Thoreau Bound, page 37
His concentration on these ideas increased in intensity; his mind shuttled between the future and the past; his heart remembered the loveliest of beaches and a loving woman’s face. The life he could imagine was perfect and beautiful, while the lives he observed were miserable and mean. The sea-view faded and the scene around him blurred behind his own sad tears.
How else can we explain why the far-seeing man failed to notice that the well-made maid had abandoned her bucket, flung her featherduster, noiselessly closed the bedroom door, and then feasted her famished eyes upon the powerful body of Thoreau?
35
Deu Sex Machina — How the Bed Made The Maid
‘Deus ex machina,’ is said to mean
In New Latin, a ‘god from a machine.’
Improbably, the god descends to save
The book, the plot, the hero from the grave.
Tears swelled in Thoreau’s bright eyes as the maid — maneuvering silently behind him — moved closer for the thrill. Her ten sharp fingernails clasped around his head like a wreath of thorns. Her warm palms pressed firmly over his ears, just hard enough for him to hear, but not identify, her sultry voice. Her lips, blowing a hot sirocco of clove-breath, scorched the hairs on the back of his neck.
“Drink this,” she whispered hoarsely, handing him the cocoa cup. “You will need the energy.”
Thoreau drank deep, draining the cocoa and the cream-dollop in three long gulps. Deftly, like peeling a banana skin, the maid removed her dress. Uncostumed, this maid became a woman, and then the woman millimetered closer to the man.
“Have you found the difference,” she asked, “between women from Greece and women from Germany?”
Thoreau tried to turn around to face the woman, but she held his head too firmly between her hands.
“The Greeks never ask what time it is,” he answered. “The Germans — the women and the men — keep track of every minute of the day.”
“What time is it?” the woman asked.
Thoreau peered out the window at the clock that topped the church.
“Three minutes to 8:30. In less than one hundred and eighty seconds, Gertrude and Karin will find you here on their sexpensive bed. They will combine the tools of the writer’s trade — intuition, experience, observation, and imagination — and then assume the inevitable: that Thoreau tried to seduce the maid. There will be a mild scene.”
The woman tied a bandanna around his head to cover up his eyes, then pressed her naked front against Thoreau’s bare back. Disheartened, he had no strength to resist. They wrestled for few moments and at the end of the bout she had pinned him back-down against the bed. She placed the empty cocoa cup into his right hand.
“Here, take this,” the woman commanded. “Smash this cup against the wall. It’s a Greek thing. It means that you care nothing about those things that can be broken and replaced. Afterwards, you will feel better.”
Half-heartedly, Thoreau tossed the cup and then listened as it bounced off the wall and dropped unbroken to the carpeted floor.
“Seven nights of sex makes one weak man,” the woman said, as she massaged his forehead. “Thoreau, if you remember how, tell me nothing but the whole truth. When you wrote in your letter and asked if I needed anything, did you mean that?”
“Penelope!” shouted Thoreau. “Penelope!! Penelope!!!”
“Your guardian goddess,” she said. “I love the way you punctuate me!”
Thoreau snatched the bandanna blindfold from his eyes and flung it at the woman’s belly. Playfully, she pounded his chest with her fists.
“Thoreau, tell me which is right: Do mules have more brains than men, or do men have less brains than mules?”
Penelope, sitting on top of him, here! ... Thoreau smiled and recovered his calm self. In the presence of this wildly open woman he always felt entirely at ease. He wanted to hug her, to tell her how much he had missed her, how much her friendship meant to him. But before he could act, she spoke.
“Thoreau, stop thinking somewhere else and listen to what I am saying to you. I was talking about the stupid question in your letter. When a passionate woman lives alone without a man, what in the name of Hellas do you think she needs?”
A strong woman is able to live alone: she can be productive, caring, and creative despite her solitude But when a woman (or a man) is weak, then loneliness drives her (or him) into the doing of desperate things. How sad that so many beautiful women live without getting the gift of so-beautiful love.
“What does a passionate woman need, Penelope?” Thoreau asked, happy to be glancing at the light in her mischievous eyes. “A passionate woman needs a man to care for her, and a man to care for.”
“Does that mean,” she asked, “that a woman needs one man, or two?”
As Penelope laughed deeply, sensuously, Thoreau’s head turned at the sight of the bedroom door moving open slowly, slowly, inch by inch. Penelope — who had been waiting for that moment — swooped down and wrapped her arms around Thoreau. Certain that his Reason would be defeated by her Passion, Thoreau protested nevertheless.
“Penelope! Get off me, stand up, put on your clothes. At least cover yourself with the bandanna. Remember the last time you meddled in my romantic life? You almost ruined me.”
She hugged him tighter.
“I’ll remember that, Thoreau, as soon as you remember that you promised Kosmos that you would live with me. He wanted us to take care of each other, so I would not lose hope while he was gone, and so you could find a center for your wandering life and mind.”
“Penelope, please get up. You don’t understand what’s been happening here.”
Tighter she squeezed her arms around him.
“Your letter said that you’ve been sleeping with two sisters: is that so hard to understand? In France it happens every day. They call that a menagerie de trop.”
Anxiously Thoreau’s eyes glanced first at the slow-opening door, then up at the woman sitting on his stomach. Time still remained to rescue himself, if he could be cunning enough.
“The square man avoids the triangles of love. Penelope, keep your hands to yourself and listen to me — do not believe that you are not attractive and that I am not attracted to you. As our mutual friend might say: ‘Penelope is built like a brick church-house, and touching her body charges me with spiritual thoughts. Her body tempts me to her temple, spires my desires, and rings my steeple bells.’ ... Yet to me, Penelope, you will always be a big sister. While Kosmos is alive I could never betray him and seduce you.”
Penelope shook her head to disagree; her long hair swept across Thoreau’s muscular chest.
“While that selfish bastard is alive you won’t sleep with me? Then let’s pretend he’s dead! I’ve written him a hundred letters, and he doesn’t care enough to answer, not even once. Kosmos can take care of himself in jail, but you, Thoreau, how will you escape from your prison? You can’t break out because your prison is inside your head. Will your whole miserable life be the life of a slave who wants to do the right thing, and an idiot who thinks the wrong things he should do are right?”
In a flash their eyes spoke profoundly to each other.
“A whole life lived in slavery?” asked Thoreau. “Freedom is everything. Almost everything.”
“Good,” said the passionate woman, “we are agreed. Now stop talking, pucker your lips, and open up your heart. And if you believe in the freedom that is made of actions — and not just the empty words — then kiss me!”
And she kissed him and kissed him and kissed.
The lascivious kiss was not quite consummated when Thoreau and Penelope heard the shouting of a high-pitched voice.
“Mama! Karin!” yelled Nikola, as she placed a fruit-laden tray onto the table beside the bed. “Bring up one extra cup and plate for the breakfast.Thoreau is playing kissy-kissy with our nice new maid!”
36
Thoreau’s Breakfast In Bed
To be caught flagrante delicto — caught in the act ‘while the crime is blazing’ — is the greatest challenge to the male creative mind. Caught red-hinded with their infidelities exposed, men find four ways to respond: deny, downplay, justify, confess.
Thoreau — in his young foolishness — had no fear of women: no fear of winning them, losing them, or drawing them into the orbit of his life. His sincerity would prompt him to tell the truth. And what truth would he tell? Penelope had hunted him, but Thoreau knew that he had been pleased to be her prey. Karin and Gertrude would leave him. He would lose the warmth of their bodies and the pleasures of their love.
‘Lovers Turnover’ is not a dessert at a New York diner; it is the perennial problem of women and men. Women would desert Thoreau; other women would replace them; these replacements would be replaced; and soon as the lust was lost these new lovers would be replaced again, again, again. How many women does a man need? If lust is the only goal, then ten thousand women are not enough. Lust is good; yet when a man grows past his adolescent phase he wants and needs far more than lust.
How many women would it would take to satisfy him? How many mistakes would first be made — how many failed experiments — before the great creative insights break through the ordinary mind?
“Thoreau!” yelled Gertrude from the hallway. “Tonight’s dinner is my favorite, Schmorgurken unterm Sahneberg — stewed cucumbers under a mountain of cream.”
Said Karin: “And your favorite, Kartoffelpuffer mit Apfelmus — potato pancakes with applesauce. And for dessert, Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte — Black Forest cherry cake.”
The moment that Karin and Gertrude entered the bedroom, Thoreau hardily noticed that the two beauties were naked from the forehead down.
Terribly did their Augen flash. Karin and Gertrude stared at Thoreau and Penelope.
“Sehr gemütlich! How charming!” Gertrude said coolly.
“Welches Ansehen! What a sight!” Karin shouted. “Das ist grauenhaft! That is horrible!”
Glaring at Thoreau, Gertrude marched closer to the bed.
“In my professional life as a sexual therapist, Herr Thoreau, I have seen everything and heard more. I am trained to accept, without judgment, all varieties of erotic misbehavior, from vertiginous virginity to psychogenic detumescence. When a woman confesses that she is a nymphomaniac, I nod my head with sympathy; when a man leaves his wife to have intercourse with a barnyard chicken, I take notes and yawn. I am a doctor. I am rational. I am calm and detached as the injured retina of the third Buddhist eye. In one word: I am unshockable.”
Penelope, sensing the storm after the calm, wrapped both her hands around the bulging biceps muscle of Thoreau’s right arm. The German therapist gazed at and appraised her Greek rival like a jeweler studying a gem.
“Sie ist so schön wie die Venus! She is as beautiful as Venus!” said Gertrude, examining the full-bodied Penelope.
Gertrude dropped her breakfast tray. Her mouth fell open, and then out came a siren-loud scream that made the paintings tremble on the walls. Wailing again, she jumped onto the bed then desperately clutched her übermensch Thoreau.
“Ich liebe dich! I love you!” she cried.
Karin, immediately, let her food-filled tray crash to the carpet, then leaped at Thoreau shouting:
“Ich bin verrückt nach dir! I am crazy about you!”
Gertrude jerked Thoreau’s left thigh. Karin tugged Thoreau’s right leg. Penelope yanked Thoreau’s left arm. Shouting, screaming, shrieking, swearing, the three women pulled Thoreau’s body in three different directions. Jealousy was tearing him apart.
Thoreau grasped his powerful right hand around the wooden bedpost.
“Ladies,” he said. “Is there something we need to talk about?”
Not one of the women wanted to talk. Thoreau watched them like an artist: Penelope’s pendulous breasts; Gertrude’s bicycle-built thighs; Karin’s lithe body perfected by years of ballet. Even when they were angry they were beautiful. Like all men in trouble, he wondered if telling these women that they looked beautiful would help to get them calm.
Thoreau was not the lone observer of this centrifugal farce. As young Nikola watched the scene, her eyes filled with a child’s wonder, openness, and curiosity. For the past seven weeks, Thoreau had delighted in laughing with her, and making her laugh and laugh.
“Nikola,” he said. “All this exercise is making me very hungry.”
And with his powerful right arm he pulled himself close to the tray of food that Nikola had placed on the table beside the bed. When his mouth opened to bite the bunch of grapes, the three women tugged him back.
Again Thoreau pulled himself closer to the grapes and opened his mouth to eat, but again the tugging women drew his body back from the unattainable fruits. The child’s face lit up with joy as she laughed and laughed and laughed.
“I will help you,” Nikola said. “You need one more hand.”
Gripping a bowl of olive oil, she climbed up onto the bed then poured the oil along the bedpost.
“Nikola, no!” Thoreau said calmly. “If you grease that post, I won’t be able to hold on.”
Penelope yelled: “He promised! He’s coming home with me!”
Karin cried out: “I loved him first!”
Gertrude shouted: “I cured him and now he is mine!”
The women pulled Thoreau’s limbs with all their furied might. The olive oil trickled down the bedpost and the man’s hand slid from the saving wood. Four bodies shouted as they tumbled off the bed onto the carpet, in one tangled heap of flesh.
37
What Thoreau Remembered Then Forgot
“It is safer,” says the ancient proverb, “to be a meat bone tossed between a pack of dogs, than to be a man beloved by two women at once.”
Thoreau lay sprawled on the plush carpet, gripped by three furious femmes: the clutching Karin, the grasping Gertrude, the pawing Penelope. Danger — especially dangerous women — focused the young man’s attention and made his whole self fully alert. Strange-shaped shards of memories interconnected as a mystery unpuzzled itself. Thoreau thrilled at the swelling illuminations poised to burst from subconscious chaos into his mind’s sweet light.
He remembered the old man who loved olive trees: his smile, his peacefulness, his hearty warmth expressing the most sublime abilities of human beings: to love, to give, to speak sincerely, and to be human kind.
He remembered — it happened a week ago — the 80-year-old old lady he met in a café: for thirty years she had saved pennies and nickels and dimes so she could visit Greece. But on her first day in Athens, an American tourist, pretending to change her dollars into Euros, robbed her of everything she owned. So Thoreau, after listening to her saga and realizing that he was rich, reached into his pocket and handed her enough money to live splendidly in Greece for a month at least.
He remembered his friend Kosmos, the vitality of Kosmos, how he lived fully in this world, yet searched never-endingly for his true paradise. His dream remained laughably quixotic and hopelessly unattainable, yet the man never lost his passion for that dream. His faith made that paradise feel so real, so close at hand. And the colorful picture of the bird with circled knee! A work of joy that could have been created only by a man who had discovered what his heart had been seeking for so long.
He remembered at last the eyes of Beatrice Loverly, the beautiful radiance in those eyes, the way she gazed at him that night too many weeks ago. And her voice, the voice that caressed him with so much vitality, and laughed with so much joy. Would they ever again walk together, watched by the starlight, on that quietly glorious segment of the beach? Would he ever again find one moment as magical as that?
Those four memories were about to meld into a new idea when Thoreau felt tug-tug-tuggings on his arm and legs. Penelope, Gertrude, and Karin continued their project of shrieking and shouting and swearing as they pulled Thoreau. The young man’s concentration dissolved like cotton candy. The great solution — once focused like a moonbeam — scattered as the wind-blown sand.
With a jump and a thump and a ha-ha-ha, Nikola leaped from the bed and landed on Thoreau’s strong chest.
“Mama! Karin! Don’t hurt him!” the child cried out. “We were crying all the time and he brought us happiness!”
Silence. Six hands released Thoreau’s three limbs. Ears perked up and eyes opened astonished as the silence broke beneath the telephone’s discordant ring ring rings.
38
How Thoreau Explained The Woman Naked In His Arms
The telephone rang and rang and rang, and nobody knew what to do except the child Nikola, who dashed across Thoreau’s body then picked up the shimmering phone.
“Hello, Halo, ela,” the child said, in English, German, Greek. ... “It’s for you, Thoreau.”
When the man placed the earpiece to his ear he heard the most seductive voice chanting these most enchanting words:
“If a goddess steals a mortal man
Himself he cannot help or save —
He can escape from her just when
A stronger goddess takes him as her slave.”
Thoreau pondered this poem for a moment, then grasped the meaning behind the words.
“Beatrice!” he shouted, thoroughly surprised. “Beatrice!”
“Am I interruptusing your coitus, darling?” the woman replied. “I could ring back in ten seconds, when you’ve finished up.”
“Beatrice, I was just thinking about you!”
“Thinking about me while a trio of women dally in your arms! That’s twice I’ve caught you naked with Penelope. Three times and it’s a certified affair.”
