If I’m lying, may you inherit a hotel with ten thousand rooms and be found dead in every room.”
“These oaths are pretty dangerous to people just standing around listening.”
“I didn’t word them. They were worded five thousand years ago. You want to change the wording, go complain. Tell them Pitkin sent you. I’m in enough trouble with the cheating like a hot coal on my heart so I can’t sleep at night, I might as well have that too, my name on a complaint by some pipsqueak speller from off the street. This is what happens with strictness. It has awe built in. The more you cheat, the greater the fear. Where’s the impunity in this world?”
“Just don’t start in with the vengeful pus.”
“An oath is an oath.”
“You don’t have to use the worst ones.”
“It’s time to present the roses,” Pitkin said.
They went through the bronze door, past the instant silicone apparatus and down several flights of stairs that seemed even older and more damaged than the stairs he’d descended earlier. He heard organ music below, a reverberating cavern-sized snore, and he followed Pitkin through a slit in the wall and out into the Great Hole, a vast underground chamber largely in a natural state (cool stone surfaces) but including remnants of ancient architecture (columns, half-walls, part of a platform) as well as elements of recent installation (fluorescent lighting and structural reinforcement). The lights were suspended from large portable appliances that resembled clothing racks. The organ, which was Endor’s, the same neon pipe organ Billy had seen in the hobby room, was set on an outcropping of rock in a far corner. Aside from Pitkin, the only people he saw at the moment were the organist, now playing the kind of intermission music featured at hockey games, and the old gentleman’s doctor, heading directly toward Pitkin. The two men exchanged a few words and then the bearded advisor disappeared into a dim hollow about thirty yards away. Listening to the organ, Billy recalled Evinrude’s remark about a loud noise bringing down the entire Great Hole, if a hole could be thought of as something readily subject to being brought down.
“The old gent may or may not make it,” Bonwit said. “One advantage is the air down here, crystal clear, a beautiful purifying agent for the biomembrane. Now here’s how we’ll work it. The laureates are in the antecave off the Great Hole and they’re being instructed in torch manipulation. You don’t join them until they file in and Sandow gives you a hand signal. Sandow’s the man at the organ. After he gives the hand signal, the biomembrane is wheeled in by Pitkin and Georgette from that shadowy area with me leading the way. Then Sandow makes the opening remarks and the pigeons are released.”
“When do I present the roses?”
“After the pigeons,” Bonwit said.
“What’s this biomembrane that’s being wheeled in?”
“It’s what keeps old Ratner alive. Ultrasterile biomedical membrane environment. This is the prototype model, fully operational but with still a few kinks. It’s a total life-support system that grew out of the tracer element isolator used to keep lab animals germ-free. The old gentleman never leaves. This is the only nonhostile environment we could work out for him considering his state of deterioration. The bacterial count is zero. There are double airlocks for air current control. Pressure is regulated and there’s automatic oxygen therapy when his system needs a jolt. It’s even got a vapor duct to cut down the chance of self-infection. If he begins to fail, Georgette raises the shield and I crawl in and operate. The biomembrane is a self-sterilizing operating theater in miniature and it adapts to a postoperative therapy center, he should live so long, as the saying goes.”
“Is Sandow a laureate?”
“Sandow is an organist,” the doctor said.
“I was told laureates only. I can understand an MD and a nurse and even a person who reads from the writings. But if it’s all laureates, why move that organ all the way down from where it was and include someone that didn’t win? Except maybe he did win and only plays the organ on the side.”
“Unless they give a Nobel Prize for pedaling, he didn’t win. But it adds to the mood, an organ. I for one don’t mind him around. It makes for more pomp, having an organ. ‘LaMar T. Sandow at the keyboard.’ Besides he’s the old gent’s lifelong friend. You want a friend to see you honored. I’m all for an organ at a function like this. It supplies a heady tone.”
“What do you specialize in?”
“Everything,” the doctor said.
Pitkin returned, bent and shuffling, a bouquet of white roses in his arms.
“The colored nurse told me to tell you the face filled out.”
“Good,” Bonwit said.
“I made believe I did a little reading. I gave a good show. It made him teary around the nose. Thick green nose-blow runs out of his eyes. From his nose you get nothing but water.”
“What do you think of having an organ?” Bonwit said.
“We already got one. What, you want two?”
“Just want to know what you think. Fielding a few ideas.”
“Why, somebody’s against it?”
“That’s right.”
“Wait, let me guess.”
“You want to give me the flowers?” Billy said.
“Against the organ, who could it be? Which person for his size makes the biggest corrections? Tell me if I’m warm if I move toward the speller.”
“It belongs to Endor. They should have left it where it was.”
Sandow broke off the intermission music and began playing a triumphal march. Pitkin handed Billy the flowers and went back to the dark corner, this time accompanied by Dr. Bonwit. The laureates started filing in, thirty-one of them, in size places. Multicolored neon, flashing intermittently, pulsed through the clear tubing
that extended well above the organ. The torches carried by the laureates were as large as the one Evinrude had used to light the way into the original jagged hole. Although still unlit, the torches were being held as if each one were about to cough forth an assortment of fresh lava; that is, the laureates kept the plastic devices well away from their bodies, every head averted. They seemed to march accompanied by a terrible belief in their own potential for self-immolation. It passed methodically down the line, a bland handshake, freezing them to their processional drag-step.
The small parade came to a halt as Sandow lifted his hands from the keyboard and spun himself to the end of the bench, looking directly at Billy. Echoes of the organ music collided high above the floor of the Great Hole. Sandow tapped his right hand twice on the inside of his left thigh. This, it turned out, was only the first of two signals and he followed it with a little wiggle of the thumb. Billy, with the flowers, took his place at the front of the line. He realized now that the first hand signal had been meant for him (get in line) and the second for the doctor, the nurse and Pitkin (wheel in the biomembrane), for at this moment a massive transparent tank came into view. Its basic shape was simple: a cylinder on wheels, a blunt-nosed torpedo set lengthwise on a metal undercasing to which were fixed four scooter-sized tires. Dr. Bonwit walked ahead of the biomembrane, kicking small stones out of the way, and behind it were Pitkin and the nurse, pushing. Everywhere on the ten-foot-long tank were complex monitoring devices and all sorts of gauges, tubes and switches. It was by far the most elaborate health mechanism Billy had ever seen and he stood on his toes to get a look at Ratner himself but the angle wasn’t favorable just then. What he could see, clearly, were a half-dozen large bright sponsor decals and stickers on both sides of the biomembrane and even on the blunt front end. Corporate names, brand names, slogans and symbols:
MAINLINE FILTRONIC
Tank & Filter Maintenance
STERILMASTER PEERLESS AIR CURTAINING