Authors: Jaimy Gordon
“O my godzilla—”
“I know you can’t name her exact country, Doc, top secret and all that”—
I mushed on with the program, but sumpm was different. To get myself in the right mood for dreambox repair, I had tuned up the scary couple on my crystal ball. Sekt, Madame? To the Koderer adolescent, yes? Stubborn as fungus, but now
Gott sei Dank
she gets always better and we may at last get rid of her! You want to get rid? I like this greedy baby. Yes, we have noticed. We even fear a little the sorcery of your influence, Doktor Zuk. But we can rely on the authority of your technik, Dr. Feuffer.
Na ja!
Even so she gets better. Kiss! kiss!
Prosit! Nazdravje!
Clink clink.
But no, his date with the love of my life seemed to have some way tightened the boilerplate on the world-famous diagnostician. Foofer sat before me more sealed than ever in his sphinx suit full of farts, his notebook closed, his ballpoint nowhere in sight, his baggy cheeks motionless, not even his thumbnail zissing.
“But howsabout we do it this way, Doc: If it’s no, say no, if it’s yes or maybe, say nuttin. Then nuttin’s for sure, but like you put it so succinctly” (I wasn’t above ladling on the shmaltz when he got that trapped look behind his bifocals) “at least then the truth shrinks down to my size, instead of staying as big as seven worlds like it is right now.”
“Ursula,” Foofer creaked, “nuh-zing you can propose, no game, no trick, will make me utter one word more or less than I zink good and right. Is it quite clear?” “It’s quite clear,” I echoed,
We’ll see about that
I was thinking.
“Okay, Doc, we’re talking Soviet Central Asia here, that narrows it down to six million square miles. I’m on the right track, aren’t I, at Camp Chunkagunk I was always the champ at this kinda thing … We’re talking Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, or Kyrgyzstan—cheese, there can’t be two Foodian dreambox mechanics in the whole six million miles, just try getting your conk fixed in Betpak-Dala!—you can forget it! So once Doctor Zuk let it slip that she grew up in Forty Maidens Feasting—that was the name of this real old fort where they hid her when the bad guys took away her old man. I swear the name’s got fourteen
k
’s in it—sumpm like—well I’ll know it when I hear it. So I figure all I gotta do is dig up Forty Maidens Feasting in all the languages in Central Asia and I got my Rosetta Stone. Don’t look so surprised, Doc, I was trained by the best! the wood wizardess, namely Willis Marie Bundgus of East Millinocket, Maine.”
(I eyeballed him. Maybe August had put the dew on his wooly eyebrows, but what could explain the wild look under them, the restless irises stranded in bloodshot aspic—and he sat perfectly still—not even his thumbnail zissing—)
“Make it easy for me, Doc! I can tell I’m getting warm. Now the big question is who the hump was her old man and why did they take him. Are we talking Nazis here or Commies—”
“Nuh-zing means nuh-zing,” Foofer suddenly exploded, but quietly, like a dropped grapefruit, with a thud and a fizz, and only afterwards the shiny eyebags under his glasses reddened, “when I say nuh-zing, it needs no dolmetscher, do you understand me, Ursula?” he whispered.
I was shocked. “Hey, I thought that was the main way you dreambox mechanics operated, you say nuttin and we fill in the holes, work the crossword puzzle, stuff the sausage casing—and here for godzillas sakes I thought we were doing better—”
“I object to nuh-zing if you want to talk. I gladly hear all you have to say. I mean that my silence is not to be translated by some,
splutter
, teenager into confirmation of nonsense concerning another mental scientist and particularly not into cheap romance! Is it quite clear?”
This was stunning news, but as it was not love of Foofer that had set me talking in the first place, I refused to let him hurt my feelings. I drew a breath and ploughed on with the program: “Just tell me this—Doc—I mean it
is
my question—the old man was a Jew, am I right?”
“Zis Zuk woman is of far too much interest to you. I tell you nuh-zing more about her! nuh-zing! We will have no more questions. This concerns you not a damp chicken dropping, do you understand?” It was my jaw that dropped. “You have scratched up far too much already what is nuh-zing of your affair, Ursula. If you can find Doktor Zuk you may ask her. There is an end of the matter.”
“Sumpm’s different about you today, Doc,” I had to observe, “you used to be more, er, softer. Sumpm more in the overcooked vegetable line—don’t get me wrong—I like overcooked vegetables, they’re real good for you. But used to be I could push with the program and you fell over splat.”
“Yes.” He was recovering the Buick and the Alps before my eyes, I mean his dignity, the height and bulk of it, and to tell you the truth (maybe I really was getting better) he was easier on the eyes this way than when his baggy jowls shook. “Let us say I expect some-zing more of you now,” he said, after a pause,
in a perfectly calm, dreadfully slow voice. “I can treat you as … some-zing of a fellow … seeker … now I see you are getting better. And I know from Doktor Zuk you are a young woman of great nerve … and respond to challenge … in fact I change my mind … I honor our bargain. I answer one last time—about Doktor Zuk’s fazzer—if you promise to respond as grown-up woman to some-zing I set before you …” Does it stink like some animal squashed five days ago under a pickup truck? Did I smell what was coming? I gobbled that ripe old catfish-bait hook line and sinker. “It’s a deal.”
Foofer settled himself in his chair with an urbane little kick of his pinstripes and folding of knuckles and liquid sparkle of watch chain that told me this interview was going exactly as he had planned. What did it matter as long as I’d find out about her at last?
“Her fazzer,” he began, in his creakiest, millstoniest voice, “was a writer of, what to say, odd, grotesque tales, in Yiddish. Self-evidently, then, a Jew … but razzer a phantast of z’nowhere … than a portrayer of some-zing very much Jewish. What to call these … promiscuous mystical tendencies …?
“Born in Poland, in Galicia … fled before German troops to Lvov … deported by z’Soviets to Kazakhstan—ah yes, your six million miles narrows it down very nicely. And here he went hungry. Then did some-zing clever … married an Uzbeki woman from a powerful family. They disappeared, and for a while this saved him …
“He was a phantast, but smart, you see, he was simply never seen … His stories appeared, out of nowhere, in z’last Yiddish papers … He signed them The Beetle, the one who lives in dung …
“He was betrayed by a Uigur guide to Stalinist agents, found and liquidated in 1951.
“Certain persons remained interested for z’daughter. She was hidden in the nomad villages, then sent to university … god knows where, some fantastic capital, Tashkent perhaps, or Samovarobad … She had studies in Vienna, in Paris and a little bit here … wrote in French a curious small essay, about, eh, puberty as ephemeral monstrosity that was translated into English and made for her some little passing celebrity in z’field … Before she is invited here she is Commissar of Mental Science in some Soviet Autonomous Republic, nine tenths desert, z’size perhaps of …” He shrugged. “Kansas? … She calls herself a Foodian, if you will ask me she has to z’world of everyday a hinge quite her own, razzer like her fazzer …”
Foofer recrossed his legs, comfortably. “Zis is all I know. He was a little famous, The Beetle. You can look under Der Kaifer in z’bigger Jewish encyclopedias …
So
.
“And now.” He drew from the inner pocket of his jacket a dirty pink envelope, unfolded a paper and smoothed it in front of me. “What do you say about zis?” It was a mimeographed menu from Stubby’s Seventh Furlong, Track Kitchen No. 2, Indian Mound Downs. I picked it up, turned it over and over in disbelief. On the back were ketchup stains and Margaret’s familiar scrawl:
My dear sister,
It’s not like me to dish out my judgment uninvited, but now that I’ve seen you, I take my greasy pen in hand. Ursie! What in godzillas name are you doing in that bughouse! Not that the joint has nuttin to recommend it, that scrambled Egbert is a genius in his shriveled little way, the Greek noodle is a masterpiece of simple cuisine and I could certainly oink that suave and helpful nurse’s aide Reginald once or twice, but the point
is: What the hump are you doing in the bughouse? Godzillas sake I know you’re not buggy, Ursie, just crawling with love for womankind.
There, I said it. For years I’ve kept it to myself. Before, you were too young to know, but now you’re too old not to, especially if you think you’re doomed to spend your life in the loonie bin. What for, to keep the world safe from the Bogeywoman? Just because those chicken-livered Maine girls threw you out of camp, so what, they were only little girlgoyles, they didn’t know any better.
Can’t you see, Ursie, you being you, the banquet will be laid for you wherever you land? Already that beautiful dreambox mechanic in the bughouse is crazy in love with you, anybody could see it, for godzillas sake she gave you her phone number didn’t she? Actually I don’t know about that old broad—okay so it’s the covert prude inside the hussy talking, but I don’t claim to be helping anybody, she does, and besides she’s old enough to be your mother. I mean, isn’t there some kind of Olympus you’re not supposed to descend from if you work in the bughouse, otherwise where’s that big difference between the bughouse and life which costs ninety-six dollars a day? Aaaaah what does it matter who am I to talk, love rules the camp, the grove, the track but who woulda thought the bughouse—just lemme know when you want outa there.
Love,
Margaret
You are in serious hot water now Miss Margaret head-in-the-fog Koderer
, I radioed my sister,
you won’t live down this verblundjet
act of treachery for thirty years at least. Wait’ll I get my hands on you, and don’t try to tell me you thought their royal highnesses would respect the sanctity of the U.S. Mail
…
“She’s joking of course,” I said with a feeble snicker, “quite a whipped-cream-pie-in-your-face type, my sister.”
“Why she would joke about your sexuality, I wonder, some-zing we have never talked about?”
“She’d joke about it exactly so this would happen, so I’d have to face a world-famous fuddy dreambox mechanic on a highly poisonal subject which is, to put it mildly, embarrassing to a girlgoyle like me. She’d find that sorta funny.”
“I wonder why zis subject is embarrassing to you?”
“Hey, no use tryna explain to a royal what a normal person finds embarrassing. You fuddies don’t even see sumpm a little raw in sending Nurse Hageboom to butt in on O Hell and ask us Bug Motels one by one did you have a bowel movement today …”
“Ahem. Your sister Margaret. She is the closest person to you?”
“She used to be,” I said.
“May I ask why she thinks you are troubled by sexual feelings for women?”
“I don’t see where she said I was troubled. She said
crawling
not troubled.”
“You are quite certain there is nuh-zing worth discussing in what your sister says?”
“Nuttin worth discussing with
you
,” I said, and we shared a moment of unpleasant silence. “I might discuss it with Doctor Zuk, if she was my dreambox mechanic. And by the way, not to hurt your feelings or anything, but I always thought from the first time I saw her that Doctor Zuk oughta be my dreambox
mechanic. Why won’t you let her be my dreambox mechanic? I don’t see why somebody shouldn’t choose their own doctor when they know, absolutely know, they’ll be better off with that person.” I had a queasy spongy feeling in my guts that the timing might be all wrong for this argument, but I also had a hunch it was now or never.
“Ursula, I tell you frankly because you are so much better. Such a move is simply out of z’question. Can you zink why I might find this not a good plan?”
“I don’t care,” I said. “Doctor Zuk will go along with it.”
“I’m afraid you are right,” Foofer said gravely.
I stared at him, trying to gather what this might mean. So hard and clear, so amber, so royal was the glue that stuck the royals together fast in their one big royal popcorn ball, so rare, in fact never, were the holes in it that let you see down to the nothing-but-popcorn at its core—I stared and stared and started filling up with dread like a battery with charge. “We’re not all that good buddies, me and Doctor Zuk,” I panted, afraid I had somehow ratted on her, “she wouldn’t tell me her birth date, or her country, or who she was working for, or whether she’s married or a spy or a Red Army dreambox fixer or what kind of perfume she wears or whether she’s ever been in Caracas or any of that private royal stuff.”
“Yes, but I see you have put her all these questions.”
“So what, whaddaya mean,” I said in rising panic, “we all wanna know that stuff about the royals all the time, that’s half of what we talk about in the Bug Motels, you could put out a royal gossip magazine and it would sell like hotcakes—”
“I zink very little of such talk takes place in telephone calls to private residences of psychiatrists.”
“Margaret made that part up!” I shouted.
“Perhaps. Still, plainly it has come to a question of, of far too complicated personal … interest. Perhaps you know I am z’chief of treatment at this clinic. Furzermore, I am one of a staff of fifty-seven treatment personnel including fifteen senior psychiatrists. And I am your psychiatrist. The plan of treatment for every patient in z’Adolescent Wing of Rohring Rohring is discussed regularly before zis whole body. I must tell you that Doktor Zuk has argued long and eloquently in front of zis body for your special friendship, but now, in my judgment and that of many uzzers, it is gone too far and, with my apologies, for I know zis will be difficult for you—it must end.”
“You mean we’re not supposed to talk to each other any more?”
“Nuh-zing.”
“She’ll never put up with that kinda ridiculous game, pretend you don’t know each other and all that!” I said.
“No. She has not.”