BOOK ONE
The Homing Pigeons
PART ONE
WHO’S ZELENKA?
All Cretans are liars.
—EMPEDOCLES THE CRETAN
The President of the United States is not a crook.
—THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Death to all fanatics!
—MALACLYPSE THE YOUNGER
THE UNIVERSE WILL SURPRISE US
Jen fa Ti: Ti fa Tsien
T’sien fa Tao; Tao fa tzu-jan
—LAO-TSE, Tao Te Ching
Tall, skinny palm trees, twisted to bizarre angles by dozens of Florida hurricanes, stood black against a cinnamon-streaked sky as the sun rose majestically in the west.
“We stop here,” Mavis said, as he had known she would; as was, perhaps, inevitable now.
This must be the Gulf of Mexico, Dashwood thought. They could now load him with chains and drop him in the drink, as criminals said, letting him sink slowly down amid the sharks and barracudas, down where, after the sharks were finished, the King Crabs would pick what was left on his bones, down, down, down, full fathom five.
And, as was inevitable now, Mavis motioned him out of the car, stepping out behind him (still holding that damned tommy gun, as if quietly toying with it) like the ghoats in hammelts.
“We wait here,” she said. “The others go back.”
“What are we waiting for?” Dashwood asked.
“Don’t be a dummy, George. We rescued you, remember? Like the gauds in ambers.”
Dashwood took a deep breath, counting to ten. “Why do you keep calling me George? You know my name is Frank, dammit.”
Mavis opened her eyes wide, pretending astonishment. “You really don’t remember,” she said sadly.
A woodpecker landed wearily on the nearest palm, as if he had flown more missions than Yossarian and never intended to go up again.
“I’m Frank Dashwood,” he said. “Dr. Francis R. Dashwood. I’m a member of the American Psychiatric Association. I’m in Who’s Who. Goddamnit,” he added, irrelevantly but heatedly.
“You’re George Dorn,” she said. “You work for Confrontation magazine. Your boss is named Justin Case.”
“Oh, balls,” Dashwood said.
The woodpecker turned his head, as perhaps was sure to happen now, and watched them suspiciously, like a paranoid old man.
And Dashwood noticed, as for the first time, an unfinished building on the beach, probably a new condo, with girders going off at strange cubist angles. Skeletons in hard hats stood frozen like statues, and a giant squid reached up from the ocean to wrap its tentacles around the pylons.
The sun was as hot as Gunga Din’s loincloth.
A vine-colored plaque at the gate said:
FATALITY INC.
Muss S. Sine, President
S. Muss Sine, Vice President
“If I’m George Dorn,” he said finally, “why do I have this deep-seated longtime delusion that I’m Frank Dashwood?”
“We’re in Maybe-time here,” Mavis said. “You know: ‘In addition to a Yes and a No, the universe contains a Maybe.’ You’ve heard that, I’m sure. It’s hard to keep track of social fictions out here, and personal identity is just a social fiction. So you’ve lost your ego for a few minutes and grabbed hold of another one. That’s how you created this imaginary Frank Fernwood.”
“Dashwood,” he corrected automatically.
“Going home from here isn’t easy,” Mavis said, still toying with the tommy gun. “Some people never find their way back. That’s why you must let go out of this Frank Fernwood delusion.”
“It’s Dashwood, dammit, Dashwood!”
“Fernwood, Dashwood,” she said impatiently. “Deep down you know you’re George Dorn.”
“You are a fruitcake, Mavis. Why did you rescue me from that jail, anyway?”
“You’re wanted,” she said simply.
“By whom?”
“Hagbard Celine.”
“And who is Hagbard Celine?” They had reached the cabana and were standing beside it, glaring at each other like two chess masters who each suspect that they have wandered into some idiotic permutation of the Ourang-Outan opening. The woodpecker turned his head, probably a bit puzzled himself, and sized them up with the other eye.
“You’ll know when you meet him, George.” (“Frank,” he shouted. “George,” she repeated firmly.) “For now it’s enough that he wanted us to get you out of Bad Ass Jail.”
“And why the hell does Hagbard Chelling …” (“Celine,” she corrected.) “… Celine, then, why the hell does Hagbard Celine want to see me?”
“Why anything?” Mavis asked rhetorically. “Why sky, why oceans, why people? Jen fa Ti: Ti fa T’sien: T’sien fa Tao: Tao fa tzu-jan.”
“Oh, coitus,” Dashwood said, avoiding crudity. “Don’t give me obscurities in Cantonese at this hour.”
“Men are created by earth, earth is created by the universe, the universe is created by Nature’s Process, and Nature’s Process just happened,” Mavis translated.
Dashwood was not going to get involved in aleotoric cosmologies. “So Hagbard Celine just happened,” he said. “And he just happened to want me out of Bad Ass Jail. And you just happen to like busting into jails with tommy guns and taking prisoners out. This is the silliest damned routine I ever heard.”
“Well,” Mavis said, grinning wickedly, “I also just happen to like you. In fact, I’ve had the Whites for you ever since I broke into the cell back in Bad Ass and caught you Lourding off.”
“Don’t talk dirty,” he said. “It’s not becoming to a young woman your age, and it’s getting silly and old-fashioned. It makes you sound like a refugee from the 1960s.”
“Nonsense,” Mavis said. “It gets you excited. It always gets men excited to hear women talk like this. Do you know how I felt when I saw you there on the bunk with your Rehnquist in your hand? It made my Feinstein go all warm and mushy inside, George.”
“Frank,” he said one more time. “And I don’t have the Whites for you. Women with tommy guns don’t turn me on at all.”
“Are you sure?” Mavis asked provocatively. “I’ll bet I could make your Rehnquist stand up if I really tried.” She opened her trenchcoat and he could see her magnificent Brownmillers bulging through her tight sweater. He had to admit they were a fine, firm pair of Brownmillers—“a pair you could hang your hat on,” as an Irishman had once said—but he was not going to be tempted. This was all too weird.
“I’ve had a lot of tension since raiding the jail,” Mavis went on, slipping the trenchcoat to the sand. “I really need a good Potter Stewart, George. Wouldn’t you like to Potter Stewart me? Wouldn’t you like to lie on the sand and stick your great big pulsating Rehnquist into my warm, moist Feinstein?”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Listen, George,” Mavis went on intensely. “When I was young I decided to save myself for a man who completely meets the criteria of my value system. That’s when I was reading Ayn Rand, you see. But then I realized I could get awfully horny waiting for him to come along. You’ll have to do.”
How can you keep the facts clear and sharp-edged when this happens? “You really want me to Potter Stewart you right now on a public beach in broad daylight?” he asked, feeling like a fool.
The woodpecker went to work above them just then, banging away like a Rock drummer. Dashwood remembered from Nutley High School:
The woodpecker pecked on the outhouse door;
He pecked and he pecked till his pecker was sore.
“George, you’re too serious. Don’t you know how to play? Did you ever think that life is maybe a game? The world is a toy, George. I’m a toy. You conjured me out of your fantasies while you were Lourding-off in that jail cell last night. I’m a magic voodoo doll. You can do anything you want with me.”
Dashwood shook his head. “I can’t believe you. The way you’re talking—it’s not real.”
“I always talk this way wh
en I’m horny. It so happens that at such tender moments I’m more open to the vibrations from outer space. George, is the Tooth Fairy real? Is the thought of the Tooth Fairy a real thought? How is it different from the mental picture of my Brownmillers that you get when you imagine you can look right through my sweater? Does the fact that you can think of Potter Stewarting me and I can think of Potter Stewarting you mean that we are going to Potter Stewart? Or is the universe going to surprise us?”
“The universe is going to surprise you,” Dashwood said. “I don’t trust women with tommy guns who rave about Tooth Fairies and vibrations from outer space. I’m getting the hell out of here.” He started to walk away.
“Listen, George,” Mavis said earnestly. “You are about to walk into a completely different universe, one you might not like at all. Every quantum decision creates a whole new space-time manifold …”
“Oh, bullburger,” he said, before she could go any further with that gibberish.
“You damned fool! You’re walking out on the greatest adventure of our century!” She was almost shouting now. “Atlantis! Illumination! Leviathan! Hagbard Celine!”
Dashwood kept going.
“You asshole!” she screamed. “You’re about to miss the best Steinem Job of your life.”
He almost turned then, but this was all too bizarre for him. He continued down the asphalt road grimly, ignoring the yellow submarine that was beginning to surface offshore.
Blake Williams galloped past him suddenly, riding a horse with no wife and no mustache. He was Lassie (who was really a male dog in drag), but he was also Dashwood’s father. Like the Gutmanhammett.
Then Furbish Lousewart came out of the lavatory wearing a laboratory smock. “The masses are female,” he sneered, drawing a rotary saw out of his toolbox depository. He methodically began sawing off Dashwood’s head. “Give me head!” he screamed. “The whiteness of the wall! Gothin haven, annette colp us! Give me head!”
And then Linda Lovelace was there, with Dracula’s old red-lined cape, starting to suck him, starting to suck the purity of essence from him, biting down hard hard hard, a blood-smeared mouth with canine fangs.
And he woke up.
He looked at the alarm clock blearily, still haunted by fangs and blood. Six-fifty-eight; the alarm would go off in two minutes.
I am Frank Dashwood. All that other was just a dream.
He depressed the alarm switch and put his naked feet on the cold floor, so he would not roll over and dream he was going to work.
Fangs and blood. Why do people see such films? Weird species, we are.
Dr. Dashwood staggered to the shower. White tile, white on white: the whiteness of the wall. Vibrations from outer space, she said. Not too hot, now: careful. Ah, that’s good. Watch that it doesn’t heat up too fast, though. Fangs and blood: average person has seen one hundred, maybe two hundred, of those films. Hundreds of hours of horror grooves in the brain: neurological masochism. YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
He turned the hot-water spigot down quickly. Always does that: starts tepid and then boils you.
He leapt from the shower and began toweling. Oral sadism: she looked good enough to eat, we say. Little Red Riding Hood. Eatupus complex.
Dashwood surveyed his features in the mirror, combing his hair. As the world sees me: this not unhandsome, definitely nervous, middle-aged face.
Radio will bring me all the way back. Try KKHI, maybe catch some Vivaldi. Dashwood’s Law: whenever you turn on KKHI, they’re either playing Vivaldi or will play Vivaldi within fifteen minutes.
De de dum de dum de dee
De de dum de dum de dum dum dum
Sounds more like Bach. Wait: listen:
De de drum de drum de DRUM
Drum drum de droom de de
Wheeeee dumb de!
And that was the Concerto for Harp by Jan Zelenka. And now the news. In Bad Ass, Texas, School Superintendent B. S. Curve was murdered last night by a bomb attached to the starter of his automobile. Superintendent Curve had been under attack by local clergy and the John Birch Society for proposing the teaching of the metric system in schools. In Washington, President K—
Dashwood snapped the radio off irritably. Whenever you want to hear some pleasant music, they break for the news. Ah, well: time to head for the office, anyway.
De de dum de dum de dee … Where the hell did I put the key? Oh yes; alarm clock, next to. Dum de de: sure sounded like Bach at first. Dum drum de dee! Really bounced along, music of that period. Baroque.
He started his car.
Crrrumph rumph rumph.
Oh, damn. Try again.
Crrrrrrrrrrrumph rumph a zoom.
Dashwood pulled out into the traffic. Always fails to ignite first time. Dum dum de. Zelenka, he said. Who the hell was Zelenka? Same period as Bach, I’m sure.
Dr. Dashwood turned onto Van Ness and headed for Orgasm Research: da dum da dum da dreee!
And drove straight into an entirely different kind of novel.
THE MAD ARAB
Qol: Hua Allahu achad; Allahu Assamad; lam yalid Walam yulad;
walam yakun lahu kufwan achad.
—AL QORAN
One day earlier and three thousand miles due east, Bonita (“Bonny”) Benedict, a popular columnist for the New York News-Times-Post-Herald-Dispatch-Express-Mirror-Eagle, sat down to write her daily stream-of-consciousness. According to her usual procedure, Bonny began by flipping through her notebook. This usually served to fructify her imagination, but that day proved rather sterile. Items which had already been used were crossed out with large X’s and what was left was weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable. There was literally nothing timely or exciting enough for a lead.
Bonny was only stumped for a minute; then she remembered the ancient maxim of the great pioneer of modern journalism, Charles Foster Hearst: “If there isn’t any news, invent some.”
Ms. Benedict, whose hair would have been gray if she hadn’t decided it was more chic to bleach it pure platinum white, had lasted in the news game for forty years. She did not lack the faculty of imagination.
Bonny inserted a fresh sheet in the typewriter and began at once, trusting her years of experience to guide her. What emerged was:
Who is the man in Hong Kong who looks exactly like Lee Harvey Oswald? Believe it or not, darlings, that question is causing a lot of excitement among the members of the new Senate Committee on Congressional Committees on Assassinations. In case you forgot, they’re the ones who are trying to find out why the various Congressional Committees on Assassinations couldn’t find out anything. What they’re asking each other is: Could the man in Hong Kong really be Oswald? And, if so, who was the double that got shot in Dallas? Doesn’t it make your heads swim???
That was what was known as a fail-safe item. If (as was likely) the Senate Committee simply ignored it rather than fan the flames of rumor, many readers would believe it on the grounds that it had been printed and not denied. If, on the other hand, the Committee did deny it, even more people would believe it. A 1981 psychological survey had shown that 67 percent of the population experienced uncertainty, indecision, suspicion, or downright paranoia whenever they saw the words “government denial” in print.
Bonny went on to use up the not-totally dreary items in her notebook, jazzing each one enough to give it a coat of sparkle, or at least of tinsel. But she still needed a zinger for the closing. She followed the sage advice of the prophet Hearst one more time and wrote:
Wasn’t that Furbish Lousewart of the Purity of Ecology Party eating steak and drinking Manhattans (made with Southern Comfort, my dears!) at Sardi’s last night? What would the Party regulars think of this flagrant disregard of POE principles?
Bonny, in her youth, had been a disciple of the famous feminist and psychologist Alberta Einstein. It was Ms. Einstein, in her epoch-making Neuropsychology, who introduced the concept that every brain constructs a different “island-reality” from the billions of signals it receives every minute. T
his concept had revolutionized the social sciences and even led Heisenberg to propose a similar relativity principle in physics. Bonny knew that the POE people lived in an island-reality where eating meat and drinking fermented spirits were atrocities comparable to ax murder or Burgering in the well. This item would make them hopping mad.
A columnist’s career depends on amusing most of her readers most of the time and making some of them hopping mad some of the time.
The owner-publisher of the New York News-Times-$$ was Polly Esther Doubleknit, relict of the late Dacron Doubleknit, the leisurewear king. When the leisurewear fad had peaked in the 1970s, Dacron had shrewdly used the cash flow to “diversify,” as his accountant called it. Engulf and Devour, his competitors called it. When he died Dacron owned over a thousand retail stores coast to coast, a tapioca mine in Nutley, N.J. (a bad investment, that one, suggested by a plausible but Machiavellian midget), a large hunk of Canadian forestland, three South American governments (his leisurewear was thereafter made with very cheap labor), sixteen Congresspersons, three senators, a shipyard in Yellow Springs, Ohio (suggested by Eva Gebloomenkraft), seven state legislatures together with four other whorehouses in Nevada, and the New York News-Times-u.s.w.
Dacron died of a heart attack at fifty-two, brought on by anxiety about the amount of political corruption he was involved in. Dacron did not like to bribe public officials and hated the size of the bribes they all wanted, because he had been raised a Presbyterian. Unfortunately for him, he lived in an age of Terminal Bureaucracy and there was absolutely no way, no matter how many lawyers he hired, to find out if his corporations were, in any given instance, in violation of the law. There were too many laws, and they were written in language that guaranteed maximum ambiguity all around, so that lawyers (who wrote the laws) could always get jobs proving that the laws meant Yes, if they were being paid to prove that, or that the laws meant No, if they were being paid to prove that. Dacron never found out, for sure, whether he was one of the businessmen in the country operating 100 percent legally all the time or if he was in violation of so many statutes that he was subject to over a thousand years in prison; no two lawyers ever would agree about that. So Dacron bribed as many officials as possible to protect himself, and then gradually worried himself to death about the bribes being discovered someday.
Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy Page 29
