The Jules Verne Steam Balloon

by Guy Davenport

  81

  Hi Anders! Hi Kim! We’re doing wildflowers, have seen a bunny, and a perfectly round ring of mushrooms. It was Pascal, with Housemaster Sigurjonsson. What are you doing? Mucking about, Anders said. Hello, hr. Sigurjonsson. Fine afternoon, said the housemaster. Pascal and I were making our way to the sandspit for a dip: join us. Looks out of tails of eyes, and Sure! Our bikes are over there. We’ll come around by the road and meet you, OK? Pascal had found a turtle when they reached the spit and the housemaster was doing breaststrokes and frog kicks in the river. The reason, Pascal said, you shouldn’t make a pet of a turtle is that he can’t digest his food if he’s the wrong temperature. And, as with snakes, you can’t tell from their eyes what they’re thinking. Why are you undressing Kim, can’t he do it himself? Don’t splash me, I hate water, and it’s cold.

  82

  Germans in their city parks, Anders said undressing on his pallet. There was this bare-chested boy, California tan, jeans with zipper maybe on the fritz, maybe just down, front of his briefs jutting through, like those little balls sacs back in history. Codpieces, said Tom. Had a barefoot friend in short pants of no matter, student cap, like 13, I’d say. Shot Zipper offed his jeans right in front of a line of girls naked as sardines all turning from hot pink to gingerbread brown right before your eyes. Student Cap dropped his little pants, Adam before the Fall beneath. And, being Germans, very serious about it all.

  83

  No absolute petrographical distinction is attached to the terms Berkshire schist and Rensselaer grit. The upper part of the east side of the plateau, its southeastern, western, and northern faces, and its top, consist of grit or graywacke, a dark green, exceedingly tough, and in some places calcareous, generally thick-bedded granular rock, in which the quartz grains are apparent, and, upon closer inspection, the feldspar grains. Numerous veins of quartz, and sometimes of epidote, traverse it. This rock is, however, interbedded with strata of purplish or greenish slate (phyllite), varying in thickness from a few inches to perhaps a hundred feet. A small section, measured south of Bowman Pond, in Sandlake, shows, beginning above, fine grit five feet, slate eight inches, coarse grit fifteen feet, slate one foot six inches, fine grit five feet, slate eight inches. About a mile north-northeast of Black Pond, in Stephentown, surrounded by grit, is a mass of slate six hundred feet in width which belongs either to the grit or the Berkshire schist. There is a considerable area of green phyllite at West Stephentown and of the purple northwest of Black Pond. The thin purple phyllite layers along the west edge of the plateau, in Poestenkill, contain minute branching annelid trails.

  84

  Forest light on bare butts. Kim smelled of mint between the toes.

  85

  Silver look from the hornbeam’s Athena strix. Yellow eyes, Pan. Herds of boys, agemates, in Sparta, ate together on the floor of the mess, with their fingers, from the bare boards. They wore as their only clothing winter and summer an old shirt that left their legs bare from crotch to toe, handed down from elder brothers, the nastier snagged daubed patched and too small, the better. They learned together grammar, law, manners, and singing. Each herd had a Boymaster, who taught them to march in time to the flute and lyre. Each boy sooner or later was caught by an older lover, and carried away to the country. The boy’s friends came along, too, for the fun of it. This outing lasted through three full moons, and thereafter the two were friends for life. The lover gave the beloved, as was required by Spartan law, a wine cup, shield, sword, soldier’s cape, and an ox. With the ox he threw a banquet, and invited all of his herd, together with their lovers, and gave an account, in intimate detail, of how he had been loved for two months. After this, the beloved wore respectable clothes given him by his lover. They went hunting and dancing together, and ran together in races.

  86

  This was our discovery, Rutger said, Anders’s and Kim’s and Meg’s and mine. I know, I know: your club is for superrevolutionary Kids’ Rights underage snuggling and jacking off, but just because my pal happens to be a girl is no reason I can see for you to blackball us. Man, look at this red! Kim, a smudge of blue paint across his nose and his hair bound with a piratical bandana, said he voted for Meg and Rutger to be admitted. Meg taught me and Anders how to French kiss. She’s done it with a girl, so she’s like one of us, kind of, right?

  87

  Morale, said Tom. Openness, brashness, spirit. Boundaries of freedom moving outwards. Put that down in the minutes, Hugo said. What I think, Anders said, is that with all the rockets and megadeath bombs and poverty and violence and fanaticism, Lebanon Ulster Nicaragua Honduras Afghanistan Poland Libya, whole bunches of us need to say there are better revolutions. Talk about simplistic, Lemuel said, O my. When we lose our sense of history, Hugo said, reasoning becomes a lucid madness. That’s Piet Mondriaan, the painter. He sat at the feet of the mathematician Brunschvicg, who said, The more a man imagines himself independent of history, the more, on the contrary, he makes himself its prisoner. So let’s learn some history.

  88

  Blue café awnings winter square Paris trees gray buildings green shutters and Rimbaud in a tightjeaned boy with curls and broad shoulders. Order is freedom, order is grace. The centurion’s child (Günther Zuntz’s essay, Stanley Spencer’s painting). Cock upslant warped bell flare to glans. Deep slick. In the park Mariana leaned an ear for a whisper in birdy sibilances from Franklin, shifty of eye and grin. My word’s my word, she said. He won’t bat an eye. He’s for gosh sakes a scoutmaster and knows all about boys, understands boys. He even likes them. Franklin, dubious, heel to toe, deepened his pockets.

  89

  Headmaster Eglund, Kim’s father, a Latinist who had written about Cicero and Seneca, was an authority on classical weights and measures. Or, as Kim’s mother the gardener always said, amounts. My dear husband studies Grecian amounts. He had welcomed young Tvemunding after choosing him from among many applicants, and bragged about him to colleagues at other schools. And here was a beautiful essay by Tvemunding on Virgil and St. Paul, their ideals of magnanimity and courage. He called him in. Do you, he said over tea, think there is enough rascal in my Kim? His sister, did Hugo know, was married and with children of her own, his brothers were an engineer in the navy, exec. officer on a submarine, and a graduate student in chemistry. Kim, our Eros, was an afterthought on a second honeymoon in Italy, begotten on a sunny afternoon in a village inn from the windows of which they could see a hill slope with shepherds and goats, an olive grove and a farm that seemed, as it might be, Horace’s. Life does beautiful things once in a while, what? O decidedly, Hugo said. But, said Eglund, he’s in love, as he calls it, with dear Anders, a gentle boy and a bright one. We know from psychology that this is all properly inevitable, and it has done wonders for Kim. He feels so good about it, and he has been so manly and honest. You work with Scouts and run a well-disciplined and effective classroom. What do you think? It’s beautiful, Hugo said. Quite, what I say, said Eglund. I try not to be puritanical. They’ve started this club, and have put you down as faculty sponsor, and have renovated the old boathouse. Should I look in on it, give it my blessing, do you think? Not without announcing when you’re coming, Hugo said, believe me. What would I see? Eglund asked. Come in, dear, he said to his wife pulling off gardening gloves. Classics Master Tvemunding, she said, how delightful.

  90

  Green world. They’d come through deep ferns from the country road, and then up to a ledge of flat rock velvety with moss, hefting their bikes on their shoulders. Lemuel’s hair, as blond as Kim’s, spiked out in warps from under his racing cap, which he still wore after putting every other stitch neatly rolled in his rucksack, its provender unpacked and lined just as neatly by his bicycle: thermos of cold milk, apples, blue cheese and onion sandwiches, chocolate bars, and a tin of oysters in their liquor. Oysters, Anders said. Oysters, said Tom. To make us hornier, so they say. You swallow them whole, very sexy, with some of the juice. Raw, said Kim. Raw. What an absolutely lovely place. Anders
squatted to undo Kim’s shoes and pants. You undress him? Lemuel said. Neat. Hejsa! the kid has no more pubic hair than an infant. I do too, Kim said, some. He comes, Anders said, and I love him. You’re kissing, Kim said to Lemuel and Tom, like a boy and a girl.

  91

  Kim was a wolf, weight on four paws like a table, ears cupped and keen. A green frog, hopping. Anders, creeping up from behind, flopped on him, pinning his arms. His nose, a wolf’s, could savor the grassy suet odor of a rabbit’s spoor, the hairy stink of a dog, the fermented turnip reek of a bear, all the mellow pollen green turpentine bitterbutter acorn smells of the woods, dark smells of punk lichen leafmold. In bed, sleep taking him, he could be a hedgehog, a badger.

  92

  Lizard, the Greeks called it, Hugo said, flipping Kim’s penis with a nonchalant finger. We didn’t think, Anders said, you’d come up when we weren’t having a formal meeting. But Tom asked me, Hugo said. I’ve seen everything anyhow. I wanted, said Tom, to see if you’d come. I don’t see anything but some bare boys such as I see thrice weekly with my Scouts, Hugo said. Officially I’m not here. And I must skedaddle in a bit, to meet my Mariana. Kim’s the lucky one here, jumping the gun by several years. You met Anders last summer? His folks’ summer place is near ours, Kim said. The first time we undressed together to swim, he asked if I knew how to jack off, and I said O yes! And did I? O yes! Lots? O yes! Then, Anders said, he did a stomp dance, snapped his fingers, and whistled, and flopped his hair about. He had seen me throwing my javelin and jogging and reading under a tree and had come over and said he was Kim, eleven, soon to be twelve. I think he thought I was generous to notice him at all. Fifteen is pretty scary, Kim said. So after all the things you do to make friends, we found a sunny old barnloft across a field of sunflowers, where we proposed to do some serious jacking off. I remember that my dick was hard as a bone when I took off my swimslip and had a thrum of benevolence in it. Veins and knots all over it, Kim said. And juice beading out. Bulbourethral secretion, Hugo said, to be coolly pedantic. What an afternoon, Kim said. And all the ones since.

  93

  Rutger’s slow eyes’ sliding look at Meg makes her hold her breasts with squeezing fingers, red snicks in grass halms fusing their green with mauves and browns. Rutger’s quick eyes’ bolting look at Meg makes her caress her breasts with fingertips, blue glints in grass halms fusing their green with yellows and blues. Rutger’s slitted eyes’ satyr’s look at Meg makes her knead her breasts with tight fingers, green tones on grass halms fusing their pale straw with tan and cream. Rutger’s sly eyes’ longing look at Meg makes her pinch her nipples, yellow bosses on grass halms fusing their cedar green with dusk and dew.

  94

  A slope of daffodils down to the river. Old trees. One of those days when Kim was full of himself. Spin and stomp! Spin on your left foot, stomp on your right. He was, he said, into imagination soak. He could be a rabbit, a fox, a mouflon, a cow. Rimbaud’s rabbit, Anders said, looking through a spiderweb strung with dew in a meadow. Dürer’s handsome Belgian hare, Peter Rabbit in his red jacket and blue slippers, and what’s imagination soak? When you see what was always there for the first time, Kim said, you know? The way you see it is to imagine you’re something else, like a dog. A dog sees up, and low, and when I’m dogminded I look at the ground, and at the undersides of things, bike seats, chairs, to see how a dog sees it. And, really hard, to do imagination soak and try to be, say, Master Tvemunding, who knows the history of everything, and would see people completely different. He must see me as a squirt with lots of blond hair, and his girlfriend Mariana looks at me and wonders if my diapers are wet. Do you know Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony? When it’s raining, but the sun’s shining, and you see the sun through chestnut leaves, and you’re walking along wet flagstones, doesn’t a shiver tickle up your neck? Tell me about Sven Asgarsen again, huh? Anders a freshman at NFS Grundtvig had fallen in love with Sven Asgarsen a quiet muddleheaded sophomore who loved animals, spoke in riddles, and was out of it. Who are you? he said one day to Anders, who had hitherto studied Sven’s good looks from afar and who answered with his name. No no! Names won’t do. Science or books? City or farm? Anders said: Books, city, though I’ve milked a cow and slopped pigs. So Anders learned how to talk with Sven. Pigs, their breeds and who raised them and how and why, flop or stand of ear, curl of tail, rake of trotters. Then goats, bantams, cows. You didn’t do anything? Kim asked. I just worshipped, Anders said. And one day he went home. Folks came for him, just like that. I’d never been so lonely in my life.

  95

  Friend of mine from way back is on shore leave, Mariana said on the phone. I really ought to be nice to him. Will you understand? I’ll try, Hugo said. The other thing, she said, is that Franklin needs a place to sleep tonight. He shouldn’t be by himself. Mommy’s off somewhere. Bring him over, Hugo said. Better still, I’ll come get him. I won’t be replaced? she said. Can’t promise, Hugo said. If Franklin looks at me with those big eyes, I may kiss him black and blue. Wiggle his toes, she said, he likes that better.

  96

  Going to fetch Franklin, he remembered at the foot of the stairs the evening he’d come out for a breath of fresh air and found the rider drawing in colored chalk on the concrete terrace. An apple, a snake. He’d lettered around it, The Apple that Ate the Serpant. That, said Hugo, is not the way to spell serpent. The rider said, I was going to draw it and go away. For you to find. And, said Hugo, what does it mean? Don’t you know? the rider asked, all charming smile and handsome eyes.

  97

  Hugo, having graded a set of Greek papers (conditionals, optatives) and a set of Latin (ablatives and datives), written his father (Schillebeeckx, a promise to visit with Mariana while the hollyhocks were at their best, Scouts), washed bowl plate glass and tableware, realizing that it was no effort to be generous toward Mariana, her generosity being enough for them both, set out to meet her and Franklin. No Apple that Ate the Serpant on the terrace at the foot of the outside steps, only clean concrete with a cricket in a corner, a beech leaf in the center. The friend from way back was a sailor with a neat wide box of a nose, flat cheeks, good looking, trim. Seems, he said in his handshake, I’m lucky to see Mariana without knowing six languages. Glad to know ya, fella. The same, said Hugo. Franklin and I are going to dare each other to eat a banana split on the way back, the deluxe extraordinaire with everything on it, topped with Chantilly and the Danish flag. Then we’re going to have a wild evening of dissipation playing checkers. And we intend to have silly dreams.

  98

  Franklin, full of banana split, was going to be a Scout, both a Cub (Dyb! Dyb! Dyb!) in a blue uniform with yellow neckerchief, and the mascot to Hugo’s troop, going with them on all hikes and campings-out. Moreover, he and Hugo were going to sleep together, like buddies, no pyjamas. In the morning they were going to run four kilometers before breakfast. Hugo was his big friend.

  99

  They were asleep, Franklin’s head on Hugo’s shoulder, arm across his chest, when a steady tapping at the door woke Hugo. Mariana, would you believe. O wow, she said, naked and all. O, I’m here because sacking out with Hjalmar all night seemed wrong. He has changed, people do. He’s as good a lover as always, proved it twice, to be friends. His feelings aren’t hurt. Sailors are tough. I belong here. The bed will be sort of crowded, Hugo said. Don’t mind, she said, he can be between us. The phone. Who in the name of God is calling at this hour of the night?

  100

  He was chalk white from messy hair to toes, no pink anywhere, so that the shallow definition of muscle in the chest, abdomen, and quadriceps seemed sculptural, a young Hermes by a sentimental follower of Thorvaldsen working in alabaster. The eyes were open and blank, the mouth peaceful. Both hands were curled as if in anxious preparation for catching some object about to fall. A student of yours? the policeman asked. He had a letter from you in his jeans pocket, wadded up. That’s why we called you. Last session, Hugo said, at NFS Grundtvig, day student, lived on
the warehouse end of Kalksten. He’d dropped out of school. Cocaine, the policeman said, OD. They’re doing it all over the world, and why? I don’t know, Hugo said, needing to cry but knowing that he couldn’t. Do you?