Dead-Bang (35 page)

“What's the matter with you? Did Dru tell you she was younger?”

“No … she didn't say anything. And it was a
lie.”

He smiled that Papa Lisa smile, sat down again, and crossed his long legs. “As I was saying, in my lifetime I have discovered, in one case stumbled upon, three substances—or combinations of natural substances, entirely harmless—each of which has a profoundly beneficial effect upon the average individual's body and state of mind, all three of which are in Erovite. One is a euphoriant, a mood elevator. It brings a chemical ray of light into darkness. The second is an energizer. It acts primarily upon the ductless glands, and to a degree upon neural tissues and fibers. The third is a kind of peniscillin or libido lifter, which acts upon the sexual glands and the systems most directly supporting them. And acts also, it appears, upon a minute sexual center now known to exist in the hypothalamus. This is the
notorious
aphrodisiac, concerning which there has been a certain amount of discussion.”

He smiled. “So there, basically, you have it, Sheldon. Steak and potatoes and a vitamin pill. Plus seaweed … and a few other delicacies.
And
a euphoriant, an energizer, and a sexual stimulant of marvelous potency. Behold: Erovite!”

He fell silent for a few moments, examining his thumbnail. “Life's pleasures, Sheldon, are not infinite in their number and variety. And I have come, finally, to believe that man's primary goal in life is, or should be, the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Here, in
this
life, which we must assume. God, whose gift it is, gave us for our enjoyment. I would hate to think He is a practical joker, who puts firecrackers in birthday cigars.”

“Well, they say He gives bad people a hotfoot. Hell, not just
foot
—”

“Pleasure, remember, can be derived from many things—love, work, success, play, friendship, a book or painting or poem, gazing upon a sunset or the sea—but pain is almost invariably harmful, inhibiting, destructive. Pleasure expands, rewards, builds; pain contracts, punishes, tears down. Pleasure is harmony, pain discord. Pleasure is health, pain is sickness. Almost invariably the misfits, meddlers, and misanthropes who bring most pain to
others
, as well as themselves, are those already warped and twisted by their own previous experience of pain. For many reasons, Sheldon, I honestly believe that Erovite, to a degree unsuspected even now, can
help
men, strengthen them, make more possible for them the achievement of that ideal: the joyous pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of crippling pain. Yet millions, including many of those who would benefit most from Erovite, fight or fear it, would forbid its sale, ban it, destroy it.”

I got out a cigarette—one of life's less-than-infinite number of little pleasures, especially before it became more carcinogenic than smog, insecticides, and sewage—lit it, and sucked in a deep, sensual drag. “Well, Doc, I'm no philosopher, but I think fun is a lot more fun than.… I'm sure you know what I mean. Whether I do or not. As for Erovite, I gather a whole bunch of people are afraid if enough of the country got turned on there'd be a coast-to-coast
orgy
—”

“Orgy! Ha! Aha!”

“What'd I say? Did I—”

“Sex—yes, the monster of frightful and frightening mien. Filth! Damnation! I
deliberately
did not name among man's pleasures what very likely is—or should be—life's
chief
pleasure. Sex! Supersin! Desire! The bang! The orgasm! The release of sexual and even cosmic energies! Copulation! Fornication! FUN!”

“Well, yeah but … just think how many would hate themselves in the morn—”

“So, an orgy. Couples coupling from Maine to California and Yonkers to San Diego, groups groping from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to the sea. Why not?”

“Well, yeah, but … besides, they wouldn't all be legally
married
—”

“Such a forbidden and stimulating phenomenon might awaken sex from its hypnotic sleep, rescue fornication from the priests and preachers and politicians, instill The Bang with new life and vigor and—”

“Sex is asleep?”

“Not asleep, Sheldon, it is tottering toward the tomb in a coma. It is dying, and its grave is the blushing-bride's bed.” Bruno couldn't sit still any longer. He placed his brandy snifter on a table, got to his feet, waved one arm in the air and waggled the other.

“Can any rational being deny that sex is in grave difficulties? If not verily
in
the grave, almost totally kaput? Consider: Does not every married couple, without exception, learn and simultaneously deny the knowledge that after one or five or ten or twenty or fifty years, each blessed or burdened with three hundred and sixty-five nights—assuming there ever lived such a pair of prodigies as to continue nightly to consummate the contract which according to local statute was made in Heaven—the seven thousand and thirty-first attempt somehow failed to recapture that first fine careless rapture of the initial extravaganza?”

“Is that a question?”

“The tent is still there,” Bruno boomed, waving his arms overhead, “and even the same old pole may still hold it up, but—where has the circus gone? Where the lions and tigers, the acrobats, the girls on trapezes? Where are the bands playing, the oompah—
oom
pah, the roar of the crowd? Why, there is not even a snake charmer, not a peanut vendor, alas! not even a lass selling candied apples. O Misery, have they all fled? Even the clowns—Ah! There! There in the center of the ring, do you see him?”

Goddamnit, I looked around. The old boy really had me this time. I was there—there in the empty circus tent. It wasn't only his words, it was the booming, humming, electric-light-company-generator vibrancy and
zap
of his voice, the conviction behind his words, the arms waving tragically.

“There—” he boomed on—“alone, is he. Only the clown remains. The solitary clown, salt tears traced on his painted grin, and around and about him the lone and level sawdust stretches far away. He alone remains, and now—there he goes!—he is blowing his brains out!” Bruno stalked to his snifter, polished off the last swallow of his brandy. “Is it not a tragedy?”

“Boy, I'll say,” I said. “Well, I guess the only thing to do is play now, go later. Which reminds me, do I have to take a leak, or is it something I drank?”

“It is Erovite. I have been waiting for you to mention the feeling of warmth, energy, increasing alertness—”

“You're sure I don't have to take a leak?”

“That is something you will have to determine for yourself, Sheldon. Erovite does not vulcanize the bladder. It—”

“Excuse me a minute, will you, Doc? Where is—”

He showed me. Still, there really
was
—also—the feeling of warmth, of somewhat greater alertness and energy than I'd possessed only minutes ago.

In Bruno's front room again I told him that and added, “Well, I'd better leave, Doc. I only came here to use the bathroom. But I dropped a dime in the toilet.”

“Lord, oh, Lord,” he sighed, staring at the ceiling. “These
are
the dimes that dry men's souls.” Then he went with me to the door, stood in it looking benignly after me while I walked to my Cad.

As I drove toward the freeway, I glanced back once—just as all the lights, except for a soft glow from inside the house, went out. The trees, lamps, shrubs, the small figure of Emmanuel Bruno in the doorway, disappeared, vanished in sudden darkness.

It gave me an odd feeling, kind of a chill. I don't know why it did; but it did.

27

Well, all that was a year ago. Only a year. But it was, as everybody knows, an unusual and exceptional year.

It was a great year for me.

I stayed on Erovite—and when I finally got hold of a bottle with a label on it learned, to my dismay, for by then of course it was too late, that the recommended dose was ten drops after each meal. I saw each and all of the Ten, and even Regina. And spent quite a bit of time with Dru, for several reasons. I had a lot of fun. I guess you could say I worked at Doc Bruno's “pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain” and did pretty well on both ends.

Except for the unavoidable pain of being literally forced to combat the miserable myth about me that grew to such ridiculous proportions, and in some dizzy circles is still growing. So let me say again as I have said a hundred or a thousand times before: There were only ten.

Well.…

Eleven if you count Regina. But I don't think it's fair to count Regina.

Anyhow, for everyone else it was a year, in the main, either of delight and satisfaction, or trial and tribulation, but for all it was undeniably a year of unprecedented change, because the alterations and upheaval already in progress at the time were vastly accelerated by the death of Emmanuel Bruno.

Yes, they killed him.

Of course they killed him—like so many hundreds, even thousands, who had come before him, bearing gifts.

Within days after his murder, it was learned Bruno had made arrangements, before Erovite first went on sale, to ensure that it would survive him, no matter when and how he died. He had entrusted to the care of three separate attorneys identical sets of several hundred addressed and sealed envelopes which were, in the event of his death, to be immediately mailed. This was done. In consequence, well before the end of that August, members of Congress, every major pharmaceutical company as well as several minor ones, plus miscellaneous physicians, pharmacists, pharmacognosists, biochemists and other researchers, nutritionists, writers, magazine editors, newspapermen, and even some quacks and faddists became possessors of the full and complete formula for Erovite, together with such clear instructions for its preparation that almost any reasonably bright and persistent individual could, if he desired, produce it by the barrel.

Several legal battles were begun, mainly initiated by large pharmaceutical companies that desired exclusive rights to and control of the worthless concoction. But it became unnecessary for a legal decision to be handed down by any court simply because damn near everybody soon knew all there was to know about the composition and preparation of Erovite.

Within a week after Bruno's death, the formula and instructions—his last will and testament, the legacy of a long, well-lived life—had been published in newspapers with a circulation of at least ten million readers. Additional newspaper stories, magazine articles, pamphlets and brochures and mimeographed flyers were to follow. The result was that—after an abortive attempt to make Erovite freely available on prescription—it was sold openly, in drugstores, along with Alka-Seltzer and Aspirin and Ex-Lax.

Before the year was out, more than a dozen companies were producing and selling Emmanuel Bruno's elixir. Most marketed it as one or another name brand of Erovite, but a few tried selling their brew under other names, none of which gave rise to uncontrollable excitement. The only one I recall was “The Fountain of Youthanasia,” alleged to “Close the Regeneration Gap,” but I haven't spotted that one for months. There was even a “NEW IMPROVED Erovite,” presumably containing
Mmmm!
, but it didn't catch on, either.

Not surprisingly, as sales of Erovite increased so did sales of the Pill, despite publicity about possible side effects from its use. As one widely quoted single girl explained on the Johnny Carson Show, “I know if I take the Pill it may be injurious, but if I don't it could be fetal.” On the other hand, many citizens grew prune-lipped and stony-eyed and quoted Scripture and cried that all the sinners were de-immortalizing their immortal souls by sinning, though they never explained precisely how this curious result was produced or clearly defined the de-immortalizing sins. These were the citizens who also refused even to give Erovite a try, but—as Doc Bruno once said to me—you can't wean 'em all.

Of course, within the Church and in the churches were millions of troubled, seeking, honest, hopeful, and hoping men and women looking either for answers or The Answer, but all of them—Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and Infidel—were caught up and torn in the flux and ferment of the times. Many high Catholic and Protestant officials responded to attacks upon them—as though still in reaction against ancient Rome and the Coliseum—with the centuries-old technique of throwing the lions to the Christians. The greatest upheaval was in the modern Church of Rome, for—though, we had not yet seen headlines, “POPE HAS ABORTION”—there were priests and nuns not only living in sin but exclaiming, “I've seen the light, and it isn't the light they told me about.”

At any rate, before long half the country must have been consuming the stuff, because thousands of
tons
of Erovite had been produced and sold. It was a flourishing new business grown from infancy to monster size almost overnight—happily, or sadly, much of that which Festus Lemming feared had come upon him—and extremely profitable to many. But I suppose things have a way of balancing out, because simultaneously the sales of Alka-Seltzer and Aspirin and Ex-Lax, along with other nostrums, declined.

It was interesting that sales of insulin, cortisone, nitroglycerine, and digitalis also slipped slightly, while the drop in gross income from barbiturates and tranquilizers was deemed catastrophic. All this was interesting but not significant—according to an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association—but it did appear there might be a lot of spontaneous remission, not to mention improvement following previous medical treatment in 1940, going on.

However, not even Authority could now successfully indict Emmanuel Bruno as a quack or an elf, or dim the luster of his name. Not even the most exhaustive tests and analyses had revealed the presence in Erovite of anything poisonous or harmful, unless an increase of vigor, energy, libido, and love of life was harmful—which, needless to say, some continued to claim with the fervor and feverishness of constipated Savonarolas.
That
battle continued, and not with diminished but with increased sound and fury, especially fury.