Candy

by Terry Southern

  “There’s a guy down this street supposed to have a ‘flying-carpet,’” said a big-stomached man wearing a floral sport shirt and smoking a cigar, “. . . gives six rupees to the buck too—I don’t like the black-market idea myself, but with these prices, who’s gotta choice? Know what I mean?” All this sort of talk just made Candy wring her hands in grief—she only hoped that the holy man hadn’t heard and become upset. She wanted to kiss him, or in some way reassure him, but was uncertain whether she should and so merely walked along slowly behind him.

  Although they were only about a block from the temple, the holy man’s progress was so astonishingly slow that an hour passed before they reached the great steps—whereupon the holy man, like a snail coming to an impasse, merely turned away and began to inch along in another direction. He wasn’t going to the temple after all! Good Grief! thought Candy, and at just that moment the temple clock sounded three and she remembered her appointment with the travel office—where she was to complete arrangements for her journey to Tibet—and she had to fly back down Zen Boulevard to the American Express.

  A week later, Candy had gotten herself a little attic room in Lhasa, the holy center of Tibet. The American Express in Lhasa had been extremely helpful in finding her a place where the landlady would bring Candy a bowl of porridge each morning in exchange for the girl’s assistance two hours a day in winding yak-yarn onto a spindle.

  The house was only a short distance from the fabulous temple of Zen-Dowa, and Candy went there every day for meditation, sitting before the huge image of Buddha and focusing all her attention on the nose tip of the great idol.

  When she arrived at the temple this afternoon, the sky above Lhasa was overcast deeply to the hue of rich slate, and Candy paused on the steps of the temple to look out at the snow-peaked mountains against this backdrop of foreboding; the white-top mountains appeared to her allegorically as the bright pinnacles of hope in a trouble-darkened world. She was extremely happy in her new life and did a little twirl of joy now on the great temple porch. The precious girl was still wearing the simple Cracker garment, which, as she twirled, billowed out to permit a glimpse of her darling dimpled knees and a marvelous and tantalizing bit above. It was then that she noticed, sitting in the corner, the holy man she had seen in Calcutta. How on earth had he gotten to Lhasa! Had he inched his way up the Himalayas? It looked as though he might have—he was enshelled in a crust of mud, dung and ash, his hair so matted that it was more like clay than anything else—and Candy was sure that he was in the coveted sixth stage of spiritual advancement; she herself was still always fresh and sweet. . . she had had six more of the simple Cracker shifts made and so she had a fresh change each day. She could not help staring in awe and reverence at this holy dung-man, who, as in Calcutta, seemed entirely unaware of her presence, either now or earlier when her twirl of joy had flashed a dazzling stretch of superb ivory thigh.

  Then it suddenly began to rain. The holy man was sitting near the edge of the porch, only half sheltered, and drops of rain were falling on him. Despite her shyness, Candy couldn’t bear the idea of his saintly dung-crust being damaged and she rushed over to him impulsively and began to pull him up and away toward the temple door. He was quite thin and pliable and made no resistance whatever, allowing himself to be taken inside the temple, and then seated beside the girl in front of the great image of the holy Buddha.

  Candy began her meditation at once, concentrating all her attention on the single spot, the tip of Buddha’s nose. It was wonderful for her—all her life it had always been she who had been needed by someone else—mostly boys—and now at last she had found someone that she herself needed . . . Buddha! And yet, because of her early orientation, of always being the needed one (except by Daddy!), there was something vaguely dissatisfying and incomplete about it. If only the Buddha needed her! But she knew of course that this was a silly feeling and would in time be overcome. She had already begun to think of the Buddha in a personal, almost human way. “My big friend,” she sometimes said to herself. She glanced at the holy man sitting beside her. He seemed to be paying no attention to her or Buddha, but was simply gazing ahead, into infinity it seemed, while on the roof of the temple now the rain beat down terrifically and an occasional gigantic clap of thunder seemed to make the huge structure shudder to its foundations.

  Candy returned her thought and concentration to the Buddha’s nose, and put every last ounce of her little meditative power into it—and at that very instant a fantastic thing happened: an astounding crash of sound that seemed to split the earth itself and a tremendous flash of fire which filled the great vaulted roof of the temple while everything around seemed to sway and crumple as though the end of the world had surely come—for the great temple had been struck by lightning! Above them the huge Buddha loomed uncertainly for a breathtaking moment, then, in monumental slow motion, it toppled forward, pitching headlong to the temple floor in a veritable explosion.

  Although it seemed to fall right on top of them, Candy and the holy man were miraculously unscathed, and were left bunched together, half buried in the rubble. In the tumult of the crash, Candy had been flung against the holy man frontally so that now they were pressed tightly together lengthwise. It was extremely awkward, for the young girl’s shift had been forced well above her waist and her shapely bare limbs now were locked about the holy man’s loins. She struggled to free herself but this only succeeded in agitating her precious and open honeypot against the holy man’s secret parts—which were now awakening after so many years and slowly breaking through the rotten old loincloth that swaddled them! Good Gosh, thought Candy, when she realized what was happening, and in fact, felt the holy man’s taut member ease an inch or two into her tight little lamb-pit. She quickly turned her head to see behind her and to determine what was pinioning them there. And she saw that a part of the huge Buddha had just missed them by inches, and was pressing firmly against her back; it seemed to be balanced in a precarious way and in danger of slipping—and, even as she thought this, she saw that it was in fact slipping, forward, and against her; it was a section of her beloved Buddha’s face—the nose! And a truly incredible thing was happening—it was slipping into Candy’s marvelous derriere! “Good Grief!” said the girl, half aloud, trying to move forward a little—which merely had the effect of securely embedding the holy man’s member deeply into her ever-sweetening pudding-pie.

  Above them the lightning bolt had opened a sizable hole at the top of the roof and the summer rain was pouring in on them now in torrents. It had wetted the tip of the Buddha’s nose, which did seem, thus lubricated, to be undeniable as it moved slowly into Candy’s coyly arched tooky—the warm wet nose of Buddha, the beloved spot of her meditation! Not a wholly unpleasant sensation for the adorable girl as it gracefully eased into her perfect bottom; and it was then that she realized, with the same lightning force of miracle which had split the roof, that wonder of wonders, the Buddha, too, needed her! And so with a sigh of indulgence she stopped her shy squirming and gave herself up fully to her idol, one hand behind her, stroking his cheek, as she gradually began the esoteric Exercise Number Four—and only realizing after a minute that this movement was having a definite effect on the situation in her honey-cloister as well, forcing the holy man’s member deeply in and out as it did, and she turned to him at once, wanting to tell him that it wasn’t meant the way it seemed certainly, but she was stricken stone dumb by what she saw—for the warm summer rain had worked its wonders there as well, washing the crust of dung and ash away completely, leaving the face clean, bright, and all too recognizable, as the eyes glittered terrifically while the hopeless ecstasy of his huge pent-up spasm began, and sweet Candy’s melodious voice rang out through the temple in truly mixed feelings:

  GOOD GRIEF—IT’S DADDY!”

  A Biography of Terry Southern

  Terry Southern (1924–1995) was an American satirist, author, journalist, screenwriter, and educator and is considered one of the great literar
y minds of the second half of the twentieth century. His bestselling novels—Candy (1958), a spoof on pornography based on Voltaire’s Candide, and The Magic Christian (1959), a satire of the grossly rich also made into a movie starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr—established Southern as a literary and pop culture icon. Literary achievement evolved into a successful film career, with the Academy Award–nominated screenplays for Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), which he wrote with Stanley Kubrick and Peter George, and Easy Rider (1969), which he wrote with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper.

  Born in Alvarado, Texas, Southern was educated at Southern Methodist University, the University of Chicago, and Northwestern, where he earned his bachelor’s degree. He served in the Army during World War II, and was part of the expatriate American café society of 1950s Paris, where he attended the Sorbonne on the GI Bill. In Paris, he befriended writers James Baldwin, James Jones, Mordecai Richler, and Christopher Logue, among others, and met the prominent French intellectuals Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus. His short story “The Accident” was published in the inaugural issue of the Paris Review in 1953, and he became closely identified with the magazine’s founders, Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton, who became his lifelong friends. It was in Paris that Southern wrote his first novel, Flash and Filigree (1958), a satire of 1950s Los Angeles.

  When he returned to the States, Southern moved to Greenwich Village, where he took an apartment with Aram Avakian (whom he’d met in Paris) and quickly became a major part of the artistic, literary, and music scene populated by Larry Rivers, David Amram, Bruce Conner, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Jack Kerouac, among others. After marrying Carol Kauffman in 1956, he settled in Geneva until 1959. There he wrote Candy with friend and poet Mason Hoffenberg, and The Magic Christian. Carol and Terry’s son, Nile, was born in 1960 after the couple moved to Connecticut, near the novelist William Styron, another lifelong friend.

  Three years later, Southern was invited by Stanley Kubrick to work on his new film starring Peter Sellers, which became, Dr. Strangelove. Candy, initially banned in France and England, pushed all of America’s post-war puritanical buttons and became a bestseller. Southern’s short pieces have appeared in the Paris Review, Esquire, the Realist, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour, Argosy, Playboy, and the Nation, among others. His journalism for Esquire, particularly his 1962 piece “Twirling at Ole Miss,” was credited by Tom Wolfe for beginning the New Journalism style. In 1964 Southern was one of the most famous writers in the United States, with a successful career in journalism, his novel Candy at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and Dr. Strangelove a hit at the box office.

  After his success with Strangelove, Southern worked on a series of films, including the hugely successful Easy Rider. Other film credits include The Loved One, The Cincinnati Kid, Barbarella, and The End of the Road. He achieved pop-culture immortality when he was featured on the famous album cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. However, despite working with some of the biggest names in film, music, and television, and a period in which he was making quite a lot of money (1964–1969), by 1970, Southern was plagued by financial troubles.

  He published two more books: Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes (1967), a collection of stories and other short pieces, and Blue Movie (1970), a bawdy satire of Hollywood. In the 1980s, Southern wrote for Saturday Night Live, and his final novel, Texas Summer, was published in 1992. In his final years, Southern lectured on screenwriting at New York University and Columbia University. He collapsed on his way to class at Columbia on October 25, 1995, and died four days later.

  The Southern home in Alvarado, Texas, seen here in the 1880s.

  A young Southern with a dog in Alvarado, his hometown, around 1929.

  Terry Southern Sr. with his son in Dallas, around 1930.

  Southern’s yearbook photo from his senior year at Sunset High in 1941.

  Southern before World War II. He was able to use the GI Bill to spend four years studying in Paris.

  Southern’s 1949 student ID card from the Sorbonne. While abroad, he met many of the people with whom he would collaborate, including Henry Green, Richard Seaver, Alex Trocchi, William Burroughs, Ted Kotcheff, George Plimpton, and Mason Hoffenberg, with whom he wrote Candy (1958).

  The first ever issue of the Paris Review (Spring 1953), which included Southern’s short story “The Accident.”

  Outside Gaudí’s Sagrada Família Church in Barcelona in 1954. (Photo by Pud Gadiot.)

  Terry and Carol Southern in Paris in 1956.

  A page from the original draft of Flash and Filigree written between 1952 and 1957.

  Working on The Magic Christian galleys in Geneva in 1958.

  Gore Vidal’s rave write-up of The Magic Christian (1959), written on the back of a starched shirt backing. Vidal writes, “Terry Southern is the most profoundly witty writer of our generation . . .”

  The telegram that changed everything. This communiqué from Stanley Kubrick invited Southern to come to London to work on Kubrick’s new screenplay for the movie Dr. Strangelove (1964). Southern was instrumental in transforming the film from a political thriller into a satire.

  Southern and his son, Nile, in Central Park in 1967. (Photo by Michael Cooper.)

  From left to right: William S. Burroughs, Terry Southern, Allen Ginsberg, and Jean Genet, covering the National Democratic Convention for Esquire in Chicago, 1968. (Photo by Michael Cooper.)

  Southern with his dog, Hunter, in Canaan, Connecticut, in the 1980s. (Photo by Nile Southern.)

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1958, 2000 by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg

  cover design by Milan Bozic

  978-1-4532-1742-9

  This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media

  180 Varick Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com