Frolic of His Own (53 page)

—John Israel and Kane out there, both sides of your equation manipulating your hero's profoundly hypocritical capacity for guilt, the black and the Jew parading their very real grievances they're not appealing to his conscience, they're not even fighting each other to seize hold of his conscience Oscar they're fighting for which one will fill this yawning sentimental churchgoing flagwaving vacant remnant of the founding fathers, which one will finally
be
the conscience of this exhausted morally bankrupt corpse of the white Protestant establishment and that! with an emphatic stab straight to the heaving chest —that's the heart of it, the
heart of the American dilemma. Sorry, didn't mean to, didn't hurt you old sport did I? Here, need a light? What's that you're smoking, never seen them.

—Stop it Pookie, get down, he's not going to hurt you they're just playing, Jerry's simply so brilliant that sometimes he gets carried away Teen and people don't quite know how to deal with it, this mousse is too salty I don't think I can eat it can you? If you could have seen him in court with those three living corpses of lawyers sent down there by the Cardinal himself with that kind of money involved when they didn't really understand their own case until he had to get up and explain it to them before he destroyed it, do you think we . . .

—Just a minute Trish. Oscar what are you doing, you're not smoking one of those things are you? as the gold lighter flared up in his face.

—They're Picayunes he said, dropping the free hand pressed against his chest to steady himself against the sill, —an old brand probably don't make them anymore . . . breaking off with a cough. They both coughed.

—Can't smoke those old boy, here, try one of these? digging behind the gold monogram, —made for me by an old Cuban in Tampa for getting him a green card once.

—Well not in here! If you're both going to smoke go outside.

—Get a breath of air, shall we? like the old county host leading off up the hall, —rather painful confession to make old boy, do you mind? stepping ahead to rattle the doors opening on the veranda, —really embarrassing at this point you know, but your play there? Never read the last act. Nothing germane to the issue in your amended complaint when we called for the bill of particulars and all your people would surrender were the first two acts and the prologue, could have pursued it of course for another delay to keep running up your costs but I managed to convince my people to take mercy, always wondered how it came out. Here, don't stumble, get this fixed up out here or you'll have a fat liability suit on your . . .

—You mean you never finished reading it?

—Probably changed the denouement around for the movie anyway, not surprised are you? proffering the cigar, —got through the epitasis, that what they call it? proffering a light, —that's what matters isn't it?

—But the way you've been talking I thought, you never finished it? Then how could you stand there just now and dissect the whole, take the whole thing apart like that when you hadn't even, we talked about the Crito in that deposition didn't we? in the last act and you didn't even ask how it . . .

—No, no, can't blame you for being impatient but we got to the heart of it in there didn't we? The last act's always just tying things up and . . .

—How do you think it came out then! How do you think it ended!

—But we've always known the answer to that one haven't we, in death and madness old sport. Madness and death.

Blue smoke trailing behind them on the still air followed their steps down the veranda overlooking the lawn stretched below down to the unruffled surface of the pond and the leafless detail of the oaks on the opposite bank against the dark of the tall pines betraying their presence, recalling, Blake was it? Where man is not, nature is barren, —referring to King Lear?

—If you like. Based on a true story from Holinshed? like your grandfather there you tried to take out a patent on?

—That's ridiculous. It's just like the rest of this twisting things around to ruin my father's chances for the appeals court with talk about madness in the family and burning him in effigy he doesn't give a damn for all that but impeachment, this talk about impeachment if that happened it would kill him.

—Not a chance old sport, don't worry about it. The process is so complicated they've only managed to throw one Federal judge off the bench in the last fifty years for cheating on his taxes, finally tried an end run around Article I to impeach two more, one being tried for bribery and the other already in Federal prison for perjury but these pygmies in your congress haven't got the appetite for it, can't even stand up to this sleazy gun lobby can they?

—But that's not the . . .

—Can't expect to have a national policy on anything can you? Every national goal you set up there's some particular region or lobby or private interest out there to thwart it, that's what American politics are all about. It's not a country it's a continent, eight or ten million Italians, Swedes, Poles, fifteen or twenty million Irish, thirty million English descent, twenty five million Germans and the same for blacks, six million Jews, Mexicans, Hungarians, Norwegians and this horde of Hispanics pouring in it's a melting pot where nothing's melted, what can you expect.

—I'm not talking about six million Norwegians! I'm talking about forty or fifty million Bible thumping illiterates and this Neanderthal in the Senate calling for my father's impeachment down there burning him in effigy talking about madness that's where it comes from, the Lord is a man of war says Exodus, two thousand years of slaughter since he came bringing not peace but a sword from the Crusades right down to your courtroom with the little black roach and his foetal personhood to the boy with the catsup bottle, the Dome of the Rock and the Temple Mount soaked with the blood of Muslims and Jews and your mosque up there in Uttar Pradesh with Muslims and Hindus drenched with blood wherever
you find them, the true believers, revealed religion that's where it all comes from, those riots in Bombay with the Hindu mobs dragging Muslims out the front door and killing them? making men drop their pants in the street to see if they were circumcised and burning them alive, dancing and singing around their blazing bodies if that's not madness? if that's not madness!

—Of course it is old fellow, of course it is, the whole pantheon of . . .

—And those stories I heard about the Juggernaut when I was a child, that tremendous wagon they pulled in religious processions where people threw themselves under the wheels to be crushed?

—All nonsense old man, typical British bloody bedtime story. Juggernaut's a good fellow, ninth avatar of Vishnu, he lives in a temple on the east coast a town called Puri where he gets sick every summer, recovers, goes on vacation and these pilgrims show up in the hundreds of thousands to celebrate, build a huge chariot with him perched on top of it playing a flute and drag it to his aunt's temple a mile down the road to make a few Brownie points with the trinity all yelling and shouting, all the caste barriers broken down some of them trampled and run down in the melee, no worse than the carnage after a soccer game is it? Along comes the British raj and sees their little brown brothers having a good time, a few of them crushed under the chariot's wheels and they take it for a frenzy of human sacrifice to this bloodthirsty deity, give a dog a bad name and all the rest of it? one man's religion another man's madness?

—And you don't call that madness?

—Of course I do, let me finish. Of course it's madness, but the madness comes first. It's an essential of the human condition, the worse the human condition the greater the madness and your revealed religion simply comes along to channel the madness, give some shape to it. For these unlettered hordes mired in poverty the only things that are free are sex and religion, and the poorer and more illiterate they are the more they procreate and the more ornate these religious pantheons and rituals become. Some Filipino crucifies himself at Easter because Jesus drove him to it? No, no he's mad from the start and religion gives it an outlet, gets it organized, penitents flagellating themselves with scourges till the blood pours out in those streams of madness throbbing away skindeep all over Mexico, Sikhs, Iraqis, Afghanis they're all raving maniacs to begin with looking for some grand design that they can fit into, some system of absolutes where they can find refuge, that's what the true believer is isn't he? And the more chaotic the times, the greater the demand for these absolutes, it's what drove Dostoevski's heroes over the brink wasn't it? this panic at living in a meaningless universe? Take the deep bedrock madness of the Germans from Peter the Hermit and Thomas Münster
right down to the death camps they try to masquerade as nationalism, like that exquisite distillation of total madness that's peculiarly Japanese. The Italians channel theirs through the Vatican in a wholesale mayhem of crime and opera, the Russians drown theirs in a sea of vodka and the English cross dressing theirs under the skirts of the Anglican Church or they'd be as frankly mad as their neighbors across the Irish sea.

—Nothing to do with madness no, or even religion, the Church of England's just a framework for the comedy of manners holding together the ruling class with a social caste system that . . .

—What any organized religion is isn't it, old boy? But go to the Old Catholics for top drawer snobbism and your real streak of madness, the Anglicans are just the bastard child, perfidious Albion and all the rest of it, you want a taste of the social caste system in all its cruelty and duplicity? Such, such were the joys, try boarding at an English public school, you've got its pale offspring right here haven't you? your bankrupt Protestant Episcopal refuge for old families and old money?

—That's just what I'm saying! Good God look at Harry's Pop and Glow case, nothing to do with madness or religion, the only true Christian faces you'll see in this country are black and I don't mean your mad to begin with theory either, how anyone can grow up black in America and stay halfway sane is beyond me.

—Not arguing that with you, am I? The demands for being a true Christian what can you expect, give up all and follow me? They had nothing to give up in the first place, for everybody else this love thy neighbor as thyself's a plain oxymoron, turned the whole country into a cradle of hypocrisy.

—Fine yes, and when the bough breaks the whole thing comes crashing down baby and all, that's what I . . .

—What you're talking about's organized religion, the established churches, Episcopals, Presbyterians, Congregational losing members right and left out there fighting for market share in what's left of their elite spiritual supplyside economy but the blood of the martyrs, Tertullian wasn't it? the seed of the church? And there's your forty million to the rescue mad from the start and ready to spill it killing in defense of the right to life, no bleeding heart accommodation like your Roman Catholic confessional's end run around the seventh commandment, say a few Paternosters and Hail Marys and go and sin no more till the next time, try that in Islam and they'll stone her to death so there won't be a next time, steal a loaf and they'll lop off your hand. Remember T E Lawrence calling his Arabs a people of primary colours seeing everything in black and white? either truth or untruth? despising this doubt he called our modern crown of thorns, our hesitating retinue of finer shades, true believers go forth to
war says the Koran. Turn your faces toward Mecca's what your young blacks are doing, throwing off the Christian names they were baptised with and calling themselves Ali and Muhammad reminds me, I looked into your Cratylus.

—My what?

—Plato's dialogue Cratylus, haven't forgotten the last time we talked have you? when you said you'd no more change your name than the shape of your nose? Cratylus claiming your name signifies your essential nature, if it doesn't it's not really a name at all and even if it is it's probably somebody else's with a real claim to the qualities it expresses like our friend Basie there, he's your perfect Hermogenes isn't he? His cheery I'll take the Fifth on that, seeing names as nothing more than conveniences? change them any way you like?

—Can you blame him? His own real name lost back in some African savannah when the slave traders came through and what about yours then, would you change it?

—Tell you the truth when I was a boy I, Pai is an old name in the south of India but in England, I told you the cruelty of schoolboys and I hated it, needn't tell you what they called me and I swore I'd change it when I grew up, some of the finest old names going back to the battle of Hastings in sixth form there and even the future Duke of Wellington was called Washrag but all due respect old sport, I don't really trust your Plato, said that before haven't I? Look at his record on slavery, subjugation of women and the welcome mat out on Queer Street you get the feeling in this Cratylus that it's all really just a game he's playing, cardboard characters and their arguments so full of holes the whole thing ends in confusion and the flaws in his method show right through, your plea in your deposition back there as homage? as timely and timeless? In the end he's pretty much a dictator isn't he, a censor, can't trust him any more than your Major who's a sort of cardboard Cratylus himself isn't he? No more change his name than he would Quantness and the more chaotic things get the more he clings to them till they destroy him.

—That's the whole point isn't it? And there's Bagby, is he a cardboard Hermogenes? He's all expediency, change his name in a minute like your client Livingston changing his name to Siegal it was probably Siegal in the first place, and then Kiester? Constantine Kiester it's just a convenience, for Cratylus Socrates in the dialogue is really Socrates and the name Cratylus is the essence of Cratylus himself like the character Kane in the play, he's the Cratylus in the play and whatever gave you the idea he's some broken down peddler who . . .