As Far as You Can Go (29 page)

And
he
didn’t
say
very
much,
he
said
the
Towers
were
finished
and
he
was
old,
and
screw
the
Towers.
I
built
them
because,
he
said.
I
wanted
to
do
something
big,
something
to
show
my
country
how
much
I
loved
her,
and
everyone
thought
I
was
mad,
but
I’m
not
mad,
and
now
scram.
The
Towers
aren’t
mine
any
longer,
he
said,
I
gave
them
away,
and
I
don’t
care
what
happens,
so
get
out
of
here.

And
the
City
and
these
other
guys,
the
ones
who
didn’t
want
anyone
pulling
the
Towers
down,
they
went
to
court,
but
Simon
didn’t
give
a
damn,
the
Towers
were
finished,
and
when
he
was
finished
Simon
Rodia
was
finished.
And
they
yammered
a
lot,
and
got
paid
for
it,
too,
some
of
them,
and
then
they
agreed
the
Towers
must
stand
up
for
themselves.
They
agreed
to
send
a
bulldozer
down
to
test
them,
and
if
they
could
stand
it,
the
strain,
then
O.K.,
otherwise
not.

And
they
agreed
that
if
the
Towers
looked
like
falling
down,
then
they’d
stop
the
strain,
and
think
about
it
some
more.
And
everyone
argued,
but
now
they
agreed,
the
Towers
must
stand
up
for 
them
selves.

And
they
all
trooped
off
and
went
to
see
the
Towers
tested,
and
TV
people
were
there,
and
all
the
rest
of
that
crowd,
but
Simon,
he
didn’t
go,
he
didn’t
care
what
happened.
He
had
done
something
big,
and
the
hell
with
them
all,
and
screw
the
Towers.

And
chains
were
tested
and
put
in
place,
and
levers
arranged
and
the
bulldozer
put
in
its
place,
and
the
signal
was
given.

And
slowly
the
strain
came
on,
and
the
chains
grew
taut,
and
the
people
watched,
all
the
TV
people
and
the
rest
of
that
crowd,
and
the
neighbours,
they
all
watched.
And
then
the
test
strain
was
reached,
and
the
Towers
gave
a
shrug,
like
a
man
that’s
busy,
who
feels
a
fly
on
his
nose,
the
Towers
just
twitched.

And
a
seashell
fell,
a
single
shell
from
the
beaches
of
L.A.
where
Simon
had
gone
to
collect
them,
bucket
on
bucket,
and
brought
them
home,
and
cemented
them
in
—
one
miserable
shell
fell
off,
and
the
Towers
were
saved,
and
the
bulldozer
grumbled
back
home.

And
that
is
the
story
of
Simon
Rodia
and
the
Towers
of
Watts,
Simon
Rodia
from
Rome,
who
started
out
life
setting
tiles,
and
set
them
the
rest
of
his
life,
and
built
his
Towers,
and
then
went
away.

It’s
something
to
write
a
poem
about,
the
way
he
built
the
Towers,
so
I’m
writing
a
poem,
a
poem
for
him,
and
I’d
like
to
meet
him
one
day,
but
I
guess
I
never
will.

And
say
a
kind
word
for
California
that
Simon
Rodia
came
here,
and
liked
it
enough
to
stay,
and
to
build
here,
and
to
love
it
enough
to
build
his
love
out
of
fragments,
by
the
railroad
tracks
in
Watts,
for
which
thank
God.

Harold looked up from the last sheet of the poem and saw
that Eddie was gazing still at the pinnacles, head tilted back, a straight white smile on his face.

“Shouldn’t you take your glasses off in church?” said Harold. He didn’t know what to say about the poem.

“Did you like it?” said Eddie.

“Yes, yes. Very much. I think it’s very good indeed. Have you shown it to anyone else? Any editors or anything?”

“Jesus, no,” said Eddie. “It’s for Chuck. I wouldn’t want anyone to see it. I guess I feel like Simon. I did it for myself, and then I wanted to give it away to someone. I thought I’d give it to Chuck. But if you like it, you have it.”

“Do you have another copy?”

“Is there another copy of this?” said Eddie, waving his hand at the Towers. “No, I guess that a poem is meant to be written, and then you give it away, and if anyone wants it, they can have it. Don’t you want it?”

“Yes, of course I do.” Harold felt very embarrassed. Poets, real poets, at least the ones he knew, were always congratulating themselves on the amount of money they got for their poems. But then Eddie was a natural. As he folded the paper and put it in his pocket, Harold hoped Eddie would always stay that way. He was touched that Eddie should have wanted him to see the Towers, even more touched that he wanted to give him his only poem.

“I’ll tell you something, Harold,” said Eddie. “I wouldn’t give just anyone that poem. I kind of like you. And another thing, you’re English. I guess the English understand about poetry. I felt all shaken up writing that. I don’t know. I guess it isn’t something I’d show to anyone I saw every day.”

“You see me quite often,” said Harold.

“Yeah. But you won’t be around much longer, I guess. I feel kind of good, giving it to a foreigner. You know, I bitch a lot, and I don’t care where I live, but I always feel best when I’m in California. On the west coast, anyway. I guess I must be beginning to get old, sentimental, all that crap.
I’d’ve hated for you to leave without seeing this place. It’s got something. It’s real. It’s what I like about the world. It’s what I like about America. It makes L.A. a good place to live, a crazy thing like this.”

He stared up at the Towers, the sky shining through their involuted curls and spirals. Then he said abruptly, “Let’s go.”

On the way back Eddie didn’t say very much. He sat hunched against the door of the car and fiddled with the radio. He said he was trying to get a particular pop-song, but Harold thought they must have heard every song even remotely popular by the time they got to Venice and Eddie still hadn’t found the one he was looking for. He dropped him off at Lou’s, and Eddie said “Thanks”.

“Thank
you,
Eddie. I wouldn’t have missed the Towers for anything. And if it hadn’t been for you I would never even have known about them.”

“Oh, that’s O.K.”

“And the poem. I feel terribly—I don’t know. Proud. I think it’s extremely good.”

“It’s finished,” said Eddie. “I’m like Rodia. When I’ve finished, I’ve finished, I guess. You be around for a few days more?”

“Yes. I don’t know how long. It depends on Diane. I may stay for ever, you can’t tell.”

“I guess you won’t,” said Eddie. “I’ll call you at the hotel. It was a good trip, too. See ya.”

He slouched off into the apartment building. The Pirates didn’t seem to be around, for which Harold was grateful. There was no sign of life at all.

He had half an hour before he met Diane, and he went straight to Beverly Hills and to the drugstore she had named. He had a sandwich and a coke and looked at the magazine and book rack.
The
Elvis
Presley
Story
was next to
Adolphe,
and he bought both on a sudden impulse, trying not to think the
obvious thoughts about the effect of paper-backed books on modern cultural life. Modern cultural life was a subject that didn’t interest him as such, and anyway, he’d spent the morning looking at Rodia’s Towers.

While he was waiting he thought about Eddie. There was no question but that he was, to use his own term, “invisible”, he was so far out. Yet, whatever his faults, and they were many, he had a nose for the rare and exciting, for the places where the suppressed feelings of a nation came boiling to the surface, for that curious underground life which is a defiance of the ordinary life of the earth’s surface. The Towers, for instance—they were something that seemed to have roots far below the foundations of the houses that surrounded them, deep in some primitive human feeling that owed nothing to Christ or Mahomet or any of the modern religious leaders. Yet they were, in a sense, religious buildings, or at least one felt that they were, and Eddie himself had remarked that they were like a cathedral in that poem of his. And the
extraordinary
dance in the bar on the beach at Venice, that was like some very primitive religious dance—something long before the Greeks or Romans or even the Egyptians
rationalized
their gods into systems. Which showed, as far as Harold was concerned, that there were no gods, only human feelings that needed rituals or cathedrals or the Watts Towers to express them. Eddie had talked about the religion he wanted to found, with underground church services which would be little more than orgies. There had been a heresy like that, Harold remembered. Something to do with Hieronymus Bosch: Adamites, they were called. There were always these underground sexual religions wherever you looked, and they were usually called paganism or pantheism or something, and were always persecuted like mad, as though the
established
church was frightened to death by them. And why not? Harold was frightened himself. It was the fierce sexuality, the uncompromising refusal to accept the social and religious
norms, that made these obscure movements feared and
persecuted
. If they were allowed to get out of hand, the whole fabric of society would crumple like a piece of paper thrown on a fire, holding its shape but losing its meaning, losing the words written on it. The very idea was frightening. Not
because
there was anything in the magic or black magic
attributed
to the movements, but because they seemed to exist without any relationship to ordinary life. You could make them mysterious and silly, like D. H. Lawrence, or you could accuse them of being evil, but the real point about them was that they were against—against normality, against the
necessary
inhibitions and prohibitions that made society possible. They were anarchy in practice. And if they did throw up a Bosch or a Simon Rodia, so much the better: without a few anarchists life would become very dull. It was pretty
stimulating
to have Eddie around, for instance.