Crazy Cock (18 page)

Hildred and Vanya had to be awakened for supper. They behaved just as if they were at home—grumbled, rubbed their eyes sleepily, yawned, clamored immediately for cigarettes, and then, playful-like, took to tickling each other. Finally they took it into their heads to wrestle, which the old man thought rather amusing. “Just like a man, isn't she?” he said. At this moment the two of them rolled onto the floor, their skirts up to their necks, their breasts spilling out. Coincident with this there was a loud snap and Babette came running in to see what had happened. Vanya and Hildred were sitting on the floor, adjusting their clothes, when Tony Bring's mother walked in.

“Mother, they broke the couch!” Babette exclaimed.

All eyes were turned on the couch; it was as still and solemn in the room as if someone had just expired there on the couch.

“Well, that's how you people take care of things,” said Tony Bring's mother. “It lasted us twenty-five years.”

Tony Bring was looking down at the floor. He waited a moment to hear what would follow. But there was nothing more. His mother had turned away and walked back to the kitchen. Her shoulders drooped a little more, so he thought.

But Hildred quickly got to her feet and followed his mother inside. “I'm dreadfully sorry,” she said. “Please believe me. Have it fixed . . . tomorrow . . . I'll pay you for it.”

The suggestion inspired no emotion.

“You have quite enough to pay for,” said Tony Bring's mother in a resigned voice. “No, don't feel badly about it. It's time we had a new one anyway.”

“But Mother, you like this couch . . . I know how it is. I had no idea such a thing would happen.”

“No, of course you didn't. You see, we're not so wild as you young people. We're getting more subdued now. . . .”

Tony Bring was standing by. “Listen, Mother, don't throw it out. Do as Hildred says. It's much better than getting a new couch.” And while he offered profuse apologies he took Hildred by the arm and squeezed it viciously. Soon afterward they sat down to supper and once again the tree was lighted and the table flooded with a weird, sanctimonious glow.

Thus they got through the day.

As they left the house Babette shouted after them to say that she would be down soon to have a look at Vanya's pictures. Turning back for a last farewell, Tony Bring saw the old folks standing at the railing looking up at the sky. Guess it'll rain tomorrow, he said to himself.

When they had passed the funeral parlor Hildred whistled for a cab. Not a word passed between them until they were almost home. Then suddenly Hildred announced her intention of going on to the Village to buy some wine.

“I'll go along,” he said.

No, she didn't want that. She would return immediately. They were still arguing about the matter when the cab drew up to the door.

“You promise to be back in an hour?”

“In less than that,” she said.

I
T WAS
almost dawn when they came staggering down the street singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Once inside they collapsed. Vanya lay on the floor with an empty bottle in one hand and a chocolate layer cake in the other. Hildred had to be laid out like a corpse and undressed. In her drunken lingo she muttered foul accusations against some devil who had drugged their drinks. “Merry Christmas, Tony! Merry Christmas!” she cried. Then she took to mewing like a cat, after which she became repentant and murmured: “I'm sorry I broke the couch, honest I am. You don't love me anymore, do you? I'm not drunk, dear, I'm ill. . . . Some dirty bastard drugged us. . . .”

Vanya he allowed to remain on the floor, stepping over her as if she were a mangy dog. They clamored for wet towels and ice. Hildred wanted paregoric. Vanya wanted doughnuts and coffee.

“Wouldn't you like some nice mountain oysters?” he jeered.

“Please light the fire,” Hildred moaned in a low agonizing voice. “I'm ill. . . . I'm not drunk, I tell you.”

“Allez à la Gare St. Lazare . . . je suis très pressé.”

“I'm freezing. . . . Please light the fire!”

“You poor kid, you want me to make you a nice little fire?”

“Please, Tony, please. . . .”

“I'll make you warm,” he said. “Just wait a minute.” And he went to his file case, emptied the contents on the hearth, and put a match to it. As the blaze leaped up a weird glow
suffused the room; the walls quivered and the figures began to dance.

“Feel better?” he asked, and he put his foot through the file case and splintered it. “You didn't think I'd let you freeze to death, did you?” He took the chairs one by one and smashed them also.

“That's it!” cried Hildred. “Burn them up . . . burn everything . . . tomorrow we'll get new furniture.”

There was a crackle and roar as the flames shot up the flue. “That's wonderful . . .
wonderful,”
groaned Hildred. “You're so good, Tony. I want you to have a merry, merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas!” yelled Vanya. “Don't you
love
it?”

“You poor little bums,” he said. “So they tried to poison you, did they? The idea!”

He sat on the gut table and watched the flames licking up ten years of scribbling. Where was the land of Nod? The land of Nod was in the noodle and Cain and Abel were a couple of gaudy fellows with red neckties.
Comment allez-vous? Très bien, monsieur, et vous-même?
Imagine it—someone trying to drug two little ladies on Christmas day! Where in Christ's name did she get that hat? A swell casket, it was—satin-lined. Just like a man . . . so healthy. And in the depths of the forests were monstrous idols, their eyes glowing with gems . . . a wilderness through which the
chicleros
roamed searching for chewing gum. Slot machines for clean white teeth. Drive me to the Gare St. Lazare, I'm in a hurry. . . .

N
EW
Y
EAR'S
Eve! America trying to stand on its hind legs. Every one wall-eyed, scrooched, crocked. Dredge fried to the hat and Hildred down with the screaming meemies. A great jamboree in which Vanya delivers herself of a jolly little poem about the virgin spittle of the gutter, the seven cathedrals that gave warm milk, and the dead rats floating in the Seine. Bob Ramsay drops in with his friend Homer Reed and Amy, Homer Reed's mistress, the three of them followed by a slutty little bitch which insists on leaving its card here and there. Wrestling bouts between Amy and Vanya, between Vanya and Hildred, between Hildred and Amy. The referee getting down on his haunches to see that there are no foul tactics and what kind of underwear, if any, there may be. Amy fighting like a wildcat, her clothes ripped to shreds, her face puffed and gory. And then Emil Sluter pops in and a Jew named Bunchek. Anecdotes concerning a female called Iliad who has a crush on her own mother. A droll affair this—jealousy, intrigue, incest. Sluter, the polite bastard with the butter-colored gloves, listening with both ears cocked. “And who was the mother jealous of, if I'm not indiscreet?” Hildred, in her incandescent state, blurting out—“Why, of me!”

“Of you? No! Well, I'll be go to hell. . . . Did you hear that, Tony?”

Tony Bring hears only too well. He is thinking of the oily phrases Sluter will palm off on him next time they meet. “Golly, man, I tell you, one has no idea with what a terrific force these things can sweep down on you and destroy you; and it's all the more insidious because it finds you unprepared. Hasn't that been your experience?” That is Sluter's lingo: full of modifying clauses, prefatory notes, retractions, apologies, innuendoes, discreet loopholes, fire escapes. . . .

Meanwhile there's Hildred emptying her mind like a slop pail. And Bunchek, the pimply-faced gawk, gaping goggle-eyed. Hildred, the wife, sitting with her legs parted, her stockings rolled down, her thighs showing, her legs bruised and scratched. Informing all and sundry about her strong spine and the little hollow just above the tip of the spine which everyone admires so when they dance with her. Still not enough about it—elaborating, embroidering, begging Homer Reed to put his hand there—because, as an artist, he can appreciate these accidentals, these anatomical nuances.

Then Bunchek, pianissimo at first, opening up with a tender minuet from the
Kama Sutra
, followed in brief order by the fully orchestrated works of Stekel, Jung, and Pavlov. Not a mind, but a cesspool. Much too much, even for Hildred's strong stomach. Sluter, always correct, excusing himself in order to go outside and stick his finger down his throat.

And finally, Amy, spurred on by her consort, stripping down to her pantalettes and giving a slow muscle dance. Not finally, either, because immediately following this Bunchek and Ramsay commence a word-reaction contest: luck-duck, brick-pick, runt-bunt, mass-crass, ore-core, flit-sit.
Sluter joins in, and then Hildred; the room is filled with the sound of words coupling and uncoupling: dingo-bingo, righto-presto, bigboy-frigeroi, Lucy-juicy, tart-cart, spiddivus-quiddibus, Apennine-turpentine, souse-louse. . . . Until station D-R-E-D-G-E announces the birth of the homunculus with Father Aquinas patching the shingles of his roof to keep the angels out. A little spiel about the gastronomic functioning of the unicellular organism and then: “The Alps and the Andes are but so much hardened ocean ash, and perhaps the whole earth is but the compact mold of dead things.” A fine coprolalic orgy watered with sexual proverbs and neologisms like
dingitaries
and
vaginaries
. Sluter remaining after the others have gone to take a stirrup cup. Avid to sponge up a few fundamental verities, as, for example—

1. “How did the world then come to be filled with life?”

2. “Just what is meant by the Symbolist Movement?”

3. “Am I right in saying that Gauguin was perhaps a little too decorative?”

Ushering in the dawn with
Spiddividdibeebumbum. . . .

T
HE
N
EW
Year! New resolutions, new quarrels, new ideas afoot. Paris again. And from Vanya a leitmotif: Sweden. Sweden! And why Sweden? Sweden: land of the midnight sun, of fjords and staggering hors d'oeuvres, land of liberty for the third sex, the star-spangled bananas for Lesbians and Uranians.

Intermission while Vanya and Hildred toy with the idea of finding more suitable employment. Whims. Caprices. Hallucinations.

During the intermission someone puts the bug into their heads to see Paul Jukes. Paul Jukes: the greatest painter
alive! Doesn't think much of Cézanne, and less of Matisse. As for Picasso—the only thing, according to Paul Jukes, that Picasso ever mastered is the art of drawing mechanical ducks. None of your mechanical ducks and linoleum patterns for Paul Jukes. Not on your tintype! The greatest American painter that ever lived is a stickler for muscles and green fields, for doing the right breast as religiously as the left, for putting heads on torsos and not lilac bushes or cauliflowers. If you want to draw a man, you must first have arms and legs. . . .
Alors
, see Paul Jukes. Perhaps Paul Jukes can use a model or two. He who can tie a brush to his behind and paint the aurora borealis, perhaps such a much can give a word or two of advice—or a ticket for Sweden. Nothing definite in mind. See Paul Jukes, that's all. . . .

I
T SO
happened that the day chosen for the interview was one of those
bad
days. The great Paul Jukes, only released from the hospital a few days previously, was getting ready to bring suit against his physician for puncturing his bladder. He was feeble and crotchety. He didn't even have the courtesy to invite his unknown guests inside.

They went away crestfallen. The great Paul Jukes—bah! Vanya spat on the sidewalk to void her disgust. Phew! Pfui! As for Hildred—Hildred wasn't satisfied to merely spit on the sidewalk. She had to do something extra. She called him “a horse's ass.”

A day or so afterward they had another idea. Hildred's idea this time. “Models wanted for hosiery and lingerie . . . easy work . . . only a few hours a day.” Why not grab off a little easy money? Why not?

Bright and early they rose one morning. Even Tony Bring
was required to lend a hand. He took a big brush, with a long, curved handle, and curried Vanya's back. They took the knots out of her hair, laundered her bloomers, and pressed her blue cheviot suit. As a finishing touch Hildred sprinkled toilet water over Vanya's shirtwaist. All set. Vanya gay as a sparrow straddling a telegraph wire. Wiggling her behind a little, à la Margie Pennetti. Ravishing. What has she been concealing all this time? Too utterly utter. . . .

But when they returned Hildred had a long face. Some dirty little kike with a tape measure had gotten fresh—with Vanya particularly. He had gone over them as if they were racehorses. And there was no screen. They had to undress in the presence of three dirty little kikes. The one held the tape measure, the other put the measurements down on a pad, and the third—the third, it seems, just stood by like a life buoy to see that nothing went wrong. He was working away all the while on a big Havana cigar. The climax came when it was discovered that Vanya had to be measured for the third time. It was all due to an error on the part of the gentleman with the pencil and pad. He didn't have his mind on his business, apparently. Imagine, he had nothing to do but get the numbers right—but when they looked at the numbers, the numbers were phony. To aggravate matters, Vanya, it seems, had taken it all as a big joke. Even when they were fooling around her crotch she displayed the same disgusting
sang-froid
. She wasn't even concerned enough to hold her hands over her bosom.

“No moral sense whatever” was Hildred's angry comment.

“But what did I do?” Vanya cried. “Didn't you get undressed too? Do you think you looked more respectable because you kept your damned brassiere on?”