Milkbottle H, page 23
(BE THAT AS IT MAY, BE THAT AS IT MAY is the recurrent slogan that must grimly content the dentist, a contemporary magic disposeall, a professorial indictment of the impossible as impossible which, being the case, we at all times pounce feverishly on the possible, the possible being the sole catharsis of modem society, the impossible having belonged to the Greeks; as much as we may admire their art, we can no longer be Greek Forget the Greeks, forget them, Clifford irascibly advises; do without them; they wont help you; youre on your own, he staccatos at his helpless listening possibles; were no longer capable of tragedy
Who isnt, Harry Ring blissblasts him. You mean Dr Clifford Gratz isnt capable of tragedy.
Well. Well, Clifford blastblisses, his smile fawning in innocence, Im—Im representative. Am I not? Am I not? Youll concede that, yes? BE THAT AS IT MAY)
If, Clifford begs leave to continue, if you think of Red posing in the nude as analgous to her mother Esther in the Odessa suburb in Russia staring out of the window during the winter at the moon, you cannot possibly, Lee
again, note, the simplicity, the viability of the possible, but, BE THAT AS IT MAY
you cannot possibly, Clifford begins to munch on the long curved fantastically sweet banana of a smile, you cannot possibly take offence. Look, after all, note, Clifford prods. The want of Sy to paint Rena in her naked state is after all much like a boy gazing at a full moon. Besides, after all, Sy sees Rena as her mother, he sees her, if you want to know, as simply a mother. And then, really, Sy is the full moon gazing down on the little naked girl. It is a kind of paternal romance on Sy’s part that he certainly must recognize. Hes going to paint Rena’s mother on a winter night enraptured by the full white moon in Russia. Both Sy and Rena are children. They are both enraptured by the full white lunar mother as a girl. So: Rena, Esther and Sy are three children posing in the full white lunar nakedness—the artist when he paints must certainly remove his clothes, no? What more innocent romp could you possibly conceive of, Lee? Theres Rena in her nakedness romantically bemoaning her mother’s lost youth, for Rena has become the white full moon at which her mother gazes. My child, my child, Esther sings in her heart to the moon, knowing full well that the moon in reality is a blank white man posing nakedly in the black sky. Will not Sy protect himself? Of course: he assiduously invests the canvas. Rena has nothing to fear. You, Lee, have nothing to fear. The whole composition is vacuous in the extreme—no reflection on you, Sy, you understand. The moon couldnt reflect on you anyhow: it shines on Lee. And that is precisely the reason why Esther tells about that particular aspect of her childhood to Lee: the moon, since her daughter is enamored of Lee, is indeed Lee himself. Now what, Lee, could you possibly object to? Esther praises you, the evoker. Her daughter takes her mother’s praises of you to Sy. Paint my mother’s praises of Lee, she tells Sy. Well, all right, I admit another element intrudes. There is in Rena’s statement an implied criticism of her mother. So: she has an artist, Sy, who will in turn as an artist criticize the criticism and thereby possibly (POSSIBLY, BE THAT AS RR MAY) invalidate it. So she wants to pose in the nude for Sy so that he can exorcize her mother, and he would like to take her up on it for the additional pleasure hed derive in exorcizing his own mother who breathes her last upstairs. His brothers, after all, are opposed to his leaving Philadelphia, as his wife is incessantly coaxing him to, because the mother is dying and they believe it only right that Sy should at least stay on at her side till she dies. But that can happen tomorrow or five years from now. Nobody can really make an accurate prognosis. Consequently, and further, as amelioration, Sy would like to paint his mother as a girl. She would become, then, momentarily palatable. She would become esthetically violable as a matter of fact. Lee, Lee, how can you possibly say no to such an intent? You yourself, later, from Kansas, constantly urge Sy to quit his mother and Philadelphia. True, by that time Rena is with you. But why not anticipate yourself? This would be gallant, graceful, youd be a man of the world, because a man of the world you really arent. Dont misunderstand me, now: I can hardly contend that any contemporary male can be a man of the world. But certainly we can make stabs at being so from time to time. A stab, if you will, at Rena posing in the nude, a stab at accepting the quixotic white moon of her mother’s. Could there be a more beautiful wintry picture? I say—no. Lee, Lee, Lee, her mother is giving you all her winter springtime in describing her memory. The mother’s storybook. She tells you of listening for the sound of a troika, of a count and countess glistening by in the night past Esther’s humble home. She sees the troika sliding across the moon in a flurry of light. She tells you this as Red sits by your side at the diningroom table, the mother’s face the blank white one of her girlhood. Her daughter wants to be as naked as her mother. Would you deprive Rena of that? If you do, youre arrogant, more arrogant than I thought, and perhaps Rena wishes to antagonize that arrogance by mentioning Sy’s willingness to paint her naked. She wants to tell you that she knows you dont believe her mother’s story, and in all probability do not believe, therefore, her, Rena, that you do not even believe there has been an offer made by Sy at all to paint her. To oppose someone’s request, Lee, is often to indicate one’s disbelief in the basis of the request. In the extremity of your opposition you actually denounce Rena as a liar. No wonder the shock of her request persists over so long a time: it is the shock of your believing Rena a liar. And the development of Rena begging you to forget about the whole matter only confirms your belief. Still, you refuse to accept your feeling that she is a liar. You go on and on writing painfully long letters to her about your imagining of Red as naked before somebody else’s eyes. What nakedness? She isnt posing. Youre actually talking about what to you is her characterological nakedness, your presumption that she is a liar.
Howmidoing Cliffordjaredlee swings on Renanadine with purposely demotic vulgarity, the vicious vagaries of surgery hollowing out a testicle and with a stick rolling it down a long hill in Fairmount Park so that the boy rolls over and over and over lengthwise through the stupefying cloy of the summergreen grass, burs nettling his flesh through the rayon shirt and the sky walloping itself against the grass and the grass thudding against the sky all the way down over and over to the bottom of
GEORGE’S HILL
as it is known
tree and grass and sky and stone swinging round and round round as the three rise in a giant lariat tightening though persisting in its awesome mammoth circles around their skull;
Ill be only too happy myself to pose in the nude for Sy Renan-adine says.
Listen if youre getting rid of testicles the men say why give them to us but Sy does not paint them in that fashion:
He paints himself, Al Gordon whose speech impediment causes an enunciative thickness, Danny Naroyan and Lee sitting around the Naroyan kitchen table. But, more than merely sitting in normal vertical positions, they all lean clockwise as at the same time they bend vulpinely over heaping platefuls of food:
Witches.
Thats what they look like Nina tells the clambering monkey in herself to be still stopping on the bottom step of the stairway
No, friends, friends back there at the Naroyan kitchen Lee pleads with her watching her eyeballs swell with monkeyrumps;
Forget it, Lee, forget it, her wrinkles retch out her face at him. Witches, now
(jesuschrist, mr and mrs brody her mother and father clutch at her spine for cover, jesuschrist, nina cowers all the way down to her younger sister, what kind of world have i come into where the men are not beasts are not my superiors are not my competitors, no, nothing like that her round swart face laps at a trickle of cream in a far comer, the men
are witches on PENIS BROOMSTICKS oh my god oh my god she ties a bublitchki round her round swart face and holds her head between her hands
and they are enemies of each other; and Sy knows it when he paints them in the Naroyan kitchen and offers to paint Rena in the nude.
Sy puffs tranquilly and contentedly at Nina with his pipe, he is the serene queen of the witches Nina knows, and in that moment knows as well she will finally not live with him. And St Red, that Rena, what is she but the King of Witches, Sy her consort. For King St Red, Nina twitches her finger at her throat convulsively —King St Red makes a unified batter of lie and truth, the two are to the King, poor Lee, poor Lee, poor
So, its very clear, Al Gordon confesses to Lee in the great Bronx apartment house, confesses with a loud softness, his kinky wartcolored hair bunched up in his thick lips, as if there is a speech impediment to his whole body, Im giving up painting and becoming a salesman for a pharmaceutical house because its very obvious, you know, having paralleled Sy through the years, and observing his canvasses, that I have at best a small talent, nothing comparable to Sy’s. Believe me, more than anything else in the world I want to paint, but how could I be so ridiculous? I know, I know, Al holds up his hand, his thick neck swerving down, all the years I went down to the settlement school to study, along with Sy. Funny guy, Sy. Remember how he knew nothing of the world till we taught him? Hed never heard of socialism, knew nothing of economics—nothing of anything except paint and girls and caddying in New Hampshire. Al gives a short thick laugh. And dancing. Good dancer, Sy. Well. Its good to be back in New York, my fathers a lot happier teaching Yiddish here, and my sisters studying soil bacteriology. His graybrown eyes contain a thick seriousness edged by gayety. I hope youll visit every week you come to New York, Lee. Your playwrighting professor any good?
Hatcher Hughes
Do you remember how you passed that scrap of paper over to me in the algebra class at Olney High?
But, lying in the same bed with AI later that night, Lee cannot sleep. He can sense the whole body of Al protruding thickly in its snoring pores. He can smell Als thickness; tastes it. The sense of the bulk of Al is overwhelming. It is too close. It is a solid with a liquid threat that will engulf Lee. Lee is panicstricken at the possibility that Al will accidentally touch him. He lies awake all night in that fear. He edges as far away from Al on the bed as he possibly can. Lee cannot sleep with a man. He cannot be in the same bedroom with a man. If he visits Al again, the problem will be present, but he cannot tell Al that, he cannot hurt him, for the thick guttural oblongsquat impedimented young man that Al is as tender as touch of wound in new skin. Lee makes excuses as he peers down at the aircraft carrier anchored in the Hudson, that broad, gray river at which the lovers idly toss down their faces to feed the images flying low over the waters.
Al Gordon’s father teaches Yiddish to a dwindling number of children, a short pudgy man who looks on his son as a dumb one. The short pudgy mother bustles around her daughter studying soil bacteriology at the University of Michigan:
all over the Jews are getting closer to the soil, Lee thinks. Dirt through a testtube
he passes through when he examines that closely. He passes through the slide, beyond it to a feigned yet innocent innocence.
Rubbing thumb against forefinger in his eyesockets, Dr Clifford Gratz proposes that Lee consider the posing of St Red in the nude from yet another view
Hes the original allweather man Harry Ring barkroars from the piano. Cliff is out in all kinds of people offering them umbrellas, snowshoes, nudist camps, sunvisors. Cliff youre a branch of meterorology did you know that, hah? His face peers out through the isobars. Im telling you, Lee, throw him peanuts and he will snow, he will come off in flakes. How do you fuck, Cliff? I suspect maybe you send up a weather balloon in Nadine’s vagina, you know—with a thermometer, Harry is drawling lugubriously, to test the smear currents, what the pressure was at noonday, how many birds are flying through the tubes, the suck statistics from way back, you know, Cliff—how she reacted when an embryo to her papa’s lips at mamma’s clitoris blowing now hot and now cold, the old fashioned meteorological dianetician
