“Lucinda went once to see him. Thereafter she sent him thoughtfully chosen gifts, toys, tins of cookies, picture books appropriate to his mental age. She always sent him things. She liked helpless beings. I don’t mean that the way it sounds. I mean she had a heart for people. It was she who saved Penfield a jail sentence. Penfield was from the working class and he decided to come here in the late twenties to assassinate me. You knew that of course. Well, the fellow was pathetic but she kept him on as a sort of a cause in personal rehabilitation. A sort of one-woman Salvation Army, except without the prayer. Lucinda was not religious except perhaps in some vague pantheistic way. She decided the poor man was a poet. I got to like him myself. He read aloud very well, he probably should have been an actor. He read Wordsworth and Keats, all that kind of thing. He was a sort of house pet she kept on and I indulged her. But then of course I did something I shouldn’t have. I took Penfield’s own verses to the president of the New York Public Library and asked him his opinion. In turn he called on a professor who was an expert in the field of literature. Oh my. And I showed Lucinda this fellow’s letter. She perceived, accurately, that the opinion didn’t matter so much as my malice in having asked for it. She threw the letter in the fire. She was a wonderful woman. She was not a prey to fashion, didn’t give a damn for it. She always looked smart by looking herself. She always wore her hair the same way, cut short and brushed back from her temples. I thought it was most seemly. She had a thin, fit body. Thin waist. Ribs showed. She had good hands, small and squarish, nails trim, cut close. She would not paint her nails or wear make-up. I liked her mouth, a generous mouth. Sweet smile. A light came into her eyes when she smiled. She had almost no bosom. Just a slight rise there with good thick nipples. She told me once if I liked her body I must really like boys.”
He paused. “You’ve come here to kill me too, I suppose.”
“What?”
“But you don’t have the guts for it—anymore than he.”
“What?”
“See? I’m not even carrying my gun.”
He pushed his chair back from the table and held out his arms.
The room empties. They have gone to make the call. I walk back and forth shaking a fist in the air. The fuckers! By my wits I have done this thing and the stupid sons of bitches have gone for it. But why not? They will hear him laugh, they’ll hear him say, Yes, let him go. My heart fills with a passionate conviction. He and I are complicitors. We’re both against them. As if, having made this up, I cannot make it work unless I believe it myself.
And I am released. And I strut out of that room bone-cracked, skin-stitched and betrayed and I glare at them all as I lead her by the arm out the door. I take my time. I think the illusion will endure only if I do not break and run. I sleep in Sandy James’ parlor. I sleep eighteen hours. I take her money, buy a truck. I hire two men to load it. In the rear-view mirror I see only a black industrial cloud where Jacktown was. I press the accelerator. Cars turn on their lights, the red lights of moving cars ahead of me. The furniture shifts and bangs against the tailgate. The heavy furniture rises in the air on the bumps. I am in transit on the road, the child bride beside me, bracing herself with her knee against the dashboard and holding her baby tightly. I open the window for the cold air. I want the wind to blow these feelings out of my eyes, blow them away, leave me without memory or love, leave me to myself.
“If you thought I would want to kill you,” I said, “why did you tell them to let me go?”
“What?”
“When the police called from Jacksontown,” I said to him. “With that message.” I was smiling like a fatuous idiot.
“What message? I don’t know what you’re talking about. From whom?”
I choked on the answer. Bennett got up and stood at the parapet. He stood looking over the lake with his hands in his pockets.
That night we steal upon a station of the Tokaido and purchase disguises. We are a country lord and his serving boy. She wears bloused trousers. We travel in this humble manner because my mission is clandestine. Soldiers of the daimyo eye us warily. We book rooms in a modest inn where, to avoid suspicion, I call for a woman. She is a tired fat artiste who responds to the humor of the situation. The two of us climb all over her, I with ordinary lasciviousness, my young ward with the affection of a child for her mother. Of course the old whore is terribly moved. She reaches into the child’s pantaloons, and my hand, like a band of steel, clamps around her wrist. If she discovers my serving boy is a girl, all is lost. Even so the situation is difficult. I use all the sexual arts of which I am capable to divert the old bag. But in the midst of passion I intuit that the more undone she becomes, the more shrewd. It is actually interesting. At the moment of her release she is totally withdrawn and quietly aware that we are not what we appear to be. But her tongue is extended. I grab the tongue and impale it to the polished floor with an awl. I shout and stamp about and raise an uproar. The innkeeper comes to the door. Other travelers come running. I berate the innkeeper for the poor quality of his house. He is abject. The woman moans, rump up, head on the floor, eyes glazed like a pig to be served. I put my foot on her back and behead her. The innkeeper begs my pardon.
At dawn we continue our journey. The sky is pink. We climb the trail alongside an amazing stream, so rock-strewn that the water, broken into millions of drops, falls like the sound of hail and bounces like steel pellets. I scrape the bark from a small pine tree tortured by the wind to grow like sunrays toward the earth. This lime-green powdery moss I allow to dry for four minutes in the palm of my hand. I then lick this powder from my palm and immediately my young love becomes a giantess looking down at me with amazement. I trip her and she falls backward, quaking the earth, I run into her vulva and by that means continue my lifelong search for the godhead. It is some sort of gland somewhere. The way becomes slippery. In this viscous darkness I use my knees and my hands like a water spider. The way becomes narrower. Soon I am flattened, drawn like a mote toward some powerful brilliantly lit eye. I feel myself enlarging. The light is blinding. I become my own size and break her open like an egg.
You are thinking it is a dream. It is no dream. It is the account in helpless linear translation of the unending love of our simultaneous but disynchrous lives.
Data linkage escape this is not emergency
Come with me compute with me
Coupling with me she becomes a couplet
Lovers leap in the sea
A drop of sunlit pee between two lips
Substitute a priapic navigator
I see inappropriate behavior
I recall Father Damien seeing his own pale blue eyes
Regarding him from a face resembling his own enlarged redblue heart
It is a woman, a leperess, expressing his sentiments.
I refer to the paired animals going up the ramp of the ark
Leopard leopard aardvark aardvark porpoise porpoise inchworm inchworm
The story of Noah is the religious vision of cloning.
Scientists tweeze pollen eyedrop spermatozoa
Dispatch flights of sexy sterile white moths to eliminate specie
They notice human lovers commonly resemble each other
Test it at home looking at their wives friends friends wives
Or if not each other then each other’s brother or sister
But in any event that love conducts a shock of recognition
Question haven’t I seen you somewhere before answer yes in the mirror
Given wars before wars after wars genocides
and competition for markets cloning will eliminate all chance
and love will be one hundred percent efficient
No Sturm und Drang German phrase no disynchronicity
but everyone having seen everyone else somewhere before
we will have realized serenity of perfect universal love
univerself love uniself love unilove
until the race withers and blows away like the dried hus
ks
of moths but who’s complaining
They had either believed me or not believed me. If they had believed me I had been so effective, so frighteningly effective that they did not want to confirm what I told them, they were afraid to. If they called, he would want their names. So they had let me go.
If they had not believed me, then my desperation was so patent or my cravenness so truly loathsome that they didn’t have the heart to go on with it. Perhaps there were moral operations in this world that transcended the individual responsible for them and threatened to ruin everyone. Was that it? Was I perceived as a leper who threatened to contaminate them?
In either case the result was the same, wasn’t that so? I had been released thinking I’d made contact with Bennett and I had not.
That night I lay in Penfield’s bed and stared at the amber windowpanes and listened to the watchdogs baying. I tried to compose my terrible shame into something I could deal with, I tried to comprehend the weird sick brokenness I felt, the sense of irreparable damage I had done to myself the catastrophic discomposure of everything but the small light in my mind. It was most difficult.
Sandy James asleep forever on the coach seat amid the pilgrims: I take a few dollars out of my wallet and tuck the fat wallet with her death benefits under her chin she does not wake the train begins to move the small flaked tarnished charms of her charm bracelet swing in their arc the train picks up speed I jump hit the embankment the cinders imbedding themselves in my knees.
Compare the private railroad car of the Meiji emperor the imperial beloved, as it makes its way through the sunlit valley of the Bunraku province. It moves slowly and from the populated fields no closer than a mile thousands of little children wave paper flags in time to the small white puffs of smoke rising from the engine. The children are well behaved. Their parents kneel beside them and hold their shoulders. Their grandparents lie prostrate on the ground not even daring to glance toward the distant train where the line of mounted imperial guardsmen cantering at the base of the embankment alongside the dark green imperial car give it the look of a lampshade with a rippling fringe.
The man resisted all approaches he was stone he was steel I hated his grief his luxurious dereliction I hated his thoughts the quality of his voice his walk the way he spent his life proving his importance ritualizing his superiority his exercises of freedom his arrogant knowledge of the human heart I hated the back of his neck he was a killer of poets and explorers, a killer of boys and girls and he killed with as little thought as he gave to breathing, he killed by breathing he killed by existing he was an emperor, a maniac force in pantaloons and silk slippers and lacquered headdress dispensing like treasure pieces of his stool, making us throw ourselves on our faces to be beheaded one by one with gratitude, the outrageous absurdity of him was his power, his clucking crowing mewing shouting whistling ridiculousness is what stunned us into submission but not this boy, I know what to do about this pompous little self-idolator, I’m going to put the fucker where he belongs I swear oh my Clara I swear Mr. Penfield I swear by the memory of the Fat Lady I know how to do it, I know how to do it and I have the courage to do it and it will be a beautiful monumental thing I do I will testify to God that he is a human being, that is how, I will save him from wasting away, I will save him from crumbling into a piece of dried shit, into a foul eccentric, you see, I will give him hope, I will extend his reign, I will raise him and do it all so well with such style that he will thank me, thank me for growing in his heart his heart bursting his son.
And in the morning the whole spring of the earth has come forth and Loon Lake is a bowl of light. A sweet blue haze hangs in the trees. The sun is shining, a filigree of pale green leaf laces through the evergreens across the water. I run down the hill to the lake side pulling off my clothes as I go. I stop to remove my shoes. My feet thump along the boathouse deck. I stand poised on the edge and dive into the water. With powerful strokes learned in the filth of industrial rivers Joe swims a great circle crawl in the sweet clear cold mountain lake. He pulls himself up on the float and stands panting in the sun, his glistening white young body inhaling the light, the sun healing my scars my cracked bones my lacerated soul, the sun powering my loins warming them to a stir. I toss my hair back, smooth it back, shake the water from my arms, open my eyes. Up on the hill Bennett stands on his terrace, a tiny man totally attentive. He has seen the whole thing, as I knew he would. He waves at me. I smile my white teeth. I wave back.
Herewith bio Joseph Korzeniowski.
Born to a working-class family Paterson New Jersey August 2 1918.
Graduated Paterson Latin Grade School 1930.
Graduated Paterson Latin High School 1936. Voted by classmates
Best Shape of the Head. Hobbies: Street hockey, petit larceny.
Roustabout Hearn Bros. Carnival, summer 1936.
Aka Joe of Paterson, Loon Lake NY autumn 1936.
Employed Bennett Autobody Number Six, headlight man, winter 1936.
Enrolled Williams College September 1937. Letters in Lacrosse,
Swimming. Graduated cum laude, honors in Political Science, 1941.
Voted by classmates Captain ROTC and Most Likely to Succeed.
Commissioned Second Lieutenant U.S. Air Corps.
Legal name change Joseph Paterson Bennett, June 1941.
Assigned newly formed Office of Strategic Services 1942
parachuting into France in black sweater flight jacket trousers
black boots false passport black wool cap black parachute
pockets of francs four thousand feet into windy void
face blackened teeth blackened, heart blackened dropping into blackness.
Awarded Bronze Star with oak leaf cluster 1943.
Awarded Silver Star with oak leaf cluster 1944.
Decommissioned 1945 rank of Major, Office of Strategic Services.
Appointed organization staff Central Intelligence Agency 1947.
Married Dru Channing Smith 1947, divorced 1950; no issue.
Married Kimberly Andrea Kennedy 1951, divorced 1954; no issue.
Continuous service Central Intelligence Agency to resignation
1974. Retiring rank Deputy Assistant Director.
Retired US State Department rank of Ambassador 1975.
Chairman and Chief Operating Officer Bennett Foundation.
Board of Directors James-Pennsylvania Steel Corporation.
Board of Directors Chilean-American Copper Corporation.
Trustee Jordan and Naismith colleges, Rhinebeck NY.
Trustee Miss Morris’ School for Young Women, Briarcliff Manor NY.
Member Knickerbocker, Acropolis, New York; Silks, Saratoga Springs;
Rhode Island Keel, Newport.
Master of Loon Lake.
E. L. DOCTOROW’S work has been published
in thirty languages. His novels include City of
God, Welcome to HardTimes, The Bookof
Daniel, Ragtime, Livesof the Poets, World’s Fair,
Billy Bathgate, The Waterworks, and The March.
Among his honors are the National Book Award,
three National Book Critics Circle awards, two
PEN/Faulkner Awards, the Edith Wharton
Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells
Medal of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters, and the presidentially conferred National
Humanities Medal. He lives in New York.
2007 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 1979,1980 by E.L. Doctorow
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
READER’S CIRCLE and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United Stat
es by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1979.
The poem “Loon Lake” originally appeared in the Kenyon Review.
Portions of this work originally appeared in somewhat altered form in Playboy magazine.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.: Excerpt from “500 Miles” words and music by Hedy West, copyright © 1961 (renewed) by Atzal Music, Inc. All rights administered by Unichappell Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc. Peer International Corporation: Excerpt from “Wabash Cannon Ball” by A. P. Carter, copyright 1933, 1939 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright renewed. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Peer International Corporation. Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., Inc.: Excerpts from “Exactly Like You” by Dorothy Fields, copyright © MCMXXX and copyright renewed by Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., Inc., New York, NY. Reprinted by permission.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Doctorow, E L
Loon Lake.
I. Title.
PZ4.D6413L0 [PS3554.03] 813′.54 79-5526
eISBN: 978-0-307-76298-6
www.thereaderscircle.com
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