Apples and Pears

by Guy Davenport

  GERTRUDE STEIN

  Human nature is not interesting. The human mind is interesting and the universe.

  COPENHAGEN

  Opening Olaf’s door at the rigorously modern apartment complex the station taxi took me to was a long-headed fourteen-year-old blond with dark blue eyes, tall for his age, in an American Army shirt, unbuttoned, Gemini shoulder-patch, a wolfcub pawprint in a yellow circle on the zipper ply of his jeans, rotten sneakers, and dirty white socks. You’re the man from Amsterdam, he said. At least I hope you are. I skipped school to be here when you came. Olaf will be back. He was, he said, practicing holding action foreplay while waiting for me to turn up, and (checking a Rollex oyster on his left wrist) had been at it for an hour and fifty-two minutes. I made signs of being impressed. He took my briefcase and overnight bag to a table piled with books, magazines, and a scruffy blue rucksack I took to be his, as well as a pair of briefs. I asked his name. Pier. He zipped down his jeans, took them off, dried his glans and foreskin on the briefs, and pulled them and his jeans back on. No need to stop because I’m here, I said. Save it for later, he said. He was in a film of Olaf’s, and Olaf wants runny splats and loopy strings of sperm for a take later in the afternoon. Age? Almost fifteen. Incredible blue eyes. Silence. Asked him to tell me about himself. Tell what? What, for instance, interested him. At school, at home, in general, how long he’d been with Olaf’s fribørn group. Or anything at all. Three years, two years, something like that. Time flies. Films, photography. Reads a lot. Acting, maybe.

  DISTEL’S DRENG

  Olaf’s wolfden. Overnydansk long box of glass and brick with decisively proportioned corbufibonacci modulations, narrow intensely reticulated verticals dividing Shakerly rectangles of urban brick from Bauhauslijk squares of glass. High wall all around. Flagstone courtyard, bicycles, skateboards, boxwood in concrete cylinders. Lifesized neoclassical Art Deco bronze boy on stone cube base, incipiently adolescent, anatomically ideal, head leaning pensively forward, hips canted, one hand holding a soccer ball against a thigh, the other knuckles down on a hip, penis punctiliously modeled and precociously advanced, scrotum chastely small. Toes worthy of Bourdelle, butt of Maillol, face of Despiau. Sander would approve. The work of a young Belgian named Distel. Olympia by way of Erewhon.

  WOLFDEN COMMON ROOM

  Large sunny room, ultracontemporary chairs, tables, bookshelves, sexy posters bold of sentiment (Wen sie wollen! Weg mit dem Scheisssystem! Auf zur sexuellen Revolution! Konsfrihed for altid! Pik eller kusse alle dage!). With designs variously styled from the photograph to the abstract, all smartly graphic, all explicit.

  THE WOLFDEN BULLETIN BOARD

  Clubgebouw aanplakbord, een Fourierlijk verwondering. Emil: after tumbling Tues: Tom. Thorvald: grounded come over to the house it’s OK: Ejnar. Sven + Tom 1600 all of next week. Frivillig needed for paedo arbejder 26 muskelstaerk smuk 17 cm. Frivillig needed nydreng Adam Fleming 14 Thurs or Fri 1700. An abandoned scantling slipje, blue, was thumbtacked, spread frontward, across a poster (handsome young man in denim workclothes with an arm around the shoulders of a handsome grey-eyed blond boy in short pants) for the Düsseldorf Deutschen Studien- und Arbeitsgemeinschaft Pädophile e.V. (Für sexuelle Selbstbestimmung von Kindheit an). A forlorn long white sock hung from a thumbtack at the bottom of the board. A pair of grubby shoelaces shared a drawing pin with a film brochure and schedules (Masturbation: sa meget man lyster, forlaengelse og hyppighed. The Red Planet: BBC Science Film. Ungt Menneske og Lille Dreng. Hygiejne og Kneppen.)

  KONTORET

  JCH Ellehammer skimming over sawgrass dunes in his omithopter kite hangs behind Olaf’s table, a speckle-grained enlargement of a photograph made 12 September 1906. It is flanked on one side by a poster derived from a woodcut herbal (black winter cherries), and on the other by a poster in the same series, of double anemones. Superbly modern swivel chair. Oxblood carpet. Benches, chairs, shelves of art books.

  SKRUB AF!

  Introduced by Olaf to two teenagers with remote and untrusting eyes. They’d just arrived themselves, had satchels of schoolbooks, and had greeted Olaf with kisses more military than affectionate, me with nods. There was the gaze of the wolf in their eyes, an animal alertness. Olaf said why I was a visitor: to learn. But how dare you, said their eyes, come snooping around here, whoever you are. Writer and philosopher, my ass. What they said was nothing. Olaf stamped his foot at them, furious. Skrub af! the two of you! Go love yourselves crosseyed. Come back when you think you have some manners. A stammer from one, apologies from the other. Six demerits apiece, Olaf said. You, Peter, that makes ten for you in one week: remember what you said to Diderich when he was only paying you a compliment. And pull Jens and Edvard apart and tell Jens to come down here. He’s been known to have some manners.

  BILLY

  You could go quietly insane talking to my Billy, Olaf said, but he’s off for the afternoon seeing Stjerne krigen with some pals. Rare for him to be out of sight. He’s adhesive. Our mascot, I pass him off as. But for prelogical thought and a total innocence of cause and effect he has few peers among those who can come and go as they like.

  JENS

  Fiks, eleven. Saucy-eyed, harumscarum hair, trim, smiling compliantly, expediently wearing an unavailing brief with a wet spot on the pod. Long torso, long legs: going to be tall. Dimples, chubby upper lip, baby’s flat nose. Hallo! he said brightly, nothing shy, giving me both hands to shake. Introduced as a pal and fellow ungdomsfrihedskaemper, to be called Adriaan. And your trusser are on inside out, bonkammerat. Ak ja! he laughed, slipped them off, whipped them right side out with a snap, and resumed them. Held i orden, nu, perfekt! He watched me with cocked head and wide eyes as Olaf said who I was, why I was there. He tended to answer my questions with perhaps and I forget and I don’t know, and everything became awkward and the pulling of eye teeth, not helped by entanglements between Dutch and Danish, and my and Olaf’s English. Apprehensive glances from Olaf, who was helping wonderfully, but getting nowhere. O pokker tage det! he blew up, heaved a hugging Jens over his shoulder, whoofed kisses into his hair, and wiggled a tickling hand into his briefs. All this is too uelsket for this hedensk slurkpik, the cat has his tongue. The pool, the pool’s the place. Jens is a fish when he isn’t everybody’s lille skat, and a crack scholar when he doesn’t do his algebra with his hand in his fly. Upstairs to undress, and you can see the barracks.

  THE BEDS

  Barracks upstairs: a Spartan double row of precisely made iron cots, army surplus. Well-lit by four skylights and high square nydansk windows. The two ulveblik were clamped onto each other head to crotch as tight as breeding frogs.

  ULVEBLIK

  Three others: two halvvoksne, just arrived, were undressing and bragging how horny they were, and a straw blond in a thin-bretelled white undershirt. This was Edvard, Jens’ bonded mate. I was introduced to him as the friend from Amsterdam who wants to learn how we do things. Call him Adriaan. Olaf, stripping (a gymnast’s body, nothing naked about his nudity) expatiated on Edvard, fifteen. Marvelously talented at drawing, the guitar, photography, woodcraft, canoeing, and civilizing stinkers from the fast skateboard set, like Jens. Jens, Olaf said to Edvard with a voice suddenly loud, turns out to be as useless a spokesman for the sag as rend mig i røven, so we’re having a dip. Adriaan can learn wonders from Edvard. Adriaan! Barmhjertige Gud! but you’ve kept in shape, kammerat! You’re blushing! Yndig! I was given an unabashed inspection by the halvvoksne, now holding each other by the hips. The clinched ulveblik held, full-throated, to their unhistoried hour of Arcady beyond time and statute.

  THE POOL

  The four of us down to the swimming pool, Edvard abiding, Jens patient (the young’s greatest defense of their inwardness is to wait all occasions out), Olaf confidently doing his best, I feeling very much the tame fox in a henhouse, character giving way to instinct. We swam, tossed a tired ball, had a splashing fight, a ducking chase, all within any Lutheran burgher’s notion of men and boys at play except for the qu
ick kisses in passing, sudden halts at the poolside for puppyish fits of affection. Edvard, no matter what else was happening, had a practiced way of plunging toward Jens, sinking just short of him, and surfacing to kiss him full on the mouth. Olaf kissed everybody, including me. The boys were wary of the hollaender until Olaf caught me in an impulsive hug that sank us both in a boiling swarm of green bubbles. We porpoised up, I returned his salute, and we capsized again. Edvard and Jens crawled over and hugged Olaf together in a tumult of splashing. I got them next, half drowning. We swam in circles with them around our necks, Edvard Olaf’s Arion, Jens mine. Winded, acquainted, we dried in the level sun with towels Edvard fetched. I went up to the barracks for my pipe, tobacco, and matches. There were three braces of boys on cots. The ulveblik, holding tight, moving only at the hips, were still at it.

  JOHANNES

  Tall boy, sixteen, longish hair the brown of walnut stain, as coarse-grained as weathered wood, large thin-nostrilled nose with high bridge. Hornrimmed specs. Works out in the gym thrice a week, bonded to one Ejnar, also sixteen, with whom he couples (dobbelsug, the argot) daily, usually twice, with swim and second foreplay between, more on weekends and holidays. Jacks off nightly, aldeles bestemt, for (I must have blinked) the fun of it. The only ulveunge who has heard of me, to Olaf’s delight. Eager to be interviewed. Very much the young intellectual. Has good English. Conducts the pack’s study group, is the clubhouse librarian. Shook hands and said he was honored to meet me. A three-note whistle from Olaf got me a smiling kiss on the corner of the mouth. That’s better, said Olaf, and Johannes said he wasn’t sure. Our manners, said Olaf, are our manners. We kiss. Poolside, this interview, in fine green light. Olaf asked with his eyes if he should leave: I signaled stay. So peel down, he ordered Johannes, this is for the frihedsbevaegelse. Skinny boy, big feet and hands, good rusty umber suntan, chest muscles worked to finished anatomical definition. The fore distension of his briefs (I’d thought the strain on his jeans fly was the push of an erection) seemed an excess of design in a body so lean, tail flat, and shallow-fleshed. Of his oversized penis horsily ponderous, fat of girth at root and head, Olaf boasted that it was the prize thumper of the troop. Johannes, a pink tinge in the brown of his flat cheeks, shifted his pinched grin to a guffaw. I love it, he said, but it’s cumbersome and embarrassing. Discussed penile awareness intelligently and wittily, causing Olaf to give me a smug smile: his boys are smart. It’s not bigger than Olaf’s whopper, inviting me to compare the two (Olaf stark naked except for his whistle on a string around his neck), but he has the physique to go with it. Erect, it’s really gross: and showed me. Began keeping it in shape at age nine, tutored by a cockhappy brother (thirteen). Parents magnanimously broadminded, both sons being obedient, bright, talented, affectionate, assiduous in school. Family has traveled considerably. Johannes reads French, German, English, Italian, and is learning Spanish. His brother boldly brought home a girl at fifteen and fucked her for five days, coming out of the bedroom only to fetch food for the two of them, Johannes banished to the living room couch, the parents uneasy but determined not to be prudes. On the fifth day Ulrik emerged from his harem tanglehaired and glassy of eye, saying that he had come forty-seven times, the girl several hundred, but now she was too modbydelig sore to kneppen more, and was having hysterics. Inspected (Ulrik’s penis livid as a bruise and puffy, the girl’s vagina raw and swollen shut), washed (Mummy helping graciously), properly fed, and put into pyjamas, they slept in a fresh bed around the clock, Johannes tiptoeing in from time to time to look at them with awe. Girl went away for a week, replaced the meanwhile by another: much glee in Johannes telling us all this, a dubious slide of eyes from Olaf, who was enjoying it. First girl returned, joined the other (Mummy did allow herself the observation one breakfast that two girls at once might plausibly deplete one’s stamina) and has been there, off and on, ever since. She’s a sweet kid, devoted to Ulrik, who’s pisseforvirret crazy about her. Johannes, turned thirteen, organized his emotions: he was giddily and happily excited by fellow males, their bodies, their charm, their smell, their grace. Claiming the license given his brother’s loving heart, he proudly announced at dinner one evening to the family and two of Ulrik’s serail that he was homoseksuel. Mummy turned white, Papa red. But Ulrik whooped juhu bravo! brave Johannes! honest Johannes! and they sat up most of the night talking about it. His first tumble, mind like a kite in March wind, was with Ulrik, who, a week after Johannes’ family news, inquired if little brother had seduced or been seduced by anybody interesting, and (again at table, making parents turn colors) fraternally offered himself, to get things started and for practice. Prince of brothers, Ulrik. Heirs, both, of the lineal inclination to good measure, they had between them 46 cm of penis to work with, and Ulrik, putting in double time as banty rooster and gammel graeker bedmate, became disgustingly vain of the universality of his affections, demanding raw oysters, vitamins, fewer tactless remarks from the old folks, and lots of sleep. Can’t touch the sweet bastard now: the ulveunger get booted out if they bring in alien germs. Olaf hauls us all to the doctor quite enough as it is. Johannes joined the wolfden at fourteen, out of his mind anxious that he wouldn’t get in. A patch of ancient Greece, a logical progression of Scandinavian liberality, a frontier: his answer to the question variously replied to by others as crazy fun and why should we have to wait? The men’s longhouse, girls excluded, stodgy middleclass prurient taboos subverted. Johannes has the earnest passion of the young revolutionary: in really repressive countries like Forenede Stater, he lectures us as if we didn’t know (and Olaf pretends he doesn’t), the punishment for killing a boy with an automobile, even if the driver is limber drunk, is six months in jail, whereas the punishment for loving a boy is thirty years hard labor. Sindssyg! His theory is that capitalism won’t work if people don’t hate and distrust each other, and hate themselves, and savage each other. Kristus! They’re out there, sadists, breaking their children’s arms with beating on them, and telling them that they’re depraved idiots for jacking off. After he’d worked himself through an oration, I remembered, and told about, the case of an American child, an orphan adopted by straitlaced puritans, who was caught masturbating in the barn. A local doctor was of the opinion that he was a moral degenerate for whom no hope was to be entertained, and he was confined in an insane asylum for the next thirty years. This is true, Adriaan? Olaf asked, tears brimming in his eyes.

  NEJ TAK

  Johannes’ Ejnar turned up, a Standard Danish Boy, short and compact. Some quick words in the argot of the troop, a huddle with Olaf, Ejnar undressing as he talked. Ask him, Olaf said. And Johannes with unsuspected shyness, explaining that on very rare occasions they were allowed to make it with outsiders, put his and Ejnar’s bodies at my disposal. Hugged them both (Johannes’ shoulders warm, Ejnar’s cold), thanked them kindly, and pleaded other arrangements. Olaf gave me a very odd look.

  POOLSIDE TALK

  By not differentiating between the sensuality of the whole body, Olaf says, and that of sex, common opinion has on the one hand damned all sensuality in damning sex, taking affection, loyalty, and comradeship along with it, and on the other burdened sex with representing the full range of sensuality. Sexual attraction is, I should think, far too effervescent a reason to marry, and yet the divorce courts show that an awful lot of people suppose it to be. Better to enjoy a game of checkers together. Human affinities come from any direction. My slubberter here are after affection one way or another, and are also heroically generous in giving it. Their puppy longing to hug and lie close is as God intended. They are silly, selfish, conceited, cheating little buggers as well, but most soon learn to leave their unlovable nastinesses at the door. We have a tearing fight from time to time, and the occasional emotional crisis, which we all deal with as best we can. I’ve jettisoned all psychology, terrible guff written by cold fish anyway, and learn from Billy. Who can’t sleep unless he’s got a monkey hold on me all night, arms around my chest, legs around my waist, hair in my mouth,
peter tickling my navel. In the morning I put a sweater on over the two of us, and make breakfast so.

  ISAAC NEWTON PHILOSOPHE

  Attention is attraction, surveillance, or critical inspection. Civilization discourages all three as immoral, as leading to more efficiency in industry and government spending than bankers are happy with, and as embarrassing. The Harmony will come into being through attraction, grow through surveillance, and make a habit and delight of critical acumen. The people will be the mind rather than the bowels of their community.

  PLACE

  Grietje, solicitous for and respectful of Sander’s privacy, and of mine, worries that Wolfgang doesn’t have any, especially after his mysterious running away, that he may not even know what it is. We build him a table, with bookcase. On his own carpet, defining a territory. He likes the table because Sander has one, and Grietje. The model’s screen rejected by Hans and Jan for the Free Badger area he has appropriated. Something, he says, to look around.

  PROVINCIA GALLIA

  In early Atlantic Hazel Time, apple was analogue of grape in northern forests. Apple the only tree to keep its name after the imposition of Roman horticulture.

  INGENIUM

  The French readiness to dismiss, like the German suspicion of everything on God’s earth, is an annoying habit which prejudice calls national and psychology an attitude taught children generation after generation. One is haughty, the other pathological. Both are meannesses caught by children, a true contagion. It was Fourier’s idea that children are their own best teachers. Chronic suspicion is unlovable. Children will soon correct it in an individual. Haughtiness is easily brought low by a democracy in rompers. Nor will children idolize each other with fixations that have invaded and corroded the adult mind. They are, all unknowing, followers of Holberg’s observation that to be a Christian (or Harmonian) you must first be a human being, or you will never be a Christian (or Harmonian). There is, as Fourier set out to discover, a human nature which never wholly dissolves in culture, which is candidly naked in children, and reappears often in the old, who are weary of custom and impatient with pretense. Harmonian manners will all be transparent, human nature showing through.