第2章 Florence Green Is 81

Dinner with Florence Green. The old babe is on a kick tonight: I want to go to some other country, she announces. Everyone wonders what this can mean. But Florence says nothing more: no explanation, no elaboration, after a satisfied look around the table bang! she is asleep again. The girl at Florences right is new here and does not understand. I give her an ingratiating look (a look that says, "There is nothing to worry about, I will explain everything later in the privacy of my quarters Kathleen"). Lentils vegetate in the depths of the fourth principal river of the world, the Ob, in Siberia, 3200 miles. We are talking about Quemoy and Matsu. "Its a matter of leading from strength. What is the strongest possible move on our part? To deny them the islands even though the islands are worthless in themselves." Baskerville, a sophomore at the Famous Writers School in Westport, Connecticut, which he attends with the object of becoming a famous writer, is making his excited notes. The new g irls boobies are like my secretarys knees, very prominent and irritating. Florence began the evening by saying, grandly, "The upstairs bathroom leaks you know." What does Herman Kahn think about Quemoy and Matsu? I cant remember, I cant remember. . .

Oh Baskerville! you silly son of a bitch, how can you become a famous writer without first having worried about your life, is it the right kind of life, does it have the right people in it, is it going well? Instead you are beglamoured by JD Ratcliff. The smallest city in the United States with a population over 100,000 is Santa Ana, California, where 100,350 citizens nestle together in the Balboa blue Pacific evenings worrying about their lives. I am a young man but very brilliant, very ingratiating, I adopt this ingratiating tone because I cant help myself (for fear of boring you). I edit with my left hand a small magazine, very scholarly, very brilliant, called The Journal of Tension Reduction (social-psychological studies, learned disputation, letters-to-the-editor, anxiety in rats). Isnt that distasteful? Certainly it is distasteful but if Florence Green takes her money to another country who will pay the printer? answer me that. From an article in The Journal of Tension Reduction : "One source of concern in the classic encounter between patient and psychoanalyst is the patients fear of boring the doctor." The doctor no doubt is also worrying about his life, unfolding with ten minutes between hours to smoke a cigarette in and wash his hands in. Reader, you who have already been told more than you want to know about the river Ob, 3200 miles long, in Siberia, we have roles to play, thou and I: you are the doctor (washing your hands between hours), and I, I am, I think, the nervous dreary patient. I am free associating, brilliantly, brilliantly, to put you into the problem. Or for fear of boring you: which? The Journal of Tension Reduction is concerned with everything from global tensions (drums along the Ob) to interpersonal relations (Baskerville and the new girl). There is, we feel, too much tension in the world, I myself am a perfect example, my stomach is like a clenched fist. Notice the ingratiating tone here? the only way I can relax it, I refer to the stoma ch, is by introducing quarts of Fleischmanns Gin. Fleischmanns I have found is a magnificent source of tension reduction, I favor the establishment of comfort stations providing free Fleischmanns on every street corner of the city of Santa Ana, California, and all other cities. Be serious, cant you?

The new girl is a thin thin sketchy girl with a big chest looming over the gazpacho and black holes around her eyes that are very promising. Surely when she opens her mouth toads will pop out. I am tempted to remove my shirt and show her my trim midsection sporting chiseled abdominals, my superior shoulders and brilliantly developed pectoral-latissimus tie-in. Jackson called himself a South Carolinian, and his biographer, Amos Kendall, recorded his birthplace as Lancaster County, SC; but Parton has published documentary evidence to show that Jackson was born in Union County, NC, less than a quarter mile from the South Carolina line. Jackson is my great hero even though he had, if contemporary reports are to be believed, lousy lats. I am also a weightlifter and poet and admirer of Jackson and the father of one abortion and four miscarriages; who among you has such a record and no wife? Baskervilles difficulty not only at the Famous Writers School in Westport, Connecticut, but in every p art of the world, is that he is slow. "Thats a slow boy, that one," his first teacher said. "That boy is what you call real slow," his second teacher said. "Thats a slow son of a bitch," his third teacher said. And they were right, right, entirely correct, still I learned about Andrew Jackson and abortions, many of you walking the streets of Santa Ana, California, and all other cities know nothing about either. "In such cases the patient sees the doctor as a highly sophisticated consumer of outre material, a connoisseur of exotic behavior. Therefore he tends to propose himself as more colorful, more eccentric (or more ill) than he really is; or he is witty, or he fantasticates." You see? Isnt that sensible? In the magazine we run many useful and sensible pieces of this kind, portages through the whirlpool-country of the mind. In the magazine I cannot openly advocate the use of Fleischmanns Gin in tension reduction but I did run an article titled "Alcohol Reconsidered" written by a tale nted soak of my acquaintance which drew many approving if carefully worded letters from secret drinkers in psychology departments all over this vast, dry and misunderstood country. . .

"Thats a slow son of a bitch," his third teacher remarked of him, at a meeting called to discuss the formation of a special program for Inferior Students, in which Baskervilles name had so to speak rushed to the fore. The young Baskerville, shrinking along the beach brushing sand from his dreary Texas eyes, his sad fingers gripping $20 worth of pamphlets secured by post from Joe Weider, "Trainer of Terror Fighters" (are they, Baskerville wondered, like fire fighters? do they fight terror? or do they, rather, inspire it? the latter his, Baskervilles, impossible goal), was even then incubating plans for his novel The Childrens Army which he is attending the Famous Writers School to learn how to write. "You will do famously, Baskerville," said the Registrar, the exciting results of Baskervilles Talent Test lying unexamined before him. "Run along now to the Cashiers Office." "I am writing doctor an immense novel to be called The Childrens Army!" (Why do I think the colored doctors name, he with his brown hand on the red radishes, is Pamela Hansford Johnson? Why do I think?) Florence Green is a small fat girl eighty-one years old, old with blue legs and very rich. Rock pools deep in the earth, I salute the shrewdness of whoever filled you with Texaco! Texaco breaks my heart, Texaco is particularly poignant. Florence Green who was not always a small fat girl once made a voyage with her husband Mr. Green on the Graf Zeppelin. In the grand salon, she remembers, there was a grand piano, the great pianist Mandrake the Magician was also on board but could not be persuaded to play. The Zeppelins could not use helium; the government of this country refused to sell helium to the owners of the Zeppelins. The title of my second book will be I believe Hydrogen After Lakehurst. For the first half of the evening we heard about the problem of the upstairs bathroom: "I had a man come out and look at it, and he said it would be two hundred and twenty-five dollars for a new one. I said I didnt want a new one, I just wanted this one fixed." Shall I offer to obtain a new one for Florence, carved out of solid helium? would that be ingratiating? Does she worry about her life? "He said mine was old-fashioned and they didnt make parts for that kind any more." Now she sleeps untidily at the head of the table, except for her single, mysterious statement, delivered with the soup (I want to go to some other country!), she has said nothing about her life whatsoever. . . The diameter of the world at the Poles is 7899.99 miles whereas the diameter of the world at the Equator is 7926.68 miles, mark it and strike it. I am sure the colored man across from me is a doctor, he has a doctors doctorly air of being needed and necessary. He leans into the conversation as if to say: Just make me Secretary of State and then you will see some action. "Ill tell you one thing, there are a hell of a lot of Chinese over there." Surely the very kidneys of wisdom, Florence Green has only one kidney, I have a kidney stone, Baskerville was stoned by the massed faculty of the Famous Writers School upon presentation of his first lesson: he was accused of formalism. It is well known that Florence adores doctors, why didnt I announce myself, in the beginning, from the very first, as a doctor? Then I could say that the money was for a very important research project (use of radioactive tracers in reptiles) with very important ramifications in stomach cancer (the small intestine is very like a reptile). Then I would get the money with much less difficulty, cancer frightens Florence, the money would rain down like fallout in New Mexico. I am a young man but very brilliant, very ingratiating, I edit with my left hand a small magazine called. . . did I explain that? And you accepted my explanation? Her name is not really Kathleen, it is Joan Graham, when we were introduced she said, "Oh are you a native of Dallas Mr. Baskerville?" No Joan baby I am a native of Bengazi sent here by the UN to screw your beautiful ass right down into the ground, that is not what I said but what I should have said, it would have been brilliant. When she asked him what he did Baskerville identified himself as an American weightlifter and poet (that is to say: a man stronger and more eloquent than other men). "It moves," Mandrake said, pointing to the piano, and although no one else could detect the slightest movement, the force of his personality was so magical that he was not contradicted (the instrument sat in the salon, Florence says, as solidly as Gibraltar in the sea).

The man who has been settling the hash of the mainland Chinese searches the back of his neck, where there is what appears to be a sebaceous cyst (I can clear that up for you; my instrument will be a paper on the theory of games). What if Mandrake had played, though, what if he had seated himself before the instrument, raised his hands, and. . . what? The Principal Seas, do you want to hear about the Principal Seas? Florence has been prodded awake; people are beginning to ask questions. If not this country, then what country? Italy? "No," Florence says smiling through her emeralds, "not Italy. Ive been to Italy. Although Mr. Green was very fond of Italy." "To bore the doctor is to become, for this patient, a case similar to other cases; the patient strives mightily to establish his uniqueness. This is also, of course, a tactic for evading the psychoanalytic issue." The first thing the All-American Boy said to Florence Green at the very brink of their acquaintanceship was "It is closing time in the gardens of the West Cyril Connolly." This remark pleased her, it was a pleasing remark, on the strength of this remark Baskerville was invited again, on the second occasion he made a second remark, which was "Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded Gertrude Stein." Joan is like one of those marvelous Vogue girls, a tease in a half-slip on Mykonos, bare from the belly up on the rocks. "It moves," Mandrake said, and the piano raised itself a few inches, magically, and swayed from side to side in a careful Baldwin dance. "It moves," the other passengers agreed, under the spell of posthypnotic suggestion. "It moves," Joan says, pointing at the gazpacho, which sways from side to side with a secret Heinz trembling movement. I give the soup a serious warning, couched in the strongest possible terms, and Joan grins gratefully not at me but at Pamela Hansford Johnson. The Virgin Islands maybe? "We were there in 1925, Mr. Green had indigestion, I sat up all night with his stomach and the flies, the flies were something you wouldnt believe." They are asking I think the wrong questions, the question is not where but why? "I was reading the other day that the average age of Chiangs enlisted men is thirty-seven. You cant do much with an outfit like that." This is true, I myself am thirty-seven and if Chiang must rely on men of my sort then he might as well kiss the mainland goodbye. Oh, there is nothing better than intelligent conversation except thrashing about in bed with a naked girl and Egmont Light Italic.

Despite his slowness already remarked upon which perhaps inhibited his ingestion of the splendid curriculum that had been prepared for him, Baskerville never failed to be "promoted," but on the contrary was always "promoted," the reason for this being perhaps that his seat was needed for another child (Baskerville then being classified, in spite of his marked growth and gorgeous potential, as a child). There were some it was true who never thought he would extend himself to six feet, still he learned about Andrew Jackson, helium-hydrogen, and abortions, where are my mother and father now? answer me that. On a circular afternoon in June 1945 -- it was raining, Florence says, hard enough to fill the Brazen Sea -- she was sitting untidily on a chaise in the north bedroom (on the wall of the north bedroom there are twenty identically framed photographs of Florence from eighteen to eighty-one, she was a beauty at eighteen) reading a copy of Life. It was the issue containing the first pictur es from Buchenwald, she could not look away, she read the text, or a little of the text, then she vomited. When she recovered she read the article again, but without understanding it. What did exterminated mean? It meant nothing, an eyewitness account mentioned a little girl with one leg thrown alive on top of a truckload of corpses to be burned. Florence was sick. She went immediately to the Greenbrier, a resort in West Virginia. Later she permitted me to tell her about the Principal Seas, the South China, the Yellow, the Andaman, the Sea of Okhotsk. "I spotted you for a weightlifter," Joan says. "But not for a poet," Baskerville replies. "What have you written?" she asks. "Mostly I make remarks," I say. "Remarks are not literature," she says. "Then theres my novel," I say, "it will be twelve years old Tuesday." "Published?" she asks. "Not finished," I say, "however its very violent and necessary. It has to do with this Army see, made up of children, young children but I mean really w ell armed with M-1s, carbines, .30 and .50 caliber machine guns, 105 mortars, recoilless rifles, the whole works. The central figure is the General, who is fifteen. One day the Army appears in the city, in a park, and takes up positions. Then it begins killing the people. Do you understand?" "I dont think Id like it," Joan says. "I dont like it either," Baskerville says, "but it doesnt make any difference that I dont like it. Mr. Henry James writes fiction as though it were a painful duty Oscar Wilde."

Does Florence worry about her life? "He said mine was old-fashioned and they didnt make parts for that kind any more." Last year Florence tried to join the Peace Corps and when she was refused, telephoned the President to complain. "I have always admired the work of the Andrews Sisters," Joan says. I feel feverish; will you take my temperature doctor? Baskerville that simple preliterate soaks up all the Taylors New York State malmsey in reach meanwhile wondering about his Grand Design. France? Japan? "Not Japan dear, we had a lovely time there but I wouldnt want to go back now. France is where my little niece is, they have twenty-two acres near Versailles, hes a count and a biochemist, isnt that wonderful?" The others nod, they know what is wonderful. The Principal Seas are wonderful, the Important Lakes of the World are wonderful, the Metric System is wonderful, let us measure something together Florence Green baby. I will trade you a walleyed hectometer for a single golden micron. Th e table is hushed, like a crowd admiring 300 million dollars. Did I say that Florence has 300 million dollars? Florence Green is eighty-one with blue legs and has 300 million dollars and in 1932 was in love, airily, with a radio announcer named Norman Brokenshire, with his voice. "Meanwhile Edna Gathers husband who takes me to church, hes got a very good job with the Port, I think he does very well, hes her second husband, the first was Pete Duff who got into all that trouble, where was I? Oh yes when Paul called up and said he wouldnt come because of his hernia -- you heard about his hernia -- John said hed come over and look at it. Mind you Ive been using the downstaics bathroom all this time." In fact the whole history of Florences radio listenership is of interest. In fact I have decided to write a paper called "The Whole History of Florence Greens Radio Listenership." Or perhaps, in the seventeenth-century style, "The Whole and True History of Florence Greens Radio Listenership." Or perhaps. . . But I am boring you, I sense it, let me say only that she can still elicit, from her ancient larynx, the special thrilling sound used to introduce Captain Midnight. . . The table is hushed, then, we are all involved in a furious pause, a grand parenthesis (here I will insert a description of Florences canes. Florences canes line a special room, the room in which her cane collection is kept. There are hundreds of them: smooth black Fred Astaire canes and rough chewed alpenstocks, blackthorns and quarterstaffs, cudgels and swagger sticks, bamboo and ironwood, maple and slippery elm, canes from Tangier, Maine, Zurich, Panama City, Quebec, Togoland, the Dakotas and Borneo, resting in notched compartments that resemble arms racks in an armory. Everywhere Florence goes, she purchases one or more canes. Some she has made herself, stripping the bark from the green unseasoned wood, drying them carefully, applying layer on layer of a special varnish, then polishing them, endlessl y, in the evenings, after dark and dinner) as vast as the Sea of Okhotsk, 590,000 square miles. I was sitting, I remember, in a German restaurant on Lexington, blowing bubbles in my seidel, at the next table there were six Germans, young Germans, they were laughing and talking. At Florence Greens here-and-now table there is a poet named Onward Christian or something whose spectacles have wide silver sidepieces rather than the dull brown horn sidepieces of true poets and weightlifters, and whose poems invariably begin: "Through all my clangorous hours. . ." I am worried about his remarks, are his remarks better than my remarks? We are elected after all on the strength of our glamorous remarks, what is he saying to her? to Joan? what sort of eyewash is he pouring in her ear? I am tempted to walk briskly over and ask to see his honorable discharge from the Famous Writers School. What could be more glamorous or necessary than The Childrens Army, "An army of youth bearing the standard of tr uth" as we used to sing in my fourth-grade classroom at Our Lady of the Sorrows under the unforgiving eye of Sister Scholastica who knew how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. . .

Florence I have decided is evading the life-issue. She is proposing herself as more unhappy than she really is. She has in mind making herself more interesting. She is afraid of boring us. She is trying to establish her uniqueness. She does not really want to go away. Does Onward Christian know about the Important Lakes of the World? Terminate services of employees when necessary. I terminate you, brightness that seems to know me. She proceeded by car from Tempelhof to a hotel in the American zone, registered, dined, sat in a chair in the lobby for a time observing the American lieutenant colonels and their healthy German girls, and then walked out into the street. The first German man she saw was a policeman directing traffic. He wore a uniform. Florence walked out into the traffic island and tugged at his sleeve. He bent politely toward the nice old American lady. She lifted her cane, the cane of 1927 from Yellowstone, and cracked his head with it. He fell in a heap in the middle of the street. Then Florence Green rushed awkwardly into the plaza with her cane, beating the people there, men and women, indiscriminately, until she was subdued. The Forms of Address, shall I sing to you of the Forms of Address? What Florence did was what Florence did, not more or less, she was returned to this country under restraint on a military plane. "Why do you have the children kill everybody?" "Because everybody has already been killed. Everybody is absolutely dead. You and I and Onward Christian." "Youre not very sanguine." "Thats true." For an earls younger sons wife, letters commence: Madam. . . "We put in the downstairs bathroom when Bad came to visit us. Bad was Mr. Greens sister and she couldnt climb stairs." What about Casablanca? Santa Cruz? Funchal? Malaga? Valletta? Iraklion? Samos? Haifa? Kotor Bay? Dubrovnik? "I want to go to some other place," Florence says. "Somewhere where everything is different." For the Talent Test a necessary but not a sufficient condition for matriculation at the Famous Writers School Baskerville delivered himself of "Impressions of Akron" which began: "Akron! Akron was full of people walking the streets of Akron carrying little transistor radios which were turned on."

Florence has a Club. The Club meets on Tuesday evenings, at her huge horizontal old multibathroom home on Indiana Boulevard. The Club is a group of men who gather, on these occasions, to recite and hear poems in praise of Florence Green. Before you can be admitted you must compose a poem. The poems begin, usually, somewhat in this vein: "Florence Green is eighty-one/ Nevertheless shes lots of fun. . ." Onward Christians poem began "Through all my clangorous hours. . ." Florence carries the poems about with her in her purse, stapled together in an immense, filthy wad. Surely Florence Green is a vastly rich vastly egocentric old-woman nut! Six modifiers modify her into something one can think of as a nut. "But you have not grasped the living reality, the essence!" Husserl exclaims. Nor will I, ever. His examiner (was it JD Ratcliff?) said severely: "Baskerville, you blank round, discursiveness is not literature." "The aim of literature," Baskerville replied grandly, "is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart." Joan says: "I have two children." "Why did you do that?" I ask. "I dont know," she says. I am struck by the modesty of her answer. Pamela Hansford Johnson has been listening and his face jumps in what may be described as a wince. "Thats a terrible thing to say," he says. And he is right, right, entirely correct, what she has said is the First Terrible Thing. We value each other for our remarks, on the strength of this remark and the one about the Andrews Sisters, love becomes possible. 1 carry in my wallet an eight-paragraph General Order, issued by the adjutant of my young immaculate Army to the troops: "(1) You are in this Army because you wanted to be. So you have to do what the General says. Anybody who doesnt do what the General says will be kicked out of the Army. (2) The purpose of the Army is to do what the General says. (3) The General says that nobody will shoot his weapon unless the General says to. It is important t hat when the Army opens fire on something everybody does it together. This is very important and anybody who doesnt do it will have his weapon taken away and will be kicked out of the Army. (4) Dont be afraid of the noise when everybody fires. It wont hurt you. (5) Everybody has enough rounds to do what the General wants to do. People who lose their rounds wont get any more. (6) Talking to people who are not in the Army is strictly forbidden. Other people dont understand the Army. (7) This is a serious Army and anybody that laughs will have his weapon taken away and will be kicked out of the Army. (8) What the General wants to do now is, find and destroy the enemy."

I want to go somewhere where everything is different. A simple, perfect idea. The old babe demands nothing less than total otherness. Dinner is over. We place our napkins on our lips. Quemoy and Matsu remain ours, temporarily perhaps; the upstairs bathroom drips away unrepaired; I feel the money drifting, drifting away from me. I am a young man but very brilliant, very ingratiating, I edit. . . but I explained all that. In the dim foyer I slip my hands through the neck of Joans yellow dress. It is dangerous but it is a way of finding out everything all at once. Then Onward Christian arrives to resume his yellow overcoat. No one has taken Florence seriously, how can anyone with three hundred million dollars be taken seriously? But I know that when I telephone tomorrow, there will be no answer. Iraklion? Samos? Haifa? Kotor Bay? She will be in none of these places but in another place, a place where everything is different. Outside it is raining. In my rain-blue Volkswagen I proceed down the rain-black street thinking, for some simple reason, of the Verdi Requiem. I begin to drive my tiny car in idiot circles in the street, I begin to sing the first great Kyrie.