by Don DeLillo
Longboy licked the tip of the butt and returned it to his pocket. On his field jacket was an 82nd Airborne patch. Maje looked at Bohack.
“Take five more cards and tear them front from back,” Bohack said. “Just five more. Just out of curiosity. A random sampling. Five more and then just five more. Front from back. Gently. English muffins.”
20
“THE EFFECT of the tapes is that they’re tapes.”
“Sure, sure, sure. I agree. Absolutely. I’m with you. It’s you and me. Absolutely. Teammates. Rah, rah, rah.” Globke was a toy motor in my ear, evidence of the muggy passion of telephones, his voice feverish with allegiance. He was largehearted in his sovereignty, dispensing benedictions to every quarter, a healer and teacher, prepared to animate what was moribund in me, to lash what was reluctant, to tease and feed the smallest fires of my mind.
“Talk, I’m listening. Tell me freely what’s worrying that boy-genius head of yours. I’m sitting here with so many answers they’re coming out of my clothes. Just make sure you don’t ask me where I was with the tapes last night because I can only answer that in the flesh, person to person, and even then I’ll have to whisper it in your ear just to make sure there’s no security leak. I don’t tolerate laxness in that area. My people know that. So do my people’s people.”
“How do I face crowds?” I said. “I can t do the material on the tapes. I don’t want to do old material. I don’t have new material. So how do I get back out? I don’t know how I do that.”
“You don’t know how because it’s not your appointed task to know how. It’s not your professional identity. It’s not your blood and muscle. But I know how, Bucky. I know exactly how.” “Okay.”
“Guest appearances,” he said. “We’ve got bands touring all over the country. You show up with one group in one place, a different group two nights later a thousand miles away. Surprise appearances. We don’t announce anything to anybody. This way we build up tremendous interest. It’s not only your return to action. It’s not only a secret appearance. It’s a whole series of appearances, different places, different times, weeks on end, never any clue where you’ll show up, or when, or which group. Nobody knows, including the bands you appear with. You just show up, say hello and go on. We buüd up fantastic interest and suspense. Tremendous speculation on your movements and whereabouts. You’re in Seattle one night, New Orleans the next. Crowds go wild wanting to know where you’re going to turn up next. Every band you perform with is under contract to Transparanoia but that’s the only clue anybody has and we’ve got enough bands blasting away out there to make it impossible for anybody to pinpoint your itinerary. We build up unbelievable publicity for the tapes. All these performances lead up to the release of the mountain tapes on a two-record set. By the time you’re on the road, word will be out about the tapes. So all the time you’re out there, you’re building up unprecedented interest in the tapes. You tour. Then we release the album. Then you tour again. I know what you’re about to ask.”
“What material do I perform?”
“You’re about to ask what material you perform for all these concerts weeks on end with totally different groups. Bucky, it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference. You can jam, you can whistle, you can hum, you can do top-forty AM schlock, you can just stand there and shout at the audience. It doesn’t make any difference what you do. The idea is to get you out there, get the whole mystique going again, make them wet their pants, make them yell and scream. Jam. That’s what I say. Tap the mike and start picking. Do twenty minutes’ guitar work and get the hell off. Make loud sounds, that’s the thing. Move your lips, that’s even better. Stand there and move your lips. Don’t think of it as a performance. Think of it as an appearance. You’re back on the road, that’s the thing we’re concerned about. Twenty minutes and run for the airport. You pick up one group in one city, zoom over to another city and another group, hit a third city and a third group, jump into a fourth city and pick up the original group there. We build up incredible interest this way.”
“And the day after my funeral you release the tapes.”
“You can’t wait to get out there. Admit it, Bucky. You know the truth about the tour. You know you need the tour. It won’t be long. Six or eight weeks, more or less. Then we release the material on the tapes. Then you hit the road for six or eight more weeks. A two-record set. Early spring release. Obvious title: The Mountain Tapes. We’d be crazy to call it anything else since that’s the name everybody knows it by. Right now we’re culling. We’re editing down to twenty cuts. Getting rid of tape hiss and other noises. Snipping and clipping. Moving things around. Making up titles. Mixing in some instrumental work on about three quarters of the cuts. The thing’s going to be rough as hell. But I think that’s what we need right now. We’ve had enough of instant phasing and sixteen track and synthesizers. The people want something plain. Plain but complicated. The kind of material you and only you can deliver. I don’t go in for levels in popular music and I don’t even know if this is level-material or not. Maybe that’s the power of it. Is it one level or two levels or no levels at all? Are the levels simple levels or profound levels? That’s the power of the mountain tapes as I view it from my own particular viewpoint. It’s not my sound. It’s not the sound I listen to when I look across the river from my bedroom window on a summer night and my wife is sitting up in bed reading the Eastern teachers and there’s moonlight on the river and the great rotting towers of Manhattan are arrayed across the night and I turn off the air conditioner and open a window and insert a cartridge in my music system. Your sound frankly isn’t the sound I listen to at times like that. But it’s a valid sound and it should sell by the carload. So right now we’re culling and mixing and refining. The technical minds are hard at work. We aim for early spring. Definitely a two-record set. Positively called The Mountain Tapes.”
“First pressing of a hundred million billion,” I said.
“I’m in the middle of arrangements for the tour. Everybody’s working on it here. Late nights, weekends, quickie lunches. It’ll be unprecedented, Bucky. Give me a few days to work out the second tour. Then well talk again. I’ve got tour one just about nailed down. Then we have to do some coordinating. Then we have to work out chart cities versus test cities. It’s a valid sound. No doubt about it. I’ll tell you where you’ll be traveling the first time around. You want to hear? I’ve got the list right here marked confidential in big red letters.”
“Not now,” I said.
“The third, a Wednesday, Atlanta. Fourth, Memphis. Fifth, San Antonio. Sixth, Dallas. Seventh, New Orleans. Eighth, Albuquerque. Ninth, L.A. Tenth, Portland. Twelfth, Seattle. Thirteenth, Portland. Fourteenth, Tampa. Jacksonville the fifteenth. Miami the sixteenth, a Tuesday. Milwaukee the seventeenth. Flint the eighteenth. Grand Rapids the nineteenth. Grand Rapids the twentieth. Long Beach the twenty-first. Phoenix the twenty-second. Emporia twenty-third. Oneonta twenty-fifth. Cortland twenty-fifth. Brockton twenty-sixth. Toronto twenty-seventh. London twenty-eighth. Salt Lake City thirty-first. Lubbock the first, a Thursday. Houston on two. Galveston on three. Baton Rouge on four. Nashville on five. Memphis on six. Chattanooga on seven. Knoxville on eight. Alliance the tenth. Millersburg the eleventh. Ripley the twelfth. Bradford the thirteenth. Wellsboro the fourteenth. Hazelton the sixteenth. Woodland the seventeenth. Calistoga the eighteenth. Clover-dale the nineteenth. San Francisco the twentieth, a Tuesday, fog rolling in, sea gulls sitting on the pilings.”
The Mountain Tapes
Press Preview and Record Industry Orientation
Edited transcript of lyrics—Tape 4
Prepared by Esme Taylor Associates
in collaboration with Pulse Redactor Co.
DIVISIONS OF TRANSPARANOIA
15: Near and far
Night so high
Water falling
Water falling
Night so high
Water falling
Night so high
Wate
r falling
Water falling
Water falling
Near and far
Water falling
Near and far
Night so high
Water falling
Water falling
16: Dadmom sis
Driving in the black car
Dadmom sis
Sighting on the white line
Long come something
In a blinding light
Long gone something
In a blinding light
Dead all dead
Oooh all dead
Bloody foot
Bloody head
Eat the nose for Christmas
Eat the toes for Lent
Eat the car for Eat-A-Car
Send the bones to Kent
17: Roses roses never red
Sweet the buzzard sings
Tell me tell me tell me
Time weather seasons
Story tell
Lesson give
Maiden words to learn
Being young restores the god
That eats itself
That eats itself
Better than the feast that ends
When they pick us from their teeth
Tell me tell me tell me
Cloud that’s making
Less of sky
That more of flying
Tries to make
Down the wind it comes
Something flying down the wind
Time weather seasons
Maiden words to learn
Standing sitting
Strip by strip
I pick the skin from off my face
Becoming god
Begin to glow
Behead the rose
Better than the feast that ends
When they pick us from their teeth
Tell me tell me tell me
Roses roses never red
Soft the vulture croons
18: I was born with all languages in my mouth
Baba
Baba
Baba
This and that
Egramine and woe
Sandwords on mud
High taljonics
Everything ever spoken shines from my teeth
Baba
Baba
Baba
Halda Ny Wadji
Hilda Krywicki
Mildred Hayes
Bionongenics
Mambo magic
Oh oh oh oh
Mambo madness
Oh oh oh oh
Dancing on a Latin balcony
Swaying to a starry symphony
Mambo mania
Oh oh oh oh
Undreamed grammars float in my spittle
Baba
Baba
Baba
Gadung gadung gadung
Uma childa nobo
Distiptics in wine
Insane today
I was born with all languages in my mouth
Baba
Baba
Baba
Nothing-maker
But to blurt
But to sing
Baby god and goo
19: Nighttime come
Mountain dark
Treetop wind
Mad dog bark
20: I know my toes
One to ten
This one’s big
This one’s no
Big one big
No one no
I know my toes
One to ten
I touch my hand
One touch one
One is touching
One is touched
Touching touching
Hand touch hand
I touch my hand
My hand touch me
I smell my nose
I smell my nose
I know my toes
I touch my hand
I smell my nose
I close my mouth
DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT PERMISSION
21
IN A MILLENNIUM or two, a seeming paradox of our civilization will be best understood by those men versed in the methods of counter-archaeology. They will study us not by digging into the earth but by climbing vast dunes of industrial rubble and mutilated steel, seeking to reach the tops of our buildings. Here they’ll chip lovingly at our spires, mansards, turrets, parapets, belfries, water tanks, flower pots, pigeon lofts and chimneys.
I turned south on Broadway.
Scaling our masonry they will identify the encrustations of twentieth-century art and culture, decade by decade, each layer simple enough to compare with the detritus at ground level — our shattered bank vaults, cash registers, safes, locks, electrified alarm systems and armored vehicles. Back in their universities in the earth, the counter-archaeologists will sort their reasons for our demise, citing as prominent the fact that we stored our beauty in the air, for birds of prey to see, while placing at eye level nothing more edifying than hardware, machinery and the implements of torture.
Hanes was sitting in the last car on the downtown local. The package angled out of an airline bag between his feet. I sat next to him, drawing a tap on the wrist. The noise was devastating, a series of bending downriver screams. Conversing I tilted my head and spoke directly into his ear. There were four or five other people in the car. Hanes looked weak and sick, a reproduction of my image in the mirror when I first arrived at Great Jones and cut myself shaving.
“What do you want?” I said.
“There’s a rumor you’re in New York living in an old building on some obscure street. Seriously, that’s the strongest rumor about you right now. I’ve been to enough places lately to know which rumors are current and choice. I’ve been through so many time zones I’m almost bodiless.”
“What places?”
“Literally or figuratively?” he said. “Literally about fifteen cities in three countries. Thought I had a sure sale at one point. Not quite, as it turned out. Question of ethics, they said. Time zones nearly did me in. I couldn’t write my name on a traveler’s check. Ì couldn’t add simple figures. That was the literal journey I took. Figuratively I lived in a lamasery in Tibet, being guided through the mysteries of the highest level of death. That’s what my whole vacation was about. Death-in-life. A string of make-believings. I moved through progressions of passive trains of thought. Nobody wanted to use me. I was prepared to be used. I did everything but take out ads in the newspapers. It was all a mistake. I’m meant to ride elevators floor to floor. More than that requires the mettle of demigods like yourself. I’m meant to crouch in stairwells reading interoffice mail. There’s a tremendous lure to becoming bodiless. I see it but fear it. It’s like a junkie’s death. A junkie’s death is beautiful because it’s so effortless.”
Hanes insisted on changing trains every few stops. We spent the afternoon this way, shouting into each other’s head, standing on platforms, hurrying through barren tunnels, altering our level of descent from train to train. In the last car again, somewhere beneath the ruck of Red Hook, we saw a boy and two girls steal a sleeping derelict’s shoes. The man stirred, then curled more tightly into the bouncing seat. Opening the door between cars, the three children headed for the heart of the train.
“Too young to understand the dignity of shoes,” Hanes said.
“Why did you call me?”
“I keep moving. I haven’t stopped since I got back. Those people are not pleased with me. You’ll have to intervene, Bucky. Return the product to Happy Valley with my deepest regrets for the delay involved. My vacation ends tomorrow morning. I’m due back at the office. Clearly I can’t appear in such an obvious place with Bohack lathered up the way he undoubtedly is. What do I do then? I can’t go to my apartment. I can’t keep riding subways. I can’t get on another plane and soar away. You’ll have to intervene.”
“No good,” I said.
“You’ll have to tell them you’ve got the product and it’s theirs for the asking, no harm don
e, just show a little compassion toward Hanes, boys, he forgot himself and tried to turn dealer. His fatal taste for silver. But no harm done, right, boys?”
“You don’t need me. Do it yourself. Just give it back and say you’re sorry. I’m tired of that package. Don’t want to see it anymore.”
“My vacation ends tomorrow,” he said.
We changed trains one more time. A woman wearing torn clothing and a surgical mask stood laced to one of the poles. About a dozen young students got on, dressed in black, nodding their bodies to the train’s demonic flutter, serene rabbinical boys, hair solemnly curlicued, their ears like desert fruit. A man brought up battle sounds from his scarred throat. Creatures of the subway passed through the weaving cars. A woman across the aisle, carrying fifteen or twenty shopping bags inside each other, leaned forward and spoke to us.
“What happened to all the young men on shore leave from the air force? You never see them anymore. What’s been done to them? There’s something fishy going on. People know it in their bones but they won’t say it out loud. Everybody’s missing. Little by little everybody’s disappearing. In our bones we know it.”
We got off the train and walked through a series of cold passageways. Hanes carried the airline bag cradled to his chest. A strange wind lingered in the tunnels. The stone walls seemed to have a refrigerating effect and I submerged myself in my coat. Train-noise reverberated over our heads and beyond the blank walls. A small man stood in position before a monolithic hooded trash container, a neat stack of newspapers in his arms, waiting to be added to. I turned a corner and moved toward the stairway.
