The Moon In Its Flight (9 page)

It was not possible to find gathered together rarer specimens than these young flowers. Of course, as the phrase so often has it, there are flowers, and then there are flowers. Some commentators, as always, have vulgarly intruded remarks concerning “figural language,” if one can countenance such opinion without displaying some small degree, at the very least, of levity. At this moment, before my eyes, they were breaking the line of the sea with their slender hedge. “The line of the sea,” I admit, may be taking things just a little
too
seriously; but events, one hopes, will bear out its ultimate propriety. It should also be noted, and the earlier the better, that the sand was almost uncomfortably hot because of the meridional blaze of the sun, savagely brilliant in the usual white, cloudless sky. They were like a bower of Pennsylvania roses adorning a cliffside garden. In gardens such as these, small domestic animals tend to cavort, on any pretext. The question of why larger animals neglect to “follow suit,” if such an idiom may still be employed, is, at present, moot. Between their blooms is contained the whole tract of ocean, crossed by some streamer. This is an ocean “as you like it,” which is the message presented by this crumpled note. The note also contains the formula for making roast leg of lamb mavourneen, sometimes called—the formula, that is—a “recipe.” The steamer is slowly gliding along the blue, horizontal line. With the aid of a pair of good, not to say excellent binoculars, one can just make out the name of the ship—the SS
Albertine.
On the other hand, it may well be the humble forest cabin which
we have seen before,
albeit in dreams. The line stretches from one stem to the next. As we know, the rose is beautiful, and is often called the queen of the green world because of its cruel thorns. This sobriquet doesn’t seem precisely right or just, if I may, for a moment, interrupt the gardening with a gently puzzled remark, as I have, or so it would seem, just done! An idle butterfly is dawdling in the cup of a flower, one long since passed by the ship’s hull. Some of the more sensitive guests are leaving, including a few of the young flowers. There are barely concealed grimaces of disapproval, and some of the older gentlemen, placidly elegant in black tie, appear to be trying to
sink
the steamer before it reaches the buffet. The butterfly can wait before flying off in plenty of time to arrive before the ship. But according to a telegram carried by a sweating courier, “Nobody else can wait.” And there, once again, is the old, familiar sound of breaking glass! He can wait until the tiniest chink of blue still separates the prow from the first petals of the flower. Two of the women have nervously rushed into the gazebo, despite posted warnings. And, as one might easily have imagined, the “chink of blue”—actually aquamarine—has grown no smaller. The ship, of course, is steering toward the flower. There are cries and imprecations against Pennsylvania and what some call “salts,” whatever they may be. The blue, horizontal line is quite striking in contrast to the blank glare of the sky.

But only last week, the flowers that were flowers had vied with what certain celebrated authors term “the shining turn of the wave,” or “the turn of the shining wave,” or perhaps “the thundering wall of water.” Figural language often defeats one, especially at the seashore, where one’s head simply swirls! The
line
of the sea, however, seems, always, somehow to remedy just about any problem. There were vacationers, of course, who, daunted by the white, blazing sand and the cruelly hot sun, stayed in their well-ventilated gazebos, “happy,” the roustabouts said, “as cherrystones,” to some small degree. Clams are not usually thought of as domestic animals, particularly the large, blue-ribbon specimens often mistakenly associated with Pennsylvania, its farms, wells, knolls, buzzards, and plentiful copses. There is a wonderful photograph of one such prizewinner, “Old Moot,” who comes up to the ankles of his master, or, as it pleasurably turned out, mistress. I may as well state unequivocally that I prefer not to use the word “mistress” in such close relationship to the mention, such as it is, of an animal. More than one crumpled note has been delivered to me—post-haste!—from breezy oceanfront cabanas regarding such unfortunate contiguities. The threats therein are what a grizzled editor of my acquaintance wisely called “recipes for disaster.” But this time I escaped, and could gaze at the slowly steaming freighter on the horizon in much the same essentially idiotic manner as the other guests. Not, of course, that I was a guest; let us say that I was, simply, very like someone you may well have seen “before.” I was, indeed, once billed as “Queen of Flowers” and “Credenza of Cruel Thorns,” but that was long before certain curious proclivities led to disturbing psychological effects and an unswerving attention to minute details of dress. My gardening regimen, for instance, was almost completely subverted, if I may use a fashionable euphemism. A few of the young flowers, as I like, I suppose I’ve mentioned, to call the unmarried women, were leaving for a better view of Saint-Loup, the hotel’s pasta chef. He, rapt before his own sense of personal vanity, paid attention only to the buffet, and not even the steamer’s insane whistle could tear his gaze from the
“plat complet”
of
vermicelli alla Sciaccatana.
None of the lovely young flowers waited for him to notice them, and the message they blushingly but assertively conveyed to him occasioned one of the master’s rare, gap-toothed smiles. He and three of the young ladies swiftly made for the greenhouse, and subsequently were heard the sounds of flustered laughter, creaking wicker, and
some more
breaking glass. Influenced, perhaps, by the current bestseller,
The Hothouse Bacchanal,
certain of the older women charged the cliffside gazebo, despite posted warnings to be on the alert for myriad broken spirits. More than one “chink” of blue, as wags still snicker, was fondled that day, although the several dispatches from the administration’s puppets predictably said otherwise. As the sun began to lower itself into the glittering sea, one heard feminine voices everywhere pleading for “salts, my salts,
please,
my salts, if you love me!” The
blue line
of chauffeurs, servants, toadies, and hastily deputized police officers prevented angry crowds from approaching the scene of what had rather quickly become an exhausting debacle.

Later, one had not thought it possible to find gathered together rarer denizens than the young whores, who, at every moment, between their thighs were peeking for signs of glee. Their tender wedges, like bowers in “Pennsylvania poses,” were explored by silklike garters between which perfumes retained a slow, “packed” emotion. Bossed by one schemer, so slow in sliding along the blue, horizontal mime who had stretched from one hem to the next, an idle guttersnipe bawled in humping a whore whom a pimp’s trull had long since sassed.
(He
could wait before flying off; I’m to arrive before him!) Nothing but the tiniest pink-and-blue rill separated these souls from the fine-fettled whores toward which they were leering.

Ultimately, it is not possible to say with any certainty whether or not lessons have been learned, since it is not possible to determine the moral objectivity of the spectators who gathered about like so many wretched flu sufferers, each vying for a moment of an exhausted physician’s time, each brandishing a crusted eyecup, or pitifully displaying badly soiled linen in a puerile bid for attention. It is one thing to deal with the orgiastic and the exhibitionistic in an area which is, let us admit, a dreary seadrome like La Bbec, but such activity, such shocking hedonism in a supposedly refined family setting, is, as a rude prospector, in quite another context, put it, “like a Bowie knife ’mid th’ aspic.” As to these noted activities, made depressingly public, they needed no Rosetta stone of the sensual in order for them to have been clearly—all
too
clearly!—understood. Granted, the balmy temperatures of these climes may have contributed to the general moral collapse, but the erotic pandemonium of gardyloos, shrieks, halloos, yodels, screams, and full-throated bellowings cannot be blamed on the weather, and must stand forever as a blot on this otherwise handsomely managed season. Some grumblers have suggested that morality and discretion were treated by the
rentiers
as mere trade-ins for the considerable monies provided by what this same disaffected group calls (worshipfully), with no reservations whatsoever, an ochlocracy. A small minority of older, successful tradesmen and professionals sneer at the younger and overtly “conspicuous” crowd as “rabid stearin,” but that is, surely, going a little too far. In any event, the stencils went up later that day, each bearing its remonstrative jussive in blazing red: DESIST! Yet the very next morning, the butterweed around the ransacked and noisome gazebo was crushed and broken, the machine for instant cupellation lay smashed at the bottom of the sea, and the shipment of New Testaments was but smoldering ashes. A noted conservative humanitarian of excellent family was found, sans trousers and underpants, bound and gagged in the ladies’ room, and time itself seemed to have retired—perhaps for good! Yet the antique chipper still had a fine edge to its blade, and the more obstreperous protesters were being, finally, brutally harassed. That afternoon, all the self-proclaimed prudes left, taking their health implements and “green things” with them, and the youthful contingent of regulars triumphantly flew the peter, thereby recalling those compatriots who, earlier in the summer, had unwillingly and unhappily vanished. All in all, the lesson learned, then, might be phrased, “a surfeit of emendation
sometimes
turns to delighted glee,” or, as an old proverb teaches, “else.”

A BEEHIVE ARRANGED ON HUMANE PRINCIPLES

So can you predict the exact date on which the “pearly” rain will fall? Are you a slave to such quirks of clairvoyance? Is there a testament, if you don’t think that’s too strong a word, for or against behavior of that sort? Would red flowers or white, or pink for that matter, be any the less useless to you? Or their motions, such as they are, in the wind? Speaking of wind, do you remember those long-ago parades, held in gales of lilacs, so it seemed, or were they actually merely lilac butterflies? And do you recall how the children and their mothers aped the yokels who marched in those Midwestern uniforms and plumes? Weren’t they always the dead white of sails, or snow, of, in short, winter as you once experienced it? Do you think of the usual creaking boughs and bitter frosts when you hear that “music”? Wasn’t it on one of those festive days that you butchered the peacocks? Those you claimed lived behind the house of the girl with the out-of-tune guitar? Didn’t you tell me her name was Regina, Regina Lake, or Regina Star? Now that I think of it, weren’t you and she the closest of friends when she was still a virgin? And isn’t she now the Regina Lake or Star whose sex life is the subject of the monographs on perversion that you collect? She and you flew pigeons off the roof, didn’t you? I remember, do I not, you telling me that she asked you the meaning of “gobbet,” or was it the derivation of “radish”? You say that was April Starre? Why would you think of April Starre when Regina looked, not like her, but exactly like Ursula? Speaking of whom, why did you insist on calling her really beautiful buttocks ugly? And why did you persuade the other women to give her a box of candles and bananas?
And
why did Sheila Christian blush and crack her gum when you arrived? In the photograph you have of Sheila and Ursula, who is the blonde asleep or in a faint or perhaps even dead beneath the hydrangea? Why do women to whom you show this disconcerting photograph mysteriously call that position a “malady”? Why, for instance, do
you
say, “With a malady like that the only cure is Emperor Ointment”? And in the other photograph, isn’t that you doing the Tiger Hump? And why do all of you, you, Regina, April, Ursula, and Sheila, insist that Jesus was at the party? And then why do you agree that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he arrived wearing a sleeveless pink dress? Weren’t
you
wearing a sombrero like the sojourning Mexicans? Or were they really blackamoors whose curious taste for the fugue depressed all of you? And the turbans beneath their sombreros frightened you? But didn’t they kill the parakeets to assure you of their good intentions? Didn’t they appear the next morning in slippers and dressing gowns to tell you and anyone else who would listen of sunshine and cognac and the coconuts of Florida? Before we go on, would you like some chocolate? Or would you prefer to sit under a California umbrella and have a glass of orangeade and gin to chase the blues? Perhaps you’d like a free pass to the Bijou to see
The Janitor’s Waltz?
Seriously, as they say, why are you waiting this way, so hopelessly, really, for Ramón? Do you believe, despite all you’ve learned, that he’s different from other drummers? Didn’t he make you publicly “perform” on a bed covered with white carnations? Didn’t you have to eat cauliflower ice cream for him? Didn’t he make you sleep on bare porcelain tiles? Don’t you consider that being laced, day after day, into that tiny corset was an indication of his true feelings for you? And while you and the Mexicans acted those lewd roles for the camera, didn’t Ramón sit there blithely eating
peas?
You say that he sent you bouquets? But didn’t he give Ursula the pearl-and-ruby necklace he’d bought for you? Weren’t you bitterly hurt when he took April and Regina to Barbados on what he called a “double honeymoon”? Don’t you think that there’s a
reason
that he makes you live on Willow Way? Don’t you find it strange that a loathsome dwarf constantly spies on you? Didn’t your very blood sicken when you first realized that there wasn’t a crevice of your body that the little monstrosity hadn’t seen? Why do you pretend not to know that he’s always there, watching and masturbating? Why do you play those madrigals every night? Why do you threaten to call Connecticut, where you don’t know a soul, with the news? Why do you continue to believe that the cinnamon cantharides tablets and the sex toys that you get every month are from Ramón? Don’t you ever see the misshapen beast watching you in your bath? Why did you let Ursula hide in the family chapel? Didn’t you find it odd that Ramón asked Regina to pose for that “emperor” in nothing but pearls and high heels and carrying a tiny Japanese parasol? Didn’t she tell you that she was persuaded with hashish nougat? Were you the beautiful brunette rapt amid the flowering dogwood? Or were you naked in that copse of almonds? Why did Sheila name the sparrow that you gave her “Lesbia”? She was living then in the mauve-brick tenement you own, wasn’t she? Why did the milkman deliver free ice cream to you and to her every Saturday? Didn’t you say that his name was Bud or Billy Starr? Weren’t you, during your early days on Willow Way, playing the oboe with the Sapphic Apricot Romance Orchestra? Didn’t the leader affect a steel helmet and pretend an interest in antique gramophones in order to seduce you? Wasn’t she the woman who duped you with some absurd story about a lost canto of
Don Juan?
Why on earth did you buy her a football for Christmas? And didn’t you and Ursula buy her a blown-up color photograph of a plague of locusts? Do you still think that there was a certain “chemistry” between the two of you? Didn’t she give you a thousand dollars to “pose,” as she called it, in some expensive lingerie she’d bought for you? And didn’t you turn white as a ghost when a nude actor suddenly joined the two of you? Why did you, some few years later, regularly refer to the obscene exhibition that occurred that night as a “rendezvous”? And don’t you now term the photograph one of crickets, not locusts, as if it somehow mattered? And why do you maintain that the geraniums had a spicy smell? Why do you so dislike Sundays?