“What the hell do you think I'm trying to do? Let go, let go, let me put it on fast.”
“But not so fast. Permit me to tell you a little about this suit. I will not misrepresent it to you. It is no longer in style. It is what was once called a zoot suit and is now quite rare. The beauty of it is that it will fit anyone, for you cannot tell whether it fits or not. And for only sixty-five dollars.”
“The Robber!” though Finnegan who was watching. Finnegan had bought the old suit for nine dollars for the stunt but he began to understand how these men turn a profit on everything.
“Oh my God, man, let me put it on,” said Casey, for he was the stitchless young man.
“Sixty-five dollars, cash in advance,” said the gnome.
“I don't have it on me right now. I don't have anything on me right now. Let me put on the suit and we will go somewhere and get the money.”
“Well, let me have your old suit for security.”
“Dammit, man, if I had an old suit I'd put it on. Give me the suit quick.”
“You would take it by force? Police! Police!”
“Oh God no! Don't holler. Look, I will kneel to you. I'll beg. I'll grovel. For the love of all humanity let me have that suit.”
“Surely you're just trying to have fun with an old man and you don't intend to buy at all. But if you change your mind, come see old Dan tomorrow. Here's my card. Put it in your pocket.”
“Pocket? If I had a pocket I'd crawl into it. The suit, old man, the suit.”
“Maybe you want a necktie. I have neckties with me also.”
“They're better than nothing if you have enough of them. Oh my God, man, give me the suit right now.”
“But for credit? And without security? And to one who seems to have, pardon me, no visible assets whatever? That is hardly good business.”
“Old man, you don't know how bad I need that suit.”
“There is a shortage of suits? Then the price is seventy-five dollars. I cannot afford to give away what is in short supply.”
But finally Askandan sold Casey not only the zoot suit but also a pair of pointed shoes and a monstrous hat, all on promise of payment in the morning.
“I do not presently have the jangle chain that should go with this,” said Asking Dan, “but I can get you a jangle chain. I will leave no leaf unturned to get you a jangle chain by tomorrow. I like the phrase ‘Leave no leaf unturned’. It reminds me of a story about leaves, and an unthinking couple who once found themselves in your present state.”
And Askandan disappeared into the bushes again like a gnome.
The very odd figure of Casey started down the road towards town with a new bitterness mixed with the old. The zoot suit was much too small for him and was painful in the crotch. He was a whole catalog of fools, and there was a horrible tension in his throat that threatened to burst into sound.
Then, when the pointed shoes had begun to hurt very badly, and when he had suffered the tortures of the damned for an intolerable time, there was a frightening rasping noise. It scared him; he couldn't place it. It was coming from somewhere very near; it was coming from inside of him.
It was laughter, and it was his own. It had first an hysterical note to it, coming tightly from his throat and chest. Then it broke loose and came from farther down. It became an old country belly laugh. He had forgotten how funny a really bare situation can be. This was rich, and he bellowed and hooted. It was like something out of one of the old Crocks.
Casey laughed for the first time in many months, and a lightness came back to him that he had forgotten.
6.
Show Boat was writing to Dotty:
‘No, I haven't heard from the brat. But Casey came back from over the hill. Why should we give up on our special boy? I thought he'd be at the ordination. He must be out of the country. I justify him in all ways.
‘Didn't you know that Finnegan was Top Sergeant in that outfit, Dotty? They all agree that he was the best man in the outfit, in any outfit. Other men have had the same failings.
‘Did you know that one of the Apostles was a tippler? Papa says that it's an old Italian legend. He used to duck back and finish what was left in the cups and wineskins. He was either Thomas or Bartholomew or Jude, Papa forgets which. There were miracles in reverse with wine bottles found filled with water. Yet he was a fine Apostle and he converted his tens of thousands. He never got over an inordinate love for the stuff but he must have brought it under control. Vincent is reading over my shoulder, and he says that inordinate means not brought under control. I say ‘A long afternoon in Purgatory to you, my love.’ I pray to the Holy Apostle the tippler, Sanctus Apostolus Potator Incognitus.
‘Let there always be more in us than is apparent, Dotty, or we are lost. Did you know that we are period pieces? In twenty years nobody will believe that we happened. You do see what is coming in the name of the Name, don't you, Dotty? And we will become troglodytes.
‘Mary was here this morning. She told me a joke so far out that I'm afraid to repeat it. You can look forward to knowing it on the last day.
‘Casey says that the Seven Devils came back and found him swept and garnished and want to move in again. He hasn't let them. He is a good boy though badly spoiled. He is, however, in hock to the Seven Devils for a lot of money. They have taken his press and building, but they can't use the name of the Crock. There is no Crock but the Crock, and Casey is the editor of the Crock and is being exacerbated (is that a word? It doesn't look like one after I've written it) by the liberals (is that?): they all bleed a little when anyone turns on the Party. Vincent says that we talk too much about Communism. We are occupied by it while a much more dangerous arm of the same octopus advances on us, the secular-liberal tentacle. They are of the same flesh, of course. The Serpent of the Garden (I have this information by special charisma) was this hydra, this eight-armed water monster that is still with us.
‘Vincent also says that we are the last young people ever to believe that the Church is perfect. I think so too. I'll hate to see us go.
‘My husband says smart things sometimes. Then he does the dumbest things in the world. The last time he was hunting he left his shotgun in a fence corner and came home without it. He says that he did seem to be walking a little lighter, but he thought nothing about it till he got home. He would go back to fishing but he forgot who borrowed his rod and reel.
‘I was very glad to get to go to the ordination and to see you all again. There's too many years between things! The next time will probably be at my funeral, or yours. Gee I hope it's yours! I bet you'll look pretty in a coffin. Be good. We all love you: how shall I count the ways? Rats, Dotty, it wouldn't take the fingers of one hand. I don't know many ways to love, but all of them are for you.’
Show Boat
Finnegan wrote to Dotty:
‘Ruskin (or was it Erskine?) wrote that music is the only language in which it is impossible to say an unkind or something thing. Ruskin (or was it Erskine?) was wrong as usual. There is vindictive music, there is sneaky music, there is derisive music, there is just plain mean music. More unkind things have been written in jazz than in jargon, which is why unkind people are so taken by it. There is the conceit of the fugue, the arrogance of the operatic, the pride of the pop, the weaseling of the waltz, the whining meanness of the hillbilly, the silliness of swing, the dishonesty of downbeat, the biliousness of the ballad.
‘All of which is prelude to the last time I got whipped. I recently had a blank platter made and put on the box at my favorite bistro. I put in ten dollars for it to play noiselessly a hundred times. This caused panic among the unclean hoppers. They twitched, they bled, they sweat, they howled to the management for the key to put an end to the terrible silence. I told them that I had paid for the music, that it was beautiful music and was pitched so that it could be heard only by the human ear. This made them mad. They called me a fink and a scab and a fruit and a fascist. They pummeled me with coke bottles (the unclean hoppers drin
k nothing stronger) and tore off my shirt, and got me on the floor and kicked me with their pointed shoes; and this after I promised you that I wouldn't fight any more.
‘Then they got out their switchblade knives and cut a Z in my cheek. Does the letter Z have a special meaning to music lovers? Then I was arrested for disturbing the peace. The judge said that he would have given me ten years had he the power. He is a buff. I was afraid to ask for a jury trial. I'd have gotten the gas chamber.
‘I should not have missed the ordination. It was just that I miscalculated it by some weeks and some thousands of miles. I will make it up to Henry in some manner. I should not have missed writing to you last year. It is the first year I ever missed. It is possible that I will come out of all this. I mean to do something very much for you who have done so much for all the rest.
‘I will write to you again soon. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe again the day after. I have always believed that the best way to end a letter is just to stop when you get to the end of a page no matter — ’ And he stopped there without end or signature.
Mary Virginia Schaeffer wrote to Henry:
‘This thing that I want to tell you, it is no use going about it. I could never tell you when we were close and you were my boyfriend, and how could I write what I could not even say? And last month at the Ordination I was the only one who didn't know what to say to you. But I knew that you still understood that we would never be apart. And when you gave me your blessing, you winked at me.
‘A long time ago (it seems like a long time) mama used to worry that I had anything to do with you. ‘Why, you are the prettiest girl in town,’ she'd say (and I was), ‘and he is the homeliest man, and he is no good and has been in jail in Beaumont. Why do you want to tempt the Lord? There will always be something between you.’ (And there should be.) ‘Why do you like the fat Frenchman?’ But maybe you would still be mean if I hadn't loved you. When you changed, maybe it was partly I who changed you. And now you are taken by the passion and you will always know what you must do. But you are already saved.
‘And the rest of us have it still to do, and we will only be saved as by fire. It is like climbing a hill, and then finding that you are at the bottom of a bigger hill and the ground is sinking. It is like starting a big bird off to fly, and it all comes apart in your hands. And you try to put it together again, and meanwhile the wind has changed, and it seems like real flight is no longer possible.
‘Everyone is happy. X-dmo and all that.’
Love, M. V. S.
Mr. X wrote to Absalom Stein:
‘We are perhaps the only ones who know what this is about, and I sometimes think that you are not as dedicated as you might be. Duffey is only a toy patriarch who crusades well but is not fitted to work in the dark. Gabrielovitch can only read the poison label if it is printed in Slavic. Henry, by the nature of his calling, cannot penetrate as deeply as we. Casey, even though he has changed, still has not any more brains than he had before the change, and it is very hard to strike flame from soapstone. The kids, well they are very fine ladies, and they have the Church; they are justified. They are right even when they are wrong. I have it only a little and you not at all. We must hobble without that crutch.
‘Now the point is that you have to be a born joker to be able to stand this. I was born so, and by all the powers so were you! We are Cassandras in pants. We make our revelations, and listen to the cat-calls of the cretins. But not all who mock us disbelieve us. For those who lead the roar against us know that what we say is true. To us remains a certain defense, after the proper defenders have lost interest or gone to sleep. Oh well, we will go on tilting with Principalities and Powers. And yet it is a terrible blow to learn that another one has turned. This last one I can hardly believe.
‘Naturally I know the source of Finnegan's money, but only God knows the source of Finnegan and myself. Even if I were not deeply involved (and I am) my natural curiosity would not let the question go unanswered. But I will not tell you the story now. Someday I will tell it with fine elaboration, for in several senses it is out of this world. A good story mellows in me like wine till it is ready.
‘There is pride in all of us, Absalom, and it must be broken. We all come to the passion and are shaken by it: Finnegan who goes to his many deaths; Casey who was dead and lives again; Hans and Henry who were born to balanced power and will both be broken to gibbering weakness before they die; Duffey who must find Him Who Is More Than Melchisedech; Vincent who made peace with the world and will find that the world does not keep it; Dotty herself, and the Urchin, and Margaret the bonfire.
‘Do you know what is the Abomination of Desolation spoken of by the Prophets? It is the world that God so loved, becoming trivial and narrow. We will see it. I have heard a sad thing of yourself: that you have read the Teilhard bogus and have not laughed. The everlasting phoniness be upon you, Absalom, the gaping nothingness! Renounce this prostitution of the mind, this adoration of the golden gawk!
‘And you yourself, Absalom, you have seen the burning bush, and you must wander for forty years in the desert. Hey, you'll be old then. Two things are required of us through it all: that we be intelligent and that we be serene.
‘I will pass through town the same time as the Snow Goose in the fall. I will be the one without feathers.’
Wryly yours,
— X
Chapter Eleven
Crotolo or Dorotea
1.
There was a joke going around town, a most unusual joke. Everyone in New Orleans had started to talk Spanish to Finnegan. Even those who spoke English to him did so with a Spanish accent. Did he suddenly seem Spanish to people? It was mighty rum that he should appear so to everyone, and all at once. Now Finn could talk Spanish as well as anyone, but he had got a little tired of the joke. They had changed the town. He couldn't find any of the old bars or the Pelican Press. It was possible that New Orleans had recently been ceded to Mexico. He had not been reading the papers. All the signs were printed in Spanish. This was either carrying a city-wide joke on him to great lengths or there had been political changes.
“What's wrong with old New Orleans?” he asked a man who was solicitous of him.
“What time the boat to New Orleans? The boat it has gone already. No mas antes de martes. You understand? Not another one till Tuesday.”
“I understand, and yet I do not. Not knowing what day this is, I do not know when, if ever, Tuesday will be. Nor why I should take a boat to get to where I already am.”
He went to call Dotty, but the exchanges had been changed. The only phonebook was an old one from Havana, Cuba that someone had left in the booth.
Finnegan's friend was named Ignacio. Ignacio was an Abogado. Everyone in town was either an abogado or a medico or a catedratrico, very professional people.
“I notice another thing,” Finnegan told his friend. “The people are getting bluer.”
“Bluer? Mas de azul? Are you sure that ‘bluer’ is the word you want?”
“Yes. A layman might say ‘darker’; but, were I working on canvas now, I would touch the blue just a little more to indicate these newfound complexions. There is no doubt that the people are getting bluer. And, though I find the new darkness or blueness attractive, yet I wonder at it. It is not the face of the New Orleans that I know. The complexion of a whole city does not commonly darken suddenly. Do you think that they are all victims of an epidemic and I am the only one who has noticed it? Should we notify the authorities?”
“I doubt it, Finnegan. The authorities, I am sad to say, have already been appraised of your activities. And, though they are taking a friendly view so far, yet I wouldn't bother them with the story of an epidemic. They might consider you an epidemic of one.”
“That's clever, an epidemic of one. I say lots of clever things myself. Why does everyone here talk Spanish this week?”
“All are not polyglot as you and I. Many have no other tongue. You are a charming kidder. You are the nicest drunka
rd I have ever known.”
It was late in the evening, and evening did not begin till after midnight. Ignacio the abogado took occasion to lecture Finnegan:
“As faithful, though not at the moment intense, children of Holy Mother the Church, we know that our temptations are of three sources: the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. The Flesh is for those who are weaker than we, the Devil for those less fastidious of their company. For you and me the World is our temptation, as it is our habitation and our home. It is so glorious to be alive in so fine a World, that our temptation is to live over-gloriously, especially as to the cup. I speak, of course, of such noble persons as ourselves. Lesser people have lesser temptations.”
“The World we have always with us. There is only one way out,” said Finn.
“There was one who took an alternate way from the World,” said Igancio.
“Let's leave Elias out of this,” Finnegan protested.
“It is not he of whom I speak. There is an authentic story of a man in the eighth century. It has gone unnoticed even by the curious, or been treated as a silly legend by the serious. This I do not understand. It was chronicled by the great Bishop — mas — arzobispo — Turpin of Rheims, one of the peers of Charlemagne, in what may have been the noon-time of the World. Now the man who left the World and its temptations by an alternate route was a holy Benedictine Priest named Joseph of Mainz. Father Joseph was faced with the same moral problem that faces us: that of living in a World too lovely and too treacherous, or leaving it without defying the ban on self-destruction. But Father Joseph was the wisest man in the eighth decade of the eighth century when so much was known that is now forgotten.
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