The Americans, Baby

by Frank Moorhouse

  He banged on Stockwell’s door. Stockwell didn’t answer but came on to the balcony pulling on the boxer’s ring robe which Torres sent him.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, obviously inconvenienced.

  ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’

  ‘I’m ah – entertaining.’

  Oh yes. I see.

  ‘Well, I won’t come in,’ he said. ‘I wanted to ask you something.’

  ‘Make it quick.’

  ‘Do you think de Beauvoir’s influence is unhealthy?’

  ‘Christ almighty,’ Stockwell said, just holding himself to courtesy, against impatience. He looked back into his bedroom and then leaning over the balcony said, whispering loudly, ‘What in the name of hell is this all about?’

  ‘Her ideas seem to spread like gas,’ he said leadingly. ‘She has injured the male-female rapport.’

  Then a girl’s voice – Mia’s voice! – a scorching jet from the bedroom. ‘Is that that fool?’ Like Rocket Robin Hood she appeared on the balcony wrapped in a blanket. ‘What is wrong with you?’ she screeched, and turned to Stockwell, ‘What is wrong with him?’

  ‘Go back inside, Mia,’ Stockwell said, ‘I’ll be with you in a second.’

  ‘I heard what he said,’ she screamed. ‘He’s persecuting me about Simone de Beauvoir – he must have followed me here.’

  He hadn’t expected her to be there at all. That she was there, and that he’d intruded, delighted him.

  ‘It’s OK, Mia,’ Stockwell said, wilted by the scorch, ‘I’ll talk to him privately.’

  ‘Privately, hell, I’m going home – you can talk privately to the ratbag all night.’

  Stockwell followed her back in, leaving him standing in the street.

  ‘Don’t go just because of me, Mia,’ he called up to her, without taking a step.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ he heard Mia scream at Stockwell, ‘don’t touch me – I’m going – you faggots.’

  Stockwell came back on to the balcony as though staggering from an explosion. ‘You’ve really fucked things up now,’ he said, staring helplessly back into his room, standing flatfooted in his ring robe like a defeated champion.

  Mia thumped down the stairs and came blasting out the door, a locomotive from a tunnel.

  She gave him a push as she passed and he went against the spiked iron pales of the fence.

  They both watched the leggy stride which took her away into the night.

  ‘You’d better come in and have a drink,’ Stockwell said, from the balcony, not graciously, but with a certain depressed resignation, hands plunged into the pockets of his ring robe. Depressed resignation was his existential state.

  ‘Did you see her push me against the iron spikes?’ he said to Stockwell as he let him in.

  He traced her again to an arcade in the city when she was window shopping.

  ‘Mia.’

  She turned. ‘Not you again,’ she said, trying to smile, signalling that she was prepared to forgive.

  ‘I seem to have disrupted your visit to Stockwell,’ he said, concealing as best he could the bellyful of delight he’d gotten from striking what he saw as sexual sabotage, against what he saw now as S. de B’s agent.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you did.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  She made a precautionary study of his face and then nodded. They went to an arcade coffee shop. Those characterless shops.

  ‘I was looking for some leather gear.’

  ‘I wish women who wore leather gear were truly sadistic – and girls who wore slave chains were slaves. Sexual signals unreliable these days.’

  She gaped at him. ‘It’s only a fashion for Godsake – not an orgy.’

  ‘Perhaps they do,’ he mused.

  She continued to gape at him.

  ‘I notice you wear Scholl sandals,’ he said.

  ‘Yes …’ she said, en garde.

  ‘What makes you think they’re good for your feet?’

  ‘I read …’ she trailed off, ‘I just like the feel of them,’ she said, retreating, he observed, to subjective preference.

  ‘You think they’re therapeutic but the only evidence you have is an advertising campaign,’ he said, slinging the words.

  ‘You seem a little preoccupied with fashion.’ She tried to lightly joke, tempering her words with truce.

  ‘Did she dress more like a man or a woman?’

  Mia frowned, not understanding, and then understanding. She pushed her cup and saucer away and moved out her chair.

  ‘If you’re going to raise Simone de Beauvoir again I’m leaving.’

  ‘No, I’m just asking.’

  ‘Look, this is ridiculous – just because I meet the woman in Paris – why get at me?’ An appeal for justice. What leads us to expect justice?

  ‘I’m just interested.’

  ‘Like damn hell you are – you’re aggressive and your attacks are pointless and vicious – you’re anti-woman.’

  ‘She was completely unable to understand the bad reaction she got to The Second Sex.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware that it had – but I suppose in a male-dominated society it would get a bad reaction.’

  ‘Ha – see – she’s got you thinking that way. It was badly received because it was embarrassing to sensitive people – it was a sour and cold book – it was knifingly anti-male – she ignored the whole male problem.’

  Mia stood up – she took forty cents from her purse and put the money on the table. One twenty cent piece wobbled with a clatter to a final silence.

  ‘You can’t change the female role without consulting us.’

  Mia left the coffee shop, turning to say, ‘I feel sorry for you.’

  The proprietress came over and said, ‘Would you mind lowering your voice?’ As if he intended to continue the conversation now Mia had left. The proprietress wore Scholl sandals.

  He turned the rays of his eyes on her and then left.

  Mia was some distance down the arcade walking quickly.

  He shouted, ‘And what does she mean by second sex? – there are hundreds of sexes – all variations of the sexual characteristics – delicate gradations – look at people’s clothes and mannerisms – look at them!’ He gestured at the passing people.

  She threw back a frightened glance and ran out of sight.

  He stopped, dizzy, in the middle of the arcade. People stared but sensing that he might be ill, hurried by.

  ‘Mia rang.’

  ‘What she want?’

  ‘Don’t act the innocent, she said you behaved like a madman in the Arcade today.’

  He pulled on a puzzled look.

  She came over and grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt. ‘Don’t look puzzled at me.’

  She partly hauled him from the chair.

  ‘I asked her,’ he said, his voice distorted by her grip, ‘about Simone de Beauvoir.’

  She let him drop and, bringing her face very close to his, said, ‘From now on cool it.’

  She talked like last week’s Newsweek.

  We all talk like last week’s Newsweek.

  ‘She wants to be an honorary male.’

  ‘Cool it, I said.’

  With great defiance he said, ‘Why do girls wear Scholl sandals?’

  She almost pirouetted.

  ‘For crying-out-loud what are you on about now? – I don’t wear Scholl sandals. But I hear they’re good for the feet.’

  ‘Another victim of health faddism.’

  ‘Don’t change the subject,’ she countered. ‘Mia is very upset with the way you’ve been persecuting her.’

  He sat admiring his attack on Scholl sandals. ‘What makes girls think their feet need treatment?’

  ‘So in the future,’ she continued, ‘I want you to cool it.’

  She went to the kitchen.

  Taking up the S. de B. book Force of Circumstance he found his place and, picking up the telephone, dialled Mia’s number.

  ‘Mia?’

 
‘Yes – who is it?’

  ‘What do you think of this – from Force of Circumstance,’ he read from the book, ‘“no; far from suffering from my femininity,” note the word “suffering”, “I have, on the contrary, since the age of twenty accumulated the advantages of both sexes.” Don’t you think that a trifle arrogant, perhaps it amounts even to de-sexualisation. Did you know that “Beauvoir” roughly translates as “see me as a beautiful male”?’

  The telephone clicked dead.

  She came into the room. ‘What are you about?’ She saw the book and made an instant deduction. ‘You bastard,’ she snatched the book, ‘you were ringing Mia, you bastard.’

  She took the book. ‘I’m locking them away – and I don’t want you to even mention her name. Right?’

  The candles lit, they sat down to dinner. It was the housekeeper’s night off so she served. They were eating Elizabeth David’s bouillon when Cooper, Mia’s former lover and now avuncular protector, arrived.

  ‘Come in,’ he said, ‘just having soup.’

  Cooper came in unsmiling; he left his coat on, hands in the pockets as though carrying a pistol.

  ‘Have some soup,’ he said to Cooper.

  ‘I’ve come to have a quick word,’ he said, looking ill at ease, almost woebegone. ‘I think your joke with Mia has gone far enough,’ he said, heaving the remark off himself.

  ‘It’s no joke,’ he replied, jokingly.

  She said, ‘You heard Cooper – the joke’s gone far enough.’

  Cooper said, ‘Mia’s been crying – she rang me tonight and asked me to come over.’

  ‘God knows I warned him, Cooper.’

  He went on with his bouillon. He had an idea.

  He took Cooper into the other room, leaving her with her bouillon.

  He went to the Louis XVI bedside table where she had put the books.

  ‘I think de Beauvoir is unhealthy,’ he explained to Cooper.

  ‘I’d rather the whole matter was dropped,’ Cooper said, hands still in his pockets.

  He went to his desk and took out his knife and going back to the Louis XVI bedside table broke the locked drawer open, with a splintering crack. Cooper watched somewhat astounded.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  ‘The books,’ he said, taking our four S. de B. books, ‘they’ve been put on limited access.’

  Cooper moved his lips but didn’t speak, uncomprehending.

  ‘Now listen to this,’ he said, flicking through the pages, ‘this is about the Second Sex. “Camus in a few morose sentences accused me of making the French male ridiculous. A progressive professor threw the book across the room. Mauriac attacked it.” She finds this bewildering – yet she claims to understand the delicate thing called sexual roles.’

  Cooper said nothing. Now really woebegone.

  ‘She says she admired a review of the book which she said and I quote “was delightfully decorated with the photograph of a woman held fast in the passionate embrace of an ape”.’

  ‘Show me,’ Cooper said, as if punched, taking the book and reading.

  She gusted into the room.

  ‘What the hell?’ she said, looking at the book, at the splintered Louis XVI bedside table, the knife and to him, ‘You’ve wrecked the Louis XVI bedside table.’

  She grabbed the book from Cooper, rocking him with her ferocity.

  ‘Cooper and I are going to the hotel to continue our talk.’

  Cooper clambered aboard the suggestion and they left the house together.

  ‘You faggots,’ she yelled at them through the bay window.

  In the calm of the street traffic, he said, ‘She got that expression from Mia.’

  In the pub they met ‘Bunny’ Stockwell Anderson.

  ‘We’ve just agreed on S. de B.,’ he told him.

  ‘Now look, now look,’ Stockwell said, backing off, ‘I’ve been through this – I want nothing of it. Nothing. It’s dynamite.’ The steam of fear came through his deodorant.

  Later they were drinking brandy in Stockwell’s study beneath the defeated stare of the antlered head of a buck, their feet on the fur of the bear, lying back low in the leather armchairs, when a banging began on the front door.

  They heard her voice first, ‘Come out of there, you faggots.’

  Then Mia screeched, ‘Come out – we’ve got you holed up.’

  More banging.

  ‘How long can we hold out?’ Cooper said to Stockwell, who was white.

  ‘The women have really got us holed up,’ Cooper said grimly, looking through the curtain into the garden, ‘is there a back way out?’

  ‘Yes, there is a back passage,’ Stockwell said with desperate hope.

  END OF INTERLUDE

  The St Louis Rotary Convention 1923, Recalled

  Becker meets the kook

  Becker was thinking this: how rarely in this foul country did the milk carton spout open as the printed directions promised, ‘to open push up here’ – push up where, for goddam. It had to do with the spread of talent across the land. For a country with a population so small they should, in terms of technology, still be peasants. That was his feeling, harsh as it may be. The way he figured it, the high-performance five-percenters were spread over too diversified an economy. By accident of history. The accident of history, as Becker saw it, was that they were English speakers. They attempted the higher technology of the main English nations. That was it. Result: milk cartons which wouldn’t spout.

  Some theory, Becker, you could go back to the alma mater in Atlanta and package that into a Ph.D.

  Of course, it explained his presence in the foul country. ‘To the foul country,’ he toasted with the milk carton, drinking through a jagged spout torn with his envelope-opening dagger. He was there to reinforce the top echelon of the country’s paltry beverage technology – ‘to advise and counsel the franchise men on marketing’.

  ‘Here’s to you, technological missionary, evangelist, old dog.’ He was, and he often thought it, he was an evangelist of sorts. The Peace Corps sort: he really sometimes feared that he had the Peace Corps mentality. But somehow the Corps never had seemed to him to be the classic bourbon-drinking type of organisation. And he was the classic bourbon-drinking type.

  The felt-penned drawing on a large sheet of paste-board came down before him on the desk from behind, covering his hands and milk – as though he’d lost his hands to mid-forearm in some disappearing act.

  The relief secretary was standing there. He was unnerved. She herself had an uncertainty in her smile, her stance. She was waiting for him to put her at ease. Who would ease him?

  ‘That me?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes – do you like it?’

  Becker often felt that not a day went past when someone didn’t inflict some extraordinary demand upon him way beyond what he felt should be expected of him in his job with Coca-Cola or of his guarded, programmed, elementary motel life. More in fact than he thought life itself had any right to throw up. He had not begun life visualising, encompassing, such things. Nor was he equipped or adequately trained. They are tests, Becker, tests. Yes, but tests for what, where was the diploma, where was the payout?

  ‘Well, do you like it?’

  He’d been staring at the drawing – the drawing obviously of himself.

  ‘What am I doing with my hand shading my eyes like that?’

  ‘You’re searching.’

  ‘Searching for what?’

  ‘New horizons.’

  OK, he would pursue her meaning. He didn’t want any. He wanted to reduce the enigmas. Back to the drawing. What he feared was that she was going to ‘reveal’ him.

  ‘New horizons?’

  ‘New horizons for Coca-Cola.’

  Well, that was damn true. ‘What’s the Coke bottle doing on my head like some William Tell apple?’

  ‘You have it on the brain – you’re a coke-head,’ she giggled. ‘What’s your star? Let me tell you – you’re …’ she hummed and ha’d
staring into his eyes until not blinking hurt him, ‘you’re Pisces – sensitive, unlucky, and melancholy.’

  ‘You’re damn right – about the star, that is.’ Further unnerved – ‘Say, how did you know that?’

  ‘I knew it.’ She gave off noises of self-delight.

  ‘You looked at my personnel card,’ he said, ‘and anyhow,’ changing the subject swiftly, ‘is Coca-Cola subsidising art now – don’t we give you enough to do?’ Becker, wielder of the corporation inflation axe, pruner of manpower wastage.

  ‘I did it in my lunch hour. Don’t be mean.’

  ‘I like it – it’s kookie but I like it.’

  Becker worried that Sam would come out and see the drawing. Sam would show it to the others and they’d all have a great hee-haw. He didn’t care for that.

  Her name? ‘You’re –?’ He snapped his fingers. But she left him hanging there, pinned there, endeavouring to remember, just too long, for politeness, for social ease, and he knew it, she liked, he bet, she liked to see men sweat. A Western Union thought arrived also: the drawing was a pass. There was a rule he recalled, about fraternising with female office staff. Perhaps that applied in Atlanta but not here.

  ‘I’m Terri.’

  ‘Becker.’

  ‘I know – we met before.’

  Sunburst symbols, high signs, hash bag

  Her flat asked too much for Becker’s liking. Not that he objected to art. Or fad art. But he found that he was most at ease in an electronic and technically servile four-star motel room. Nothing talking back at you. In Terri’s place it was all talking at you. Everything she’d done to the place was a message. From the time he stepped in he was warding them off. The pottery, the artifacts, the prints, the posters, the sketches, the photographs, the pinned-up clippings, the dyed drapes, the books, were all like yelping dogs or crying children. Sunburst symbols, assorted carved statuettes from the East, high signs, and a hash bag hung on a small hookah.

  ‘What’s that burning?’

  ‘Ethiopian sandalwood – incense.’

  ‘Uh uh.’

  She went about doing things in another room.

  Motels. Now a motel was five-star living. Bourbon, a jar of hot mix, of which he was inordinately fond, a pre-war movie or perhaps a Dashiell Hammett, cleanliness, air-conditioning, and refrigeration. Motels kept him a today-man because there was no yesterday around to hold him back.