The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (29 page)

But a week was spent cheered. With an erection rising on the Metro and often in the bath. Where Beefy said it was always nice to give it quietly a soft and soapy pull. My heart now came to slowly climb that last bit of cliff to the mountain top. And just as I could stand there and see. Outside again. The world all around. Noisy boulevards and the night hour as cafe proprietors rub eyes and waiters count their francs at tables and counters across Paris. And I lay reading one morning the paper to see what new matter was afoot in Metz. I scratched an itch in my pubic hair. I took the autobus and scratched again on the way to class. At night I scrubbed and scratched. Through two days more. Whenever I decently could. And finally thought my God. Anoplura. As this word fell from a long closed closet of useless knowledge. After all these intemperate times. Shouted out as I lay in bed. Where I happened to be. Two jointed tarsi adapted for clinging to the host. Mouthparts used for biting or piercing and sucking.

And Balthazar B took a taxi to the public hospital. Walking in these dismal doors. Asked to wait and then what's your complaint Monsieur. Would Monsieur please remove his trousers and lower his drawers. A magnifying glass put near. Ah yes, ah ha, just what I thought. Please wait Monsieur, I shall be back in a moment. I stood waiting. Until I was ready to complain. And the man in his white coat came back, a pleased look across his face. He said I would be much obliged if you would come this way with me.

Balthazar walked trouserless in shoes and red unforgettable socks. The doctor opened a small door at the end of the room. He stepped aside and said pray proceed. I held my trousers over my arm and heard the strange murmur of voices beyond. The bare and dusty floor. A smell of paper and ink and familiar university sounds. Now become hushed. And I catch my breath as I suddenly stand facing the faces, a few black among the white, tier upon rising tier. Turning as the door slammed shut behind me. A white haired professor at a lectern. Smiling as he approached slapping a long pointer in his hand. Good day, Monsieur, thank you for coming. Now ladies and gentlemen, we have a rare case not too often encountered. Phthirus pubis, the infestations of which are less frequently seen. This good gentleman has been kind enough to help us today. That is enough, there will be no laughter please. Now. Monsieur. Would you lower your drawers please. Do not be alarmed, we have all seen what you shall show us many times before. And we would not trouble you but for your particular complaint. Yes. Please. Just lower a little more. Yes. And just a little more. Good. Thank you. The professor raising his eyebrows, touching his spectacles back on his nose and turning his voice to the class. Balthazar speechless, hands terrified at his hips, with nowhere to move or run, with the feel of blood burning on cheeks as bright as his socks. Catching his breath as the pointer comes back pointing again. The easy drone of the professor's voice. Now, it is a characteristic ladies and gentlemen, that while the body louse is never found on the head, the head louse may be found on the body. But the pubic louse may be found on other parts of the body including the head. Expect to find the louse wherever one finds man. If standards of hygiene are low they will be favourable to their multiplication. Stop that please. This is no laughing matter. This is a disease which can spread through an army and reduce it to a bunch of scratching idiots. I shall require complete silence while I continue please. In this case the pubic louse, sometimes more commonly known as the crabs, hooks into the skin near the roots of the hair. Here note the lightness and soft texture of Monsieur's skin which makes for an optimum host. The movement of the pubic louse is slow, crablike and deliberate. The professor turning. One moment if you please Monsieur. Balthazar B slowly pulling back up his drawers. Ah Monsieur, could I just ask that you keep them down for a few moments longer. Thank you. It is interesting to note that in the case of the body louse a louse free person lying in the same bed as a lousy person will begin to complain in six hours. Here now at the base of Monsieur's pubic hair, and you note it is thickest as it arches here over the penis. Here the eggs are attached when laid. Incubation eight days. The sensitive person reacts with scratching. The bite of the pubic louse, and this is most interesting. If you will permit me Monsieur, yes, to have a closer look. Now we shall see. Ah, yes, the characteristic blue spot is present. Thank you Monsieur. These spots are not found after the bites of the head or body louse. Typhus and trench fever are not transmitted. However, rarely but it is possible, blood poisoning and death can result from an infected scratch. Our patient here does not yet display any laceration. Treatment. As you can observe in this case, Monsieur's pubic hair covers the area about his private parts. These should be completely shaved. Silence please. And, ah pardon, the hair is to be shaved. And the area smeared with vaseline. Also. If you will turn around Monsieur please. Also, you should guard in treatment that the perianal area is accounted for. Oil treatment is to be avoided as it gives rise to smarting of the genitalia. The simplest and the best is the modern insecticide. Thank you Monsieur, you have been most helpful. If you go back by that door, I am sure the best treatment awaitsyou.

For the first three long seconds Balthazar B could not move at all. Staring as one was at the ball of paper nearby on the floor. Behind which one's whole being was desperately crouching. The professor's voice droning on in one's ears. Ladies and gentlemen, we may as well go on to the flea, the vector of the plague. As I now gather up my crushed soul and perambulate towards the grey door on my shoes hanging darkly from my red socks. To have a nurse behind curtains lather and shave me with idle heads peeking now and again and grinning. My penis would not stay down till I was nearly in tears. And jumped when the nurse flicked her fingers painfully hard on my poor pole end. Out of the hospital I ran two blocks, downed a cognac and changed to evening clothes to go that night carrying upon me a peculiar smell. I dined in solitary splendour off duck and Grand Echezeaux to gently gather up the shreds of me and avoid the Sorbonne forever.

All these months passing. I read Halsburg's laws of England until I got to the volume Malicious Prosecution to Mines, Minerals and Quarries. When you stop to look back and see all those days dreaming of a future. And say then, that was my life. And if any new days are to come it's now time to move. To go from this pleasant place. Of mahogany and tiles. Soft carpets and quiet grace. Where meals were amiably solemn. One's entrance and exit awaited by waiters smiling and the air anointed gently with towels. Uncle Edouard said my dear boy if ever you are financially incommoded. Go at once and stay at the best Paris hotel. Live elegantly and well till the bill is enormous. Then call your lawyers to come. For the time has arrived to throw the fake heart attack over a sudden fright from something in the closet. The ambulance comes. To take you of course to another hotel. Your lawyers surround you as one leaves on a stretcher. When the bill is waved in your departing face and the screams descend for payment, the lawyers will say Monsieur has had a woeful shock and they will be hearing further and better particulars of the spiritual and dietary damage soon.

And now this midday, sunshiny breezy and clear, Balthazar B walked out between the panelled walls and across the black and white tiled hall. All belongings sent the week before to 78 Crescent Curve, lain vacant over all these many many months. Courage now to go back at last, agrip of one's gladstone bag that went with me swaying in the moist clear breezes of Fermanagh. Soon to see Beefy. Whose last letter three days ago was amusingly brave and sadly grave.

The Club

London S.W.i

This city now abounds with matters many of which are very gay and others decidedly detrimental and dismayed. But London goes modern as fast as some others are slow to lose the indulgent splendours of the old days. Meanwhile I am so delighted that you are coming. And look forward to seeing you Harrods at one. Where alas some few days ago I was passing one of those plaster mannequins and as is my friendly wont, I administered a light fingered goose delux. It suddenly brought both its hands behind it. It also leaped in the air and screamed. My attire at the time did not afford me much protection and I said rather too many times I beg your pardon madam, I thought you were a statue. She glared as I walked away backwards over the toes of several assembled assistants. Sad when only minutes before I'd helped an old lady across the road. It could be the moment for me to swim the Channel both ways, French and British flags between the toes and the usual inflated French letters for buoyancy. I find all my acquaintances booked up. Even I suppose for their funerals. I say there, one says, are you booked in for a shit old man, better be, the best places are awfully crowded. God I miss the ways of Erseland where one was lucky just to wake for the next day's doggish proclivities. I am taking my colonic irrigations like a man and cry out only for town house, country estate and polo ponies as a little embellishment and garnish in my life. But to add to my dangerous difficulties I went recently to an all night do it your ruddy self laundry just opened here to cleanse my clothes at one A.M. when there wasn't a bugger in sight. I delicately stripped down and washed my shirt, socks and lacy underthings. A passing woman walking her unpleasant dog saw me and called the police. They arrived in force as I sat stark naked and lonely reading a copy of Country Life. Only that I bedazzled them with ecclesiastic and legal mummeries I would have been had up. As it was they helped me dry my garments and drove me home. You will gather from this that it is a far away time when one was pushed by nannie in one's pram looking down from one's lofty wheeled height at the ranks of other men below. All I now hear whispered at me from the unprivileged comers of this London world is, sir may we be of assistance in your failure. It's not too funny when one thinks of all the time spent growing one's eyebrows long in a good London club. But I still do have my little bevy of fluffy delights who polish my instrument like a doorknob before turning it open to frolic and frisson with my soul. Needless to add, a mare of much fortune eludes me more and more. And so, blessed are they who rat on their principles and trample their codes for profit, provided the friend is dear who suffers and dies betrayed.

Beefy

A smooth crossing of the Channel. Rearwards, in second class, people sang around a man who played a mandolin. And down in first class with the suspicious immigration officer as the ship plied its way. I sat before his desk as he thrust out his lower lip and sucked air between his dentures.

"How long are you staying.' "I don't know."

"Have you come for a visit."

"I don't know."

"How do you support yourself."

"Privately."

"You may be required to give proof. However you will be permitted to land as a visitor provided you don't enter employment or engage in any business or profession. And leave the United Kingdom not later than such date as may be specified by the Secretary of State."

And there ahead lay England. Suddenly a green and welcoming land. The great high darkness of Victoria Station. To taxi through the bustling streets. Where the people sauntered looking hopeful again. The fountain sprinkling under the leafy trees of Sloane Square. And dead ahead at the end of a straight road, the turreted red brick eminence of this peaceful hotel.

Balthazar B went to look at 78 Crescent Curve. To push open the heavy oak door. A scattering of brown envelopes inside. Footprints on the parquet. His boxes and trunks stacked in the hall. To walk in across the grimy dusty floors. All once new paint grown shades darker in the stale air. And this is where I would have sat and smoked perhaps a pipe. Might have been little laughing voices racing by. And no. I must not go on thinking. For the pain will never go away. You just go on and live. In the dust of desertion.

23

Take this morning stroll through the park, a light wind shaking the leaves. Couples lying on the grass. And striped sails fluttering on boats bumping across the Serpentine. An Afghan hound goes loping around the deck chairs. Nice to see an Alsatian locked in cohabitation with a little white poodle as the owners hysterically dance and belabour all around. And there two little babies, a boy and girl, come wading through the grass hand in hand. And I look up. A blue jay catches a moth. Now it lands to sit on a branch and devour and dine. As the tiny bits of moth wings come fluttering down.

And again to march out into life after lunch, a tune in my head. Step lively, stride long. Under a sky flooded blue. And over blackened slate rooftops and greening copper rain gutters clouds float puffy white and moisty. Turn this corner away from traffic humming on the mild afternoon air. The houses of this street all their red sooty fronts mellowed umber. And there, that's the house where I still might live. Behind the bits of ivy. Me and my volumes of comparative anatomy. Mr. Pleader, who comes after Horn and before Hoot, not to mention Bother and Writson, said yesterday these brooding blocks of flats nearby are graced with leading stage actors and psychologists. They graze here on these calm spring pastures. Of soft brick, gentle curtains, gleaming glass and goodish surnames. Terribly nice, all of it.

Balthazar B went through the double swing doors of this russet stone walled emporium. Suppliers of fancy goods to the Monarch. Past the ties, shoes and shirtings. The glove counter and the stairs down to the safety deposit vaults. Where many documents and various ready cashes have lain locked away between the mirrored walls, lonely in the fireproof silence.

Ahead the waiting hall. Vast marble room of creamy browns. Six fluted pillars hold up a ceiling lit with funereal glass trays shrouding neon lights. A gauntlet of dowagers in last year's wedding hat. Seated with unmarried sons in the green leather chairs. They confide little jokes. Nod and flicker timidly at their random passing friends. And sometimes they pause to talk of weddings and christenings. And my God. There. Is it, it must be. Beefy. And his clothes. As he sits dejected. Suede leather on his feet smudged with something like plaster and powdered cement. His grey flannels spattered with crusts of mud. But higher up near the throat he looks splendidly the same. Silk crimson hanky and a moss green cravat tucked in the neck of his yellow shirt.

"My God Beefy. I hardly recognised you."

"Yes. I know. Note the colours of my jacket match nicely with the encrusted clay. Clearly no tonsorial artist or tailor is doing his fortnightly nut to keep me beautiful. But my glands sustain in the lack of gaudery. Goodness I am glad to see you.

I need a friend in my world these days. If Fm away from the building site much longer Fll be sacked. Say Fm shirking. When I have the most awful case of the runs. Together with my piles, which attacked recently, I can barely stand up. Chaps keep accusing me of not pulling my weight."

"What have you done Beefy."

"Done. Dear man I should like to know. Mostly it is what another has done. In particular dear old granny. I came to the last five pound note in my deed box after a catastrophic series of races devoid of tips from Zutu. And then I made another awfully ill advised attempt to harass granny, I tried to get a mortgage on the insurance of her life. And I am now situated in chambers in Bayswater. A polite word which upon map scrutiny admits of one having been pushed into Paddington. The tale is simple. I'm ruined. As you know the Public School Appointments got me my job on the stock exchange. After a prolonged safari in Brighton with a most saucy but impoverished debutante, I was fired. Upon many subsequent interviews I was finally offered another position. As a clerk. Can you imagine. I said not on your life. I will go and tear up earth as a navvy before I will stand behind a counter. I sounded so convincing, I believed it myself. Mesmerised by those suicidal words that's what Fve done. After the first two days I was so blistered and tired I thought I'd soon die a natural death. Some days later climbing up the marble steps of the club, my hand touching along the reassuring brass gleam of the rail, I asked for mail. Hoping my trustees might have unearthed ownership of a deed to some country pub. But there wasn't even a bill. And just as I went across the lobby to the lift, an elderly rather red nosed member said to George the porter as I passed, that chap is soiled. Imagine. Soiled."

"O my God Beefy. You must let me help you."

"Wait there's more. Not all of it gloom. Just last week at my very bottom lowest when I'd returned to my tiny room. Put sixpence in the slot for a morsel of electric fire. Not for heat. Just for the encouraging glow in the gloom. I stared out back at the pipes and chimneys and the car parts yard below. Then I knelt down. God I was fervent. I really meant it. Knees sunk deeply in the threadbare broadloom. I promised and prayed, as a onetime member of the Church of Ireland, that if God would send some reasonable female creature of marriageable age across my path, in fact age immaterial, who was possessed of the wherewithal and whence I should get my hands upon it, I would forthwith, as decency allowed after the ceremony, covenant the church to two and a half percent of the income, after tax was paid. At that exact moment. Right over my head. The light bulb exploded. I was showered in glass and darkness. I also jumped ten feet. And as the room is six by nine I had to call my doctor. He bid me, tired as I was, to come round and he would look for breaks in the arm bones. Off I went to Harley Street. I was next to last at his ultra late Friday surgery. My unbroken legs crossed as I turned the pages of a magazine. And into the waiting room. There comes a young lady.

A rainbow of a smile bursting across Beefy's blustery freckled face, his wandering nose and wine tinted cheeks. As Balthazar B leaned forward in his light grey flannel suit sewn in the Rue St. Honore with two horn buttons requested on the sleeves. A matron near by, long nostrilled, green suited, her lorgnette held up to an auction catalogue. An audibly tender moment really.

"Yes. There comes a young lady, Beefy."

"Ah. By the way Balthazar, that is a fine blue tie you're wearing with that elegant shirt. You're marvellously turned out."

"And you Beefy have not changed one bit. And what happened. There comes a young lady."

"Ah. Wait. My God I have an erection. Of the volcanic variety once again. Visions of richness always brings it on. Ah so. Yes. To be sure. The young lady. Who that moment came delicately in, in the best of leathers and fabrics. And I who had just crawled searching for forgiveness, off the wintry Hornchurch Marshes near some borax works to face a committee of ecclesiastics lined up inside a glassed, centrally heated pavilion. They were chanting quietly, I Know That My Redeemer Liveth. And then at the sight of me. They pointed. Go back, they said. Back to the marsh, dirty deed doing profaner, your redeemer does not liveth."

"My God Beefy, the young lady."

"Ah the young lady. But you are so splendidly turned out Balthazar, so frisky and one might say fresh from France that it does my heart fair good just to see you."

"Yes Beefy, I've come all this way. And a girl came into the waiting room and then what."

"You must let me tantalise myself Balthazar. To me these days it means much. Let me digress one more delicious moment. The chaps at my building site when they saw me giving the cement a little extra wetting down. They cheered. Said it was the biggest weapon ever seen. It rather improved my day. Of course I know it's achieved a further grandeur it did not know at prep school. And perhaps not even as one prepared to take holy orders. But to have these chaps cheer. It's given me courage to again present this instrument to a mare who would exchange all her riches lain at my feet for a guarantee of frequent thrustings. Ah but back at the doctor's."

"Yes."

"Ah. Her name, listen carefully while I thrill it out between my sober lips. Listen. Angelica Violet Infanta. Doesn't that tell you much already. Angelica, from the Greek, Violet from the Latin. Those delicate tiny flowers found on grassy banks through woods. Infanta. From that latter one catches a tremolo of Debrett. I swim back to the shores of privilege out of the sea of the dispossessed. Saved from a lifetime of discomfort. But back at my doctor's. Medical treatment is the only thing left that granny pays for these days. And the dear man while he was examining my bones said, now Beefy there waits downstairs in my waiting room a girl of not too great looks perhaps but a marvellous fortune. When I returned to the waiting room I gave my most charming smile. But she was of course aloof. In fact positively ignored me. Being as I was and still am, in a state of deshabille. But on the good doctor's front door step. I lurked waiting. And did pounce. With a long prepared stream of lies. When the door opened and she appeared. I said I'm awfully sorry. Then I left an enormous pause. To let my villainous vowels sink in. Her eyebrows were rising. I attacked. Said I'd just rushed from rehearsals. Left my bowler and brolly in my dressing room. I'm a navvy darling in an uproariously funny stage play. I didn't say darling I must admit. But I made a further thrust. As always Fm the first to believe myself. I said you, my dear, are just the one one has been looking for. My leading lady in the flesh. She began to open her mouth. I knew it would be fatal if ever she got anything out. Something odious like be gone cad. So I said. Say nothing please. Just come with me. I got her into a nearby wine lodge. Admiring her eighty quids' worth of tailoring she carried so presentably on her back. I extracted her address. Belgravia of course. I flung the necessary heirlooms into pawn. Bombarded her with red roses for a week. And now if only I can hold out. Keep the wool over suspicious eyes. Tonight I meet ma and pa."

"I'm terribly pleased for you Beefy."

"Balthazar so good to hear your word. When all is not well. When you know that out under the cloudy skies of London no one thinks in love of one. But now. The Violet Infanta. Niece of a Welsh peer. You know how utterly rich they are. She may mention Le Touquet a trifle too often for my comfort. Does rather hysterically laugh. But what matter. We'll get on. In wedlock I know I can grow to love her. For what she is. Stinking. Gushingly stinking rich. My doctor smiles every time he tells me of her ground rents and her father's connection with motor cars. Given me the runs, made me half demented. The slothful grandeur of it all. Our spiritual feelings are so in harmony. She's a rabid believer in the monarchy. And of course so am I. Ah Balthazar you look so untouched by life. The calmness of your existence. Back there in Paris. You must meet her. You must. Told her all about you. She thinks she has a friend you would adore."

Beefy's sun reddened hand reaching to lightly touch his cravat. And a finger flicks away a morsel of hardened mud from his knee. As mothers, aunts and nannies march by, irregularities of figure neatly corsetted under their tweed. Children in tow. On their way to measure for the school uniform.

"Balthazar, you do tolerate me so much. Why."

"Your charm."

"For that I shall send you by foot messenger six gull's eggs. Imagine though how God answered my prayer. Nearly within the hour. I even thought I might have caught a glimpse of him as the light bulb overhead exploded. I knelt with the backside out of my underwear and untold guilts from nursery days blushing on my face. Fm on my way. My rich mare lassoed. And till I get to the altar, I smash back my emulsion of poppy juice to keep my spirits up. I really know now that one's redeemer damn sure liveth."

"Beefy. I don't want to trouble you or be presumptuous. But I do think that you need a little help. And Fd like very much if you would accept from me an early wedding present."

"Balthazar, my goodness, you are a brick. You really are. What an awfully nice thing of you to say. Were I a heretic denying the transubstantiation and you minded, I must say Fd mend my ways forthwith. And my Lord I haven't really asked you how you are. How are you.' "Fm fine. Very fine. I had one or two low moments in Paris perhaps. But at the same time I rather caught up on some aspects of zoology I had missed."

"God suddenly the world at this moment seems so good. I mean one couldn't help wondering what was going to happen to us. To our caste. Me wheeling a wheelbarrow on a building site. Marvellous thing is, amazing how many places one can go, a wheelbarrow in front of you, shouting out gangway. Fm planning to use it to enter the Enclosure at Ascot with champagne buried in my little load of ice cold sand."

"Would you excuse me Beefy. Just for a few moments."

Balthazar passed to the end of the waiting hall. Between the elevators. And down the steps into the vaults. Pressing the black little button. A buzzer ringing along a corridor and footsteps approaching. Dark uniformed man lifting up his rings of keys to unlock and swing open this iron barred entrance.

"Good day, sir."

"Good day."

Heels clicking over the tiles along this passage and turning right into a mirrored room, a fan whirring quietly. The tinkle of keys and clank of a safe door. Great steel box lugged forth. Placed on a high table shelf behind the frosted glass door of a panelled booth. Turn the key, lift up the lid. Reach into the loneliness. To choose a stack of white storage crisp five pound notes. From the other stacks of French, Swiss, Dutch and Danish. Uncle Edouard always said keep a balance of currencies dear boy to cushion your horror if they all devalue at once.

And climbing back the carpeted marble stairs. Left between the phalanx of lift doors. Step aside politely for a high heeled toy poodle carrying perfumed customer. Beefy, my goodness, engaged in eager conversation with the dowager. He must practice on all old ladies. In the hope of handling granny. He lights up one's whole lonely life. With his fighting flaming flesh and bone. Now my God she's handing him her card. Enmeshed in his magic. And once he said at a distance people look different but when you talk to them they all become the same.