Another Roadside Attraction (21 page)

“You don't believe in the soul?”

“The soul, to us nonmystics, is an electrochemical manifestation: a synthesis of proteins, a flare of nerve electricity. Nothing more.”

“In Burma,” said Amanda, “they believe the soul is a butterfly.”

Marx Marvelous stared at her. He could forgive her anything. Her lisp unlocked his creed and spilled his discipline. “When I was a boy,” he mused, “I had a sheep dog that looked like an English poet. Eyes blue and distant as were Shelley's. One day he disappeared and never came back. My mother said the gypsies stole him. Are you really a gypsy?”

“I am a gypsy in name only,” said Amanda. “Just as you are a scientist.”

“A scientist in name only? How do you mean?”

“Marx Marvelous, your methods may be entirely compatible with those of our so-called 'advanced' technocracy but as far as I can tell, your goals were shaped by the ancient great purpose of life. Now don't curl your lip, it spoils your good looks. That's better. If you're so up-tight about what I said then answer me this: you decided, didn't you, that religions are natural systems rather than supernatural phenomena, and like all natural systems they adhere to natural laws? If you were to study religions as historical structures, as natural entities, you might establish a set of facts and relations about religions. Right? There might, for example, be equations that could predict the movement of gods with planetary precision. You might invent Marvelous' First Law of Religiodynamics. How would it go? A transformation whose only final result is to transform into dogma ethical behavior extracted from a source which is at the same social temperature throughout is impossible. Or something like that. Now isn't that what you are up to?”

“Your parody of the First Law oversimplifies my concerns and makes them sound trivial. But, in essence, you're correct, I guess. By assembling a logic of religious procedure based upon observed knowledge and accumulated data, it might be possible to predict—and maybe control—the nature of the religion that is to supplant Christianity. With such an assemblage at its disposal, science could save mankind an enormous amount of anguish.”

“Ah, the pride of intellect,” sighed Amanda. “But you know more about such stuff than I do. I wouldn't have known the famous First Law except that a physics major who was once my lover talked in his sleep. Anyway, what happened to your grandiose enterprise? You must have had a first-rate library at your Institute; contacts, computers, resources, a secluded study. The think tank seems perfect for your project. Why did you run away?”

“There are some thoughts that a think tank is not capable of incubating. I had discovered that the church had become too self-centered to deal with real life, which runs in all directions and runs to extremes. Next, I discovered that the think tank is too comfortable for real thinking, which likewise is a radical, and sometimes dangerous, activity. A think tank is an ideal place to consider the meaning of events, but I was becoming obsessed with something other; I wanted to consider—”

“The meaning of meaning?”

“Oh shit.” Marvelous slumped against the totem pole that sprouted adjacent to the altar of the tsetse fly. “I loathe that phrase. It makes me gag.”

“Marx Marvelous, are you on a scientific mission or a spiritual quest?”

“What? A scientific mission! No, I don't know. I really don't know. I told you that I've been confused about things. Maybe I'm on both. I'm capable of it. I'm such an ambivalent bastard.”

“That's a pity,” said Amanda sincerely. “Ambivalence is a bigger nuisance than schizophrenia. When you're schizoid each of your two personalities is blissfully ignorant of the other, but when you're ambivalent each half of you is painfully aware of the conflicting half, and if you aren't careful your whole life can turn into a taffy pull. Anyway, you quit the Institute. You still haven't explained why you turned up here.”

“I felt that a monumental event in the annals of the human animal was unfolding, unfolding in
my
lifetime; and while its implications reached into the Institute, as they indeed reached into every cranny of existence, I was possessed by the desire to get closer to developments. A major religion was dead or dying and another was materializing in its stead. The consequences of a religious changeover at this particularly volatile moment in our cultural history are immense. I began to think of it as my duty as a scientist and as a human being; my duty was to get close enough to the vortex, to the medulla of evolutionary outburst so that I could experience it in a direct, tangible way. I craved the ultimate scientific luxury of being simultaneously involved and detached. Now look, Amanda, I realize that you are trying to make me out to be some kind of soul-searcher in scientist's clothing, but you're wasting your time. Science is an active response to the world. Mysticism accepts the world. Mystics scurry about trying to get in harmony with nature. Scientists turn nature to issues which
we
define. Science is resistance, rather than acceptance, and I assure you that it was in a mood of responsible resistance that I set out to encounter the new Messiah.”

“Dear Marx Marvelous,” said Amanda. “Champion of resistance. Have you forgotten so quickly then how you learned to stop flinching and accept the rain? Oh well. You still haven't revealed why you chose to come here. Of course, you needn't tell if you don't want to.”

“I'll tell you straight away. I didn't want to wander around from scene to scene, always arriving at the tail end of things. I didn't have time for fads, cults or false prophets. Frankly, the activities which usually characterize a period of religious transition are quite unappealing to me. No, I decided that since the first substantial, recognizable evidence of the next religion would undoubtedly appear out on the limits of the psychic frontier, my best plan would be to find some compatible person or persons who reside on the psychic frontier and to cast my lot with them and work from there. After hearing about the Zillers from Nearly Normal Jimmy and others—your husband is something of a legend in New York—I decided that you were ideal. A photograph of you, Amanda, shown to me by Jimmy unquestionably influenced my decision. One can't be totally devoted to science, you know.”

“Marx Marvelous, you're as nutty as a Mars bar. This is a little roadside attraction sitting out in the rains of isolated Northwest America, enticing passing motorists with a sausage smile. We have sunshine juices for mildewed tummies and exotic exhibitions for jaded eyes. But we do not concern ourselves with religions or sciences. We are ignorant of your psychic frontier. Are you positive you are in the right place? What was it Jimmy said to lead you to assume that we hold the key to some . . . some evolutionary religious awakening?”

“I don't know that I can tell you explicitly. As much as anything else, I had a feeling about this place.”

“A feeling?” Amanda clapped her hands and squealed. “A hunch! You mean you had a hunch. See what I told you. You confessed at playing at chance earlier than I thought you would. You came here on a kind of hunch and you admit it, don't you?”

“Partially.” Marvelous was blushing. “Only partially. You people may be going through the motions of operating a roadside zoo, but I know there are other levels of activity here. I have every reason to suspect that your crazy hot dog stand is a front for doings of a more valuable elevation.”

“All right,” said Amanda. “We can't fool you. You are too shrewd for us. It's only a matter of time before you expose us so I might as well confess to everything. My husband and I are agents of the great Icelandic conspiracy.”

“Joke if you must,” said Marvelous. “But I know you are up to something extraordinary here. I know it even if you don't.”

Amanda giggled and stood up, her skirt settling like nightfall over the maverick cunt-hair that for a golden moment had flown from the staff of champions. “You really are silly,” she said. “Luckily for you, I am found of silliness. What's more, you're cute.” She dragged her silvered nails along the seam of his trousers.

Marx had grown rather pale and now he slumped even more awkwardly against the totem pole.

“What's wrong?” asked Amanda.

“I guess I just got too worked up. It's another of my shortcomings as a scientist; I get carried away. Damn it all. I hadn't planned to tell you so much. I had intended to live here as somewhat of a spy. Confessions must be hard on me. Anyway, I feel a bit faint.” He was gasping.

Amanda withdrew from her bosom a black silk handkerchief bordered with gold braid. Passing it to Marvelous, she said, “Hold this to your nose.”

Marx hadn't expected a girl as healthy as Amanda to carry smelling salts, but he followed her instructions. From the handkerchief there came a subtle waft, an effluvium of sweetness. Even while he sniffed it, however, its perfume became gradually stronger, then musky, then barbarically acrid. He was about to yank the fabric away from his nostrils when yet another odor emerged, this one spicy and primordial. In turn, that fragrance also passed and in its place oozed an aroma of lanolin and leather, a rich animal funk flanked by a mineral smell as dry as ash.

Smiling at Marx's befuddlement, Amanda said, “That handkerchief has been dipped in a jar containing the accumulated odors of twelve years in Tibet. I had planned to send it to Nearly Normal Jimmy, but perhaps he won't be needing it.”

Dumfounded, Marvelous said nothing and continued to sniff. He smelled malty vapors and fatty ones, thin olfactory outlines of the mountains and windy whiffs of the snows. Meanwhile, as if fulfilling Amanda's prophecy, several cars had parked out front and their occupants were filing expectantly into the roadhouse. “Enough now,” said Amanda, reaching for the square of silk. “The zoo has customers and you have a lot to learn. You'd better follow me about and watch me carefully. Tomorrow we're going to be closed all day for a morel hunt, but on Friday you may have to run the place alone.”

Blinking, Marx Marvelous returned the handkerchief, but throughout the day as he helped Amanda wipe tables and counters, as he poured juice, memorized a short lecture on San Francisco garter snakes and learned how to direct fleas in chariot races and ballets, there lingered in his nasal passages certain odors of lotus blossom, yak butter, prayer wheels—and one exceedingly stimulating fragrance which Amanda would identify only as Mom's Tibetan peach pie.

"There are three mental states that interest me,” said Amanda, turning the lizard doorknob. “These are : one, amnesia; two, euphoria; three, ecstasy."

She reached into the cabinet and removed a small green bottle of water-lily pollen. “Amnesia is not knowing who one is and wanting desperately to find out. Euphoria is not knowing who one is and not caring. Ecstasy is knowing exactly who one is—and still not caring.”

Some readers were probably surprised to learn that Amanda spoke with a lisp. The author would be pleased to describe her lisp for you, although it will not be easy. Marx Marvelous observed that it was a Gene Tierney lisp, but he was wrong. It was slighter than that. Slighter, warmer, pinker, more vulnerable. It was more of a Gloria Grahame lisp. Remember Gloria Grahame in
The Big Heat?
Her gangster boy friend threw a pot of scalding coffee in her face. A noisy episode. Gloria Grahame didn't lisp when she screamed.

If you don't remember Gloria Grahame (or even if you do), maybe you have heard of the Great Blondino. He was the Mozart of the tightrope, the Great Blondino. A child prodigy, Blondino was already a virtuoso of high-rope acrobatics at six. As an adult, he won fame for his repeated crossings of Niagara Falls. In the 1860's he walked a rope over Niagara once on stilts, once with both feet in a sack. He hoped over with a man on his back while fireworks popped in the air about him. Once, he sat down on the rope, hundreds of feet above the roaring cataracts, and cooked and ate an omelet. Throughout his career of perilous performances, he never had a close call or sustained an injury. While walking a safe city sidewalk during a stay in Sydney, Australia, however, Blondino slipped on a banana peel and broke his neck. Picture Amanda's lisp as that banana peel.

Or, let us look at it another way. A Chinese philosopher once taught his pupils the meaning of agression by having them wad up spring blossoms and throw them against a wall. To arrive at an understanding of Amanda's lisp, simply reverse the process.

Among the Haida Indians of the Pacific Northwest, the verb for “making poetry” is the same as the verb “to breathe."

Such tidbits of ethnic lore delighted Amanda, and she vowed that from that time onward she would try to regulate each breath as if she were composing a poem. She was as good as her word, and her new style of breathing added to her warehouse of personal charm.

Once, while breathing an especially strenuous stanza, she sucked in a stinkbug that had been bumbling by. “What a rotten rhyme,” she gagged. “I think I'll go back to prose.”

Amanda took Marx Marvelous on a tour of the grove out back. There was moss in the grove and fir needles and ferns. There was mud and grass and weeds, but no rocks. There was a tipi, and a wooden table carved to resemble a mushroom. On those rare days when it was not raining, the grove was the Zillers' living room, nursery and dining area. It was here, protected and private, that they entertained their few (and mostly uninvited) guests.

In his checkered suit, now rather soiled, Marvelous strutted about the grove, jaws flapping. “Yes, there is an air of asylum out here,” he flapped. “This grove does for my insecurities what Preparation H does for my hemorrhoids: shrinks them without surgery. Brings to mind the grove in ancient Italy where Romulus, shunned by his neighbors after he had slain his brother, established a sanctuary for fugitives, rebels, and aliens—the future citizens of Rome. In honor of the god Consus, kidnaped virgins were borne to the grove to participate in bacchanalian festivals and to observe secret feasts and games. A good time was had by all.

“Of course,” he flapped on, skewering Amanda with that blue-eyed barbed-wire glare that he reserved for persons whom he suspected of mystical inclinations, “
you
would prefer to compare it to Jetavana, the grove at Savatthi where the Illustrious Buddha dwelt. No kidnaped virgins for old Buddha, huh? Just mangoes and figs. You are what you eat.”