“I knew only Korean and Mandarin until I found passage from Shanghai to Baltimore on an Israeli merchant ship. The crew of the Altalena taught me my first words in English and in Hebrew.”
“Koomgang's converted to Judaism,” Pace said.
Koomgang Lee laughed gently and fingered his soul patch. “Not precisely converted,” he said. “Before, I was an atheist. The only belief system permitted in North Korea is the cult of the leader, Kim Jong-il. Now I am Reform Jew.”
“I tried reformin' myself many times,” said Beany, “but nothin' ever took for keeps. I guess I'm doomed to die apostate.”
“This word you employâapostateâ” said Koomgang Lee, “is one I do not know.”
“Means I got no faith. Nothin' in particular, anyway.”
“To believe in yourself and in your duty to mankind is faith enough, Mrs. Beany.”
“Miss Beany to you, Mr. Lee.”
Koomgang Lee smiled without showing his tiny teeth, then stood up.
“It has been a most highly remarkable pleasure to have made your acquaintances and to talk with you,” he said to the ladies. “Will you be in New Orleans for long?”
“Not very, I don't think,” said Lula.
“But we'll be sure to come back in here before we go,” said Beany.
“Please do. Good to see you, Mr. Ripley, as always.”
Pace and Koomgang Lee shook hands again before the owner moved to another table to greet his customers.
Count Basie and his orchestra played as Helen Humes sang “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.”
“Maybe I will have another snowflake, son,” said Lula. “I'm beginnin' to feel better about bein' back in N.O.”
32
It was spooky driving around today with Pace. NO definitely aint the same place as I left it eighteen years ago. Sailors and my old house in Metairie is okay there wasnt much damage in Jefferson Parish but just about every neighborhood east got hit pretty bad except for high ground like the Quarter and the Marigny and parts of Uptown. Mounds of trash no stoplights or power drug dealers cruising around in cars Pace told me in the Lower Nine and New Orleans East dead bodies are being dumped and nobody does nothing about it. Ghost lands is a accurate description of those places. The tourist area is back up plenty of people carrying on on Bourbon so youd think nothing so terrible ever happened. When I lived here I dont think I was on that street six times in the last ten years or more. Now at Marnies Im two blocks away but still cant feature going anywhere near it other than maybe if we go to Galatoires I do miss their remoulade sauce I never tasted none better. Pace and his crew are working on Arturo Okazaki y Pinturas house and when they finish it will start repairing a restaurant out on Canal across from the high school Lee Harvey Oswald went to. Pace says there is enough work for him in and around NO to last him until he decides to retire and from what we saw of the devastation I cant disagree. Most of the workers are from Mexico not many from here which is a fact that troubles me. I would think that its the local inhabitants who could use the jobs there are plenty and the money. They cant all have gone to Houston. Marnie Kowalski has invited Beany and me to have dinner with her tonight shes cooking and wants us to meet her newest beau a movie director who is shooting a picture in Shreveport so hes only in NO on weekends. Marnie says hes famous his name is Doncovay Abidjan a half African who made a movie called Death Becomes You won prizes all over the world Marnie told us but neither Beany or me heard of it. Marnie says its about a young woman from a rich Boston family who falls in love with her husbands father whos the worlds leading expert on wasps she gets pregnant by him and they run off together to a made up South American country where he falls off a cliff trying to capture a wasp. She decides to stay there and
live in this mountain village and have the child though she releases all the wasps her fatherinlaw kept to study and is stung in her eyes so she goes blind but has the baby who is a boy who grows up to become the leader of a revolution and then is president of the country. Before his mother dies she tells him her last wish is for her corpse to be thrown off the same cliff his father fell from and he honors her wish and years later she is made a saint who becomes the icon of a cult that each year several of its followers jump off this cliff to prove their devotion. Her son the president tries to break up the cult but he fails when members of the cult assassinate him and they take over the government. Beany said she didnt think shed like the movie I dont think I would either but I didnt say it to Marnie.
33
“Mama, this place out here's my own special pro bono project. Man owns it lived here thirty-nine years, lost his house and all his most prized earthly possessions but one. Wanted to show you now so when it's transformed into what I got in my head you'll say, âMy land, Pace Roscoe, I just wish your daddy was here to witness what a marvelous thing you gone and done.' What I love about you, Mama, nobody but you ever calls me by my forenames.”
Pace and Lula were rolling in Pace's red Dodge Ram east on St. Bernard Highway. He'd picked up his mother that overcast afternoon, leaving Beany and Marnie in deep discussion about the difference between clitoral and vaginal orgasms, the latter of which the eternally inquisitive Miss Thorn, even at her advanced age, remained unconvinced were anything more than an oriental myth.
“What's this man's name whose house you're gonna build for nothin'?”
“Luther Byu-Lee, Mama. Half Vietnamese, half black. His daddy was a cook on a Chinese freighter and his mama was a dancer at Big Dorothy's Shoo-Fly Club. Remember it? On Conti?”
Lula shook her head.
“Burned down, Luther told me. Anyway, he's a musician, one of N.O.'s best. Plays a dozen instruments but mostly alto sax. His horn's all he took with him when he escaped the flood.”
“Sailor Ripley was partial to Charlie Parker. Said Bird took up alto 'cause Prez and Bean had a lock on tenor.”
“Didn't know Daddy paid such close attention to jazz. Always thought he was more an old rock 'n' roll and R and B man.”
“Sail listened to ever'thin', Pace, even classical. In his declinin' years, he got into a Hungarian composer, said his music made him feel like centipedes was slitherin' through his veins.”
“Probably Bela Bartok,” said Pace. “Charlie Parker liked his music, too.”
Pace turned off onto a road strewn with everything from fallen trees to misshapen couches and rusted water heaters.
“Mr. Byu-Lee's meetin' us, Mama. There he is.”
Seated on a wooden folding chair in the middle of a clean-swept plot of land was a large, burnt orange-colored, middle-aged man wearing a white shirt and brown slacks held up by red suspenders. He was playing a golden horn that glowed under the cloudy sky. Pace stopped his truck and cut the engine.
As they sat and listened, a nail of sunlight pierced the gray. After a minute, Lula said, “Lord in heaven, no Frenchman ever painted a prettier picture.”
34
“So tell us, Mr. Abidjan,” said Beany, “what's it like to hobnob with all them movie stars? Lula here had her an adventure once with a director.”
“Oh, who was that?” asked Doncovay Abidjan.
“Man named Phil Reál,” said Lula, “but it was ages ago.”
“Of course,” Abidjan said, “he made
Mumblemouth
, a classic in the horror genre.”
“That was him,” said Lula.
“It's a pity that he died before he could make
The Cry of the Mute
,” said the director. “It is a legendary project. Those who were fortunate enough to have read the screenplay said that it was certain to have been his masterpiece.”
Lula, Beany, Marnie, and Doncovay Abidjan were each on their second glass of champagne prior to having dinner in Marnie's house. Abidjan was a short, stout, coffee-colored man with heavy black-rimmed glasses and a goatee. He was wearing a bright yellow dashiki, a mauve scarf and a large pendant around his neck that represented the signs of the zodiac. Marnie Kowalski had told Lula and Beany before Abidjan arrived that he was a devout believer in astrology. “He's a Libra,” Marnie had said, “he'll be nice to both of you.”
“Actors are still children,” the director said in answer to Beany's request. He laughed, sniffled briefly and continued, “Most of them have an emotional age of not more than fourteen, so, as a director, I treat them accordingly. I make them feel as though there is no other person on the planet who could do for me what I am asking, and sometimes this is even the truth.”
“Surely not all of 'em are cases of arrested development,” said Lula. “There must be some exceptions.”
“There are,” said Abidjan, “and those few I don't have to consider, they know what to do and how to do it. It is always a pleasure to have someone who shows up on time and has prepared him or herself sufficiently.”
“Give us some examples,” said Beany. “What about Eddie Epps? He's my fave these days. You ever worked with him?”
“Yes, on
Way Down in Egypt Land
.”
“I saw it!” Beany said. “One where Eddie Epps is disguised as a French anthropologist but he's really Prince Balkanski of Moldavia who's kidnapped and sold into slavery to a tribe of Nomads when he's explorin' the Sahara desert.”
“It was the Gobi desert, actually,” said Abidjan.
“He looked wicked cute in a burnoose. I loved the scene where the teenage girl with the bee lips who's also a slave really licks his wounds with her tongue. It's somethin' people always say meanin' not actually doin' it but she does it like I never seen before. Was that your idea, Mr. Abidjan, or was it in the script?”
“As the Arabs say, it was written.”
“The writer never gets enough credit,” said Lula. “That's what Sailor used to say.”
“It's true,” Marnie added. “Doncovay says the actors think they made up their lines all by themselves.”
“No,” said Abidjan, “what I said is that many of them believe they are spontaneously saying these words, not inventing but being.”
“What's Eddie Epps really like?” asked Beany. “Is he as smart as he is cute?”
“Eddie is a delightful boy, when he wants to be. Now that he is married and a father, he seems calmer. His days of destroying hotel rooms and punching photographers are past, I think. His biggest problem now is controlling his weight. Between films he balloons up. He is addicted to
la cuisine rapide
.”
“What's that?” Lula asked.
“Fast food,” said Marnie.
“I will tell you a secret,” said Abidjan. “Twice Eddie has had the liposuction.”
“No!” Beany yelped.
“
Mais, oui
. The first time was before
Way Down in Egypt Land
, when he was only twenty-six.
C'etait necessaire
for the very scene you mentioned, Madame Beany, of the licking of the wounds.”
“My land,” said Lula, “who would have thought it?”
“This kinda thing is pretty common,” said Marnie. “Doncovay's told me a whole hell of a lot of really nasty stuff. Some of it's downright creepy.”
“Tell us somethin' creepy,” said Beany, as she helped herself to another glass of champagne.
“Not before dinner,” said Lula.
“Better before than after,” said Beany. “Just a quickie.”
“Tell 'em about Brenda du Sossé,” said Marnie. “What happened with her and Federico Cazzissimo, the Italian producer.”
“Brenda du Sossé, the old model?” Beany asked. “She's on those four A.M. infomercials now hawkin' Swiss face cream supposed to contain Miura bull semen. They make a big deal out of sayin' how no bulls are harmed durin' the process of obtainin' it.”
“Go on, Doncovay, tell 'em,” Marnie said. “Then we'll eat.”
The director took a swig of champagne, then began. “Everyone in the business knows how crazy this Cazzissimo is, how he would do anything to get what he wants. He owns television stations, newspapers, ships, everything, grocery stores in Nepal, you name it. Money means everything and nothing to him. So, when Brenda du Sossé was at the height of her fame, twenty years ago, when she was often referred to as the most beautiful woman in the world, Federico Cazzissimo pursued her tirelessly. He offered to marry her many times but she refused. She told him it was not because he was so uglyâwhich he still is, he resembles a buzzard with two necksâbut that in order for her to have a vaginal orgasm, the man's cock must, when fully erect, to measure at least nine and one-half inches. Cazzissimo's member, apparently, while of normal proportions, fell well short of her requirement.”
“Marnie,” said Lula, “let me have a little bit more of that champagne.”
“The Italian producer,” Abidjan continued, “located an Austrian surgeon who claimed that he could construct from a cadaver a super penis and transplant it onto Federico Cazzissimo's body.”
“This really happened?” asked Beany. “How could he connect the nerve endin's and everything?”
“Hush, Beany,” said Lula.
“The doctorâI forget his name, he's dead nowâ”
“Committed suicide,” said Marnie, “after he was exposed as a Nazi experimented on prisoners in concentration camps durin' World War II.”
“âassured Cazzissimo that the surgery would be successful, the first of its kind. Federico promised him that if the transplant worked, he
would personally endorse the procedure and make the doctor wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. Cazzissimo swore that he could arrange for the doctor to be awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine.