Homunculus
Robert Wintner
New York
For Susan Evans,
a friend through the years
—this Baron had … actually produced ten homunculi which he called his “prophesying spirits” … a king, a queen, a knight, a monk, a nun, an architect, a miner, a seraph, and finally a blue spirit and a red one!… As the Baron was anxious for them to grow to a greater size, we helped him bury them in several cartloads of horse manure … The manure began to steam as if heated by a subterranean fire … Once every three days the Abbé and the Baron spent the whole night praying and fumigating the midden with incense. When at last the Baron deemed this process complete the bottles were carefully removed and returned to the laboratory shelves. All the homunculi had grown in size to such an extent that the bottles were now hardly big enough for them … They had a kind of beautiful obscenity floating there with an expression on their faces such as I have only seen once before—on the face of a Peruvian pickled head!… The blue spirit was as beautiful as any angel, but the red wore a truly terrifying expression.
—Lawrence Durrell, CLEA
Refuse the evil. Choose the good.
—anonymous
Prologue
“There it is. There’s our lovely little town.” This introduction pours from the heart now, when Charles Blackmore crests the last ridge before winding down the hillside to the twinkling lights of town.
The night he says it to Anthony Drury he has to correct himself. “No, wait. That’s not it. That’s some industrial slum I forgot the name of; well, hell, they all look alike at night.” They ride a few more minutes until, cresting the last ridge, Charles fixes his bearings and says, “There it is. There’s our lovely little town.” He smiles fondly and says he’s new on the job; the first crest fooled him, but it won’t happen again. “It’s one thing that made me a solid actor,” he says. “Instant recall. I read a script; I know a script. Leaves more time for the flourish, if you can get the basic step down. I’ve played the last crest casually. I’ve played it sentimentally, and I’ve played it from the heart. I think the heart is best. Don’t you?”
Tony Drury scans the lights and measures the place. “How new could you be, if you already played it three ways? How solid could you have been, driving a taxi in Mexico?”
They’re too late, these two, for hollow claims and false fronts. Tony Drury wants away from all that.
Charles smiles. “You never heard of me?”
“That’s right. I heard of a Charles Laughton, a Charles Boyer, Lindberg, Manning, Durning, Keating. I know of a Prince Charles and a Charles McCarthy, but I can’t recall a Blackwell.”
“Blackmore. And it’s a tour van, actually.”
“A tour van. Yes. Sorry,” Tony says, pressing on, lest an unresolved untruth taint his homecoming. “How solid could you have been, driving a tour van in Mexico?”
The fond smile twists to chagrin. “You’re right. I’m no better now than I ever was, which wasn’t much good. My name is Charles. Joven Carlos, if you like. I’m a failed actor. How’s that? I had potential, until my nosedive. Engines screamed; smoke plumed; flames licked about. But I never failed with my lines. Get the picture?”
Tony turns from the spectacular view to his driver. “Why punish yourself?”
Charles shrugs. “I thought you preferred it. You need to read your customers in this line of work, if you want the decent tips.” Tony laughs and turns back to the view. Charles says, “You’re an actor yourself, no?”
“No. Just a bullshitter. I have my lines down, too.”
“Touché. You should fit right in.”
Silence enfolds. The fixed price for the hour and a half trip from the airport is thirty-five dollars American, as if that leg is still outbound, tied to the economy of origin. Tony pays thirty-seven, because two dollars goes farther here, and he feels the service only adequate.
He carries his own bag, makes small tidings with the concierge and goes up. The room welcomes him with dim light and thorough quaintness. An oblong mirror with beveled edges and a filigreed frame of ancient madrone reflects gently over the dresser. Stippled walls in mottled yellow promise a soft tomorrow, when sunlight will ease through the translucent glass brick in the ceiling. Big flowered tiles on the bathroom walls go better than you’d expect with medium singing-bird tiles in the shower and a green-and-orange swirl on the floor. Water pressure is adequate for rinsing off the road, and the rough-hewn brass-fish towel rack and mismatched mounting screws are refreshingly low-tech.
Stepping back outside to release lingering tensions of a day on the road, a rejuvenating traveler looks both ways as if checking traffic before stepping into the future. “I wonder where she is now,” he wonders of the woman of chance. Well, her presence seems as obvious here as anywhere, given proper timing and patience.
A lovely discovery the next block down gives pleasant closure to contemplation of random events in nature; the liquor store is open. A man coming up the street stops near the entrance and says, “Hello.” Tony nods. “Don’t I know you?” Tony shakes his head. “Haven’t we met? In the past, perhaps?” Tony says he only just arrived and no, they haven’t met. The man apologizes, and on second thought offers his hand. “I’m Bob Wattelle.”
“That’s all right,” Tony says, shaking his head and stepping inside. “Many people tell me I look alike.” The man stares after him uncertainly, as if to ask, You look alike whom? But Tony is already taken with the incredibly slender, tall and beautiful half-pints, already preoccupied with good thoughts, the first in a long while. Each shape captures a unique appeal, and he strives to try them all. Selection is difficult until he realizes, hey, I have all night, which is a joke, of course, because he actually has all the nights a man could want. Happy to be surrounded by evidence of a prevailing aesthetic, he glances at the door, but it’s empty. He regrets his behavior with Bob Wattelle and Charles Blackhole or whatever it was. They could have been friends. Still could be, he supposes. He makes his selection and determines to open up.
Three restaurants in the next block lure him along. He chooses La Grutas because it sounds Mexican, and soft salsa music scores the journey well. A tart aroma feels warmed by the fireplace and cayenne—could it possibly be relleños?
Inside, a waiter bows and bids buenas noches and seats him near the fire. A woman several tables over waves her arms and exclaims, “He barfed! They made him eat the salad, and he barfed! All over the table! Everywhere!”
He orders a Negra Modelo, folds his napkin and goes to the quaint, swinging doors under the painted caballero. A little boy in the booth retches while a man holds him from behind as if to keep him from falling in. The man says the worst is over, wait here. The man goes to fetch a clean cloth. The boy, red-faced and tearful, watches Tony Drury relieve himself and with a shaky voice says, “I barfed.”
“I know,” Tony says. “It happens to the best of us.”
“They made me eat the salad,” the little boy says.
Tony shakes his head. “They shouldn’t have done that. They made me eat Jell-O with peas in it once. I puked, same as you. That’ll teach them. You don’t have to eat anything you don’t want to.”
“What about when your mother makes you?”
“You heard me. Now you’ll always have the salad under your belt, in case you have to remind them.”
“What about when it comes out your nose?”
“Well,” Tony laughs. “That can happen to anyone, too. It happened to me once, and I wasn’t even sick. Eating chicken noodle soup and this guy tells this joke about B.B. King’s wife—maybe you’ve heard it. Anyway, it was so funny I couldn’t stop laughing, and the noodles came out my nose.”
“It hurts,” the little boy says.
The man had returned and tells the little boy, “It’s not funny to you, is it?”
The little boy says no. Tony says, “But it’s pretty funny to look back on, noodles coming out your nose.” He shakes off, repacks, flushes, washes and says, “I have to go now. Good luck.”
The man dabs the cloth and doesn’t turn around. The little boy says thank you and good-bye. Tony pulls out his skinny pint, uncaps and samples the wares. A lustrous glow rounds the moment with gentility and the spirit of a brave child. He winks. The little boy smiles. And he returns to his table for another happy surprise, which is the beer with its unique flavor, complex yet smooth, and yes, it was chili relleños he smelled from outside, prepared with a delicacy suggesting dinner with friends.
A few more beers, a nice walk around the garden in the center of town, a nip or two from the slender beauty, and arrival never felt so good. He turns in, feeling more at home all the time.
The morning begins when it feels good and ready. A chance discovery of a breakfast nook behind a bookstore yields tamales of extreme caliber. A few hours before siesta allow for further discovery among the cobblestone streets and pastel masonry. An enterprising fellow up on Ancha San Antonio has rigged a bicycle chain to an electric motor that turns a linkage of tortuous complexity that turns a rack holding two hundred splayed chickens. A propane tank fuels the fire evenly below and discourages bacteria. A line forms. Tony Drury stands in it, and when his turn comes he holds up one finger and says, “Sí,” several times to questions he feels unthreatened by. He goes back to his room with a perfectly barbecued chicken, two perfectly marinated jalapeños, a hard roll and another slender beauty. Eating with two hands feels decadent and rich and perfect as well as prelude to a lovely lie-down for an hour or two. A most pleasant snooze assures another enjoyable evening in which cocktails will run till eight or nine with an excellent dinner afterward. He drifts off in the warm reverie of mere pennies on the dollar.
Near dusk he strolls a jardin transformed, not so much physically as essentially; hordes of people walk it, sit on its benches, absorb its bounteous society. Some talk, some read, some sit. People who would be home staring at the tube elsewhere, here gather for the event called life. Day fades to night. Long-tailed grackles come to roost in the ficus canopy, their chatter soon drowning all the idle chit chat humanity can offer, until the people are reduced to smiles and nods. Pigeons by the hundreds roost in the parapets and towers of the gigantic church across the plaza, on the figureheads and between their legs, as if the church is a cliff, and refuge can be taken in the dramatic front.
A man sits beside him when the street lights and church lights come on and delineate the darkness. The man asks in Spanish if he, Tony, just arrived. Tony says no, he arrived yesterday, because a day and a night feel like all the difference.
The man sits back and sighs and says more and more are coming now.
I
Birds of a Feather
“Charles is gone,” Rhonda exhales.
“So?” Tony Drury slides onto an empty stool with a half-nod for Pancho. He often considers things in their passing, but Charles will not be missed. Charles will return or not. Who cares?
“My sweetie went away, but he didn’t say when.” Rhonda blows a cloud and fills it with lyric: “He didn’t say when …” She sways like a woman in love with a feeling, like a woman reaching back for something lost, even though it was hardly grasped in the first place.
Charles isn’t her man. It’s clear to everyone else, so why can’t she get it? Charles plucks a chord, that’s all. He plays the blues. She sings.
Tony sips until the icy warmth brings him up to even. He doesn’t miss Charles or the Charles show or the finale that won’t end. Charles’ absence makes the place feel good again. Tony wonders why people say gone instead of dead. Rhonda gazes wistfully. And when will she believe what her eyes are trying to tell her? How pitiful; her age and on the make. And what a waste, pining for a man like Charles here in the remains of prime time. Some have thought Charles dead and gone, or same as, for a long time. Ah, there it is, the thaw, the warmth; soon comes the glow.
Charles went too slowly for some, should have gone long ago. Rhonda croons; now she’s all alone without you.
Charles played out, lost his cool, raved shamefully while everyone else was having fun, became a party pooper, dragging the good times down. The Charles Show began as light comedy, with the chorus girls above and the orchestra below. Those were the nights, when the uprighters can-canned on the bar, the chair-bound spooned, dinged and thumped. It wasn’t that many nights ago, that the prone moaned and heartfelt yodels rose here and there from the pit. Over the din wailed the tenor off the cuff on the fall of Babylon; on a man who had sex with a horse; on love and thirst. The bar tab would never be sorted, but who cares about cost on a night of nights, on which the history of nights is written? Nobody is who. One by one they fell smitten. The strong walked home on their knees. Some said Charles crawled home. Some said he squirmed on his belly. Some said he went with a game Samaritan.
Risen at last to daylight the woeful crowd convenes for caffeine and sugar, for the lament and small antidote so life can resume. Then comes recollection. It groans over who lost her drawers, who peeked, who drank amazing draughts, who had good dope or great toot.
A tiny fissure splits Kensho Wannamaker’s stone face when Cisco recalls Leanne revealing a breast—Cisco asked for two but got only one, because Leanne needs control. He put a hand under the one, gauged it for heft and said, “Wait a minute.” He attempted a suckle, but she ducked back under cover and boxed his ears.
He hefts thin air in the retelling. Leanne is still in bed. He plays her part too, aping her ardor. “She liked it,” he says. A whack in the head was nothing for such contact, and yes, he tasted the delectable nub. Dwayne watched, enjoying the fun made available by Leanne’s huge set.
Someone asks why Lawrence sat in a booth for hours with Heidi. Nobody answers, so someone asks if Lawrence might be doing Heidi. Tony Drury recalls Rhonda’s bar dance, Rhonda’s reach for another night of anarchy in compensation for the rest. It’s a blessing when a woman finds her goddess within at Frederick’s of Hollywood, but a display like that was not nice. Fine lace and ventilators are one thing, but who wants to look up the dress of a woman with grown children?
Suey moved on a college boy while Whippet wanted Marylin or maybe only wanted even. So what’s new? But what a night. Charles called out with a plague of virtues … the dying of bitches … shoving it into the coal black sky …
Replay fades without the maestro, most likely hung worse than anyone, sleeping it off most likely in the ash pit of the gravel heap of the garbage dump of pain. Oh, he soaked it with a vengeance. Some ask how a man could set that pace and not have the decency to show for commiseration. Recalling the glory isn’t the same without Charles. Someone says, “Mm …”
A few heads loll and moan, “Oh …”
One mumbles an old love song.
Some stare vacantly. And it’s soon enough time for the pooch to give up another grab o’ hair.
Enter Charles, stage left.
Fracturing the interlude like rampant growth in springtime, into the lull like a man who’s thought it over, shaking his head and stepping boldly into Tony Drury’s personal space he says, “I’ve had enough.”
Tony shrugs. “Then go home. Because you’re too much.” You don’t need to think twice if Charles is messing with you, because he is, because he messes with everybody, an equal opportunity messer. Messing around is what he does, what he is, and you can’t do anything about it.
He says, “You’re wrong. Irresponsible and wrong. Greedy and wrong. Weak and wrong.” Between indictments he inches nearer, swelling like a thunderhead.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Tony says in the jargon drunks understand. Let him huff, Tony thinks; every bag of wind has its blow.
“We don’t know that you’re evi
l, but we don’t know you’re not. We sense your vacuum. You take without giving. You have wasted so much.”
Tony Drury will not face his accuser but tells the icy puddle in front of him, “Sometimes you have to overlook the small stuff. Charles, can you forgive me?”
“I’m going to kick your ass,” Charles says calmly as a surgeon as Tony looks up in time to see the roundhouse right rounding the bend. Kensho Wannamaker will critique Tony for opening his mouth on another glib refrain when he should have kept it shut. Others will say Charles would have hit him anyway. Tony doesn’t want to fight but this is no slap; Charles’ haymaker puts Tony cheek to cheek with the floor, with only a lump between the two. Tony staggers up and steps to the line, because a man in Mexico is easily marked by submission.
Charles circles like John L. Sullivan threatening a pair of upper cuts. Everyone agrees that Charles has a point, and Tony must defend himself, and it’s a fair match, except for the first punch, unless Tony deserved it.
They circle, Charles grinning like Teddy Roosevelt over a rise from the electorate. Tony moves back, rubs his jaw and shakes his head. Pain answers all questions. “There’s no going back,” Charles says. “You know I’m sincere.” Tony lunges for a clip on the chin. They grapple to the floor, to the dirt and blood, the black and blue.
As usual with men who accept middle age, Round 1 is best for action. Backing off for a breather makes Round 2 a glare down. Jab for jab and a few lucky hooks highlight Round 3. The ringside crowd want more mixing, so Charles delivers both upper cuts as threatened and jabs at will after that. It looks like Charles walking away with the round, the fight and the title, until he drops his hands and serves his chin on a platter. Maybe he wants to show he can take it, or that he wants Tony in the game too, or that he nurtures a sense of fair play. Or maybe it’s a trap to draw Tony near. Tony moves in cautiously, ducks and dances as seen on TV and with fading hesitation lands a left and a right but Charles shakes it off, three-steps, shifts from snake-eye to goose-walk and launches the rejoinder, which makes Tony’s face go all rubbery and stretch comically to one side. Some say Charles is drunk—just look at his big red nose. But his chin is never suspect. He compliments Tony’s stamina as he pounds Tony’s face.
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