Bodies and Souls

by John Rechy

  Lisa sat in back with Pearl. The proximity to Jesse—and Orin—when she sat in front, became, at times, more frustrating than pleasurable, because it stopped there. So there were recurrent times when she moved away from the sexual currents; other times she wanted to swim in them.

  Western Avenue cuts Hollywood in half. At that corner derelicts not yet ready for skid row gather as if in preparation, harsh initiation. Ubiquitous avengers, the police prowl in slow cars. At that point of Western, the raunch gathers. In a stuttering fit of attempted “class,” a shop at the corner displays a clutter of “art works” in its windows; its most prominent piece is a harsh reproduction of a hugely hung David painted gold.

  Then that street slides away into Los Feliz Boulevard, the haughty street along which—and in the lofty hills—grand homes stretch in settled wealth, lawns perennially sprinkled in water-spurting stars. The dark Cadillac moved past the several entrances to Griffith Park. Lisa was relieved they didn't drive in. She wanted to see the Planetarium, yes—but not if it was going to create more of that disturbing talk, and Jesse's fired imagination. She fluffed out Pearl Chavez's dress. She had eyes like hers but the doll's were dimming.

  Chopping off a whiny song, Orin set the radio on to the news station.

  “… —of an investigation into the shooting death of an unarmed black woman by Officer Norris Weston several months ago. The Internal Affairs Division of the police department has recommended that no further action be taken, asserting that Officer Weston acted responsibly in defense of his threatened fellow officer. In the city for a fundraiser for various liberal-identified causes, Senator Hutchens called the finding ‘a blatant miscarriage of justice.’ The white senator's remarks were denounced as ‘inflammatory’ by Cardinal Unger, in the city for a meeting of church hierarchical figures…. A sweep of male and female prostitutes netted— …”

  To assert his independence further, Lisa's remark still smarting, Jesse turned off the voice on the radio—but did not switch back to the country and Western station—and asked Orin, in a small voice, “Awright, kid?”

  “All right,” Orin said.

  That was what was so damn confounding to Jesse. Orin's unpredictability. The same thing that angered him one moment, he accepted easily the next. Sometimes Jesse thought in terms of a “struggle” between them; but when he tried to define it, it would all evaporate. And there were all the unallowed questions about the dead old woman—who probably made these idle days possible—and that weird Sister Woman; she seemed to have been talking about Orin last night. And how were he and Lisa involved—if they were? Part of the “evidence” Orin seemed at times to be collecting?—the way he studied the shape of things, investigating; actually sniffing at things as if to detect what might be hidden in them. Yes, something to do with Sister Woman? For her? Or something to do to her? He didn't dare ask any of those questions, though: He felt secure in the indolence—now—of this time. And he liked to hear Orin talk. He liked that increasingly, would often make comments to elicit Orin's strangely clear declarations. Like now.

  “That senator and that cardinal— …” That's all Jesse needed to say.

  “You can't tell what side people are on until the exact moment comes when they do,” Orin said. “You just can't tell until people do.”

  Jesse leaned back to listen.

  Aware of a certain rhythm his words assumed, like an incantation—a rhythm she had noticed as far back as the long trip across forests and deserts and into Los Angeles with him—Lisa listened. It was like the rhythm that the wind can create on the ocean, private murmurings which become yours.

  “See, God created order out of chaos,” Orin said. “Now that was good, no question about that, a-tall. But what he created, and what it created, is it good? The act, see, is different from what comes out of it—can be. If God hadn't thrown out the lost angels, he would have had to surrender heaven—but if they hadn't rebelled, there wouldn't have been Jesus. So the angels deserved to go to hell, but their rebellion, see—was their rebellion good? And if so, don't they deserve to be led out of hell?”

  Jesse felt the intense words. Even when Orin asked a question at those times, the sound carried certainty, as if he knew.

  “Can God be wrong, Orin?” Lisa asked. With her fingers, she pulled up her hair, to get a breeze on her moist neck. The wind whipped her hair about recklessly. She saw Orin's eyes framed on her in the mirror. She kept her hands behind her neck. She wasn't even sure whether she believed in God—but she wanted to hear Orin.

  “Depends,” he said with finality.

  He made a dangerous U-turn into nervous traffic, and Jesse knew: We are going into the park.

  The lots about the Observatory were full. They had to park on a slope of a hill and walk up. Hundreds of early-summer tourists littered the grounds; with cameras and hot dogs and in shorts and pulled-out shirts and blouses, they roamed like immigrants from 1955.

  “The planet show goes on in fifteen minutes!” Lisa read the schedule outside the entrance. She wanted to see stars and planets.

  “We got time,” Orin said; he walked around the back of the green dome, where they had stood yesterday. Lisa moved along resignedly with Jesse. This time she had brought the doll with her.

  On the highest tier, Orin stared at the acres of wilderness. Jesse followed his gaze—far along wild growth, farther to a jutting fortress of exposed rocks in distorted shapes, beyond, to a short leprous patch of burned ground after a decline, and then, rising onto a green hill, to a bolted enclosure of trees. He does think there's someone there; maybe he knows it! Jesse's excitement resurged.

  “Time for the planets,” Lisa said emphatically.

  They walked past the white portals and into the wide foyer of the Observatory. Inside, there are displays of extraterrestial stones and photographs, harsh craters like modern paintings.

  Under a spherical ceiling on which are painted nude figures in ambiguous struggle, a gold ball connected by wire swings—a pendulum threatening to overturn each of a series of colored pins arranged at the base of a deep round stone pit. A placard identifies this as “The Foucalt Pendulum” and explains that the pendulum revolves in rhythm with the earth's rotation, knocking down one pin every eight minutes.

  Now it swung, missing a pin—several already lay slaughtered at the base of the deep cylinder. It missed again, came closer, swung, missed again, closer, missing again. Over the edges, looking down as if into a well, crowds of people waited eagerly for the ineluctable gold ball to topple still another pin. It did. The pin folded over. There was a collective sigh, then applause, then cheers.

  Flowing in with a current of bodies, Orin, Jesse, and Lisa went inside the largest domed structure, a huge auditorium, seats arranged in concentric circles. A giant, round machine waits to duplicate the universe. An awed hush gripped the full hall, which deepened into black; then the dome lit up: dusk; then a rim of night filled with vagrant eager stars; then: night—deep, dark—and stars, stars, stars! A voice announced the names of the planets as a white arrow projected on the reproduction of sky located them. The signs of the zodiac, imposed on the constellations, drew “Ah's!”

  When it was over and they were outside, Lisa said, “It was just like the sky used to be, remember?—full of real stars. Couldn't you just sit in that planetarium and pretend you were floating away from this old world?”

  “You sure could.” Jesse had been impressed.

  “Can't, though,” Orin said.

  They drove out of the park, each awed by the universe.

  The elegant Cadillac had entered the old Pasadena Freeway, the oldest, grandest, and most inadequate, of the city's 600 miles of freeways. It is narrow, with quaint lamps out of another era, the Los Angeles of the Forties. Grass borders usher cars into unexpected bricked exits.

  The Cadillac glided out of the freeway. It moved into the elegant old city of Pasadena. It was as if the trees were bleeding gelid red blossoms. There were solid fields of flowers of all shapes an
d colors. From the distance, they looked like exotic rugs draping green lawns. Houses of old grandeur, even steepled Victorian creations, magnificent rococo buildings, challenge the encroaching landscape of plastic and squares.

  Jesse's guide said this city had more roses than— …

  “What did you do back in Indiana so you had to run away, Jesse?” Orin asked.

  Both Jesse and Lisa looked at him in shock. He had broken his asserted demand not to invade the past.

  “What!” Jesse grasped for time to frame an exact answer. He felt the same coldness he had experienced the day in the shadowed cove of the park when Orin had seemed to read his thoughts about Lisa. “Tell us about the old woman in Salem, Orin,” Jesse actually asked that—doing back what Orin had done to him that other afternoon, countering his probing.

  “Toldya,” Orin said easily. “She died. Almost two weeks ago now. What did you leave back there, Lisa?” Orin extended the sudden, threatening invasion.

  “Nothing!” Lisa said in a firm voice. “Nothing—because that was all there was—nothing!” Why! Why was Orin doing this?

  “Just joking?” Jesse offered weakly.

  “Just joking,” Orin pronounced.

  They stopped to eat in a red and black restaurant: red curtains, black vinyl booths. Orin broke the profound silence—he announced the treat was his, “and the sky's the limit.”

  He's making us trust him, Lisa felt she understood now, that's why he asked those questions, and why he pays our expenses only sometimes but more and more. He wants us to trust him. She felt better now, sure that the violating incursion into past shadows would not recur.

  Evening. The heat settled into the night. Orin drove about the city. He turned the radio to the news: “…on tonight's television news in response to Mandy Lang-Jones's report on prostitution in her series on ‘The Lower Depths.’ And she interviews Council woman Patty Peterson, whose office has been deluged with calls demanding a cleanup of the sordid streets. Council-woman Peterson asserts her belief that more arrests and harsher penalties are the answer— …”

  “Our bodies! belong! to us!” Lisa chanted from another newscast.

  “… —in the canyons is causing anxiety among firefighters. Police suspect arson— …”

  This time it was Orin who found the country and Western station—and Jesse James quickly told them of a place he'd read about in the entertainment section of the paper. They went there.

  It was a beer bar for “cowboys” from the Valley, a portion of the San Fernando Valley just minutes from the city. Almost everyone was in Western garb—the grandchildren of the men and women who had fled the smothering dust and wilting heat of the West in the Thirties; grandchildren who now fled to the Valley, away from “niggers.”

  The best country bands and singers perform here, a place pulsing with redneck energy. Bowing to request a dance, Jesse swept Lisa into the dance floor. She liked his strong hands around her tiny waist, like Rhett's about Scarlett's when they scandalized Atlanta society by dancing at the fundraiser while she was still in mourning, she told Jesse, who was delighted and whirled her around even more. Orin enjoyed himself, too; that was so obvious that Jesse and Lisa coaxed him into the dance area. To their astonishment, Orin swirled expertly with Lisa. They became stars, getting special attention on the cleared floor! Orin's lengthening reddish hair sparkled in the colored lights. Jesse was chagrined by the sensational performance, which got applause.

  In the motel now filled with good humor, which had grown during the ride back—yes, Orin wanted them to trust him—Lisa stood in front of the mirror, having finished her shower. She studied her naked form as far as that mirror allowed. She touched each breast simultaneously with a finger, rubbing it until it tingled and felt erect. She moistened two fingers with her tongue. She touched the nipples again. She had enjoyed—a lot—the attention she'd gotten at that dance place earlier, and it was obvious that both Jesse and Orin were proud to be her partners. During those minutes, she had been certain that, yes, she loved Orin and Jesse. Could love them, she inserted an unspecified contingency—for later, if necessary.

  Now she put on her nightgown, arranging it so that the parting in the middle of her chest showed prominently. She allowed one shoulder of the flimsy material to fall loosely so that the effect would be one of pure accident. Quickly, she raised the nightgown. Again, she lowered it, even more boldly. After all, Orin had held her closely when they danced. Very closely. Radiant with sexuality, her hair wet and wavy from the shampoo, she walked into the bedroom.

  Jesse had been sitting down. Seeing her, he stood up, took a step toward her. “Knock your eyes out!” he blurted Cagney's line when he saw his girlfriend Verna in a black negligee, or did she say it?

  Lisa looked flirtatiously at Orin. She had glanced at him a second earlier and seen clear desire. It turned into fury!

  He lowered his head so that he gazed up at her.

  Lisa felt cold-heated terror, felt exposed, naked, trapped. She raised her nightgown over her breasts. She rushed to Pearl. She covered herself with the bed sheet. When she looked back at Orin, the anger was gone. Had she imagined it?—it had all occurred in one second.

  Orin turned the television on. “… —the adversary, like a roaring lion, goeth about seeking the ruin of souls,” Sister Woman was whispering.

  Jesse looked wistfully at Lisa. Why had she acted so strangely? What had Orin's reaction been?—he hadn't seen it.

  Hearing the woman's voice, Lisa sat up in bed. She saw the telephone number across the television screen. And Orin was dialing on the telephone! Sister Woman's eyes, dark outlines containing almost no color now, stared from the screen; eyes whose paleness reflected only black.

  “I want to speak to her! … Yes, you can! … No, to her I said, to her!” Orin demanded into the telephone.

  Did he really dial that number? Jesse looked at the red gash of the woman's mouth, issuing words he did not hear now. He heard only Orin's.

  “He isn't talking to her!” Lisa saw Jesse's confusion, and she pointed to the screen.

  “They've got lots of operators,” Jesse said. “They answer.”

  Brother Man bowed his head. Sister Woman grasped the arms of her throne. The breeze brushed her hair. “Deliver us, O Lord. Purify us in the blood. Slay us in your spirit. And you, out there, soldiers of God, challenge the evil prince!” Her strange eyes gazed down as if at a presence pulling violently at her. “I bind you, Satan, in the name of Jesus! I plead in the blood of the Lamb! The Lord rebukes you!”

  Wails rose from the studio audience.

  “I want to speak to her,” Orin repeated each word into the telephone. “All right, then, this is the message: Tell her Orin called. Tell her: that I am here! Exactly that.” Anger smirched his face. “The old woman is dead—like I wrote her—and I am here. Tell her I want the proof now!” He hung up ferociously. Depression was carved into his face. Rage and pain seemed to pull at his features.

  Again! / am here. If not a threat, a secret message? And proof— … Lisa looked away from the menacing screen.

  The televison camera shifted to Brother Man, only him. He mumbled prayers. Alone on the screen, he looked real, flesh and blood; in her presence he faded. The camera reached back to reembrace Sister Woman. Her hands were clutched.

  She said, “All grief will be lifted. Jesus promises it, and through him I promise it too by the living God.” Her crystalline eyes stared into the camera; her hands were clenched on her lap. The sigh of her originless breeze touched her hair, once, in awe. “Proof … of the wondrous … fireworks of God!” her mouth shot out the words.

  Jesse and Lisa heard Orin inhale, long, as if pulling the woman's words into himself. His eyes closed as if to contain them there.

  “Neither shall there be any more pain. That is the promise; it will be kept. Call!” One hand sprang to violent life, the other remained clasped in her lap. She flung out that one word, forcefully, and then paused, paused, paused. Now the purling voic
e resumed: “Call! … on the Lord.”

  The wrenched emotions seemed wiped away from Orin's face, suddenly beautiful.

  Over the image of Sister Woman kneeling in prayer, the announcer's voice exhorted viewers to send in their petitions and their gifts of love, especially now for the “marathon spiritual meeting—the largest revolution of saved souls ever”—which would occur, he reminded, this weekend, Sunday, “in the Silver Chapel on the Hill.”

  The camera pulled farther back on the phantasmal kneeling figure of the chiffon-draped woman—and on the hands quivering toward her in the studio.

  Jesse waited for Orin to pick up the telephone and dial again. But he didn't.

  The Lecturer: “On Nothing”

  James Huston, the guest lecturer, looked out the window of the room in which he would soon speak. The campus was flooded with green grass and white sun. Shadows cast by the Rodin statues in the sculpture garden he had just passed were almost as beautiful as the carved bodies themselves.

  It always astounded him anew, this city of bodies and souls. He did not consider it the flippant land of the inherited cliches. To him it was the most spiritual and physical of cities, a profound city which drew to it the various bright and dark energies of the country. All its strains, of decay and rebirth, repression and profligacy, gathered here in exaggeration—as exaggerated as actors in Greek tragedies. Its desperate narcissism—which acknowledged death in extended summers under seasonless skies—and its vagrant spirituality—which burgeoned into excess—were manifestations of a fury to live, to feel, to be, here on the last frontier before the drowning land—the snuffed sun, the darkened shoreline.

  Now the sun was so white it glazed shadows silver. Momentarily mesmerized by the dazzling brilliance of this day, the lecturer forced his eyes away from the open window and faced his audience. He would not speak in a large auditorium—he needed to watch his listeners. More than a dozen rows of at least as many seats ascended in a widening arc about the lectern where he stood. Unprepared for the heat, the air-conditioner created a sweaty breeze.