Dimension of Miracles (21 page)

CHAPTER 28

Carmody was in New York City, on Riverside Drive and Ninety-ninth Street. To the west, above the Jersey shore, the sun was dropping down behind Horizon House, and, to the right, the Spry sign had come on in all its glory. The trees of Riverside Park, clad in green and soot, rustled faintly in the exhaust fumes from the West Side Drive. Around him he could hear the screams of frustrated, highly-strung children, punctuated by an occasional bellow from their equally frustrated and highly- strung parents.

‘Is this your home?’ asked the Prize.

Carmody looked down and saw that the Prize had metamorphosed again, appearing now as a Dick Tracy watch with hidden stereo speaker.

‘It looks like it,’ Carmody said.

‘Seems like rather an interesting spot,’ the Prize said. ‘Lively. I like that.’

‘Yeah,’ Carmody said reluctantly, not at all sure how he felt about his home.

He began to walk uptown. The lights had come on in Riverside Park. Mothers with baby carriages were leaving, and soon the park would be left alone to police cars and muggers. All around him the smog rolled in on little cat feet. Buildings could be glimpsed through it like giants who had lost their way. To either side, the sewers ran merrily into the Hudson, while at the same time the Hudson ran merrily into the sewers.

‘Hey, Carmody!’

Carmody stopped and turned. A man was walking briskly towards him. The man wore a business suit, sneakers, a bowler, and a white canvas ascot. Carmody recognized him as George Marundi, an indigent artist of his acquaintance.

‘Hey, man,’ said Marundi, coming up and shaking hands.

‘Hey, hey,’ said Carmody, smiling like an accomplice.

‘Well, man, how you
been?
’ Marundi asked.

‘Oh, you know,’ Carmody said.

‘Indeed, do I
not
know!’ Marundi said. ‘Helen’s been asking about you.’

‘That a fact?’Carmody said.

‘Most assuredly. Dicky Tait’s throwing a party next Saturday. You wanna come?’

‘Sure,’ Carmody said. ‘How is Tait?’

‘Well, man, you know.’

‘Sure, I know,’ Carmody said, in a tone of deep compassion. ‘Still, eh?’

‘What would you expect?’ Marundi asked.

Carmody shrugged.

‘Isn’t anyone going to introduce me?’ the Prize asked.

‘Shut up!’ Carmody said.

‘Hey, man, what’s that you got there?’ Marundi bent down and peered at Carmody’s wrist. ‘Little tape recorder, huh? That’s the greatest, baby, the greatest. You got it programmed?’

‘I am not programmed,’ the Prize said. ‘I am autonomous.’

‘Hey, that’s beautiful!’ Marundi said. ‘I mean, it really is. Hey there, Mickey Mouse, what else you got to say?’

‘Go screw yourself,’ the Prize said.

‘Stop it!’ Carmody whispered urgently.

‘Well now,’ Marundi said, grinning, ‘little fellow’s got a lot of spunk, eh Carmie?’

‘That he has,’ Carmody said.

‘Where’d you get it?’

‘I got it – well, I got it while I was away.’

‘You’ve been away? I guess that’s why I haven’t seen you around for these last several months.’

‘That must be it,’ Carmody said.

‘Where away have you been?’ Marundi asked.

It was on the tip of Carmody’s tongue to say that had been in Miami. But instead he was inspired to say, ‘I have been out in the Universe, the Cosmos itself, wherein I have passed through certain selected short subjects which shall henceforward be known as reality.’

Marundi nodded with understanding. ‘You been on a Trip, yes, man?’

‘Indeed I have.’

‘And on that Trip you have perceived the molecular all-in-oneness of all things and have listened to the energies of your body,
nicht wahr?
’

‘Not exactly,’ Carmody said. ‘Upon my particular Trip, I observed most particularly the discretionary energies of other creations and went beyond the personal-molecular into the external-atomic. That is to say, my Trip convinced me of the reality, to say nothing of the existence, of creatures other than myself.’

‘That sounds like powerful acid,’ Marundi said. ‘Where might it be obtained?’

‘The Acid of Experience is distilled from the dull weed of Practice,’ Carmody said. ‘Objective existence is desired by many but obtained by few.’

‘You won’t talk, huh?’ Marundi said. ‘Never mind, baby, any Trip you can make I can make better.’

‘I doubt that.’

‘I doubt not that you doubt that. But never mind. Are you coming to the Opening?’

‘What Opening?’

Marundi looked at him with amazement. ‘Man, you have not only been away, you have been out of touch besides. Today is the opening of what is past a doubt the most important art exhibition of our times and perhaps of any times.’

‘What is this paragon of aesthetics?’ Carmody asked.

‘I am going there,’ Marundi said. ‘Accompany me.’

Despite the mumblings of the Prize, Carmody fell into step beside his friend. They walked uptown, and Marundi told the latest gossip: how the House Un-American Activities Committee had been found guilty of Un-Americanism but had got off with a suspended sentence; the success of Pepperidge Farm’s new Freez-a-Man Plan; how five US Air Cavalry divisions had yesterday succeeded in killing five Vietcong guerrillas; how NBC-TV had begun a wildly successful new series entitled
Adventures in Laissez-Faire Capitalism.
And he also learned that General Motors, in a gesture of unprecendented patriotism, had sent a regiment of clerical volunteers led by a vice- president to Xien Ka near the Cambodian border.

Thus they conversed, and at length they came to 106th Street, where several buildings had been razed and a new structure erected to stand in their stead. This structure appeared to be a castle, but such a one as Carmody had never before seen. And he addressed his companion, the high-spirited Marundi, asking for an explanation.

‘This massy building that you see before you,’ Marundi said, ‘was designed by the architect Delvanuey, who also planned Death Trap 66, the famous New York toll road which no one has succeeded in driving from start to finish without accident. This same Delvanuey, you may recall, drew up the plans for Flash-Point Towers, Chicago’s newest slum, the only slum in the world in which form follows function; that is to say, the first slum which is proudly and avowedly designed
as
a slum, and which has been certified “unrenewable” by The President’s Commission on the Perpetration of Fine Arts in Urbanamerica.’

‘That is a singular accomplishment,’ Carmody said. ‘What does he call this particular structure?’

‘This is his opus magnus,’ Marundi said. ‘This, my friend, is The Castle of Garbage.’

The roadway to the Castle, Carmody perceived, was cunningly constructed of egg shells, orange peels, avocado stones and clam shells. It led to a great doorway whose two sides were made of rusty bedsprings. Above the gate, in letters formed by varnished fishheads, was the motto: ‘Wastefulness in the defence of luxury is no vice; moderation in the dissemination of excess is no virtue.’

They entered and walked through hallways of pressed cardboard, coming at last to an open courtyard in which a fountain of napalm blazed merrily away. They went past it into a room made of aluminium, steel, polyethylene, formica, styrene, bakelite, concrete, simulated walnut, acrilan and vinyl. Beyond that, other corridors branched out.

‘Do you like it?’ Marundi asked.

‘I don’t know yet,’ Carmody said. ‘What on earth is it?’

‘It is a museum,’ Marundi told him. ‘It is the first museum of human waste.’

‘I see,’ Carmody said. ‘How has it been received?’

‘With great enthusiasm, to my amazement. I mean, we artists and intellectuals knew it was good, but we didn’t think the public at large would catch on so fast. But they have. In this regard they have displayed innate good taste and have recognized this is the only true art of our times.’

‘Do they? I, personally, find all of this a little hard to take.’

Marundi looked at him with sorrow. ‘I had not thought that you of all people would be an aesthetic reactionary. What would you like? Greek statuary or Byzantine icons, perhaps?’

‘Certainly not. But why this?’

‘Because this, Carmody, is the real present, upon which true art must be constructed. We consume, therefore we are! But men have been unwilling to face this vital fact. They have turned away from Garbage, that irreducible residue of our pleasures. Yet consider – what is waste? Is it not a memorial to our needs? Waste not, want not: this was the ancient counsel of anal anxiety. But now the false axiom has been changed. Why talk about waste? Indeed! Why talk about sex, or virtue, or any other important thing?’

‘It sounds reasonable when you put it that way,’ Carmody said. ‘But still …’

‘Come with me, observe, learn,’ Marundi said. ‘The concept grows on you, very much like waste itself.’

They walked into the Extraneous Noises Room. Here Carmody listened to the sound of a continually flushing toilet, the musical pageant of traffic noises, the thrilling screech of an accident, the deep-throated roar of a mob. Mingled with this were Retrospective Sounds: the burr of a piston aircraft, the chatter of a riveting gun, the strong thud of a jackhammer. Past that was the Sonic Boom Room, which Carmody hastily backed out of.

‘Quite right,’ Marundi said. ‘It
is
dangerous. But a lot of people come here, and some stay in this room for five or six hours.’

‘Huh,’ said Carmody.

‘Perhaps,’ Marundi said. ‘Now, right over here is the keynote sound of our exhibition: the beloved bellow of a rubbish truck chewing up rubbish. Nice, eh? And right through here is an exhibition of empty pint wine bottles. Over there is a replica of a subway. It is built to convey every lurch, and its aerial environment is smoke-conditioned by Westinghouse.’

‘What’s that shouting?’ Carmody asked.

‘A tape of heroic voices,’ Marundi said. ‘That first one is Ed Brun, all-pro quarterback for the Green Bay Packers. The next, a high-pitched whine, is a sound-portrait of New York’s most recent mayor. And after that –’

‘Let’s go on,’ Carmody said.

‘Certainly. To the right is the Graffiti wing. To the left is an exact replica of an old-law tenement (a spurious bit of romanticism, to my way of thinking). Straight ahead you can see our collection of television antennas. This one is a British model, circa 1960. Note the severity, the restraint. Compare it to that 1959 Cambodian job. Do you see the luxuriant flowing of lines on the Oriental model? That is popular art expressing itself in a viable form.’

Marundi turned to Carmody and said earnestly, ‘See and believe, my friend. This is the wave of the future. Once upon a time men resisted the implications of actuality. That day is gone. We know now that art is the thing itself together with its extensions into superfluity. Not pop art, I hasten to say, which sneers and exaggerates. This is
popular
art, which simply exists. This is the age in which we unconditionally accept the unacceptable, and thus proclaim the naturalness of our artificiality.’

‘I don’t like it!’ Carmody said. ‘Seethwright!’

‘What are you shouting for?’ Marundi asked him.

‘Seethwright! Seethwright! Get me the hell out of here!’

‘He’s flipped,’ Marundi said. ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’

Immediately a short swarthy man in a one-piece jumpsuit appeared. The man was carrying a little black bag with a silver plaque on it, upon which was written, ‘Little Black Bag.’

‘I am a physician,’ the physician said. ‘Let me see him.’

‘Seethwright! Where in hell are you?’

‘Hmmmmmm, I see,’ the doctor said. ‘This man shows every sign of acute hallucinatory deprivation. Hmm. Yes, I palpate the head and find a hard massy growth. That much is normal. But going beyond that … hmm, amazing. The poor man is literally starved for illusion.’

‘Doc, can you help him?’ Marundi asked.

‘You called me just in time,’ the doctor said. ‘The condition is reversible. I have here the divine panacea.’

‘Seethwright!’

The doctor drew a case out of his Little Black Bag and fitted together a glittering hypodermic. ‘This is the standard booster,’ he said to Carmody. ‘Nothing to worry about, it wouldn’t hurt a child. It contains a highly pleasing mixture of LSD, barbiturates, amphetamines, tranquillizers, psychic lifts, mood stimulators, and various other good things. And just a touch of arsenic to make your hair glossy. Hold still now …’

‘Damn you, Seethwright! Get me out of this!’

‘It only hurts while the pain is present,’ the doctor assured him, poised the hypodermic and thrust home.

At the same moment, or nearly the same moment, Carmody disappeared.

There was consternation and confusion in the Castle, which was not resolved until everyone had fixed. Then it was passed over with Olympian calm. As for Carmody, a priest intoned the words: ‘Superfluous man, goest thou now to that great realm of the Extraneous in the sky, where there is place for all unnecessary things.’