Milkbottle H, page 8
MILKBOTTLE H thats what he wants to MILKBOTTLE Youre crazy to want to go back with her Nina worriedly pronounces I have a little monkey INSIDE of me he says that wants to clamber all over Rena offering his little tin cup
of a mouth toward the revolving door WAR WAR WAR he doesnt have to marry anybody he doesnt have to work for anybody he doesnt have to make any money, he can be death personified, yes, the actor who carries a small coffin on his index finger in a silver setting, onyx, I seal all my communications thus, death absolves from him all living problems WAR WAR WAR. Not that she has to come. Nobody has to come to anybody. Nobody has to make an approach, all approaches are reconsiderable, there is simply the statement of schedule on Broad Street the evening before. Trains. Momentary schedule of meeting, the trust of what is now. He values the appearance of Rena at seventyfive thousand dollars, precisely the amount his father stakes his brother to for two coalyards successively, he peels off a bill from the heavy wad he carries here Rena Goldstein go get yourself a good lay. In the final impotence, the impossibility to destroy, running through all the impossibilities, what shall I take the torch to the sulfur tips of his fingers knock against each other, theres smoke under his fingernails, smoke under his doublebreasted suit, a whole smudgepot of curling blacks because theres a frost tonight, keep the fruitballs from being ruined, theyre delicately balanced, a whole crop waiting to be transported you cannot destroy. The wildness in any man
in any man
due to the fact that he wants to destroy but that in all the destruction that ensues he destroys nothing so that he stands back or he sits back in the cafeteria chair with the concept of destroying Rena but twentyfour hours in the knowing of her and yet knowing that whether he puts torch or knife or garrote to her whether he sets fire to his mothers and fathers house whether or no he sends all the men and women he hates to the gaschamber that the weight of the stuff he believes he has destroyed remains exactly and precisely and horribly the same. Lee feels light, light, light with the sense of incapability of destruction, as if all weight has run away from him. Light wildness. Delicate wildness. Feminine wildness. A very fag fashiondesigner light wildness at the impossibility of the perfect creation. God. God. God. It is a matter of creating her. He all but lifts himself out of the chair as he keeps sitting there. The wildness to make a figure, make a Rena, which he has destroyed in the notdestroying. The wildness of the sameness of his self before after and during, which also is quite impossible. You breathe, but thats impossible. You see, but thats impos. You hear, but. You. So. You turn an inch in your chair, another, still another, the seat wet with sweat, reconseater. But the mere commonplaces can hold her up, delay her, which is what Lee must repudiate in all situations. Nobody but Lee must be susceptible of succumbing to the commonplace. For everybody else but Lee the reason, the deter, the prod, the motivation, the barrier must be extraordinary. He refuses to live in a world that may be defined by the commonplace; only Lee is permitted the dull and the tedious and the boring within himself. Everyone else must caper, clown, roar, whisper, tumble, play; he and he alone can remain seated, doing nothing and wondering on the fabulous circumstance in which all other men and women behave
WELL JESUS CHRIST IF IT ISNT TIMMY LASCAR the table greets the blueeyed blondhaired deckweaving sailorman Yeh docked at Baltimore and took the train in he grins Christ nothings changed youre still at the same goddamn table talking
intimately Timmy Lascar can confide to Lee You think you got problems. You think anybodys got problems. Minor stuff. Trivia. Let me tell you what a problem is but I expect you to say nothing. Nothing to anybody, understand. I dont want any pity. If you want to know the truth, Lee, Im dying
Lee nearly giggles, but restrains. Im sorry to
No youre not, dont wig me
Well, what is it that youre
Softening, Timmy Lascar confides, his round shoulders reflected in his foreheads crouches, pastyfaced, You can see I got no color. Im on the deck and I get no color, plenty of sun, heh? Sure, but no burn. I cant burn, thats the truth of it. Because Im softening. My bones, Lee, my bones. Ever hear of decalcification? Well, nodding his chin up and down, the grim soft childing light of his blue eyes leaping and frolicking over Timmy Lascar, Im losing the calcium. Oh its slow. Itll take another twentyfive years sure, but in time Ill be just a heap of jelly, nothing more, Keep it under your hat
Lee here says the American people want war, want direct involvement
Not only that, Lee cuts in, but they want to be defeated, decimated, holocausted, ruined, devastated
Hes right, Timmy Lascar swipes a chair from another table, turns it backward and straddles it, he knows what hes talking about Silas
The whole goddamn American people wants its bone structure decalcified, they want to be a heap of jelly
Hes right, Silas, Timmy Lascar does a soft grin around the table
Jesus what a bunch of boobs Hoppy Zitin says disgustedly. For once I got to side with Silas. What youre talking about is an action of mass suicide, and I dont believe in looking at people as a mass, theyre made up of one two
three
four five
six seven eight nine
the little girl whips the hoop about her how many times can she do it. One becomes many, one wants to be many. No one. A single digit is impossible, you see, Hoppy
What the fuck are you talki
Nothing single, noth. One is one billion. Two is four hundred and sixtyeight trillion. One is seventyfive thousand he hackhaws to himself.
Do you consider yourself
and plus Rena, thats how I reconsider, Im already two. And before, yes, theres Levi and my brother dont I have his worry his frownlines, dont I if he whores and plays the races not think fantasy of whoring and. Multiples, clusters
I cant quite subscribe to that, Mark Fahn
What are you saying, youve got six sisters youve got to sub
now wait
no you listen to the Ark two by two God could think of one and one only
well there was noah
and his wife
and his sons
the ark of man is multiple in the raging flood. God did not visit his wrath on one man because He couldnt see one man, he never created a singular, he was distraught at the beginning, he caught his error didnt he
evil evil evil
remembered he had a rib he could deal with
never one elephant, even the beasts plural of the field I cannot go on single Rena Rena Rena
for GODS sake you understand I call on
MASS, HOPPY ZITIN, YOU CANT GET AWAY FROM YOUR MULTIPLES, YOUR ATTACHMENTS, YOUR PLANES FLOWING AND SLIDING ONE AND THROUGH THE OTHER
Was there more than one Minotaur at the end of the Labyrinth Jay attempts
there were a whole bunch of priests at the end of the labyrinth and Jason slew them all, eh, Theseus?
well why did he report one minotaur
fabulous wasnt it? how much more persuasive the gigantic myth rather than a group of priests the mammoth beast he a man slew to hell with slaying other men what the hells that thatd been done over and over
well I for one have no desire to be decimated; urge himself at himself Lee considers, reconsiders, multiconsiders, urge Hoppy at his manynesses, have him slay the hydraHoppy happyhoppy arent you with your apprentice jewelership arent you eh
I didnt say I
your eyes smart and sting and you tell us youre going slowly blind doing it but you call it a living and what else is there to so its obvious you hate it you hate you, imagine the enormous area of hatred in you Hoppy Zitin
well that doesnt mean that everybody else
let me take you on an American tour while you sing your excerpts from the great compositions of music Hoppy Zitin, sure, you sing for the American people, Hoppy, you do an extract from the Art of the Fugue to the Pittsburgh steelworker and ask him where its from, you whistle a melody from the Trout Quintet to the Nebraska farmer and ask him what its taken from, isnt that what you want to do
Who the hell wants to sing to the Pittsburgh steelworker or the Nebraska farmer you got rocks in your
You dont give a fuck whether they live or die do you
No I dont
You think they give a fuck whether you live or die
No they dont but whats that got to
I like that indifference to another mans existence, hey Hoppy. That perfect marmoreal crystallized indifference
You fucking sonofabitch Lee you motherscrewing Hoppy hiccups his laughter’
Who are you waiting for? Mark says to Lee flatly, and the table takes up the chorus WHO ARE YOU WAITING FOR
What a bunch of cruddy pricks Timmy Lascar
That doesnt disprove Lee bellows
All right all right Silas gavels the table, youve both had your innings
Hoppy turns on Silas, Who appointed you the referee, his adamsapple jiggling like a marble in a stoppedup rainspout, The American people want to die let em die Lees got a point theyre like their own gobblers stuffed and overstuffed with peace
Lee feels exhaustedly triumphant, the hell with Rena, the hell with girls, subject then to a commonplace fantasy he has on numerous occasions, that of all the males in the whole world murdered except Lee Emanuel, who then proceeds to slide his prick into the vagina of each and every living female, the female dirges of lamentations broken by the regular grunts, gulps, whimpers and fartsighs of each woman being satisfied
man is a fartsighted animal, Lee drawls
jesus youre evil Achille shakes his head.
The cafeteria courtroom is gravely silent. The figures at the Moscow Trials are: Kaminev, Zinoviev, Radek and Emanuel, Judge Silas Klein presiding, Achille Volpe the State Prosecutor, the dirtyskinned white bad eye a dog at his feet Your full name is, please
Rena I beg you beg you beg you beg you
Lee Primus Emanuel
You admit that you had established communication of a surreptitious nature with the American People.
I do so admit, sirrep.
Will you kindly inform the Court as to the methods you employed to seduce the American People to commit acts of a hostile nature against the citizens of the Soviet Union.
Yes, sirrep. The bad whitish eye leaps to its feet, goes about nuzzling and lapping at the crowd in the courtroom, whispering Evil, Evil, its all because he has six sisters, you see, one of whom is named Rena Emanuel, the worst kind of agent provocateur who committed acts of an unspeakable nature in her early childhood, unspeakable. Oh, yes, Whiteye holds up his finger, and as the official blind organ and hoopster of the Soviet People it is my duty to have you privy to these acts. I make my living teaching the art of sculpture to deserving students of the Workers, but in my spare time I am a believer in the plastic as the essence of life. I make small figures, you see. And this small Rena Emanuel is one of my masterpieces. At three years of age, in the city of Baltimore, her birthplace—the United States of America, after all, a surreptitious and subversive choice—leading us to comprehend that sabotage and treachery begin, you see, at the very moment of conception, in which the foetus selects its forebears and thereby the nation of the forebears—we have begun to detect, you see, that the Lysenko theories of environment after birth do not always quite apply—we must investigate environment prior to parturition—well, then, as I was remarking, this Rena Emanuel, at three years of age, observing that the aunts who comprised her family were far too numerous, conspired with her brother Lee, when her mother and one sister had gone to shop in downtown Baltimore, to set fire to the family house in which were slumbering five sisters and brothers of her mother. These sleeping brothers and sisters perished in the flames, except for one brother, who was badly burnt but who managed to live. Live, as a matter of fact, to the age of fifty. But he died, at last, too. Not from scars, you understand, no, nothing so clearly obvious. Died from his skin.
Oh, yes, the white eye breathes heavily, the brother of Rena’s mother died from his skin. The fire, you see, had affected his flesh in such a manner that at age forty-five he developed a cancer of the skin. He began to scratch at his skin, the itching of the cancer intolerable. He was shunted from one hospital to another, given one drug after another. Nothing was of any value. In his fiftieth year, Citizens, driven mad by the itching in his head, in his feet, in his scrotum, under his nipples, behind his ears, under his navel, in the small of his back, the itching behind his eyeballs, on his scalp, far enough up his anus so that he could not intrude a finger to relieve himself—driven mad, I say, by the itching of his flesh, he excused himself from his hospital bedroom, walked to the toilet, opened the window and hurled himself out to his death six storeys below. He died, continuing to itch, for the attendants, coming upon his body, in which all the bones were broken, observed his right index finger flexed and twitching at—it is unspeakable, Citizens, utterly unspeakable, but it is my duty to—twitching at his soul. We in the Soviet Union do not acknowledge the existence any longer of the Soul, but in this man’s case, since he was an American, the Soul in all its treachery and subversion had not yet been eradicated. Treacherous, disloyal Soul to this poor man, I say, typical of all that is corrupt and decadent in the Western World. For his Soul had got itself Infected with the Cancer which had itched the flesh of the man. So that the Soul, after the body’s death, mind you, continued to itch. In America it is still itching, poor forsaken thing. Rena Emanuel, therefore, is responsible for an Itching American Soul, an itch that was communicated as well to her brother, Lee Emanuel. A complex saboteur, Rena Emanuel. I give you her background so that you can watch her the more acutely. She is a pyromaniac and a carcinomaniac
Yes, sirrep. A very simple method, Lee Primus says very softly, not wishing to disturb his brother Secundus at the other end of the hallway. It is not that the American people were overstuffed with peace that they desired war. No. I simply persuaded them that as a people they did not as yet have the opportunity of enjoying the knowledge that in destruction they could not finally destroy. European and Asiatic peoples had already demonstrated that, but the American never believed the foreigner. It was very simple to plant the idea that they needed the demonstration for themselves. But they are good people, you see, and good people must commit suicide. I should be decorated, Comrades, not held for Trial. I have done you a service, I do not have to tie any knots, I am free
america is the last of the free peoples I will not die in war
I can hardly see now, Hoppy Zitin says, so Im not eligible for the draft.
I support my aged mother, Silas Klein says, so Im not eligible for the draft.
I have a feeble eye, Achille Volpe says, so Im not eligible for I have six sisters, Mark says, so Im not
I will have a wife and two children, Jay says, so Im Im practically boneless, Timmy Lascar says, so
Yes. I guess theres too much snow, Lee says, rising, Id better get back to the Boulevard myself. Goodnight, gentlemen. Eleven oclock the Roman numerals, and they walk Arabic toward the revolving door but Lees reflection in the glass pulls back his torso, a bare thrust of oneeyed hair falls to the shoulder of his trenchcoat
You werent going, she starts and stops in her own breath, the dismay tap of her smile fulltugged at her mouth, her body all but a series of full bundles emerging from the glass vanes, bundle by bundle, spewed by the revolvingdoor machine, melting snow a needled porcelain web stammering over her falling hair over one eye the color of rotten oranges with dark brown pits of gaze. A nylon bublitchki tipsy at her hair. A crinkly transparent plastic raincoat cottoncandied about her body. Shoes, but no galoshes. Semiprecious jewelwet. A great black bulky knitted wool sweater done by her mother rolltopped over her bosom and hips under the plastic wrinkles. Wet. The shoes soaked. Her body titters, her remotely mochacolored flawless skin. Five feet eight inches, a draw of brawn canted and bevelled, brownblonde, cornercurved, the power and the muscle of the girl, this Rena, spiculed and siphoned off in the mocha clarity of the skin, the shadowed hazel of the eye, the capsizing corners of the gravely weighted mouth withal volant, vacant, visceral, vortical and veiled in turn oh I have no chin she merrilys to Lee, theres enough of one he insists, not even as much as Sy has, who has a kind of minuscule trimmed goatee of a chin one might say but compensated by a determined thrust, not so Rena’s, which shyly backs in a bit, like me, she merrilys. Im very undetermined
a days growth of beard, blue on white, she tells herself about Lee, the shoulders rumpled in the trenchcoat, somewhat bent from the waist, as if he must remember not to be roundshouldered because of his height, but inevitably bowing while the torso is kept straight. Taller than I am, much taller, too much vaseline in the black wavy hair that he arranges in a tousle over a forehead corner, carefully, spending at least fifteen minutes before the mirror combing and recombing so that the tousle will fall precisely right, heavily dousing the hair with water, again and again, so that streams pour down his neck, wet his shirt, pool on the tile bathroom floor while he defecates at times mapping out an imaginary area in whose bounds he endeavors to count the tiny hexagonal tiles, white once, now faintly yellowed, tilted, canted, a few missing from the floor now cracked in several places from the gradual settling of the house, the cracks chorusing up the walls and down the ceiling, reflecting in Lee’s features, faint jags on the forehead and down the cheekbones where Renas are high, her face from the front a delicately inverted delta, the two faces somehow somewhat crooked, off center, his on a turtleneck and hers on a neck a shawldrop and perfectly valenced on either side to their broadly sloping shoulders, white on blue the Leeman, and his slenderlong fingers fixing the water saturating in his hair then with fat wads of vaseline, petroleum jelly the jar label says, the thick long heavy eyebrows of him, his eyelashes any girl would give a fortune to have Mrs Goldstein giggles, but not the hairs growing from the tip of his nose, which he plucks from time to time, hair all over him, hair even on your ears, Rena says wonderingly, mockingly, a thick white fuzz on them, the ears themselves arranged in two concentric semicircles and heavy lobes, the boy and the girl touch not a moment away from each other untouching, a crosshatched penumbral fuzz between, an arc of table, a hyphen of a rail, a spigothandle at the waterfountain, the polished marble floor, and the quiet of the all but deserted cafeteria, a group of men welling up at them from the rear, a roman-numerald clock jowling down and oblique upon them, the entrance plateglass window frosted over but evoking a half of a heft of her here, the raffish segment of his trenchcoat collar there, the bottom margins of the revolving doors footed in heavy rubber to slow the whirl down, slowing, now ending, the shush of the rubber against the wet marble halting, tatters of water at the girls feet, her cheeks smudged red from the cold, you dont have to wear any makeup at all he tells her, never, never. Oh, maybe a touch of lipstick. Thats all? Thats. Take that goddamn eyeshadow off. All right, Lee. No rouge. Yessir! she merrilys at him. No mascara. Yessir! she shoots at him, Aye aye captain. No jewelry. Just a little costume jewelry? No, nothing, you dont need it. Yessir! Oh, Lee. Rena, Rena, Re. Trembles trip all over her. You must be freezing. You werent going were you. I thought the snowstorm pretty heavy. But I said Id come, didnt I? Yes. I told you Id come sweeps aside everything and anything from her eyes but the Lee proscenium. Clear all, not another stick, bare stage, simply the overhead light, nothing in the rear, no group of men, no clock, no rail, no female Herbert Hoover, the hair looped back from the broad shore of the forehead, her forehead for his entire hand. But the snow, youre wet, youre cold. Oh a little snow cant melt anybody. Do you go out like this all the time, in all kinds of weather. Yes even in the rain. I like the rain, I never catch a cold, I dont care, what harm can a little rain do. It just took me a little time to get out of the house. My mother thought I was crazy, so did my father and brothers, and then I had to wait for the trolley, and the trolley took an awfully long time, I was so afraid you wouldnt wait, Lee, but I did get here as fast as I could. Were you afraid, really afraid I wouldnt. Seriously, slowsweetedly, she nods. Yes. But I wouldntve let anything in the world stop me. Oh you cant mean. Yes, yes I do. I was afraid youd. Were you? Honestly? Yes, she has a faint smudge of down on her upperlip, sometimes I think its quite a mustache. Oh, no, it just looks a little darker, but not like a. Youre sure? I always think people think. But they dont. No? Its not really that dark? No. Oh youre just telling me that it. No, Im not, Rena, Im not one for just telling for the sake of telling, I never do that, I cant spare feelings, you should know that, Im not given to idle compliments, when I do compliment then you will know I mean it absolutely, without equivocation, youre beautiful. Ah, Lee. No no, you are, I told I dont. All right. You believe me. Yes I bel. I simply thought that the storm, you know, and such, wouldve. Im here. Touching in the penumbra crosshatching between, Rena not looking away from him, not glancing at another living or inanimate thing, not at a rail, nor the floor, nor the clock, nor at herself, but simply and believingly at Lee, tall, blue on white, slim, the trenchcoat rammed up behind his head like a mediaeval ruffle, stiff and daring, Im ruthless in what I say Rena, maybe I sound a little harsh, but theres no point in not being truthful. Yes, Lee. The swart gold of her.
