The Müller-Fokker Effect

by John Sladek

  ‘What human could live the way the colored do in Harlem—six or ten to a room? And in Calcutta and Tokyo even more! What human could work for the wages of a black in South Africa—$10 a month! And how about savage rhythm music and cannibalism?

  ‘Let’s look at some of the nigros’ heroes. George Washington Carver introduced the peanut, a plant whose vines soon killed off the cotton and made land worthless! Peanut vines wrapped themselves around the great heart of the South, choking her to death!’

  ‘By God, Wes, I never thought of that!’ The cellmate slapped his denimed thigh. ‘Peanuts!’

  ‘Statistics show,’ Wes read, ‘peanut brittle is a major cause of tooth decay in children, and peanut butter causes malnutrition.’ He looked up. ‘Ever notice how it sticks to the roof of your mouth?’

  ‘Like a parasite!’

  ‘Thou hast said it. It is a parasite, introduced by the nigger conspiracy to wipe us out. Kids have died injecting peanut butter into their veins! And think of the old people, struggling with glued-up dentures.’

  ‘By God, Wes, that’s right! Peanuts even have their own comic strip, I hear!’

  Wes read: ‘GET THE OLD PEOPLE AND CHILDREN FIRST, & YOU PARALYZE THE NATION. So goes the motto of the Great Nigro Conspiracy.’

  He was not reading to his cellmate to entertain or enlighten. The cellmate was educated. He helped ctiticize Wes’s style and grammar—and he knew a publisher.

  Sometimes the field of MacCormick Hines’s reality reversed, and he began to wonder if television weren’t real.

  ‘My dear,’ he said to the set, ‘I haven’t forgotten what you said that night. The night he died. That you’d give anything to get him back. And believe me, I’m working on just that.’

  ‘And cleaning the Thermo-K is no problem either,’ she replied. ‘Just push this button, and the blades slip into your dishwater. See how easy?’

  Sunday night was Veronica. ‘I’m sorry, Glen, but I don’t think you’re really serious about me as a person. Thanks anyway for showing me those movies.’

  Tuesday night was Karen. ‘Glen darling, let’s be reasonable I know your reputation, and I’m just not the kind of girl you want. But thanks all the same. For the champagne and all.’

  Wednesday night was Trudy. ‘Oh, Glen, I thought you were different!’

  Wendy, on Thursday night, was willing. Even on the tiny monitor screen, Feinwelt could see her face was going expressionless and tuned to receive. Glen bent over her, sucking at a bare shoulder.

  ‘That bitch!’ Feinwelt stubbed out a cigarette and reached for a toggle switch. ‘Takes three hundred bucks just to say no, and then gets hot pants all the same! Lucky I was watching tonight, instead of Hank. He’d let it get too far.’

  The timing had to be just right. Too soon and there would be a fresh start to the seduction. Too late and—too late. He waited.

  Feinwelt was being pulled too many ways. Late nights protecting his investment, afternoons patching up the damage he’d done Glen each night before, evenings working as counsellor for Transvestites Anonymous—he barely had time to change clothes, frames of reference.

  Awkwardly, Glen groped for a breast. Feinwelt threw the switch, and in the bedroom the huge color TV blazed on at top volume.

  Bette Cooke was stirring something in a saucepan. ‘THE MAN IN YOUR LIFE,’ she thundered, ‘WILL LOVE NEW INSTANT VEAL CUTLETS.’

  By the time Glen could turn it down the moment was past. Thinking of the three hundred yet to come, Wendy reached for her purse.

  ‘I’ve really got to go now, darling. It’s been sweet, but I’ve got this terrible headache. I think my period brings it on.’

  When she had left, Glen took off his gaucho hat and laid it in the exact middle of the bed. Without knowing quite why, he took all the cokes out of his bedside refrigerator, opened them and poured them on the hat.

  Bette Cooke was back on the screen again by the time he’d finished. She recommended that listeners give their menfolk a special treat tonight.

  Only the safety shield in front of the picture tube saved Bette from that flying bottle.

  One more week, Marge promised herself. One more week, and if that little snob didn’t write to his mother, he’d find himself yanked out of that damned ‘academy’ and sent to a school for mere human children. Where he couldn’t strut around in a uniform all day, snarling commands (as no doubt he was doing this minute), and lapping up all that West-Point-type glory. At eight years old, he wasn’t so much of an old campaigner that he couldn’t be bothered to scratch out a post card.

  Spot had his plan. Fouts seemed to be carrying on the school traditions, and television was forbidden (images of women), but cadets were after all encouraged to be religious. Spot simply waited until Billy Koch was on one channel, then watched whatever he wanted.

  It was the evening recreation hour, a time when cadets were inclined to find ways to be by themselves. Therefore the school was heavily patrolled by (pairs of) upper classmen, officers.

  Sensing rather than hearing their approach, Spot switched over from a cowboy program to Healing Hand and dropped to his knees before the set.

  ‘DON’T YOU KNOW ENOUGH TO STAND AT ATTENTION WHEN AN UPPER CLASSMAN ENTERS THE ROOM?’ said one of the two officers. It was Jerry Zurkenhall, a pimply fifteen-year-old who, it was said, had hair in the palm of his hand.

  Spot did not move or look around.

  ‘OKAY, I’M GIVING YOU FIFTEEN DEMERITS…’

  ‘Knock it off, Jerry,’ said the other. ‘You can’t give a guy demerits when he’s praying, stupid. It’s in the rules.’

  ‘Yeah? So who’s he praying to, Billy Koch? My old man works for him.’

  ‘No kidding?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s in computers.’ Jerry put his hairy palm on the doorknob.

  ‘Hey, what does a preacher need computers for? To give him hymn numbers? Hah haha hahaha…’

  The door closed and the two went off to harass someone else. Spot, anxious for the life of the Negro sheriff on channel two, switched over at once.

  ‘Here’s news for BUSY HOUSEWIVES! Have you tried my DIN-DIN? You know, each package of DIN-DIN contains everything you need for a meal with—mmmm—man appeal! You just add water through this little door in the convenient, no-mess foil pack, pop it in the oven—and Bette Cooke takes over! Then just sit back and let your men-folk fall in love with you all over again!’

  She was on the screen, serving dinner to a red-haired, freckle-faced boy with a disgusting grin, to a man who sniffed, went silly and rose to peck at her cheek. Mom’s face was soft with pleasure, as Spot had never seen it.

  Of course it was all acting, but still. Her letters never mentioned his letters. She ignored his plea to be allowed to come home again, she seemed unmoved by his stories of life at the academy. So here she was, living it up with television actors (and her last letter: ‘Guess what? Your Mom’s got a new job. But I guess you’re not very interested in that kind of news…guess you’re pretty busy with medals and marching bands and military balls…’) while Spot languished in prison, sweeping from the Northwest corner, mitering the corners of his bed…

  To the fading smile of Bette Cooke he whispered a threat, a curse that took in Fouts, the upper classmen, all mortal enemies.

  ‘I don’t care,’ it went. ‘I don’t care. My old man’s in computers, too.’

  Ank switched off the freeze-dried lemon meringue pie commercial before answering the door.

  ‘Ank Bullard? Package for you.’ It was the paint, the last thing he needed for his painting machine. Ank paid the COD charges and dragged the big box into his flat. Since his right shoulder still ached from the accident, he began mixing colors with his left hand.

  The accident had been a miracle. First, he’d come to in the hospital to find on his bedside table the very thing he’d have given a leg for: a reel of Müller-Fokker tape. And no one seemed to know who the anonymous donor was.

  Then, his second day in the hospital, there had
been a visitor with still another gift. He was a lawyer from the Billy Koch Crusade, and though he wanted Ank to understand his clients accepted no responsibility whatever, they were willing to pay him three thousand dollars over his hospital expenses if he would sign this waiver.

  Ank had given notice at the newspaper the day he came out. Today he was just an ex-art-critic. Tomorrow—even in a few hours—he would be a painter.

  The painting machine had a wheel to hold a thousand smears of color and a brush mounted on a pivoted arm. The brush could be moved along the arm by one motor, while a second motor worked the arm around on its pivot. A third rotated the paint wheel, or ‘auto-pallette’.

  Random numbers generated by the tape were fed into this system, controlling all three variables. The brush could dip up any color, transfer it to any of the hundred and fifty thousand positions over a prepared canvas, and dip again, leaving a dot. Between dottings, it moved through a powerful cleaning solution.

  This cartesian process would go on until either the canvas was completely covered or until Ank liked what he saw and stopped it. He called the process rand-pontillisme in advance, knowing how important it was for his former colleagues to have a name to fasten upon from the start. Ank was prepared to explain in detail the philosophy behind this ‘marriage of random number and Seurat, which guarantees all the benefits of luminosity, color and harmony’.

  Now he set it into motion. There were a hundred and fifty million potential paintings in there somewhere, a hundred and fifty million pure abstract patterns without ‘meaning’ or ‘intention’. What he would see, in just a few hours, would be the end of so-called Humanism, the end of sentiment and prejudice—the dawn of Mechanism.

  What he actually saw was a close copy of David’s Coronation of Napoleon. The details were blurry, but his painting differed from the original in only one respect.

  The archbishop’s face was modeled in bright greens.

  Ank tried a fresh canvas. The brush rose and fell, faster than the eye could follow, and a ‘Remington’ took shape: A mounted Indian wheeling his pony to fire an arrow into the flank of a galloping bison.

  Except the pony wasn’t wheeling and the bison did not gallop. Instead, both ‘stood on’, or were solidified into, thick furry pedestals.

  ‘Surrealism?’ he whimpered. ‘I’ve given up my whole career for this cheap surrealism?’

  I was almost time to go to Glen Dale’s party. He threw the two ruined canvases in the corner and went to wash his hands. Instead of shaving, he decided to have a drink somewhere.

  Seven

  In the corner by the fireplace, two Shriners were telling a Knight of Columbus about the possibility of a Vatican missile.

  ‘You must mean this,’ he said, hauling out a dog-eared mass book. ‘A missal.’

  ‘Naw, I got the straight word from a bishop. Says they’re gonna call it Miserecordia Dei.’

  ‘Yeah? Well all I can say is, somebody better say their prayers…’

  Two men in modified zoot suits stood arguing about a song recorded by Deef John Holler. A hideously fat woman in gold lamé and a stiff blonde wig watched them and, when they paused for breath, introduced herself as Columbine.

  Someone elsewhere swore the US Navy had already successfully teleported a ship from Philadelphia to Norfolk.

  ‘It fried the crew, though.’

  ‘England?’ asked the young man in the wicker suit. ‘Was that Norfolk, England?’ On learning it was Virginia, he seemed to lose interest in the story.

  On the mezzanine a new group called The World, The Flesh and Father Schmidt bombarded the guests with glare and noise:

  You know I got a little girl named Gladys?

  She give me such a ice cream

  So when I ask the neighbors what they want

  They tell me there’s no

  Ahhhhhhhss

  Cuh-ream-MUH!

  You caint go home dog

  YOU CAINT GO HOME DOG

  This cat done EAT up all my beans

  No one could hear the singer screaming these words to the old Deef John Holler tune, above the party sounds and the electronic background music provided by zither, serpent and white noise generator. But no one was listening, anyway.

  The man disguised as a hot dog (red-painted baldness; thick, bun-colored coat) was saying it was hard as hell to find a book worth publishing these days. ‘Just got one promising em-ess from a guy in prison. All about the black conspiracy. Oughta do the ton, easy.’ He went on to explain to his audience, two models in painful-looking tubular garments from Paris, that ‘the ton’ was a million copies.

  Behind him a professor of American Studies named Throgmorton thought someone had failed to make a distinction somewhere. ‘American Studies is not an all-embracing field,’ he corrected. ‘It is a much-embracing field. Take my own specialty, for example. I have written what I hope is the definitive catalogue of Little Moron Jokes.’

  ‘Indeed?’ The cryogenics man stood ready to feign interest.

  Someone asked where Feinwelt was, and someone replied, ‘Oh he never comes to these things. Always busy with his girl scouts, I guess.’

  ‘Yeah, what do they call it? Transvestites Anonymous?’

  Worried-looking Miss Columbine butted in to ask what a transvestite was.

  In another corner Mr Bradd told the gloomy TV producer how Marge had wanted to appear in commercials under her own name. ‘Can you slice that? Her own name! Marge> for Christ’s sake. The economy spread.’

  The gloomy producer nodded and went right on talking about his western series based on Huckleberry Finn, and entitled ‘Sheriff Jim’.

  Somewhere in the next room, the tall art critic with the ax-blade nose called someone a ‘reified cubist’.

  Mr Hackendorf, a civilian anthropologist attached to the staff of General Weimarauner, stood in the kitchen talking to Sir Somebody about the Seneca tribe. The general himself sat in the den, too near the harpsichord to hear what the lady with the jeweled face was saying about dogs. He was watching a pretty girl with a rather large and rigid jaw who stood in the doorway between the den and living room. She sipped her drink through a straw and conversed with a man in a feather cape.

  The art dealer lit a cigarette, holding it well away from his artificial feathers. ‘So what’s new, Myra?’

  ‘Net mech, Drew. Whet’s en et yr guellery?’

  ‘Nothing on at the moment. I’m looking for a show. Something really new. Anything but computer art. I’m so sick of—say, what happened to your jaw?’

  Myra explained that she’d had her jaw sectioned to correct an overbite. After sawing through on both sides, she said, they ‘pet en sem plestec enserts.’

  ‘That’s nothing. I had a pilonidal cyst removed about a month back. Jesus, I was sick for three days.’

  Glen was looking lonely, Mrya noticed. She excused herself and went over to talk to him.

  ‘Mester Dele? E meant te speak weth ye, abet…’

  ‘About the proofs for January? I know, Myra, I’ve already had a look at them. But can’t we talk about that some other time? If you’ll excuse me, there’s someone I wanted to see.’

  He resumed his lonely prowling of the penthouse rooms. There was no one he had to see, but Glen hated for it to look as if he had to talk to his own secretary. Hoping someone would remark on his square printer’s hat, folded from a sheet of Stagman, Glen crossed the living room and spoke to the old Negro by the door.

  Conspicuous in new bib overalls, new work shoes and no shirt, the old man sat with his chair tipped back against the wall. He seemed to be ignoring the entire party, possibly because the rest ignored him.

  ‘Hello,’ said Glen heartily. ‘Haven’t seen you here before.’ The old Negro did not look up or speak. Glen wondered uneasily if he might not be the Wrong Kind of spade. The Right Kind included jazz musicians, baseball players, poets, astronauts…

  ‘Friend of Bill Banks, are you?’

  No response. Glen resisted the temptat
ion to throw him out—it might look as if he didn’t like the Right Kind—and walked away, hiding his burning face in a drink. Ögivaal the architect caught his eye, but Glen continued on to the farthest part of the apartment. Ögivaal resumed his story:

  ‘…and it should have been a thirty, instead of a three.’

  Throgmorton leaned against the mantel. ‘That’s a shaggy-dog story,’ he told the cryogenics man. ‘I think you fail to make a distinction there.’

  ‘All right, how about this one, then? Why did the Little Moron take a ladder to the cat-house?’

  Ank came in, dropped a cigarette and bent in slow-motion to retrieve it.

  ‘That’s the so-called art critic who works for the Sun,’ said the tall man, jerking his ax-blade nose in Ank’s direction. ‘He thinks a Constable is an English cop.’

  The young man in the wicker suit opined that the English police were the best in the world.

  ‘Is that so?’ said the tall man. He extracted a cigarette from one sleeve of his worn, paint-splattered sweater. ‘Well, a friend of mine got busted by English fuzz for speeding, one night. They just about kicked his nuts off. As it happens, he’s black.’

  Six persons in the costumes of Egyptian priests moved together to the bathroom, where they rolled up their black-and-gold sleeves to bare arms no cleaner or healthier than those preserved in museums. One of them produced an anachronistic syringe.

  In the kitchen, Hackendorf was saying, ‘You’re right. The Seneca are, as you put it, unequalled in common sense. A magnificent tribe.’

  ‘Eh?’ Sir Somebody cupped a hand to his ear. ‘Damn that infernal music. Did you say Seneca was tripe?’