Flying to America (7 page)

Alexandra had a special devotion to the Sacred Heart.

T
HEORIES OF THE
S
ACRED
H
EART

L
OSS AND
R
ECOVERY OF THE
S
ACRED
H
EART

C
ONFLICTING
C
LAIMS OF THE
G
REAT
C
ATHEDRALS

T
HE
S
ACRED
H
EART
IN
C
ONTEMPORARY
I
CONOGRAPHY

A
PPEARANCE
OF
S
PURIOUS
S
ACRED
H
EARTS
AND
H
OW
T
HEY
M
AY
B
E

D
ISTINGUISHED FROM THE
T
RUE
O
NE

L
OCATION OF THE
T
RUE
S
ACRED
H
EART
R
EVEALED

H
OW
THE
A
BBÉ
S
T
. G
ERMAIN
P
RESERVED THE
T
RUE
S
ACRED
H
EART

FROM THE
H
ANDS OF THE
B
ARBARIANS

W
HY THE
S
ACRED
H
EART
I
s
F
REQUENTLY
R
EPRESENTED
S
URMOUNTED

BY A
C
ROWN OF
T
HORNS

M
EANING OF THE
T
INY
T
ONGUE OF
F
LAME

O
RDERS AND
C
EREMONIES IN THE
V
ENERATION OF THE
S
ACRED
H
EART

R
OLE OF THE
S
ACRED
H
EART
S
OCIETY IN THE
V
ENERATION OF THE
S
ACRED
H
EART

Alexandra was also a member of the Knights of St. Dympna, patroness of the insane.

Alexandra and Henrietta were walking down the street in their long gowns. A man looked at them and laughed. Alexandra and Henrietta rushed at him and scratched his eyes out.

As a designer of artificial ruins, Alexandra was well-known. She designed ruins in the manners of Langley, Effner, Robert Adam, and Carlo Marchionni, as well as her own manner. She was working on a ruin for a park in Tempe, Arizona, consisting of a ruined wall nicely disintegrated at the top and one end, two classical columns upright and one fallen, vines, and a number of broken urns. The urns were difficult because it was necessary to produce them from intact urns and the workmen at the site were often reluctant to do violence to the urns. Sometimes she pretended to lose her temper.
“Hurl the bloody urn, Umberto!”

Alexandra looked at herself in the mirror. She admired her breasts, her belly, and her legs, which were, she felt, her best feature.

“Now I will go into the other room and astonish Henrietta, who is also beautiful.”

Henrietta stood up and, with a heaving motion, threw the manuscript of her novel into the fire. The manuscript of the novel she had been working on ceaselessly, night and day, for the last ten years.

“Alexandra! Aren’t you going to rush to the fire and pull the manuscript of my novel out of it?”

“No.”

Henrietta rushed to the fire and pulled the manuscript out of it. Only the first and last pages were fully burned, and luckily, she remembered what was written there.

Henrietta decided that Alexandra did not love her enough. And how could nuances of despair be expressed if you couldn’t throw your novel into the fire safely?

Alexandra was sending a petition to Rome. She wanted her old marriage, a dim marriage ten years old to a man named Black Dog,
annulled. Alexandra read the rules about sending petitions to Rome to Henrietta.

“All applications to be sent to Rome should be written on good paper, and a double sheet, 8⅛ inches x 10¾ inches, should be employed. The writing of petitions should be done with ink of a good quality, that will remain legible for a long time. Petitions are generally composed in the Latin language, but the use of the French and Italian languages is also permissible.

“The fundamental rule to be observed is that all petitions must be addressed to the Pope, who, directly or indirectly, grants the requested favors. Hence the regulation form of address in all petitions reads
Beatissime Pater.
Following this the petition opens with the customary deferential phrase
ad pedes Sanctitatis Vestrae humillime provolutus.
The concluding formula is indicated by its opening words:
Et Deus . . .
expressing the prayer of blessing which the grateful petitioner addresses in advance to God for the expected favor.

“After introduction, body, and conclusion of the petition have been duly drawn, the sheet is evenly folded length-wise, and on its back, to the right of the fold line, are indited the date of the presentation and the petitioner’s name.

“The presentation of petitions is generally made through an agent, whose name is inscribed in the right-hand corner on the back of the petition. This signature is necessary because the agent will call for the grant, and the Congregations deliver rescripts to no one but the agent whose name is thus recorded. The agents, furthermore, pay the fee and taxes for the requested rescripts of favor, give any necessary explanations and comments that may be required, and are at all times in touch with the authorities in order to correct any mistakes or defects in the petitions. Between the hours of nine and one o’clock the agents gather in the offices of the Curial administration to hand in new petitions and to inquire about the fate of those not yet decided. Many of them also go to the anterooms of secretaries in order to discuss important matters personally with the leading officials.

“For lay persons it is as a rule useless to forward petitions through the mails to the Roman Congregations, because as a matter of principle they will not be considered. Equally useless, of course, would be the enclosing of postage stamps with such petitions. Applications by telegraph are not permitted because of their publicity. Nor are decisions ever given by telegraph.”

Alexandra stopped reading.

“Jesus Christ!” Henrietta said.

“This wine is piss,” Alexandra said.

“You needn’t drink it then.”

“I’ll have another glass.”

“You wanted me to buy California wine,” Henrietta said.

“But there’s no reason to buy absolute vinegar, is there? I mean couldn’t you have asked the man at the store?”

“They don’t always tell the truth.”

“I remember that time in Chicago,” Alexandra said. “That was a good bottle. And afterwards . . .”

“How much did we pay for that bottle?” Henrietta asked, incuriously.

“Twelve dollars. Or ten dollars. Ten or twelve.”

“The hotel,” Henrietta said. “Snapdragons on the night table.”

“You were . . . exquisite.”

“I was mature,” Henrietta said.

“If you were mature then, what are you now?”

“More mature,” Henrietta said. “Maturation is a process that is ongoing.”

“When are you old?” Alexandra asked.

“Not while love is here,” Henrietta said.

Henrietta said: “Now I am mature. In maturity I found a rich world beyond the pale and found it possible to live in that world with a degree of enthusiasm. My mother says I am deluded but I have stopped talking to my mother. My father is dead and thus has no opinion. Alexandra continues to heap up indulgences by exclaiming ‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!’ which is worth an indulgence of fifty days each time it is exclaimed. Some of the choicer ejaculations are
worth seven years and seven quarantines and these she pursues with the innocent cupidity of the small investor. She keeps her totals in a little book. I love her. She has to date worked off eighteen thousand years in the flames of Purgatory. I tell her that the whole thing is a shuck but she refuses to consider my views on this point. Alexandra is immature in that she thinks she will live forever, live after she is dead at the right hand of God in His glory with His power and His angels and His whatnot and I cannot persuade her otherwise. Joseph Conrad will live forever but Alexandra will not. I love her. Now we are going out.”

Henrietta and Alexandra went walking. They were holding each other’s arms. Alexandra moved a hand sensuously with a circular motion around one of Henrietta’s breasts. Henrietta did the same thing to Alexandra. People were looking at them with strange expressions on their faces. They continued walking, under the shaped trees of the boulevard. They were swooning with pleasure, more or less. Someone called the police.

Presents

I
n the middle of a forest. Parked there is a handsome 1932 Ford, its left rear door open. Two young women are pausing, about to step into the car. Each has one foot on the running board. Both are naked. They have their arms around each other’s waist in sisterly embrace. The woman on the left is dark, the one on the right fair. Their white, graceful backs are in sharp contrast to the shiny black of the Ford. The woman on the right has turned her head to hear something her companion is saying.

*
  
*
  
*

At a dinner party. The eight guests are seated, in shining white plastic shells mounted on steel pedestals, in a luxurious kitchen. They sit around a long table of polished rosewood, at one end of which there is a wicker basket filled with fruit, pineapples, bananas, pears, and at the other a wicker basket containing loaves of burnt-orange bread. The kitchen floor is polished black tile; electric ovens with bronze fronts are set into the polished off-white walls. On thick glass shelves above the diners, handsome pots with herbs, jams, jellies, and tall glass jars with half-a-dozen varieties of raw pasta. Six of the guests, men and women, are conventionally clothed. The two
young women (one dark, one fair) are naked, smoking cigarillos. One of them unfolds a large white linen napkin and smoothes it over her companion’s lap.

*
  
*
  
*

Ten o’clock in the morning. Marble, more marble, together with walnut paneling, a terrazzo floor, on the left a long (sixty feet) black-topped counter behind which the tellers sit, on the right a beige-carpeted area with three rows (three times three) of bank officers, suited and gowned. At the back, the great vault door open, functionary seated at desk reading a Gothic novel. In the center, long lines of depositors channeled to the tellers by a flattened S-curve of blue velvet ropes. Uniformed guards, etc., the American flag drooping on its standard near the vault. Two young women enter. They are naked except for black masks. One is dark, one fair. They place themselves back-to-back in the center of the banking floor. The guards rush toward them, then rush away again.

*
  
*
  
*

A woman seated on a plain wooden chair under a canopy. She is wearing white overalls and has a pleased expression on her face. Watching her, two dogs, German shepherds, at rest. Behind the dogs, with their backs to us, a row of naked women kneeling, sitting on their heels, their buttocks perfect as eggs or O’s — OOOOOOOOOOOOO
.
In profile to the scene, at the far right, Henry James — his calm, accepting gaze.

*
  
*
  
*

Two young women wrapped as gifts. But the gift-wrapping is indistinguishable from ordinary clothing. Or there is a distinction, in that what they are wearing is perhaps a shade newer, brighter, more studied than ordinary clothing, proclaims the specialness of what is wrapped, argues for immediate unwrapping, or if not that, unwrapping at leisure, with wine, cheese, sour cream.

*
  
*
  
*

Two young women, naked, tied together by a long red thread. One is dark, one is fair.

*
  
*
  
*

Large (eight by ten feet) sheets of white paper on the floor, six or eight of them. The total area covered is perhaps 200 feet square; some of the sheets overlap. A string quartet is playing at one edge of this area, and irregular rows of handsomely-dressed spectators border another. A large bucket of blue paint sits on the paper. Two young women, naked. Each has her hair rolled up in a bun; each has been splashed, breasts, belly, and thighs, with blue paint. One, on her belly, is being dragged across the paper by the other, who is standing, gripping the first woman’s wrists. Their backs are not painted. Or not painted with. The artist is Yves Klein.

*
  
*
  
*

Two young men, wrapped as gifts. They have wrapped themselves carefully, tight pants, open-throated shirts, shoes with stacked heels, gold jewelry on right and left wrists, codpieces stuffed with credit cards. They stand, under a Christmas tree big as an office building, the women rush toward them. Or they stand, under a Christmas tree big as an office building, and no women rush toward them. A voice singing inappropriate Easter songs, hallelujahs.