Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me Page 23
He had attempted to singe Kristin’s knee-socks with the temperature of a parting glance as he passed, but she failed to notice. Punish her with my absence. That Tampax story, man, got to get things a little bit clear, knowledge of the taut membrane ought to stay in front. Celebrate the passion with blood is where it’s at, closest they come to crucifixion, atonement for the old forbidden fruit. He purged the pockets of carbon dioxide in his lungs and sucked a little pure ambrosia, Mixture Sixty-nine, cut with the remains of a paregoric Pall Mall. All natural goodness, no carburetion. He kept it down until his temperature changed, a vague swelling at the temples. Then he stuffed his ears with Q-tips to keep away the outside world and read for an hour, not even rising when he sensed a pounding on the door.
Later he realized he’d been scanning the same paragraph two or three hundred times, so he stumbled into the kitchen and called Fitzgore. He was slightly higher than an Indian elephant’s eye.
“What’s the matter with you?” came Kristin’s voice. “Fitzgore’s been in the infirmary for weeks.” She was searching in the refrigerator for food, and everyone else had gone.
“Hey, Piglet, where you been?”
“Well, I couldn’t get into the goddamned bathroom, so I had to use the Rajamuttus’.”
“That’s not what I meant, man, where you been, anyway?” He teetered slightly and his lids were annoyingly heavy.
“Getting my thing. It always comes early when something exciting’s going on like this. Is there any of that Greek cheese?”
“Your thing, man?”
“My period.”
“Oh, that’s lovely. Really sweet.”
“Am I supposed to apologize or something?”
“You signed out last night, man, what’s going on?”
She had taken off her knee-socks and was barefoot in a summer dress. “Who told you that?”
“Never mind, baby, just don’t put me on.”
She paused with a marinated artichoke heart. “You’re not jealous, honey? I mean, how flattering—”
“An’ cut out that honey stuff, okay? Sounds like a goddamned housewife.”
“I thought you liked it. Say, these things are good.”
“Lot of shit, that honey business. Sweetie pie. Lambkins.”
“Are you drunk, Gnossos?”
“Honey bunch. Angel.”
“Are you?” In her free hand she was holding a list of faculty names.
“C’mon baby, you got a nose.”
“Oh, Pooh, dammit, I thought you’d stopped that.”
“Yeah, that’s right, it’s the new me. C’mere, wanna feel you up.” He tripped and crashed against the refrigerator door, giggling.
“Don’t be so rough, please. God, if you could only see your eyes.”
“What, man?”
“I don’t like it.”
She doesn’t like it. All of a goddamned sudden she doesn’t like it. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Are you going to get all paranoiac now?”
“Paranoiac? Who the hell is paranoiac? And where the hell were you last night, what’s going on round here?”
“In the dorms of course, silly. Did Judy Lumpers tell you I’d signed out? I was making posters for the demonstration, that’s all.”
“Oh yeah? Well, dump the demonstration, right? All that Junta business, Ladies’-tea-society crap, meetings, what are you, some kind of Florence Nightingale under Oeuf, man?” Her expression changing. Ha.
“I thought you were interested in what we’re doing!”
Don’t get her too twisted, be cryptic. “You’ve been putting me on is all.”
“I’m not putting you—”
“Fool with me, I’ll break your arm, right?”
“Gnossos,” putting down her list where he couldn’t read it, “what in heaven’s name is wrong with you?”
“Nothing, right? Just c’mere, got a little something to give you.”
“You’re not being at all nice just now.”
“Cyclical phase, periodical, speaking of which—”
“Here I was, so pleased that they printed the letter verbatim, and everything—”
“Fuck the letter.”
“Gnossos, bite your tongue. I really wish you wouldn’t curse so damned much, really. Do you have any cigarettes?”
“No. And double-fuck the letter. Not like me, see? Where the hell were you this afternoon at three, and what’s going on with all these scheming maniacs? I don’t like any of this organizational thing happening, see, I mean how the hell did it get to be everybody’s big hangup all of a sudden?”
“It wasn’t sudden, silly. When I suggested it, you—”
“Look, I wrote the letter, right? Rest is up to all the gung-ho troopers. You and me are Exempt, perfectly Immune. C’mere.”
“You’re too high for that, please.”
“You telling me no, man?”
“Please, Pooh Bear.”
“I have to ask now?”
“Gnossos, stop.”
He took a long drag on the remains of his reignited joint and tossed the roach into the sink. In the slippery gray coil of his intestines he felt a coming ugliness. He wondered, in actual fact, what he was doing.
Still later, of course, when she had electrified his mind’s eye with subtle hints of post-period pleasures and their bellies were swollen with stuffed lamb shoulder and braised Salonika peppers, he read to her in the narrow, gray-sheeted bed. To oblige him, she had taken off her clothes, and sure enough she had her thing. The farther he could travel from the letter in the Sun the better, and he read in an apologetic, childlike voice, trying to conjure up the whole Pooh Corner syndrome with inflection alone. “‘Chapter Four,”’ he continued. “‘In Which Rastus Loses a Tail and Pooh Finds One.”’
“Will you show me the good pictures when you come to them?”
“Sure thing, ducks,” still high, but coming down. “‘The Old Brown Workhorse, Rastus, stood by himself in a thorny corner of the woods, his front feet sort of pigeon-toed, his head to one side, and considered the Situation. Sometimes he thought oddly to himself, Nowhere, and sometimes he thought, Later . . . ”’ He read on, tilting his own furry head from side to side, using different voices for all the animals, showing her the drawings of Rastus staring back through his front legs, looking for the missing tail.
“‘. . . And so at last, down and somewhat out, to the Thousand Acre Plantation. For it was on the Plantation that Topsy . . . ’”
Yet it was nothing like a workhorse or a Topsy—nothing either of them could name except in the dimmest, least accessible part of his consciousness, the semisweet darkness where its warning had been so insidiously whispered. It came at the moment when Immunity was surrendered and no guard or shield held out against its force. It came swooping in through the windows and doors, through fissures in the wall, out of the septic breath of the commode. It came with the force and intention of violent death, and its malevolent presence could be no less ignored. They lurched bolt upright in bed, twisting every which way to find it, holding out their hands for pathetic protection, the book falling to the floor and bouncing shut. Sounds of untempered fear fled their throats, primitive cries they might have uttered in their sleep, being thrown awake by some jarring, physical horror. Yet they were awake.
Pooh, honest to God, she murmured, clutching him fiercely, I felt something come into the room.
The blood chilled instantly in Gnossos’ loins, his scalp cringed, as if being crawled over by scaly centipedes. The room might have been torn loose from underneath, pushed up into the night by the force of some titanic hand, sent slowly revolving through the etherous void.
Who’s there? he called, his voice faltering. Who is it?
Yet the doors and windows were shut, had never been opened, and the question, like the presence which coiled itself so suddenly into the blackest corner of the room, was absurd.
Oh my God, Pooh, I think it’s sitting right there.
Then Gnossos, in the same mind’s eye which had been appealed to so sensuously moments before, saw superimposed a malignant vista. A wild, impetuous scream gathered strength in his lungs but wouldn’t escape, and he shuddered spasmodically.
What, she asked, twisting her hair and trembling, what is it?
I saw something, baby, Holy Christ, man, I saw it all right there.
Oh God, Gnossos, in the room?
He spoke barely loud enough to be heard, his pupils distending fiercely. In my head, baby, but it’s really there. Oh shit.
Listen, Gnossos, listen to me, are you listening?
He tried to nod but nothing happened.
I think I saw it too, really, oh God, was it a cave, tell me, because I think I’m going crazy.
He touched his lips together and said: A monkey.
Oh my God, yes, coming out of a cave.
Like a mandrill, came the thought, heinous, rabid, depraved . . .
I don’t feel well, Gnossos . . .
An Oriental vista, mountains vanishing in color and smoke, a plain, a mesa . . .
She sank against him in a half swoon, her body going clammy and limp. The smell in the room was overwhelming. All at once he could no longer bear it.
“Annhh!” Gnossos leapt free of the bed and grabbed an andiron, flicking on the lamp in the rice-paper globe. Then another light and still another, until the apartment was brilliant, shadowless, overt. He jumped all around, pants falling down, wielding the andiron, his hair standing on end, his flesh glistening with goosebumps. “C’mon. C’mon, goddammit, c’mon—”
But there was nothing, only the odor. He ran to the kitchen, prancing, lifting his heels like a terrified satyr, then to the bathroom until no light was left turned off. Finally to the record player, where in a compulsive seizure he put on the overture to La Traviata. But it failed to help. Kristin revived with a lanquid moan and he searched closets vainly for some liquor, always glancing back over his shoulder.
“Ohhhhh, Gnossos,” she called, and began to sob. “What in God’s name is it? Let’s get out of here, please . . . ” He tossed her shoes and knee-socks onto the bed, then pranced back into the kitchen: Don’t be hysterical, baby, I’ll go out of my skull if you get hysterical. Under the sink, maybe it’s there. In the commode. Oh go away, for Christ’s sake, leave. Eeeee.
He turned on all the faucets and flushed the toilet, but still it wouldn’t budge. “It wants us out, Gnossos,” Kristin wailed from the other room, “it really does, can’t you feel it?” He pulled on his baseball cap, took the rucksack from its nail, and grabbed her by the hand, never for an instant putting down the andiron. They ran across the room, tripping over a fold in the Navajo rug, then had a moment of panic as the lock stuck on the door.
“Oh God, what’s the matter, can’t you get it open, let me hold the andiron.”
“Easy, for Christ’s sake, don’t go crazy, just take it easy.”
George and Irma Rajamuttu were cowering in the hall, obviously aware of the demonic invasion, their faces pale, their eyes aghast, their jaundiced fingers clutching robes at their throats. Kristin screamed unmercifully when she saw them.
Fitzgore’s Impala was at the curb and he helped her in, seconds before she fainted on the seat. He dropped the keys on the floor, nearly ruptured a blood vessel searching, inserted them upside down in the ignition, stalled the engine twice, and finally drove to Guido’s Grill at eighty-seven miles an hour.
When they were calm enough to take a table the waitress did not want to serve them.
“I said, get her a double bourbon, baby, or I’ll cut out your polluted kidneys, right?”
“Disgraceful, where’s her shoes and socks, anyway?” Kristin had forgotten to put them on. Gnossos lifted an empty bottle with a candle in the neck and aimed it at the window. The waitress ran.
After the bourbon, color seeped back into Kristin’s face, but with the return of familiar surroundings came intensified fear. She began to weep uncontrollably and everyone stared. “The monkey,” she sobbed passionately, “it wants to kill me.” And with a vehement shriek she went hysterical. The waitress came waddling over, waving towels.
“What the hell’s the matter with the girl, anyway, is she nuts or something? Why is she laughing like a maniac?”
“Get out of here, man, go away!”
“I’m gonna call the cops, this is ridiculous.”
Gnossos slapped Kristin on the cheek. She stopped laughing, started again, then began to cry. He carried her to the car, staggering under the dead weight, and drove back to the dorms. At the entrance to Circe III she lost all control, wet her pants, and he could no longer handle her.
The coed at the sign-in desk came running out, full of alarm, rubbing her hands on her hips. “Is anything wrong? What’s the matter with her?”
He had her call Judy Lumpers, who after a nerve-wracking pause came skipping into the courtyard with Jack jumping along behind.
“Later,” he told them, to avoid a discussion, “just take care of her, okay?”
“What’s the matter with your place, for Christ’s sake?” asked Jack, suspecting that the girl had been screwed half to death. Judy was slipping an arm around Kristin’s waist, feeling her head for fever.
“Please,” he said. “I’ll come by in the morning.”
When he turned back to the dormitory parking lot, there was a prowl car waiting. Proctor Slug, in a fedora, was getting out one door and a police sergeant out the other. Behind them was the Impala, with two wheels up on the curb. The tires were hot and rubbery, and the brakes smelled of scorched lining. Gnossos was barefoot, his corduroys were down around his hips, his shirt was torn open in half a dozen places. He also reeked of bourbon. Slug and the sergeant approached him from both sides.
“We’ve been meaning to talk with you, Pappadopoulis,” said the sergeant, “about a little matter of stolen Italian statues from the Christmas manger last year.”
“Sacrilege,” said Proctor Slug, sliding his bear-paw hands into the outside pockets of his jacket.
Gnossos closed his eyes and sighed wearily, a sigh of indignant hatred. Measuring his words, using a sonorous low voice, he said:
“Not now. Any time but now.”
The barely audible statement stopped the two men. Embarrassed, the sergeant told him: “Funny boy.”
Gnossos pointed a trembling finger at the man’s Adam’s apple, his arm rigid. “If you touch me now,” he said in an even lower tone, “so help me Jesus, one of you will get a testicle torn up.”
“Watch that talk,” said Slug. But he backed off.
Gnossos walked between them to the Impala, got in, and drove away. Of all the noplaces he could go, one was better than most.
15
Blacknesse listened silently to the story, moving nothing but the tips of his paint-stained fingers. He was fondling an orange and fuchsia ping-pong ball. He wore a faded linen Nehru jacket, mandarin collar, white cotton trousers, and buffalo-hide sandals. He maintained the full lotus on a cobraskin stool. Next to him was the small colony of carnivorous plants, each of which had grown a number of inches. A single ultraviolet light burned palely from a socket in the eye of a nickel toad, bringing to life the dormant creatures in the depths and planes of the wall paintings. Sprung from the surface of their canvas, they dipped and swung in the medium of short-wave light, as fully dimensional as the mackerel on David Grün’s ceiling. In this same visible intensity Gnossos’ face looked electric baby-blue, his lips maroon. He was barefoot, naked from the waist up, although Beth had silently draped a paisley shawl around his shoulders as he entered the house, shivering. He had stepped gingerly over the tiger-shaped flags
tones, and shielded his eyes from the enamel masks hanging in the pines. When he finished the story the muscles were twitching in his cheeks and his gaze shifted continually from windows to closet doors.
Blacknesse made no sound but he listened to Gnossos’ breathing long enough for both of them to become conscious of the silence. Finally he raised the ping-pong ball, cocked it by his ear, and flicked it gently into the cushioning air. The distorted light on the falling ball brought the memory of another arching sphere within the field of uneasy vision. A pearl, small and gleaming, plunging through the opaque abyss of a nearly eternal Adirondacks night.
But this time it landed gently on the warmer weave of a saffron rug. “It all seems quite familiar,” spoke Blacknesse, reflecting.
Gnossos exhaled carefully, the way he might have tested for residual paregoric fumes, but he said nothing.
“Her and not yourself,” continued the painter. “That much ought to be clear.”
“Sure thing, man.”
“Do you know what I’m talking about? The monkey. It wanted to kill her.”
“So why not? All the signs were there.” The hair stood on the back of his neck and he smoothed it down, at the same time catching sight of an evil specter creeping from under the ocher muff, which turned out to be Apricot, the cat.
“Yet I fail to understand precisely why.”
“You’ve got company.”
“No. I mean, why her and not yourself?”
“Well somebody knows, man, only don’t look at me, I’ve got my own problems. Here, Apricot, nice pussy.”
“It came from a cave?”
“Yeah, a cave, a hole, some kind of opening, you know, full of smells.”
“It seems so familiar.”
Apricot sniffed his feet and crawled away. “And cut out that familiar crap, all right? You’re scaring the shit out of me.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”