Soul of a Whore and Purvis

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Soul of a Whore and Purvis Page 12

by Denis Johnson


  …I shit you not. The firstest puff of smoke

  You spy from out their smallest little popgun

  I intend to answer with a nightmare. [Hangs up.]

  HOOVER: Third Configuration? Isn’t that—

  JOHNSON: Let’s us do what Truman orto’ve done.

  HOOVER: Won’t that spark a Soviet reprisal?

  JOHNSON: Spark a reprisal? Sir, at the end of this finger

  I’ve got thirty-two thousand, one hunnerd and ninety-three

  Sonofabitchin’ nuclear warheads, and

  Them Russkies pack about two thousand more.

  Betwixt us we’ve heaped up some twenty-four

  Thousand megatons of nasty business.

  That’s twenty-four million Hiroshimas in

  This little box, under a little button.

  That kind of megatonnage leaves no Northern

  Hemisphere. Spark a reprisal? Sir,

  I’ll spark a God-consuming conflagration.

  I’m going to murder everyone in the world.

  JOHNSON gulps from a flask.

  HOOVER: Shellfish compound?

  JOHNSON: No, sir. Mineral oil:

  The recipe of crow and shit you fellers

  Fustigate my stomach with requires it.

  It’ll grease your stuffing and send it along.

  [Phone rings.]

  [On phone]…Yes. I’ll use the red phone. [On red phone] Señor Khrushchev!

  Herr Khrushchev!—What’s he—Translator?—

  (Well, he’s unloading just a bit of thunder.)

  This is between me and Mao. Here’s a little

  Formula to follow, Comrade Khrushchev:

  Restraint equals reward. Now, Translator,

  Make him understand he’s come between

  Mao and me, and he should sit this out.

  …If that’s the attitude he cares to strike,

  God help the Northern Hemi sphere. [Other phone rings.] Hang on.

  [A receiver in either hand]

  It’s eight-oh-what?…Well, I’m impressed…Hi, fellers.

  “Joint Chiefs of Staff.” I hear that phrase

  I can’t prevent my mind from picturing

  Pygmies with a spear…Indeed I have.

  We’re chatting now…The red one, yes indeed.

  What color’s yours?…(They’re remonstrating with me.

  …I’m not going to run for a second term.

  I dislike this office. I want corners.

  I don’t like a goddamn oval office.)

  [A third phone rings.] Revelation Central; Jesus speaking.

  —Hey! “Huberty Humphrey sat on a wall,

  Huberty Humphrey had a great”—Howdy, Hue.

  [He’s now dealing with three phones—a receiver in each hand and one laid on the desk before his face.]

  [On phones] That wart-face Russkie hasn’t got the sand.

  We backed him off on Cuba. Here’s the thing:

  I don’t give one dab of rat shit whether

  We kiss our grandkids in their beds tonight

  Or burn the ocean, earth, and sky to cinders.

  [Throws phones aside.]

  Sir, are you a Christian man? Make peace

  With your creator. Where’s the combination?

  HOOVER: I’ve come all over shaking.

  JOHNSON: Here we are.

  They change it every goddamn day.

  HOOVER: I’m all

  Aquiver and atingle and aglow!

  JOHNSON: This is the selfsame finger I itch my ass with.

  HOOVER: And that’s the magic button!

  JOHNSON: THERE SHE LAYS.

  HOOVER: Push it with your member! Rape it! Rape it!

  JOHNSON: Mao may get Taiwan—but he’ll never get this!

  HOOVER: My!—there’s megatonnage there, good sir!

  JOHNSON: I’m gonna drive this thing to Hot Goddamn!

  HOOVER: I’m all afire, and abashed. I’m all aswarm,

  I’m prancing in a madness! Shall we dance?

  A jittlejot of junko juice

  A snittlesnot of turn-me-loose

  A razzledazz of hello mom

  And there you have your atom bomb

  JOHNSON: I’ve just destroyed the Northern Hemi sphere.

  HOOVER: The world is ending, and I’m in your arms.

  [Music plays. They dance together.]

  …I’ve a confession, darling. April Fools’.

  I didn’t hand your secret to the world.

  JOHNSON: It’s October.

  HOOVER: I’m a kinky boy!

  JOHNSON: You didn’t tell the Post? No Pravda?

  HOOVER: I was only joshing. Now you’ve gone

  And diddled with the button!—Are you cross?

  JOHNSON:…What does it matter? Sooner or later

  One of us was going to flush the toilet.

  HOOVER: Round and round and down the spout—hurrah!

  They dance near the phones;

  JOHNSON grabs one.

  JOHNSON: How goes our business?…What? He’s turned around?

  Turned around? But what about our nukes?

  …All right, rescind the order…Well, goddamn.

  Then don’t rescind it, if it wasn’t sent.

  …What do you mean? Indeed I gave the order.

  [Hangs up.]

  Apparently this thing’s not functioning.

  HOOVER: Which thing exactly now?

  JOHNSON: Ha-ha. Ha-ha.

  Somebody’s got a load of explaining to do!

  HOOVER: You’ve got a little explaining to do as well.

  JOHNSON: Johnson broke the button with his Johnson.

  …Have we amused you? Good. Go home. Go on.

  …Get on out, J. Edgar. I must nap.

  HOOVER:…If the commies get us, it won’t be by war.

  They’ll get us in the brain, right in our soft

  Impressionable minds. They’ll get us in

  The coffee houses and the beatnik poems.

  Our spoiled little hairy little children

  Dancing in the psychedelic light.

  A fond adieu, Your Excellency.

  HOOVER exits.

  JOHNSON: I don’t feel so excellent today.

  [As he dons his clothes, he addresses the hanging corpse.]

  …Hook the jug by the ear and hoist it up

  For a little smooch. Wonder what I’d do

  If somebody ordinarily decent ever

  Entered here? Feller like that Purvis.

  ’Pologize for entertaining in

  My skivvies. Turn my liquor breath away.

  President of travesties and favors.

  Faithful of the balance. Figuring it

  To tip down finally on the attractive end.

  Unreasonable, childish hope:

  And bless you, sojer, may you never spy

  The thumbs of bought historians and hostage

  Propagandists weighting the boonful side.

  I’m traveling to the South week after next.

  O, I’ll meet Purvis marching in the sunshine:

  Son of light, master of undisguise…

  The South, well—down there, certain airs bring back

  The sweetness of a childhood I no longer

  Find at all believable, of years

  I must have dreamt.—Why did I ever waken?

  O, I was a knobby little man.

  Sir: I put the skinny in skinny-dipping.

  Flailing in my slow descent, screaming,

  Splashing, the cooling shadow of the bluff

  Blanketing us and it all echoing…

  I used to like to be the last to leave.

  I’d stay there lonely with my chin on my knees,

  There by that slow water at the bend

  Where right about that time of afternoon The dragonflies dipped down to drink.

  And I’d come running for my father’s house,

  Hot all over again in the last light,

  Thudding like a quarter hors
e for home,

  Falling flat and slurping up the crick.

  Lord, that water went down sweet.

  …Never since then a truly slakable thirst…

  JOHNSON fades from view, leaving visible only the hanging corpse.

  BLACKOUT

  Scene 2

  March 1, 1960: The home of J. EDGAR HOOVER.

  HOOVER in silk kimono and garish face paint.

  HOOVER: THE CLOWN IS DEAD!

  TOLSON [entering]: Jay?

  HOOVER: Shot himself!

  Phone rings offstage.

  TOLSON [exiting]: I’ll get it.

  In the course of the scene, HOOVER cleans his features and changes into a business suit, preparing for the day’s appointments.

  His housemate CLYDE TOLSON attends.

  HOOVER: Marvin the clown has blown his own clown head off!

  Clyde, ring up the Post. Ring up The New York Times.

  I want those rats to promise me he stays

  Entombed on the obituary page,

  Or certainly never crawls as far as four,

  That he rises no higher than five, not one page higher,

  And keeps to the lower half. One column inch.

  No photograph!—The clown without a face.

  I want this cloaked and shrunken in the stench

  Of his self-murder. And: no Dillinger!

  Dillinger broke the law, the law broke him:

  Let the glory be the law’s, and not

  Its instrument’s, the late, lamented Marvin.

  I own he was a modest instrument.

  He didn’t slaver after glory, merely

  Postured himself so it accrued to him.

  —Do you know what the poor wretch was reduced to?

  Tomorrow his admirers will read

  That after a stint with breakfast cereal

  He wandered into radio. Somewhere

  Down south he kept the farmers in the know

  And jazzed it up for barnyard animals.

  O, my God, the leader of a horde

  Of Junior G-men! Lovely!—Suicide!

  The Baptists promise Hell for that, I think.

  Dear God, I pray he was your Baptist son.

  “Onward Junior G-he-he me-hen

  Marching as to war! With the cross of Pur-vis—”

  Purvis was the perfect name for him.

  He was perverse: He purposely, perversely

  Projected a lovelorn, stoic decency;

  I believe it to have been primarily prideful,

  Perverse and prideful. Are you calling the Post?

  No mention of museums!—The the the the

  South Carolina—nothing of the kind.

  “On then, Junior G-men, on to victory.”

  TOLSON [reentering]: Jay—Jay—Jay—Jay…Melvin Purvis has died.

  HOOVER: What news do you suppose I’ve just been piping

  From the rooftops?

  TOLSON: When you pipe I tend

  To fail to listen.

  HOOVER: Marvin Purvis is dead.

  TOLSON: As I have just informed you.

  HOOVER: Who told you?

  TOLSON: Melvin, actually.

  HOOVER: Melvin who, exactly?

  TOLSON: Marvin’s name was Melvin.

  HOOVER: Morton, Mable,

  Or Melba Toast—how did you get the news?

  TOLSON: I’ve been on the other line.

  HOOVER: With whom?

  TOLSON: With Mrs. Purvis.

  HOOVER: Well, you can tell her no.

  Why would I be moved to eulogize

  Some suicidal platter-spinner? No.

  Let him be known as the sometime president

  Of the Carolina Broadcast News Assembly.

  TOLSON: She had a request.

  HOOVER: When’s the funeral?

  TOLSON: She asks that you not attend the service, Jay.

  HOOVER: …I only asked when it was.

  TOLSON: Tomorrow at three p.m.

  HOOVER: …How did she find our number?

  TOLSON: His memo book.

  HOOVER: He kept my private number all his life?

  TOLSON: …Get back from there, Jay, have a care.

  HOOVER: I am at home. Here I make no bones.

  TOLSON: You’ve been gamboling past the open view

  Like a helium-bloated parade animal.

  HOOVER: Do you have the Post on the phone, as I requested?

  I want no mention made of Dillinger!

  Or Baby Face or Pretty Boy or Cutie

  Pie or Pooh the Bear or—infants’ icons!

  Clyde, have you seen the wrestlers in Mexico?—

  And all these gangsters wore personae like

  The Mexican wrestlers do—Clyde, we must get

  Immediately half a dozen fearful

  Masks from Mexico, and you and I

  Shall wrestle.

  TOLSON: Mexico is in the mirror,

  Should you care to look. Let me get your suit.

  HOOVER: When I was a lad, we played cops and robbers.

  Purvis and his gangsters shot it out

  Across the landscape, but, Clyde, by and large

  They played cops and robbers. We fight wars.

  Our enemies are ideologies,

  And we must smash the vessels that purvey them,

  And not just this one or that one—all of them:

  Black or Communist or Ku Klux Klan,

  All are rationales for disorder,

  All are threats to peace and order,

  All will wax to a size to challenge

  Eventually authority and justice—

  TOLSON: John—John—John—John—John—

  John, the temple is going to burst asunder.

  HOOVER: And talk to The New York Times. The pinko shits.

  TOLSON: The vein is standing out all blue and ropy—

  HOOVER: The Jew York Times, more like it.

  TOLSON: Let’s not start.

  HOOVER: The goose step is unattractive, I concede,

  But in the man’s defense—what now?

  TOLSON: To bring your pressure down…Take two…

  Get dressed.

  HOOVER: Patriotism, vision, strength,

  Consistency and elegance of concept—

  TOLSON: Please, Jay, not the Hitler diatribe—

  HOOVER: Do we draw across the face of these fine values

  Sort of a black veil because a tragic villain

  Happened to possess them? I refuse.

  TOLSON: I love you.

  HOOVER: Yes, the pinstripe double-breasted.

  The goose step is both ominous and silly,

  I warrant, but in the man’s defense, he didn’t

  Invent the goose step…

  TOLSON: John…I love you, John.

  HOOVER:…HITLER INVENTED THE TWENTIETH CENTURY!

  He instituted the control of guns.

  We need such a law ourselves, do we not?

  May I point out that whereas the Negro may have

  To swim up waterfalls to cast a vote,

  He nevertheless may purchase firearms?

  TOLSON: Suck in. Zip up.

  HOOVER: BRING ME THE OBITUARY

  OF MARTIN LUTHER KING.

  TOLSON: Suck in your gut.

  You have a two p.m. appointment with

  Senator Johnson.

  HOOVER: Senator LBJ

  From Cowturdania. Him a good ol’ boy.

  TOLSON: He’s set aside half an hour for you.

  HOOVER: How would you like to see me double that?

  One call and his whole afternoon is mine.

  He’ll drop the German chancellor for me.

  TOLSON: He owes you favors.

  HOOVER: He owes me more than favors.

  Bring me a deck of cards.—We’ll play gin rummy!

  —In our underwear!

  TOLSON: But I don’t play gin rummy.

  HOOVER: Not you and I! The senator and I!

  He’ll play rummy with me if tha
t’s my pleasure,

  And in his undershorts, if that’s my pleasure.

  But I think I’ll save that game for the Oval Office,

  And play it with the president half-naked.

  TOLSON: With Eisenhower? Does he fancy cards?

  HOOVER: With LBJ, after he takes the White House.

  TOLSON: Will LBJ be president one day?

  HOOVER: What earthly circumstance would stay the man?

  Cremation, and his ashes on the wind.

  Go fish. He’s got a really enormous dick.

  We’ll have a round of crazy eights if I

  Decree it.

  TOLSON: An enormous what?

  HOOVER: Shlazool.

  Often he pulls it out to drive a point home.

  “Mao’s got China but he ain’t got nuthin’ lack ’is.”

  TOLSON: Has Elvis Presley become the president?

  HOOVER: And Eisenhower!—chrome-dome imbecile.

  Unless he’s reading from a page the man’s

  Aphasic. Now we’ve given him a button

  He can push to set off World War Three.

  TOLSON: An awesome power. He—

  HOOVER: It doesn’t work.

  TOLSON: It doesn’t—doesn’t—

  HOOVER: Doesn’t do a thing.

  Push it all day long, he won’t succeed

  In summoning a shoeshine.

  TOLSON: Well!—

  HOOVER: What do you take us for? The button’s phony.

  When is supper? Should I be home for supper?

  TOLSON: You are persona non grata.

  HOOVER: What are we having?

  TOLSON: Grated persona non grata.

  —Jay, back.—First in costume, now half-naked.

  HOOVER: They don’t know me.

  TOLSON: Only that you live here,

  Only that the windows of Director

  Hoover’s Georgetown mansion wink

  With images of a runaway mannequin.

  HOOVER: How will my obituary read?

  “Hoover was a fascist bureaucrat, a spy

  For Adolf Hitler, shredder of the Bill of Rights”—

  And that’s if I succeed. But if I fail:

  “Hoover let the tendrils of a cancer

  Flourish in the very neck of God and choke him

 

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