The Müller-Fokker Effect

by John Sladek

  Methuselah, despite the suspect’s newly sprouting short gray hair, guessed his age accurately, but anyway awarded him a keychain containing a drop of the Red Sea in plastic. You could tell it was real because it was bright red. The man ate a double-dip cone of Manna Whip, a 100 % Certified Beef Quailburger and two Pillar-of-Fire Candy Flosses. Declining to let ‘Joseph’ read his fortune in the Ark of the Covenant (not all pitches were strictly chronistic) he headed for New Testament Land.

  It began with a large Crêche at the entrance, with life-size moving figures. Mary smiled, Joseph turned to look, the shepherds genuflected, and so on. The ox moaned at regular intervals.

  ‘A real wise guy,’ said the attendant later to the two cops. ‘He ast me if the cow was having a baby.’

  In the Pavilion of Miracles, a magician in wig and beard walked on water, turned water into wine-colored liquid, and after disappearing from a locked casket, reappeared in the audience with a collection plate. The suspect gave generously.

  Passing down the New Testament midway, he was invited to look at Herod’s Holy Innocents (formerly a ‘Story of Life’ exhibit of pickled foeti), to throw the first baseball at an adultress, and to visit Pilate’s Chamber of Atrocities.

  Among the thousands of devotional items for sale were rubber crowns of thorns (some with cardboard sun visors), Veronica dishtowels, mustard seeds, ‘Paul in prison’ interlocking puzzles, marionettes, souvenir scourges. He bought everything he saw, and gorged himself on sugar skulls, hot-cross buns, pretzels, chocolate nails and apostle haloes, though he’d scarcely had time to digest his first Eden apple.

  Apostle haloes were donuts sold in individual bags, each stamped with the name of an apostle.

  ‘Get ’em all,’ said the vendor. ‘Get ’em all and get a prize. Get all twelve, you get a prize.’ More than one poor visitor had stuffed himself to vomiting, eating as many as twenty without having been warned there were two Jameses.

  The suspect rode the St John Desertmobile, the Galilee speedboat, and allowed himself to be glued to the wall (by centrifugal force) of the chalice for a few moments. In the Garden of Gethsemane Chug-A-Lug contest he drained the cup and was awarded Peter’s victim’s rubber ear. Then on to Crucifixion.

  He escalated to the top of Calvary, passing on the way a figure in a white robe. Drawn slowly upward by a buried cable, it made mechanical toiling gestures under its huge cross. At the top there were more diversions: dicing for Crusade T-shirts; a photography studio where figures with heads cut out portrayed all fourteen stations of the cross, enabling one to take any part in any scene; and the main event, shortened from the original three hours to twenty minutes, and played out in a big tent by mechanical figures.

  ‘Show’s about to start, brothers and sisters, any minute. On the inside, the one show you cannot miss. Show’s about to start any minute. See it all, acted by living audioanimatrons.’

  The barker paused to ask the suspect for his ticket. ‘Two bucks, bub.’

  The man gestured over his shoulder with a thumb. ‘He paid,’ he said, and shoved on through the wicket. The barker looked for the payer and saw no one, only the figure in white. Having toted its cross to the top, it was being backed down again.

  The two Crusade cops looked at each other. ‘He slipped in? Well I guess we got enough on him, then. Where is he now?’

  ‘It’s real funny. I seen him go in,’ said the barker. ‘But I didn’t see him come out.’

  ‘Okay, then. We might as well check out Heaven and Hades.’

  Hades Land was run by the management of ‘Harry’s Hollywood Happening’. It masqueraded as a respectable restaurant with demonized waiters, red lighting and many flambée specialités. But once a customer had entered—and abandoned hope by means of signing a waiver—it became a painfully elaborate fun house.

  A polite demon led the suspect to his table and held his chair for him. The chair had no back legs. Another demon waiter rushed out with a plate of rubber food.

  The stranger seemed to take it all good-naturedly. No one laughed harder than he when his table proved to be topless, and he saw his dinner sink out of sight in the folds of the tablecloth. Nor when a pair of waiters whipped off the red cloth, tucked it around his neck and began giving him a haircut. Nor when they snipped off his tie and one sleeve of his suit.

  Baffled and angry, they gave up on him and concentrated on more likely targets. A woman’s dress blew up, a table collapsed. There were screams as a waiter uncovered a dish of live squid; elsewhere diners made the mistake of ordering the special chili. Still laughing, the stranger headed for the door.

  ‘Just a minute, sir,’ said the headwaiter. ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ He held out the check.

  The stranger laughed again. ‘That’ll be fourteen dollars, sir,’ the headwaiter insisted, and his seriousness seemed to delight the man in dark glasses even. more. He held out his empty billfold, laughing. Laughing harder, be began the laborious process of transferring prizes and souvenirs from one hand to the other. Still laughing, he then seized the check and impaled it on one of the headwaiter’s horns.

  They tried to kick him, but he ran too fast.

  Heaven Land was a genuine night club and restaurant of quality, set into a dwarf replica of the cathedral of Notre Dame. The floor was nearly full-scale, but the roof had been lowered to a comfortable height of fifteen feet, and other dimensions harmoniously warped.

  Walls and table linen were eyeshadow blue, and ornaments had been plated with yellow metal. The waitresses wore pink and white to match the cloud-pattern carpet, and they glided about so softly on it that patrons could catch every bounce of the Melodiak background. The music, specially written for this place by a writer of successful musical comedies, was designed to uplift without spoiling the digestive processes. Even more soothing was the sound of the baptismal font, gurgling something that looked like liquid gold.

  Into Heaven Land stormed an asymmetric wild man in a tattered suit, around his neck a red tablecloth from Hades Land, half his hair cropped. Customers and angels looked up as he brushed the maitre d’ aside, bending his halo.

  ‘Sir, have you a res…’

  ‘I want to see the Head Man! Where is He? Got a message for Him, been working on it for three days!’

  ‘Sir, if you’ll just…’

  ‘GAWD! GAWD!’ He lurched to the center of the dining room, the nave, and stood looking about. He was sweating, and patches of his hair clung to his forehead and to the red cloth, ‘GAWWWWD!’ One lense of his sunglasses was missing, and a fierce blue eye glared through the rhinestone rim.

  ‘WHERE ARRRRE YOU?’

  Then he saw the pulpit. Before the angels could stop him, he leapt the plush rope and scrambled up the steps.

  ‘Brothers and sisters, GAWD is not with us here today.’ He paused to slip on a rubber crown of thorns. The Red Sea keychain was entangled with it, and hung near his forehead like a bouncy droplet of blood. At the base of the pulpit an angel dialed a white telephone and hysterically spoke to the Crusade cops.

  ‘My sermon today is addressed to you and to GAWD, Gawd rest his soul. Taken from the Flying Roll as revealed to Joe Jezreel: “To be a stranger is to be called, chosen and elect.” ’ He shook out Veronica’s veil and draped it over the front of the lectern. From a tiny scap of paper he read:

  ‘I my speak leak as has a the stranger manger. Stranger manger still will are bar many any stories glories about without Jesus Ceasahs. Some come say may that splat he me…was because conceived believed of love the a Holy goalie Ghost post, born torn out about of above the a Virgin sturgeon Mary dairy, suffered buffered from some Pontius conscious Pilate, eyelet, died fried, was because buried married, rose froze again amen on upon the a third curd day whey, and sand ascended blended to into Heaven leaven.

  ‘Others mothers brothers say may bray he me be was muss buzz conceived misbelieved bereaved by my belie this miss bliss Holy moley be lowly Ghost most boast upon moron baton that mat bat Virgin mergi
n’ burgeon Mary marry bury, lashed mashed bashed by my bye P.P. M.M. B.B., died bide misguide upon moron baton the ma ba cross moss boss, was moss because buried married berried, and mand band that mat bat he me be rose morose bestows in margin bin three me bee days maize baize, but mutt butt they may bay deny misery belie he me be ascended mended bended.

  ‘Tho som know God’s son of Holy Ghost got, of not-fork’d Mom born, flogg’d, got on cross, sod plot on top of body, so loft’d on to God & so forth; not so for body on top of sod. No, God’s son stood not.

  ‘Still diff’ring wits think…’

  No one seemed to get the point of his sermon. Some went on eating, some thought he was drunk and some wondered if this were part of the floor show.* The Crusade cops (who now collared him, dragged him out in the desert well away from the sight of Bibleland, and beat and kicked him for half an hour) were of the opinion that he was speaking in Tongues.

  There was no use sitting around waiting for the lawsuits to come pouring in, the directors reasoned. Next morning after the Auditorium Incident they met at Headquarters.

  All regular work had been suspended. The great neon cross on the roof (with its slogan, RELIEF IN CHRIST) was unlighted. Marilyn Temblor was out of a job. She allowed the curly-haired bible student to take her to a nearby golf course and feel her breasts for an unexciting hour.

  The press hung around the closed-door conference all morning. From time to time an ashen-faced director came out and declined to say whether the Crusade would march on or not. One was off to the Deeper Life Convention at Lourdes, one was flying direct to Mexico City, to help organize Radio Free Will.

  The first vice-president, Dr Paen, was the only one who finally remained in the country. He moved to Washington and began a syndicated column, Dr Norm Understands. Readers were requested to ‘send in your problems, accompanied by a five dollar contribution and a snapshot for Dr Norm to pray over.’

  He advocated punishment. ‘Don’t be afraid to whip your child,’ he wrote. ‘God wasn’t slow to punish those He loved most. So-called psychologists tell you to spare the rod and darn the consequences, but I say those men need a good thrashing themselves!

  ‘Trust God’s methods. Whipping not only builds character and improves the circulation, it is the sincerest form of prayer.’

  Dr Normal Paen was lynched during the Washington Riot.

  Fifteen

  ‘Now wait.’ Bradd threw a friendship arm around her shoulders. ‘Before you say no, hear me out. First, what do you do all week? Ten, twenty hours on the set, and four more learning your part, right? And what do you do the rest of the time?’ He made her sit with him on the edge of his Din-Din box desk. ‘Be honest, now.’

  ‘Oh…nothing much, really…’

  ‘You mope around the house. You fiddle around with drugs—don’t deny it, I can see the signs. But there’s something else you do, babe.

  ‘You age. And that’s a problem. We can’t use you up any faster than we’re going right now; how do we know what kind of commercials to make for next year? But at the rate we’re going, you’ll be too old in maybe ten, fifteen years. I mean, face it, pal, nobody needs granny love.

  ‘But on the freeze you can stay the same age for as much as a hundred and thirty hours a week! That means fifteen years from now you’ll be about three years older than you are now. Hell, by the time I’m a hundred you’ll only be forty-eight!’

  ‘It’s hard to think, Bradd. I know…’

  ‘Wait. Don’t make up your mind today, keed. We all know you’ve been in a slump; we’ve all been pulling for you, the whole team. But look at it this way—this is a chance to get away from your problems for awhile. It’s the kind of Nirvana that keeps you young while you get richer. While this…’

  He dug in her purse and came up with a bottle of pills. ‘This is the other kind of Nirvana. Richer? Yes, we’ll pay your salary while you’re in there. And the company undertakes to pay for the freezing itself, and keep up payments on anything you’ve got going, like keeping your kid in school—now what could be fairer?’

  ‘Undertakes,’ she said distantly. ‘That’s appropriate.’

  ‘Ha haha haha, Bette, you’re a born comic. Okay, I say no more, think it over and let me know by this time tomorrow. Oh, before you go, there’s something else I’d like to show you, in the studio.’

  Part of the kitchen set had been pushed back, leaving a blank patch of white wall. A projector TV unit stood by. Bradd dimmed the lights and switched on a test pattern.

  ‘Our new TOTAL commercial,’ he said. ‘Some of the boys thought it would be fun to see what would happen if we tried selling you, and everything you stand for. So we made this up out of bits of all your other commercials, just slung ‘em all in the old computer and gave it the juice.

  ‘It’s a really interesting sorting job, but the censors would never let us use it commercially. Too sexy, and in a funny kind of way. There’s no explicit sex on the screen, just a funny ambiance of sex. It depends on visual stimulation of the brain or something, I don’t know.’

  He picked up a telephone receiver and began dialing the long computer library code. ‘By the way, I loaned Glen Dale a copy for his porno collection—hope you don’t mind.’

  Marge didn’t mind anything at the moment. The combined day’s load of shock, stimulants, depressants, sedatives, euphorics and stabilizers was catching up to her, and now as the final our house before it will is as leaves for have be in high for washing steamer quite place the thrill illustration party scale leaves by the thread of a flight of a message to show in eraser for train side…

  ‘Think I’ll take a nap or something.’ He went, falling forward and catching himself at every step, into the bedroom, where he stopped at the mirror.

  The hat was a brown, irregular earthenware bowler, unglazed and about size three. Either the Utopis were pinheads or they thought he was, for the crown was slightly bigger than a tennis ball and the brim, a thick slab of hard clay, did not quite span his head. He held it on with elastic, like a party hat.

  Trying to sleep was useless. He could see it above him, the reflection of the silly, stupid hat.

  It looked like a pile of dogshit.

  He took it off and dropped it on the floor. ‘Made a fool of myself. All these years.’ Through the darkness he could imagine Bertha Venus watching him, x-ray eyes right through the wall from the living room…laughing. Bitch goddess iron maiden sacrifice…

  He switched on the video tape player and keyed in the cartridge Bradd had given him.

  The first few images were ordinary enough. Bette in her kitchen. A square black dot appeared in the lower left corner, turned white, disappeared. Three red X’s flashed across the top of the screen, obliterating some written message, all but part of a word, ‘asserole’.

  Myra called through the door.

  ‘Glen? It’s after seven—should I stick around?’

  ‘SHUT UP!’

  Bette’s lips and teeth appeared, filling the giant screen. She stood by superimposition in the center of her own smile, flickering like a snake’s tongue. Light-show liquid shapes began to swim through the image; it dissolved back to the kitchen.

  ‘Mmmmmmmm,’ she said. ‘Sommmmmething love. It’s so love you’ll LOVE. Baby man easy. Oven EASY!’

  A pair of dark green, glistening hands, red-shadowed, flickered in back of her. Kitchen gloves lying on a counter. Brightening, they sprang into the air and clasped each other.

  ‘Scrumptious! Yummy! Kids love licking the beater after. You’ll love deep down tender firmer banana goodness!’

  The gloves grasped her waist and moved, without moving, up towards her breasts. There came a sound like the phone chiming. Bette bent, picked up a wooden spoon. The same spoon shape, crackling blue/orange sparks, moved in behind her and disappeared up her dress. Kitchen cabinets, stove, all surfaces began breaking up, boiling off clouds of fizzy colored dots. Bette kneaded a cornucopia, which shot boxed products offscreen, as parts of the scene
began wriggling to the rhythm of the stirring spoon, the flapping gloves, the fluttering smile.

  ‘Take a tip from me, something for your love jelly from the man tonight. Pleases as no creamy goodness! Drop the beaters in your dish spread with spread spread, my instant loin chops! Yum! Tongue is no messy flank, just truss and whip until stiff, then quick rolls into the oven! Tempting! Fabulous wieners make this triple-layer dessert a real old-fashioned sweetened each piece perfect every time.’

  Boiled images popped out of the cornucopia, the only stable part of the scene. Everything else was strobing madly in a dozen colors. There came a sound like the phone.

  ‘Ah! Mammy jammy dumplings! Gooooood and PIPING HOT! MMMMMM! YES! GREAT AND—READY!’

  ‘Glen? Glen!’

  Gasping, drooling, shaking, he sat in a pool of sweat on the carpet. The third time Myra called his name from the doorway he looked up.

  ‘It was the hospital on the phone.’

  ‘Ah?’

  ‘The hospital. Glen, your mother’s dead.’

  He stirred his legs and managed to stand up. Moving toward her, he said, ‘Yes, I know. Yes, but never mind about that hat. It looked like a dog turd. A dog turd…you know in a way that’s the most exciting thing…’

  He reached her and ripped open the front of her dress.

  She drew back her hand to slap him, but saw there was no need. Glen’s eyes closed. He slid to the floor and lay still. Her new Oriental eyes widened in terror. There was no sound but her own breathing.

  A ghastly death-rattle sound came from his snarling lips. Then he coughed, rolled over and started snoring.

  Marge was lying on the counter, wearing only her gingham apron, which had worked its way around to one side. She made a half-hearted gesture of modesty.