Fourier’s chaste children were an invention of his age, a moral injunction of middle-class propriety. In medieval schools you could have seen little boys with rumpround taffy hair hiking up their smocks between grammar and noontide oatcakes, as it may be, to jiggle their stipes stiff and springy, the tips of their tongues like rose petals between their teeth. The best moralists said that such fleshly play was inevitable in children descended from Adam, and was not to be considered any more serious than giggling at Mass or vagueness in one’s grasp of the catechism. And you would have seen older, quadrivial youngsters with codpieces untied vying with each other in spattering the stable walls. The great doctor Gabrielus Fallopius accounted it useful, moreover, in lengthening the member and preparing it for its mature use in propagating the species.
Fourier’s harmony is designed to cause dissonances, or divergent energies, which is the subject of its constant watchfulness. Human nature is at all times both civilized and uncivilized. To keep it from feeding on the weakness of others, of using others’ despair as an advantage, there must be a common justice easily available. But first there must be the sense that we can agree what common justice is.
Mimi personati in the park, a girl in jeans and red shirt with a large United States flag wrapped around her, as toga or cape, a boy barefoot in jeans and unbuttoned tattersall vest over a naked torso, and another boy hooded and cloaked in a large tricolor of the Netherlands. All wore masks in the style of Art Deco shopwindow mannikins, blank of eye and inanely serene of mouth. The girl did the Standbeeld van Vrijheid that became, with a snap of her fingers and handclaps in jazz rhythm from the boys, a seductive dance. Jan interpreted: imperialism giving the glad eye to the sheepwitted European burgerklasse. The boy in the tattersall vest with histrionic boasts of his masculinity, did a forward roll, and waltzed with American Flag. Dutch Flag took a fetal position. Onzinnig! was the stout remark of a doublechinned woman, who then skewered Jan in his scantling slipje with a stare of schandaal, and looked daggers at me. Got one! Jan whispered, squeezing my hand. That the game, burgerschrik? He butted my arm for reply.
We staked a territory in the shoal of sunbathers. Hansje shimmied out of his jeans, Jan unslung his poche with a downslide of thumbs. Zo. The voice used for crowded open places is like no other. It finds the ears it wants. Ome Adriaan is schuw, Hansje teases, and is not about to go natural here as he does on his island.
Tsunami VI, Grand Hordes of the Vincent Willem van Goghfalanx, przhevalski mounted, een vloedgolf van zaad their motto. The hetman is eighteen, beamshouldered, hair a hummock of brassy silk sprucely swirled and trimly edged. He wears mulberry linen Chinese cavalry boots, a blue vest rich in badges and insignia patches open to the navel, white briefs scorched nutbrown in the pod. His merit badges are a golden scallop for fucking daily since fifteen, a brace of acorns for Spartan Friendships with agemates, chrysanthemum with leaf cluster for friendships both celadonian and erotic with elders, crossed Cupid’s bow and arrow for friendship with minors, silver crotchet for his piano sonata in B Flat, bronze ladle for a potato and leek soup made for the Sodality of Poets and Geographers on Founder’s Day, panpipe in walnut for his Frisian Eclogues, Olympic medals for swimming, the javelin, running, and the pole vault, enamel palette for second prize in landscape painting, red sunburst for charm in conversation, phallus erectus with ejaculum jettant for a Midsummers Day when he offered as an exercise in Composite Harmonics a display of squash and beans at the early market after waking and kissing all sixty striplings of the Little Bands and Hordes attached to his comitatus, mouth, bellybutton, and genitals, captaining his soccer team in a match after reveille, sitting with the Council at its weekly session, playing the clarinet in an afternoon concert, chairing the Philosophy Club, preparing a dinner for friends, and six exploits of gallantry, the first with Belinda of his whirlwind before the soccer match, classical tumble with full foreplay, throbbing deep orgasm, and silly talk afterwards, kisses, hugs, and gossip, the second with Carolus before the Council meeting, a dusty and wiggly soixante-neuf under a laurel bush in the Pare Floral, the third with Daisy, who was fond of blonde teenaged girls with athletic interests but who had a weakness for strapping young men like our captain from time to time, a frolic in a bed frilled with lace and chintz, the foreplay longer and more elaborate than the coupling, eighteen orgasms by finger and tongue but one only while being tupped, the fourth with Erasmus, a corporal with carroty hair, a spray of freckles across his face, capacious thorax, terse waist, a top-heavy dick, and rowdy smile, after the concert at the barracks of the Sparticate redolent of armpit, sperm, and socks, swimming pool and wrestling floor, the fifth with Clementine after the Philosophy Club, a jouvencelle with beautiful eyes and high breasts, an accomplished sensualist whose style in bed was a topic for long quaggarides, one lover praising her nimble rhythms, another her versatility, another her wit and generosity, the sixth and last, a valiant harmonian coup de maître with a faunlet named Rutger, longflanked, big-eared and ten, who had declared his fancy through Corporal Erasmus, who got the consent of the Directorate of Good Taste, which issued its indulgence after considering that Rutger had seduced his every agemate, both Band and Horde, outjacked every challenger in duration and repetition, and was inordinately pretty, a pairing in barracks, with onlookers invited by Rutger.
9 FRUCTIDOR
We agree to an isonomy of continuous visual field for the second floor, and oningehouden en onbeperkt tactility and affection. Grietje writes this in crayon on a postersize card, different color for each word. There are indeed no doors to shut between the two bedroom spaces at each end of the long center room. Shall we have Bruno remove these two partial walls? Not everybody’s us, Sander says. We’ve promised the Liberated Badgers a cozy corner that’s always theirs. Ask them, Grietje says. Unrestricted is unrestricted, say I. The cabin has no divisions of space: we have inhabited that territory. We will have five levels: roof garden and sundeck, Sander’s studio, our bedroom in its unboundaried three parts, Adriaan’s studio and library, and the kitchen below.
Imagination chilled by apprehension, apprehension relaxed by imagination.
Admire the angle of his fly, says Sander of a nubbinnosed sprout of a Swede in De Volkskrant hugging his sweetly dippy sister and their croodling peuter on the occasion of their marriage by a liberal and practical judge, and the glimpse of zipper at the prod. We’re not, says Grietje, moving to Sweden. So they sunbathe naked and marry brother and sister. They’re also buttermilk-fed lunks and bores and alcoholics and walk around bumping into things, chronically depressed. What’s worse, they sing folksongs.
10 FRUCTIDOR
To Strodekker’s house in Uilenbos. I had fixed him in my mind as a Weimar intellectual in his mid thirties, abundant dark brown hair brushed straight back, an enthusiast and crank under the eye of the ss for deportation. Check shirt, grey sweater, narrow blue slacks, good shoes, eyes too wide open. He was, instead, a younger man, early thirties, sunbrowned olive umber, eyelashes sooty black and seemingly inked by Modigliani around large aniline blue eyes. Coal-black hair in a boyish cut. The face of an Etruscan god of adolescence, or Balkan military hero whose death devastates a whole population and gives rise to a hundred-stanza ballad. Eyes are too wide open, but in idealistic good humor rather than fanaticism. Shook my hand with both of his at the door. In a room with many glass doors looking out onto a garden enclosed by a high brick wall he introduced me first of all to his sons Nils 13 and Tobias 11, charmers both. Nils sunripened at beaches, in cocky short blue pants, rugger shirt, his father’s black hair saucily run wild and ruffled, eyes amiable, witty, and gentle. Tobias in snug kneelength nautical pants, white middy, full head of amber-brown hair, waggish smile, chipper dimples. They shook hands, both, nothing shy. Dokter Roelof Groenvink, psychiatrist at the Gemeentekliniek for disturbed children. Warm handshake, effusive greeting. Olaf, about eighteen, autochthonously Danish, blond hair in eyes, full-lipped, flat-cheeked, in jeans and pullover with an Art Deco decal, the Gemini t
wins encircled by the words Paedofil Frihedskaemper, a wzw button on the slope of a hummocked pectoral. Spoke to me in English, saying it was an honor to meet me. Gymnast? I asked, feeling free in such company to shape in the air the contours of his narrow hips and wide shoulders. O ja, he said, and weights and swimming. A young printer named Joris Oudveld with black close-cropped curls like a sheep growing back nicely after being shorn, stockier but with as wrought a physique as Olaf, the grace of a soccer wing in his walk. Elsa Boonwijn, smartly feminine, good legs, Athena’s nose, fingernails trimmed round and short. Welcome, she said with a laugh, to the most revolutionary group in all the Netherlands. A bearded photographer with an eagle’s nose, thirtyish, English cap on the back of his head, leather jacket, grundgy jeans, Ulric Kuller by name, German, from Düsseldorf.
Strodekker a history and geography master at the Conrad Busken Huetschool, bijzondere. Coffee handed around, pleasantries exchanged in so congenial a room, Master Tobias, with compliant if ironic good nature, stood with shuffling patience while his father stripped him mothernaked, brown as a gingersnap, his suikerpot knippen topping his elvish slenderness in the lively flesh as that of the museum copy of a Pommier Chaillot boy in a corner of the room, the Despiau adolescent in another. They had, Strodekker said, been photographing Tobias in the garden with Olaf and Nils, and that we ought to keep him around au naturel to be, as it were, our presiding daimon. Blinking in acknowledgment of his daimon’s status, whatever the fuck, his scrooged shoulders said, that might be, Tobias palmed two cookies and an orange slice, and went to sit astride Olaf’s thigh and to arch his back against Olaf’s hand kneading his back.
Strodekker, nodding to Nils that yes, he could be excused to go out, outlined their goals, distinguishing factional disagreements with similar organizations. What freedoms, and to what extent, were morally due the young and the very young. He himself had taken up the movement, he and Dokter Groenvink, because of the infuriatingly repressive restraints imposed on children forbidden any sensuality whatsoever. Pamphlets, lectures, films, study groups with parents and teachers. Psychological studies, theories, arguments. Great strides, of course, since the war, and astounding progress since the last century, especially in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, but still everything yet to do. In Germany there’s a squabble between those who go no further than an early acceptance of our sexual nature and the radicals who want to include children in the full spectrum of sexuality, ardently, passionately, and, as they say with German wit, below the belt. A grin from Tobias. La Boonwijn spoke of sensitivity, of the love of which children are so capable, of honesty, of beautiful friendships between boys, and between girls, of smooth rather than traumatic transitions from childhood to adolescence, as in Polynesia. Groenvink spoke of security, reciprocity, sophistication, communication, moral awareness, giving and taking, erotic sophistication. Olaf, rather ostentatiously caressing Tobias, who was making a joke of caressing back, explained the vast leap ahead of the Danes, clubhouses, outings, camping, magazines, a newspaper, articles in the regular press, manuals, posters, buttons. Films to show to interested groups. He parked Tobias in Oudveld’s lap and, limping cautiously to make fun of the prominent ridge across his groin, fetched me a portfolio of brochures, clippings, posters, some cranky, some done with taste, all bold. Oudveld, addressing me as professor, and stammering, said that he was the radical of the lot, as well as the proletarian, and further felt that any present, always excepting Tobias the Red here, whose peter he squeezed, and that regardless of the humanity of it all, the struggle of the oppressed against bigotry, the nasty superstitions of the bourgeoisie in their arrogant ignorance and stupid propriety, we must gross out the meanminded prigs with the basic fact that kids are, goddank, sexy. He stammered dreadfully, and blushed, and looked pleadingly for understanding. His hand forgot Tobias, who guided it back. Professor van Hovendaal, he plunged on, is probably thinking of the Anthology of the Greeks, and Else of het Ideaal, and Roelof of mens sana in corpore sano, and Godfried of nobly affectionate boys and girls, but for the kids it’s whether they’re in a moral concentration camp or free to love and be loved. Right ho, said Tobias, in English. More talk, more theorizing. The most I hope I agreed to is to address their group on Fourier’s blueprints for childhood in the New Harmony. Warm gratitude, and prompted by Olaf, a kiss on the corner of the mouth from Master Tobias, whom I picked up and kissed on the navel, for good measure. Joris Oudveld left with me, anxious to talk.
A cap, like Lenin’s, the tread of a pard. He wanted me to know, Joris Oudveld, that he believes in truth, social justice, and beauty. He said schoonheid with a stutter, and after a quick questioning look. He has, he wanted me to know, an extensive paperback library, works out in a gym, plays on the company soccer team, and is an admirer of the finer sensibilities. Is trying to teach himself to appreciate classical music, has a room of his own, is treasurer of his workers’ solidarity. Loves nature, in which he takes meditative and appreciative walks when he can. Did I know that was Lenin’s ideal for the worker? To appreciate nature, like a poet. Longs to be able to speak correctly. Would I help him, some? He doesn’t waste his time, not him. Others, lacking idealism, might squander their leisure time mindlessly, not him. Thought Bertolucci’s 1900 the best film ever made, and had I seen the Danish film Du Er Ikke Alene? The rich make him furious, ill, out of all patience. Exploit is all they can do. He loved going to Strodekker’s, the most cultivated and civilized home he’d ever been in. His whole life had changed, and this recently, since he’d joined the Cause, a truly revolutionary group, didn’t I think? The barricades of liberty! He’ll be nineteen his next birthday. This was only his second time at Strodekker’s. Hoped he hadn’t overstepped himself in his remarks or in squeezing Tobias’ wizzle, the little sexpot. Olaf he’d met only today. He’ll be showing films. Would I come see them?
11 FRUCTIDOR
A naked man on a naked horse is a very fine spectacle. I had no idea how well the two animals suited each other. As the peons were galloping about they reminded me of the Elgin marbles. Darwin’s notebooks, Argentina 1833.
Sander, the agent of chaos, is suddenly a fanatic in ordering both time and space. He and Grietje draw plans of every room. His studio is to be like Klee’s, like Mondriaan’s, like Corbusier’s. Back to the Shakers! Gerrit Rietveld! Our time is to be in segments we can control: meals at regular times, exercise, walks, conversations. Only work and love are to be without form, to be initiated and prolonged by inspiration.
Kaatje, dear soul, it is not that the past can’t be changed. It will not cease changing. How I have sat in the island’s meadow this summer, watching dancing gnats, butterflies with winking wings, and, thrilled to the quick, two thumbsized black-eyed fieldmice fucking, high summer holding its finest light and sturdiest green, and parted your thighs again, and put my animal soul deep into you to find my human soul again. Your eyes know what’s in my inwardness, and no one else knows. That is our lovely secret.
Space, its flow in a house. Its territorial character, a metaphor of freedom, security, privacy. Windows are for the French to look out of, for the Dutch to look in, for Italians to talk through. Sander howls that he grew up in houses with doors closed, too many walls. He wants to see in all directions.
Don’t you love me? he says. Now that I have Grietje to love, like to idiotic foolish happiness, I know that I love you, too. I’m not afraid of that. I’ve loved you, I think, from the time you couldn’t be bothered to think of me as raised wrong, a headache to good old Dokter Tomas, a disgrace to my parents. Nothing to do with me, you said cheerfully. You wanted boards sawn and sawn straight, and treated, O God, with creosote. It was days before you parted with so much as a grump of approval. What a bastard, I told myself, but a bastard who knows what he wants, and one who doesn’t meddle into my fucked-up past. You showed me how to drive a nail and to chisel and to sink a screw and bore true with the brace and bit. You muttered in strange languages, Greek I think, and swore in German and English. I’d never met
anybody like you at all. You hurt my feelings. But in making me respect a straight line, a nail placed just right, things squared away, neat, you put me back together. We built a cabin that summer, and we built one Sander.
Sander to make us a copy of Gerald Murphy’s Wasp and Pear (1929) for the living-room wall. Ozenfant in the spirit of De Stijl, and wonderfully by an Irish-American painting in France.
Grietje for all her rhetoric of liberation and Bohemian airs has a huisvrouw’s animosity toward motes and microbes. She says that although I undoubtedly plucked Sander from the gutter and found the gold beneath the grime, I deserve a statue in the park for making him hang up his clothes, put the towel on the rack, and change his underwear before it looks like a Honderdjarenoorlog fieldkitchen dishcloth.
The greatest achievement of civilization may be detaching the individual from culture to function as a contemplative and creative force. Civilization ought to ensure freedom, and culture security. To be there when wanted, to be ground and a nourishment, but not a hindrance, as both have proved to be. This balance is the most difficult, most delicate of cultural structures. By such detachments we got Darwin, Balzac, Beethoven. Many interesting private people. People who do not exploit, who are not parasites.
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