The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children

by Connell, Brendan

  Wearing a blue wool vest and pants that terminated at the ankles, pants brown with dirt on the knees and rump, he would walk along the cobbled streets. The dark pits of his eyes, the drooping of his lower lip, were all signs, of the complete collapse of the inner man. And then at home, in the little apartment he had moved into, he spent his time slapping his own face, fantasising about her, flinging the last of his manhood into the latrine.

  He was abject, finished, because he would never find a woman half so disgusting as Mirta, and even his imagination was insufficient to supply the filth.

  The Dancing Billionaire

  Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?

  O sweet content!

  Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplex’d?

  O punishment!

  —Thomas Dekker

  I.

  “I am afraid that he is an ineffectual boy.”

  “Is a boy meant to be effectual? What exactly is it you expect him to effect?”

  “I have always hoped that he would become more . . . strident.”

  “You have strange ambitions and, pardon my saying, unrealistic expectations. Every human being has its own temperament,—an artistic nature should not be manhandled.”

  “I have the ambitions of a father. A man does not like to see his son peter out so early in life.”

  “I did not notice that he had ever petered on. To me he simply seems like a rather frail boy. He may not have the over——Well, the same bearing as his father, but he is a nice enough child. Have some sympathy for him Ralph. A man should love his offspring.”

  The man and woman walked over the grounds, and though one man, one woman, they were the same of nose, of gesture, the family’s eyes, brownish beads floating on oval faces, jaws ever so slightly salient. . . . They rise on their toes, their gait uplifting in aspiration, uncapped pride. . . . Sun, moon; organs sexual, jointly different, german; beads quivering down the atavistic rosary, dropped from ovaries consanguineous, spermazoa mutual, produced in similar sessions of grave copulation.

  II.

  The child stood alone on the lawn beside the great house. You know that the sky was blue, that there were a few white clouds. You know that the weather was warm, and all around the smell of fresh cut grass.

  He heard the laughter, from an open window, and knew that they, the adults, were within,—drinking things that he could not drink, bitter sweet, the cause of that mild, quaint delirium.

  He walked to the tennis court and watched the groundskeeper pull minute weeds from the cracks. The man looked up and smiled at him, a little sadly, and he, condescendingly, smiled back.

  With arms folded the child kicked his toe against the court—a piquant spasm of dissatisfaction—and studied the other opposite him: The man on hands and knees, his years doing little to distinguish him from the worm of the earth, the groping creature of the soil. A bird sang from a nearby tree. The young, upright human both enjoyed and respected that beauty of nature, though he might despise the callousness of man.

  The groundskeeper, whose name was Oliver, took up the bucket of weeds he had pulled and walked to the flower garden. The child, whose name was Allen, followed him, without speaking. He watched in silent disdain and interest as Oliver weeded around the French marigolds, of which there was a full bed. He could smell the pregnant, female earth, but was not tempted to touch it, just as he liked the brown back of the man’s neck, wrinkled and rough, without desire for more intimate knowledge of its texture.

  A butterfly fluttered by Allen, landing amid nearby carnations. He snuck up to it and grabbed it in his pale and delicate hands, crushing it, painting them with the powder of its wings.

  “A painted lady,” he lisped, letting the corpse drop to the ground.

  *

  His father, thick-figured, moustached, hair tending to mouse colour, a small glass of hard drink in hand; his father laughed, the sound swelling from deep in his torso, organic; teeth showing, a cigar rolling between fingers, smoke magnetizing toward the ceiling. . . . Allen saw the eyes meet him, momentarily, traitors of the man’s apprehension. . . . Yes, he, Ralph, was made nervous by that thin, China-white manikin standing there, that pompous sprout of unwanted fibre, that child against nature, even at such a young age haloed by an aura of self-satisfaction. God knows he must have questioned his wife’s fidelity, or put all the blame on her sickly, inbred line. But maybe that woman’s weakness, her frailty of carriage, her demi-royal descent, had been the real, original attraction. Was not love that melting confusion, recklessness, of contorted limbs, slavering of eyes, words said and compression of hopes to pain?

  There were those suited giants, billowy women, enjoyment, or what adults call enjoyment, seek for. And in the library, where he wandered to with surly steps, a piece of marzipan in hand, dissolving in his mouth, creamed along his gums; in the library he saw her sitting. A girl about his own age, a large picture book on her lap.

  “Hello,” he said.

  The scrutiny on his part was obvious, lids half closed, mouth slowly churning.

  “There is more in the kitchen,” he remarked.

  “More?”

  “There is more marzipan in the kitchen, if that’s what you want. I won’t get it for you, but it is sitting there,—a whole bowl of it.”

  “I don’t like marzipan, and I’m not to eat sweets except at dessert,” her girl’s voice, crisp with English accent, upper class cadence.

  And then there was his aunt, echoing from without, calling his name.

  “Allen!” she cried, as she came blowing through the door. “There you are Allen. . . . There you are children,” her eyes wide with eccentricity.

  III.

  You were very near being a naughty boy—a boy one might have called atrocious, except that you had such pretty skin, such winning ways when it pleased you to charm.

  Remember, it was I who took you clothes shopping, to indulge my broken feminine streak, if you wish to call it so. . . . But I did enjoy expending my taste. —Yes, I was born with a few lumps of that—on suiting you elegantly, protecting your genteel instincts. . . . Of course I realise that you got them from her. There is not a marked degree of refinement on my side of the family. Still, I have always recognized and respected beauty when it condescended to enter my sphere. And, believe me, I mean to imply no negative undertones.

  —But you did look so cute, in your little garments, selected by me, my chapped hands; a little gentleman. And then we styled your hair. . . . You were my doll, the baby doll of a big, greying girl,—you were much more to me.

  IV.

  Allen Hutton appears in a violet jacket, an avocado tie, terminating a full three inches above his waistline, and a simple fine-weave cotton shirt of the lightest shade of blue. His pants, tan, immaculately pressed, form two slashes above black booties.

  Guests mingle, thin-stemmed glasses growing from hands like effervescent fungi. Women gossip over diminutive plates of mulberry salad, Vicksburg cheese balls, and aspic-glazed shrimp. Here a fashion is made of laziness and many smile, for they can fathom, in their spoon-like existences, no reason to frown: a woman with the head of a sheep plugged on the neck of a turtle talks in low tones to a gentleman resembling, to a startling degree, a well groomed summer sausage. An ex-senator staggers unsteadily by, the flesh of his face flopping behind a protruding jowl. A hired pianist, placed discretely off to one side, plays Chopin, a subservient smile freezing his blanched and meagre lips.

  Allen, standing hipshot before the bar, was just taking the first sip of his Alexander and noting the strangeness of the group of guests his father and aunt had assembled when she herself, the aunt, appeared, pulling him off to one side.

  “I would like to introduce you to someone,” she said. “Or I should say re-introduce. I believe that you met as children. . . . Allen Hutton, Lady Helen Ashe.”

  “A lady . . . well,” he said, taking her fingertips and signalling mock deference with a downward inclination of his head.


  “Helen is the Earl of Saxelby’s daughter,” Aunt Margaret remarked.

  “Yes, I remember,” Allen commented suavely. “And how is the Right Honourable Earl? I seem to recall visiting some old castle of his, on a greenish sort of hillside, a lot of long shrubbery, a bit depressing. But maybe I am being too forward. I remember you, but you might not remember me. This violet jacket throws people.”

  “To be frank, the violet jacket was the only thing I did think I recognized.”

  Large-kneed Aunt Margaret smiled nervously as she looked at the two, both so attractive, both so much more feminine than she.

  *

  Later, as the guests began to filter out, Mr. Hutton took Allen apart to the study. Lighting a cigarette and leaning his healthy rump against a desk he proceeded:

  “Allen, I am going to broach a subject which I know is distasteful to you, but you are going to have to face sometime, and I believe now is as good as any.”

  “Father, really,” the young man replied, throwing his body into the soft, cool mass of a leather armchair.

  “Occupation Allen. You have to choose some kind of occupation. At school you took in a pretty good variety of directionless classes: film appreciation, Greek drama, dancing for God’s sake! . . . Don’t you realise that your family is sitting on a fortune; a fortune which it takes outrageous energy and prudence to manage, to maintain, grow. . . . A great deal of responsibility . . .”

  Allen looked on with raised eyebrows and an amused expression.

  “You don’t expect me to work, do you?” he asked.

  “I not only expect you to work, but to make something of yourself. It is obvious that business does not appeal to you at present. Fine. You’re young. Time will undoubtedly show you its value. But for now, choose some occupation, some honourable occupation, and follow it. . . . So . . . What do you want to do? Tell me.”

  “Shop.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Shop . . . I really do like clothes you know. I could spend a few years inspecting the various boutiques and——”

  “Enough,” his father, Ralph Hutton, cried out. “Being a clothes horse is not an occupation. It is a moral failing. Now what are you going to do with yourself?”

  The younger man rolled his eyes back in his head, and stroked his moustache. The role of son bored him. The things he liked were not tasks but fantasies. There was pleasure, the absurd and the sensual; there was what could be paid for and what he did not care to touch; and other things he was willing to sample.

  V.

  Bipeds moved along the streets of the city, many bearing themselves with the ease of the financially secure; the smile of laziness adhered to faces; women’s puffed lips strangely decorous: we see opulence and laugh, hear the languages of the world warbled. And then the click of Italianate shoes, red heels gliding over the deeper shade of brick. Eccentric he was, walking as if those around him did not exist, were invisible, certainly not worth notice. But her, strangely his wife, honeymoon fresh, if not dripping sweet, bizarre.

  Before the glass panes of a jewellery establishment, whose reputation was not in the least exaggerated, Allen stopped, the woman following suit.

  “What a gorgeous display,” he said.

  The Etruscan fibula shaped like a twisted pelican; the bracelet a golden serpent eating its own tail, eyes of sphene, body marked with red enamel; earrings, thin, sunny disks showing the river god Achelous; a necklace, each bead a golden, pregnant woman, each womb a semiprecious stone; and that tiara, simple, like a cluster of aspen leaves in fall.

  “I want you to have them,” Allen said, an odd sparkle in his eyes. “The entire collection. . . . My wedding present. . . . To you.”

  “I don’t think this is the kind of jewellery one actually wears,” she commented.

  “Of course it is. You’ll wear it,” he said, going through the door.

  *

  “Undress,” he said.

  She blushed, guardedly satisfied, breasts stiffened, risen. The dress dropped from her shoulders, girdle unfastened, drawers, like a crumpled petal of orchid, lay at her feet. She stood, legs pressed together, a white, bare stroke of apparent virginity, a conflux of drooling stars.

  I am molten love, she knew. I am a sea anemone, a fluctuating bubble of blood. I am in need, of taking, entwining, wrapping my boneless limbs around, burping gorgeous obscenities—I am snow-coated coal—I am a moonlit well—I am naked, a woman, beauty of woman, in long of love. I am me. I am me.

  “Put the jewels on now,” he said.

  “Jewels?”

  “The diamonds, the necklace, that lovely bracelet. And, oh yes—the tiara, the tiara.”

  His voice hoarse.

  “You are a funny one,” she said.

  She felt them cold against her skin, grinning around her neck, licking her wrists, lashed to her head. She felt something spook around her, enter into her, as yet undefined, inscrutable . . .

  She walked toward him, feeling the carpet beneath her feet.

  “No,” he said. “Just stay there. Let me look at you.”

  “I am cold.”

  “Stay there! The jewellery is so wonderful. It really is.”

  Pleasure unsought, untasted. Breasts of bread, thighs, joining in a bottomless pit that yet bears reflection; a bubbling slug. Perversion, the skinless dog of art, crawls, flesh bare, an exposed and living wound, salivating magenta, pools of slick filth.

  And, to awake in humiliation,—that fear of the living being—her hair heavy as that final departure into night, and tears, the swelling of pus of nightmares.

  VI.

  Denny held the mushroom stuffed with duck sausage between two fingers.

  “You’ve come into it,” he said. “Of course it is in bad taste to word it that way. But amongst friends. And, you know, money can be a real consolation at a time like this.”

  He bit into the mushroom cap and chewed, his eyes, those of a voluptuary, half closed. There was no denying that Pellington could cook. Allen was tolerable company, but Denny’s primary interest was in the food.

  “I feel rather despondent,” said Allen as he sipped his mint julep. It was difficult to add appropriate gravity to the action. “I would cry if I knew it would help.”

  “Yes,” said Denny, that young gentleman with short maize-coloured hair, an extremely delicate tan, a feathery voice and much appreciation for his own beauty, “I would shed tears with you if I knew it would help. But it won’t. It won’t help at all. So we must not spoil our lunch on some fruitless, rather straining endeavour. A quick cry would not add the smallest bit of enjoyment to this mushroom stuffed with duck sausage. . . . Life is for the living. We should always remember that.”

  After inhaling the last morsel of mushroom he sliced an asparagus spear into three parts, wondering if he should not take a bite of crab cake before proceeding.

  “Yes,” clipping off a chunk of the crab cake with his fork after surmising that the asparagus would undoubtedly wait for him. “Yes, my heart goes out to you Allen, but we must find a way to distract our minds from morbid thoughts, depression. Good dining and sophisticated company are a starting point.”

  VII.

  Your mother, what she would think, I cannot guess. I did not love her, I will admit that, but do not press me for more. . . . Your father cared for her, and I saw that she was elegant, refined—Oh, she had much of what I lacked.

  But do not think that any of . . . of that emotional disarray. —Do not think that it has prejudiced me against you. No, I have always been your strongest advocate, and will defend you, even if it were to mean draining my veins dry of their sap. —Yes, you are a handsome, so handsome young man.

  —Allen, I will be there for you, when you have discarded fresher blooms.

  VIII.

  He had always liked theatre, movies, dancing, entertainment of all description as long it tended toward the benign, the sensual. Astaire was a well-tailored god; Swing time, Top Hat, ecstatic suavity. Allen Hutton’s face
would burn with the flush of blood, then grow suddenly pale, the tapping, the orchestra crying into the secret places of his being—Fred Astaire dancing off chairs, tables, desks, steps, dogs, walls, ceilings; the perfectly cut suit never gathering up, the sunshine smile never betraying the whisper of death.

  In the subdued light of the movie room Allen lay on his side, one elbow embedded in a soft pillow, a hand supporting his weary head. The stem of a hookah extended from his sentient lips. . . . The screen before him, of generous proportion—women blooming into flowers, the petals of their lower limbs, and those stamen arms; Gold Diggers of 1935; one-thousand legs lashing as whips, the sex subdued into patterns of cosmic grandeur. . . . Sets of dreams, opulence of love beyond his grasp. . . . Busby Berkeley, took away his body, those instants, tender as the skin of boiled milk.

  And in his study he would sometimes read the first few lines of Helen’s letters in disgust. But more often than not he simply threw them away unopened. And then, to Allen’s relief, they stopped. . . . Subsequently only vague reports, of the woman’s frantic, sluttish romances with Portuguese gigolos and decaying aristocratic rakes.

  IX.

  “Do you want me to be saucy, or submissive?”

  “Surprise me,” Allen said, with a gesture worthy of a Caesar, yellowish smoke spiralling from the Turkish oval balanced between his fingertips.

  The creature was at his feet, nestled up and caressing his calves. Allen bent, letting his hand scrub through the short black hair.

  “Li Chi, you little beast, demean yourself.”

  The slobber ran from the young man’s mouth as he raised that pants’ leg, licking shin and kneecap. Allen laughed weakly at the contortions below him. The face lifted, two teardrops arrested, then rolling from the eyes.

  “Why do you weep my child?” voice saccharine, darkly soothing.

  The mouth opened, explained: . . . His wife, children, family . . . in China . . . so poor. . . . He was an astrologer . . . not a love toy. . . . The honour of his family. . . . He sent them money . . . but . . .