The Twilight of the Bums (6 page)
Read The Twilight of the Bums Online
Authors: George Chambers,Raymond Federman
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #The Twilight of the Bums
Ladies and gentlemen the captain has turned on the safety belt sign in preparation for our landing â¦
The Old Bums, as you know, share a shadow. And so, when the sun is out, they take turns wearing it -- what are friends for? This fact doesn't seem to have much to do with the great wop storyteller, but you just wait.
The Old Bum on your left is telling the Old Bum on your right a B tale which the right Bum is receiving with growing resistance, if not outright incredulity.
No shit, mon cher, Leftie continues, the guys switched wives, the girls couldn't tell the difference.
I find this hard to believe, responds Rightie, I think you are preparing me to suggest that we switch wives, that is the real burden of your tale.
Alors, ça non, replies Leftie, on the banks of the very Seine whereupon I was born, I swear that I do not lie!
You liar! shouts R, heating up. You want to lie with my delicious young wife, whose breasts even braless retain the vibrant shape of youth and passion, whose Segovia guitar hips rival the hips of â¦
Forgive me for interrupting you, île de rêve, but you mean
lay
not
lie
.
See what I mean! This proves it! You want my wife!
This little exchange does prove indeed that words and deeds do not always coincide.
As it inevitably happens to old farts, one day one of the two friends fell ill. As he lay on his hospital bed dozing, the other friend came to visit. Since Old Fart One seemed asleep, and Two didn't want to disturb him, he quietly sat by his bed in a chair, and soon fell himself into deep sleep.
This is what Fart Two told himself in his dream: We've been through strange and wondrous things together. Unwittingly you and I sipped our fill of joy and bitter woe from the cup of life. And now that it's almost empty, one might be tempted to believe all that was only a test, and that now fortified with the wisdom of experience, we stand before the real beginning. This is the real beginning, and though we do not wish the return of past delusion, we are happy to have lived it as it was. And so I now feel confident that whatever ill attacked our old friend, he will soon be doing better than before.
While the voice inside sleeping Fart Two continued to rant, Fart One regained consciousness, and seeing his friend asleep in the armchair, quietly snoring, his face twisted into a painful grimace, he reached out and shook him, Why don't you get in bed with me, you Old Fart, you don't look well at all.
You don't have to be a sick man to experience the fantasy of the Sex Nurse. Every man in trouble imagines that a woman much like his mother or his mistress is coming momentarily through the door to slip under the sheets with him and restore his pricky manliness.
Our friends are no exception.
One in the chair and Two in the bed, they've been holding hands, snoozing, dreaming of her, all in holy white. So, when she does appear, carrying, like a waitress, a tray of tiny fluted paper cups of pills, Sex Nurse Herself, pausing by the bed, double-checking the pill cups, her freshly laundered white uniform so sweet and clean smelling, oh, oh it's spring and a window flies open, her uniform embracing and defining her naked womanhood, and so on and so forth, the old guys waken, their handclasp tightening, tears inching down their cragged, manly faces.
The two bums, the guys we often speak of, the ones who share a birth date and a sock size, and a shadow, are also men, through no fault of their own, of a defined substance in the secondary community in which they live and work. Their wives enjoy their status in this community and have, as wives are wont, ambitions beyond their state. And so it is that at the class AA ballpark one may view, much to the chagrin of the bums, a structure just above the bleachers, where the wives come to entertain their friends and view the games in air-conditioned comfort.
On the day in question, an interesting game is ongoing, scoreless, bottom of the third. The bums are seated in the proletarian green bleachers directly below the sky box, a gesture to the masses they insisted on. The bums are sitting just behind a youngish woman, an up-and-coming lawyer, they decide, who is studying the game with a total attention that frees them to view with delight her appetizing derrière which bounces with every move and every shout she makes to encourage her favorite players.
Bottom of the third then. This is what they are doing. But it's also her fingers, their slimness, and the way the shaped nails sit on them, which attract the bums' attention. They are having sex fantasies about these lovely slim fingers, which rest composedly on a legal pad, but also her thick bush, a miracle of Levantine black, and the revealed scalp beneath it so healthy, so clean. Those lovely fingers, her healthy hair, and that appetizing derrière, the two bums have lost interest in the game.
The wives, meanwhile, sit in the circle of easy chairs at the back of the box, chatting with their invited guests, the wives of the police chief, the mayor, the school superintendent, the guest conductor of the local symphony orchestra.
But now, it's the seventh inning stretch. The two bums get up to stretch with the rest of the crowd and so does the lady up-coming-lawyer who turns to view the crowd behind her thus facing the two bums. Oh my mamamia! What a set of boobs. Unbelievable. These generous protuberances will no doubt occupy our two bums, along with the rest of the lady's anatomy, until the end of the game, and will probably prevent them from enjoying the local team's victory.
One day Monette invited the boys to tea to meet Henri, her newest conquest -- a large man with a thick beard (big and thick enough to store things in, oh say a pipe cleaner kit) and big opinions (quite natural for a pseudofrog).
This, you are thinking, is indeed an auspicious opening. You wonder why the guys hate Henri so.
Monette, it should be revealed, did time as the mistress of the bums (not the same sentence, of course -- social
bienséance
must be preserved).
Ah, we see, so the bums are still in love with the memory of Monette and resent their reincarnation in Henri.
Right you are. Henri is standing (he likes to be upright for his major utterances,
avec un accent, bien sûr
) near the delicate tea table with its fine Limoges service, a pleasant little stream of steam rising from the pot, a pot deeply glazed, a white crane -- the ancient symbol of longevity -- depicted in the attitude of flight.
The boys are seated together on what is called a love seat
[hey, specify that it is an original Beauvais, whispers my co-author]
. You may be sure they detest it.
(Oh, lest we be accused of not reporting the scene faithfully, we must mention here, especially since it is an important detail, and a nice touch, the record-player, next to the love seat, on which Monette is playing her favorite recording of Mireille Mathieu singing
Je m'en fous!)
[Hey, did you mention the pipe that Henri is holding in his hand? Yes, my co-author again.]
Monette is reclining on a curious bit of furniture (hard for us to tell what it is from where we are), a sofa of sorts, elevated at one end, on the bolsters of which she is carefully, most piquantly semi-reclined, her camellia gown draping, its folds flowing and draping, flowing and falling, and falling
[you're pushing, keep the effusions down. Oh shut up, let me go on]
.
Henri is working it up, his major new thought [une
pensée cartésienne
, to be sure] on the Fall Of Rome (he capitalizes his opinions).
I
, he begins, the word in his register one endless vowel.
Iyeeeeeeee
Whereupon enters Bum Two, aka
Blitz. Who, Monette ma chérie, was your most superior lover?
Blitz
, of course, speaking in this manner, nominates himself
[bien entendu]
.
Hmm, responds Monette, wishing, perhaps, that she had a fan to shield her face at this moment.
[Hey, nice touch the fan!]
