“All right, George. George, this is my friend John.”
“Pleased to make yoh acquaintance.” George more-or-less curtseyed.
“We were on the stage together,” continued Adam. “Where was that, John?”
“Washington, I think.”
“Ay, yes.” Adam turned back to George. “I played Don Juan to his Don Pedro.”
George nodded uncertainly. “Don’t walk on the floah,” he reminded them.
The men continued on their tour of the little community. The community consisted mostly of the Phalanstery, but there were a few smaller buildings nearby. One housed the presses that weekly printed The Theocratic Watchman, another was a small nursery for the children where they could play without disturbing the adults. There were stables, workhouses and outbuildings.
“How many people live here, De-la-Noy?”
“We are now …” Adam had to think “… seventeen adults, and, um, eleven children.”
“And is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“What one reads. That you and other men’s wives …?” John let the sentence dangle.
Adam shrugged. “Oh, well, I suppose it’s true enough. I imagine it’s also greatly exaggerated.”
“And other men sleep with your wife?”
They do indeed, thought Adam. “None of that is of any importance,” explained De-la-Noy. “What is important is our experiments in societal cohabitation. For instance, the children are raised by all of us, regardless of who the actual parents may be, and child-rearing is as much a man’s function as a woman’s.”
“If I lived here,” asked John, “could I sleep with other men’s wives? With Mary?”
Adam looked at his old friend with a measure of distaste. John had certainly changed. Years ago, when they had appeared together in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, John had been a witty and articulate young man, a trifle on the introspective side but very pleasant and congenial. He had also been critically praised as one of the finest young Shakespearians in the Americas —but that was to be expected, coming as he did from an illustrious family, his father and brother perhaps the finest actors in the nation.
Cairine McDiarmid passed by them with a smile and an Irish, “Top o’ the marning.” Cairine had the new-born Louisa at her breast, and to facilitate nursing was wearing only her skirts. Adam watched John’s little eyes bulge. Adam was thankful that Cairine had been wearing clothes at all; on hot days most of the Perfectionists went naked. Adam had long grown used to it —even the most beautiful human bodies (his wife’s, for example) were after all a fairly standardized collection of muscle and pockets of fat.
Then Ephraim Drinkwater Davies appeared almost out of nowhere, no mean feat considering that at four feet and some inches he weighed almost 210 pounds. Ephraim was naked; Adam involuntarily shuddered at the sight. The little fat boy said, “ ‘Let them be confounded that persecute me, but let me not be confounded. Let them be dismayed, but let me not be dismayed. Bring upon them the day of evil, and destroy them with double destruction!’ ”
“Hello, Ehpraim,” said Adam wearily.
“Fare well, De-la-Noy!” returned the boy, and then he passed wind in a vicious and arrogant manner. Ephraim D. Davies wandered away.
Adam decided to change the subject. “Do you know how our Phalanstery supports itself?”
“No.” John’s answer was quick and blunt, as if to suggest that he was not at all interested.
Adam continued anyway. “We make angling equipment. We manufacture two- and three-part poles with brass ferrules. It’s very handy for putting them together. They’ve become quite fashionable, I gather, now that fishing is so popular. And we also make plugs. Imitation minnows, you see. The fish mistakes them for real, and …”
Polyphilia Drinkwater came up to them, smiling shyly. She was, needless to say, naked as a baby, a state in which she existed almost perpetually. “Hello, Adam,” she said, then turned. “And you are John. I’m so pleased to meet you. I’ve always been a great admirer.” Polly had, in fact, clipped out a drawing of the man from a magazine and nailed it to the wall of her room.
John’s eyes, little and bulging, were a vivid shade of red, fastened relentlessly to Polyphilia’s pale-nippled breasts. After many long moments there his eyes stumbled downward, latching on to her pudenda. Polyphilia was accustomed to having her nakedness devoured lustily, but even she found this a bit much. She turned to Adam so that John would at least not be afforded a full-frontal view. “Have you seen Mr. Opdycke?”
“Probably napping somewhere,” said Adam sarcastically, and he felt instantly remorseful. Mr. Opdycke may be a little on the slothful side, Adam reminded himself, but were it not for Opdycke it’s unlikely that the Fourieristic Phalanstery would be able to exist at all. It was Opdycke who had invented the ferruled fishing poles and the plugs.
One of the first people they’d met in Upper Canada had been an Indian, a tall, gaunt Bigfoot with raven-black hair and very singular eyes, eyes that somehow shone silver and black. This man spoke to them in the Queen’s English, informing them that his name was Jonathon Whitecrow, welcoming them to their new home, and then presenting them all with gifts. He’d given Mary and himself bead necklaces, Adam recalled; he’d given Abram Skinner some seeds and Abigal some flowers. The Indian had presented George and Martha with axes, Joseph Hope with a well-fashioned cane fishing pole, and he’d given Mr. Opdycke a long, razor-sharp carving knife. Opdycke had forthwith taken to whittling almost constantly (especially when there was work to be done, which was all of the time) and evidenced innate skill and talent. Opdycke made toys for the children, he made handles for the gardening tools and then, on a whim, he’d carved a little fish. Something occurred to Opdycke; he’d cunningly tied a hook along the thing’s back and tossed his creation into the nearby lake. He’d caught a fish with his first toss. Mr. Opdycke had made more, simplifying the design so that in time all of the other Perfectionists could whittle them as well. They found that these “plugs” worked so well that they could be sold elsewhere—in the stores of Milverton, Fredericksburg and Trenton, their closest neighbors. It was a meager income, but a steady one.
“That was …?” asked John. The pale, blond nymph had skipped away.
“Polyphilia.”
“And if I lived here …?” John let the sentence hang and waved his long, carefully manicured hands in the air.
“Yes, John. You could have amorous congress with her.” Adam sighed.
They continued walking and came upon Abram Skinner in his small field of vegetables. Farming the land in any real way was out of the question, the soil being both fussy and stingy, but Abram had torn two or three acres out of the hills and raised up corn and mixed vegetables.
Adam was happy to see Abram. Abram Skinner, Adam felt, was a deep man, dark and poetic. Abram stood beneath the sun, stripped to the waist; he was crudely muscled, tiny knots and veins buckling across his chest. Skinner settled on to his haunches and lit a pipe—he placed his hand over his eyes for shade and took a long, hard look at the earth.
“Some problem, Abram?” called Adam.
Abram gave a brief half-smile. “Weather,” he answered simply, meaning that bad weather was on its way.
Troubled as he was, usually gloomy and brooding, Abram Skinner was of late a happier man. His daughters were healthy and robust creatures, cheerful and strong like their mother, and Abram also had a son, Ambrose, six months of age. (Ambrose Skinner died at age nine months.)
Adam made introductions. Abram nodded and formed in his mind a question. Thinking was more laborious for Skinner than any farm work; it was hard avoiding all the crevices of his psyche. “Hamlet,” he stated, as if giving his topic a title or subject heading. “Was he, in your opinion, truly suicidal?”
“Oh, yes!” answered John eagerly. “Life to him was a loathsome burden, a mantle as heavy as the moon.”
“And yet, and yet …” stammered Skinner, and then he took a deep breat
h to calm himself. “And yet I’ve seen performances where all of Hamlet’s dark musings seem somehow nothing … nothing other than … that is, nothing more than … than … cunning … artifice. Cunning artifice.” The voicing of that statement had actually caused Abram to perspire. “For instance, in Boston, I saw your brother’s Hamlet …”
John interrupted rudely. “I’ve no wish to discuss my brother, nor his laughable Hamlet.”
Abram turned once more to look at the earth; not out of embarrassment or anger, only because the earth would never interrupt rudely.
Abigal came into the field, Anne and Alice clinging to her apron strings, Ambrose a swaddled bundle in her arms. Both Adam and Abram smiled. John turned away, uninterested. This woman was pudgy, plain and completely clothed.
“Time for dinner,” Abigal announced. “Has anyone seen Lem and Sam?”
Adam nodded. “We saw them just a few minutes ago.”
“Did they have some spoons?”
“Spoons?”
“Martha says some spoons have gone missing from the kitchen.”
Adam and Abram exchanged glances. “Did Martha,” asked Adam, “prepare the day’s meal?”
“Yes,” said Abigal quickly, “and you two had better like it, or so help me …”
“For you, Sweet Abigal,” said Adam, “we would eat mud.”
“In fact,” added Abram, “I think we’d just as soon eat mud, wouldn’t we, Adam?”
The two men nodded. “Mud it is,” they informed a chuckling Abigal.
Anne and Alice, four and three years old respectively, were staring at the stranger with curiosity and some degree of malevolence. “Who are you?” demanded Anne.
“I am a Prince,” answered John, “from a faraway country. I rule there, and everyone is very happy.” John dropped to his knees in front of the little girls. “Would you like to come and live there?”
“No,” answered Anne.
“NO!” bellowed Alice, as loudly as she could.
“But there is magic there,” continued John, “and no one is sad.”
“No,” answered Anne.
“NO!” shrieked Alice.
“Very well.” John climbed to his feet. “There’s no room for you at any rate.”
“By the way, Abigal,” asked Adam, “have you seen Mary?”
“She’s in her room.”
“Ah, yes.” Adam didn’t bother asking if his wife was alone in her room. “John, will you stay for lunch?”
“I do not eat tomatoes,” John cautioned them urgently. “Many people do, and I consider them fools. The tomato has a poison in it that is secreted into the brain, and it causes derangement of the faculties.”
“No tomatoes,” said Abigal.
Along the way back to the Fourieristic Phalanstery, John said, “It is indeed pleasant here, De-la-Noy. And best of all, no negroes.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No negroes. No black apes walking upright, laying claim to the same rights as human beings.”
“See here,” started Abram Skinner, but Abigal caught his arm and silenced him. It is unlikely that Abram would have been able to speak at any rate—even “See here” had been a struggle, and after that Abram became hopelessly tongue-tied.
Adam De-la-Noy merely shook his head, and wondered about the sanity of his old friend John.
The Play of Sunlight on the Metal
Upper Canada, 1862
Regarding the Angling Innovations of Hope, et al, we know the following: that Opdycke was responsible for many of them; that the most popular proved to be the Spoon.
Mr. Opdycke was bored. That’s why he’d taken the spoons.
He sat beside the Lake and worked at one of them with a tiny metal file. He’d broken off the handle, and was now smoothing down the edge. Mr. Opdycke sighed out of boredom. He briefly considered conjuring up a mental picture of Abigal Skinner’s backside and having a healthy go at himself, but he was even bored with that, both with Abigal’s backside (which had lost much of its magic; now it often appeared to Opdycke as nothing but lumps of lard) and with amorous congress in general. Mr. Opdycke chuckled as he considered the term “amorous congress”—he imagined the heads of state gathered together in the Capitol buildings, all of them naked and possessed of cock-upright jiggling-bones.
A fish jumped, far away. Opdycke glanced up briefly and snarled. “Keep it up, darling. I’ll have you soon enough.”
Who would have suspected, Mr. Opdycke mused, that swiving could become so tedious? (He’d finished smoothing the spoon’s edge. Opdycke held the little dish in the palm of his hand and caught the sunlight in it. The glare hurt his eyes, but Opdycke didn’t turn away.) Even rutting with Polyphilia, who did most anything he suggested, was, in the final analysis, dull, bone-breaking work. It was all, Opdycke had concluded, J. B. Hope’s fault. And, to make matters worse, Hope had recently come up with a new theory to be put into practice, that of wilful countenance. Opdycke took an awl and began digging at a point near the edge of the metal. “Wilful countenance” was, Hope’s fancy terminology notwithstanding, sticking the pud into the pudding dish and leaving it there. Hope justified this with his usual mouthful of “amative”s and “propagative”s, and there was, moreover, a practical consideration, in that the Phalanstery was rapidly filling up with small fry. Still, the practice made scant sense to Mr. Opdycke. Joseph Hope claimed that he had withheld himself from orgasm for over two hours, but Opdycke disbelieved him; or suspected that Hope had accomplished the feat with the grotesque Martha, in which case why hadn’t Joe withheld himself from orgasm for two weeks? Mr. Opdycke didn’t think that he himself had ever lasted much more than two minutes and didn’t think he ever would.
Mr. Opdycke heard something rustling in the bushes behind him, and he was startled. Opdycke found the countryside disquieting somehow and half believed that it was inhabited by ferocious beasts, wildcats and grizzlies. Opdycke gripped the awl tightly and looked over his shoulder, prepared to plunge the tool into some creature’s eyeball. He saw, instead, the Indian, Jonathon Whitecrow. Opdycke snorted, half out of relief, half out of disdain for the redskin.
“How!” said Mr. Opdycke.
The Indian tilted his head quizzically. “ ‘How’?”
Opdycke scowled. “Hullo.”
“Oh. Hullo, Mr. Opdycke.” The Indian took some steps forward. “Do you mind if I join you?”
In principle, Mr. Opdycke did mind. He hated Indians almost as much as he hated niggers. In the war that was currently being fought in the States, Opdycke’s sympathy lay firmly with the Confederacy, even though he himself hailed from Vermont. Opdycke was not so sympathetic as to consider taking up arms for Old Glory, but he certainly wished them well. However, Mr. Opdycke shrugged to show the redskin that he was at least indifferent to the notion of his joining him, so Jonathon White-crow gingerly lowered his haunches on to a nearby rock. The two men sat in silence for many moments. Opdycke had succeeded in pushing the awl through the thin metal, and now he was twisting it, enlarging the hole. Jonathon watched him do this with an almost scientific interest. Opdycke found the Indian’s gaze irritating; he gestured violently at the water.
“How do you call that lake?” Opdycke demanded.
Whitecrow turned and stared at the water as if seeing it for the first time. “We call it Loo Kow.”
“What does that mean?”
Jonathon shrugged. Opdycke reflected that the Indian shrugged an awful lot, an aristocratic gesture suggesting that most things were inconsequential. “It means ‘Home of the Big Fish,’ ” said Whitecrow, “more or less.”
Mr. Opdycke nodded, picked up some fine wire and a hook. “Is it? Are there big fish in there?”
Again the Indian shrugged.
Opdycke said, “Well?”
The Indian held up a long forefinger, a finger that was stained yellow because Whitecrow smoked the new “cigarettes”, rolling up plug tobacco into thin white tubes of paper. “One big fish,” explained the In
dian.
“Loo Kow,” muttered Opdycke. He twisted the thin wire hard, and now the fishhook and spoonbowl were firmly fastened together. Mr. Opdycke threaded the end of some gut twine through the spoon’s hole and tied it off. He dangled his creation in the air and watched the sunlight bounce off of it.
“What makes you think,” asked Jonathon Whitecrow, “that such a thing will work?”
“I have my reasons,” snarled Mr. Opdycke. “Never mind about that. I have my reasons.”
The Indian smiled.
“Why are you smiling?” demanded Mr. Opdycke.
“Because, Mr. Opdycke, you have your reasons.”
For a brief and alarming moment, Opdycke thought that the Indian knew what his reasons were. Opdycke found himself perspiring. He peeled off his shirt and wiped the sweat from his bulging paunch. “How big is the fish?” he asked the Indian.
The Indian was constructing one of his cigarettes. (Opdycke frowned once more. Cigarette smoking was vaguely effeminate, definitely sissified, a habit shared by women, young boys and old hobos.) “Bigger than a breadbox,” the Indian responded rather musically, “smaller than a house.”
“How big?” asked Mr. Opdycke once more.
“How big?” repeated Whitecrow in a strange manner, tilting his head as if addressing some third party. Jonathon nodded, and then answered, “Big enough to eat anything in the water. Too big to be eaten by anything in the water. So the answer to your question is, as big as the water itself.”
“How big in feet? Two feet? Three feet?”
“A fish doesn’t have feet,” responded Whitecrow.
Mr. Opdycke didn’t like being teased. Mostly out of boredom he considered murdering the Indian. Opdycke thought that the awl would make the best weapon, sharp enough to pierce the skull. Then Opdycke would fill up the Indian’s pockets with rocks, toss him into Loo Kow, and no one would ever be the wiser.
Jonathon Whitecrow was smiling at Mr. Opdycke in a gentle way. “I see you have a cranking reel-winch,” said the Indian, pointing with his smoking white tube at Opdycke’s fishing gear.
“Yeh,” grunted Opdycke rudely, but pride of ownership overcame him. He picked up the butt of his pole and cranked the contraption’s handle. It produced a horrible sound, loud and jagged like a ratchet’s. “I made it,” he informed the Indian, “at the Phalanstery.” Opdycke set about assembling his stuff. First of all he fed the horse-hair line from the reel through the rod’s guides. Opdycke’s pole was seven feet long, a fairly short one. Joseph Hope owned rods of nine, ten and even twelve feet, which he used when hiding behind bushes and fishing quiet waters. Then Opdycke attached the two lines together, the horse-hair and the gut leader. He was ready to fish.
The Life of Hope Page 21
