In the mirror Mr. More saw his wife bound out of Her bed (3672: the covers flapped like brown bats), race across the cold Montina squares like a cowardly Queen, and dive like perhaps Ty Cobb beneath His (40x80: the floor was 3-D, no goggles required, sparkly pearls in yellow phlegm). "Kamikaze cantcatchme!" she yelled in transit. Then, sweetly, from under the bed: "You remember when the kids brought that puppy home last week...?"
He opened a drawer and replaced his toothpick-file in the case among the rest, just below the rat"s-tail and just above the camel-hair navel-lint brush, slipping it into its loop like a toe into Indian sandals. (His pride was the two-foot-long emery board he"d bought off an elephant manicurist when the circus was in town.) "Sure do," he said. "And a sweet, soft little thing it was, too."
"Yes, it was, wasn"t it?" Her hand crawled out from under the bed, crept across the linoleum-then went scuttling back sideways, back under the bed, leaving behind something that looked like a misanthropic b.u.t.terfly: her rainbow bra. The games were beginning, the Sunday games. The games. "But they wouldn"t eat a thing afterward, remember? They"re just going to have to start eating regularly, Bruce." She always p.r.o.nounced his name to rhyme with cruise cruise. "Three meals a day, no snacks, get their vitamins, get their iron. Can"t let them wreck their health." Again the hand came creeping out only to dash back to safety. But it left behind, this time, two sharp rubber cones with plastic warts on the ends. The warts, Mr. More thought, were like hard pink raisins. Or like, perhaps, Bing cherries impaled on the ends of ice-cream cones.
"I think you"re right," he said to his wife. "I"ll talk to them about it this evening." He opened the velvet-lined jade-and-ivory case which squatted with springy S legs on top of the dresser, as though it were about to hop off. He took out his Sunday eyes and put them on. They were made to resemble the eyes of a potato ("The potato is an innocent fruit") and were gold, 23 carats fine (the 24th part being const.i.tuted of tiny silver stars). They stuck out from his face like mutant, misshapen corkscrews. He turned his face from side to side, admiring himself in the mirror. "Yes-sir," he said, "first thing this evening." (Page 654: "The casual ease of early evening is the most propitious time for family conference, and the dinner table perhaps affords the most comfortable and accessible opportunity.") This time the hand rushed out rushed out (nails clattering on the floor) and (nails clattering on the floor) and crept back crept back (dragging its thumb). A (dragging its thumb). A tempo tempo was being established. Smack in the center of one of the Montina squares now, floating in the phlegm, were two mounds of collapsing flesh. Two dimples with Scripto erasers inside, Mr. More thought. Or demita.s.se saucers with little prunes on them inside the darker cup-ring. Or a plastic dog dish. A pale smear of blood tracked back toward the bed, mixing already with the phlegm, thinning the fluid, which then overflowed into the room, bearing chunks of pearl that whirled and spun like leaves, clicking against the doors pipes bureau bed shoes. was being established. Smack in the center of one of the Montina squares now, floating in the phlegm, were two mounds of collapsing flesh. Two dimples with Scripto erasers inside, Mr. More thought. Or demita.s.se saucers with little prunes on them inside the darker cup-ring. Or a plastic dog dish. A pale smear of blood tracked back toward the bed, mixing already with the phlegm, thinning the fluid, which then overflowed into the room, bearing chunks of pearl that whirled and spun like leaves, clicking against the doors pipes bureau bed shoes.
"And they"ll listen, too," Mr. More said. "Or no more TV." (Page 4: "The simplest punishment is often the most effective.") He removed hair eyebrows ears and put on his skullcap (ibid.). Then he stood staring in the mirror for several seconds. Finally, he reached up and removed his nose, moving it to the tip of his chin. Much better. Much Much better. A better. A timbre timbre to match the to match the tempo tempo.
Again the hand: the dash, the creeping retreat. So bold, so coy, so like a Restoration lady. Lace pants this time: a small pile of cobwebs on the floor. As he watched they dampened, dissolved, joined the blood and phlegm, strings of stuff like seaweed. The floor was yellow going orange, of a starchy consistency. That is to say, sticky sticky.
"I think that"s enough, don"t you, Dear?" Mr. More said. "Shouldn"t you stop now?" He walked back to the mirror and, one by one, unsheathed his teeth. They clicked, one by one, into the porcelain sink, almost invisible. White. White.
"Are you ready then, Darling?" his wife said. And then the surrender, the sweet surrender, ahhh, as one by one her legs came sliding across the floor and b.u.mped with soft thuds (like huge spaghettis) into the waterpipes, splashing the orange blood-phlegm up onto the base of the walls to water the orchids blooming there. Sucking sounds. A toe fell off, and the toenail off that. Mr. More picked the nail up and put it in his pocket; it would make a good pick when, later, he played his harp, plucking the strings one by one.
He kicked the legs aside.
"Yes, Darling, I"m ready," he said.
"Then call the children." (Page 456, right before the good parts: "Whenever and wherever possible, satisfy the children"s curiosity as to what goes on behind closed, adult doors; at all costs, avoid deepening this curiosity, this wanting-to-belong.") Mr. More called the children and together they hauled her body up onto the bed-it was covered with cobwebs-and he beat her with the olive branches and peeled willow wands he kept in the cupboard while the children watched and applauded. She screamed magnificently this time; her body oozed phlegm and later gave out great clouds of dust that looked like brown feathers.
Later he played the harp with his teeth and the children applauded again. And after that, with toothpicks and red wax off Gouda cheese, they put her back together again. However. That is to say, all but one hand and a toenail. Mr. More kept the toenail and had a ring made out of it. And they finally found the hand when, late that night, it crawled into bed with one of the children (Tom, the oldest).
That night at dinner (veal in ketchup and chowder in powdered milk) he gave them all a stern talking-to (op. cit.). And the next day, Monday (which was, incidentally, Columbus Day), he hired a new maid. She had white white teeth and flat nails, her hips were like a saddle, her nipples like chianti corks.
Genevieve was her name and the children loved her.
Afterword.
a les etrangers It"s March 16, 1970. Ten in the morning, three hours" sleep, the telephone rings. Harlan has somehow, how the h.e.l.l, found out where I am. He"s calling from the other side of the States, has to have this afterword, "Get to a typewriter somehow and get it to me tomorrow." And, Do you have a woman in bed with you; No, she had to go to work-and he"s off the line. So I"m sitting there on the bed half-awake trying to remember what he said. I"m not used to being up before two or three, and New York mornings are worse than most. And they"re all pretty horrible.
Now I"m at Port Authority on my way out of New York. Thinking about a poem by Tadeusz Rozewicz,
I am twenty-four led to slaughter I survived -and something Wallace Stevens said, that when belief in external reality collapses we must feed upon our own minds. But: how long will they last. I just called my agents. No news? No news. I"m on my way out of town again. Are you reachable?
It"s two in the afternoon. I"m writing this on Algonquin stationery, which is where I was staying when Harlan found me; on a credit card because I"ve had no money for months now. The stationery"s on a Mickey Spillane novel and there"s a book of French poetry, Guillevic, under that. Friends came in from London (where these stories were finally written) yesterday. I"m leaving for the Continent, and Poland, in a few months but have to go to Nashville first, on business. On the way here I stopped off on 42nd Street to buy a new knife. A sign on the shop window read Ici parlons Francais Ici parlons Francais and the clerk and I spoke Spanish as he showed me the case of knives. An Italian stiletto; you can use the blade-lock to make it work like a switchblade, just as fast. New York terrifies me. and the clerk and I spoke Spanish as he showed me the case of knives. An Italian stiletto; you can use the blade-lock to make it work like a switchblade, just as fast. New York terrifies me.
-And that, Harlan, is somehow what it"s all about.
Pokoj. Mito.
James Sallis
Introduction to ELOUISE AND THE DOCTORS OF THE PLANET PERGAMON.
As I have never met Josephine Saxton, author of the most most remarkable story that follows, I can only report that she is agented (skillfully) by Ms. Virginia Kidd, to date she has had two books published ( remarkable story that follows, I can only report that she is agented (skillfully) by Ms. Virginia Kidd, to date she has had two books published (The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith [Doubleday, 1969] and a collection, [Doubleday, 1969] and a collection, Vector for Seven Vector for Seven [Doubleday, 1970]), and she is one of the most chillingly original writers I"ve ever read. I would tell you more, but I think Ms./Mr. Saxton (you"ll understand my confusion momentarily) can say all that need be said of her/himself on her/his own. You see, I have at hand 4 count "em 4 introductions. Also 4 Afterwords. I"ve become prudent in my declining years, and so, without further to-do, here is The Five Foot Shelf of Saxton Introductions. [Doubleday, 1970]), and she is one of the most chillingly original writers I"ve ever read. I would tell you more, but I think Ms./Mr. Saxton (you"ll understand my confusion momentarily) can say all that need be said of her/himself on her/his own. You see, I have at hand 4 count "em 4 introductions. Also 4 Afterwords. I"ve become prudent in my declining years, and so, without further to-do, here is The Five Foot Shelf of Saxton Introductions.
1 Josephine Saxton is really a man who asks us not to publish his real name. He took this nom-de-plume in order to get published in what he describes as "this Age of The Great Mother." The few details we can publish reveal that he keeps a grocery store, plays bowls at the weekends and is married with a teenage daughter who plans to be a secretary. He has done no other kind of work, having inherited the store, and goes to Blackpool for his holidays every year. His novel The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith came out in August "69 from Doubleday, to be followed soon by came out in August "69 from Doubleday, to be followed soon by The Weltanschauung of Mrs. Amelia Mortimer and Friends The Weltanschauung of Mrs. Amelia Mortimer and Friends. He says he does not know where he gets his ideas from, they just come to him, as he weighs out dry goods.
2 Josephine Saxton is the Grandma Moses of the new writers, having just celebrated her 77th birthday. She has been married nine times and has fifteen grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. She has finally given up the idea of Marriage As A Way Of Life and has taken vows in the monastery of Kali-Lung-Gompoo in Tibetan Turkestan where she writes novels and stories in between meditating. She began writing only four years ago to fill in the winter evenings and to prevent herself from becoming a cabbage. She describes herself as "phenomenally ugly-four feet six inches in my naked bunions, bald as a melon-and I didn"t get my figure back after the twins, which were the tenth." She writes to us with fascinating hints of developing powers under her Teacher at the monastery, things like seeing life on other planets, killing yaks ten miles away by a thought thought and levitation. and levitation.
Her favourite food is tsampa tsampa and her only ambition now is to get herself off the cycle of birth and rebirth. and her only ambition now is to get herself off the cycle of birth and rebirth.
She sends a special blessing to all her readers, and has written out a special ticket for them to attach to her prayer wheel.
3 Josephine Saxton is thirty-four and married to a genius painter and has three children, one boy is going to be a TV comic, the second boy a poet and drag-stripper, and the girl a prima donna ballerina. She has done many of the things one reads of writers except travel, but this will be rectified in due course, a good start having been made with the trip to the States in August 1969. She is a native of Halifax in Yorkshire and identifies with Emily Bronte ever since visiting Haworth parsonage and feeling haunted haunted at the age of thirteen. She bakes her own bread and likes eating honey and slices of raw lemon. She likes watching vegetables grow, lace curtains, and brochures for new electric cookers. She has a shocking past, a blissful present and a dark future full of dreams. at the age of thirteen. She bakes her own bread and likes eating honey and slices of raw lemon. She likes watching vegetables grow, lace curtains, and brochures for new electric cookers. She has a shocking past, a blissful present and a dark future full of dreams.
She had no higher education to speak of, and is very grateful for same; it has left her free to prefer Jung to Freud for one thing.
She is the kind of person who plants a few rose bushes, but arranges them in a symbolic pattern so they will grow well.
4 Josephine Saxton Josephine Saxton.
Date of birth 11th June 1935. Born in Halifax Yorkshire, one of the last two towns to abolish the gibbet, and the town with the highest suicide rate in Great Britain, built in a hollow of the Pennines amidst wild moors, neighbouring Bronte country. Left school at age sixteen having arranged to meet my schoolfriends at age twenty-one, to celebrate my first book. Became: a solicitor"s clerk; an inspector of woollen socks; a cashdesk a.s.sistant in a delicatessen; and then the cook and fish-filleter with the same firm. Then a brewer"s clerk, learning to drink half a pint of undiluted rum with my morning coffee at age seventeen, unaccountably having a nervous breakdown, left to go and chalk-mark round patterns in a clothing factory whilst painting scenery for repertory at night. Went to another brewery, most d.i.c.kensian, sitting on high stool and bearing the brunt of wit of the sour old clerks; nothing to drink for juniors there. Spent a winter at the seaside being a chambermaid and reading Aleister Crowley, was followed everywhere by a baldheaded man with a hatchet, one kitchen porter. (I am not being facetious, just irrelevant.) Then I did eighteen months in Halifax Art School, got my exams and had a row about dirty paint brushes and next day had become a bus conductress with a studio, which lasted for a year. I then married a painter, having had a spell as an artist"s model at a rival art school, whilst trying to get further exams at night. Settled down in a cottage on a moor, wrote a play in between feeding the baby, and then "A Taste of Honey" came out, almost word for word what I had just written. Alas! Fell in love with an old friend and ran away with him one night and settled in a seventeenth century mansion and had two more babies, wrote some stories. Set up as a machine embroiderer, sold a few, decided it wasn"t me.
I have omitted many other jobs: tailoress, shop a.s.sistant, lavatory cleaner in a cinema, mill-hand. I also got but did not pursue a job as cook in a Scottish Castle. Moved to Leicester because of Colin"s job (he is a painter and lectures in Fine Art) and found myself in a battery of breeding huts known as suburban dwelling-houses. Still here but my endurance is running out. One day I said: "I will write a novel;" and did so, but it wasn"t much good, wrote another, then the third, which was published by Doubleday, followed by my fourth novel. So, fifteen years later than I thought, I have done what I wanted to do on leaving school. Things are going on from there, writing is it it.
Interests.
All branches of psychology, favouring C. G. Jung.
All religions, favouring Eastern philosophies.
Cooking, sewing, gardening. Reading anything, biology, science, novels, anything.
Occultism and esoterica, collecting books on these subjects. Favourite authors include Patrick White, Iris Murdoch, C. F. Keppler, A. S. Byatt, Thomas Hinde, Mervyn Peake, C. S. Lewis. Hero figure is William Blake.
Recreations: Sunbathing, swimming, walking, being on mountains, by lakes, on cliffs. Never watch TV and hardly go to the cinema. Love dancing and music, especially Indian music and Messiaen and some pop. Never experimented with drugs and no longer like being drunk but enjoy parties, and entertaining.
Aspirations: To write better and more, to travel and find somewhere congenial to live in a warm climate where there are friendly natives.
To write good poetry. I have written stacks but I am too garrulous to be a good poet...
ELOUISE AND THE DOCTORS OF THE PLANET PERGAMON.
Josephine Saxton Elouise sat in the waiting room of the Out Patients of Central Theatre, dressed in a short white gown. She had been waiting for a long time and wished that someone would come to fetch her; she had read all the advertis.e.m.e.nts on the wall and found none of personal interest, all of them being for drugs with unusual side effects.
A nurse entered the room. He wore a scarlet mask that covered all his face except one eye, and Elouise knew that this signified infectious carcinoma of the skin. She did not shrink with fear or disgust; she had played with children years ago who had that disease and it seemed she had resistance to it.
"The doctors will see you now," said the nurse, so Elouise rose to follow.
He led her down the corridor past mysterious doors and flights of stairs until they came to thick drawn curtains over which shone a small red light. He pushed her through the curtains where she stood alone for a moment. "Escape!" occurred to her automatically. She decided that escape was not only impossible considering how important she was this day, but it was almost undesirable; curiosity made her stand her ground ready for the next experience, whatever it might be. She heard her name announced and felt herself led onto the stage of Central Theatre and then locked by force-field into the examination throne. Before her the theatre was filled with people. They were the Council of Doctors, and they numbered about a hundred; all experts.
She took out from her handbag her mirror, observed her glistening pale hair and shining dark eyes and golden silky skin. Then she turned the little mirror onto the audience and was satisfied that many gave out squeaks of pain at the flash of light. Unusual if none among them had suffered from some form of iritis.
The male nurse turned to Elouise and above the babble of voices he asked her if she had anything to say before the examinations began.
"I want you to release my mother from the prison hospital. She acted from the highest principles and best motives, considering the fact that she is deemed schizophrenic." Elouise felt very dutiful saying these words and also rather foolish. Mother was too mad to know where she was and since recent events had slipped completely out of reach of other minds. The only response she got to her hollow request was a ripple of amus.e.m.e.nt for in any case her mother had committed an unpardonable crime in allowing her only child to remain healthy until the age of twenty. It was almost unheard-of; supremely antisocial.
There was a shouted conversation about Elouise"s radiography reports, blood tests, metabolic rates. Everyone was rea.s.sured that the pathologists were completing a list of test results containing information concerning the patient"s haemoglobin, Erythrocyte sedimentation, haemotocrit reading, C.S.F., sputum, urine, feces, gall-bladder contents. Someone screamed hysterically that the patient had a fantastic renal function and someone else remarked loudly that he had never ever come across such a perfect specimen of marrow. Someone maintained that he still thought that the result of his test would reveal occult blood in the stool, but his colleagues were dubious. Silence was called for and then the formal examinations were announced. Elouise hoped that they would not be as unpleasant as some of the tests already performed on her, and then remembered the last coherent thing her mother had said to her before being taken away.
"Don"t let them get you down. Never fear a thing." And Elouise simply sat and waited, quite relaxed. She took a good look around the theatre; great windows opened onto the surrounding forecourt, and inside row on row of doctors flopped down on padded seats. Behind her the backdrop, immediately before her the step that separated the rostrum from the auditorium, and in the ceiling very bright lights. No television equipment; this conclave was in camera in camera although surely all Pergamon knew of her notorious self by now? She looked again through the windows across the flat land outside the forecourt. There were no other buildings to be seen but there were distant groups of people like herds of cattle browsing. although surely all Pergamon knew of her notorious self by now? She looked again through the windows across the flat land outside the forecourt. There were no other buildings to be seen but there were distant groups of people like herds of cattle browsing.
Matron bustled in from the wings. Immediate and profound silence ensued and Matron spoke. An efficient voice; a long-faced voice; a voice that was we we not not I I.
"Who will examine the patient first?"
In the auditorium a man stood up, hand raised.
"Please Matron, I will."
"Very well then, proceed. And then take your turns in orderly fashion."
Matron left the stage and Elouise looked at her first doctor.
Like a poppy unfolding, uprose the thin hairy body with green pallor at the neck and a corolla of bright red hair; he waved towards her through the field of his friends, hypnotic and delicate. What wasting disease or chronic glandular disorder caused his appearance Elouise did not know and neither cared; he held no interest for her and inspired no fear.
"I got your lumbar puncture report," he simpered as he approached. She cringed at the memory; manometer, gallipot and syringe. Unpleasant. But that was past; what now?
"Cross your knees."
Elouise crossed her knees and he opened a large briefcase which was fitted out with a tray of instruments. He took a soft hammer and hit her gently just below her patella. Elouise"s foot came up and kicked the doctor under the chin which caused a ripple of laughter and some perfunctory applause in the audience. The doctor slowly moved his head away but showed no other reaction to the blow. He turned his attention to the contents of his case, checking and counting. He had a camel-hair paintbrush number six, three test tubes containing mystery-substances, three small plastic envelopes, a sharp pin and a tuning fork. This tuning fork he tw.a.n.ged loudly and looked up into Elouise"s face and coyly asked her if she thought it in tune.
"Sounded all right to me," she said.
"Good, good," he murmured professionally and without warning stabbed her in the calf with his sharp pin. Elouise yelped and the doctor laughed and so did his colleagues.
"One all," someone shouted.
He opened a test tube and wet his finger and dipped it in the powder therein.
"Taste that."
She tasted.
"It"s salt."
"And this?"
"Sugar."
"Correct absolutely." He put the third tube back into his case.
He then opened one of the sealed envelopes and offered it to her beautiful nose.
"It smells of flowers," she breathed.
"And this?"
"Corruption."
"Too right it does," he whiffed and hastily put it away.
The doctor stretched out his thin pale hand and delicately lifted the hem of her short white gown. He took his camel-hair brush number six and touched her b.u.t.tock with it where it flattened out on the chair.
"What does that feel like?"
"You might say the delicate touch of the wing of a newly born moth at dusk or you might say you were tickling my a.r.s.e."
"Precisely."
She looked at him closely; it seemed that his eyes were made of plastic and that they continued into his head in a solid ma.s.s rather than that they were globes in sockets as other eyes. And yet he saw.