by Norm Sibum
Traymoreans wondered what was now afoot.
I laughed and answered, ‘Snaky old goat.’
It was a magic incantation, one that permitted me to take my leave.
That night, in unsettled sleep, I dreamed of Echo. Even as I dreamed, I laughed. It was too obvious, too transparent a dream. The girl had quite ordinary ambitions. She would get her ology degree and perhaps marry and have babies and keep peace in her family between its Greek and Italian factions. That she would command a rebel force in the outback of Indiana was positively ludicrous. She pointed her fingers at her eyes and then, reversing those fingers, she pointed at me. I see you. I now realized that when she responded to every word Eggy uttered with ‘amazing’, she had been having him on all along. At some point in the morning that followed, Eleanor shanghaied me in the hall. She finagled me into her digs. It turned out that I learned something about her I had not known, to wit, the nature of her bedroom décor. Cherry veneer. It was the bedroom of a woman serious about nesting. And the bed, well, the bed was not the four-poster I had always imagined. It was a sleigh bed, classic Quebec, Eleanor explained. But could she explain what was I doing in this room? She kicked off her pompadours and then I knew. She backed me to the sleigh’s edge. And we rolled around a bit until, finally, I returned to my senses. She had the grace not to be miffed. That she simply sighed and said that well, if that was how I felt about it … It was how I felt about it, Traymorean life complicated enough, her kisses rather searching and bemused. I passed on an offer of the hair of the dog, she having noted my hangover. She supposed I had been carrying on with the ‘boys’; she supposed right, so I let her know.
‘Don’t be that way, Calhoun.’
‘I know, you had an itch to scratch.’
She gave me a look.
‘It’s Bob,’ she said, ‘it’s always Bob.’
‘Do you love the man,’ I said, exasperated. ‘Are you going to make it up with him? If you don’t, I think you’ll be sorry.’
‘I am, already, seeing as I can’t get any cooperation from you.’
§
Book IV—Sex on the Beach
Anti-Follies III
—Eggy is still having too much fun to die. He once was in the south of France, having fun in his 5th decade arguing American decline with a movie star. What, had Eggy been prescient? Sex on the Beach is a drink. It is a drink which Moonface drinks when her Champagne Sheridans take her out. Combine vodka and peach schnapps, plus the juices of the cranberry, the orange, the pineapple. Serve with lots of ice in a highball glass. It is not to be deemed a classic drink, and so champagne is what Rumsfeld offered the first man who would solve the complex algorithms of Iraq. Rumour has it that in Baghdad there is a crematorium. It’s war, so suck it up or move on. We are not moral creatures. Should Dubois get to Rome, let him begin at the forum with the Basilica of Maxentius erected on an earlier site where pepper and spice were sold. Let him contemplate what must have been a grand structure of groined and coffered vaulting. Then let him of an evening drink limoncello under a trellis of vines at a bar on the Janiculum. Let him hear from Nero himself the value of trusting the system, of the innate good sense of the people. Let Dubois return to this his faded Jezebel of a town, his thought hemorrhaging, his socks blown off. I am in the Blue Danube, and I am wearing socks. Anna the tall, the very slim, redheaded waitress is on for the afternoon. Talks hospitals with an old biddy. The Blue Danube aka Le Grec now serves moussaka that Cassandra prepares in her home kitchen. It is, I am sorry to say, heavy and tasteless. One hears on the radio some musical group whose music resembles nothing so much as a snapping of wet towels. For whose buttocks are they intended? I would refer Anna to the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii, her mute incomprehension her very solemn business.
—It is said the novelist requires a world; the poet makes do with a patch of grass. I pace the limits of my universe. From the Traymore Rooms to the poor man’s super mart a gauntlet of attitudes. One flatters it with the epithet of ‘cultural mix’. Augustus Caesar stood at the head of a rough and ready world-state. To be sure, there were peoples not included, the Parthians, for instance, the dangerous Germanic tribes. I am a creature of the boulevard, but one alienated by those in high office pseudo-civilized enough to make a hash of it all, their lawns always pristine.
—Is Eleanor to be faulted for wanting happiness? She has Dubois, but not as she would like him. Is not this what always breaks the bank at Monte Carlo—he or she has what he or she wants but not as he or she would like it? One cannot get from a person what a person has not to give. Dubois is the proud conveyor of looks and vanity. He is more or less civil; he is more or less interested. Has a certain joie de vivre, even that which cultural stereotyping insists he must have. The fact that he is a materialist of a most conventional sort is not necessarily off-putting. Even I, Calhoun, Randall Q, find I can live with it. Is it so much of a cliché to suggest that Dubois breathes best when his affections are freely given and Eleanor freely takes them? Well, I can only speculate, approaching my second summer among Traymoreans. I have not known Dubois or Eggy or even Eleanor, for that matter, in their darkest hours such as most people undergo alone. I myself cried out, last night, in a nightmare. Then I knew myself to be utterly ridiculous. Moonface is still just a girl. It is a privileged culture that allows this state of affairs. Even so, last night in the Blue Danube, she gave me a look of such impishness and it touched me to the bone; I could never wish to see that look replaced by one of banal maturity. Dubois was going on about sovereign money and private capital. I have to say his words went in one ear and out the other. Eggy wished to see a few bastards hang. Gentleman Jim protested that, on the contrary, he was not obliged to observe a curfew; he could come and go as he saw fit. ‘But Christ,’ said Eggy, ‘you have to bribe the night nurse when you go out.’ I said all of life is curfew. No one gave much credence to this observation. I noted that Cassandra’s hands were plump and child-like. I wondered with what force they might strike her Elias. Who seemed to be emerging from under the cloud of suspicion that had dogged him of late. No one spoke of Echo, not even a whisper. The ghost of Fast Eddy bragged of the chocolates he had given Moonface as a gift, how he had put her figure in jeopardy. Blind Musician, his locks newly shorn, his eyes immense behind his thick lenses, showed up and was stunned; he had nothing about which to complain. He had a new blind man’s stick to play with. Even Eleanor showed up, and it had been a while. To be sure, there was awkwardness in the situation, but I thought Dubois handled it fairly well, asking her highness what her pleasure might be, which gave Eggy his opening, and he said, ‘Drink to me with thine eyes.’
—Shameless liar that he was, FDR, scion of privilege, gave Americans hope and true reason to have pride, so much wiped out in the downturn of the Thirties. Current Occupant of the American nation’s sitting parlour, deluded fool, just makes everyone feel shabby. Redemption will not cost you a thing, just your soul and your house and your country. Late night comedians are fine as they go, but the chuckles are mostly showbiz. I sit here in the Blue Danube at the crack of noon, blind man in a cave. Cassandra lets rip with a joke and it so knocks me over that I fail to respond. Poor woman. She tries. Since when has Elias laughed at her levity? I will eat cream of potato soup. I will watch wind blow rain along the street. I will see passersby seemingly in control of their lives. A few of them might know it is a crock. We will, in any case, participate in a collective delusion, doing laundry, haunting a café, punching numbers at a bank machine, taking pets to the animal clinic. I envy Moonface her confusion and even her ambivalent sex life; at least her body is a kind of theatre, however absurd, of possibilities. I envy Eggy the fact he is having too much fun to die. What is Cassandra’s hand doing on my shoulder? What is a puffy, child-like hand looking for? Do I look like a priest? A lover? Some woebegone who requires a mother? Surely, it is an accident. Her husband, Elias, who already views me not so much as a rival but as a man who might cause him trouble, would not look kindly
on this. When one has lies to maintain one is alert to presences that bear disclosure. Her hand withdrawn, Cassandra retreats to the galley where Serge with his paramilitary haircut is, no doubt, plotting revenge against all the nincompoops who have trifled with the serious business of living. These tiny, tiny betrayals. Sometimes I believe I hear the creakings and the saggings in some unseen-to-the-eye rigging, the sound of a craft that is barely making headway, that is complaining, and no one listens.
—Mrs Petrova’s tulip tree produced but a single blossom; however, it was huge. And while it grew, while it went about its business, attaining full, meaty volume only to fall apart and drop to the earth, I listened to the oud. Dhow boats hissed across the sea. Debussy played like a cenobite, but one in a salon of frocked women holding aloft their parasols. Some eyes were violet; some were green—like the colour of a liqueur. Sometimes sound travels well in the Traymore. Mrs Petrova on the telephone: ‘Okay, okay. Nyet, no, nyet.’ One heard in her voice impressionist paintings and black-scarfed women haggling at market. Then Dubois came over unannounced. ‘Calhoun,’ he said, opening his worn but honest attaché case, extracting from it a book, ‘I see in this anthology one of your poems. Translated into French. I have to tell you it’s not the equal of your English. What have you to say?’ What could I say? Better to have been translated than to have lost? Now Eleanor, and right after her, Moonface. My, but here was a crowd gathered in my living room. Dubois offered up his chair to Eleanor and parked on the floor. Moonface joined me on the couch. ‘It’s peculiar music you listen to,’ said Dubois. ‘Are you sure it’s legal?’ He went on to say we should not expect a new world order anytime soon. Eleanor clucked her agreement, inspecting a pompadoured foot. Moonface wished to know if I thought Tiberius had truly been a perverted old goat. Eleanor’s eyes narrowed with some interest. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘there’s fact and there’s fiction. And then there’s supposition—’ ‘Oh god,’ Dubois interrupted. Eleanor massaged her ankle. ‘Let the man speak,’ she said. I continued: ‘Here’s the supposition. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.’ Eleanor said, ‘Roger that.’ She caressed the vain and handsome wrist of Dubois where it now lay across her lap. Dubois did not withdraw it. I minded this spectacle. Moonface rolled her eyes up and to the side. A dimple formed in her cheek. She was not as afraid of Eleanor as once she had been. The music faded to the evident relief of all. Eggy, who rarely passed through my door, now shuffled in on his cane. He surveyed the scene, I and Moonface on the couch, Eleanor squatted on a chair, Dubois on the floor like some college kid gathering up the thought-crumbs of a mentor. ‘Bloody effing hell,’ observed Eggy. ‘Bloody effing hell, is that all you have to say, you old fart?’ This was Eleanor. ‘You have something better?’ thundered Eggy in return, tiny sparrow of a man. Nor was he afraid of Eleanor. My eyes filled with the good woman’s ankle. Moonface stared into space as if averting her countenance from shenanigans such as haunt the earth. ‘Alley alley in for free,’ I said, clapping my hands. It was my way of enjoining the people to depart. ‘He thinks he’s a poet,’ said Dubois to Eggy. ‘I know,’ said Eggy, ‘sorry case.’ Eleanor clucked once more. Moonface moaned in that slight musical way she has of moaning, her sense of justice violated. ‘I’m for the Danube,’ Eggy let us know. ‘I’ve got thirst.’ He lowered his cap over his tough old eyes, turned around and tottered away.
Anti-Follies IV
—Eggy, fellow Traymorean, tiny sparrow of a man, decrepit at age 81, is waiting to see a few bastards hang. He lost interest in art in the year I was born. It was the year of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. It was the year India and Pakistan gained independence. The Dead Sea Scrolls turned up at Qumran. Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. Toronto beat Montreal for the Stanley Cup. Meet the Press debuted on NBC. Dr Faustus was published. It is a gloomy sky. The darkest of grey clouds will unload their rain. I stand on the street corner, smoking a fag. My jottings are in the café. Moonface the waitress may steal a look at them to see if I have impugned her tiny ears. Eleanor does not think Moonface good for anything but marriage and the burbs. ‘What do men see in this silly maid?’ Eleanor has wondered, Moonface living proof that men are saps. Eleanor, you see, has no sentimental notions regarding either child-rearing or a woman’s empowerment. If history is irony and self paradox, Eleanor is most selfless when most herself, stealing kisses when and where she can. Otherwise, she plans her nest in which she intends to install Dubois, her longest serving lover. It is almost endearing, her relentlessness of purpose. I continue smoking my fag. I note the cloud, the pale leaves beneath. Oh the Phoenicians, do they know what they unleashed, bringing an alphabet to Greeks? I raise my arms; I spin around. My signature gesture of disgust. Like so, William Blake in his dying hours, painted while naked out of doors. I spin until a swoon threatens to poleax me. If history is irony and the world a prison and the chatter of eggheads little improvement over the chatter of the masses—if this is it, and all there is, I would rather boff some girl against an ilex tree in Roman shade, tipping my hat at a procession of Priapus, no news hound anywhere in sight. Let idiots mew, ‘Transcendence! Transcendence!’ I return to the café. Moonface gives me a look. Eggy will go on about how history is bunk; it is written by winners. I offer Tacitus as refutation. He wrote for the winners. He did not necessarily coo with pleasure; he did not gloat even if he retained all the prejudices of his class. Eggy says, ‘Alright then, have it your way.’ Which is fine with me. His tough old eyes are tough for a reason. He supposes he must express his gratitude to the mothers of his children. He does not otherwise believe he must say he loved them.
—The only remedy for love, if remedy is wanted, is egoism. It suggests what love is not. Moonface reports that Eggy is beside himself. He has run into a girl he used to know and took out. She has returned to a bar down the street where once she served drinks. This may be the last we will see of the man. Farewell, blithe homunculus. But Moonface does not seem jealous, no, not at all, and she flashes her nails and she pulls at her hair. She has the look of a woman who has something on her mind, the contents of which I am not worthy. ‘Soup and wine,’ I say, ‘and not necessarily in that order.’ She rolls her eyes up and to the side. I glance at some jottings, mine own. I scowl. Serge the cook, he has the look of a man just back from a psy-ops interlude, mission successful. His air of utter competence infuriates me. Discipline, discipline. Cynic that I am, I search Moonface for a hint, any hint at all, that she knows what is at stake. She places the soup before me; no, she has no idea. Yesterday, perhaps yesterday, she might have found herself if only she had had a different father or read a more demanding literature among the moderns she does read. A wind kicks up. Maple leaves lash about in turbulence. In strides Dubois, a man on top of his game. Perhaps he has just been to the barbershop; perhaps he has just left Eleanor contented, having Henry Miller’d her. Immediately, he starts in: ‘Pursuant to our previous conversation—’ ‘Which one was that?’ I interject. ‘Business,’ he continues, ‘plays by a set of rules or else it can’t do business. However, I grant you this: free enterprise is a myth.’ Moonface wonders if he will have wine. Dubois wonders why it has not yet materialized. Moonface flashes her nails once more that are oddly at variance with her otherwise benign manner. Must look up the latest scholarship on John the Apostle, I decide; it seems he was not the Beloved Disciple after all, the one who laid his head on the bosom of Christ. And Eggy, I explain, is down the street at some bar. Got a new honey. To which Moonface replies, ‘Yes, he roams far afield.’ Dubois laughs, the hairline cracks of his cheeks threatening to widen. But now we are a quorum as here is Eggy with his cane. Here is Eleanor in spiky shoes. Gentleman Jim has already taken a post, and like a Darwinist investigating an island, he examines Blue Danube space for terrors. Now talk to do with the price of oil. Well, it’s a bit much, the price. Now fatwahs. Now computer viruses. Now politics. ‘Alley alley in for free.’ Ah, cloaks more cloakier, daggers more daggery. Hooded figures in a Roman shade. Pronounces E
leanor, ‘I’m sick of politics. Sick of it all. Roll me a fag, won’t you, dahling?’ A burbling in her throat reminds one of the power of her personality. As for vain and handsome Dubois, he observes that while the dollar may be falling, and while that fact and the fact of speculation are spiking oil prices, the world still has to trade in those dollars. ‘Not for long,’ says Gentleman Jim, and his remark startles us; he hardly ever weighs in on matters of a socio-economic nature. He levels melancholy eyes on us all, those eyes his death rattle. On the street, an old woman walks a dachshund. Young louts walk their hounds. The hag occupies the bus stop bench. She utters no interdictions, but she is waving her hands about. Cassandra and Elias are in the galley, are a couple making a living. Serge is the Holy Ghost. It disturbs me, it panics me that, while Elias may be innocent of Echo’s disappearance, he may not be and so, what does Cassandra know, if she knows anything? How unreal might her marriage be? And to what extent does the unreality mirror what goes on around us? Ahkmatova’s cabaret poem. Must reread the thing.