Carpenter's Gothic

by William Gaddis

  The tea in the cup had steeped almost black and she left it there, up for a moment staring out the window again and then she pulled open the door and went out and sat on the edge of the chair overturned on the dead leaves carpeting the terrace, the streamers from the limbs of the mulberry tree drifting over her gentle as torn curtains and the lattice fence beyond like the ruptured wall of a room, of a house long since abandoned.

  — You want to know what Africa's really all about here, here read this one… She'd come back in, chilled, to see him up tottering on the magazine bundle reaching down a book from a high shelf, her own hand already spotting white on the knuckles where she gripped the dark turn of wood standing there in the doorway — all four horsemen riding across the hills of Africa with every damned kind of war you could ask for. Coups d'etat and you've got Somalia, Benin, Madagascar, the Congo, nationalist war gives you Mozambique, war of liberation topped off by a civil war and there's Angola, revolution and you've got Ethiopia and the tribes, the tribes. Rwanda gets its independence and the Hutus celebrate by killing a hundred thousand Watusi and grabbing majority rule, right next door in Burundi the Watusi slaughter two hundred thousand Hutus just to make sure it won't happen there. North Koreans train the Shona in Zimbabwe's Fifth Brigade and off they go in their red berets chopping up the Ndebele people in southern Matabeleland, seven hundred languages they've all been at each other's throats since the creation war, famine, pestilence, death, they ask for food and water somebody hands them an AK47 and suddenly the whole thing's a Marxist conspiracy? It's money from the West and guns from the East and they'll all sell out to the highest bidder. Somalis and Ethiopians they were killing each other up there in the Ogaden a thousand years before Marx was born. Ethiopia sells us out to the Marxists and comes out owing them two billion dollars for arms, Somalia rigs up something called scientific socialism that's just about as real as this scientific creationism, they keep it running long enough to build up a vast system of patronage and corruption when a coup d'etat hands them over to us and we get to pay the bills no no no, if all this is a Marxist Leninist conspiracy to take over the dark continent it's a pretty damned pitiful show. Fifty countries over there and the seven or eight that call themselves Marxist are a shambles every damned one of them. This spectre of Marxism taking over black Africa good God, they're the best friends we've got, good healthy ignorance they believe in the same things we do, strong family ties, religion and greed.

  — I, excuse me… she caught at the advantage of his efforts engrossed now in scaling down from the heights of the bookshelf, two more books in one hand and the other out grasping his balance on the table corner, wiping away cobwebs, looking over to her as though startled to see these features he'd lost sight of looming dumb over him suddenly redrawn, refined, restored in the same frail strength of her hand's restraint on the doorframe.

  — No no no, it's all right yes come in Mrs Booth, come in… banging dust from one of the books and handing it over, — this will interest you too yes, come in…

  Instead she sneezed. — No, I… she sneezed again.

  And as though to oblige he picked up the smouldering cigarette to add to the cloud and sank back in the chair banging dust from the other book against the edge of the table — here, it's mostly statistics but you'll get the idea… brandishing it till he was disarmed — same damned thing Billy. Over there sitting on half the world's diamonds and chrome, ninety percent of its cobalt, half the gold, almost half the platinum, the whole length of the copper belt and that huge bauxite deposit at Boké in Guinea while they're starving to death who's going to buy it. Three or four centuries their main export was slaves now all they've got to sell is their minerals, they want our money, they want our investment and they want our technology call their politics any damned thing they please. Who's been guarding Gulf Oil's installation in Angola where they're pumping out millions of barrels a day, the US Marines? Cubans, Cubans, you want to see what's keeping the whole cycle of corruption and starvation poverty in business go over to Zaire and watch those South African Cl3Os taking off at night from Kinshasa's airport packed with diamonds and cobalt, our great bulwark against the, what was it? aggressive instincts of an evil empire? the cause of unrest anyplace in the world you find it no, take a look at every country bordering South Africa you'll see who's doing the destabilizing. They've got no damned rights at all in Namibia but who's making them leave, diamond fields running up the west coast but that's not why they're there oh no, no no no they're holding back the powers of darkness up in Angola going right in there and shooting to kill. This great global Marxist conspiracy behind every insurgent movement, who recruited these wretched Ndebele for this secret Matabele brigade to destabilize Zimbabwe handing them over to rape, torture, murder by the Shonas. Who set up the Mozambique National Resistance Movement in the Transvaal when Rhodesia went down, want to write to them they're at Clive Street, Robindale, Randburg, want to see a reign of terror see them raiding into Mozambique beating, raping, disfiguring the locals, teachers, health workers all the forces of darkness and the whole rickety thing collapses, Mozambique's brought to its knees like Lesotho, there's a country as big as your hat and they've ground it right into the dirt but a hundred and fifty thousand of them cross the border to work in the mines and it's that or starve. Keep their neighbors crippled and set up twenty million blacks of their own in these homelands of poverty, disease, families broken up like they were in the good old slave trading days, walk out of their Dutch Reform Church apartheid ringing in their ears and they've got as nice a slave empire as any good Christian could ask for, talk about having business with the Bible and we're right in there cheering them on. Good church going people aren't they? bulwark against this great global Marxist conspiracy aren't they? Vanadium, platinum, manganese, chromium they sell these four key minerals to our industry and defense don't they? think they're going to hand that over to the blacks? No no no, hand them the Survival Handbook and look the other way, talk about harvest time and here comes your missionary bringing Africa to the foot of the Cross with his trucks carrying the dynamite of the Holy Spirit, plundering hell and populating heaven's going to be so damned crowded it will look like the Green Pastures, here come de…

  — Please… She was back with a paper napkin crushed to her face — it's, it's Paul he… and she sneezed.

  — Like didn't I just tell you it's Paul? I mean Paul with this whole crusade for Little Wayne Fuckup over there harvesting souls Paul the bagman, he…

  — No no no, no it's not just starting Billy it never ended, hasn't ended for five hundred years since the Portuguese heard about those great silver and gold and copper mines in the kingdoms running up the Zambezi valley and came in with a few missionaries and a free trade monopoly from the Pope, a missionary's killed and it's war for anybody opposing propagation of the true faith pouring into Mombasa and plundering the east coast, evangelism and slave trading if you want that nice line between the truth and what really happens, fighting their way up the valley five years later when they've reached the Rhodesian plateau they've been wiped out by death and disease but that doesn't end it. Here comes Doctor Livingstone opening Africa to Christianity and commerce and the British gunboats steaming up the river Niger, white missionaries in Buganda howling for protection and the British East Africa Company storming African kingdoms for trade monopolies right up to the headwaters of the Nile. Free trade and Christianity, it's the German East Africa Company, it's French Equatorial Africa, it's the Belgians cutting down the Congo's population from twenty million to ten in barely twenty years, by nineteen fourteen there's nothing left to plunder in Africa so they go to war with each other in Europe instead that's what the whole damned first world war was all ab…

  — Please! will you, just let me…

  — No come in, come in we…

  — I can't come in! The smoke and the, the dust and the smoke I just want to tell you that, to tell Billy that Paul called that he's on his way from the, from someplace Billy… speakin
g to him, looking past him where her eyes were met through the petrifying drift of smoke and dust — his plans changed he's, he'll be here by…

  — Man I don't believe it. I mean I don't fucking believe it Bibbs. I come in here I think no Paul, I think finally there's no big rush we can just hang out and maybe even have supper later but in comes fucking Paul with his…

  — I can't help it! She broke away — if you, I don't think Mister McCandless has to lis…

  — No I'm going, I'm going Bibbs… up following her through to the kitchen — I mean I'll be in New York before Paul walks in the door waving his hammer where everything looks like a fucking nail and Bibbs? I mean if you've got twenty…

  She'd just shaken open the drawer there digging under napkins, placemats, when — Wait. Wait, you're driving down to New York?

  — Man as fast as I can get there.

  — If you can just take a minute, if I can drive down with you I'll just be a few minutes.

  — But… her hand came up empty — don't, you don't have to leave Mister McCandless, I mean now if you haven't finished what you…

  — Never turn down a ride no, just take me a minute to tie up these bags… and he was gone through the doorway.

  — Bibbs? that twenty?

  — I'm getting it! She came after him into the living room, stabbing the bills out — Billy listen. You don't have to, wait for him I mean you can just leave, now right now I'll just tell him you were in a terrible hurry and couldn't, that you're not going straight to New York that you have to stop in New Jersey or someplace and…

  — What's the difference Bibbs, relax… He'd already sunk into the wing chair, — I mean he's sort of a neat old guy.

  — A, a neat… she came down on the arm of the love seat, — neat old guy?

  — I mean he's pretty wound up but that's…

  — And you can listen to that all the way to New York? He's, he's…

  — He's what, I mean Bibbs what the hell is the matter? You think anybody wants to be here when Paul walks in the…

  — I'm not talking about Paul! He's, he doesn't even know Paul, you and Paul, you don't know him either walking right in there telling somebody you've never, some perfect stranger telling him how awful Paul and his military school and his southern just, anything just making things up to hurt Paul when you don't even…

  — Making things up! I mean are you kidding Bibbs? Like that dumb toy sword with his name engraved on it? you mean I made that up? All this military bullshit with these spades from Cleveland and Detroit in his broken down platoon out there kicking their ass to show them what the southern white officer class is all about I made all that up? I mean he's still out there on the Mekong Delta, he walks down the street everybody he sees is a gook, he's…

  — Well he's not! He's, because you don't know everything you think you do, what he, how he came out what really happened you don't know the…

  — Man I know he came out this same second fucking lieutenant like he went in didn't he? I mean when you told me his own father said it's a God damn good thing he…

  — Well he didn't!

  — I mean you told me his own…

  — Because he wasn't, because I never said he was Paul's own father he was, because Paul was adopted that's what you didn't know, that's something you didn't know when you go around talking to perfect stra…

  — Man then how am I supposed to know he's adopted! I mean all this time where he's putting on this good old boy bullshit like these stones? all these stones he's got numbered and crated he says they were this ancestor General Beauregard's fireplace for when he rebuilds the old family mansion? Oh man, I mean for making things up? I mean I'm the one that's supposed to be making things up just to hurt Paul? Man I mean like what do you…

  — Because it's not to hurt Paul, it's me isn't it. It's to hurt me, isn't it.

  — Man like wait Bibbs, I mean what…

  — I mean talking about Paul and Daddy the last time you were here, how I always find somebody that's not as good as I am that it's always a, it's always somebody inferior that that's all I…

  — Man like wait Bibbs, I mean wait! That's not what I, I mean it's like you've got this real secret self hidden someplace you don't want anybody to get near it, you don't even want them to know about it like you're afraid if some superior person shows up he'll like wipe you out so you protect it by these inferior types they're the only ones you'll let near you because they don't even know it's there. I mean they think they've taken over they never even like suspect you've always got the upper hand because I mean that's your strength Bibbs, that's like how you survive because if this real superior person moved in you'd be wiped out so you appeal to these real morons where they don't have a fucking clue who you really are, like how you let Paul knock you around so he thinks he owns you, I mean that bruise right there on your shoulder? did I make that up? I mean you know he's this fucking inferior person because you married the same thing you tried to get away from, the same…

  — Well maybe I did! Because I, because sometimes I almost can't tell you apart you and Paul, you sound the same you sound exactly the same the only difference is he says your God damn brother and you say fucking Paul but it's the same, if I closed my eyes it could be either one of you maybe that's why I married him! If you think the only men I appeal to are fools, if all I ever look for is inferior men then maybe that's why!

  — Oh Bibbs… He'd brought a hand up to his mouth as though to cover his lips, to bite the edge of a nail, suddenly he raised his eyes with a look that wrenched her square around to the kitchen doorway behind her.

  — Oh I, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt, just my jacket… They watched his haste to where it lay crumpled in the chair there from the night before — just needed to get my jacket, almost done in there I'll only be a minute…

  She watched it all as fast as a shadow flung across the room and back, leaving her staring at those hands interlacing, turned out, cracking the knuckles. — I wish you'd never said that, Bibb… and he wasn't looking at her, — I wish I hadn't made you say that… his voice as emptied as his eyes fixed somewhere on the floor between them when she got up in a turn round the end of the love seat without a sound till she came through the kitchen, a sound choked off somewhere between there and loss coming through that doorway for so long shackled closed upon everything she now knew not to be there.

  — Be right with you… He came up knotting a trash bag tight, — just get these tied up and…

  — What are you doing!

  — Just getting these tied up so that…

  — He won't be here, Paul won't be here he won't be here for hours he won't be here till suppertime you don't have to go, we've got the whole afternoon why are you going.

  — I'd have to leave anyway, he's got a car out there and…

  — Let him leave then, you don't have to just because he is do you? You can stay with me at least till…

  — No no no, it's all right, I'm…

  — It's not all right! None of it's all right no don't pat me, no! Since the minute he came in it's been look at this Billy, I'll tell you something Billy you look up at me as though you'd never, I mean what's it all about!

  He had one arm in his jacket, standing there pulling it on slowly. — Something's come up, he said. — A couple of things I want to get into town to straighten out… He squared up his shoulders, buttoned a button — Elizabeth, listen…

  — I don't want to listen… She'd already turned for the door — if you're going just, go.

  And on into the kitchen behind her, — oh Mrs Booth? I'll leave that open, all those trash bags you've got Madame Socrate coming in?

  — She's, yes, yes she…

  — She can put them out then. And don't let her complain, some of it's heavy, those magazine bundles she likes to complain, have you had that?

  — Your vacuum cleaner. She says it's foutu.

  — You know I had to teach her how to use it? the vacuum cleaner? he
came along briskly behind her into the living room unfurling the wad of that raincoat, pulling it on. — Came in she was dragging it around poking the brush into corners it wasn't plugged in, just doing what she must have seen one of those dim blondes playing housewife on television like a boy I took with me out near the Hawash river, he'd never seen a shovel, didn't know how to use one. Not stupid no, no just ignorance he learned how to use the damned shovel, that's the difference. Are you ready? He shot the frayed cuffs — wait, those books I just gave you?

  — Man like what am I going to do with them now, I mean…

  — What do you mean do with them. Read them! And they started aside from his burst back through the kitchen, caught there within reach when their eyes met and her arms came up in a sudden embrace holding close, Billy, Billy, barely audible in the arms sheltering her tight when he was back calling from the kitchen, — Mrs Booth? There was a piece of paper on the table here, a lot of arrows and crosses scribbled on it?

  — It's there somewhere… she broke away, — but why in the world would you…

  — No no no, it's just a phone number here it is, I wrote a phone number on it… By the time she reached the door he'd torn a finger's length from it there just east of Estrées, — it's nothing important is it?

  And from behind her, — it looks like some of Paul's crap.

  — Sorry… He came out with the books, too many of them, steeped up under one arm, reaching out the other as he passed in a try at squeezing her hand, — afraid I disturbed you Mrs Booth I, I'll try to call first if I come up again… He paused there, but the front door was being held open for him.