Flying to America (35 page)
Kellerman is eating one of his fifty-two-cent lunches: a 4½ oz. can of Sells Liver Pâté (thirty-one cents) and a box of Nabisco Saltines (twenty-one cents), washed down with the last third of a bottle of leftover Chablis. He lifts the curiously ugly orange wineglass, one of four (the fourth destroyed in the dishwasher) sent to Noëlie at Christmas by her Oregon aunt. He is reading an essay by Paul Goodman in
Commentary.
His eye, caught by a line in the last paragraph (“In a viable constitution, every excess of power should structurally generate its own antidote”), has wandered back up the page to see what is being talked about (“I have discussed the matter with
Mr. and Mrs. Beck of the Living Theatre and we agree that the following methods are tolerable”). He nicks the little hump of pâté with the sharp edge of a Saltine. He congratulates himself on the economical elegance of the meal. Gregg meantime has attacked Fitzhugh Lee on the Louisa Courthouse road and has driven him back some distance, pursuing until nightfall. Near one of the hedges of the Hougoumont farm, without even a drummer to beat the
rappel,
we succeeded in rallying under the enemy’s fire 300 men; I made a villager act as our guide, and bound him by his arm to my stirrup.
Kellerman stands before a chalkboard with a long wooden pointer in his hand. The general has been folded into a schoolchild’s desk, sitting in the front row. On the board, in chalk, there is a diagrammatic sketch of a suit of armor. Kellerman points.
“A.:
Palette
.”
“Palette,” the old man repeats.
“Covers the shoulder joint,” Kellerman says.
“The armpit?” the old man suggests.
“The shoulder joint,” Kellerman says.
“Are you certain?”
“Absolutely.”
The general writes in his tablet.
Kellerman points. “B.:
Breastplate
.”
His father scribbles.
“Covers the —”
“Breast,” old Kellerman says.
“Chest,” Kellerman says.
“Mustard plaster,” the old man says. “Trying to break up the clog in your little lung. Your mother and I. All through the night. Tears in her eyes. The doctor forty miles away.”
“C.:
Tasset
.”
“Semolina pudding you wanted, ‘No,’ I said. ‘Later,’ I said. ‘Bad for the gut,’ I said. You cried and cried.”
“
Tasset
,” Kellerman repeats. “For the upper thigh. Suspended from the waistplate by straps.”
“Strap. Ah, strap!”
“D.:
Cuisse
.”
“I was good with the strap. Fast, but careful. Not too much, not too little. Calculating the angles, wind velocity, air-spring density, time of day. My windup a perfect hyperbolic paraboloid.”
“Covers the thigh proper,” Kellerman says. “Fastened by means of —”
“Strap,” the general says, with satisfaction. “Unpleasant duty. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary —”
“
You loved it!
” Kellerman says, shouting.
The Belgian regiments had been tampered with. In the melee, I was almost instantly disabled in both arms, losing first my sword, and then my reins, and followed by a few men, who were presently cut down, no quarter being asked, allowed, or given, I was carried along by my horse, till, receiving a blow from a sabre, I fell senseless on my face to the ground. Germany was unspeakably silly. Technically, I was a radar operator on the guidance system. It was a rotten job. Ten hours a day of solid boredom. I did get one trip to the wild Hebrides for the annual firing of the missile (it’s called a Corporal). Confidentially, it doesn’t work worth a damn. We have a saying: Its effective range is thirty-five feet — its length. If it falls on you, it can be lethal. “There are worms in words!” the general cries. “The worms in words are, like Mexican jumping beans, agitated by the warmth of the mouth.”
“Flaming gel,” Kellerman says. “You were fond of flaming gel.”
“Not overfond,” the general replies. “Not like some of them.”
“What’s that you have there, under you arm?” asks the book-storeman.
“The Black Knight,” Kellerman says. “I want one of those Histomaps of Evolution that you have in the window there, showing the swelling of the unsegmented worms — flatworms, ribbon worms, arrow worms, wheelworms, spring heads, and so forth.”
“Worms in words,” the general repeats, “agitated by the warmth of the mouth.”
“I’m not accepting any more blame, Papa,” Kellerman says finally. “Blame wouldn’t melt in my. . . .” He hands round the pâté. “I love playing with mugged-up cards,” Kellerman says, to the nearest mother. She is wearing a slim sand-tweed coat with two rows
of gilt buttons and carrying a matchbook that says (black lettering, rose-blush ground) “VD Is On the Rise In New York City.” “The four of fans, the twelve of wands, the deuce of kidneys, the Jack of Brutes. And shaved decks and readers of various kinds, they make the game worthy of the name.” And it was true that his wife pulled one hair out of his sleeping head each night, but what if she decided upon two, or five, or even eleven?
Of those who remained and fought, none were so rudely handled as the Chians, who displayed prodigies of valor, and disdained to play the part of cowards. The order and harmony of the universe, what a beautiful idea! He was obsessed by a vision of beauty — the shimmering, golden Temple, more fascinating than a woman, more eternal than love. And because he was ugly, evil, impotent, he determined someday to possess it . . . by destruction. He had used the word incorrectly. He had mispronounced the word. He had misspelled the word. It was the wrong word.
“Eh, hello, Mado. A Beaujolais.”
“Eh, hello, Tris-Tris. A Beaujolais?”
Kellerman runs down the avenue, among the cars, in and out. There are sirens, there is a fire. The huge pieces of apparatus clog the streets. Hoses are run this way and that. Hundreds of firemen stand about, looking at each other, asking each other questions. Kellerman runs. There is a fire somewhere, but the firemen do not know where it is. They stand, gigantic in their black slickers, yellow-lined, their black hats covering the back of the neck, holding shovels. The street is full of firemen, gigantic, standing there. Kellerman runs up to a group of firemen, who look at him with frightened eyes. He begins asking them questions. “Should a person who is sterile marry? What is sterility? What is a false pregnancy? How do the male reproductive organs work? What is natural childbirth? Can a couple know in advance if they can have children? Can impotence be cured? What are the causes of barrenness? Is a human egg like a bird’s?”
I
t was kind of the department to think up the Police Band. The original impulse, I believe, was creative and humanitarian. A better way of doing things. Unpleasant, bloody things required by the line of duty. Even if it didn’t work out.
The Commissioner (the old Commissioner, not the one they have now) brought us up the river from Detroit. Where our members had been, typically, working the Sho Bar two nights a week. Sometimes the Glass Crutch. Friday and Saturday. And the rest of the time wandering the streets disguised as postal employees. Bitten by dogs and burdened with third-class mail.
What are our duties? we asked at the interview. Your duties are to wail, the Commissioner said. That only. We admired our new dark-blue uniforms as we came up the river in canoes like Indians. We plan to use you in certain situations, certain tense situations, to alleviate tensions, the Commissioner said. I can visualize great success with this new method. And would you play “Entropy.” He was pale, with a bad liver.
We are subtle, the Commissioner said, never forget that. Subtlety is what has previously been lacking in our line. Some of the old ones, the Commissioner said, all they know is the club. He took a little pill from a little box and swallowed it with his Scotch.
When we got to town we looked at those Steve Canyon recruiting posters and wondered if we resembled them. Henry Wang, the bass man, looks like a Chinese Steve Canyon, right? The other cops were friendly in a suspicious way. They liked to hear us wail, however.
The Police Band is a very sensitive highly trained and ruggedly anti-Communist unit whose efficacy will be demonstrated in due time, the Commissioner said to the Mayor (the old Mayor). The Mayor took a little pill from a little box and said, We’ll see. He could tell we were musicians because we were holding our instruments, right? Emptying spit valves, giving the horn that little shake. Or coming in at letter E with some sly emotion stolen from another life.
The old Commissioner’s idea was essentially that if there was a disturbance on the city’s streets — some ethnic group cutting up some other ethnic group on a warm August evening — the Police Band would be sent in. The handsome dark-green band bus arriving with sirens singing, red lights whirling. Hard-pressed men on the beat in their white hats raising a grateful cheer. We stream out of the vehicle holding our instruments at high port. A skirmish line fronting the angry crowd. And play “Perdido.” The crowd washed with new and true emotion. Startled, they listen. Our emotion stronger than their emotion. A triumph of art over good sense.
That was the idea. The old Commissioner’s
musical
ideas were not very interesting, because after all he was a cop, right? But his police ideas were interesting.
We had drills. Poured out of that mother-loving bus onto vacant lots holding our instruments at high port like John Wayne. Felt we were heroes already. Playing “Perdido,” “Stumblin’,” “Gin Song,” “Feebles.” Laving the terrain with emotion stolen from old busted-up loves, broken marriages, the needle, economic deprivation. A few old ladies leaning out of high windows. Our emotion washing rusty Rheingold cans and parts of old doors.
This city is too much! We’d be walking down the street talking about our techniques and we’d see out of our eyes a woman standing in the gutter screaming to herself about what we could not imagine. A drunk trying to strangle a dog somebody’d left leashed to a parking
meter. The drunk and the dog screaming at each other. This city is too much!
We had drills and drills. It is true that the best musicians come from Detroit but there is something here that you have to get in your playing and that is simply the scream. We got that. The Commissioner, a sixty-three-year-old hippie with no doubt many graft qualities and unpleasant qualities, nevertheless understood that. When we’d play “ugly,” he understood that. He understood the rising expectations of the world’s peoples also. That our black members didn’t feel like toting junk mail around Detroit forever until the ends of their lives. For some strange reason.
He said one of our functions would be to be sent out to play in places where people were trembling with fear inside their houses, right? To inspirit them in difficult times. This was the plan. We set up in the street. Henry Wang grabs hold of his instrument. He has a four-bar lead-in all by himself. Then the whole group. The iron shutters raised a few inches. Shorty Alanio holding his horn at his characteristic angle (sideways). The reeds dropping lacy little fill-ins behind him. We’re cooking. The crowd roars.
The Police Band was an idea of a very romantic kind. The Police Band was an idea that didn’t work. When they retired the old Commissioner (our Commissioner), who it turned out had a little drug problem of his own, they didn’t let us even drill anymore. We have never been used. His idea was a romantic idea, they said (right?), which was not adequate to the rage currently around in the world. Rage must be met with rage, they said. (Not in so many words.) We sit around the precinct houses, under the filthy lights, talking about our techniques. But I thought it might be good if you knew that the Department still has us. We have a good group. We still have emotion to be used. We’re still here.
I
f Jackson had pressed McClellan in White Oak Swamp,” Francesca said. “If Longstreet had proceeded vigorously on the first day at Second Manassas. If we had had the forty thousand pairs of shoes we needed when we entered Maryland. If Bloss had not found the envelope containing the two cigars and the copy of Lee’s Secret Order No. 191 at Frederick. If the pneumonia had not taken Jackson. If Ewell had secured possession of Cemetery Heights on the first day of Gettysburg. If Pickett’s charge . . . If Early’s march into the Valley . . . If we had had sufficient food for our troops at Petersburg. If our attack on Fort Stedman had succeeded. If Pickett and Fitzhugh Lee had not indulged in a shad bake at Five Forks. If there had been stores and provisions as promised at Amelia Court House. If Ewell had not been captured at Saylor’s Creek together with sixteen artillery pieces and four hundred wagons. If Lee had understood Lincoln — his mind, his larger intentions. If there had been a degree of competence in our civilian administration equal to that exhibited by the military. Then, perhaps, matters would have been brought to a happier conclusion.”
“Yes,” I said.
Francesca is slightly obsessed. But one must let people talk about
what they want to talk about. One must let people do what they want to do.
This morning in the mail I received an abusive letter from a woman in Prague.
Dear Greasy Thomas:
You cannot understand what a pig you are. You are a pig, you idiot. You think you understand things but there is nothing you understand, nothing, idiot pig-swine. You have not wisdom and you have no discretion and nothing can be done without wisdom and discretion. How did a pig-cretin like yourself ever wriggle into life? Why do you exist still, vulgar swine? If you don’t think I’m going to inform the government of your inappropriate continued existence, a stain on the country’s face . . . You can expect Federal Marshals in clouds very soon, cretin-hideous-swine, and I will laugh as they haul you away in their green vans, ugly toad. You know nothing about anything, garbage-face, and the idea that you would dare “think” for others (I know you are not capable of “feeling”) is so wildly outrageous that I would laugh out loud if I were not sick of your importunate posturing, egregious fraud-pig. You are not even an honest pig which is at least of some use in the world, you are rather an ocean of pig-dip poisoning everything you touch. I do not like you at all.
