The Electrical Experience (11 page)

‘No,' said Becker, not wanting to know, not wanting to know a further damned item.

‘It was during my “active phase”, as the shrink calls it … when I was younger. I stripped naked and got into bed with my father while he was asleep and slashed him with a razor-blade … not badly … just superficial cuts … Is that castration?'

‘Just superficial cuts, uh?' Becker said, nodding. Becker knew nothing of castration and was having none of it. None.

Protesting a backache, he proceeded to remove himself from the situation.

‘You mean you've been kissing and we're undressed and now you're going to go without making love to me?'

She seemed not to believe that he could go. He was sure he could.

‘You think I'm mad, don't you?' she cried, complaining, wanting, he could tell, for him to say no. Which he couldn't.

‘I'm concerned, Terri … maybe, I thought … maybe the office might be able to … a lot of people don't
realise how good Coca-Cola is about these … things.' He too had his doubts.

‘You're too much,' she said nastily, and began to laugh in a way which was like sobbing, which caused Becker to look again. Naked, she was laughing at him, and she continued to laugh at him, saying now and then, ‘Oh, my god', and ‘too much', shaking her head, while he dressed. When he looked again, she was masturbating herself with two hands between her legs, as he tied his laces.

No Prayer

Becker had a stiff Old Crow straight from the bottle in the motel and sang to himself, ‘Becker the brave, Becker the free.'

He realised it had been a dumb thing for him to have suggested assistance from Coca-Cola. Terri would not have considered that acceptable.

Anyhow, he didn't think Sam would come at it. Sam believed in will, pep and grit.

Somehow she didn't seem as crazy as she came on.

No prayer came to mind.

Coincidence: Non-negotiable Experience

‘We have with us tonight, as my guest, a visitor all the way from Atlantic City, Georgia, from the Coca-Cola Company.'

‘Atlanta, Georgia,' Becker corrected, with a good-big smile.

‘As you were Fellows, “Atlanta, Georgia”.'

The Rotarians clapped.

Becker was again introduced to yet another Rotary Club. He saw Rotarians rather as those who had the treasure he was after. But they were the Barons—not the Princes. It worried him that they had treasure but didn't know how to eat well.

Where is Rotary going?

Rotary is going to lunch—to a cheap lunch.

The other thing he objected to was that in every damned town he visited and fell in with Rotarians—the local bottler in this case—they took him to the meeting … never invited him … never gave him an out … They
took
him.

‘My daughter Terri is at present working in your city office,' Rotarian T. George McDowell—Classification: Catering—said, introducing himself across the table, half standing, napkin under chin, arm outstretched. Becker didn't like coincidences, because they were an imposition, an infringement of the straightforward, a breakdown of the expected. They had the bad odour of the supernatural about them. Coincidence led nowhere. Where do you go, what do you do with coincidence? It was what Becker called non-negotiable experience.

But strictly this was no coincidence. It was no surprise. ‘Pleased to meet you, sir. Terri mentioned you were in business hereabouts. I meant to get around to calling.'

Becker had hoped to ride his itinerary in and out of the fibro town without so much as a glance towards T. George McDowell.

‘She shouldn't be working in an office,' McDowell said. ‘We put her through art school—has just thrown that aside—wasted it.'

McDowell showed concern about his daughter, then injury, and then, placing a hand on Becker's arm, changed to smiling, became outgoing. ‘I love Americans. Both my wife and I love Americans.'

‘That sounds too generous a statement,' Becker said. ‘You must have to make many allowances for us.'

‘Not at all. I and my wife love you all. How many times would you say I'd been to the States, at a guess?'

Yet more guessing.

‘You travel a good deal?' he rejoined.

‘I've been to the States now seventeen times.' McDowell sat there, travel-proud.

‘You must have a fascination for our country.'

‘You know what I admire about Americans?'

Becker looked at him, resisting a no and resisting the guess.

‘I admire your mental tidiness.'

McDowell invited Becker back for a drink after the meeting. ‘Can't have you going back to some miserable motel room. Not that I'm saying the accommodation in this town is bad, and anyhow I was once in the same trade.'

The St Louis Rotary Convention 1923, Recalled

Becker wondered how he could fit himself into the McDowell house, so much carpet, so much bric-a-brac, so many pieces of furniture, so many clocks, so
many standard lamps, so many travel souvenirs, so many barometers, pianos, and palms.

‘The house is too large for the wife and me now that the children have flown the nest.'

His wife was in bed with a backache.

‘What will it be?'

They sat with a drink.

‘My first trip to the States was to the St Louis Rotary Convention of 1923, with my father. I wasn't a Rotarian my self, but joined Rotary as soon as we could get it going.'

‘That's a fine record.'

Of what?

‘That Convention, oh it was really something. The pageant at the Coliseum, corner of Jefferson and Washington streets.'

‘You remember the streets?'

‘Not bad for an old fellow. How is it I can remember the address of the St Louis Coliseum from 1923, but I forget the name of someone I met ten minutes ago? Why is that?'

‘It's an often remarked characteristic of later years, sir.'

‘I remember the flowers—the Rotary Garden of Nations. And they had young girls and boy scouts, and the Rotary Band and the singing of a choir—the Italian Choir of St Louis. Funny that, don't know why an “Italian” choir. Do you know St Louis at all?'

‘No, sir, I'm afraid I don't.' Becker shook his head, readying himself to be outknowledged on the United States.

‘There it was, in this vast auditorium, massed humanity. How many delegates and observers attended the convention, would you say at a guess?'

‘No, sir.'

‘… that's with wives, how many?'

‘No, I really have little idea.'

‘Six thousand—nearly seven thousand—and this was Rotary in 1923.'

Becker moved his head, impressed, liking a good crowd.

‘It was almost pitch-black when we went in. The light gradually brightened at each part of the opening ceremony until the whole spectacle ended in a display of electric light. Now, at the beginning, there was the sound of a trumpet. The sound of a single trumpet in a black auditorium.'

McDowell made a trumpeting action and imitated the sound of a trumpet.

‘A spotlight then revealed a single figure up there on this long flight of stairs—I think, if I remember, it was meant to be Columbia—standing on top of these stairs. The stairs were covered with green carpet leading to a terrace filled with pot-plants. We had the chorus of welcome sung by the choir—this Italian choir. Then a shrill whistle brought the boy scouts into the hall through the audience, and each bore a flag of the nations represented in Rotary.'

‘It must have been truly impressive,' said Becker from behind his empty glass, thinking especially of the enigmatic spaghetti choir.

‘Oh, that was just the beginning. Another fanfare.'

McDowell again made the trumpeting action and the imitated sound of a trumpet.

‘Another fanfare and from the top of the terrace, in sets of four, trooped twenty-eight girls, representing the twenty-eight nations of Rotary. All dressed in those classical robes and each wearing a band of flowers around their head—they represented the national flowers of the twenty-eight nations in Rotary, Australia included.'

‘Twenty-eight.'

‘Twenty-eight, each girl being one of those nations. They carried on their shoulders a huge garland, like a rope, which they hauled down to the main stage and then presented a dance. This was a salute to the visiting nations and an expression of their joy and exhilaration at being present at such a gathering. At the end of the dance the maidens—girls—went back up the stairs to the terrace and their garland was twined among the flags, the flags which the boy scouts had carried up. Can you picture that?'

‘Yes, sir, you certainly remember it. More trumpets?'

‘No, no more trumpet. This time, instead, the strains of the triumphal march of
Aida
. The rope of flowers was drawn to the top of a gold flagpole now—with your flag, the Stars and Stripes. This was the main feature of the spectacle, and at the same time a huge Rotary Wheel in gold and blue—Rotary colours—glittering, was lit up, twenty feet above our heads. Can you imagine it?'

‘Your description, sir, is vivid.'

‘John Henry Lyons—I think, if I remember, he was from Tacoma, Washington—led the singing. Do you know Tacoma?'

‘No, sir, I'm afraid not.'

‘I've been there, have been to the States now seventeen times. But I've told you that. John Henry Lyons from Tacoma led the singing. We sang “The Star-spangled Banner”, “God Save the King”, “America”, “Old Black Joe”—we had song books, of course—but I have never heard men sing out like that since.'

‘It must have been some occasion.'

With a mustering of fervour, McDowell said, ‘I have never seen anything like it in my life. It has never been equalled in my experience.'

McDowell sat there, back among the fanfares and the dancing maidens and the boy scouts.

Then he returned, became the host, rose to fix drinks—but again, paused, mid flight, both empty glasses in his hands, before the ice-bucket, finding the return from 1923 difficult.

‘Rotary,' McDowell said, holding onto the word, ‘Rotary is my religion', re-engaging, putting down the glasses and going on with getting the drinks. ‘I hope you don't find that sacrilegious, me saying that, but Rotary has guided my every adult act,' McDowell said.

‘Oh no … no, sir.'

‘I'm not the churchgoing type, but I am an ethical man and I believe there is a Great Chairman in the Other Country which is the destination of us all.'

Mortality was never far from Becker. Becker, replenished by his drink, wanting to ask about the poor food Rotary ate, and about the treasure promised by Consistent Effort, said instead, ‘I have never been in one place long enough to join.'

‘I often say that there is no need to be in a club to live by the principles of Rotary. What we need is not more men in Rotary, but more Rotary in men.'

Then McDowell mused, ‘It has guided the raising of my family. Now take the family. There is good authority, you probably know, for the proposition that a child owes no natural affection to the parents, that such affection will, however, result from kind treatment, companionship, and studied care. The sacredness and survival of the family, I argue, is largely dependent on the environment of Fellowship that is made around it. That's what Rotary and life are about. Complexes cannot live in the Rotary Home. Do you agree?'

Becker scratched around in the remnants of Course 231, Social Psychology. ‘Complexes, sir, I don't fully follow.'

‘A complex is when people aggravate their differences, while Fellowship is generally interpreted as a development of the principles on which there can be agreement. One is the seeking of conflict: the other, harmony.'

‘I follow.'

Again McDowell slipped into reverie.

Becker slugged down the drink.

McDowell came up out of the reverie, saying,
‘What is your honest opinion of my daughter Terri?' A darkness of trouble about his face.

‘I really don't know her that well. I spend so little time at the main office.'

Two hands masturbating between her legs.

‘We haven't seen her for a year.' The darkness blackened and without comment McDowell rose, left the room, and returned with a letter.

‘I want you to read this. Tell me what you think of a daughter who'd write this to her father.'

‘Really, sir, I don't think it's my place.'

‘Go on, I'd like your opinion. I'd like an American approach.' McDowell shook the letter at him in the agitated way of the elderly.

He knew the contents of the letter. He knew no response to the contents. He was thinking of the wording of a response and not reading the letter, he saw it all there in key words from the night in the bedroom under the Archfiend in Goat Form. A loud, blurred letter written with a felt-tipped pen. He saw the words: shaven head, castration, lice, methedrine, a pit of snakes, your cursed daughter.

You didn't need a Soc. Psy. 231 to know it was the letter of a speed freak screaming to her father.

‘Really, sir, I don't think it's my place to comment …'

Two hands masturbating between her legs.

‘Please, I'd be grateful for any comment. So difficult to seek advice in this town. About this sort of thing.'

He guessed McDowell wanted to be confirmed in
his judgement. Becker returned to the letter, pretending again to read, and then said, ‘I guess, sir, it's part of her search.'

McDowell didn't acknowledge this, but said, ‘Do you read the
Reader's Digest
?'

‘Yes, sir, I do.'

‘I like the positive American approach of the
Digest
. It's the only thing I have to go by. This drug thing comes stealing into the home. Remember also that it is not the behaviour of a teenager. Terri's no child, she's nearly thirty.' McDowell was grimly bewildered. ‘She was nurtured in the good fellowship and ethics of this home. I can only put it down to the city life and the company of artistic types.'