“Good,” the woman said. “Here’s George.”
I was pushed into the back seat—which was already full of grim-looking men and grimmer-looking munitions of various sorts—and the car started at once.
“One for good measure,” the woman in the trench coat shouted and threw another plastic bomb back at the jail.
“Right,” the driver said. “It fits, too—that makes it five.”
“The Law of Fives,” another passenger chuckled bitterly. “Serves the commie bastards right. A taste of their own medicine.”
I could restrain myself no longer.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded. “Who are you people? What makes you think Sheriff Cartwright and his police are communists? And where are you taking me?”
“Shut up,” said the woman who had unlocked my cell, nudging me none too affectionately with her machine gun. “We’ll talk when we’re ready. Meanwhile, wipe the come off your pants.”
The car sped into the night.
(In a Bentley limousine, Fedrico “Banana Nose” Mal-donado drew on his cigar and relaxed as his chauffeur drove him toward Robert Putney Drake’s mansion in Blue Point, Long Island. In back of his eyes, almost forgotten, Charlie “The Bug” Workman, Mendy Weiss, and Jimmy the Shrew listen soberly, on October 23, 1935, as Banana Nose tells them: “Don’t give the Dutchman a chance. Cowboy the son of a bitch.” The three guns nod stolidly; cowboying somebody is messy, but it pays well. In an ordinary hit, you can be precise, even artistic, because after all the only thing that matters is that the person so honored should be definitely dead afterwards. Cowboying, in the language of the profession, leaves no room for personal taste or delicacy: the important thing is that there should be a lot of lead in the air and the victim should leave a spectacularly gory corpse for the tabloids, as notification that the Brotherhood is both edgy and short-tempered and everybody better watch his ass. Although it wasn’t obligatory, it was considered a sign of true enthusiasm on a cowboy job if the guest of honor took along a few innocent bystanders, so everybody would understand exactly how edgy the Brotherhood was feeling. The Dutchman took two such bystanders. And in a different world that is still this world, Albert “The Teacher” Stern opens his morning paper on July 23, 1934, and reads FBI shoots dillinger, thinking wistfully If I could kill somebody that important, my name would never be forgotten. Further back, back further: February 7, 1932, Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll looks through the phone-booth door and sees a familiar face crossing the drugstore and a tommy-gun in the man’s hand. “The god-damned pig-headed Dutchman,” he howled, but nobody heard him because the Thompson gun was already systematically spraying the phone-booth up and down, right and left, left and right, and up and down again for good measure … But tilt the picture another way and this emerges: On November 10, 1948, the “World’s Greatest Newspaper,” the Chicago Tribune announced the election to the Presidency of the United States of America of Thomas Dewey, a man who not only was not elected but would not even have been alive if Banana Nose Maldonado had not given such specific instructions concerning the Dutchman to Charlie the Bug, Mendy Weiss and Jimmy the Shrew.)
Who shot you? the police stenographer asked. Mother is the best bet, Oh mama mama mama. I want harmony. I don’t want harmony, is the delirious answer. Who shot you? the question is repeated. The Dutchman still replies: Oh mama mama mama. French Canadian bean soup.
We drove till dawn. The car stopped on a road by a beach of white sand. Tall, skinny palm trees stood black against a turquoise sky. This must be the Gulf of Mexico, I thought. They could now load me with chains and drop me in the gulf, hundreds of miles from Mad Dog, without involving Sheriff Jim. No, they had raided Sheriff Jim’s jail. Or was that a hallucination? I was going to have to keep more of an eye on reality. This was a new day, and I was going to know facts hard and sharp-edged in the sunlight and keep them straight.
I was stiff and sore and tired from a night of driving. The only rest I’d gotten was fitful dozing in which Cyclopean ruby eyes looked at me till I awoke in terror. Mavis, the woman with the tommy gun, had put her arms around me several times when I screamed. She would murmur soothingly to me, and once her lips, smooth, cool and soft, had brushed my ear.
At the beach, Mavis motioned me out of the car. The sun was as hot as the bishop’s jock strap when he finished his sermon on the evils of pornography. She stepped out behind me and slammed the door.
“We wait here,” she said. “The others go back.”
“What are we waiting for?” I asked. Just then the driver of the car gunned the motor. The car swung round in a wide U-turn. In a minute its rear end had disappeared beyond a bend in the Gulf highway. We were alone with the rising sun and the sand-strewn asphalt.
Mavis motioned me to walk down the beach with her, A little ways ahead, far back from the water, was a small white-painted frame cabana. A woodpecker landed wearily on its roof like he had flown more missions than Yossarian and never intended to go up again.
“What’s the plan, Mavis? A private execution on a lonely beach in another state so Sheriff Jim can’t get blamed?”
“Don’t be a dummy, George. We blew up that commie bastard’s jail.”
“Why do you keep calling Sheriff Cartwright a commie? If ever a man had KKK written all over his forehead, it was that reactionary redneck prick.”
“Don’t you know your Trotsky? ‘Worse is better.’ Slobs like Cartwright are trying to discredit America to make it ripe for a left-wing takeover.”
“I’m a left-winger. If you’re against commies, you’ve got to be against me.” I didn’t care to tell her about my other friends in Weatherman and Morituri.
“You’re just a liberal dupe.”
“I’m not a liberal, I’m a militant radical.”
“A radical is nothing but a liberal with a big mouth. And a militant radical is nothing but a big-mouthed liberal with a Che costume. Balls. We’re the real radicals, George. We do things, like last night. Except for Weatherman and Morituri, all the militant radicals in your crowd ever do is take out the Molotov cocktail diagram that they carefully clipped from The New York Review of Books, hang it on the bathroom door and jack-off in connection with it. No offense meant.” The woodpecker turned his head and watched us suspiciously like a paranoid old man.
“And what are your politics, if you’re such a radical?” I asked.
“I believe that government governs best of all that governs least of all. Preferably not at all. And I believe in the laissez faire capitalist economic system.”
“Then you must hate my politics. Why did you rescue me?”
“You’re wanted,” she said.
“By whom?”
“Hagbard Celine.”
“And who is Hagbard Celine?” We had reached the cabana and were standing beside it, facing each other, glaring at each other. The woodpecker turned his head and looked at us with the other eye.
“What is John Guilt?” Mavis said. I might have guessed, I thought, a Hope fiend. She went on, “It took a whole book to answer that one. As for Hagbard, you’ll learn by seeing. Enough for now that you know that he’s the man who requested that we rescue you.”
“But you personally don’t like me and would not have gone out of your way to help me?”
“I don’t know about not liking you. That splotch of come on your trousers has had me horny ever since Mad Dog. Also the excitement of the raid. I’ve got some tension to burn off. I’d prefer to save myself for a man who completely meets the criteria of my value system. But I could get awfully horny waiting for him. No regrets, no guilt, though. You’re all right. You’ll do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your fucking me, George.”
“I never knew a girl—I mean woman—who believed in the capitalist system who was any kind of a good fuck.”
“What has your pathetic circle of acquaintances got to do with the price of gold? I doubt you ever met a woman who believ
ed in the real laissez faire capitalist system. Such a woman is not likely to be caught traveling in your left-liberal circles.” She took me by the hand and led me into the cabana. She shrugged out of her trench coat and spread it carefully on the floor. She was wearing a black sweater and a pair of blue jeans, both tight-fitting. She pulled the sweater off over her head. She was wearing no bra, and her breasts were apple-sized cherry-tipped cones. There was some sort of dark red birthmark between them, “Your kind of capitalist woman was a Nixonette in 1972, and she believes in that half-ass corporate socialist bastard fascist mixed economy Frank Roosevelt blessed these United States with.” She unbuckled her wide black belt and unzipped her jeans. She tugged them down over her hips. I felt my hardon swelling up inside my pants. “Libertarian women are good fucks, because they know what they want, and what they want they like a lot.” She stepped out of her jeans to reveal, of all things, panties made of some strange metallic-looking synthetic material that was gold in color.
How can I know facts hard and sharp-edged in the sunlight and keep them straight when this happens? “You really want me to fuck you right now on this public beach in broad daylight?” The woodpecker went to work above us just then, banging away like a rock drummer, I suddenly remembered from high school:
The Woodpecker pecked on the out-house door;
He pecked and he pecked till his pecker was sore….
“George, you’re too serious. Don’t you know how to play? Did you ever think that life is maybe a game? There is no difference between life and a game, you know. When you play, for instance, playing with a toy, there is no winning or losing. Life is a toy, George, I’m a toy. Think of me as a doll. Instead of sticking pins in me, you can stick your thing in me. I’m a magic doll, like a voodoo doll. A doll is a work of art. Art is magic. You make an image of the thing you want to possess or cope with, so you can cope with it. You make a model, so you have it under control. Dig? Don’t you want to possess me? You can, but just for a moment.”
I shook my head. “I can’t believe you. The way you’re talking—it’s not real.”
“I always talk like this when I’m horny. It happens that at such times I’m more open to the vibrations from outer space. George, are unicorns real? Who made unicorns? Is a thought about unicorns a real thought? How is it different from the mental picture of my pussy—which you’ve never seen—that you’ve got in your head at this minute? Does the fact that you can think of fucking me and I can think of fucking with you mean we are going to fuck? Or is the universe going to surprise us? Wisdom is wearying, folly is fun. What does a horse with a single long horn sticking straight out of its head mean to you?”
My eyes went from the pubic bulge under her gold panties, where they’d strayed when she said “pussy,” to the mark between her breasts.
It wasn’t a birthmark. I felt like a bucket of ice water hit my groin.
I pointed. “What does a red eye inside a red-and-white triangle mean to you?”
Her open hand slammed against my jaw. “Motherfucker! Never speak to me about that!”
Then she bowed her head. “I’m sorry, George. I had no right to do that. Hit me back, if you want.”
“I don’t want. But I’m afraid you’ve turned me off sexually.”
“Nonsense. You’re a healthy man. But now I want to give you something without taking anything from you.” She knelt before me on her trench coat, her knees parted, unzipped my fly, reached in with quick, tickling fingers, and pulled my penis out. She slipped her mouth around it. It was my jail fantasy coming true.
“What are you doing?”
She took her lips away from my penis, and I looked down and saw that the head was shiny with saliva and swelling visibly in rapid throbs. Her breasts—my glance avoided the Masonic tattoo—were somewhat fuller, and the nipples stuck out erect.
She smiled. “Don’t whistle while you’re pissing, George, and don’t ask questions when you’re getting blowed. Shut up and get hard. This is just quid pro quo.”
When I came I didn’t feel much juice jetting out through my penis; I’d used a lot up whacking off in jail. I noted with pleasure that what there was of it she didn’t spit out. She smiled and swallowed it.
The sun was higher and hotter in the sky and the woodpecker pecker celebrated by drumming faster and harder. The Gulf sparkled like Mrs. Astor’s best diamonds. I peered out at the water: just below the horizon there was a flash of gold among the diamonds.
Mavis suddenly struck her legs out in front of her and dropped onto her back. “George! I can’t give without taking. Please, quick, while it’s still hard, get down here and slip it to me.”
I looked down. Her lips were trembling. She was tugging the gold panties away from her black-escutcheoned crotch. My wet cock was already beginning to droop. I looked down at her and grinned.
“No,” I said. “I don’t like girls who slap you one minute and get the hots for you the next minute. They don’t meet the criteria of my value system. I think they’re nuts.” Carefully and deliberately I stuffed my pecker back into my trousers and stepped away from her. It was sore anyway, like in the ryhme.
“You’re not such a schmuck after all, you bastard,” she said through gritted teeth. Her hand was moving rapidly between her legs. In a moment she arched her back, eyes clenched tight, and emitted a little scream, like a baby seagull out on its first flight, a strangely virginal sound.
She lay relaxed for a moment, then picked herself up off the cabana floor and started to dress. She glanced out at the water and I followed her eyes. She pointed at the distant glint of gold.
“Hagbard’s here.”
A buzzing sound floated across the water. After a moment, I spotted a small black motorboat coming toward us. We watched in silence as the boat grounded its bow on the white beach. Mavis motioned at me, and I followed her down the sand to the water’s edge. There was a man in a black turtleneck sweater sitting in the stern of the boat. Mavis climbed in the bow and turned to me with a questioning look. The woodpecker felt bad vibes and took off with a flapping and cawing like the omen of Doom.
What the hell am I getting into, and why am I so crazy as to go along? I tried to see what it was out there that the motorboat had come from, but the sun on the gold metal was flashing blindingly and I couldn’t make out a shape. I looked back at the black motorboat and saw that there was a circular gold object painted on the bow and there was a little black flag flying at the stern with the same gold object in its center. I pointed at the emblem on the bow.
“What’s that?”
“An apple,” said Mavis.
People who chose a golden apple as their symbol couldn’t be all bad. I jumped into the boat, and its pilot used an oar to push off. We buzzed over the smooth water of the Gulf toward the golden object on the horizon. It was still blinding from reflected sunlight, but I was now able to make out a long, low silhouette with a small tower in the center, like a matchbox on top of a broomstick. Then I realized that I had my judgment of distances wrong. The ship, or whatever it was, was much more distant than I’d first realized.
It was a submarine—a golden submarine—and it appeared to be the equivalent of five city blocks long, as big as the biggest ocean liner I had ever heard of. The conning tower was about three stories high. As we drew up beside it I saw a man on the tower waving to us. Mavis waved back. I waved halfheartedly, supposing somehow that it was the thing to do. I was still thinking about that Masonic tattoo.
A hatch opened in the submarine’s side, and the little motorboat floated right in. The hatch closed, the water drained out, and the boat settled into a cradle. Mavis pointed to a door that looked like an entrance to an elevator.
“You go that way,” she said. “I’ll see you later, maybe.” She pressed a button and the door opened, revealing a carpeted gilt cage. I stepped in and was whisked up three stories. The door opened and I stepped out into a small room where a man was waiting, standing with a grace that reminded me of a Hindu
or an American Indian. I thought at once of Metternich’s remark about Talleyrand: “If somebody kicked him in the backside, not a muscle would move in his face until he decided what to do.”
He bore a striking resemblance to Anthony Quinn; he had thick black eyebrows, olive skin, and a strong nose and jaw. He was big and burly, powerful muscles bulging under his black-and-green striped nautical sweater. He held out his hand.
“Good, George. You made it. I’m Hagbard Celine.” We shook hands; he had a grip like King Kong. “Welcome aboard the Lief Erickson, named after the first European to reach America from the Atlantic side, may my Italian ancestors forgive me. Fortunately, I have Viking ancestors, as well. My mother is Norwegian. However, blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin are all recessive. My Sicilian father creamed my mother in the genes.”
“Where the hell did you get this ship? I wouldn’t have believed a submarine like this could exist without the whole world knowing about it.”
“The sub’s my creation, built in accordance with my design in a Norwegian fjord. This is what the liberated mind can do. I am the twentieth-century Leonardo, except that I’m not gay. I’ve tried it, of course, but women interest me more. The world has never heard of Hagbard Celine. That is because the world is stupid and Celine is very smart. The submarine is radar and sonar transparent. It is superior to the best either the American or Russian government even has on the drawing board. It can go to any depth in any ocean. We’ve sounded the Atlantic Trench, the Mindinao Deep, and a few holes in the floor of the sea that no one’s ever heard of or named. Lief Erickson is capable of meeting the biggest, most ferocious, and smartest monsters of the deep, of which we’ve found God’s plenty. I’d even risk her in battle with Leviathan himself, though I’m just as pleased that we’ve only seen him from afar hitherto.”
“You mean whales?”
“I mean Leviathan, man. That fish—if fish it be—that is to your whale what your whale is to your meanest guppy. Don’t ask me what Leviathan is—I haven’t even gotten close enough to tell you his shape. There’s only one of him, her, or it in all that world that’s water. I don’t know how it reproduces—maybe it doesn’t have to reproduce—maybe it’s immortal. It may be neither plant nor animal for all I know, but it’s alive, and it’s the biggest living thing there is. Oh, we’ve seen monsters, George. We’ve seen, in Lief Erickson, the sunken ruins of Atlantis and Lerauria—or Mu, as it’s known to keepers of the Sacred Chao.”
The illuminatus! trilogy Page 9