Still Life with Woodpecker

by Tom Robbins

  “It says in this article—pass the butter—that Wrangle was suspected of helping hijack an airliner to Cuba back in seventy-one. Yet he was not a Marxist. He did it out of general contempt for government. What makes an intelligent, courageous man disrespect the law to such an extent? In games of chance, one plays by the rules. Rules give poker its shape, its substance, its tension, its life. Poker without rules would be pointless and boring. And those who cheat the rules cannot be allowed to play. In the old days they were shot. I guess that is what happened to our Mr. Wrangle. More syrup.”

  “In health there ees also rules,” said Tilli, “und you are zee vorse ven it come to breaking dem. No! No more syrup, you break-lawer.”

  “When I disobey the doctor’s orders, Tilli, it affects no one but me. Should I break the rules in poker, everybody at the table would feel the effects. That is what Wrangle did, and that is why he is dead. Surely I will be dead soon, too, but I am forty years older than he, and death is not my punishment, it is my reward.” Like metal fatigue, a smile creased the fusilage of Max’s DC-10 face. “Well, should I run into him in the next world, we shall have an amusing chat. He was—”

  “All zis is not zee point,” said Tilli, wiping syrup off three of her four chins. “Zee point is dat he ees killed and I spoke wif Leigh-Cheri on der phone two nights ago und she don’t know nuffin of thees. Should I tell her or not?”

  “Of course you should tell her. She has a right to know. There is no reason to conceal his demise. She is not in love with him any longer.” A pause ensued during which Max pondered his statement. “But, uh, Tilli,” he said at last, “I would wait to tell her until after she is married. Okay?”

  “Eef you tink zo.” Tilli wrapped bacon slices in a napkin to carry to her pooch.

  “Did you read this? Allegedly, Wrangle landed in Havana in the month of December. He was surprised to find that since going Communist the Cubans no longer observed Christmas. So when he met Fidel Castro, Wrangle called him a rebel without a Claus. Ha ha. Quite the joker, eh?”

  Tilli didn’t get it.

  89

  THERE HAD TO BE ONE MOMENT, a single isolated moment, pear-shaped, quivering, and outlined in radium, when Beethoven inked the final note of his Fifth Symphony, when Shakespeare chose the word (“shoot”) that completed Hamlet, when Leonardo applied the brush stroke that shoved Mona Lisa onto the Louvre express. Such a moment occurred, at least in the mind of Princess Leigh-Cheri, when the last slab of facing was cemented in place on the capstone point of the modern pyramid. Both depressed and elated (as Beethoven, Shakespeare, and Leonardo must have been), all she could say was, “Done.”

  Her real task had, of course, just begun. According to Manly P. Hall, “All the wisdom possessed by the ancients seems to have been epitomized in the structure of the Great Pyramid, and he [sic] who solves it riddle must necessarily be as wise as he [sic] who contrived it.”

  Leigh-Cheri wasn’t exactly trying to solve the riddle of the Great Pyramid, but she did aspire to understand the peculiar properties of pyramids, in general, and their application to the improvement of the human race, and she was aware that both she and her team of scientists would require capabilities beyond the ordinary. She was also aware of her lack of expertise, of the terrible ignorance she brought to this enterprise. In secret, she was counting on the Red Beards, that they would somehow intervene …

  At any rate, it was done. And it was gorgeous. Impressive. Awesome. Hers. Well, almost hers. A’ben had promised to give it to her as a wedding present, with the stipulation that she lease, free of charge, its outer chambers to his government. So it was in two days to be her very own toy, the largest, heaviest, most expensive, most perfect toy on earth. And yet, try as she might, she couldn’t think of it as exclusively hers; as much as it was the mighty egg of her dreaming, she couldn’t feel close to it. The Dean of Inanimate Objects at Outlaw College would attribute the pyramid’s detachment, as compared to the Camel pack’s intimacy, to relative scale. Objects smaller than the human body, says the dean, possess the quality of privateness. Objects larger than the human body possess the quality of publicness. The larger the object, the less private and more public its mode. We might question the dean, provided we could get his nose out of a tequila bottle or his girlfriend’s panties, about the moon. The moon is a hell of a lot bigger than the biggest pyramid and can be seen by far more people at any one time. The moon is about as public as a thing can be. Yet the moon seldom fails to invoke a sense of intimacy. We might logically assume that since two of the moon’s primary characteristics—light and gravitational pull—directly, personally affect us, that that is the source of its intimate nature. Unfortunately, logic doesn’t cut the mustard at Outlaw C. The dean would snort, puff his cheap cigar, and contend that the moon is as intimate as it is public because of its markings. As with many ornaments of tiny size, its sense of intimacy is exploited through surface detail. Surface incident sets up internal relationships, and internal relationships break down the external gestalt, the publicness. The Fizel Pyramid (as it was to be forever known), its off-white facing intact, was blank. Its profound appeal was in its constant, known physicality, for it lacked any equivalent of those enigmatic, sensuous spots that draw the moon toward intimacy.

  Sure, dean, now why don’t you go shoot a game of snooker or something. Don’t call us, we’ll call you. The Remington SL3 is running on empty, and what with thousands of people—invited dignitaries, media representatives, and curious public—pouring in for the pyramid unveiling and the grandest wedding of the decade, we have more than we can handle right now.

  Leigh-Cheri has left the pyramid site and is being driven by limousine to her flat, where she will await the two people among the wedding guests who she is excited to see: Queen Tilli and Queen Gulietta.

  90

  MIRACULOUSLY, the pyramid had been erected in slightly less than two years. Hell, it took that long for union labor to put a fresh coat of paint on the Golden Gate Bridge. It seemed to take that long for Leigh-Cheri’s limo to get back to her flat. The usual swarms of bazaar hawkers, camel drivers, snake charmers, monkey pipers, boy and girl prostitutes, beggars, dancers, shoppers, religious zealots, and soldiers had tripled. There were a half-dozen clustered around every foreign infidel, and there were more foreign infidels than the city had seen since the Crusades. A’ben Fizel had promised them foreign infidels, and there they were, cameras, spare change, and everything. The streets were festive, and traffic moved like flies through a sieve.

  It was Sunday, and for once the day wasn’t bleached out. Not entirely bleached, that is. The busiest, loudest Sunday will always seem subdued next to the quietest Saturday. You go to paint the town red on a Sunday, you’d better be prepared for pink. No matter. It was Sunday, and things were fairly hopping. The big day was Tuesday. In the garden of the Fizel palace, Leigh-Cheri and A’ben would marry at dawn. The ceremony would be private and small. There would follow an equally small and private reception in the innermost chamber of the pyramid. Concealed from the condemning eyes of teetotalling Moslems, the newly married couple could wet their newly married whistles. At nine, champagne toasts dutifully drunk, the wedding party would emerge to preside over the official dedication of the pyramid. There would follow a day-long reception outside the main entrance, in attendance at which would be enough sheiks, sultans, shahs, emirs, wizirs, wazoos, and exalted omnipotent potentates to bring every Shriners’ convention ever held to its knees. Plenty of European posh would also be on hand, making non-alcoholic merry until dusk, at which time Ihaj Fizel’s own Boeing 747 would transport the bride and groom to Paris for a honeymoon. That was Tuesday. Monday, Leigh-Cheri could spend with Tilli and Gulietta. Provided she got back to her flat.

  91

  TILLI WAS SO NAIVE she still thought Jiminy Cricket sang songs by rubbing his hind legs together. She believed the cocaine was some kind of head-cold remedy, although it seemed a trifle odd that it came packaged in a plastic frog. Besides, neither Guli
etta nor Leigh-Cheri seemed so ill that they should have to treat their noses every half hour all day. “Vhy don’t I just make you a pot of camomile tea?” asked Tilli.

  Her daughter and her former servant looked at each other and giggled.

  Cocaine, cocaine, the musical fruit

  The more you have the more you toot The more you toot

  The more you toot the better you feel

  So sniff some wiff instead of a meal,

  they harmonized. Only Leigh-Cheri’s part was in English.

  That’s how Monday went. The three women remained in the flat all day, interrupted once by the dressmakers who came for a final fitting of Leigh-Cheri’s gown. The older women wept to see her in wedding costume, but Gulietta was quickly beaming again. Her plastic frog was filled to the gills with the purest snow to sift out of the Bolivian jungle in many a winter, and she and the Princess were having themselves a party. In her fashion, Queen Tilli was enjoying herself, too. She’d splurged on a jeweled collar for her Chihuahua to wear to the ceremony, and she slipped it over the little mutt’s neck several times during the day. “Zee emeralds zey go so nice mit his eyes, don’t you tink?”

  The queens, as well as the Princess, had been invited to numerous swell soirees, but they chose to spend this time together. Who knew when they would meet again?

  Tilli had decided to move to Reno to be at Max’s side when he placed his last bet. There was not a note of serious music in Reno. Tilli would have to content herself with the slot machine chorus, singing lemons, cherries, silver dollar dreams, and twenty-five-cent disappointments forever. A jackpot and a heart valve, partners in an aria, dying in each other’s arms, end of Act IV, Reno Grand Opera.

  Gulietta’s role in the affairs of her nation had been determined by the rebels to be that of most modern-day monarchs—something more, perhaps, than a representative functionary but certainly not an initiator of political action. Yet the old woman had emerged as the most powerful figure in the government. When Gulietta decreed that there would be no nuclear plants within her borders, the ministers were forced to cancel their orders for reactors. “Our resources shall be the sun, the wind, the rivers, and the moon,” she announced. “The moon?” they asked. “You can’t get energy from the moon.” “You are mistaken,” said Gulietta. Now she had to go home and show them why they were wrong. Already, thanks to her lunar awareness program (based in part on Leigh-Cheri’s attic experience), all the women in the country were menstruating simultaneously, and all babies were being born at full moon. “It will be a bit more difficult,” she said, “teaching men to see in the dark.”

  As for Leigh-Cheri, she had to take care of some business involving a pyramid. And the bridegroom who’d paid for it.

  So the three women spent this last day together. They were warm and close. Occasionally, Tilli would forget and order Gulietta to perform some menial task, whereupon Leigh-Cheri’d remind her mom just who was the reigning monarch among them, and they’d have a good laugh. Laughter came easily. Gulietta and Leigh-Cheri were as buzzed as the door button at a discount whorehouse, and Tilli was happy that the Princess was marrying a man who could afford a three-hundred-million-dollar wedding present, although his father’s habit of munching sheep’s eyes off the tip of a scimitar aroused misgivings in her concerning genealogy.

  After an early dinner, they reluctantly broke up the party. The wedding was at dawn, and dawn had a nasty habit of showing up before breakfast. Leigh-Cheri walked Tilli and Gulietta downstairs to the limo that would drive them to their hotel. Before she maneuvered her bulk into the car, Tilli passed Leigh-Cheri an envelope. Supposedly, it contained a personal message from King Max explaining why he hadn’t come to the wedding and expressing his love for his daughter. Alas, Tilli produced the wrong missive. By mistake, she gave Leigh-Cheri an envelope containing printed accounts of the Woodpecker’s death (other newspapers had picked up and amplified the original story from the Drummer).

  Back upstairs, the Princess turned the letter opener over and over in her fingers. The letter opener was made of ivory. It’s handle had been carved to resemble an animal. Exactly what kind of animal Leigh-Cheri couldn’t say. It wasn’t a frog. It wasn’t a chipmunk, running running running at the center of the earth. Perhaps it was some kind of Arabic animal. Leigh-Cheri put the opener to its intended purpose. Snicker snee, snicker snee. Pushing a tiny curl of paper in front of it, the letter opener made its ragged incision. Leigh-Cheri reached in and pulled out the newsprint tumor.

  92

  “I DON’T KNOW WHY I’m carrying on like this,” said the Princess. “I guess Nina Jablonski was right when she called me a crybaby.” She blew her nose. Sometimes a woman blowing her nose can sound as soft and poignant as a rubber horse deflating after being punctured by a seashell.

  “The silly red-headed son-of-a-bitch didn’t know as much about love as I thought he did. He didn’t even know as much about being an outlaw as I thought he did. Done in by a stupid Arab jailer. Jeeze! But he was a genuine human being. By God, Bernard Mickey Wrangle was real.”

  How can one person be more real than any other? Well, some people do hide and others seek. Maybe those who are in hiding—escaping encounters, avoiding surprises, protecting their property, ignoring their fantasies, restricting their feelings, sitting out the Pan pipe hootchy-kootch of experience—maybe those people, people who won’t talk to rednecks, or if they’re rednecks won’t talk to intellectuals, people who’re afraid to get their shoes muddy or their noses wet, afraid to eat what they crave, afraid to drink Mexican water, afraid to bet a long shot to win, afraid to hitchhike, jaywalk, honky-tonk, cogitate, osculate, levitate, rock it, bop it, sock it, or bark at the moon, maybe such people are simply inauthentic, and maybe the jackleg humanist who says differently is due to have his tongue fried on the hot slabs of Liar’s Hell. Some folks hide, and some folks seek, and seeking, when it’s mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous can be a form of hiding. But there are folks who want to know and aren’t afraid to look and won’t turn tail should they find it—and if they never do, they’ll have a good time anyway because nothing, neither the terrible truth nor the absence of it, is going to cheat them out of one honest breath of earth’s sweet gas.

  “Maybe he was an insane bastard, but he was a genuine insane bastard,” said Leigh-Cheri, “and I loved him more than I’ve ever loved anybody—or ever will.” At that, she began to blubber again.

  The clock was messing around with midnight, and midnight was messing around with her head when she found herself at the pyramid. There was no rational reason for being at the pyramid except that she couldn’t sleep, didn’t wish to disturb Gulietta or her mom, and from her window, she had spied the limo driver in the alley outside her flat dozing at the wheel. She wanted to say, “Drive me to Algiers to Bernard’s grave.” Or, “Drive me to Husky Stadium, it’s time for cheerleader practice.” Or, “Drive me to Hawaii, to Mu and the moon.” But she’d said, “To the pyramid,” and hoped against hope that there’d be solace there.

  In the clear desert night, the stars were as wild as popcorn. The moon appeared to have already set, but the pyramid site was lit up like a midway. Thirty or forty workers were still on the job, applying finishing touches, readying the temporary wooden platform for the morning’s ceremonies. The entrance was wide open, which was lucky because she’d forgotten her key. She walked down the long corridor to the central chamber.

  Adjacent to the central chamber was a fully equipped physics laboratory and several nicely appointed offices, including an office of her own. The central chamber had been left bare, however. It was strictly unadorned stone. The central chamber was where the magic happened, and in an effort to keep it as much like the Great Pyramid’s as possible, Leigh-Cheri hadn’t even allowed it to be wired for electricity. There were several oil lamps affixed to the granite walls, and that was that. The lamps were antiques—they might have illuminated Cleopatra’s pajama parties— and it took Leigh-Cheri five minutes of fu
mbling to get one burning. When it finally blazed, she shrieked—for its flare revealed a figure lurking in the chamber. She was not alone.

  93

  INITIALLY, she thought it was a workman. Then the lamplight fell on his bright red beard. She shrieked again. Her spine tingled like the elements in a toaster, not that she was in any mood for rye. Holy Mother of God the Surpriser! It was one of them!

  What do you say to an Argonian space traveler in a pyramid at midnight? Care for a Camel, sailor?

  Leigh-Cheri didn’t say anything. She’d lost the ability to speak. She just stood there with the toaster going, trying to decide whether to faint or not, until the Red Beard understood that if there was going to be any conversation he’d have to get the ball rolling, so he opened a mouthful of ruined teeth and said:

  “Hello, dragon bait.”

  She fainted.

  94

  SHE WOKE UP with her head on a bomb. He’d made her a pillow out of his jacket and hadn’t bothered to take the dynamite out of it.

  “You’re dead.”

  “Not so.”

  “Not so?”

  “You can bank on it.”

  She was blinking rapidly and swallowing hard. “Well then … a mistake?”

  “Only natural.”

  “Was this one of your cute tricks?”

  “Nope. This was a matter of luck. Good luck for me. Bad luck for Birdfeeder.”

  “Who? Bernard, I haven’t seen you in two and a half years. First you’re dead, then you’re not. Who are you talking about? What are you talking about?”

  “A con named Perdy Birdfeeder did me what I thought was a favor. Apparently I erred—but that’s another story. Perdy the Purse had a mind to retire to the French Riviera. He heard that business opportunities were handsome there. I arranged for him to meet a bartender in Pioneer Square, a pal who was minding my personal papers. Out of fourteen possible passports, Perdy chose the one with my legal alias on it—”