Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (74 page)
The floor had felt strange at
first: alien, almost threatening. Gradually, however, it became increasingly
hospitable. Beneath his bare feet, the waxed linoleum turned into an orgy. He
went from walking like Neil Armstrong to walking like Krishna. Both cool and
warm, smooth and wavy, the floor felt like fruit skin. It felt like lettuce.
Something invisible and pleasurable oozed up between his toes. Up and down the
hallway he padded, slapping the floor with his soles to experience the
floorness of it. Every now and then, when he was out of sight of the nurses’
station, he did a little monkey dance. “I’m going to jump out the window and
dance on grass,” he told Domino. She reminded him that he was five stories up.
For much of the day, Domino walked
with him, listening to him rant about large snakes, the World Serpent, the
healing python of Apollo, the wiggly staff of Hermes, and so on; how, in his
opinion, the Serpent hadn’t seduced Eve into tasting the apple of forbidden
knowledge, rather, the Serpent
was
the apple: watching the Serpent shed
its skin and be reborn, Eve was introduced to the prospect of immortality;
observing the Serpent on its forays underground, Eve was led to suspect that
there was more to life than met the eye, that there were other, deeper, levels;
a reality beneath the surface of reality, an unconscious mind. Hadn’t the
metaphoric Serpent in Domino’s own little Eden, once it was viewed from a wider
angle, blown open the gates—and angered the authorities? As for why serpent
power killed Today Is Tomorrow, however, he had barely a clue. Supreme
knowledge is supremely dangerous, ultimate mysteries remain ultimately
mysterious. Beware the delusional rationalist who argues otherwise.
The walking was delicious, and the
ranting was pretty good, too. He walked and ranted, ranted and walked,
interrupted only by lunch and by Masked Beauty, who stopped in to squeeze his
hand and say
adieu
. The abbess, Mustang Sally, and Pippi were returning
to Syria that evening. She hoped to see him there again someday. She looked
handsome in her new summer habit. The scar on her nose had darkened, he
noticed. It was now the exact same shade of blue in which Matisse had
immortalized her naked body in 1943.
Later, drained by the walking, and in
bed early, Switters lay fantasizing future scenarios. Bobby Case was bringing
Fer-de-lance to the Northern Hemisphere. To the white man’s world.
Fer-de-lance, with all his ancient magic and contemporary awareness; a
half-breed in every sense of the word; equipped—linguistically,
epistemologically, and physically—to flourish in more than one reality. Suppose
Fer-de-lance were to throw in with them? With Switters, Bobby, Audubon Poe, and
Skeeter Washington (who’d recently lost a hand defusing a land mine in Eritrea,
but was said to play a hot five-finger-and-nub piano); with B. G. Woo and
Dickie Dare and some other operatives and ex-operatives whom he ought not to
name? Maybe even Domino would come aboard: hadn’t she expressed a weakness for the
idea of a purist elite? Suppose the lot of them were to combine forces? To
organize. Sort of.
They probably wouldn’t name it, this
new organization of theirs. Cult of the Great Snake would be presumptuous and
far-fetched; and he was getting pretty tired of
angels
, as Hollywood,
gullible Christers, and New Age loopy-doodles had combined to give them a
trite, fairy-godfather image. Most definitely, the group would not have a
creed. Unless it was something modest and non-doctrinaire, such as, “The house
is on fire, but you can’t beat our view.”
They wouldn’t even believe,
especially, in their mission; not in any fervent way. If they believed too
adamantly, then sooner or later they would be tempted to lie to protect those
beliefs. It was a small step from lying to defend one’s beliefs to killing to
defend them.
Hey, they might not be fully
cognizant of the nature of their mission. They’d contemplate it, to be sure,
and argue over it, but it would be dynamic, a work in progress, ever subject to
change. Only the weak and the dull of the world knew where they were going, and
it was rarely worth the trip.
They’d use Poe’s yacht, maybe, and
Sol Glissant’s funding. But they’d be more aggressive than Poe had been. Poe
was treating the symptoms. They would attack the disease. They would fuck with
the fuckers. Sabotage: physical, electronic, and psychic sabotage. Monkey
wrenches. Computer viruses. Psychedelic alterations. Ridicule. Japes. Spells.
Enchantments. Dadaisms. Reinformation. Meditational smart bombs. On the side,
they might deface a few advertisements. Vandalize some golf courses.
Mostly, however, they’d follow
Fer-de-lance’s lead. See what he had up his snakeskin sleeve. See if he really
was destined to bring Today Is Tomorrow’s message into an unsuspecting new
century. Determine if Our Blessed Lady of Fatima, in her role as feminine
principle, employing her archaic code, had actually rematerialized to alert her
children to a hard and wonderful truth about to stream in a helix of light and
shadow from the direction of a pyramid.
Not quite asleep, not wholly awake,
Switters was lying there fantasizing about all that when the cell phone
suddenly beeped. “This had better be good,” he growled into the mouthpiece.
Maestra actually wept at the sound
of his voice. She quickly recovered, however, and proceeded to tell him how
inconsiderate he was, and what a buffoon; no, something worse than a buffoon,
because he was brilliant and therefore had no right to behave buffoonishly. He
was also a pervert. She ordered him to come to her the instant they let him out
of that “squalid Italian hospital,” and never mind the bracelets: her arms were
getting too damn scrawny to support them anymore.
Then, Suzy got on the line. Got on
the phone with that double-tongued little voice of hers, her consonants
straight-backed with the most demure sincerity, her vowels all lopsided with
hormones. Suzy told him she loved him and wanted to be with him forever, in the
way he used to talk about back when she was just a spank girl. She’d be
eighteen in less than a year and could do as she pleased.
“You know, I had sex last summer,
Switters, and now I’m so sorry. I’m devastated. Not because they got mad and
sent me to Seattle, but because you weren’t the first. You know? Well, I’ve
been praying to Mother Mary that she’ll restore my virginity. So that I can
give it to you. Honestly. I really am praying for that. I know it’s goofy, but
miracles can happen, can’t they?”
“They can, darling. They happen all
the time.”
There has got to be a way to have
both of them,
he thought. Domino and Suzy, too. He spent the entire night
devising one delectable and improbable scheme after another, refusing to accept
that the fates might force him to choose one or the other. He loved them both.
He wanted them both. It was only natural. He was Switters.
Early the next morning, he checked
himself out of the hospital, and he and Mr. Plastic flew to
Bangkok
. To clear the coconut. To mull matters over.
There was a temple by the river,
where he meditated every day. Nights, there were the girls of Patpong. Bless
them. Bless every slink and wisp of them. There were refreshing, if timid,
beers. Food so spicy it’d run a motor. A little stick now and then.
Cowboys were fond of saying, “If it
ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Switters thought,
It’s always broke, and we can
never fix it. On the other hand, there’s nothing to break, so what is it we
imagine we’re fixing?
The baht was weak against the dollar.
A back-alley tailor made him a new linen suit. He walked in it. Danced in it.
Acknowledged the Tao. The seam in the Tao. At moments he felt as if he were at
least an inch and a half off the ground.
He kept bumping into old
acquaintances, and
one midnight
they took him to a meeting of the C.R.A.F.T. Club—where, legend has it, he
got up and squawked like a parrot.
TOM ROBBINS has been called “a
vital natural resource” by
The Portland Oregonian
, “one of the wildest
and most entertaining novelists in the world” by the
Financial Times
of
London, and “the most dangerous writer in the world today” by Fernanda Pivano
of Italy’s
Corriere della Sera.
A Southerner by birth, Robbins has lived
in and around
Seattle
since 1962.
The author wishes to lift a
goblet of vintage ink to his agent, Phoebe Larmore; his editor, Christine
Brooks; and his five-book line editor, Danelle McCafferty (who taught him south
from north—or was it the other way around?). He also salutes his assistant,
Barbara Barker; his former assistant, Jacqueline Trevillion (twelve years
before the mast); his longtime typist, Wendy Chevalier; and the numerous other
women (lucky dog!) who dominate his life, including, but definitely not limited
to, his attorney, Margaret Christopher; his yoga teacher, Dunja Lingwood; his
Patpong social directors, Little Opium Annie and Miss Pretty Woman; his
anatomical researcher and mayonnaise scout, Koryn Rolstad; his French
connection, Enid Smith-Becker; and, most emphatically, his eternal love
dumpling, Alexa.