Hide Fox, and All After

by Rafael Yglesias

  An uneasy silence. Richard gloomily and doggedly followed the road. "You and your sister have just about driven me mad. I think this is the last time I'm going to let your father go on these trips." Mother Bloom sighed. One hand carelessly turned the collar of her coat up, while she let the other stray into her pocket. Alec stared out the window, a tooth streaking the little blood in his lips white, a hand monotonously bringing a cigarette up, dragging, and letting it drop limply.

  Mother Bloom lit a cigarette. "It's pointless to try and stay calm with the two of you," she said piteously, "just pointless."

  Raul watched Mother Bloom's coat swing gently to-ward a white cottage. Alec had moved to the front seat, and they left.

  Richard overflowed with the desire to say something. But whom should he accuse? Alec and Raul, he thought, were not in sympathy. How could he complain freely with traitors in the camp? It was stupid to fight with a friend over a fight with his mother. Alec hadn't ever liked Stephie so… Richard would have enjoyed the freedom to cry.

  Raul reclined in the back, alienated from self-imagery. He cast, shaped, assimilated all he could to prepare his ideas- more clearly. His ambiguities had stopped him from being clear about political and social art to Alec. The question annoyed him. Why are you defining art before you've created, fool?

  Raul sat up. He watched the silence growing between Richard and Alec. They sat stationary, furious. Raul put a hand on Richard's shoulder. "Your mother was a bitch, Richard, a true bitch. But you shouldn't be angry at Alec for laughing. He nearly gagged trying to stop himself." Alec, almost unwillingly, smiled. "Now it's true," Raul went on. "You nearly choked. And I couldn't imagine anything that would please your mother more, Richard, than you being angry at Alec. So will the two of you quit fuckin' around. I mean, today's a cutting day for me and I'd like to have a little joy and gaiety perhaps. Alec, do you have a light?"

  The occupation made Alec more informal—the air relaxed.

  "I could have killed her," Richard said, "I could have…"

  Raul let a hand slide into his jacket, businesslike. "All right," he said, "let us drop the soap-operaish quality of the past fifteen, twenty minutes, and assume that easygoing air our generation's so famous for."

  Alec's thin smile bloomed into laughter. Richard smiled in a self-deprecating manner.

  "There is nothing," Raul said, sitting back, "like the sanity of irony. So where do we go now?"

  Richard took out a cigarette, pushing the car lighter in. Alec turned the radio on. "We're going to pick up Stephie and her friend Amy," Richard said. "Taking 'em to the dentist."

  Alec smiled. "Amy. Oh man. You've gotta meet Amy, Raul, you gotta."

  "Why?"

  "She's a typical, but really typical, fake hippie. You know what I mean?"

  Raul frowned. "I'll hate her, I know it. This is bad, Alec, you'll have to restrain me."

  "Why," Richard asked, "what are you going to do?"

  Raul straightened in his seat, posing in Napoleonic stance. "I will indulge in the treachery of honesty. Particularly in this case. What could be more obscene than being pretentious about a group that is unpretentious? The pains I have from such people are akin to the churnings of my stomach when Rosko proudly announces that WNEW is in the groove."

  "NEW, man, in the groove."

  "The groove of moneyed records."

  "The unusual green of American agriculture."

  Raul's lanky body twisted. "Oh, very good, Alec, very good. Deserves a Kewpie doll."

  Richard gave Raul a look. Raul fell back into his seat. "A good day. I am suddenly very pleased by everything."

  "Oh, really?" Alec said, looking at him.

  "Alec, you're becoming awfully impatient. Have I not so far exhibited infinite kindness toward you?"

  Richard leaned forward, turning the radio up. "Quiet, the news."

  Raul smiled. Alec looked at Richard, disgusted. "What the fuck you want to listen to the news for?"

  "I want to hear the war news."

  "As if you expect to hear the truth," Alec said. "Come on, there's no point to listening to the news."

  "It isn't good to isolate yourself. People who do…"

  "Isolate yourself!" Raul cried. "Oh, God!"

  "Richard, what bullshit is this?" Alec said. "What cunt gave you that idea?"

  "Stephie doesn't believe that at all. She doesn't care just like you two."

  "You see that, Raul. He's classing us with his cunt. Listen, Richard, it was an expression, I didn't mean it literally. I could just as easily have said—what penis gave you that idea?"

  "Gentlemen," Raul said, striking another pose, "I would find it warming to my being and soul if we dropped obscenity for the moment and returned to the point. The danger in listening to the news is that one might eventually become oblivious to it."

  "I knew my instinctive scorn had an ideology behind it. Thank you, Raul."

  "A pleasure. Now, Richard, give me a reason why-one should listen to the news. I admit there are special cases, but why make it a habit, eh?"

  "Okay. Say you run into that bastard Rubens, what do you say if…"

  "I think you're a truly fine painter, sir."

  "No, no," Alec said, "he's talking about a senior."

  "I thought it was a nice, uh, a cute little joke, you know? I suspect he's an articulate conservative."

  "Yes," Richard said. "And he'll throw the latest twisted bits of news he's gotten together, and what do you say to him, if you don't know the truth?"

  Raul closed his eyes. He spoke as if reciting a speech. "First of all, I don't know what you're doing speaking to him, but assuming you've gotten yourself into that vomitlike situation, you don't argue over particulars. If he's telling you about the latest atrocities of the Vietcong, not only can you throw hundreds of American atrocities at him, you tell him it's an imperialist war and that America will tell any lie, and the Vietcong will do anything to (1) maintain that oppression, (2) get rid of it."

  "Your problem," Raul went on, "is that you still have faith, some shred of faith, in America. I want the system overthrown, all our present conflicts lost. All my arguments boil down to an attack of capitalism, and I have all the information I need for that. Too much, in fact." Raul sighed. "Why, Richard, have you dragged me into discussing politics? God damn you, why? I have a headache already."

  "Well, that way of arguing is just unreasonable. If you're doing it on a debating team…"

  "God, man, when I'm talking about the Vietnam war, I'm not looking for any medals."

  Alec snorted. "That's a silly thing to say, Richard. You're trying to convince the man the war is inhuman, and you're worried about whether you're presenting your arguments clearly, so you'll get enough points to get first prize in debating."

  "About the only value," Raul said, "in being on a debating team—besides having the capacity to make the most fascinating topic unbearably boring—is that it counts as extracurricular credit. And the only value that has is that it might get you into a prestigious college."

  Richard's face twisted slightly. "Is there something wrong in that? You think there's no value in a college like Harvard?"

  "Sure there's a value in Harvard. For a lawyer, it's the best way of getting into big-time law firms. It gives you all the in one needs to be as corrupt as possible in this world. In business, architecture, all the major moneymaking professions. For politicians, it's perfect —the sublime poetry of the American Ideal. If you want to be thirty-eight and still working on your thesis, and still be supported by the college… man, for academicians, it's heaven. All right, so obviously there's a value in all this. For anyone who wants it. It certainly isn't a learning value. You want to make money, Richard—go to the Ivy League colleges. You want to learn—hike around Europe for a year; go to the country and read. Live any way you can, but not easily."

  "Wait a minute, Raul," Alec said. "I agree nearly everyone uses colleges for that purpose. But take Carnegie."

  "What's Carneg
ie?"

  "It's the best drama college in the country."

  "I say that to everyone about Cabot. It's number one on the East Coast. Which means very little, considering the level of schools on the East Coast."

  "No, no, Carnegie's a good school. Seriously. But the point is, you can't gain any entrance into acting by going to it, so I'm going just to learn."

  "That's probably true. But I bet the value of it will be the fact that you'll be able to act for four years. The experience will teach you, not the teachers, or the courses. Unless they have an amazing director, which is unlikely. I mean, how many amazing directors are there in the theater? If any college gave me a grant to read and write for four years, I'd take it, but that has nothing to do with how good the college is."

  Richard, visibly shaken, as if someone were chipping away at the foundation of his being, said, "But you need someone to guide you through all that study."

  "Why? Do you consider yourself incompetent?"

  "No, man, I don't. But I couldn't have read Moby Dick and understood it without…"

  "What? The help of the footnotes in the edition you read it in? Oh, man, let me tell you something about symbolism—for it to be valid in a novel, it has to be unconsciously done by the novelist, or it has to be done by analogy. If a writer feels an analogy between a biblical figure, and it's done with some hint of the sublime, then it's valid. Keats pointed that out. First of all, it has to be like a letter of D. H. Lawrence's I once read. He reread the first draft of Sons and Lovers and discovered that he had unconsciously written symbolism into it. So he went back and heightened it."

  "Same thing happened with Moby Dick. After Melville had written the first fifteen chapters, he discovered the possibilities in what he had already written. All right, so we assume that, to be good, it has to be written unconsciously. Then it follows that it has to be read unconsciously. I read that fucking edition of Moby Dick, and it just became one big-time hunt for symbolism."

  "Your whole thesis," Raul continued, "the basis of Western education in literature, rests on the idea that the genius who wrote the novel can't tell you his meaning, but it has to be filtered down through the lesser mind of an English teacher. Well, I'm telling you, if ol' Mel can't give it to ya, ya might as well give up."

  Richard, conspicuously silent during Raul's harangue, slowed the car.

  "Is that the girls?" Raul asked.

  "Yes."

  "Okay, let's drop the conversation."

  Richard said angrily, "Oh, that's great. You talk but nobody can answer you."

  "You can answer me later, it's not that important. I have to maintain my fortress of silence. Remember I'm just a fourteen-year-old schmuck friend of Alec's."

  "You're fourteen?"

  Alec laughed. "It's incredible, isn't it?"

  "The two of you shut up about me. They're over there."

  Richard stopped the car across the street from where Amy and Stephie were waiting, got out, and walked over to them.

  Raul slid over so that he sat directly behind Alec. He leaned forward and whispered in a husky voice, "We must be conspiratorial in our genius. Maintain your image at all costs." He fell back laughing.

  Alec turned to face him, his eyes fixedly clear. He gestured with despair. "This will be a farce, contain your laughter."

  Amy walked across the street slowly, a number of paces behind Richard and Stephie. She stumbled slightly, closing her eyes to drag sensuously on a cigarette. Her coat was large and brown; tight bell-bottom bluejeans fluttered beneath. Stephie was immaculately clean. Brown hair was drawn away from a forehead so milky it shone; her coat was checkered white and light gray, with a fur collar, and she wore a white satin scarf. Richard was speaking anxiously to her—making excuses. Her face was drawn in a childlike pout. Richard abruptly stopped talking when they neared the car, and Stephie immediately broke into a smile. Amy stumbled to a halt next to Stephie, towering over her. She took in the car—Alec reclining with his arm stretched across the seat, Raul hunched in the corner like a frightened, vicious weasel—with contempt.

  Alec, broadly smiling, leapt forward impetuously, saying in a baby voice, "Steyphie, how awe you?" Stephie lowered her eyes. "Aw, Alec." Raul gagged, Richard shuffled slightly, and Amy, swinging her not obese but formidable shape, said impatiently, "Are you going to let us in or not?"

  Alec drew his arm to his side, shifting his position so that he faced forward. "Hop to it, Richard me boy, hop to it."

  Richard opened the car door, Stephie sliding cozily in next to Alec. He then threw the bucket seat forward, creating havoc in the front, letting Amy into the back. Raul gazed with awe at the massive figure that accentuated his thinness.

  Richard quickly and angrily stepped in, a bellbottom twisting about his leg. He slammed the door.

  "Wichie, why didn't you tell mee to wait, instead of cwushing mee wike that."

  "Why," Alec asked in her voice, gently lifting a hand, "did oou hurt oouself?"

  Alec's mimicry had always been jovial; Richard and Stephie seemed to put it down to his frivolous character. If it ever insinuated too much, Richard thought it to be jealousy. Two years ago, Alec had made a brief try.

  Richard gloomily started the car and said, "You should have been able to see that for yourself."

  "Well, Wichie, how was I suppos'd to know?"

  Alec jauntily ignored the tension. His hand swung about, slapping Raul hard on the leg. "What about that? Isn't it incredible the way she talks?"

  "And it's real?"

  "Yep, completely real." He gave a boisterously hollow laugh. "Can you believe? Isn't it just insane?"

  "It's so unreal, it makes me squirm."

  Stephie turned a baby's amazed face to Raul. "Whaa? What did oou say?"

  Raul's voice became deep, husky, and bemused. "Nothing. I said nothing."

  Alec laughed. "He said it makes him squirm."

  Stephie turned about like a hurt doll. "It isn't nice. The two of oou tawking about mee that way."

  "Aw, Stephie, I'm so sowwy."

  Amy, still as a statue except for a slight narrowing of her eyes, said, "Stephie, will you stop being a target for them."

  Alec's cocky look dropped like scales from his face. He turned cold, ironic eyes to Amy, who met them with perfect equanimity.

  Raul said in a quiet, soothing voice, "I don't think Alec meant any harm. I think it was his way of expressing admiration." Raul looked out on Riverside Drive and smiled wanly.

  Alec smiled and turned back. Amy's face dropped its rigidity for a moment, but turned to Raul in wild attack. "I notice you left yourself out of that."

  Raul blinked his eyes and cocked his head in wonder. "I don't understand."

  "I guess not."

  Raul smiled, Alec snorted. "Oh!" Raul said, "you mean, you said 'them,' and I only explained what Alec meant?" Amy made no response. "Right?"

  She closed her eyes in suppressed irritation, mimicking, "Right."

  "Ah, I see. All I, uh, meant, as it were, is that I wriggle, squirm—have mute, undefinable longings when I hear Stephie speak."

  Richard laughed in a husky voice, Alec convulsively.

  "I suppose," Amy said with bitter scorn, "you're an actor too."

  Raul's black jacket assumed grandeur, his equine, shadowed face twinkled briefly. In a drawn-out whisper, he said, "Ah, 'tis so."

  "I thought so—all actors are egotists."

  Alec stamped his feet in rhythm. Raul stamped his as chorus. Alec shook his head wildly. "Man, oh, man, oh, man. Cunt's puttin' us down, man."

  Raul bent forward and said in a serious voice, "Do you know, Alec? All actors are egotists."

  "All politicians fart."

  "With fervor?"

  "With gaseous joy."

  "Never without precision, though."

  Like a hissing snake, Raul turned to Amy. "Only good actors are egotists."

  "But, Raul," Alec asked, "is it true then that only good politicians fart?"

  "No
. Only good politicians revel in the incestuous pleasure of their beds."

  Alec hissed and whined. " 'At game, a' swearing.' "

  " 'When he is drunk asleep.' "

  " 'Or in his rage.' "

  " 'Or about some act that has no relish of salvation in it.' "

  They hissed and whirled like a mad chorus, both subsiding simultaneously, staring vacantly ahead. Noiselessly, Raul said, "Like so, are the idiots served who speak with arrogance of actors."

  Amy curled a contemptuous lip. "The two of you are a drag."

  Raul said, " 'Your words fly up, your thoughts remain below.'"

  " 'Words without thoughts, never to Heaven go.' "

  "Charming, Alec."

  "I bow to you, Raul."

  "The princes satisfied, my lord?"

  "Their stiletto sings."

  "Close the scene, my lord?"

  "In silence…"

  "… we are cloaked."

  They both raised their hands to heaven and in exact timing folded them demurely in their laps. They sat monklike—serene and angelic, with traces of irony about their lips.

  Richard shook his head. "The two o' ya are crazy." Stephie pursed her lips. "Oou're so funny." Amy stared out the car window in irritation. "They're typical."

  "Well," Raul said, sighing, "there goes my cloak."

  "Be quiet, will you?" Amy said to him. "I have a headache."

  " 'This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.' "

  "What is it you two are quoting?" Richard asked. Raul said severely, "Hamlet."

  "Shakespeare's Hamlet. We have been quoting the speech in which Hamlet decides not to kill Claudius, since he is praying."

  "The well-known apex of the Shakespearian tragic pyramid. From that point on, one character after another gets bumped off."

  "Did they talk as much as you two do?"

  "Man," Alec said, shaking his head sorrowfully, "the cunt just keeps on putting us down."

  "A severe bitch never learns."

  Stephie turned a hurt face. "Will oou stop tawking wike that."