by John Hawkes
The rest is obvious, as most stories are. And yet there was indeed a certain mounting excitement, because first it was necessary for each girl, to locate her carrot, a process in which all three initially employed merely their good will, their innocence, their straining young bodies (fixed to the rough planks at the knees), the entirety of their groping faces. But as the game wore on, marked by waves of clapping and held breaths, one by one the girls began to intuit what was required of them, began to discover within themselves an abandon which they could not possibly have known until now. That is, they began to grope for the tips of the carrots with their open mouths, with their bright, red, girlish lips now puckered into an oval shape, or at last and skillfully enough began to fish desperately for the fat carrots with their glistening tongues. In all this there was a good deal of tension and comedy, as noses buffeted carrots or a flushed cheek accidentally knocked one of the great orange creatures quite beyond reach. The girls swayed and rose and fell on their spread knees; the carrots swayed in wild circles; the two men became more pressing as pilots, so to speak, of the now hot and sightless girls. Yes, Lulu was devoting all his efforts to Chantal while the accordianist, poor fellow, was obliged to divide his attentions between the other two now frantic girls. Of course it was only too apparent that Lulu and his assistant were attempting to guide their charges toward possession of the unobliging carrots not only with whispered words but with hands that were momentarily visible on a wet and tender shoulder and then, for long periods, were quite invisible in what could only have been their impatient grip on the seat of one of the pairs of tight blue demin pants. The accordianist was not at all in sympathy with his own two awkward girls while Lulu, on the other hand, appeared to be gaining impressive, delicate control over our remarkably responsive Chantal. The black, pointed tip of his shoe was visible between her knees, he crouched behind her like a ventriloquist manipulating an erotic doll.
Well, the admirable young contestants searched in vain, caught the tips of the carrots between eager lips, screamed joyously, thereby once again losing the prize. The carrots began to glisten, the denim pants grew predictably shaded with perspiration, the girls cried out in glee or in a childish mockery of frustration. We of the audience applauded whenever a carrot was successfully trapped, we moaned when that same carrot bobbed away.
You know the rest: the object of the game, which was merely the clever excuse for its existence, was to eat the carrot. And while the two other girls nibbled and tossed themselves about and even shed pretty tears, it was Chantal, of course, who finally understood the game and slowly, sinuously, drew the carrot between her lips and sucked, chewed, reaching always upward with her small lovely face, until the deed was quite beautifully done.
Can you see the hollow cheeks? The tendons in the youthful neck? The traces of smeared lipstick on the now devoured carrot? I am sure you can.
Well, Lulu untied the blindfold and, perspiring himself, lifted our happy Chantal to her bare feet to receive her ovation. And that, of course, is how Chantal became the Queen of Carrots. It was only the next day that she found courage enough to go for the first time bare-breasted to the beach where she spent the morning as well as the afternoon exerting herself in one of the old, white, cumbersome paddleboats. Her companion in the paddleboat was, as you will have guessed, none other than the notorious Lulu. It was plain to Honorine and me that Chantal had quite overcome her shyness and that the gigantic Lulu was enjoying to the full this first day with his little pink and amber Queen.
So you think that my brain is sewn with the sutures of your psychosis. So that’s what you think. But how very like you to require not a single last resort but two. And if you will remember, I knew it was coming sooner or later, this double-bladed effort first to persuade me of my own psychological distraction, if that is the term, and second to entice me back to sanity, as only you could express the idea, with promises of repose, forgiveness, your imminent departure, the everlasting adoration of my wife and daughter. Of course I understand that you have no alternative but to lay at my door this your actual last resort. As I have said already, it is my opinion that you publicized and glamorized excessively those few months in which you gave yourself over to the sullen immobility of the mental patient. But I am sympathetic. I am well aware that in that short time they so sutured the lobes of your brain with designs of fear and hopelessness that the threads themselves emerged from within your skull to travel in terrible variety down the very flesh of your face, pinching, pulling, and scoring your hardened skin as if they, your attendants, had been engaged not in psychological but surgical disfigurement. I appreciate all this. I regret that you were so abused and that you took such dreadful pleasure in the line that cracked your eye, cleft your upper lip, stitched the unwholesome map of your brain to the mask of your face. But we must remember that we are talking not about me but you. What I have just been saying applies to you but not to me. Despite my theory of likenesses, as I have called it, you are simply not to think that your former derangement has reappeared in me and, at present, is driving all three of us to what the authorities define as death by unnatural causes. I believe that if you have been listening you will have heard in my words the dying breath of your own irrationality, not mine.
Concentrate, cher ami. Concentrate. Because I know already that I am “adored” by wife and daughter. It would never occur to me to wish for your “imminent departure.” After all, cher ami it is I who chose you to be present with me tonight. But on the last point I am even more confident: you and I would always shun “repose” even if it in fact existed and were not merely the phantom of all who refuse to present themselves to the stillness of the open gate.
But now she is dreaming. Yes, if my calculations are in the least reliable, we are now approximately seven minutes from Tara where the lady of the dark chateau lies dreaming. Honorine was always uncomfortable when, no matter how rarely, I applied to her that romantic epithet. But of course you are not burdened with her clear integrity and charming modesty, cher ami. So tonight I shall indulge myself for the last time and speak of Honorine, my wife, as the lady of the dark chateau. And yet the sleeping rooks; the magnificent shutters drawn closed and only somewhat in need of repair; the stables long ago converted to a garage which, this moment, houses one blue automobile instead of the usual blue car and the beige; the oak tree as bare and formidable as the chateau itself; the stately dog that lies beside the mammoth bed not for protection but for the sake of elegance and love; the amorous grace of the sleeper who earlier dined alone and then at a late hour undressed for bed without fear, without suspicion, and with only a few agreeable thoughts of us. . . . Doesn’t all this justify in a way my romantic epithet? The glass of water on the nightstand, the slender volume closed but marked with a ribbon, the sound of breathing, the eyes which, if opened, would be serene —these at least justify my epithet, cher ami. But now I must tell you that despite our proximity, despite the fact that we have indeed appeared at the edge of her slumbering consciousness, still Honorine is not dreaming of our approaching car but of a flock of sheep. Let me explain.
One early afternoon, within hours, it seemed to me, of that moment when I conceived of the journey you and Chantal and I were shortly to take—I am being as honest as I possibly can—Honorine and I were walking in one of the distant, rocky fields adjoining Tara. You, I believe, had accompanied Chantal to her riding lesson. The afternoon was fair, the sun was warm, Honorine and I were walking so closely together among the rocks that we brushed shoulders, touched each other hip to hip or hand to hand, pleasantly and unintentionally. A tree far to the west was as small and bright as a golden toy. The rocks were like prehistoric signs to our suede boots. And then Honorine stopped us short and pointed. Because there, just ahead of us, the rocks appeared to be moving while the air was suddenly filled with a music of bells which Honorine, under her breath, described as a kind of heavenly Glockenspiel, though in fact she has always been quite as irreligious as her head of the household.
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Well, it was a flock of sheep, of course, and we were caught in its midst. Honorine smiled; the tinkling and caroling of the bells increased; a thrush was in flight; for no reason at all the two of us turned and looked back at Tara which, in that soft light was far away and empty and both majestic and shabby, exactly as it had always been and as we wanted it to be. A place of comfort, mystery, privacy, as you surely know. But it was then while the sheep were rippling and purling about our legs (I noted that Honorine was not much interested in the baby lambs, being her typically unsentimental self), it was then and for no reason that I could discern, that Honorine ran her fingers through her short, blonde hair streaked with gray and, keeping a slight distance apart from me, smiled up at my face and began to speak. Without preliminaries and in her clear, quiet way she said that she thought you and I were both a little out of our heads. She said that we were selfish, that we were hurtful, and that she did not trust either one of us. But then she laughed and said that she loved us both, however, and was willing and capable of paying whatever price the gods, in return, might eventually demand of her for loving us both.
You will know how I felt. But may I point out that not once have you raised the question of cruelty or advanced the argument that my insistence on suicide and murder—at this juncture let us be honest— may reflect nothing more than my secret desire to punish eternally the lady of the dark chateau, as I may now call her without impunity? Well, allow me to advance precisely that neglected argument of yours and provide an answer as well.
It is cruel. Could anyone know better than I how cruel it is? Yes, what I am doing is cruel, but it is not motivated by cruelty. There is a difference. And who better than I should know that it is in fact motivated by quite the opposite? These are my reasons: first, Honorine is now more “real” to you, to me, than she has ever been; second, when she recovers, at last, she will exercise her mind in order to experience in her own way what we have known; but third and most important, months and years beyond her recovery, Honorine will know with special certainty that just as she was the source of your poems, so too was she the source of my private apocalypse. It was all for her. And such intimate knowledge is worth whatever price the gods may demand, as she herself said. No, cher ami, Honorine is a person of great strength. Sooner or later she will understand.
So you see the importance of a woman’s dream and a flock of belled sheep.
But I have promised you a glimpse of the formative event of my early manhood. It was nothing, really, though I suppose that in retrospect all of the formative or most highly prized events of our days fade until they no longer have any shape or consequence. At any rate this particular event was the simplest of that entire store which at one time or another defined me, thrilled me, convinced me of the validity of the fiction of living, but which I have now forgotten. I will be brief. A few lines and you will have it.
The automobile, a bright green, was large enough only for two, and I was alone. The street was wide but the hour was such that the crowds, composed mostly of children, were jostling each other from the curbs. I was driving quickly, too quickly, in my desire to visit Honorine, whom I hardly knew. The old man, bewhiskered and wearing a bright silk cravat and carrying a furled umbrella, though the sun was such that it could not possibly have rained that day, was unmistakably one of your kind, which is to say an old poet. From the first instant I saw him he irritated me immensely, holding by the hand, as he surely was, a child more astounding than any I had ever seen.
I remember the car, which was powerful despite its size; I remember the street precisely because I was so uninterested in it; I remember the old poet because at the very moment I noticed him I saw that he was gripping the child’s hand in lofty possessiveness and was already staring directly into my eyes with shocking anger. But most of all I remember the child. She was a waif with dark hair, dark eyes, an ingenuous little heart-shaped face filled with uncanny trustfulness and simple beauty. She was wearing a crudely knitted stocking cap with a tassel and a small once-discarded leather coat so old that it was scarred with white cracks. I marveled at the child and yet detested the old man who was already raising his brows, opening his mouth in fury, drawing back the child as if he could read in my face the character of a young man who would regard such a poor and sacred child, as the old man would think of her, with indifference or even disrespect.
I accelerated. I saw the tassel flying. The old poet’s face was a mass of rage and his umbrella was raised threateningly above his head. I felt nothing, not so much as a hair against the fender, exactly as if the child had been one of tonight’s rabbits. I did not turn around or even glance in the rear-view mirror. I merely accelerated and went my way.
I do not believe I struck that little girl. In retrospect it does not seem likely. And yet I will never know. Perhaps the privileged man is an even greater criminal than the poet. At any rate I shall never forget the face of the child.
What’s that? What’s that you say? Can I have heard you correctly? Imagined life is more exhilarating than remembered life . . . Is that what you said? Imagined life is more exhilarating than remembered life. Can it be true?
But then you agree, you understand, you have submitted after all, Henri! And listen, even your wheezing has died away.
But now I must tell you, Henri, that if you reached your hand inside my jacket pocket nearest to you—an action I would not advise you to attempt despite a moment’s gift of agreement—your fingers would discover there a scrap of paper on which, if removed from the pocket and held low to the lights of our dashboard, you would find in my own handwriting these two lines:
Somewhere there still must be
Her face not seen, her voice not heard.
Do you recognize them? They are yours, naturally, and give us the true measure of your poetry. And I may say it now, Henri, I am extremely fond of these two lines. I might even have written them myself.
But look there. We have passed Tara. And we failed to note the lantern. And now it is gone.
Chantal . . . Papa has not forgotten you, Chantal!
But now I make you this promise, Henri: there shall be no survivors. None.
by john hawkes
Charivari (in Lunar Landscapes)
The Cannibal
The Beetle Leg
The Goose on the Grave (& The Owl
The Owl
The Lime Twig
Second Skin
The Innocent Party (plays)
Lunar Landscapes (stories & short novels)
The Blood Oranges
Death, Sleep & the Traveler
Travesty
Virginie: Her Two Lives
The Passion Artist
Humors of Blood & Skin: A John Hawkes Reader
Copyright © 1976 by John Hawkes
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: Portions of this book first appeared in Fiction and Tri-Quarterly, to whose editors grateful acknowledgement is made. The epigraphic passages to this work are quoted from Michel Leiris’ Manhood: a Journey from Childhood into the Fierce Order of Virility (Copyright © 1963 by Grossman Publishers), translated by Richard Howard and published by Grossman Publishers, and Albert Camus’ The Fall (Copyright © 1956 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.), translated by Justin O’Brien and Published by Random House, Inc.
First published as New Directions Paperbook 430 in 1977
Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited
eISBN 978-0-8112-2235-8
Designed by Gertrude Huston
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
By New Directions Publishing Corporation,
80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
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