Apples and Pears

by Guy Davenport

  GAMME

  Avant garde. Embryo, Homo ignorans.

  Aileron ascendant. Baby, Homo infans.

  Aile ascendante. Child, Homo imaginator.

  Pivot. Adolescent, Homo pubens.

  Aile descendante. Youth, Homo juventus.

  Aileron descendant. Middle age, Homo faber.

  Arrière garde. Old age, Homo senex.

  A WALK WITH JORIS

  He pads, pigeon-toed, his wide shoulders seesawing counter to the rocking of his narrow hips. Thumbs hooked into jeans pockets. Always looks at my eyes to talk, but listens with head down. He might be taken for een straatschender, especially in his Lenin cap, but this mistake corrects itself in his cropped glossy curls, the fineness of his nose, the apologetic sweetness of his eyes.

  WHEATMEAL BISCUIT, BORDEAUX, AND GOUDA

  Well, says Hans, I’ll probably be an engineer like Papa, and reclaim more of the North Sea bottom and call it The Netherlands. I will be a Radical Socialist like Joris, and reform all the laws, and fight for the good old rights of man, so we can all be free and happy. I could be a philosopher like Ome Adriaan if I learn how to spell, or a painter like Grootpapa and Sander. That would be neat. Jan and I might be explorers together if he becomes an anthropologist and not a mathematician wearing a stocking cap like Einstein. We’d be like Humboldt and Bonpland. I’m going to marry Jenny, and he Saartje, if we still like them when we grow up, and live in a house together. Jenny wants to be a judge, can you imagine, but Saartje thinks she might like to be an architect. But if the Americans and Russians blow us up with their crazy bombs, we won’t be anything but dead. America is all automobiles and gangsters, and all their kids want to do is zonk out on dope and listen to pukey music. Russia is all concentration camps and factory workers. Bunch of dumb clods, both of them. Americans all look as if they owned grocery stores.

  FULLER’S SYNERGETICS 1056.15

  Human awareness first apprehends, then sometimes goes on to comprehend.

  No guarantees.

  LA FOUGUE DE SALETÉ

  O I’ll buy them, Kaatje said. There’s no not buying them. The good of being a mother is that nothing fazes you, nothing can. Een gekeperd katoen broekje voor een jongen van 12 jaar, 4 cm ritssluiting, wit, O God. They come with an elasticized nylon belt. No need to call Hilda: she’ll think it charming. My official line is that it’s nasty. That’s predictable parental backwardness, of course. Thus Kaatje on the phone. White denim short pants for Hans and Jan to wear without briefs and never to be washed. To sport stains of piss and sperm boldly and frankly. Jan it was, the enemy of hypocrisy, who asked me if I thought they could get away with it. Really messy, Hans elaborated, come all over inside and out. We’ll wear them here and at home, and on the island if it’s just us. Beautifully grubby, spitterspatter you won’t believe. Makes you wish you’d never met us, doesn’t it? Where your peter pokes the pantsleg out will be the gunkiest and ripest.

  A BASKET OF PEARS

  Red feckles brown on pale yellow, once green.

  WOUTERS

  Rik Wouters’ pears scattered on a table. Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts, Bruxelles. One of the most brilliant colorists of his time, Wouters died in the Great War (1916) after only four years of work in the style freed by Ensor, integrated by Cezanne, brightened by Van Gogh, and launched by the Fauves.

  BLUE VASE OF CHRYSANTHEMUMS

  Bruno by to collect Hans and Jan. Why badger? he asked, pulling on Hans’ briefs for him, with a smooch on his navel, hauling on his jersey, combing his hair with his fingers. Why not cubs, puppies, colts? It seemed right, said Jan drying his dick on his undershirt. He leaned over Hans having his shoes tied to give Bruno a kiss on the corner of the mouth. Regulations, he said. Bruno squeezed him into a hug, which Jan passed on to me, and which Bruno redelivered in person. Come have a drink, and supper, can you? Cleared with Sander and Grietje downstairs, working on the nipper with Wolfje huddled against them, each with an arm around him. His invention, and not as impossible as I thought it would be. His bony shoulders fit under Grietje’s arm around him, his head against her breast, his hips under her spread thigh. I lock him in with my left arm, my right around Grietje. Scrunches his eyes with the pleasure of being included, but looks worried when Grietje groans. Fine, says Sander, you want Wolfje with you, or does Wolfje want to go to the flicks with us? The flicks. So we drop Jan off at his home.

  GAMME

  Avant garde. Camphor (Raspail, koala bears, mothballs)

  Aileron ascendant. Musk (billy goats, skunks)

  Aile ascendante. Floral (pear, apple)

  Pivot. Mint (beebalm, peppermint, all four-sided stems)

  Aile descendante. Ether

  Aileron descendant. Pungent (pepper, the savory)

  Arriere garde. Putrid (faeces, E. coli, carrion)

  SEURAT

  Hans in his yellow straw hat, blue shadow across his eyes.

  RIETVELDTAFEL

  Because we have more lumber than we need, Hans and I cut the pieces for another Rietveld worktable, paint the slats blue, yellow, and red, and take all the makings tied to the tabletop of thin strong plywood over to Joris’, and in fifteen minutes assemble it before his astonished eyes, complete with a white oilcloth thumbtacked underneath drumhead tight over the surface. There, I say, when someone asks about De Stijl, show them this table, and say that you have it because a philosopher and his nephew were making a batch of them for Florishuis, and thought it fun to give their friend Joris one. We aim, said Hans gazing at copies of Pan and Kouros, to please.

  KUS

  In the sunroom beyond us, Hans and Jenny wrapped around each other on the wicker lounge. Apparently, Kaatje said, giving me coffee, they don’t need to breathe. They’ve been like that for an hour. Tongues in each other’s mouths, hands in each other’s jeans. Makes Jan pine away. He and Saartje smooch, but don’t like each other that way. They’d rather talk books and films.

  FREE BADGER OUTING AND RAMBLE

  Jan’s report for the Bulletin Board. Joris the corporal, Hans & Jan the troops. Errands first: two bladders of Payne’s Grey, one of vermilion, four of raw Sienna, ginger and lemon drops for Jenny and Saartje, pipe cleaners for Ome A (Joris’ prize idea). Swim at the Jeugdgroepje coc, everybody nice and naked, but we had to wear a Parental Permission Supervised tag around our necks (orange plastic bit with blue printing, on a short stainless steel chain) which Joris called our leashes though he’s the one needs a leash (you said absolute truth in unvarnished words). He blushed to his shoulders when we all stripped and his whooper rose and nodded, sakkerloot! The boffer lijfwacht (seatless orange pouch for a slipje, stencilled coc, fijn fysiek, patted us all on the behind, Joris too) is named Karel and is a student at the university and did his jaw ever drop down and his eyebrows shoot up when Hansje said brightly he’s Ome A’s neef. Ome A will get us for this, but we discovered that Joris blushes like a tomato if you kiss him, also his hangdown bounces, and I think we may have overdone this maybe to see if it ever quit working but it never did. Kiss, blush, jump. Made friends with Joop and Jaap, good swimmers. Hot chocolate afterwards at the canteen, the Family Sinaasappel doing the handsome thing with half my allowance. Joris says that getting kissed by people eating glazed doughnuts should be written out of De Eengezindheid. Why then does it make his eyes shine? To his place afterwards where, as per orders, we called home and got Bruno on the air, to say that we were there and to see when we had to be home. Joris got invited to supper by the Keirinckxen. New Pan, with Danes big and little. Horsed around, talked sexy, did our best to drive Joris out of his mind, and were generally impossible. J. Sinaasappel.

  EXPEDITION

  Picked up J & H. Sander’s paint, pastilles for sisters. Signed us in at coc where we swam and had refreshments. To my room for conversation and looking at books and pictures. J & H beautifully behaved the whole time. No complaints. Joris.

  BADGERS ON THE LOOSE

  Report as required by snoopy family. Submitted by Hans K. We were taken
by big Joris our friend and keeper for the afternoon and bought things as Jan says in his version at the art store and candy shop and tobacco shop and we went to the swimming pool for Free Badgers at the club Joris belongs to and made two good friends who collect stamps and went to summer camp in Denmark and the lifeguard who knows who Ome Adriaan is, fancy that, and we teased Joris something awful. The pool has too much chlorine in it. Joris has pictures and books in his room all to himself and let us see Pan from Denemarken (golly). Then we came home and brought Joris with us as the folks invited him to supper where he was shy as he wasn’t with us. Hans.

  KRIETIEK

  Never do things to make people feel bad. Joris can handle your teasing, which seems to have been within the bounds of friendship. Pan is in orde, the Noorweegs edition is even more wellustig. Glazed doughnut kisses with chocolate backlash are what the Harmony is all about. The gamme should be from licorice to raspberries rolled in sugar. The university student who’s the lifeguard will probably ask to buy you two for f100 down and f50 a week for a thousand years, at 20% interest, but I imagine Joris would outbid him.

  ANTWOORD

  Yes and nobody was impolite enough to complain of kissing a wirebrush no matter how good Joris shaved.

  KRIETIEK

  Sounds puky but who cares? Note well, long-legged Hamsters, and brood on Adriaan’s words about other people’s feelings. Kaatje.

  SCOUT

  Joris has the gift of friendship, and in the scale of things, de weegschaal, is a forward scout in the chord of the passions. If genius is the courage of talent, and if friendship is a talent, a natural inclination and affinity, he will prosper.

  GIRLS

  Komaan! Sander pleads, joshing Wolfgang, not until the kopje of your onderbroek’s fat as an oatfed figpecker will you see what a looker Saartje is. At this Saartje, posing for Sander, kecked and held her forehead. Wolfje fipped his thumb at her. Peuter!

  GRIETJE

  Thought you didn’t like girls, Shrimp, Sander says of Wolfje in Grietje’s lap, in fine late afternoon sun by the window, the two looking at a picture book with animals and the alphabet in it, Wolfje’s arm around Grietje’s neck, his head snuggled against hers. Grietje’s not a girl, said a vexed Wolfje, Grietje’s Grietje.

  THE BLUE-EYED NIPPER

  With, says Sander to the ripping downslide of his zipper tab, a neat slot with clit at the top, which I shall kiss as soon as she has howled hello to the world, or cunning little spout and clever little balls, which I shall also kiss. What’s going to be little about his pisser, Grietje asked, if he takes after either of his daddies? We’ll have twins, says Sander, if we have the best luck in all Amsterdam, knaap en meisje, and they will go at it as soon as Spermandillo can climb on top of Clitorella. Rock their own cradle. Was anything ever so much fun! Here’s Grietje between us, and half of the nipper is somewhere under all that hair around Adriaan’s testicles, or here in mine, and the other half’s up here in Grietje, aching to fuse and grow, and squeeze out, a sweet little blue-eyed fucker. Two little blue-eyed fuckers.

  FOURIER SERIES

  It was in the attempt to write a mathematical formula for the vibration of a violin’s string that d’Alembert, Euler, and Bernoulli asked if the extension of an arbitrary function of x be possible. A series of sines being both periodic and odd, an arbitrary function of a single variable must have these two properties to be developed in an infinite series of sines of multiples of the variable. f is what x does when acted upon by an arbitrary force: what course a trajectory takes in the grip of gravity when a space rocket blasts off from Cape Kennedy, with what frequency does a violin string quiver under the bow’s friction, how heat radiates. Our Fourier wanted a science of the heart’s chaleur, its warmth of affection, its repulsion. He saw that attraction is cunningly complex, and that happiness depends on the vibrancy of a feeling, on depth of tone and range of variations.

  APPLE GLANS, ROSE VULVA

  Ashen violet, says Grietje, to give a name to the color of Wolfje’s eikel, snuzzling it between two fingers, having nipped it out of its foreskin’s snurp. Wolfgang, snugly britchesless in her lap, suffers Grietje to study his penis. Feels good, Wolfje says. I’m glad, says Grietje. Some people, says Sander. Shall I keep this up? Grietje asks. O yes! says Wolfje.

  ONTMOETING

  Sander painting, Grietje darting about with pots and pans, screws and nails, I unpacking books and hanging prints and maps, the doorbell buzzed: Jan in cutoff jeans and tall socks, red billcap and an undershirt so deep of neck and scye that more of his trunk was naked front and flank than clothed. He wandered about, watching, saying in his grown-up voice how spiffily everything was shaping up. Wolfgang, painting alongside Sander, stole glances at him, and at Jan’s Hullo Wolfgangje, snapped his fingers and mimed a smile. Only area in place is the Free Badger cot on my floor, with its Danish rag rug, Navajo blanket, schuimblusser pillow, Shaker canebottom chair (for clothes), and the three-leaved folding screen acquired for Sander’s models, rarely used, relegated to the Free Badger territory but denounced as prudish and counterrevolutionary by the Badgers, and by Sander. In this house! In ieder geval, Jan, watching me clean glazings and reframe a Klee Angel, conspued the dressing screen, unjeaned and debriefed, desneakered and unsocksed with what level ease, grote genade, and cool unconcern for boring convention, leaving on the airy undershirt for some abstruse erotic motive, whiffling a flutter of fingers over a dapperly lifting cock and tight balls. Hansje’s somewhere on the way over? I ask. His fly ricked out by a jumping hard on? An indulgent grin and stuck-out tongue for my joshing. The phone, Grietje answering, and then Grietje herself looking at Jan through fingers crossed over her eyes: Hansje has been levied by Pastor Duckfoot or Turnipseed to work on posters at the rectory. O Lord, and Jan’s heart, so to speak, is all set. The rectory! Jan cried, those Jesus hooters and Godhoppers have my Hans? For how long? All afternoon, I’m afraid, Kaatje said on the phone. Help us paint walls, pitch in upstairs, help Adriaan shoo microbes off all his things there. Jan sat on the cot, disgusted. Hold on, I said, and nipped up to Sander and Wolfgang. Explained the situation tersely. Oof! said Sander. Send the scamp up. We’ll put him to work.

  ADFABILITAS POST COITUS

  Dubonnets rouges with twist of lemon peel, deep late afternoon, only the crumpled whirl of bedsheets evidence of our spirited tumble. Two helpings from each papa, said Grietje, sipping and smiling with closed eyes, of nipper makings. A wink for me. I’m glad we’re not doing it in cold blood. We can get a girl who paints, a girl philosopher, a boy who loves his sister. Have both of you been swigging rocketbooster fuel? I’m still coming in little blips and tickles. It was, said Sander, the two rascals up there. I thought I’d slammed goal on all the facts of life, but no. Dear sweet cool brainy Jan came up to drown his disappointment in work. He dwelt on the exact nature of his disappointment in such gutter Dutch that Master Wolfgang grew a lightheaded grin all dimples and squeezing eyelashes. Something else, these kleuters with permanent erections and steadfast willingness. Traded smiles, those two, and Wolfje shed his overalls in two flicks for the galluses, a push down, and a kick, but Jantje was quicker still and had skinned back his lean peter with the chubby noddle while Wolfje was scrounging his out of his diapers. Poked the heads of them together, the buggers, and rolled them around each other. And hands slid to shoulders and hands slid under balls and hands felt butts. So I made an armload of the two of them, lugged them over to the cot, and left them hugging each other with arms and legs into rather a tight knot. Eros, I said, with his famous inspiration. Passed around, said Grietje. Fucked silly.