Snow White (11 page)

“PAUL is frog. He is frog through and through. I thought he would, at some point,
cast off his mottled wettish green-and-brown integument to reappear washed in the
hundred glistering hues of princeliness. But he is
pure frog
. So. I am disappointed. Either I have overestimated Paul, or I have overestimated
history. In either case I have made a serious error. So. There it is. I have been
disappointed, and am, doubtless, to be disappointed further. Total disappointment.
That’s it. The red meat on the rug. The frog’s legs on the floor.”

“I LOVE YOU, Snow White.” “I know, Hogo. I know because you have told me a thousand
times. I do not doubt you. I am convinced of your sincerity and warmth. And I must
admit that your tall brutality has made its impression on me, too. I am not unaffected
by your Prussian presence, or by the chromed chains you wear looped around your motorcycle
doublet, or by your tasteful scars on the left and right cheeks. But this ‘love’ must
not be, because of your blood. You don’t have the blood for this ‘love,’ Hogo. Your
blood is not fine enough. Oh I know that in this democratic era questions of blood
are a little
de trop
, a little frowned-upon. People don’t like to hear people talking about their blood,
or about other people’s blood. But I am not ‘people,’ Hogo. I am me. I must hold myself
in reserve for a prince or prince-figure, someone like Paul. I know that Paul has
not looked terribly good up to now and in fact I despise him utterly. Yet he has the
blood of kings and queens and cardinals in his veins, Hogo. He has the purple blood
of exalted station. Whereas you have only plain blood in your veins, Hogo, blood that
anybody might have, the delivery boy from the towel service for example. You must
admit that they are not the same thing, these two kinds of blood.” “But what about
love? What about love which, as Stendhal tells us, seizes the
senses and overthrows all other considerations in a giddy of irresponsibility?” “You
may well say ‘a giddy of irresponsibility,’ Hogo. That is precisely the state I am
not in. I am calm. As calm as a lamp, as calm as the Secretary of State. As calm as
you are giddy.” “Well Snow White your blood arguments are pretty potent, and I recognize
that there is a gap there, between my blood and the blood royal. Yet in my blood there
is a fever. I offer you this fever. It is as if my blood were full of St. Elmo’s fire,
so hot and electrical does it feel, inside me. If this fever, this rude but grand
passion, in any measure ennobles me in your eyes, or in any other part of you, then
perhaps all is not yet lost. For even a bad man can set his eyes on the stars, sometimes.
Even a bad man can breathe and hope. And it is my hope that, as soon as you fully
comprehend the strength of this fever in me, you will find it ennobling and me ennobled,
and a fit consort suddenly, though I was not before. I know that this is a slim hope.”
“No Hogo. It does not ennoble you, the fever. I wish it did, but it does not. It is
simply a fever, in my view. Two aspirin and a glass of water. I know that this is
commonplace, even cruel, advice, but I have no other advice. I myself am so buffeted
about by recent events, and non-events, that if events give me even one more buffet,
I will simply explode. Goodnight, Hogo. Take your dark appeal away. Your cunningly-wrought
dark appeal.”

WE were sitting at a sidewalk café talking about the old days. The days before. Then
the proprietor came. He had a policeman with him. A policeman wearing a black leather
blackjack and a book by Rafael Sabatini. “You are too far out on the sidewalk,” the
policeman said. “You must stay behind the potted plants. You must not be more than
ten feet from the building line.” We moved back behind the building line then. We
could talk about the old days on either side of the potted plants, we decided. We
were friendly and accommodating, as is our wont. But in moving the table we spilled
the drinks. “There will be an additional charge for the stained tablecloth,” the proprietor
said. Then we poured the rest of the drinks over the rest of the tablecloth, until
it was all the same color, rose-red. “Show us the stain,” we said. “Where is the stain?
Show us the stain and we will pay. And while you are looking for it, more drinks.”
We looked fondly back over the inches to where we had been. The policeman looked back
over the inches with us. “I realize it was better there,” the policeman said. “But
the law is the law. That is what is wrong with it, that it is the law. You don’t mind
if I have just a taste of your stain?” The policeman wrung out our table-cover and
tossed it off with a flourish of brass. “That’s good stain. And now, if you will excuse
me,
I intuit a felony, over on Pleat Street.” The policeman flew away to attend to his
felony, the proprietor returned with more stain. “Who has wrinkled my tablecover?”
We regarded the tablecover, a distressed area it was true. “Someone will pay for the
ironing of that.” Then we rose up and wrinkled the entire sidewalk café, with our
bare hands. It was impossible to tell who was wrong, when we had finished.

JANE gave Snow White a vodka Gibson on the rocks. “Drink this,” she said. “It will
make you feel better.” “I don’t feel bad physically,” Snow White said. “Emotionally
is another story of course.” “Go on,” Jane said. “Go on drink it.” “No I won’t drink
it now,” Snow White said. “Perhaps later. Although something warns me not to drink
it at all. Something suggests to me that it is a bad scene, this drink you proffer.
Something whispers to me that there is something wrong with it.” “Well that’s possible,”
Jane replied. “I didn’t make the vodka myself you know. I didn’t grow the grain myself,
and reap it myself, and make the mash myself. I am not a member of the Cinzano Vermouth
Company. They don’t tell me everything. I didn’t harvest the onions. I didn’t purify
the water that went into these rocks. I’m not responsible for everything. All I can
say is that to the best of my knowledge, this is an ordinary vodka Gibson on the rocks.
Just like any other. Further than that I will not go.” “Oh well then,” Snow White
said. “It must be all right in that case. It must be all right if it is ordinary.
If it is as ordinary as you say. In that case, I shall drink it.” “This drink is vaguely
exciting, like a film by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson,” Paul said. “It is a good thing I
have taken it away from you, Snow White. It is too exciting for you. If you had drunk
it, something bad would
probably have happened to your stomach. But because I am a man, and because men have
strong stomachs for the business of life, and the pleasure of life too, nothing will
happen to me. Lucky that I sensed you about to drink it, and sensed that it was too
exciting for you, on my sensing machine in my underground installation, and was able
to arrive in time to wrest it from your grasp, just as it was about to touch your
lips. Those lips that I have deeply admired, first through the window, and then from
my underground installation. Those lips that—” “Look how he has fallen to the ground
Jane!” Snow White observed. “And look at all that green foam coming out of his face!
And look at those convulsions he is having! Why it resembles nothing else but a death
agony, the whole scene! I wonder if there was something wrong with that drink after
all? Jane? Jane?”

“ONE thing you can say about him,” Fred said, “is that Paul was straight. A straight
arrow. And just by looking at him, on those occasions when our paths crossed, at the
bus station for instance, or at the discount store, I could tell that Paul had a lot
of ginger. He must have had a lot of ginger, to have dug that great hole, outside
the house, and to have put all those wires in it, and connected all those dogs to
the wires, and all that. That took a lot of mechanical ingenuity, to my way of thinking,
and a lot of technical knowledge too, that shouldn’t be understated, when we are making
our final assessment of Paul. I might mention the trust that Hogo placed in him, as
evidenced by the large sum of money found on him, wrapped in one of Hogo’s bank statements,
when they changed his clothes, at the funeral parlor. Of course some people say that
this was get-out-of-town money Hogo had given him, but I don’t believe that. I choose
to believe that Hogo placed a great deal of trust in Paul, more trust perhaps than
the best judgment would suggest, strictly speaking. But I’m talking like a banker
now, in a shrill and judicious way, and I don’t want to talk like that. Consider Amelia,
who is sitting here in the front row with a black cloth over her face, waiting to
see her late lover tucked away under the earth, in the box that has been prepared
for him. Imagine one’s feelings
at such a moment. No, it is too difficult. I shall not ask you to imagine them. I
only ask that you empathize with this poor woman, who has been deprived, at a stroke
of the Lord’s pen as it were, of a source of income and warmth and human intercourse,
which we all regard so highly, and need so much. I leave that thought to stick in
your minds. As for myself, I am only Fred, a former bandleader spitted on a passion
for Snow White, that girl in the third row there, seated next to Jane. She will not
even speak to me, even though I am in her power. It seems that being in someone’s
power implies no obligation on the part of the one in whose power one is, not even
the obligation of sparing one a word now and then, or a yellow half-smile. But that
is my business, and not the business we are gathered together here in the sight of
God to execute, which is the burning of Paul, and the putting of him into a vase,
and the sinking of the vase into the ground, in the box that has been prepared for
it. Some people like to be scattered on top, but Paul wanted to be put under the ground.
That accords with what else we knew about him.”

ANATHEMATIZATION OF THE WORLD

IS NOT AN ADEQUATE RESPONSE TO

THE WORLD.

TRYING to break out of this bag that we are in. What gave us the idea that there was
something better? How does the concept, “something better,” arise? What does it look
like, this
something better?
Don’t tell me that it is an infant’s idea because I refuse to believe that. I know
some sentient infants but they are not that sentient. And then the great horde of
persons sub-sentient who nevertheless can conceive of
something better
. I am thinking of a happy island. Intestate Bill moved toward his lack of reward.
We have raised him to the sky. Bill will become doubtless one of those skyheroes,
like Theodicy and Rime, who govern the orderly rush of virgins and widows through
the world. We lifted him toward the sky. Bill will become doubtless one of those sub-deities
who govern the calm passage of cemeteries through the sky. If the graves fall open
in mid-passage and swathed forms fall out, it will be his fault, probably.

BILL has been hanged. We regret that. He is the first of us ever to be hanged. We
regret it. But that was the verdict. We had a hard time hanging him. We had never
hanged anyone before. But fortunately we had Hogo to help us. Bill was hanged because
he was guilty, and if you are guilty, then you must be hanged. He was guilty of vatricide
and failure. He leaped about on the platform quite a bit. It was evident that he didn’t
wish to be hanged. It was a fearsome amount of trouble, the whole thing. But luckily
Hogo was there with his quirt. That expedited things. Now there is a certain degree
of equanimity. We prize equanimity. It means things are going well. Bill’s friend
Dan is the new leader. We have decided to let Hogo live in the house. He is a brute
perhaps but an efficient brute. He is good at tending the vats. Dan has taken charge
with a fine aggressiveness. He has added three new varieties to the line: Baby Water
Chestnuts, Baby Kimchi, Baby Bean Thread. They are moving well, these new varieties.
Snow White continues to cast chrysanthemums on Paul’s grave, although there is nothing
in it for her, that grave. I think she realizes that. But she was fond of his blood,
while he was alive. She was fond not of him but of the abstract notion that, to her,
meant “him.” I am not sure that that is the best idea.

THE FAILURE OF SNOW WHITE’S ARSE

REVIRGINIZATION OF SNOW WHITE

APOTHEOSIS OF SNOW WHITE

SNOW WHITE RISES INTO THE SKY

THE HEROES DEPART IN SEARCH OF

A NEW PRINCIPLE

HEIGH-HO