Now Anna comes in-Anna from Hannover-Minden -and she brings cognac, red pepper, absinthe and a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. And with Anna come the little Temple cats-Lahore, Mysore, and Cawnpore. They are all males, including the mother. They roll on the floor, with their shrunken skulls, and bugger each other mercilessly. And now the poet himself appears saying what time is it though time is a word he has stricken from his list, time, sib to death. Death’s the surd and time’s the sib and now there is a little time between the acts, an oleo in which the straight man mixes a drink to get his stomach muscles twitching. Time, time, he says, shaking a little cayenne pepper into his cognac. A time for everything, though I scarcely use the word any more, and so saying he examines the tail of Lahore which has a kink in it and scratching his own last coccyx he adds that the toilet has just been done in silver where you’ll find a copy of Humanite.
“You’re very beautiful,” he says to Dschilly Zilah Bey and with that the door opens again and Jill comes forward in a chlamys of Nile green.
“Don’t you think she’s beautiful?” says Jab.
Everything has suddenly grown beautiful, even that big buggerish brute Jocatha with her walnuts brown as cinnamon and soft as lichee.
Blow the conch and tickle the clavicle! Jab’s got a pain in the belly where his wife ought to have it. Once a month, regular as the moon, it comes over him and it lays him low, nor will inunctions do him any good. Nothing but cognac and cayenne pepper-to start the stomach muscles twitching. “I’ll give you three words,” he says, “while the goose turns over in the pan: whimsical, dropsical, phthisical.”
“Why don’t you sit down?” says Jill. “He’s got his period.”
Cawnpore is lying on an album of Twenty-Four Preludes. “I’ll play you a fast one,” says Jab, and flinging back the cover of the little black box he goes plink, plank, plunk! “I’ll do a tremolo,” he says, and employing every finger of his right hand in quick succession he hits the white key C in the middle of the board and the chess pieces and the manicure sets and the unpaid bills rattle like drunken tiddledywinks. “That’s technique! ” he says, and his eyes are glaucous and rimed with hoarfrost. “There’s only one thing travels as fast as light and that’s angels. Only angels can travel as fast as light. It takes a thousand light years to get to the planet Uranus but nobody has ever been there and nobody is ever going to get there. Here’s a Sunday newspaper from America. Did you ever notice how one reads the Sunday papers? First the rotogravure, then the funny sheet, then the sports column, then the magazine, then the theater news, then the book reviews, then the headlines. Recapitulation. Ontogeny-phylogeny. Define your terms and you’ll never use words like time, death, world, soul. In every statement there’s a little error and the error grows bigger and bigger until the snake is scotched. The poem is the only flawless thing, provided you know what time it is. A poem is a web which the poet spins out of his own body according to a logarithmic calculus of his own divination. It’s always right, because the poet starts from the center and works outward….”
The phone is ringing.
“Pythagoras was right…. Newton was right…. Einstein is right….”
“Answer the phone, will you!” says Jill.
“Hello! Oui, c’est le Monsieur Cronstadt. Et votre nom, s’il vous plait? Bimberg? Listen, you speak English, don’t you? So do I…. What? Yes, I’ve got three apartments-to rent or to sell. What? Yes, there’s a bath and a kitchen and a toilet too… . No, a regular toilet. No, not in the hall-in the apartment. One you sit down on. Would you like it in silver or in gold leaf? What? No, the toilet! I’ve got a man here from Munich, he’s a refugee. Refugee! Hitler! Hitler! Compris? Yeah, that’s it. He’s got a swastika on his chest, in blue… . What? No, I’m serious. Are you serious? What? Listen, if you mean business it means cash…. Cash! You’ve got to lay out cash. What? Well, that’s the way things are done over here. The French don’t believe in checks. I had a man last week tried to do me out of 750 francs. Yeah, an American check. What? If you don’t like that one I’ve got another one for you with a dumbwaiter. It’s out of order now but it could be fixed. What? Oh, about a thousand francs. There’s a billiard room on the top floor…. What? No… no … no. Don’t have such things over here. Listen, Mr. Bimberg, you’ve got to realize that you’re in France now. Yeah, that’s it…. When in Rome…. Listen, call me tomorrow morning, will you? I’m at dinner now. Dinner. I’m eating. What? Yeah, cash … ‘bye!”
“You see,” he says, hanging up, “that’s how we do things in this house. Fast work, what? Real estate. You people are living in a fairyland. You think literature is everything. You eat literature. Now in this house we eat goose, for instance. Yeah, it’s almost done now. Anna! Wie geht es? Nicht fertig? Merde alors! Three girls … refugees. I don’t know where they come from. Somebody gave them our address. Fine girls. Hale, hearty, buxom, sound as a berry. No room for them in Germany. Einstein is busy writing poems about light. These girls want a job, a place to live. Do you know anybody who wants a maid? Fine girls. They’re well educated. But it takes the three of them to make a meal. Katya, she’s the best of the lot: she knows how to iron. That one, Anna-she borrowed my typewriter yesterday … said she wanted to write a poem. I’m not keeping you here to write poems, I said. In this house I write the poems-if there are any to write. You learn how to cook and darn the socks. She looked peeved. Listen, Anna, I said, you’re living in an imaginary world. The world doesn’t need any more poems. The world needs bread and butter. Can you produce more bread and butter? That’s what the world wants. Learn French and you can help me with the real estate. Yeah, people have to have places to live in. Funny. But, that’s how the world is now. It was always like that, only people never believed it before. The world is made for the future … for the planet Uranus. Nobody will ever visit the planet Uranus, but that doesn’t make any difference. People must live places and eat bread and butter. For the sake of the future. That’s the way it was in the past. That’s the way it will be in the future. The present? There’s no such thing as the present. There’s a word called Time, but nobody is able to define it. There’s a past and there’s a future, and Time runs through it like an electric current. The present is an imaginary condition, a dream state … an oxymoron. There’s a word for you-I’ll make you a present of it. Write a poem about it. I’m too busy … real estate presses. Must have goose and cranberry sauce… . Listen, Jill, what was that word I was looking up yesterday?”
“Omoplate?” says Jill promptly.
“No, not that. Omo … omo …”
“Omphalos?”
“No, no. Omo … omo …”
“I’ve got it,” cries Jill. “Omophagia!”
“Omophagia, that’s it! Do you like that word? Take it away with you! What’s the matter? You’re not drinking. Jill, where the hell’s that cocktail shaker I found the other day in the dumbwaiter? Can you imagine it-a cocktail shaker! Anyway, you people seem to think that literature is something vitally necessary. It ain’t. It’s just literature. I could be making literature too-if I didn’t have these refugees to feed. You want to know what the present is? Look at that window over there. No, not there … the one above. There! Every day they sit there at that table playing cards-just the two of them. She’s always got on a red dress. And he’s always shuffling the cards. That’s the present. And if you add another word it becomes subjunctive….”
“Jesus, I’m going to see what those girls are doing,” says Jill.
“No you don’t! That’s just what they’re waiting for -for you to come and help them. They’ve got to learn that this is a real world. I want them to understand that. Afterwards I’ll find them jobs. I’ve got lots of jobs on hand. First let them cook me a meal.”
“Elsa says everything’s ready. Come on, let’s go inside.”
“Anna, Anna, bring these bottles inside and put them on the table!”
Anna looks at Jabberwhorl helplessly.
“There you are! They haven’t even learned to speak English yet. What am I going to do with them? Anna … bier! ‘Raus mit ‘em! Versteht? And pour yourself a drink, you blinking idiot.”
The dining room is softly lighted. There is a candelabra on the table and the service
