The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children

by Connell, Brendan

  “I love him, I love him,” she would murmur: “Hurt him, hurt him!”

  So was her love strangely turned into a negative force; and her eyes, which were the portal for her feelings of affection, cast on him their blight:

  He became introverted and impotent. Their relations turned to dust.

  Her second fellow was killed in a hunting accident.

  Her third was converted into one wholly lacking in amorous power.

  Her fourth threw himself from the roof of a multi-storeyed building.

  Her fifth occurred like her third.

  The breasts of mothers, under her admiring gaze, sputtered out only the feeblest drops of milk; and fruit trees became barren.

  III.

  She took the Via del Monte alle Croci, slowly ascended the steps to San Salvatore, where she sat for thirty minutes in silent meditation. She then rose, issued out the door near the Chapel of the Neri Family, and made her way to San Miniato al Monte. She looked out over the city: the great Duomo, the Campanile of Giotto, and the tower of the Castello Vecchio, as well as the domes of all the minor churches, all this set against a strip of grey, and she felt as if placed in the heights of Domenico di Michelino’s famous painting, a mixture of beauty and hell beneath her.

  She looked to her right and saw a fragile male figure; the man’s gaze however not resting on the view, but on herself, cap-à-pie, feet encased in camel-coloured whipstitched lace-up pumps, vaguely evocative of: desert seductions, woman as captive, love hot and juicy as lamb roasting on a spit: and on such fantasy his mind pitched its tent, her a golden bezel in which he would lodge his over-ripe red heart, the primal predatory instinct to seek out the lame and weakened invoked by her heels.

  The next time she saw him, it was from her own balcony. He stood in the window of the hotel across the street and bowed his head. She responded with a smile and returned inside. For two days in a row the same act was repeated. On the third day she received a letter:

  Dear and Respectable Madam,

  You have, through your smile and the flash of your eyes, charmed me, a guest in room 214 of the Hotel Leonardo. I am not stalking you. I am a mature and lonely man, and I am in love with you. This undoubtedly sounds ridiculous, but it is none the less true. When I saw you for the first time, my heart was thrilled. I crave you, every inch of you, and want to touch your body and listen to the whispers of your soul. I am having spasms for you. Please be so kind as to reply.

  Yours affectionately,

  Karl Schrimpf

  She replied:

  Dear Mr. Schrimpf

  I have seen you and you interest me. Tomorrow evening I will be expecting you. Call on me at 8.

  Michela

  The next evening he arrived at her door at the appointed time: a man with perfectly tended white hair, an extremely delicate upper lip and eyes the colour of kale. He held a potted orchid in the crook of his arm.

  “Michela,” he said matter-of-factly, with a strong German accent.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Please come in.”

  He took a few unsteady steps forward and handed her the orchid. She took it and gazed at the strange pink blossom. It seemed to her that it was something obscene, those flesh-coloured petals emitting an almost sickeningly strong aroma, vanillic, connubial.

  IV.

  The horizon became pink with the death of the sun.

  They ate at Aquacotta. There were crostini toscani and a bottle of Chianti. Karl tried the restaurant’s famous egg and vegetable soup and seemed well satisfied.

  They walked into the night, along Borgo Pinti and the Via Della Colonna. In the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata he took her hand. The sky was populated with stars. He looked up at the façade of the Ospedale Degli Innocenti, at the small and colourful tondi, sculptures of babies by Andrea della Robbia.

  “How charming,” the German said.

  Michela smiled thinly.

  They moved past Giambologna’s Equestrian Sculpture of Ferdinand I and onto the Via Dei Servi, Karl humming to himself an aria from Gounod’s Faust. They passed the Duomo, were in the nucleus of the town, and entered the Via Dei Calzaiuoli.

  “Ah, there’s a lovely pair.”

  The two now stood in front of a shoe store, gazing at the window display: pink suede, open toe, heels which were spiked, sharp as daggers. He plunged his fingers in her hair, pressed his desiccated lips to hers.

  And so he courted her; the orchid withered and died; manhood for him consisted of spending money, at restaurants, on feminine footwear, of which he was an expert, keeping track of the trends, taking great pleasure in studying the newspaper advertisements: strongly excited: envisioning shoeing her, nailing horseshoes to her feet. That she was far from pretty did not seem to matter, for he saw her not as a woman, but as a shoe, her skin leather, her arms straps, her buttocks and legs a great heel. —And she allowed him to touch her ankles.

  V.

  His bizarre infatuation with Michela ended in matrimony; a rapid ceremony at San Salvatore.

  He repaired to his native land and several weeks later she joined him, took a train to Köln, through Switzerland, through vast mountains and idyllic meadows; then arrived in the city, the rolling stock gliding into its centre (the dual spires of the great cathedral rising up to one side) and into the station.

  He greeted her with a kiss on the cheek, loaded her and the accompanying valises into a Mercedes, and drove to his dwelling some short ways into the country. The house looked like a huge coffin. That night they drank champagne; her foot in his mouth.

  VI.

  The lights of the house and the heavy metal shutters on the windows were attached to timers. When the sun set the lights would flicker on, the heavy metal shutters whirr shut. The walls were covered with pictures of horses, as well as photos of Karl, in years gone by, on horseback. He could not ride anymore, but every Saturday would still go to his country club and visit the stables, and with jealous eyes watch younger equestrians enjoy themselves.

  He owned a company which manufactured toilet appurtenances. Files, pincers and claw tweezers. Barrel spring toe-nail nippers, gold-handled scissors in the shape of storks, moustache scissors of nickel-free stainless steel and scissors with micro-serrated edges.

  She was soon informed of her conjugal duties: provision the house and serve Karl his supper as well as breakfast and lunch on weekends.

  The weather was very warm and they sat outside, under the eaves of the porch. They sipped champagne, Karl ate his daily slice of cake. He wielded a giant orange fly swatter, and with it killed the wasps that came along hunting for food, swatted them and then flicked their corpses off the table and onto the ground, crying out with satisfaction at these little victories.

  And then he would talk, his kale-coloured eyes glistening, his speech saturated with stale propaganda: sacrifice. fight for food. immigration crisis.

  “They say that one day white people will become a minority.”

  “They say?”

  “I read it in a certain book.” He looked at her defiantly. “The whites will be slaves. . . . The Africans, you see them coming over now by the boatload. . . . The women with empty bellies and full wombs. . . . The men know how to rob us. . . . And in the future we will be their slaves.” He was a visionary, a prophet. “We will be crushed. All this will one day belong to the black man,” he said with a sweeping gesture, indicating not only his home, his Germany, but the vast expanse of Europe. . . .

  He had been through, survived the war, and though he seldom talked about that part of his life, occasionally he would drop a few words . . . about the Russian front . . . where he had been an artillery commander . . . men freezing . . . living on a pocketful of peanuts.

  VII.

  The putzfrau was a square-shouldered blonde with haunches like a draft animal, fleshy lips and a vague odour of prosaic sin hanging about her person: edacity, frotteurism and evil concupiscence. Five days a week she would arrive in the morning and, after setting before Herr
Schrimpf his breakfast, begin disinfecting and cleaning the house. She dusted surfaces and polished all wood, vacuumed and waxed the floors, her large rump thrust in the air and her small nine-volt radio playing, grinding out caricatures of music.

  Though she treated Karl with great deference, she was insolent towards his bride, showing all the contempt of the northerner, of one of Teutonic race, towards the Latin, the fryer of fish and eater of cloves of garlic. She muttered darkly under her breath as she cleaned Michela’s toilet; then would glide by Karl, graze him with the protruding mass of her breasts, for him turn her frigid frown upside down. . . . And his eyes, those of a very old altocalciphiliac, wandered down to the terminal parts of her legs.

  To Michela’s extreme displeasure, her husband began to buy the cleaning woman gifts, id est shoes: cone heels and fantasy pumps. Their click, the squeak of their leather could be heard about the house interminably, cruel and pedestrian—acousticophiliatically comforting to Karl: vision of his fleshy, movable, muscular organ (principal organ of taste) wrapped around the solid built-up base at the back of the footwear.

  Michela shrugged her shoulders. She knew too well of his slug-like ability. She was unhappy. She found a kitten for herself, but it drowned; planted tulips, but they were killed by malicious nematodes. Friends? The good folks of the neighbourhood stayed away from her as from some pit so deep it appeared bottomless.

  And he: would spend much of his time in moody silences, a nervous twitch distorting his mouth; or, shut up in his room, avidly inhaling the smell of leather.

  One night she served pickled herring for dinner.

  “Ah, the food of the poor!” he cried in disgust.

  The flap of yellow fat beneath her jaw trembled.

  “You don’t like what I serve you?” she asked with forced calm.

  “I like to be treated well.”

  “How do you treat me?”

  “I am a good man!”

  “And that is why I love you,” she hissed.

  His face assumed an expression of mild amusement. He wanted to have the pleasure of seeing her cry.

  “If you were not my wife, I would call you a bitch.”

  Loathing. He was schooling her in how to hate. That night she dreamed of slitting open his belly: her hand, like a great spider, scurried forward and entered the wound.

  VIII.

  His tread became firmer, his appetite increased. At dinner, instead of his customary quarter litre glasses of beer, he would now drink a full stein; and, with an arrogant accent to his voice, demand a second portion of meat.

  One day she heard the sound of suppressed laughter. Bed springs squeaking in pain. Opened door. Starch-white thighs.

  His face glowed. His hair seemed more lustrous. His figure acquired a certain robustness, vaguely pubescent,—and this burgeoning made her hate him all the more, though she smothered this emotion with increased outward signs of wifely solicitude. One night she climbed into his bed, found him embracing a pair of thigh-high boots.

  “I love you so much Karl,” she murmured. Her keenest wish was to see him grilled alive. She now not only dreamed, but consciously desired to see him suffer unpleasantly. She would have willingly scooped out his eyes, torn out his tongue, pressed him in some horrible instrument until his bones cracked and he belched out cries of exquisite pain, his body reduced to jelly.

  And then, on a certain Saturday in August, while at the stables, he ventured upon the back of a horse;—and was exceedingly pleased as he made it prance around the corral.

  “Karl, you once pledged me your life as a loving and faithful husband.”

  “Yes.”

  “You lied.”

  “Lied?” he snorted. “It was not a lie, only a terminological inexactitude.”

  He prospered. He walked around the yard barefoot. She despised him. Her walled-up spite was for him the very fountain of youth.

  The Life of Captain Gareth Caernarvon

  I.

  1894. An hour after dawn. Montana. Forest. A large animal, of the deer family. High, humped shoulders. Enormous palmate antlers. It goes down to the edge of the stream, inclines its head, drinks water. A loud, sudden explosive noise. The creature reels off to one side, falls. Eyes wide. Blood runs from a large hole in its side.

  Caernarvon emerges from the bushes, dressed in green, his hat decorated with green sprigs, a leafy branch. A moment later a second man shows himself, carrying a Scovill Waterbury camera with a Darlot wide-angle lens mounted on a tripod.

  Caernarvon inspects the kill.

  The photographer silently arranges the camera.

  The hunter takes a pipe from his pocket: the carved head of an Indian chief. Stem in mouth. Smoke upcurling. Beneath the shade of Douglas firs: he puts one booted foot on the belly of the animal, puts the butt of his rifle, barrel upraised, against the thigh of the same leg.

  “Shoot,” he says. “Take the damned photo!”

  A sudden burst of bright and artificial light thrown briefly on the subject during exposure: momentary illumination.

  ———

  From an American picture book:

  Fig. 19

  June 14, 1894, Red Lodge, Montana

  The captain pulling out the heart of a grizzly bear.

  Fig. 20

  July 3, 1894, Hayden Valley, Wyoming

  The captain standing near a pile of buffalo heads. Before his arrival only about 750 bison were known to exist on the continent; afterwards the number was about 550.

  Fig. 21

  September 20, 1894, Santa Fe, New Mexico

  Caernarvon [broad grin / drunk on blood] harvesting a javelina.

  Fig. 22

  November 5, 1894, Orlando, Florida

  The captain squatting on head of monster alligator (16 feet and 7 inches from end to end).

  II.

  As a child, he was absurdly fond of killing insects—ants, beetles, butterflies—practically any little living thing that came within range of his heel, swatting distance of his hand. His favourite book was the Duke of York’s Maystre of Game, which he would pore over in the evenings, reading of tuskes above ben lowe and ywered off þe nether tuskes it is a tokne of a grete Boor. Young Caernarvon liked to skewer moths on pins, and set lizards on fire. Later, he fished, for chubs, with gilt-tailed worms for river trout. He hunted frogs with a long, spiked stick, or sometimes baited them with gall of goat, and then, like a French peasant, he would roast their legs over a fire of twigs. He took down doves, with his slingshot; and after ripping out their breasts with his bare hands, threw the still warm carcasses to his dogs. At the age of twelve he received his first gun, an E. M. Reilly muzzle-loading hammer gun, and with it shot a pair of fine deer, and blew out the brains of several heads of grazing cattle. As a punishment for the latter offence his father made him wear girls’ underclothing beneath his knickerbockers and jacket.

  III.

  Strong body. Tremendous voice. Determined sunburnt florid face. He had a huge moustache which jutted out from beneath his nose, reclining on thick lips. He looked like a bull elephant in rut. He was an excellent boxer and swordsman. He enjoyed running men through and shooting them in duels.

  He duelled a neighbouring landlord, a certain Thornton, who had shot one of his dogs: Early morning. Grass covered with dew. They met in a birch forest, each man accompanied by his seconds. A surgeon was in attendance. Weapon: swords.

  Counters and double counters. Caernarvon had a long arm. Straight thrust. Parry in tierce. Opponent remarkably cunning in fence, had spent a good deal of time in France. Disengagement. Coupé to the neighbour’s neck. Excited at the sight of blood, the captain made a vigorous and somewhat premature assault. His sword flew out of his hand. The landlord, grinning, leapt forward. Caernarvon stepped back, drew a pistol from his pocket.

  “A pistol?” said his enemy. “We were supposed to fight with swords. I did not bring my pistol!”

  “So much the worse for you,” the captain said. “You ought not to have bee
n such a damned idiot as to have left it at home.”

  And with those words he killed him, terminating the fight.

  “Pistols are not to be used except by mutual consent,” declared one of Thornton’s seconds.

  ———

  Bizarre duels:

  Knives strapped to foreheads: men peck like birds, gouge each other in a ridiculous spectacle.

  A duel with antique cannons (two 12 pdrs. cast by Perrier Frères) / frightful noise.

  . . . got up as gladiators . . . . . .

  IV.

  1. He married, a woman (Emma) a decent bit older than himself, of money.

  2. Said Reginald Wroth, referring to their time spent together in the Congo: “Though he took great pleasure in blood sport, he never did join the rest of us when we went raping the natives. Loved his Emma too much for that I suppose. . . . Yes, he was an . . . honourable man.”