Apples and Pears

by Guy Davenport

  PATROL

  Gallop of quaggas beyond the pear orchard. A girl’s voice above the silver call of a horn. Patrouille! Voorwaarts!

  FILM

  Digt, idyllisk, hyrdedight, den slags ting, says Olaf of his short films, studies in invention. One is a hundred stills, each held three seconds before the next clicks into place, like a series of color slides shown at a steady rhythmic pace. Details of a cornflowerblue-eyed nickelblond Danish boy, midteens, en kondi, all close-ups, beginning with the two beautiful eyes with white feathertip lashes: brown nape with frisk of woodshavings curls across the top: eyelet of navel tucked flat, trapezoidal knee as lean and compact as a fist: hiplevel profile of innocent rump and supple penis limber over pudgy balls: sandy toes, wisps of hair on the knuckles. Palest pink glans crimpled across the boll: ruddier glans plumped smooth as a plum: gingery pubic thicket by waistband of briefs flapped down: chest with copper nipples: penis erect as a bowsprit: and every fifth image the eyes.

  DRISTIG

  Olaf’s Selvportraet is entirely of his penis jauntily hanging limp, stiff as a rib, jacked rich-veined and slathery, swallowed to the root, tongued, kissed, coming in snappy globs, fingered lovingly, runny with pearly rivulets of sperm, knotty and sagging its head, knurled with rootlets of risen veins, bulging in briefs, standing out a jeans fly, peeing, butting another glans to glans, hummocked in tight pants, lugging out the cup of a skridtbind, lying curved over a thigh in morning light.

  OLAF’S EROTIKSTUDIE FILM Billy

  Billy the golden tadpole frogs around with a school of naked darting ulveunger swimming, ducking, dolphining in a pellucid dazzle of water bobbing green and blue. Heaved out glossy and blinking in an armpit heft and licked on the spout by Olaf, he stomps a devil dance, eyes jiggling with glee, gets picked up and hugged by two boys trotting to the pool, passing from one to the other and back to Olaf for a laughing stare nose to nose and lift onto his shoulders, tummy against Olaf’s face, legs hooked around so that his heels are in Olaf’s hands. Flops backward and hangs upsidedown. Twists up again, looking dizzy. Olaf flutters his penis with his tongue, sinks a tight sucking kiss around it, waggles his chin on its stiff shaft. Shift to Billy asleep, coppery leafshadow-spattered light on bed, gilet rucked up underarm, flat, grooved concavity from sternum to pubic boss very Modigliani. Camera tracks arm from heron hike of bony shoulders to elbow slightly bent to oblique wrist to fingers bunched around scrotum, tip of foreskin puckered. Tracks sienna gold-brown legs from cleft of buttocks to blunt knees to trim ankles to stubby toes.

  UNGDOMSFRIHED

  Poolside. Olaf nipped away, returning in sweater, jeans, socks, and with a box of lemon drops. Edvard, shawled in a towel, his chin on Olaf’s thigh and his arm around Jens’ waist, asked me what it was I wanted to know. I saw the nudge of Olaf’s foot that got the question asked. Jo, Olaf agreed. Kammerat Adriaan has come all the way from wicked Amsterdam to innocent Denmark to talk with liberated loving boys in their own clubhouse, and Peter and Tobias, skridtvild those two, treated him like an evangelist, and Jens, given his chance to shine as a frihedskaemper, was about as conversational as a two-day-old calf. Olaf fed Edvard a lemon drop, who turned and gave it to Jens, tongue to tongue, and asked for another like a nestling, with open mouth. Olaf obliged, and repeated the nudge. Rigtig! Edvard said, scriggling his nose, thwacking his knee with a flat slap, sliding one foot over the other. I can tell you, he said, how scared I was, and shy, and ready to bolt. It’s one thing to write a brevkort to the postboks adresse in the ungdomsfrihed brochure when you’ve got a hard on, and something else to turn up at an office with a woman in it and your face’s red and your ears on fire. Modbydelig, satans osse! I’d sent the postcard with super schemes in my hot little heart, and filled out the form that came back, dick in hand, sneaking a year onto my age, 10 cm to my height. Zap! A postcard back in two days with an appointment and interview on it, something I can tell you to wonder about and wonder about and feel great jacking off about. I was OK right up to the time itself, turning up in clean underwear, clean socks, and the only foreskin in town that had been washed twenty times in one morning. One happy boy! It was when I got to the building, just like any other building, that I began to ask myself how crazy I was, what in the world I was going to say, and just what it was I thought I was doing. I’d checked out every letdown by the time I pushed the doorbell of the office: it was all a hoax, there were cops on the other side, the truant squad, sex muggers. And inside, a woman! That did it. I was blushing like a crossing signal, my palms were sweating, and general paralysis set in from head to toes. She knew my name, I didn’t. She did get me to understand that there was a chair I was to sit in until they came with the handcuffs. It was a while before I took in the photo on the wall of a kid without a stitch on and some friendly booklets and folders on a table and began to come out of shock. Even so, I jumped like a goosed nanny when a door opened and a man laid a big hallo on me. His office was an OK sunshiny room with a desk and couch and bookcases and filing cabinets. And another boy there, Emil. We seemed, the man said, to match up, but that we’d have to see. This Emil looked as scared as I was. The man was doing his best to make us easy, but he asked questions about things I didn’t even know words for. Emil, who scared me worse than the man, was sitting there hunched in his chair saying that he’d jacked off since he was en lille spinkel fyr. He had a tale about all kinds of crushes on schoolmates and lifeguards and teachers, and a tale about almost getting somewhere with a friend several times. Alligevel, this character gave us a pep talk, sort of fruity but to the point, about friendship and loyalty. But what, Jens asked, did you do? I like Emil. He’s great. What did you do, hva’?

  HALLO

  Peter and Tobias the wolf-eyed came down for a swim, which they executed with cleanly slotting jackknife dives, swift crawls side by side four lengths of the pool, hiking out effortlessly at our end, panting, gleaming, appropriating Edvard’s towel for drying each other. Seeing the lemon drops, they went over and stood with open mouth, each getting one, undeserving, as Olaf remarked, of lemon drops. Hvorfor? they asked together. You have the manners of Germans, Olaf said. Puzzled, concerned, they distributed kisses smartly dabbed on the corners of all our mouths.

  ONENESS

  The awareness of harmony, of oneness, the only noncontradictory reality, is reflected in the mind as the first law of reason, the principle of noncontradiction, and in the psyche as contentment. We have become blind to the hard truth that reality, because symbolic, is a function of dreams.

  THE STARS ARE STILL THERE IN THE DAYTIME

  Quia non est nobis conluctatio adversus carnem et sanguinem: sed adversus principes et potestates, adversus mundi rectores tenebrarum harum, contra spiritalia nequitiae in cætlestibus.

  Blossom lives on in the apple.

  EARTHSPIN

  Rutger wakes, Corporal Holter having licked his face. Hi, Holter! Hrgkao wroof wroof. Ark ark! Holter replies, pure wolf, silver with agate eyes, tail down to indicate that he is on duty. He growls do, and do Rutger whistles back. If he is not up in a minute flat, Holter will pull the covers off and laugh. Rutger snuggles down for half a minute, one eye open. Then, Holter giving him a hopeful look, he rolls out. Holter prods his foreskin. Cold nose! Hrgkao! Off with Titus to the pool, past dogs and cats at breakfast. Then, wolves supervising, he makes Titus’ bed, Titus his. They rub their hands, cheeks, and scrota with beebalm, sage, or lemon geranium.

  LES NYMPHEAS

  Essences on the ground bass of a mind at peace with itself, through the rhythm of monotony, the generosity of work.

  Monet at Giverny. Lévy-Bruhl in the Bois.

  SILVER WOLF EYES

  Pulled on jeans to the flat hollows underhip, saddling the wortel of scrotum and schacht out over the crotch seam of his spread fly, standing with knees hasped straight, bare feet parallel 30 centimeters apart, animal cunning in the nipped corners of his mouth and flat grey eyes. I fix his stare and best him. He blinks first, gapes a smile all big white
teeth and wolf’s tongue. No English, no French, no German. My Danish between pratfall and stage fright, gets only a puzzled grin. Fotograf? he asks. Nej. Elskovskval? Penis? Nej, nej. Underbukser? We both laugh, nej! Et lille øjeblik, he says, off his mark, almost pitching on his head hobbled by his open jeans, teetered on his toes, tucked in, zipped up, and sped away like Merkur in both heels and beauty.

  LES ATTRACTIONS SONT PROPORTIONELLES

  An aggregate of entities or systems is said to be polythetic if each individual possesses a large but unspecified number of the attributes of the aggregate, if each attribute is possessed by large numbers of these individuals, and no single attribute is both sufficient or necessary to the whole.

  FIELD NOTES. DUTCH ANTHROPOLOGIST

  Thirteen-year-old translator with hair like an English sheepdog, scuzzy gym-pants with Gemini patch, fetched back by Wolf Eyes by the wrist. English functional if basic. Dutch anthropologist writing a book about us here. How come? For people to read. What for? So they’ll be the less idiots. OK. You want Blinky’s britches off, too? I don’t want anybody’s britches off. Olaf said when we talked to you he’d smash our butts if we didn’t hang free or if we didn’t sport the best manners we could find.

  JAKOB

  Blond. Almost fifteen. Has seen a flyvende tallerken, believes in them, and would welcome a ride in one. Thinks an ET crew would find him neat. Younger sister, older sister. Father works for some chemical firm and has an elskerinde, or veninde, whatever. Mother dotty, wimpy, and a Christian Scientist. Big sister picks on him, is ashamed of him, calls him fag. Little sister a friend, likes to hold his penis, and watch him toss off. Makes good grades in school, does gymnastics and swimming, belongs to a hiking club. It was, in fact, a hiking friend who got him into the wolfden. Father knows, doesn’t care, but doesn’t like hearing about it. Mother thinks it’s Boy Scouts. Olaf, did I know, is an Eagle Scout? And is an artist and shoots movies, proudly added. Olaf is very sjaelfuld, jo? Spartansk, beautiful, and just. An idiot, naturlig, about little Billy, but that was sweet. Jakob bonded to Niels, sixteen, the hiking friend.

  UNGE HR. BILLY

  Returned, babbling of starships and robots, he was scooped up by the two he’d been to the movies with and brought to Olaf’s lap. There, one said, you don’t get to scalp us. Billy, Jakob said, is Olaf’s cock with arms and legs.

  OLAF

  Apartment Scandinavian Erewhonian. Gropius chairs, rugs designed by Laplanders and Navajos, reproductions of a Dufy Regatta, a spirited Richard Mortensen abstract, a Kupka of 1913, a Jansenist Ozenfant, a firmly simple Max Bill, a melodic Helion. On a row of Shakerly pegs hung a Deensblauw backpack splendid with zippers, straps, and pockets, an Olympic zwemslipje with its slight strip of filmy lining outward, a denim jacket with Ungdomsfrihedsfront shoulder patch, a satchel of cameras and photographic gear, two English caps, one a child’s. Hov! he said, are you learning anything, even hulter til bulter? It’s all rather much, I remark. Right, he said. A monkey house of gamle græsk Boy Scouts. Whatever the ethics and sociology of it, the reality must be as Scheller says in the Düsseldorf Manifesto, in the besondere Fähigkeit zur Einfühlung in die kindliche Psyche, what they want. In the frame of the Idealismus. Which, of course, is as Danish as buttermilk, and very like. We find moral clarity exciting and invigorating. Northern Spartans.

  BATH

  Billy bathed and dried pink, Olaf took off his undershirt and dressed him in it. The philosopher and I have business to talk over, he whispered in Billy’s ear. Just a little? Spoiled, said Olaf, rotten. Nevertheless, he jacked Billy for some five minutes in his lap before kissing him pretty much all over and sending him off to bed. A kiss for me, for Olaf’s friend, and a hug. Olaf, sliding a smile across every phrase, said that if I wanted to know only clear and true things, kun lige akkurat, he could speak plainly. He is not gaga about the little buggers in his charge. The pioneer committee of the Students and Workers Coalition asked him to organize and captain the clubhouse. They knew that he kept a boy, a stray who had taken up with him and toward whom he had been both big brother and lover, as the kid expected it. At the same time he was in and out of bed with a girlfriend whom he shared with another fellow. He’d listened to the ideelle motiver in havering assent, quiddits and quillets nattering at both his conscience and measure of bonsens, however vellicative and advanced it all was, however revolutionaer. It was as if, just when he was getting well into layout and design, coming by as many commissions as he could handle, settling in with a round of friends, his life, the part of it, anyway, between navle og forhud, was doubled back to puberty and before, to a fantasiverden.

  SPADGERS

  Veelsoortig, he says, searching my eyes for understanding. Your Fourier built a utopia in his imagination, yes? Min tro, but in Düsseldorf the Indiansk group there gave me an umyndig little squirt closer to ten than eleven, as full of livsglaede as a lamb bouncing in clover. Yours, their kaptajn said, to show you, hefting him onto my lap. Frisky, cocky imp of a heathen with smart blue eyes, rabbity teeth, and a skint knee patched with haefteplaster and painted with jod, he chattered a wholly incomprehensible German at me, which, translated, made even me blush. Following instructions from the kaptajn and a helpful teenager with uncertain English, I parted this sweet brat from his spejderbukser and trusser while he blinked and beamed and wriggled helpfully. And then he was all over me like a monkey. His pastinak pik og figen pung were charming, if you will, but not sexet, not then. His yndighed was all over, integral can I say? So here I am with all these fanatic Germans, slobbering in spirit if not in fact, clicking out abstract nouns. Unge hr. Eros, whom I felt up and petted as I would a puppy, got my hand where he wanted it, on his erektion, which, as we got on with the policy talk and exchange of ideas I was there for, I cockered and jacked and fondled. Idealismus they talked, like your Oudveld and Strodekker in Amsterdam, law they talked, psychology, sociology, enlightenment, Gestalt theory, group dynamics. There was one Teutonic wonder of a teenager who was britchesless when I arrived, who must have spent the whole summer naked to be so brown, and who, continuing an awesomely prolonged pleasuring of his peter, denounced Normalität, Familie, Schule, Maloche und Heterosexualitât. Also war, prostitution, capitalism, fascism, hypocrisy, the police, colonialism, and other things as he thought of them. He was recommending friendship, collective economics, free love for all ages and combination of sexes, when my Unge hr. Eros abandoned my affections for his, and the two locked onto each other in as breathless and slogging a prodding of uvulas as ever wriggled about in the middle of a conversation. Everybody seemed pleased in a German sort of way, and I began to see something fetching in the scamp, so that when the spontaneous orgy was over and he came back to my lap licking saed from his lips I began negotiations for a wildly lovely frolic with him before I showed my films, and another after, and spent the night with him. He was good. And then, out of the blue, dropped Billy. About him he was, he had to admit, indeed gaga.

  TABLE MANNERS

  Joris (fisherman’s sweater, jeans) and Wolfgang (new winebowl haircut, knee-length poplin pants, tall socks, red jersey with narrow white collar) at our dinner table, hands in lap. Full setting by Grietje. Joris frozen, daring not look at Wolfje. Wolfje trying not to laugh. I call pâté. Fork on outside left. Bread is always broken by hand, not sliced with a knife. Wine glass at right. Cut bite size of pâté with side of fork, spear, put in mouth, chew with mouth closed. Pick up bread from bread plate. If not already in bread plate, reach for it in middle of table, but offer it to Wolfje before taking any yourself. Pull off piece of bread. Don’t hold it against your chest. Use both hands. Sip wine. It tastes like benzine, says Wolfje. Keep conversation going. What conversation? Today we painted the studio, Wolfje offers. What color? I prompt. What color? says Joris. White, says Wolfje. Left hand in lap when not in use.

  HIBISCUS

  Jan brought them from his mother’s garden, mauve and white, a copious bunch with abundant leaves. There seemed to be at the door, Grietje said,
an hibiscus bush in full bloom on two skinny long brown legs, and with eyes in the leaves very like Jantje’s, and with a voice trying to change. Found a Chinese vase, still unpacked, for them. Jan blushed to be thanked with a kiss from Grietje, as the little sex fiend was unzipping his pants, assuming in his calm way that his afternoon rendezvous with Hans at their space on my floor was custom neither noticed nor commented on.

  SMERIG EN SEKSIE

  All heart, those two: Sander’s contented remark about the nasty britches. Just when we’re getting Wolfje housebroken and with a taste for soap and elementary hygiene, these rats come along with joggling and slobbing zaad in and on pants they’ll wear unwashed until they mildew and fall apart.

  JORIS

  What we ourselves are.

  ZO IS HET

  Well yes, Skeezix, says Joris, I’m one to come. By collusion of cock and an accurate imagination, by elision of reality and dream, the way all things happen. Lots? Jan asks. Een melkfles dagelijks. Zo’n bok!

  HORDE ZEBRAMASTER AND BADGER CUBS

  Sink as much peter as you can, lips tight around it, and roll your tongue around the knob, flicker the tip on the eyelet. Squeeze the root, tickle and palm balls. The hair on the back of your neck should be crawling, your knees rubbery, your hearts thumping with love. Sander at the Free Badger Port in bib overalls, a brush piratically in his teeth, Wolfgang on his shoulders. Jan out of his briefs, dancing his penis between two fingers. Hans had been padding about waiting for him with voluptuous impatience, wandering from bookcase to window with a floppy erection. When Jan romped upstairs and they’d pounded each other on the shoulders and rolled across the floor and back in a clatter of knees and heels, and stripped, here was Sander giving lessons. Sexy, says Wolfje, bending to kiss Sander on the nose. Because, says Sander, they’re in love. Pukey, says Wolfje. Next they’ll be holding hands. But I love you, says Sander. You love Grietje, Wolfje says, you’d fuck her all day if you didn’t have to paint pictures. True, says Sander, but I only paint pictures so that I can have you close enough to hug when I want to. Me too, says Wolfgang. This house is different from other houses, isn’t it? There is, says Sander, carrying Wolfgang back to his studio, no house anywhere else in the world with Adriaan and Grietje in it, or Sander and curly-haired Wolfgang. Outside, the politicians are sucking money and picking their ugly noses, but in here we’re painting a zebra, white stripes by Wolfgang, black by Sander.