Doctor Sax (11 page)

SCENE 25
Someone ripped the pooltable cloth that night, tore it with a cue, I ran back and got my mother and she lay on it half-on-floor like a great poolshark about to take a shot under a hundred eyes only she’s got a thread in her mouth and’s sewing with the same sweet grave face you first saw in the window over my shoulder in that rain of a late Lowell afternoon.

God bless the children of this picture, this bookmovie.

I’m going on into the Shade.

HE CAME TO ME
out of Eternity–it is Sunday afternoon in Lowell, absolutely unphotographable it is that I am sitting in my room in good Sunday clothes just home from a drive to Nashua, not doing anything, semi beginning to preside dully and absently over perhaps my slamdash hockeybang game which is a whole lot of marbles fighting over a little puck marble to kick it in the goal thereby killing two birds w.o.s. by making it also the official betweenseason Ceremony of racehorse-chipping, racehorse-desfinytng, things have to change in an organic picture of the world, my Turf was just like that, horses had to go through processes of prime and decay like real horses–but instead of really bothering (whether also it’s basketball or football game, football was a crude Pro iron smash thru the line, I ceased because too many of my racehorses were dying split in half in this carnage)—tired of games, just sitting there, over my pooltable, late red Sunday afternoon in Lowell, on the Boott Mills the great silent light shrouded the redbrick in a maze of haze sorrow, something mute but about
to speak lurked in the sight of these silent glowing milk seen on dumb-Sundays of choked cleanness and odors of flower … with just a trace of the red earth grain by grain crawling out of the green and coming back into real life to smash the Sunday choke life, return earth to the issue, with it
night
later on … something secretively wild and baleful in the glares of the child soul, the masturbatory surging triumph of the knowledge of reality … tonight Doctor Sax will stalk–but it is still the hour when Sunday yet lives, 5
P.M.
October, but the hour when red silence in the entire city (above the white river roar) will make a blue laugh tonight … a long blue sepulchral laff– There stands a great red wall of mystery–I get hungup looking at a speck of dust on a marble in a corner, my mind is blank, suddenly I remember when I was a little kid of five on Hil-dreth I used to make the Great Bird pursue the Little Man, the Little Man is running on two fingers, the Great Bird who has come out of eternity swoops down from heaven with his finger-beak and lowers to pluck him up … my eyes rounden in the silence of this old thought–unphoto-graphable moment–
“Mende moi done cosse qui arrive
(I wonder what’s happening)” I’m saying to myself– My father, having labored up the stairs, is standing in the door puffing, redfaced, strawhat, blue eyed,
“Ta tu aimez ta ride mon Ti Loup?
(Did you enjoy your ride my Little Wolf?)”

“
Oui
Pa-”

He’s going into his tragic bedroom for something–I’ve dreamt of that gray room—”daw
chambre a Papa”
—(‘n’ Papa’s room).

“Change ton butain”
he says,
“on va allez manger sur
Chin Lee.
(Change your clothes, we’re going to eat at Chin Lee’s.)”

“Chin Lee?!! O Boy!”

It was the ideal place on sad red Sundays… We drove, with Ma and Nin, in the old ‘34 Plymouth, over the Moody Street Bridge, over the rocks of eternity, and down Merrimac Street, in parlous solitudes of the Sabbath, past the church St. Jean Baptiste, which on Sunday afternoons seems to swell in size, past City Hall, to Kearney Square, Sunday standers, remnants of the littlegirl gangs who went to shows in new ribbons and pink coats and are now enjoying the last red hours of the show-day in the center of the city redbrick Sohtudes, by the Paige Clock showing Bleak Time,—to the snaky scrolls and
beansprouts
of the Chinese dark interior rich heartbreaking family booth in the restaurant, where I always felt so humble and contrite … the nice smiling Chinese men would really serve us that food of the smell so savory hung in the linoleum carpet hall downstairs.

THE VERY SKELETAL
of the tale’s beginning– The Paquins lived across on Sarah in a Golden Brown House, a 2-story tenement but with fat owf-porches (piazzas, galleries) and purty gingerbread eaves and
Screens
on the porches making a dark Within … for long fly-less afternoons with Orange Crush… Paquin brothers were Beef and Robert, Big Beef of the ass-waddling down the street, Robert was
a freckled earnest giant good intentioned with all, nothing wrong with Beef, freckled too, goodnatured, my mother says she was sitting on the porch one evening and Beef came out with the moon to talk to her, told her his deepest secrets about how he wanted to just go out and enjoy nature as far as he was concerned–or some such–she my mother sat there reigning over wild conversations, Jean Fourchette the idiot came stompin by with his firecrackers and google giggled in the late sun afternoon streets of Fourth July Lowell 1936 and made monkey ginsy dances for the ladies whose children most likely by this time were all downtown disbanding among crowds of the Fourth July South Common Fireworks and Carnival, great nights —tell you about it–Jean Fourchette saw my mother sitting on the porch in a scrape of eve and asked her if she was lonely would she like to be entertained by some fireworks, she said okay, and old mad Jean set everything-he-had-in his-pocket-off–plop plow, scatter, zing; cross–he entertained the ladies of Sarah Avenue not twenty minutes before the opening bomb gong down at the Common across the soft July rooftops of Lowell clear from white tenemental creameries of Mt. Vernon porch to crazy rick-ass Bloozong Street across the river over by the dye works, over by the tanners, over by your Loo-la, Lowell–over by your long hoo-raws, roar old old rohor–rohor motor clodor closed door–on the pajama leg hanging, ding, with the white hoozahs flangeing right, they made left on a wide swing, beat the time with every wing, the ring, saw nothing in the heaven eyes but silver-star-bells, of all descriptions, saved but never knew it, he tried every means to explain to
the odd festival of types gathered around his shoe-horn, “Looka here ladies and genelmen,”—as me and G.J. and Vinny and Scotty are scuffling around at the Carnival—(my mother is smiling at Jean Fourchette) (Boom!) the fireworks are beginning, the whore-caster by the stream is showing you how the horses race in the wild hullah, they had– There were races run with wooden flap-horses leaping ahead on the turn of dice–they spun the dice so fast (in cages) you could see horses leap ahead in their win–a crazy inanimate wild living race like you’d imagine angels run … when they feel–X was the mark where the bing-lights played, in the night mist a top hatted clown presided over the toteboard– Farther on we smelt shit in grass, saw cameras, ate popcorn, blew the string balloons to heaven-Night came shrouding bluely with flap off arms in the hiar-zan– Hanging moss (hke the moss in the Castle hanging as you hear a kid whistle for his balloon) (in the grass the littler kids are wrestling in a Tiny Tim Dim you can hardly see–big souls from little acorns– Wrangling toots on all sides of pipe steams, furt-fut peanuts for sale, furtive hipsters of the time, underfoot shammysoft dusts)— Beef Paquin, now, years later, I see huddled in a football hood coat heading home from the mills in mid December, bending to the wind round Blezan’s corner, advancing homeward to hamburger supper of the upper clime, the golden rich consistency of his mother’s kitchen– Beef is going into Eternity at his end without me–my end is as far from his as eternity– Eternity hears hollow voices in a rock? Eternity hears ordinary voices in the parlor. On a bone the ant descends.

THE SCENE IS IN THE CASTLE
, in one of the more sumptuous rooms facing the forests of Billerica, as March Hare clouds race to the black,—speaking just then (“Of course that doesn’t indicate that anything is going to come of these attempts”) was (it is evening) Count Condu, impeccably dressed, just-risen from the coff of eve, the Satin Doombox with its Spenglerian metamorphosed scravenings on the lid. The recipient of his speech is the witty, gay ambassador for the Black Cardinal, our good friend Amadeus Baroque —sitting with his legs underneath, on an elegant
longue,
with a sip drink, titterlipped in listen.

“Yes my dear Count, but you do know don’t you how pre-POSTEROUS it will be for
any
of these things”- (his slavering glee)—”to have any effect on anyone, Ghod!—it will have to—”

“Second, I show you—”

“—
pos
itively—”

“—heretics in the church is what they are–houndmasters of The Francis horn, phantom-grieved, golupally in their shrouds, think they can make everybody dangle–it’s this is up, these Dovists betray the decadence–any organization gets decadent—”

“But my dear, so baroque–I
don’t
mean to use my name —so gay—”

“Which after all you measure everything by. I wanted strength in the party, blood–no Zounds and arses in their follifications, making pear pillows in the shade–well, poop along they can– I don’t see any reason why, if the Wizard
of Nittlingen is willing to–
allow
it shall we say, I go along, have no preference in the matter—” He turned away, pursed over his key-chain … key to his coffin, gold.

“Dovists are after all mere lovers of–no different than the Brownings of other Romes, groaners of other gabbles —I mean—”

Count Condu stood at the stone window staring severely into the night; in Baroque’s elegant chambers it was possible to relax, so he wore his malagant–hood-like his head loomed over his shoulders as if winged– A knock on the door, Sabatini ushered in young Boaz the son of the Castle Caretaker who was an old mysterious goof always hiding in the cellar– Young Boaz, with his long dark feet and leer, strangely satanically handsome like a clay head stretched, sophisticated son of a hermit, “Oh—!—Baroque is here.”

“I should say, dearie, it’s my room.”

“Your room! I thought it was Count Condu’s. Well may I close the door—?”

“No, flit to an eve,” muttered the Count in his cup.

The wildest news,” said Boaz.

“And now—?” perked Baroque expectantly (he wore his brocaded white silk tunic pajamas a la Cossack with a great bloodclot in red thread over the heart, he smoked from elegant holder, “perfumed of course,” a brilliant wit in the Ark Galleries of the Rack where he’d been for a while before descending (not to take courses in a taxi school) to forfend the later migamies for his mother’s estate and save the day, and find himself a Sugar Daddy at the same time so here he was) (the Wizard’s brother, meek ill-tempered oldqueen Flapsnaw, we never saw him around).

“And now,” provided Boaz, “they have officially denounced the Dovists as underground heretics of the Free Movement—”

“Free movement,” snorted Condu— “some kind of dysentery? Would be rather a joke if the Snake should spew out like a great wet fart watering and be-splattering the earth with a piece of its own good riddance—”

In the window, suddenly, unbeknownst to all of them, Doctor Sax appears, dark, merged with the balcony, shrouded, silent, as they talk.

“Such
a notion,” laughed B. “That doves, are kin, to snakes, my dear!”

“They
infer it from doves’ and snakes’ proximities.”

“Infer without proof is less than infer without proof for no reason–these people show ignorance without charm.”

“Well foo you too,” said Boaz bowing and slapping his white gloves together. “Maybe they’ll rain
you
out sometime in a blap, then where will your verdigris be? out in the garden under an onion.”

“Onions show stones”—Baroque threw in.

“It’d be better if fancy iterators re-fancied their anvil on a wit”

“Touché”.

The Doctor Sax vanished–out in the yard it could be heard, a faint triumphant distant ha ha ha ha ha of inside secret sureness in the black–around the bird bath his shroud slanted to a fade–the moon croaked–Blook wandered in the back Garden with a garland of peanut butter twigs in his hair, put there by Semibu the suspicious dwarf, ‘twas to ward away the Onion. Blook had a orror of onion—
In the belfry of the castle triumphant leered the panic Bat–a Spider hung from the wall facing the river with his silvery moonlight thread all dusty, a stately lion descended the stairs in the cellars where the Zoo was kept, a truckload of Gnomes came flipping through the wire—(in underground tunnels).

Condu, looking out the window, mused.

Baroque read the little booklet of Dovist poem in his bed.

Boaz sat stiffly writing his elegy for the dead, at the table, by the lamp.

“On the Day,” read Baroque, “clouds of Seminal Gray Doves shall issue forth from the Snake’s Mouth and it shall collapse in a Prophetic Camp, they will rejoice and cry in the Golden Air,”Twas but a husk of doves!’“

“It’ll husk
them”
spoffed Condu splurtering in his laugh-beard hands,—”phnuff–what?”

“I expect,” said Boaz looking up, “the Snake will devour them that deserve it,” but he said it in such a way Condu couldn’t tell if this was an ordinary friendly statement or not–

“Simply–
divinel”
concluded Baroque closing the book. “It’s
so
refreshing–we need
any
kind of revival, my dear, because you know it’s got great yoiky elements of Coney Island Christian in it.” He leaned over and turned on his favorite record … Edith Piaf dying.

Count Condu was gone–he had transformed himself to his bat-form, while no one looked, and into the moon he Flew–Ah me, Lowell in the night.

THERE WAS AN ALLEY DOWNTOWN
among the soft redbrick of Keith’s Theater and the Bridge Street Warehouse, with a red neoned candy store of antique Saturday nights of funnies still smelling of ink and strawberry ice cream sodas all pink and frothy with a dew on top, in Dana’s–across the street from the alley– In the alley itself there were cinders, leading to the stage door– Something there was so fantastically grad sad about this alley–in it the living W.C. Fields had walked, headed from a rainy afternoon stint in the 6-Act Vod Bill (with gaping masks ha-ha)— twirling that Old Bull Balloon cane, W.C. Fields and the tragic Marx Brothers of early times swaying precariously from immense ladders and goofing in an awful holocaust of Greatstage Sorrow all huge with drapes and jello rippling flop props in the middle of the day, 1927—in 19271 I saw the Marx Brothers, Harpo on the ladder–in 1934 I saw Harpo on the screen,
Animal Crackers,
in a dark and unbelievably Doctor Sax garden where Neo-Like God-Like the rain and sunshine just mixed for a Cosmic Joke by Chico “Don’t go out that door, it’s raining–try this one”—tweet tweet birds —”see?” and Harpo drops silverware in the dark, God how Joe and I in the dark balcony sat transfixed by this picture of our joint dreams snoring in the dark attics of our boyhood together … brothers of the frantic snazzle in the Wood, at 8, when, with Beauty the immense Shepherd dog of the Fortiers, and little Philip Fortier nicknamed Snorro, we took off on a 20-mile hike to Pelham New Hampshire to shde up and down the hayloft of some dairy farmer–there
were dead owls skewered on the pine, gravel pits, apples, distances of green Normandy fields into a mist of New England Inscrutable Space mystery–in the imprint of the trees on the sky in the horizon, I judged I was being torn from my mother’s womb with each step from Home Lowell into the Unknown … a serious lostness that has never repaired itself in my shattered flesh dumb-hanging for the light-