Carpenter's Gothic

by William Gaddis

  — You never saw me pick my nose. It's disgusting, you know that McCandless? Why did you want to give him a name like Slyke. Why did you write it.

  — I was bored.

  — You were always bored. You were bored the first time I met you, you thought I wouldn't read it? You've got Cruikshank in here as this character Riddle, you thought he and Solant and the rest of them wouldn't know who wrote it?

  — You think I even thought they'd read it? got better things to do haven't they? Forging passports, tapping tele…

  — You think it didn't show up in his briefings? They read everything down there, funny papers everything even trash like this. Maybe they thought you're trying to get back at them.

  — You think I'd waste the…

  — Maybe they think you're where these leaks are coming from.

  — What leaks.

  — Maybe they…

  — I said what leaks. Can you come out straight with it just once?

  — I never lied to you, McCandless.

  — Enough damned times you just didn't tell me the truth.

  — That's a different thing.

  — A different thing? Like freezing my bank account, who's got the IRS in there freezing my bank account.

  — There's a very fine line, you remember that? There's a very fine line between the truth and what really happens, you remember who told me that? He'd put down the book and stood there turning up papers in the glare of the lamp. — You remember that? We used to talk, didn't we.

  — One damned time you finally got it right, every, ev, ev…

  — That's a great cough. Better than the last time I heard it, you been practicing? Think it's trying to tell you something?

  — Why don't you tell me something. Not the truth, not from you no, no I'll settle for what really happened, why they're after me all of a sudden for unreported income that year, you knew about it you handed it to me. Cruikshank was your COS in Matidi he knew about it, he had to, now suddenly nobody knows about it but the IRS.

  — Then what are you worried about, what do you…

  — Not worried I'm just damned fed up! You're still working for Cruikshank?

  — I'm still working for Cruikshank. I just told you, I'd never…

  — Never lie to me no, then just tell me what in the hell you…

  — What are you worried about. There's no record you were ever employed is there? They'll deny any classified operation you know that, that's agency policy. Anybody knows that, read it in the papers.

  — In the papers, read it in the papers like this ringer they've got showing up in court with a bag over his head?

  — Like him.

  — Who is he.

  — Ask them. Ask Cruikshank.

  — I'm asking you. I'm asking you Lester, break in here when you think nobody's home with this nonsense about the redhead, am I getting into the redhead as though we're still sitting there in the Muthaiga Club before they set you up with that thin lipped Somali, before Cruikshank and his…

  — That's a different thing. That's a different thing, Mc-Candless. We never got that much from you anyhow… He stood turning up slabs of colour, pinks and blues, unlabeled diagrams, — nothing we weren't already getting someplace else till you went to work for Klinger… and he held up a map detail to shake the dust from it, spread it flat on the file. — Is this his site?

  — I don't know what it is.

  — Don't tell me what you don't know. Just tell me what you do know. Klinger was trying to round up investment when he pulled you out of that broken down Tabora Middle School wasn't he? or had they already fired you. He sent you out with your little hammer and magnifier to see if that site he'd cornered was worth further exploration and you came back and told him what you'd found. When he showed up with his exploration permits he had what he said was your mapping, he had the remote sensing and these infrared scannings, high resolution photographs down to eighty square metres all over the whole seven thousand acres lining up claims with that mission boy down in the Chamber of Mines. You both knew there was a claim running into the mission's land, they'd already developed two shafts running right up to the edge of it. They made Klinger an offer he thought was too low so he was running around to Lendro, Pythian Mining, South Africa Metal Combine, all of them with these reports on the ore body he'd found out there on the mission land trying to raise the ante. What about it.

  — What about it.

  — These reports. What did you know about his reports.

  — I knew you and Cruikshank were seeing every damned one of them. I knew you were paying somebody off to get copies of everything he came up with.

  — How good was it.

  — You saw it all. Ask Klinger.

  — Ask Klinger.

  — Well ask him! I didn't work up his proposals he did, I never saw them.

  — What did you find.

  — I told you. Ask Klinger.

  — What's the last time you saw him.

  — I never saw him again and look Lester, put the top back on that box and put it back where you got it. Whatever you're after it's not in there.

  — Is this Irene?

  — That's Irene. Put it back.

  — Pretty. You never told me she was that young… the snapshot dropped back in the box and he stood there fitting the top on. — They found Klinger in one of those alleys back of the Intercontinental with two holes in his head.

  — Is that it? You think I know who killed Klinger? Is that what all this is?

  — Nobody cares who killed Klinger… He reached the box him, — could have been anybody. He was getting his hands on that slut that worked the New Stanley, we figured it was that Afrikaner she said was her husband. They were both gone the next day. It's like Dachau in here, you know that? He struck out to shatter the tranquil column of blue smoke rising between them, — will you put it out? You're not even smoking it, look at it. It's just lying there smoking. You're making me smoke it too, you know that?

  — Why don't you just stop breathing then, go out and get some fresh air, let yourself out like you let yourself in.

  — When's the redhead due back.

  — I don't know.

  He'd settled back on the metal file, watching the bottle come up to lose a level ounce into the dirty glass, reaching suddenly for the smoking cigarette to stamp it out on the yellowed marble. — Go ahead and kill yourself with these things, you don't have to kill us both do you? The boot heels had taken up bump, bumping against the side of the file. — What do you know about the redhead's husband.

  — He's behind two months' rent, that's what I know about him.

  — You ran a credit check on him didn't you? when they rented your house here?

  — I didn't run anything. They gave the agent a bad check for a month's rent they made good a week later and that was it.

  — You don't look out for yourself very well do you. You never did… He leaned down to crumple together a handful of loose pages from the folder on the floor. — The IRS down on you, you're probably short of cash, he came on dropping one page and going on to the next, the next, — you always were… and without looking up — I'll give you two thousand dollars for the work you did for Klinger.

  — Still the big spenders.

  — Cash. It's here isn't it? in this mess here someplace?

  — Maybe you're looking at it.

  — I'm not looking at it! I'm looking at a lot of, this how you make your living now? writing for the schoolbooks?

  — How I made one.

  — It's better than your rotten fiction, you should have stayed with it.

  — Stayed with it? What do you think that trial in Smackover was all about.

  — No I'm serious, McCandless. I'm serious, don't start on your Smackover. Two thousand cash. Look at your shoes, you…

  — Think I made it up? like the name on that book there? You think ignorance isn't dead serious? Red dirt, rolling hills, a rail line, trickle of a stream and a town grows up
there, great trees meeting overhead down the main street and some civilized person names the place Chemin-couvert. A generation or two of ignorance settles in and you've got Smackover, a hundred years of it and you've got a trial like that one, defending the Bible against the powers of darkness they're doing more to degrade it taking every damned word in it literally than any militant atheist could ever hope to. Foolishness bound in the heart of a child but the rod of correction shall drive it out so they whale the daylights out of their kids with sticks. And they shall take up serpents so they get liquored up and see how many rattlesnakes they can get into a burlap bag, talk about homo habilis in East Africa two million years ago, homo sapiens homo anything they know what a homo is don't they? the men of Sodom telling Lot to bring out his two visiting angels for a little buggery? back in Deuteronomy breaking down the houses of the sodomites? an abomination in Leviticus? these vile affections in Saint Paul burning in their lust to one another? Cutting a little close to the bone here, Lester? Talking about having business with the greatest work ever produced by western man and that's what you…

  — I'm talking about the work you did for Klinger. I'm talking about what you found on Klinger's site out there McCandless, not your little grandstand play in Smackover they cleaned that up in Tennessee sixty vears ago, all your ranting about Genesis and evolution the whole…

  — Cleared it up? and evolution disappeared from their textbooks for a whole generation going around like they'd all had lobotomies no no no, stupidity's a damned hard habit to break, something right here I just saw it… Papers, clippings, ashes spilled right and left in the table's litter, — damn! The bottle almost went over, — little taste of life in Georgia it's right here someplace…

  — Your own mapping, diagrams, field notes all of it, two thous…

  — Here, here read this while you're waiting… a pamphlet in ominous black, — the Survival Handbook, it's a little literature from Smackover, tells people like me what to do when people like you are snatched up to meet the Lord in Second Thessalonians for your space age picnic in the clouds while the rest of us are…

  — Always get it wrong, don't you. It's First Thessalonians, four, seventeen and I'm not sitting here waiting for a little taste of Georgia, I'm waiting for you to…

  — No no here it is, here it is listen. You think that circus in Tennessee straightened things out? Here's a judge in Georgia right now, listen to him. This monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of abortions, permissiveness, promiscuity, pills, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning, and proliferation of crimes of all types what happened to pederasty, penis envy, peeping Toms, you think he's got business with the Bible? those bums in Samuel that pisseth against the wall by the morning light? that gang sitting on the wall in Isaiah drinking their own…

  — Two thousand.

  — their own piss and eating…

  — Cash, two thousand cash… he tapped his breast pocket. — What are you making another of those things for, I just put that one out.

  — That's why I'm making another one. You're still a little dense aren't you Lester, it's pretty damned obvious isn't it? You put that one out so I make another one, perfectly logical sequence isn't it? like Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic? All the facts staring you square in the face like they stared at those primates out there proclaiming the truth? choking on Genesis? A very fine line good God, I was wrong wasn't I, it's an abyss, it's the…

  — Well what did you want! What did you expect out there, a handful of simple people brought up to believe in the…

  — It's not a handful! You call half the country a handful? Almost half the damned people in this country, more than forty percent of them believe man was created eight or ten thousand years ago pretty much as he is today? they believe that? Two versions right there in the first two pages, have your choice. You get the animals first and then man around the sixth day, male and female created he them, or you get man from the dust and then the animals show up lined up like kids at summer camp to get their names and finally Miss America made from a spare rib. God dividing the light from the darkness, the water from the waters and making the firmament why not Pan Koo? why not China? The sleeping giant waking up in the dark smashes the void to make heaven and earth, his breath…

  — His breath the winds, his voice the thunder, his sweat the rain and dew, one eye the sun and the other the moon and his fleas men and women I've heard it, I've heard it all McCandless I've heard it from you, you think I came up here to listen to it again? You think you're back in one of these broken down schools where you can rave and rant like this? bully and browbeat everybody in sight because that's what you do. Because you're smarter than anybody else aren't you, like this hero you've got in this rotten novel, this Frank Kinkead… He had the book in the yellow jacket again tossing over its pages five, twenty at a time, — he never picks his nose does he, he's too good for that isn't he. He's supposed to be you isn't he.

  — Not supposed to be anybody, what do you think a novel…

  — This part here? where he's proceeding on a sea of doubt?

  That's pretty bad, proceeding on a sea of doubt that's pretty bad, you know that? And that part where he's trying to give his life a course of inevitability? where he wants to rescue his life from chance and deliver it to destiny? I wouldn't believe that, if I didn't know you I wouldn't believe anybody would talk like that, going around full of outrage because nobody's as smart as he is like those primates you were straightening out in Smackover, you know something? The preponderant IQ in America's around a hundred, you know that? you're going to tell them about Aegyptopithecus sitting around up in the Sahara eating fruit thirty million years ago? you're going to tell them they all come down from Australopithecus ten million years ago when they can't even pronounce Chemin-couvert? He waved off a fresh burst of smoke, — you ever wonder why people pull out on you? That part in here where this Frank Kinkead is telling Slyke he thinks his wife is going to pull out on him that's Irene, isn't it. You changed her name to Gwen but it's really Irene isn't it, it's you sitting there in the New Stanley bar talking about people who live as though life was reversible, about taking responsibility for the consequences of our own acts the same ranting, raving… the book snapped closed. — I'll give you five thousand dollars for the work you did for Klinger.

  — Why waste your money. You know what he told them.

  — We know what he told them. We want to know what you told him. He was a promoter trying to hustle up some heavy investment, you think he's going to say there's nothing on that mission site but thornbush?

  — Why don't you go out there yourself, Lester… the glass came down empty, faltering in blind search for a place to rest. — Go out and look for yourself, you've got the mapping, you've got those high resolution photographs that's more than I had. All you need's the pocket magnifier and a hammer, they're right there under those papers take them, this old tent you've been stepping on take it with a broken down truck and a couple of boys from the mission and go look for yourself.

  — It's all right here. Why should I go out there, it's all right here isn't it? can you find anything in this mess? You've saved every piece of trash you've ever come across… He caught the 36-1 lb. Crisco carton closer with the heel of a boot, — you know what's going on out there now? You can't get near that border. There isn't any border. There's nothing between the mission station and the Limpopo but the African National Congress running loose with Kalashnikovs and Katyusha rockets, a little PLO, Cubans, KGB posing as sanitary engineers and every trash mercenary you want, French, Portuguese, East Germans, Mossad agents, a little SWAPO spilling in and these South African Z Squads and the MRM keeping things destabilized till it's time for the showdown, go out there now you'll get your legs blown off before you walk ten feet. You saw what happened when they just picked you up for questioning, what you said happened. What you said happened McCandless, this time you wouldn't have to make it up. This time they'd make those Danakil
up in the Afar who'll cut off your dingus for a prize for their girlfriends look like hell's kindergarten, don't you know what's going on out there?

  — I don't know what's going on out there no, and I don't…

  — All waiting for somebody to step in and draw the line, it's as good a place as any. You don't read the papers? Take your dirty tent and a couple of mission boys out in a broken down truck like those two that strayed off the mission station for water, they were lucky to get off with their throats cut, you didn't see that?

  — I didn't see that, I don't read the papers and I don't give one damn what's going on out there, what I'm trying to tell you Lester. I'm through with it, I've been around the ring twice and I'm not going round again isn't that clear?

  — Then what good's this work you did for Klinger. What good is it to you, it's just part of this trash heap you're cleaning up isn't it? His boot rummaged the open carton turning up scraps of pages, torn envelopes, nondescript landscapes, — timetable for the Benguela railway what good is that to you, it's no good even when you're standing there in Kolwezi hoping for a train. Here's your contract with the Euthanasia Society when the time comes you can't make your own decisions you haven't signed it, what good is it. Five thousand cash. Five thousand for your timetable and the rest of this rubbish or five thousand for your field notes, diagrams, original mapping all of it, what's the difference. You don't give one damn what's going on out there what's the difference to you? Here… he was back digging in the file drawer for a dented yellow tin of — State Express, when did you open it, ten years ago? and came up with a passport perforated CANCELED flicking its pages stamped in blues, greens, reds, ovals and triangles, stayed by the photograph. — You looked better then, didn't you. Like this Frank Kinkead, that's what he's supposed to look like isn't it, this cool unwavering glance where he says from now on he's going to live deliberately? He's like you isn't he, he expects everybody else to behave like he would in their situation. If they were you they wouldn't be in their situation in the first place… He waved off a grey billow of expired smoke, — but he's too good to pick his nose isn't he, he's too busy rescuing his destiny from chance isn't he.