The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  Chapter three

  It took me a while to outgrow them. I had a stuffed woman, for a time, when I was grown. It was spontaneous, a deviant whim, and I lived to regret and to outgrow it. When I was still married, and had been for eight years, without issue (her career came first, my wife always said, and we volleyed the duty of contraception back and forth like a ping-pong ball: my ping, condoms; her pong, a diaphragm; my ping, fancier “skins”; her pong, the Pill; my ping, coitus interruptus or saxonus; her pong, the IUD; my ping, auto-eroticism; her pong, jellies and foams; my ping, ribbed rubbers; her pong, sleepiness and headaches; my ping, attempted orality; her pong, careless hygiene; my ping, hand jobs; her pong, frigidity; my ping, feigned impotence; her pong, laughter. I never kept score in this game, rarely scored in this game, and she always won), when I was promoted to chief curator at the office, it was easy enough for me to use (and abuse) my position to lure fresh-out-of-Seven-Sisters researchers into the labyrinthine basement storerooms, seduce a secretary or two, pick up auction groupies at Sotheby Parke Bernet, or make assignations with out-of-town scholaresses who came to use our facilities, but somehow my wife always found out about these quickies…usually because I boasted of them to her, in an attempt to make her jealous and therefore more pliable. Such ploys never worked; oh, she was jealous enough, infuriated, but instead of yielding she retreated more and more. It stood to reason, I tried to argue with her, that since our marriage had become virtually sexless, she shouldn’t begrudge me a casual release elsewhere. But begrudge she did. Me, at least. Too late I learned that she had not been spurning her boss, head of the advertising agency where she worked, for months and months, afternoon after afternoon, and nightly when I was out of town. I remember that when she confessed, all that I did was pester her with intimate questions: How did they do it? How long did he last? Could he come more than once? Was his penis longer than mine? Did she have multiple orgasms? Did they ever do it in a chair? Or in the shower? Had she gone down on him? Did she vociferate at climax? Did he? She answered all my questions, truthfully I believe, and then she asked me for a divorce. I sulked for months, determined to contest the divorce, while she grew colder and colder toward me, hotter and hotter toward him, coming home smelling of him all over. One Saturday night she did not go out but remained in our apartment, to pack her belongings into cardboard boxes. I offered to help, but she shook her head, and I could only sit and drink and watch her, until well after midnight, when she grew tired, collapsed into my lap with her arms around my neck and her mouth to my ear: “Love me one last.” I did, and it was long and swell, and afterwards she let me do something I had never been allowed before: hold her in my arms all night, every minute of the whole night, every ticking second of it. In the morning she was all smiles, and sensual stretchings, and lubricious saunterings, and I asked her to let me take her measurements. Whatever for?? she asked. Well, I might wish to send her a beautiful dress sometime, I said. She laughed and reminded me that she had always, always selected her own clothing. Well just let me measure you, as a last gesture, I requested. “Silly, silly, right to the end,” she said, and then she said, “No. Of course not,” and resumed coldly and efficiently packing her books and records, and mildly debating which were hers, which mine. That was easy, since our tastes did not overlap. But when she took the Adamesque cherrywood writing-box, I had to remind her that it was mine. “But you never use it!” she protested. I look at it often, I told her. “But I’ve always written all my letters on it!” she pled. You wouldn’t believe what I paid for that, I told her, and I had never told her. Her eyes dampened. But tell you what, I said, let’s make a deal, strike a fair bargain, quid pro quo, tit for tat, turn and turn about, ping for pong: if you will let me measure you, the box is yours to keep. She hesitated, staring at me, then said, “Oh, all right,” and stood stiff and immobile, like a mannequin, her eyes closed, while I snatched up a cloth measuring tape and took all her measurements and recorded them, not just her bust and waist and hips, her height and beam and boom, but her neck and clavicles, calves and femurs and jawbone, cranium and sacrum and mons. “What are you doing?” she asked, eyes still closed, and I spread my tape across her mouth, saying, Soon, just another minute. I measured her funny bone and humerus, instep and outstep and heel, the distance between her eyes, the height and breadth of her forehead, the metatarsals and metacarpals. From astragalus to zygoma, from anklebone to cheekbone, I had her all down. Finally, without her awareness, I snipped off a small lock of her blond hair. Then her husband-to-be arrived in a station wagon and took her and her things, and my writing box, out of my life. The very next morning, Monday, I took a taxi across the river, to pay a call upon the most accomplished artisan-upholsterer in the east. He and his men had done much fine work for my organization, but I had never had time to visit his workplace before, and he was delighted to have me there, ushering me past piles of ancient pillows and upended sofas into his private littered office, where he offered me cognac and a Cuban cigar. I declined the latter, had several snifters of the former before I was done with him. His eyes twinkled and he continually stroked his mustache as I spread across his desk the sheets of measurements and the photographs of my wife. I told him that I trusted nobody else, had faith in no other’s skills than his own. The job was entirely a personal one; it had nothing to do with the organization of which I was head. Did he think he could handle it? “I am humbled by the challenge, sir,” he said, “but I shall undertake my utmost.” We did not even discuss a price. Before I left the privacy of his office, he lay a hand on my arm and haltingly inquired, “Shall I attempt to…ah, to simulate…the figure’s…er, introitus…that is, her, rather, its…procreative canal?” Now I suppose that if he had simply asked, “Do you want it to have a cunt?” I would have answered, “Sure. Why not?” But I thought of the great Austrian painter, Oskar Kokoschka, possibly the true giant of our century’s otherwise demented art, and of the rumors that he had kept a life-size and lifelike woman-doll fashioned after his ex-mistress Alma Mahler for purposes of companionship and possibly copulation…which seemed to me an extravagant form of simple masturbation. Also, my wife’s “canal” had never been for “procreation,” not for me, at least, and the idea of emulating Kokoschka had never, quite honestly, entered my mind. “That won’t be necessary,” I said, and the master upholsterer blushed and apologized, “It was but a contingency that crossed my consciousness.”

  Chapter four

  When I am sitting here playing my comb-and-tissue, the only reason that my dog will come home or even return within earshot of my music, is that he has seen a poisonous snake, of which he, otherwise fearless, is frantically afraid. How he can distinguish the poisonous from the non-poisonous I do not know, for he will not give a second glance to a blacksnake, garter snake, king snake or spreading adder, but the first glimpse of a copperhead, rattler, or cottonmouth will send him slithering away in a crouch with his tail between his legs. When he was a pup, when I first brought him here, when I first brought me here, he became violently ill for a while, with his neck swollen up, and I didn’t know what ailed him, although after he had recovered I surmised that he had been struck (it is erroneous to say “bitten”) by a snake. I have been struck a number of times myself, but am equipped with razors, suction cups, and antivenin hypodermic syringes—my only concession, other than toilet paper, to contemporaneity, modernity, now. Otherwise I live as the Bluff-dwellers did, eons ago. I have a Bluff-dweller’s atlatl (pronounce that “attle attle”), which is a dart-thrower, or spear-thrower, pre-dating the bow-and-arrow. Using an atlatl is almost as accurate as pointing the finger at something. I have infallible marksmanship. If my dog creeps home with his tail between his legs, I will command him, “Show me the snake,” and he, after stalling with piteous whimpers and moans, will lead me to the serpent, or as close to it as he dares, and I will hoist my atlatl and spear the snake between the eyes, and then, if it is a rattlesnake, cut off the end of its tail. On a string spanning the width of my cave
rn’s mouth are 437 rattles, 382 heads of copper, and 298 mouths of cotton. Possibly—I have given much thought to it—I am interfering with Nature’s delicate ecological balance when I ought to give Nature a boost in any way I can, but there are plenty of other mountains around here for the toxic snakes to roam, if ever they learn to leave my mountain alone. Now, as my dog comes skulking up with his tail between his legs, and I say “Show me the snake,” he does not whimper and moan this time, but crawls in circles. “Lead me to the snake!” I order him. “You know what I’ll do to it.” He lies down and covers his ears with his forepaws. I listen, but hear nothing, except the wind snuffling through the cedars, and the coming on of rain. “Whatever it is, lead me to it,” I suggest, without enthusiasm, wondering if the dog has at last found a real panther, for which I have watched and waited these half-dozen years. The dog leads me afar, down ravines, as the rain comes on, all the way down the mountainside until the forest gives way to a clearing near the road, a clearing wherein is a small white church and an ancient graveyard, the same wherein my mother has lain a quarter-century. I stop abruptly, and quietly command the dog to sit, for there are people in the cemetery. Despite the now-pouring rain a funeral is in progress, around a fresh-dug grave. It seems that the entire population of the valley and environs, some thirty-odd people, is in attendance except me, and I will not be seen, for I am not dressed for the occasion. Most appropriately dressed for the occasion is an aged woman in black, whom I take to be the widow of the departed. I have seen her before; I have seen her sitting with the assumed departed in the breezeway of their dogtrot log cabin on a back road south of my mountain. They had seen me, and politely waved as I walked their road, and I had waved back at them, but never stopped to chat. Their yard was strewn with cats, which made my dog nervous. The husband was white-haired but handsome and rugged; sometimes I had seen him chopping wood with vigor. Now he was apparently dead. Some of the mourners were attractive young people, and they were sincerely mourning, their faces wet with tears. Perhaps the man was their grandfather. The widow was not weeping; her wrinkled face was calm, benign, but she trembled slightly. For her years, she was yet a beautiful woman, and I felt pity for her. For a moment I wanted to join the gathering, but I had no right to be there. I recognized my cousin, I recognized the young man who lives somewhere in these hills and keeps me supplied with cheap homemade whiskey, the only two of them with whom I had ever spoken, but I knew none of the others. I stayed long enough to listen to them singing “Farther along we’ll know all about it…” and then I summoned the dog and led him home. The rain stopped.

  Chapter five

  My “doll wife” was mute; that’s what I liked about her. Although my real wife had often been indisposed to talk, or aloof, or secretive, when she had chosen to wind herself up and let it all out, to nag me, to belittle me, I could never silence her without leaving the room, and even then she would continue to talk through doors or walls. It was rather late one evening and I had finished half a bottle of scotch alone when the knock came—I had virtually forgotten my commission to the “undertaker,” as I first thought of him, possibly remembering only his words “I shall undertake my utmost,” and although I realized that undertaker was not his proper job title I could not for the life of me remember at that instant what his proper job title was. He was standing there dimly in my darkened door with his arm around my wife’s waist, and hers around his. She was smiling happily at me, but her eyes seemed glazed, as they did when she drank too much. “Come in, come in!” was all I could think to say, and he guided her unsteadily into the living room, she stiffly staggering and he having to help her sit in the easiest chair—my own chair, where she had never sat before. “What’ll it be?” I asked. “Vodka and Perrier for me,” he said, and then, winking, “Nothing for her. She’s on the wagon.” I glanced at her for confirmation of this, but she only continued that radiant smile and seemed to attempt to focus her vacant eyes upon me. It was only as I was finishing mixing his drink in the kitchen, and another scotch for myself, that I remembered his proper job title: upholsterer, so I was not altogether shocked to return to the living room and find him with his hand beneath her silk blouse, from whence he drew out an electric cord and plugged it into the nearest outlet. He said, “Thermostatically maintained at a constant 98.6°…unless you wish to give her a slight fever…” He whipped up her blouse, exposing her bra-less breasts, and slightly twisted the nipple on the right one. “Heat control knob,” he said. He twisted the other nipple, and she tremored slightly. “This knob creates small spasms,” he explained. I managed to hand him his drink before collapsing with mine on the sofa. “No, don’t sit down,” he said. “Come and feel her. Stroke her ‘skin.’ Run your fingers through her hair. The hair is real. Everything else is synthetic, except the teeth.” He wedged two fingers into her smile and separated her jaws. “Not a single cavity, not a filling, and best of all—” he laughed, “—daily brushing is totally unnecessary.” He put his hand on the back of her neck and rubbed it. “All she needs is a bed. Don’t you, dear?” he asked, and she nodded her head sleepily. He unplugged her, lifted her, carried her into my bedroom, tucked her in, plugged her in, closed her eyelids. “There,” he cooed. “Sweet dreams.” I was tugging at his sleeve, and found myself urgently whispering, as if not to be overheard by her, “I didn’t request all those refinements! I just wanted a kind of glorified pillow, not a robot.” He looked offended. “She isn’t a robot. She can’t do anything, anything at all, except delight your eyes, and keep your company…in silence, although of course you may talk to her all you wish…beneath her right shoulder blade is a small inconspicuous panel which conceals a built-in tape recorder, wired to tiny microphones in both her ears, should you wish her to ‘absorb’ your words to her.” I clapped my brow, rolled my eyes, poured myself another drink, and daringly raised the question, “How much do I owe you?” He drew himself proudly erect and replied, “Sir, you and your people at the Foundation have generously given us so much business over the years—I daresay almost half of all our work—that I would be honored if you would allow me to have you accept her as a gift, an expression of personal gratitude as well as an ultimate manifestation of my personal standards of craftsmanship. Nona nona no no no, don’t object, please. I must be on my way. I wish the two of you a long and happy life, and if anything goes wrong I’ll be at your service on a moment’s notice.” He stood up to go. A nameless panic suddenly gripped me. “You can’t leave her here!” I begged. “I don’t know what to do with her!” He patted my arm reassuringly. “She’s asleep,” he said. “There is nothing she can ever do to you.” He left, but I needed several more drinks before I could undress and get under the covers with her. Although her eyes were closed, she still wore that beaming smile; to my surprise, as I fingered her mouth, trying to erase the smile, her lips were moist and warm. I gave her a quick kiss and said good-night. She rolled over—or did I pull her over?—she rolled toward me and held me in her warm arms the whole night through.

  Chapter six

  Once again my dog summons me to a funeral. How does he understand that a congregation of people in the graveyard constitutes an event that I should witness? It is again raining, and I am in no mood for leaving my front yard. I am the only person, or one of the few persons, who can sit in the front yard during a driving rainstorm, and not get wet, because of the overhang of the bluff. On this occasion I am wearing my Bluff-dweller attire: deerskin robe, sandals, leggings, breechclout: all authentic and based upon archaeological research, with the exception of the headgear. The true Bluff-dweller usually wore no head gear, but I have a sentimental attachment for the leather helmet, topless, that I wore in sparring practice as a boxer in my youth, and somehow it does not seem inappropriate on a Bluff-dweller. Thus arrayed, and armed with my atlatl and several small spears, I let my dog lead me off to some new minor adventure, only to find that once again he has led me to the cemetery, dark under the overcast sky and pelting rain. I wonder if the old woma
n has followed her husband into death, but she is there, and alive, and not dressed in black. There are not many others there this time. I recognize my cousin, but the young man who makes my moonshine is not there. Suddenly I recognize two people who had not been at the previous funeral, and I am startled: my sister and her husband, from the capital city. I have not seen her for twelve years, but I recognize her. What is she doing here? I stare at the coffin beside the open grave. Suddenly I have left the cover of the woods and walked out into the graveyard, toward the small group of people. One by one, they look up at me. The few who have seen me before, although they have not seen me in my Bluff-dweller outfit and sparring helmet, do not seem surprised, but both my sister and my brother-in-law drop their mouths open. I drop my spears: I am almost running. My sister cries my name.

  “Daddy?” I ask.

  She nods. “We tried and tried to find you,” she says, her tone accusatory. “Nobody knows where you live. We searched and searched, and called and called, all over the mountains. It’s been months and months since you ever wrote to him.”

  “He’s dead?” is all I can say.

  “Had a stroke and another stroke last week,” she says. She looks me over, sneering. “Is that any way to dress for your father’s funeral?”

  “I didn’t realize,” I say. “I’m sorry. I…”

  “At least take off that…that…hat or whatever it is.”

  I remove my sparring helmet and drop it to the ground, and pull my robe tighter around me to conceal the nakedness of my chest. The driving rain is not cold, but I begin trembling.