The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children (14 page)

She replied:

The next evening he arrived at her door at the appointed time: a man with perfectly tended white hair, an extremely delicate upper lip and eyes the colour of kale. He held a potted orchid in the crook of his arm.

“
Michela,” he said matter-of-factly, with a strong German accent.

“
Yes,” she replied. “Please come in.”

He took a few unsteady steps forward and handed her the orchid. She took it and gazed at the strange pink blossom. It seemed to her that it was something obscene, those flesh-coloured petals emitting an almost sickeningly strong aroma, vanillic, connubial.

IV.

The horizon became pink with the death of the sun.

They ate at Aquacotta. There were crostini toscani and a bottle of Chianti. Karl tried the restaurant’s famous egg and vegetable soup and seemed well satisfied.

They walked into the night, along Borgo Pinti and the Via Della Colonna. In the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata he took her hand. The sky was populated with stars. He looked up at the façade of the Ospedale Degli Innocenti, at the small and colourful tondi, sculptures of babies by Andrea della Robbia.

“
How charming,” the German said.

Michela smiled thinly.

They moved past Giambologna’s Equestrian Sculpture of Ferdinand I and onto the Via Dei Servi, Karl humming to himself an aria from Gounod’s
Faust
.
They passed the Duomo, were in the nucleus of the town, and entered the Via Dei Calzaiuoli.

“
Ah, there’s a lovely pair.”

The two now stood in front of a shoe store, gazing at the window display: pink suede, open toe, heels which were spiked, sharp as daggers. He plunged his fingers in her hair, pressed his desiccated lips to hers.

And so he courted her; the orchid withered and died; manhood for him consisted of spending money, at restaurants, on feminine footwear, of which he was an expert, keeping track of the trends, taking great pleasure in studying the newspaper advertisements: strongly excited: envisioning shoeing her, nailing horseshoes to her feet. That she was far from pretty did not seem to matter, for he saw her not as a woman, but as a shoe, her skin leather, her arms straps, her buttocks and legs a great heel. —And she allowed him to touch her ankles.

V.

His bizarre infatuation with Michela ended in matrimony; a rapid ceremony at San Salvatore.

He repaired to his native land and several weeks later she joined him, took a train to Köln, through Switzerland, through vast mountains and idyllic meadows; then arrived in the city, the rolling stock gliding into its centre (the dual spires of the great cathedral rising up to one side) and into the station.

He greeted her with a kiss on the cheek, loaded her and the accompanying valises into a Mercedes, and drove to his dwelling some short ways into the country. The house looked like a huge coffin. That night they drank champagne;
her foot in his mouth
.

VI.

The lights of the house and the heavy metal shutters on the windows were attached to timers. When the sun set the lights would flicker on, the heavy metal shutters whirr shut. The walls were covered with pictures of horses, as well as photos of Karl, in years gone by, on horseback. He could not ride anymore, but every Saturday would still go to his country club and visit the stables, and with jealous eyes watch younger equestrians enjoy themselves.

He owned a company which manufactured toilet appurtenances. Files, pincers and claw tweezers. Barrel spring toe-nail nippers, gold-handled scissors in the shape of storks, moustache scissors of nickel-free stainless steel and scissors with micro-serrated edges.

She was soon informed of her conjugal duties: provision the house and serve Karl his supper as well as breakfast and lunch on weekends.

The weather was very warm and they sat outside, under the eaves of the porch. They sipped champagne, Karl ate his daily slice of cake. He wielded a giant orange fly swatter, and with it killed the wasps that came along hunting for food, swatted them and then flicked their corpses off the table and onto the ground, crying out with satisfaction at these little victories.

And then he would talk, his kale-coloured eyes glistening, his speech saturated with stale propaganda:
sacrifice. fight for food. immigration crisis.

“
They say that one day white people will become a minority.”

“
They say?”

“
I read it in a certain book.” He looked at her defiantly. “The whites will be slaves. . . . The Africans, you see them coming over now by the boatload. . . . The women with empty bellies and full wombs. . . . The men know how to rob us. . . . And in the future we will be their slaves.” He was a visionary, a prophet. “We will be crushed. All this will one day belong to the black man,” he said with a sweeping gesture, indicating not only his home, his Germany, but the vast expanse of Europe. . . .

He had been through, survived the war, and though he seldom talked about that part of his life, occasionally he would drop a few words . . . about the Russian front . . . where he had been an artillery commander . . . men freezing . . . living on a pocketful of peanuts.

VII.

The
putzfrau
was a square-shouldered blonde with haunches like a draft animal, fleshy lips and a vague odour of prosaic sin hanging about her person: edacity, frotteurism and evil concupiscence. Five days a week she would arrive in the morning and, after setting before Herr Schrimpf his breakfast, begin disinfecting and cleaning the house. She dusted surfaces and polished all wood, vacuumed and waxed the floors, her large rump thrust in the air and her small nine-volt radio playing, grinding out caricatures of music.

Though she treated Karl with great deference, she was insolent towards his bride, showing all the contempt of the northerner, of one of Teutonic race, towards the Latin, the fryer of fish and eater of cloves of garlic. She muttered darkly under her breath as she cleaned Michela’s toilet; then would glide by Karl, graze him with the protruding mass of her breasts, for him turn her frigid frown upside down. . . . And his eyes, those of a very old altocalciphiliac, wandered down to the terminal parts of her legs.

To Michela’s extreme displeasure, her husband began to buy the cleaning woman gifts,
id est
shoes: cone heels and fantasy pumps. Their click, the squeak of their leather could be heard about the house interminably, cruel and pedestrian—acousticophiliatically comforting to Karl:
vision of his fleshy, movable, muscular organ (principal organ of taste) wrapped around the solid built-up base at the back of the footwear
.

Michela shrugged her shoulders. She knew too well of his slug-like ability. She was unhappy. She found a kitten for herself, but it drowned; planted tulips, but they were killed by malicious nematodes. Friends? The good folks of the neighbourhood stayed away from her as from some pit so deep it appeared bottomless.

And he: would spend much of his time in moody silences, a nervous twitch distorting his mouth; or, shut up in his room, avidly inhaling the smell of leather.

One night she served pickled herring for dinner.

“
Ah, the food of the poor!” he cried in disgust.

The flap of yellow fat beneath her jaw trembled.

“
You don’t like what I serve you?” she asked with forced calm.

“
I like to be treated well.”

“
How do you treat me?”

“
I am a good man!”

“
And that is why I love you,” she hissed.

His face assumed an expression of mild amusement. He wanted to have the pleasure of seeing her cry.

“
If you were not my wife, I would call you a bitch.”

Loathing. He was schooling her in how to hate. That night she dreamed of slitting open his belly: her hand, like a great spider, scurried forward and entered the wound.

VIII.

His tread became firmer, his appetite increased. At dinner, instead of his customary quarter litre glasses of beer, he would now drink a full stein; and, with an arrogant accent to his voice, demand a second portion of meat.

One day she heard the sound of suppressed laughter. Bed springs squeaking in pain. Opened door. Starch-white thighs.

His face glowed. His hair seemed more lustrous. His figure acquired a certain robustness, vaguely pubescent,—and this burgeoning made her hate him all the more, though she smothered this emotion with increased outward signs of wifely solicitude. One night she climbed into his bed, found him embracing a pair of thigh-high boots.

“
I love you so much Karl,” she murmured. Her keenest wish was to see him grilled alive. She now not only dreamed, but consciously desired to see him suffer unpleasantly. She would have willingly scooped out his eyes, torn out his tongue, pressed him in some horrible instrument until his bones cracked and he belched out cries of exquisite pain, his body reduced to jelly.

And then, on a certain Saturday in August, while at the stables, he ventured upon the back of a horse;—and was exceedingly pleased as he made it prance around the corral.

“
Karl, you once pledged me your life as a loving and faithful husband.”

“
Yes.”

“
You lied.”

“
Lied?” he snorted. “It was not a lie, only a terminological inexactitude.”

He prospered. He walked around the yard barefoot. She despised him. Her walled-up spite was for him the very fountain of youth.

The Life of Captain Gareth Caernarvon

I.

1894. An hour after dawn. Montana. Forest. A large animal, of the deer family. High, humped shoulders. Enormous palmate antlers. It goes down to the edge of the stream, inclines its head, drinks water. A loud, sudden explosive noise. The creature reels off to one side, falls. Eyes wide. Blood runs from a large hole in its side.

Caernarvon emerges from the bushes, dressed in green, his hat decorated with green sprigs, a leafy branch. A moment later a second man shows himself, carrying a
Scovill Waterbury camera with a Darlot wide-angle lens
mounted on a tripod.

Caernarvon inspects the kill.

The photographer silently arranges the camera.

The hunter takes a pipe from his pocket: the carved head of an Indian chief. Stem in mouth. Smoke upcurling. Beneath the shade of Douglas firs: he puts one booted foot on the belly of the animal, puts the butt of his rifle, barrel upraised, against the thigh of the same leg.

“
Shoot,” he says. “Take the damned photo!”

A sudden burst of bright and artificial light thrown briefly on the subject during exposure: momentary illumination.

———

From an American picture book:

Fig. 19

June 14, 1894, Red Lodge, Montana

The captain pulling out the heart of a grizzly bear.

Fig. 20

July 3, 1894, Hayden Valley, Wyoming

The captain standing near a pile of buffalo heads. Before his arrival only about 750 bison were known to exist on the continent; afterwards the number was about 550.

Fig. 21

September 20, 1894, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Caernarvon [
broad grin / drunk on blood
] harvesting a javelina.

Fig. 22

November 5, 1894, Orlando, Florida

The captain squatting on head of monster alligator (16 feet and 7 inches from end to end).

II.

As a child, he was absurdly fond of killing insects—ants, beetles, butterflies—practically any little living thing that came within range of his heel, swatting distance of his hand. His favourite book was the Duke of York’s
Maystre of Game
, which he would pore over in the evenings, reading of
tuskes above ben lowe and ywered off þe nether tuskes it is a tokne of a grete Boor
. Young Caernarvon liked to skewer moths on pins, and set lizards on fire. Later, he fished, for chubs, with gilt-tailed worms for river trout. He hunted frogs with a long, spiked stick, or sometimes baited them with gall of goat, and then, like a French peasant, he would roast their legs over a fire of twigs. He took down doves, with his slingshot; and after ripping out their breasts with his bare hands, threw the still warm carcasses to his dogs. At the age of twelve he received his first gun, an E. M. Reilly muzzle-loading hammer gun, and with it shot a pair of fine deer, and blew out the brains of several heads of grazing cattle. As a punishment for the latter offence his father made him wear girls’ underclothing beneath his knickerbockers and jacket.