Tornado Pratt

by Paul Ableman

  There were near a hundred people on that sprung plateau, most of them naked, some, particularly the women, with wisps of clothing still clinging to them. Time to time a couple would roll off the great bed and stagger away to the changing rooms or perhaps a new couple would arrive. But all the time, on the great bed, the orgy went on thrashing. There were coils of girls and knots of men. There were pyramids and loops of mixed bodies. And the whole was writhing and twitching to the accompaniment of a hissing, slurping, sluthering kind of noise, of human gasps and moans and the muted grating of springs.

  It was one of the most extraordinary things I ever saw, Horace, and it made me think of pictures I’d seen—or maybe I saw them later when I became a collector?—makes no matter—pictures from the Middle Ages of bodies twisted and heaped and usually being tormented by devils. But was that gang in the Paris “maison” being tormented by devils? I couldn’t rightly say, Horace. The nearest I figured it was, watching those judges and senators and officers, that if this was how they liked spending their time it must be pretty frustrating to have to sit in court or run the country or do their other boring jobs. As for me, I won’t say I’ve never jerked off remembering that pageant of abandon but at the time I never even got a hard-on, whereas at high school in Kansas I’d feel my body shiver with lust if Miss Perkins, our young geography teacher, accidentally showed the calf of her leg.

  I began to see a lot of Sylvie, a girl who lived in the same hotel. In spite of her name, she was some kind of oriental and she had those deep, measuring, smooth-rimmed eyes. She was exquisite. I’d been noticing her appreciatively in the rickety elevator and also down at the desk where we deposited our keys. One evening, we shared the elevator and, on impulse, I got out at her floor and noted which room she went into. Then, an hour or so later, I went down and knocked at her door. When she opened it, I bowed with a big Kansas grin and said:

  “Would you do me the honour of dining with me tonight?”

  She looked at me startled—or maybe it was just the big, inscrutable eyes—for a moment and then she smiled and said:

  “You are lucky. I speak very good the English.”

  I told her I was a poor student and asked her: could she recommend a cheap restaurant? I didn’t want her to realize I was rich. I’d had enough trouble in Chicago with dames who couldn’t see me for the glare of gold. She took us to a fine little place, packed with youngsters, where we ate terrific chow at long, festive tables covered with paper. Two or three people knew her there and one boy kissed her affectionately. I couldn’t get over this, how in Paris, everyone touched and kissed. In the rumbling old trains of the metro, couples stood locked together for minutes on end and meanwhile folk going to work just read their newspapers and paid no unhealthy attention. It seemed to me for a time that Paris had the secret of living.

  So that night after dinner, Sylvie and I wandered about the Latin Quarter. She told me she worked in a bank, that she was Indo-Chinese and that her ambition was to go to America. She explained:

  “I am very modern.”

  Time to time, we paused for a drink on the sidewalk terrace of a café and once we went into a little purple basement where a Frenchman was reciting on a platform. He made Sylvie laugh and she explained that he was being funny about the government. At that stage, I couldn’t understand a word of French and my Spanish didn’t help.

  Finally, we drifted back along the quay with the lights of Paris cupped in the sliding black waters of the Seine and the stone prow of die Isle de la Cité riding ceaselessly into the current. Back at the hotel, I let my arms gently forage for their prey and tug her body against mine. And, after the union of brandy lips and wine lips, I turned towards my own door but her small, peremptory hand clasped mine and led me by it into her room.

  Ah, Horace, I could show it to you. I could hire a geographer to draw it up for you: Pratt’s Love Map of Europe, with coloured pins stuck all over it to reveal the number and kinds of my physical loves. In Norway, there would be only two pins, one ice-blue to represent a Viking lady who swam naked in a fjord and who had once delivered her own baby. In France, on the other hand, there would be a hundred pins but most of them would represent later trips, the time when I had a château in France. But in Paris, in a poor section of the quay that borders the river Seine, there would be one crimson pin like Aphrodite’s standard. There are nights, Horace, which you don’t forget. Maybe there’s no reason for it. Maybe you can’t subsequently isolate any special quality or element which makes them unique. But in memory they become citadels, withstanding the assaults of the grey, besieging armies of time. That’s how it was—how it is!—that night with Sylvie. We only made love once—but it lasted three hours! Straight, Horace, I never unhorsed nor sheathed my lance for three glorious hours of joust! We rolled and tumbled together like comets through the starry cosmos, and as we heaved and raced, the stars flashed brighter and the worlds span faster and all the veins of energy that lace the void blazed with light.

  “Whisky, sir?”

  “It’s killing me, Horace. Do I know you, boy?”

  PRATT IN THE HOUSE OF GOD

  After that we slept together every night. On Sunday morning, my eyes still glued shut with hangover, I heard Sylvie moving about the room. I called:

  “Come back to bed, honey.”

  She whispered in my ear.

  “Stay there, chéri. I will be back soon.”

  For a while I just dozed and then the meaning of her words jabbed through and I opened my eyes.

  “But where the hell are you going?”

  “I am going to mass, chéri.”

  Mass? Somehow the idea surprised me. I thought about it and I realized, with slight shame, that I’d vaguely figured that Sylvie probably worshipped idols with eight arms or fat, grinning Buddhas. I asked her about it and she explained that her family had been Catholic even out there in Indo-China because of the French culture they had there. By this time I was awake, so I got up, dressed and accompanied her to the Cathedral of Notre Dame for Sunday morning mass.

  It was a mighty place, that cathedral, Horace, but when I tried to think of it as the house of God, it seemed to me more like a barn. I could only imagine God as a huge penned beast. The windows were brilliant, like glowing tiles of ruby and sapphire. Thousands of candles blinked in the crannies. Like the moaning of wind in a winter forest, the chant of the priests echoed coldly in my ears. I rose to leave and, just then, a sigh swept through the congregation. I heard an irreverent yell and turned to see a comic figure capering up the central aisle. It was a young man wearing a red and green piebald tunic and tights. The bells that tipped his conical, drooping cap and his long, upturned shoes jingled as—dodging to avoid spiteful hands that plucked at him—he skipped past me.

  His name was Gaspard Luria, Horace, and he was a dreamer and buffoon. When I ran into him, now wearing ordinary “quartier” clothes, a few days later in a café, I said:

  “You’re the one that shouted ‘God is dead’ in the cathedral.”

  He replied in pretty good English.

  “That is correct, monsieur. Are you drunk?”

  “Drunk? How do you mean drunk?”

  “Some subtle quality about you, monsieur—ah yes, the fact that you are on your hands and knees.”

  I’d been amusing Sylvie, Horace, by showing her how a bronco bucked when I’d caught sight of Gaspard. I was somewhat drunk but not as bad as it looked. I grinned and got up and joined him at his table. I asked him:

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Do what, monsieur?”

  “Why skip about in the cathedral, shouting ‘God is dead’?”

  “For the same reason, monsieur, that you murdered the Italian ambassador.”

  “I—what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Why did you do it, monsieur? He was a swine who ruined women but, for all that, one of God’s creatures.”

  “I never—”

  “Assassin!”

  This was a s
hrill shout, Horace. The next thing, Gaspard had darted out on to the sidewalk and accosted a couple of passing cops. I saw him talking eagerly to them and pointing at me but after a while they pushed him aside and continued on up the crowded boulevard. He danced after them, hissing and jeering and suddenly one of them swung round and hit him on the side of the head with his truncheon. Gaspard collapsed on the pavement and a crowd of indignant youngsters clustered round him. A little later they carried him, bleeding a lot, back to his seat next to mine. He blinked at me and offered:

  “I was mistaken, monsieur. The Italian ambassador is unharmed.”

  “What the hell was that all about?”

  “Monsieur, on behalf of the flics and people of France, I welcome you to our shores. Friends, a toast to the Italian ambassador.”

  And that’s how he always was, Horace, a kind of lethal joker whose most destructive pranks were reserved for himself. The closest I ever came to fathoming the nature of Gaspard Luria was one day when I caught him alone in the street because in the café he was always surrounded by an enthusiastic group. I came at him with:

  “Cut the kidding for once, Gaspard, and tell me what you really think.”

  “I think the world is a pimple, Tornado.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Yes.”

  “See here, Gaspard—”

  “There is nothing to see there, Tornado. What I do, I do for no reason because if there were a reason it would be unreasonable. Look at it like this, my life is the canopy which shelters me from the intolerable glare of eternity. How can I explain it to you, Tornado? I purchase my thoughts in the flea-market. They are second-hand but have the charming patina of age. One day, Tornado, I will die a hero’s death because I am a connoisseur of the banal.”

  Gaspard had a room in the Hotel du Phare. It was a round room without windows, like the inside of a big cheese. It contained a bed with books stacked deep around it and nothing else. He slept in that room but he lived in the huge, baroque Café Balzac on the Boulevard St Michel. All day he sat there, reading, reciting poetry, receiving friends and courtiers. Sometimes he would say:

  “Money—who can give me money?”

  And, sure enough, someone would always get out a wallet and extract some old, garishly coloured French bank-notes that were falling to bits, and hand them over to him. When I left Paris, I handed him about five hundred dollars in francs. He smiled, said:

  “Thank you, Tornado.”

  And stuffed them carelessly in his pocket.

  But what the hell, Horace, I haven’t thought about Gaspard Luria for years. Maybe I was reminded of him by that kid we saw this afternoon being shot by the firing squad. The way he held his head on one side and smiled so that he looked composed and forgiving but then—just as we slipped past in the taxi—I saw his chin quiver and I could tell that kid was rotten inside with terror of the dark. Shut the door, Horace. This is the noisiest goddamm hotel I’ve ever been in.

  PRATT AND PEER’S DAUGHTER—JUST FRIENDS?

  In England, Horace, I went straight to visit Harvey’s brother, the Earl. And that earl was very taken with me and glad to have me remain in his palace in Huntingdonshire—was it?—for as long as I wanted. While I was there he asked my opinion about certain American investments and I was able to help him in this matter so that he made thousands of pounds in the next few months. With this money, he mended the roof, hired a new under-gamekeeper and paid one of his parlour maids handsomely not to make a fuss about a baby. I studied that earl, Horace, noticing the difference there was between him and Harvey and relating that difference to the fact that for the Earl life had unrolled like a red carpet while Harvey had had to hack his way forwards. This meant Harvey had grown into the better man. That earl was a worm of a man, self-indulgent and self-important. But his estate was the nearest thing to heaven I ever saw.

  When I arrived it was velvet spring and the creamy breeze went rustling through his beeches and elms. Red squirrels clawed their way up those trees and then spied down on the flamingos in the reedy lake. Those flamingos had been imported from Africa and yet their gaudy plumes harmonized with the English green. In the walled kitchen garden, rows of succulent vegetables ripened. In front of the house, which had columns, was a great spread of lawn which gleamed with daffodils that danced away to meet a host of bluebells in the woods.

  There was a great peace and elegance about that place and no matter who came there the house was big enough to take it.

  The thing was, Harvey—Harvey? Harvey’s dead. He was hit by a truck in—early nineteen fifties must have been. Or sixties? Anyhow, the thing was, Harv—Horace! The thing was, Horace, most of that earl’s friends were too old and vicious to attract me but now and then someone called who took a shine to me and I to them. In this way, I went on to other country houses and soon I was running with fairy-tale people. There were lanterns strung in the gardens, Horace, and under them swayed the golden boys and girls. I’d never met such a set before. They smiled and whispered things. Nothing shocked them and everything amused them. And I was their new toy that they kept handing round to prove it really worked. Those silver girls flitted in and out of my skin, Horace, dissolving into moonlight. I’d bounce into a circle of those favoured children, Horace, standing with hands linked but not enough energy to dance and I’d tug long streamers of them through woods to the sea and then whip them into the curling surf.

  “My God, Tornado, don’t you ever let up?”

  “Race you to the beacon, Sir Andrew.”

  And off we’d go, drumming along the cliffhead, thrashing the wind with our winged elbows. Naturally, if I had anything like an equal amount I could lick them all on horseback. Then I’d do tricks for them like scooping up at a gallop the prettiest little Honourable, kissing her hard and then shooting her into a haystack as I went pounding past. In the sea, I’d leap and skim amongst them like a dolphin. But I began to sicken of them, Horace. Hardly any of them had any guts or any spine and, having learned at their finishing schools how to be perfect, were stuck like that forever. They began to impress me, Horace, as pretty china figures on a mantel-piece. I knew that any shock could shatter them—if you talked too loud or if you talked too real. But for a long time I went on prancing with them, Horace, because there was so much charm to be explored. But I began to get disgusted with myself and that made me drink and one day I woke up in a cell in a London police station, screaming from the pain of a horse-race taking place on my chest. I could see those ponies and their jockeys, Horace, and at the same time recognize I was in the grip of liquor-induced delirium. After a while two of those tommies or bobbies, with the big helmets, came charging along the corridor and into my cell.

  “Are you all right, sir?”

  “Are you all right, Mr Pratt?”

  They’d discovered that the bum they’d found sleeping in a shop doorway was a millionaire with fantastic connections and they nursed me like a pair of mothers.

  After that, I cut myself off from the pleasure set and began making long phone calls to Chicago, making plans for my return. I figured I’d spend a couple of weeks in London, setting up, or just exploring, one or two deals and then get on a big ship back to the USA.

  PRATT AMAZED IN THE MAZE OF TIME

  I was negotiating with Sir Vivian Bronson to sell him a few thousand steel “spiders”. These were meat-handling devices we’d invented and patented in Chicago. It wasn’t much of a deal, profitwise, but everyone said: Vivian Bronson is the man in London meat. Get him on your side and the sky’s the limit. The trouble I found was that this guy wouldn’t talk about meat. I came at him with:

  “Cuts handling costs by a third. Improves quality of the carcass.”

  He’d come busting back at me with:

  “How would you like to see my father’s marbles?”

  “I’d rather see a contract.”

  “You’re a nice lad, Tornado, but something of a philistine. Aren’t you interested in the past?”

  �
��No.”

  “But you can’t understand the present, Tornado, unless you understand the past. All of today is locked in yesterday and yesterday is in the museum.”

  “Do you want to do a deal, Sir Vivian?”

  “We are doing a deal, Tornado.”

  And I’d fume inwardly while he blathered on about his father’s marbles and his father’s flints and his father’s bronzes. You get the idea, Horace? Sir Vivian senior had been a great digger-up of things. As far as I could make out he’d gone snooping round the Mediterranean, digging little pits wherever he went. And wherever he put down his spade why he fished up some crumbling old head of a Roman senator or a Greek athlete. Sir Vivian pointed down from his office window:

  “And they’re all there, Tornado. He left everything to the nation.”

  Sir Vivian was pointing at the British Museum. He had a tremendous reverence for his father and his father’s achievement. Thinking back, Horace, it is clear that Sir Vivian wouldn’t talk about meat because he felt that it was inferior to marble and bronze. He figured that he’d let the family down by being a mere meat mogul instead of an archaeologist like dad. I still can’t figure out how he held his job because I sure as hell couldn’t get him to talk about meat. Finally, hoping it might lead to action, I agreed to inspect his father’s marbles and we shuffled off to the museum. While we were giving those marbles the once-over his secretary came mincing up to us: