Xavier got it. Here, he throve on assembly-line garbage, from which his taste buds recoiled, and on sitcom fare that offended his sensibilities just as child molestation offended most healthy Western adults. Short of the annihilation of the human species, he could not imagine a worse waking nightmare.
14
The Philistine Syndrome
Back in his apartment, Xavier tried to come to grips with his problem. In a nutshell, Bari had diagnosed him. She had taken circumstantial evidence and built from it a formidable case for his affliction by a malady one could call . . . the Philistine Syndrome.
That did the trick. It perfectly defined the ailment that had come upon him—ever so slowly—after his midnight trek to that ridge in the Phosphor Fogs overlooking Plant VanMeter. It informed him that fine art, no matter how much he might appreciate it on an intellectual and spiritual level, made him sick, while its antithesis—dreck, schlock, trash—gave him back his physical health while raping his aesthetic sensibilities and depressing his mood.
I’m the Urbanite’s Fine Arts editor, thought Xavier, leaning against his door and surveying the framed opera posters, lithographs, and original watercolors decorating his living room. If listening to Weber, or appreciating a Pollock, or reading Barth turns me into an invalid, I’m finished as a reviewer. Hell, I’m finished as a person.
The door to Mikhail’s room was shut. Xavier checked to see if his nephew had gone to bed. He had. Then, in bed himself, Xavier realized that Bari’s and his own repressed diagnosis of his “peculiar malady” was right on the money. All Bari had had to go on was his reactions to (1) a mass in Christ’s Episcopal, (2) a magnificent Vermeer, (3) a charming Bergman comedy, and (4) a Mahler symphony that unperceptive critics had written off as “disjointed” when he had always heard in it the transfigured suffering that made all five movements a unity. It was amazing that, from these four cases, Bari had figured out his problem. Although he had had more to go on—headaches, nosebleeds, diarrhea attacks—it had taken him longer. And only Bari’s relentless pursuit of the matter had made him acknowledge, aloud, the validity of her insight.
Xavier thought back. The high communion at Christ’s Episcopal had occasioned his first major attack of the Philistine Syndrome. Why? Possibly, the exalted dignity and solemnity of that mass had qualified at some level of his consciousness as a work of art. In so doing, it had triggered the untoward physical reactions leading the usher to deny them a place at the altar with all the other communicants. Once back at home, the tackiness of Dwight “Happy” McElroy’s Great Gospel Giveaway had “cured” him—at least for a time. Then there’d been those two episodes of which Bari was still blessedly ignorant, his interrupted chess match with Mikhail and his sprint to the restroom at the Oconee State Theater during the reading of “Don Juan in Hell.”
Coincidence, Xavier thought, his hands folded before him on the coverlet. He did not truly believe this amazing hypothesis, but he decided to test it. He took from his headboard shelf a volume of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Defiantly, he began to read. He read for a half hour with perfect comprehension and with total enjoyment. At the back of his mind, meanwhile, lurked an uneasy awareness that, generally, no symptoms of the “Philistine Syndrome” overcame him until he was well into the sublime activity at hand.
Blam!
Less than fifty pages into Cities of the Plain, the syndrome struck. Xavier lost his grip on the book, which hit his thigh and cartwheeled to the floor. He had no power to pick it up. Except for his eyes, nostrils, and mouth, he was paralyzed. He could glance about, breathe, and grind his teeth, but could not twitch a finger or wiggle a toe. Panic enveloped him like an embroidered shroud.
“Anything but paralysis,” he whispered. His voice startled him. He could speak! He shouted, “Mikhail!” Meanwhile, he prayed that The Mick had not gone to bed with Smite Them Hip & Thigh or Tough Grease on Cary rapping in his headphones. “For God’s sake, Mick!”
Mikhail, ghastly pale, came running in dressed in gym pants and a denim vest festooned with phony military medals: his outré substitute for pajamas. With forced calm, Xavier explained about his sudden paralysis and the strong likelihood that his late-night reading of Proust had triggered it. The Mick looked down at the guilty novel.
“I coulda warned you, Uncle Xave. I really coulda.”
Xavier was still too scared to betray annoyance. He outlined his and Bari’s theory that acknowledged masterworks had begun to impact him negatively on a physical level, but that artifacts of inferior quality or aim could undo these ill effects.
“That’s crazy,” said The Mick. “I’ll call a doctor.”
“No. Bring me one of your Mantisman comics and hold it where I can see it.”
“Screw you.” Mikhail kicked the Proust.
“Wait! Don’t be so all-fired sensitive! Don’t abandon me, Mick!”
The Mick stormed out, but soon came back pushing a TV stand on casters. He attached the wire from the cable outlet and switched the set on. Weekend Schlock Theatre was running on Channel 87. Now showing—Mikhail had checked the guide—was Mesa of Lost Women with Jackie Coogan as the wicked Dr. Aranya and a clutch of nighty-clad quasi-starlets as zombie spider women.
A few scenes of this movie reversed Xavier’s paralysis.
He crawled from bed. Weeping, he hugged his nephew, hanging from his neck like an outsized crucifix.
15
Captive to Kitsch
Two days later, Xavier sat clothed on an examination table in Dr. Nesheim’s office. Bari had accompanied him, leaving her atelier in the keeping of her second-in-command, a businesslike middle-aged woman named Marilyn Olvera. Bari was sitting on a low divan near the door.
“At first,” Dr. Nesheim said, “I thought you needed a shrink. Work-related stress. The plays, paintings, concerts, and novels you review had started to make you ill, even when exemplary models of their kind. I first supposed the culprit, Mr. Thaxton, was a subconscious psychological defense mechanism, one causing a rare sort of hypochondria whose subliminal ‘purpose’ was to get you relieved of your duties.”
“Dr. Nesheim, I love my job.”
“Stress can overtake people even in jobs they love.”
Bari said, “Xavier takes all the best assignments. The rest of his staff review the things that don’t appeal to him.”
“But he’s still responsible for field-marshaling the enterprise, Ms. Carlisle.”
“No stress in that,” Xavier said. “It’s fun. Besides, my staff and I get along fine.”
In a chair near the exam table, Dr. Nesheim steepled his fingers and frowned. “I’m trying to say that I agree with you. Your syndrome isn’t a somatic manifestation of a psychological maladjustment. Stress has nothing to do with it. Your dismaying somatic responses to fine art have an underlying physical cause. You aren’t crazy, Mr. Thaxton.”
“What’s the underlying physical cause?” Bari asked.
“The first indications of the tests we took Monday are that his syndrome may be radiation-induced. He’s absorbed a dosage of six millirems or so.”
“What?” Xavier said. “You’re kidding.”
“No. No, I’m not. About six millirems.”
“That should put me at risk for cancer, not for diarrhea attacks at readings of ‘Don Juan in Hell.’ ”
“Right,” Dr. Nesheim said. “You should be dying.”
“What?”
“Instead, you’re having such strong psychoemotional reactions to fine art that they alter your body chemistry. Blood-sugar, hormone, electrolyte, enzyme production are all affected. Usually, your system adjusts homeostatically as soon as you leave the concert hall or set aside the disturbing novel. But the millirems your body has absorbed are disrupting the readjustment process. Now, the only way you can regain biochemical equilibrium is to put yourself in the way of inferior works of, um, ‘art.’ ”
Xavier looked at Bari. Bari looked at Xavier.
“Forgive me,” Dr. Nesheim sai
d. “Much of what I’ve just told you lies outside the range of lay comprehension. I’ve done my best to simplify it, but radiation remains an unplumbed mystery and so do many of its effects.” He turned to Xavier. “Have you had any X-rays recently? Visited any contaminated sites? The Marshall Islands? Chernobyl?”
“I was camping in the Phosphor Fogs when Plant VanMeter’s accident occurred,” Xavier said, remembering the glow in the sky and the eerie look of the cooling towers. “From an overlook, I saw workers at the facility trying to cope with it.” Was that it? Was that the cause of his syndrome? Xavier remembered 1950s sci-fi films in which ants, tarantulas, or locusts attained menacing proportions because of radioactivity. And of comic-book stalwarts who had attained their powers as the result of radiation exposure. He, though, was the victim, not the beneficiary, of the unplumbed radionuclides. “Are you saying I’m the way I am because of that Plant VanMeter business?”
“It’s definitely suspicious,” Dr. Nesheim said, “but most of the radionuclides released from the Plant VanMeter mishap drifted eastward to the sea. I really don’t think that’s the source of the radioactivity you’ve absorbed, Mr. Thaxton.”
“Really? Why not? You on their board of directors?”
“Come on, Mr. Thaxton,” Dr. Nesheim said. “The accident there, though by no means negligible, was minor. The radioactivity released was minimal. Only one Con-Tri worker had to leave the site to stay within government-specified exposure limits. You didn’t venture into the reactor building itself, did you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then the source of your radioactive-poisoning lies elsewhere—despite the real suspiciousness of your camping near the plant at the time of the accident.”
“Dr. Nesheim, Plant VanMeter’s the obvious culprit.”
“Right. But if it were the culprit, people in Placer Creek and environs—as well as a bunch of plant employees—would be suffering observable effects. I’ve stayed abreast of the situation, Mr. Thaxton, and they just aren’t suffering such effects.”
“Not yet.”
“No, not yet. But I’d note that there’s no one else, in my knowledge, suffering anything akin to your ‘Philistine Syndrome.’ You’re the sole victim. So there’s another source of exposure, something you’ve forgotten or aren’t yet aware of.”
“Could it be ongoing?” Xavier asked. “Cesium 137 in my apartment walls? A radiation-emitting video-display terminal at the Urbanite?”
Dr. Nesheim hesitated. “Maybe. But unless you know of someone in your condo, or at work, suffering a like peculiar malady, probably not.”
“What can Xavier do?” Bari asked. “What’s the cure?”
“The cure’s innate in the syndrome,” Dr. Nesheim said. “Every time a Bach fugue creates a systemic imbalance, he should put on a CD by a retropunk band. The antidote for too much Tolstoy would be a paragraph of Sidney Sheldon. For too much Chagall, a matador portrait on black velvet. And for too much—”
“That enslaves me to my syndrome,” Xavier said. “It doesn’t cure me of it.”
“And,” Bari said, “couldn’t the repeated triggering of such untoward responses prove dangerous? Couldn’t they prompt a stroke or a heart attack?”
“Sure,” Dr. Nesheim said. “But I just don’t know enough to prescribe effective treatment. I’d like to study Xavier on a day-to-day basis, but he’d probably prefer to go on living as normally as possible, even if he has to make adjustments.”
“Adjustments! I’d have to cultivate a tolerance for stuff that I hate—every sort of self-expressive abomination spun out by our species!”
“There must be an alternative,” Bari said. “Couldn’t he retire for extended periods to a sensory-deprivation chamber? A closed room with no art, books, or music? To short-circuit the syndrome by depriving it of, you know, fuel?”
“It would short-circuit me. And destroy my career.”
“Maybe a couple of hours a day would be long enough to calm you biochemically and to keep the syndrome from kicking in.”
“Maybe not,” Xavier said. “And even if it would, I couldn’t live that way.”
“Which is wholly your choice,” Dr. Nesheim said. “I wish I had better news.”
“Maybe I could sue the folks who built Plant VanMeter.”
“That again,” Dr. Nesheim said. “You have no proof of their culpability.”
“I have a suspicion—the memory of a weird prickling all over my body. The knowledge that a guard at the plant didn’t want me around.”
“They seldom want civilians around, and with good reason, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“Allow me to keep you under observation. I’d treat you free of charge.”
“Forget that.”
“Xavier!” Bari said.
“I’m not a lab rat. If I’m not dying, I’m not dying. I don’t plan to will my living body to the medical profession.”
“Your choice,” said Dr. Nesheim.
To his secretary in the outer office, he spoke one word over the intercom, “Next.”
16
“For Me There Is No Vulgarity”
That evening, Bari came to Xavier’s place for a candlelight dinner, dancing, and some tension-defusing love play. The Mick was on an overnight field trip with a metropolitan chapter of the Smite Them Hip & Thigh fan club, which had booked seven rows at a concert in Montgomery. And Dr. Nesheim had told Bari and Xavier that, if they took standard precautions, there was no reason Xavier’s elevated radioactivity level should keep them from making love.
Bari wore one of her own creations, a skintight acetate gown of emerald-green with sinuous cutouts and a helically winding zipper. Only a self-possessed woman as well built as Bari, Xavier understood, could wear such a dress, for on a shy, a lean, or even a vaguely chunky female, the same outfit would have looked crass, the cry for attention of an insecure deb or a streetwalker’s come-hither smirk. On Bari, though, the gown was as apt as a white fur in Stockholm.
“Whoo-ee,” Xavier said, taking her hands. “You’re ravishing.”
“ ‘Whoo-ee’?”
“What a dress. It’s . . . unique.”
“It owes a lot to Azzedine Alaïa. I love the way he defies bourgeois expectations without stooping to avant-garde silliness.” She turned, showing the dress, not her body. “A design Mama would’ve approved, but not one she’d’ve imagined wearing.” Bari shed her shearling gloves, dropped them on the sofa arm, sashayed into the kitchen. She started palm-fronding carrots, heedless of the incongruity of wielding a vegetable grater in such upscale garb.
Xavier, lust insinuating itself into his abstract admiration, tried to envision Pippa Wiedmeyer and Ivie Nakai, pretty young women, in this wolf-whistle dress—they could wear it if they acted tough rather than demure, for Bari’s gown had leather grommets on the knee-high hem, and the V-shaped strap lifting its bodice was made of a green swatch of sailcloth. Grommets, canvas, a toothlike metal zipper—how could these doodads lend such a down-and-dirty eroticism to so refined a female?
Aroused, Xavier touched Bari’s naked shoulder.
“Know what Azzedine once told me?” she said, as if privy to his mood. “‘For me, there is no vulgarity, and the street is never in bad taste.’ Or do you think the street’s always in bad taste?”
“Of course there’s vulgarity,” nuzzling her, “and what you’ve got on tonight definitely isn’t of the street.”
“But it is. I’ve taken street materials and transfigured them by reimagining, and then reinventing, them.”
“I’m reimagining you minus the dress.”
“No vulgarity,” Bari said. “‘There are women who can mouth the worst obscenities,’ Azzedine told me, ‘and they can go around naked and still be elegant.’ He says that such women have ‘the superior quality of being able to invent themselves.’ We designers make hay by tempting insecure people with money to believe they can buy, and then magically assume, that valuable je ne sais
quoi.”
Xavier looked up. “No vulgarity? Even your rationale for your work sounds cynically vulgar, Bari.”
“Maybe. The secret’s not to do it cynically. Vulgarity is a part of us not always to be despised.”
“What?” Xavier didn’t agree.
“No arguments.” Bari gestured with the grater. “I’m not in the mood. What else are we having?”
“Broiled blue fish, stuffed crab, and steamed asparagus. The wine’s an iced Sauvignon Blanc.”
“Good,” Bari said. “Good.”
While waiting for the oven to do its work, they swayed in their stocking feet to Duke Ellington’s orchestra’s recordings of “Mood Indigo,” “Sophisticated Lady,” and a half dozen other Swing Era numbers. Dancing, Xavier told Bari in some detail about his midnight adventure, nearly a year ago, in the Phosphor Fogs.
“You witnessed the accident,” Bari said. “You saw them trying to contain it. Despite what Dr. Nesheim said, that could be how you got the radiation that’s reacted—synergistically, I guess—with your metabolism and body chemistry. Voilà, your syndrome.”
“I don’t know, Bari. I thought I’d dreamt the whole episode.”
“Who am I to say? Perhaps you did.”
Xavier demurred again. “Con-Tri said the accident took place the next morning, Bari. Perhaps my dream was a premonition of what was to happen a few hours later.”
“Are you given to premonitions, Xave?”
“Not usually. I never had a clue that you and I’d happen. I never foresaw Mikhail coming to live with me.”
“Then maybe what you think you saw, you saw, and Con-Tri was lying.”
“And why would they do that?”
“You’re the newspaperman, Xave. No guesses?”
“It hardly matters now. The NRC cleared Plant VanMeter’s staff of negligence, and the damaged reactor’s been back on line over a month now. Let’s forget it.”
Bari gave him a puzzled look, then shrugged.
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