Snow White (7 page)

THE bishop in his red mantlepiece strode forward. “Yes, we are in a terrible hurricane
here,” he acknowledged to the wrecked cries of the survivors. “If we can just cross
that spit of land there” (gesture with fingers, glitter of episcopal rings) “and get
to that harlot over there” (sweep of arm in white lacy alb) “pardon I meant
hamlet
, we can perhaps find shelter against this particular vicissitude sent by God to break
our backs for our sins.” The “flock” moaned. They had been eight days without . . .
The sudden pall on the fourth day had been the worst. There was a silence. Silence.
Everything silent. Not a sound for six hours. Nothing. “This is the worst,” they murmured
to one another in sign language, not wanting to . . . break the. . . . A few young
men of good family crawled away into the night to find help (tingle of mace against
bone). The Marchesa de G. had fainted again. Blockflutes were heard. “So this is Spain!”
Paul said to himself. “I never thought I would live to see it. It is intelligent of
me to hide from the Order here, in the episcopal entourage. And it is intelligent
of me to hide from the Order here in this hurricane. So much intelligence! So little
of God’s grace!”

SELF-REGARD is rooted in breakfast. When you have had it, then lunch seems to follow
naturally, as if you owned not only the fruits but the means of production in a large,
faux-naïf
country. This is doubted only by eccentrics, and on the present occasion their views
need not be taken into account. That country in which you are loved for yourself is
expanding now with the further development of books, a new kind capable of satisfying
the tactile wishes even of old people. Our engineers are at a loss to understand what
their engineers have done. Still, insofar as they are trying to sketch future trends,
even the most rigid empiricists among them are obliged to make projections, and then
plans. Such is the impact of technology upon the fabric of inherited social institutions
that breakfast is almost forgotten, in some countries; they paint pictures instead.
I read Dampfboot’s novel although he had nothing to say. It wasn’t rave, that volume;
we regretted that. And it was hard to read, dry, breadlike pages that turned, and
then fell, like a car burned by rioters and resting, wrong side up, at the edge of
the picture plane with its tires smoking. Fragments kept flying off the screen into
the audience, fragments of rain and ethics. Hubert wanted to go back to the dog races.
But we made him read his part, the outer part where the author is praised and the
price
quoted. We like books that have a lot of
dreck
in them, matter which presents itself as not wholly relevant (or indeed, at all relevant)
but which, carefully attended to, can supply a kind of “sense” of what is going on.
This “sense” is not to be obtained by reading between the lines (for there is nothing
there, in those white spaces) but by reading the lines themselves—looking at them
and so arriving at a feeling not of satisfaction exactly, that is too much to expect,
but of having read them, of having “completed” them. “Please don’t talk,” Snow White
said. “Say nothing. We can begin now. Take off the pajamas.” Snow White took off her
pajamas. Henry took off his pajamas. Kevin took off his pajamas. Hubert took off his
pajamas. Clem took off his pajamas. Dan took off his pajamas. Edward took off his
pajamas. Bill refused to take off his pajamas. “Take off your pajamas Bill,” Snow
White said. Everyone looked at Bill’s pajamas. “No, I won’t,” Bill said. “I will not
take off my pajamas.” “Take off your pajamas Bill,” everyone said. “No. I will not.”
Everyone looked again at Bill’s pajamas. Bill’s pajamas filled the room, in a sense.
Those yellow crêpe-paper pajamas.

“WHAT is that apelike hand I see reaching into my mailbox?” “That’s nothing. Think
nothing of it. It’s nothing. It’s just one of my familiars mother. Don’t think about
it. It’s just an ape that’s all. Just an ordinary ape. Don’t give it another thought.
That’s all there is to it.” “I think you dismiss these things too easily Jane. I’m
sure it means more than that. It’s unusual. It means something.” “No mother. It doesn’t
mean more than that. Than I have said it means.” “I’m sure it means more than that
Jane.” “No mother it does not mean more than that. Don’t go reading things into things
mother. Leave things alone. It means what it means. Content yourself with that mother.”
“I’m certain it means more than that.” “No mother.”

SNOW WHITE received the following note from Fred, tossed over the wall:

Madonna
,

My men have left me now. They have gone I suspect to the union hall to institute proceedings
against me. But I don’t care. There is nothing in life for me except being in your
power. I have swooned several times this morning, sitting on a bench in the square,
thinking of you and feeling those iron bolts with which our souls are bolted together
forever. Will you speak to me? I will be in the square at four o’clock by the cathouse
clock. Dare I expect, that you will come?

F
RED

Hubert picked up the note in the yard. “What is this note doing here, wrapped about
a box of Whitman’s chocolates? For whom is it intended? After I have read it, I will
know.” Silently Hubert opened the box of chocolates. “Should I take one of the ones
covered with gold foil, always the tastiest? Or should I instead take one of the plain
American ones?” Hubert sat down in the yard and looked into the box, trying to make
up his mind.

THEN we had a fantasy, a fantasy of anger and malevolence. We were dreaming. We dreamed
we burned Snow White. Burned is not the right word, cooked is the right word. We cooked
Snow White over the big fire, in the dream. You remember the burning scene in Dreyer’s
The Burning of Joan of Art
. It was like that, only where Dreyer was vertical, we were horizontal. Snow White
was horizontal. She was spitted on a spit (large iron bar). The spit was suspended
over the big fire. Kevin threw more wood on the fire, in the dream. Hubert threw more
wood on the fire. Bill threw more wood on the fire. Clem basted the naked girl with
sweet-and-sour sauce. Dan made the rice. Snow White screamed. Edward turned the crank
which made the meat revolve. Was she done enough? She was making a lot of noise. The
meat was moving toward the correct color, a brown-red. The meat thermometer registered
almost-enough. “Turn the crank Edward,” Bill said. Hubert threw more wood on the fire.
Jane threw more wood on the fire. The smoke was acrid, as it always is. Antonin Artaud
held out a crucifix at the end of a long pole, in the smoke. Snow White asked if we
would remove the spit. “It hurts,” she said. “No,” Bill said. “You are not done yet.
It is supposed to hurt.” Jane laughed. “Why are you laughing Jane?” “I am laughing
because it is not me burning there.”
“For you,” Henry said, “we have the red-hot iron shoes. The plastic red-hot iron shoes.”
“This has nothing to do with justice,” Bill said. “This has to do with animus.” We
regarded Snow White rotating there, in her pain and beauty, in the dream.

SNOW WHITE saw her hair black as ebony hanging out of the window. “I suppose I must
respond in some way to the new overture from the seven men. They think they are so
merveilleux
, with their new shower curtain. They have been posing in front of it all day. As
if I could be swayed, in my iron resolve, by a new shower curtain, however extraordinary
and fine! I wonder what it looks like?”

BILL has dropped the money. He was carrying the money neatly separated into 10’s,
20’s, 50’s and so forth, a bundle totaling a great deal of money I can tell you that.
He was on his way to the vault with the money bundled into his armpit, wrapped in
a red towel. Henry had wrapped it in a red towel. Hubert had bundled it into Bill’s
armpit. Dan had opened the door. Kevin had pointed Bill toward the vault. Clem had
given Bill a kick in the back, to get him started. And Edward had said, “Don’t forget
the receipt.” Then Bill had moved through the door out into the daylight in the direction
of the vault. But somewhere between the house and the vault the money hurled itself
out of his armpit in a direction known only to it. “Where is the deposit slip, Bill?”
Edward asked, when Bill returned. “Deposit slip?” Bill said. “The bundle,” Dan said.
“The bundle?” “The money,” Kevin said. “The money?” We all rushed out into the air,
then, to recover the bundle. But it was nowhere. We retraced Bill’s steps as best
we could. Some of Bill’s steps led into a bar & grill, The Fire Next Time Bar & Grill.
We retraced there a hot pastrami sandwich and eight bottles of Miller High Life. But
of the bundle there was not a trace. Luckily the matter is not serious, because we
have more money. But the loss of equanimity was serious. We prize equanimity, and
a good deal of equanimity leaked away, that day.

“ALL right Jane get into the car.” “Hogo you are making stains on my new white-duck
love seat with pillows of white-on-white Indian crewel!” Jane regarded the large black
stains. “That’s all you know Hogo isn’t it. How to take a thing that was white, and
stain it until it is black. That’s a pretty strong metaphor Hogo of what you would
like to do with me, too. I understand. If you think for one moment that your capability
of staining the thing you love has escaped me, from the very beginning, you have grossly
misperceived our situation. Get out of here Hogo forever!” “All right Jane get into
the car.”

PAUL was explaining music to the French citizens. “When we turn our amplifiers on,”
he said, “already cant is forming over some people’s minds, like the brown crust on
bread, or the silence that ‘crusts over’ inappropriate remarks. I think there ought
to be, and remember I’m talking normatively here, I think what ought to obtain is
a measure of
audacity
, an audacity component, such as turning your amplifier up a little higher than anybody
else’s, or using a fork to pick and strum, rather than a plectrum or the carefully
calloused fingertips, or doing something with your elbow, I don’t care what, I insist
only that it be
relevant
, in a strange way, to the scene that has chosen to spread itself out before us, the
theatre of our lives. And if you other gentlemen will come with me down to the quai,
carrying your amplifiers in boxes, and not forgetting the trailing cords, which have
to be ‘plugged in,’ so that we can ‘turn on’ . . .”

ROME. ANOTHER DEFEAT. PAUL HANDS OVER THE GREEN-AND-GOLD ARMBAND. THE ITALIAN POSTAL
SERVICE ABIDES NO RINGERS IN ITS RANKS.

WELL Paul is back and he has decided to stop fleeing his destiny and he has given
himself up at the Nevada monastery and drawn his robes from the supply room and now
he is home on leave in his robes. Paul came to the party in his robes. He wasn’t allowed
to eat or drink anything, or say anything. That was the Rule. We went to the howling
party sitting primly along the side of the room in a row, the seven of us and Snow
White. Our social intercourse for the quarter. We discussed the bat theory of child-raising
with the mothers there meanwhile paying attention to a vat of rum under the harpsichord.
Edward didn’t want to discuss the bat theory of child-raising (delicate memories)
so he discussed Harald Bluetooth, king of Scandinavia during a certain period, the
Blue-tooth period. But the mothers wanted to talk. “Spare the bat and the child rots,”
said the mothers. “Rots inside.” “But how do you know when to employ it? The magic
moment?” “We have a book which tells us such things,” the mothers said. “We look it
up in the book. On page 331 begins a twelve-page discussion of batting the baby. A
well-worn page.” We got away from those mothers as fast as we could. There were a
lot of other people talking there, political talk and other kinds of talk. A certain
contempt for the institutions of society was exhibited. Clem thrust his arm into
the bag of consciousness-expanding drugs. His consciousness expanded. He concentrated
his consciousness upon a thumbtip. “Is this the upper extent of knowing, this dermis
that I perceive here?” Then he became melancholy, melancholy as a gib cat, melancholy
as a jugged hare. “The content of the giraffe is giraffe meat. Giraffes have high
blood pressure because the blood must plod to the brain up ten feet of neck.” There
were more perceptions and
blague
. Edgar and Charles wanted some too. But they were not allowed to have any. All they
were allowed to do was hold Paul’s robes, when he walked around. “Take me home,” Snow
White said. “Take me home instantly. If there is anything worse than being home, it
is being out.”

“YOU shouldn’t drop your garbage out of windows Hogo,” Jane said. I understood what
she was saying. But Hogo is a cruel parody of ultimate concern. His garbage falls
on Northerners and Southerners and Westerners alike. “I had a dream,” Jane said. “In
the dream we were drinking a yellow wine. Then the winemaker came in. He said the
wine was made of old copies of the
National Geographic
. I had thought it tasted musty. Then he said no, that was just a joke. The wine was
really made of grapes, like every wine. But these were grapes to which the sun had
not been kind, he said. They had shriveled for lack of the sun’s love. That was why
the wine was like that. Then he talked about lovers and husbands. He said the lover
eats his meat with his eyes not on the meat but on the eyes of the beloved. The husband
watches the meat. The husband knows that the meat will fly away if not watched. The
winemaker thought this was really a funny story. He laughed and laughed.” Hogo got
ready to say something despicable. But it was too late. “That’s pretty careless,”
Hubert said, and we all agreed that if you were going to have a girl tied to a bed,
then at least the knots should be secure. I had already gotten the flashlight from
its place under the sink, and was working on the brilliant yellow and scarlet and
blue bandages. We had hoped to slip into the hospital without being challenged, but
the doctor recognized us right away.