Queenie

by Hortense Calisher

…I am not too keen on the partisans. In real life, they never were there…

  Meanwhile, I’m privately cutting a funky recitative called, “Female Confessing.”

  I am worried about my role. Personally and internationally.

  “Giorgio,” I say, “am I stretching my boundaries enough?” Are we?

  He says we’re doing what we please. “In the time that’s left to us.” He has a time sense too. But it’s short.

  Meanwhile he’s whizzing around the world bringing back bits of countries to each other, and for the first time commercially. Our loan comes in, but of course not in dollars, so we are hit by the rate of exchange.

  …The song money? That’s going straight into production, Mr. P. To the Pentagon, for help with your part in it. Giorgio says, “One good young revolutionary apple, that’s all it should take. In a barrel of young rotten ones.”

  Because that’s where you come in, Mr. Pr——t.

  You are to be his burst of flame…

  Frankly Mr. P., I am even beginning to wonder whether I and my gold mine are not just a cover for the serious, mandrake side of that island.

  Where one day, in among the upas trees which have been imported from Java to confuse the cover, I bump into a judo group of what I take to be hijackers extraordinaire, who are down there hardening themselves.

  Already they are not flashy types. They have turnip heads, spade jaws and hair like the bad end of a carrot; when they lean into the shoreline vegetation, they are like gone.

  Computer eyes of course. But anybody addressing a rally in a National Park area will never notice it.

  And one day, they are gone, like sucked off by submarine. They must’ve leaned too far.

  I say, “Wonder why the mature international spy scene doesn’t get more onto us? Remote geographically, the way we are.”

  Giorgio says, “Uh-uh, we aren’t their style of crazy. You aren’t. Older people look for us to be crazy like them. In the style of the establishment.”

  So, except for one bad scene with the lithographers—who have made some perfectly beautiful G-notes that Giorgio has to turn them down on—things are all ready and on target. Who, up in Washington, is doing fine.

  And except for me.

  Giorgio, meanwhile is refusing the G-notes very tactfully.

  Standing under a smashing orange sky, in an old Brooks pink shirt with the sleeves chopped, he says, “We are patriots. This is a patriotic mission to save our country. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand anything.”

  They don’t, of course. Because they have put his picture on the G-notes.

  Then I stand up. I say, “I am not happy with the female representation here.”

  Oh there are some camp followers on the island by then, Mr. P. And even some wives, this being Latin America. What realty’s burning me is—I have just been and heard the ASCAP version of my tapes.

  All the female part has been left out!

  They feel it will not have enough impact on the international scene.

  “But I am the reason you are all here!” I cry.

  Giorgio says, “A typical female reply.”

  So it’s the desk clerk scene all over. I’m a front.

  But I am also a means who intends to be in at the end.

  So I say, “Well, I’m worried about you know what. Our Automatic Pilot.” That’s our code name for you, Mr. P. “What you’re going to do with him, once he gets here. What are you going to do with him?”

  I see I have hit them square. Even Giorgio. Hijackers are like pregnant women, Mr. P. They have to deliver. That’s all they know.

  I say, “Instinct tells me he won’t work out as a lithographer.”

  I see they agree. And could kill me for throwing it up to them.

  I have brought up one of the central problems of life and revolution.

  What do you do, if you won’t shoot?

  So Giorgio compromises on my plan. If I just call it instinct, equality doesn’t bother him.

  The cuts in my copy will stand. But pirated unexpurgated ones will be made available. And I get to make your tape myself, Mr. P., which maybe you are grateful for. Because it will give you that much more time up in the air.

  Next day, I begin thinking about training for my role. Like shouldn’t I be getting nature skills? Which these days means like get a pilot license. Like, learn the latest in chemistry, so as someday to be able to create food and dynamite for daily purposes. Plus a little remedial medicine to cure the ills that will come of them.

  And maybe learn to parachute. So that if all fails, you can hop a freight home.

  Then at last it’s your day to be drafted, Mr. P.—which is a stale joke around the island—and we are standing on the highest escarpment, under all flags flying, which look astonishingly red against the tropical blue sky because they are all American. We are flying them illegally, but that’s revolution for you. And that’s Old Glory, around the world.

  Our lagoon is lapping the landing strip, and some thousands of miles away, on a coastal Maine island, the friendly shortwave tells us, the little whitecaps are scintillating too. Island to island, that’s the way we’ve done it. When I ask Giorgio why, he says maybe because mainlands have begun to frighten us.

  You are campaigning in Massachusetts, Mr. P., not far from the stern and rockbound coast. Our forefathers may even be watching. Some trawlers of the usual suspicious kind certainly are. On our radar screens, every blip is where it should be. We have an organization.

  “And it’s sailing weather around the world,” Giorgio says. “Also including forty thousand feet up.”

  The oldest lithographer, the establishment one but they kicked him out of it, totters over and hands me a G-note. I tuck it in my brassiere, which is getting pretty establishment too but I am stuck with it, and give a last embrace to Giorgio. When we sink to terra firma again, it will not be here.

  Giorgio has heard this tape up to a point, this morning. In a kind of convocation, they all have. Our rank and file is kept informed—they’re young enough. The whole room of them. Around the world. Giorgio’s comment on your tape: “So far so good. Keep talking.” And I am of course.

  And now we’re ready. We’re coming for you, Mr. P. With your draft notice. You are our fantasy, Mr. P., and we are acting on it. In an international hookup.

  Giorgio’s last words to me. On his birthday, Mr. P. “Hijacking the hijackers, Queenie. That’s maturity!”

  Oh, Mr. P! You are real.

  So here we all are, Mr. Pr——t. Forty thousand feet up.

  In a kind of bomber. At the last minute, plans were changed. On tape, that’s easy. You are five hours, and almost umpty minutes—out. On automatic pilot in the empyrean, commonly known to the uneducated as the sky. In what portion of it, will soon be for you to say. Because somewhere during this recital, which we hope keeps you rapt, pilot and co-pilot will bail out.

  But don’t you worry, Mr. P. He and I have been practicing parachute drops every morning. Double parachute, especially designed for us, because I have never been able to make it alone.

  By now, we are probably in what used to be the safest terrain of all—in the empyrean over America. And are pronto hijacking a hijacked plane out.

  We couldn’t leave you in yours, Mr. P. The private one. For the mission we intend for you, it hasn’t enough range. What plane has, of course?

  We couldn’t keep you. Not if the whole country couldn’t. That was fantasy.

  When Giorgio hears my suggestion he says, “Cancel all snide remarks, men. They are deadlier than us.”

  Hear this. This is a tape.

  Listen carefully, Mr. Pr——t. Somehow, somewhere,

  I am sure you are.

  You are in a new-type United States of America warhead, the new model with that long, long cruising range. Longest ever.

  The new paramutual, ultimate concoction one, for which Congress reluctantly OK’d the bill. They walk a very pure path of reluctance, but in t
he end they always come through OK. Maybe you will too, Mr. P.

  As bombers go, this one is fairly simple to fly. As bombers go.

  Are you with us, Mr. P.? It takes a younger person to imagine this kind of warhead into reality, but so far, your muscles are holding up fine. When Giorgio peeks in at you from the cockpit before leaving, we are proud of you. For the first time.

  When we turn on the music, dwba, dwba—we like to turn on our own music—you are sitting there, with your hands at your sides. Maybe they are trembling, but we can’t see that, the way you can’t be expected to see the ninety million pairs of hands who are now your constituents. We’re setting you free of that, Mr. P. We’re now giving you equal opportunity with all. You are now free to eat if you can get it, work if you can find it, talk if you can get someone to hear you above the noise of the Automatic Pilot, to which you in your turn are now captive audience. And you are duly relieved of the burden of self-government.

  Hear this.

  You are now on a par with every citizen of your country, Mr. Pr——t. You are on Automatic Pilot. Your hands are free and trembling at your sides.

  And you have been chosen to fly a mission of the utmost importance to you and the freedom of your country, Mr. P.

  You are going to be allowed to take your inscape abroad in the service of said country.

  If you can fly.

  Hear this.

  This plane is fueled to capacity. Its range is known to you.

  The playing time of this tape is known to you.

  The Fathers of our country are always adequately briefed. Like the sons.

  Sire—this plane is going at top speed.

  A simple calculation will give you the time that remains to you.

  The tape will direct you to the directions.

  Can you fly?

  Hear this.

  This is your direction to the directions.

  Directions for finding-keys to cockpit and controls, now locked in accordance with Automatic Pilot regulations, will be found in the lower lefthand pocket of the co-pilot’s jacket, which is hanging in the washroom.

  …Unless it is hanging in the cockpit…

  …Oh Hear This and all that, Mr. P.—but I’m for the personal touch. This is Queenie again. The voice of your tape. And mine. Like in church, we’re all members of each other, here. We’re all each other’s tapes. Which is how the idea of drafting you comes to me. In politics, people are the victims of each other’s backgrounds. That’s my pensée, which Giorgio has parlayed. We think it’s your turn to be the victim of ours.

  Because I gotta go now. Giorgio’s already crawled out on the wing and is calling for me to follow him. I can’t jump without him. And he can’t jump without me.

  Listen to him!…He says I ought to tell you first, who you are to us. I say I made a solemn promise never again to say motherfucker—besides, you know. He says in this case, I have to get over it. Oh Mr. P., how awful if our first premarital argument should be about you!

  Listen to him!…He says you must not keep telling people our age what we are. Because we already know. Why, everybody over ten in our country is already an Alexander or an Alexandress sighing for more of what they’ve already got, whether it’s death, disease, money or an all-time high. And shivering in their beds because they’re getting it.

  He says, “Queenie, get on with it for God’s sake, just tell him we’re a bunch of young hijackers.” Because that’s what we are, of course. Him—just a sports promoter of himself, and host of an island refuge for tired young revolutionaries, where we can all have a little gaslight fun. Me—just a nice semi-erotical girl forced by the times to be demi-political…And now he’s even yelling at me….He says you are not the kind of role-player would understand some roles are real. “Queenie, just tell him we’re his sole link between the putrid past and the putrid future. And now get out here and jump.”

  Guess I have to, Mr. Pr——t.

  We’re not ice-cold people. We’re about as warm as you are.

  But we don’t save. And we have come to the end of your tape.

  So herewith your draft notice. Which being the age group you are, we kind of like copied in reverse from Giorgio’s father’s World War Two one. He never went, but he framed it.

  TO: The President of the United States, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces: GREETINGS

  You have been selected by your friends and neighbors, your public and private life now being simultaneous, your boundaries now being endless, to defend your country from yourself, by continuing under your own Automatic Pilot until such time as you reach a plaque in the heavens with your name on it, proceeding meanwhile under strictest orders not to look back at the country you leave behind you, under peril of becoming the first male pillar of salt.

  Now let us observe a national moment of silence and prayer for you. You do it so often for us.

  Because…I’m afraid my jacket is in the cockpit.

  Fuck it mister, do like we do. Get an axe.

  Song of the Double Parachute

  Floating down, very fritillary—theory keeps us up, flesh sends us down. This is the song of the double parachute. Who wants to make it alone?

  Rockabye. We’re in the basket that brings all astronauts home.

  Far away at my ear, I hear Giorgio clinging to me. “Oh, Queenie, there’s going to be violence. He couldn’t fly.”

  Far away in his ear, I sing, “Hush, we’re the kingmakers now. Coming down with a last attempt to explain. Rockabye.”

  What else is there to do with men who’ll put their names on moons they didn’t fly to? It’s a matter of taste.

  As we scud over pampas and promontory, Giorgio calls out: “Explaining is action.”

  Yes, it’s too late for thinking. There’s only action, now.

  Giorgio says, “Queenie, you can open your eyes, we’ve jumped now. Wait’ll you see the view!”

  Coming down. Coming very softly down.

  Thinking ahead is saving. I can’t manage not to. So probably I’ll never be a good revolutionary.

  Giorgio says, “The only ones who can be let think ahead are the poets. They’re saving for the rainy day at the end of the world….So I’ll do the thinking for both of us.”

  While I put one prosy foot after the other, and limp home?

  In a double parachute, you can hear what everybody thinks.

  I say, “I don’t mind being a feminist on my own. Once you join the others, you’re only a unionist.”

  “Coming into Rio,” says Giorgio. “Over the silvery pampas and down.”

  I can describe Rio with all the ardor of a girl who hasn’t yet been there. We’ll have a silver pot for yerba making, a rug sold us for llama, which we’ll never be sure isn’t nylon—or maybe vice versa—and a year’s supply of the pill. That ought to be enough for what may be a long, long weekend.

  Because I’m going into this with my eyes open.

  I know I’m going to have one hell of a time, hanging onto the pensées.

  If a girl comes up with too many, people say: “Why don’t you girls just go around fucking people? Everybody understands that.”

  So do we.

  Female Confessing. Recitative:

  So, no more La Pasionaria for me? Tha-ats pop!

  But secretly…after the first half-hour of social justice, ain’t it all shop?…

  uh dress the wound, uh give the blood, uh lead the blind…and then Stop?

  …Maybe after the first half-hour everything is pop—

  andlovebetweenthelegs isonlypossible because it needn’t take that long?

  —Or between any places you choose, of course.

  …So here’s my song:

  (seriously) Ah tigerbaby of life, sucking your milk, seeking your vineshade, I know you! It’s me!

  Getting laid. And I just want to be. I just want to be.

  (naturally) And who cares if I overslept?

  I’m being kept.

  (Copyr
ight that later.)

  “Rio!” he says.

  Really, the best way is by parachute.

  Come on down, Queenie. Cable me you’re coming down.

  Floating down, like I never could over the roofgardens at home, even with the biggest rose-voices booming in my ear. In revolution or in rose gardens, who makes it alone?

  “Have a diamond,” I say, just before opening my eyes. “Just happened to have it with me.”

  And we’re down.

  THE QUEENIE TAPE

  IN BED. IN BED. And in a Hotel Bienvenida. Who is this hijacker at my side?

  He has a local newspaper. “Well, they got him,” he says.

  Somebody dreamed even harder than us. And acted on it.

  I’m glad it wasn’t us.

  I’m sorry it wasn’t us.

  “How?”

  “They took a poll.”

  I clop to the window in my mules, automatically watching out for scorpions.

  The moon, though wounded, is still there.

  And the revolution?

  It seems to be happening to me.

  Well, you get what you dream, I think. And you dream what you get. And I’ve got a new song.

  I’m still talking, inside. But I’m not leaning on anybody. And not missing it.

  I am on my own tape.

  I go back to bed. But the bed leans against me.

  It feels very nude here. If there is such a thing as a degree of it.

  I giggle, but he doesn’t look up. He’s my refuge, of course, but he’s reading.

  I’ll have to feel my own way, around myself….No innuendoes please, from the stands…

  Then I have to goose myself. Because there aren’t any stands. Not on your own tape.

  Well, I’m welcome here. Welcome, Queenie. Soyez le bienvenu.

  Been a long road, hasn’t it. Clutch your knees to yourself and consider. How you finally got through.

  I rub my eyes at him. “I’m awake.”

  “You say that every morning.” But he smiles.

  “Do I bore?”

  Now that I’m on my own, the possibility occurs to me.

  “Even under concussion, you have a certain charm.”