My Present Age (24 page)

I choke on a sudden overpowering rush of shame like a dog on a bone. How could I have been so foolish as to put that book in her hands? By mailing it to Victoria I had only meant to prove to her that I had a glimmering of steadfastness in my character, that I was capable of seeing something through to the end. The book was all the proof I had of good intentions. And Victoria had betrayed me, betrayed my inner life to this man sitting across the table from me. I can see the two of them reading aloud to one another selected passages, punctuating them with snorts of derisive glee.

I burn recalling certain incidents in my western. How easy for Peters to prompt disloyalty in Victoria after reading in mock-heroic tones, say – well, my bathroom scene.

Sam Waters is in a zinc bathtub in Topeka, sluicing and scrubbing a couple of acres of Kansas hardscrabble off his weary body, Stetson firmly settled on his head. There’s a tinkling of rowels on Mexican spurs, a floorboard groans, and Ike Grainger’s syphilis-ravaged face looms out of the steam that clouds the room. Ike has got Sam where he wants him, naked as a babe, prime for murder
à la Marat
. But Ike enjoys too much the anticipation of the kill, talks too much, blows too hard. Ike doesn’t know Sam bathes with a Derringer under his hat, and before he can cock the hammer on his Colt Peacemaker, he takes a slug in the breastbone. He manages to squeeze only a single shot into the ceiling as a second bullet slams him through a window and flat on his back on the boardwalk.

Sam requests more hot water from the shaken barber. It’s suddenly chilly, he says. There’s a draft he hasn’t noticed before.

Now what would Anthony Peters make of that?

Apparently quite a lot, to hear him talk. “I suppose I ought to be grateful to you for your charming tale,” he says. “It was your manuscript that finally brought into sharp focus some of my speculations about the ideological assumptions underlying most of the popular fiction of the century. It was seminal in formulating the hypotheses for my work
Fantasies and Fasces: A Study of the Ideology of Popular Fiction in the Modern Age.”

I pour myself more wine and try to look blithe. The bottle is nearly empty. “No gratitude need be expressed,” I say. “Myself and my charming tale are honoured, to be sure.” Peters, like many an academic, appears incapable of absorbing any sensory input when discussing his research. He continues, impervious to my poor jibe.

“The value of your little book is that it is an unconscious parody of the western; that is, a western novel without even the crude attempts at characterization and plot development that clutter the stark imaginings of the most heavy-handed practitioners of the genre.
Cool, Clear Waters
is a western without a superstructure. The foundation exists without the encumbrances of architecture, and in my case it was the foundation that was of interest. The view was absolutely unobstructed, no girders, no scaffolding, not even guy wires to hinder my examination. Once I’d studied it and isolated its characteristics, all other forms of contemporary popular fiction could be analysed in the light of my findings. My intuitive insights were confirmed. The ideologies of the western novel, the detective novel, the spy novel, and science fiction are basically the same.”

“What the hell is this ideology you’re talking about?”

“Fascism, or a variant of it. At the beginning of the century it would be most properly described as proto-fascistic – the kind of thing found in the work of Kipling. Most recent science fiction is clearly crypto-fascistic.”

I was aghast. “Are you saying
Cool, Clear Waters
is fascistic? That my book is fascistic?”

“That is exactly what I am saying. Throughout the book there is an assumption of the ineffectuality of law as the supreme arbiter in society, as well as the exaltation of the Superman above law. There is an obvious concern for cultural and racial purity common to many fascist movements. The fear of miscegenation is implicit in Sam’s decision not to marry the Indian maiden Morning Star—”

“He didn’t marry her because he felt unworthy of her! That’s why he didn’t marry her!”

“And the celebration of the will to power? Sam’s brownshirt tactics in assuring the election of the Ox Butte newspaper editor to Congress is accompanied by a transparent apologia for political terror in the ceremonialization of the cult of violence at the post-election barn dance. Those torch-lit dancers are very Nurembergian.”

“Are you talking about the saloon brawl? Is that it? The cattlemen started it! What was Sam supposed to do?”

“Of course,” says Peters charitably, “the postulating of the ideology on your part was largely unconscious. The mythology of the western was received by you in the fashion the ancient Greeks received their notions about Olympus. In your case an unreflective mind and a personality vulnerable to the siren call of authority combined to create a fascistic cartoon with a strong undertone of sexual-power fantasy.” He paused. “Do you read
Heavy Metal?”

“No, I …”

“What I’m talking about is particularly evident in that magazine. Changing mores have made the expression more explicit, but the link between sexual fantasy and its expression in political primalism has literary antecedents. In my first chapter, ‘Hierarchy and Elitism: The Worship of the Gun,’ I subject Kipling’s
Kim
to a close analysis. Perhaps you know that the book begins with the boy Kim astride the cannon Zam-Zammah outside the museum in Lahore? He is denying all the other boys,
native boys
, the right to sit astride the gun too. In a single yet highly sophisticated and complex image are coupled notions of racism, political potency,
and sexual potency. The massive gun barrel protruding from between the adolescent boy’s thighs is too obvious a symbol to need explanation. But in a very neat coupling of associations, the gun Zam-Zammah may be read as phallus, sceptre, firearm – instrument of repression.”

I lay my head on the table. It was a very hot summer the summer I read
Kim
. I kept the curtains drawn in my bedroom for the sake of coolness even though my mother said it was bad for my eyes. It was cooler still at the feet of the Himalayas, and cool too in the high-roofed Wonder House at Lahore when I entered it with the Lama.

“What’s the matter?” demands Peters. Only such a flagrant display of inattention could have deflected him. “Where’s Victoria staying?”

“I don’t know,” he says, startled by my abruptness. I can see he is telling the truth.

“When is she going to be back?”

“I don’t know that either.”

I get to my feet.

“Where are you going?” he asks, rising too.

“I don’t know.”

I
welcome the night, feeling its blackness steal into my skin, my eyes, feeling it invade me, push out the panic. It’s seven o’clock and the only light in this room enters from outside, shed from a light standard on the street. Its greenish-yellow lamp hangs level with my apartment windows and throws long, contorted shadows about the room. They run up the walls and break in the corners, cross and recross in dim webs and spiky asterisks.

Marooned in a broad bar of darkness I stare at my naked feet. Crossed at the ankles and propped on top of the
TV
set they catch a shaft of sodium light and glow like phosphorus. I pant, sip rum and Coke. The ice jingles in my glass. My hand shakes from exhaustion. I am resting between sets.

The music stops. The needle tracks soundless in the grooves for a few moments. There is a click and the arm rises from the The Who album. In the sudden silence I strain to hear whether McMurtry may be lurking outside my door in the hallway. It was only five minutes ago he finally gave up ringing my doorbell, but that doesn’t mean he still isn’t out there, shuffling his slippers on the spot in a rage, mumbling and slipping his dentures up and down on shrunken gums. Plotting.

My head aches. I’ve really gone and done it this time, pissing McMurtry off. No doubt about it, he’ll do his best to get me kicked out of here. He means business. One slip, that’s all he was waiting for. It doesn’t matter to him that ever since the incident with the car antenna I’ve bent over backward to mollify him. Vindictive old fart. Mad old fart. Still, I don’t take anything back. No quarter asked for, none given. A man can only take so much.

God, I’m hot. Running back and forth dodging him, depth-charging him, worked up quite a sweat, and turning down the thermostat after I finally did him in didn’t affect the output of heat from the registers. In this building thermostats are purely ornamental. Tenants freeze and swelter together, as one man.

But this is ridiculous. Look how it’s coming out of me. Stripped down to my jockey shorts and I’m still oozing sweat the way a warm cheese oozes grease. It’s the booze, of course. I’ve put a lot of liquor away in the past few days and hooch always makes me sweat. Maybe I should shower. I can smell myself. Still, there’s no one else around left to offend.

Not Rubacek anyway, who’s disappeared. Just one more damn thing to worry about. After leaving Peters I spent this afternoon cruising Quadrant 2, looking for both of them, Victoria and Stanley. I turned up neither.

I’ve decided to admit the idea that it might be wise to be scared of Stanley. So now I’m scared of him. After all, what do I know about the man? Why was he in jail? He may be unpredictable, violent. One thing is certain. He’s attached to his automobile and I took it away from him. I may find it difficult to convey to him my impulsive nature, to explain to him why I had to have his car.

To top it all off, the note. I pick it up from my lap. If I hold it directly over my head the paper catches the light from the street lamp and I can make it out. It shakes a little in my hand, makes a raspy sound like dry, insecty legs scratching and rubbing against one another.

That’s all. No explanation, no hint of what it is that’s so goddamn important. Finding that slipped under the door when I came home wasn’t tonic for the nerves. What did it suggest? Good news? Bad news?
Why can’t people explain themselves?

I got no answer when I phoned her. It seems strange now to think that when I settled the receiver in its cradle I was overcome by a flash of virulent optimism, believing that maybe Victoria had contacted Marsha and that Hideous now knew where she was. Life bloomed. I poured myself a stiff drink and set “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” to spinning on the turntable.

I was swaying to the music when the phone rang. It was McMurtry.

“Turn that goddamn noise down!”

I cocked an ear before answering. He had a point. It was much too loud. I was too strung-out, too hyper, to notice until my attention was drawn to it.

“Okey-doke. You got it. It won’t happen again.”

“It better not. What’s going on up there? You having a
orgy?”
Pronounced with a hard g, as in
Porgy and Bess
.

I almost said, yes. I almost said come on up, all the girls are begging for a clean old man. They claim there’s nothing nicer. What I did say was: “Er, not really.”

“If you had a job you wouldn’t have the energy for all that. Do an honest day’s work and see how you’d feel.”

I didn’t reply. He waited for a bit. Then he said: “Not all of us appreciate that noise, you know. I don’t know how they call that music. It’s just noise. I don’t know why I have to listen to it.”

And I wondered why every morning I had to listen to the base sound of The Beast jabbering, rending his prophetic garments, and clanking his madman’s manacles. And how many quiet Sunday
evenings had been shattered by the quacking fulminations of Donald Duck rising up as McMurtry sat entranced by the
Wonderful World of Disney?
And his taste in music?

“Let’s make a deal,” I said, “you don’t make me listen to Maestro Welk and I won’t make you listen to The Fab Four.”

“What?” Suddenly he’s deaf.

“I said, I’m tired of hearing Lawrence Welk bellowing from the depths. Turn your goddamn
TV
down.” I yelled into the receiver: “Wunnerful! Wunnerful! Let’s half a warm hant, folks, for dose two cute kits, Bubby and Sizzy!”

“You’re crazy,” he said, obviously shocked. “You ought to be locked up.”

“Well, I’m not. And until I am you’ll just have to live with me.”

“We’ll see about that. After I call the owner of the building, we’ll see. We’ll see if I have to live with you or not. He’s my late wife’s cousin, you know.”

Oh fuck. The best I managed to croak was, “Aw, go call your mother.”

“Maybe the owner don’t want no hummosexuals on the second floor,” he said.

I hung up, went to the stereo, and took off The Beatles. I replaced them with Jefferson Airplane. What did I have to lose? Let’s run the sixties up the flagpole and see who salutes, I said to myself. Mr. McMurtry, meet Gracie Slick. Grace, say hello to Mr. McMurtry. I twiddled the volume knob until the window frames were pulsing in and out in sync with the bass. Then I started to boogie. I boogied out to the kitchen and I boogied back, glass in hand. Gracie and I were singing about white rabbits at the top of our lungs. Underneath it all I heard, or thought I heard, a muted jangling, a dim but insistent noise that made me feel as if I had a tooth that wanted to ache. It made me nervous. I couldn’t locate the source of the sound. Was it the phone, or my head?