Lancelot (20 page)

So you fucked it up good and we're going to have to pull it out for you. We? Who are we? You will find out soon enough. It is enough for you to know how it is going to be, for we are the new Reformation, which is to say we are going to tell you something and show you something you should have known all along.

We are going to set it out for you, what is good and what is bad, and no Jew-Christian waffling bullshit about it. What we are is the last of the West. What we are is the best of you, Percival, and the best of me, Lancelot, and of Lee and Richard and Saladin and Leonidas and Hector and Agamemnon and Richthofen and Charlemagne and Clovis and Martel. Like them we might even accept your Christ but this time you will not emasculate him or us. We'll take the Grail you didn't find but we'll keep the broadsword and the great warrior Archangel of Mont-Saint-Michel and our Christ will be the stern Christ of the Sistine. And as for your sweet Jesus and your guitar-banging and ass-wiggling nuns, and your love feasts and peace kisses: there is no peace.

If I were a Jew, I'd know what to do. It's easy. I'd be in Israel with the sabras. They're my kind. The only difference between them and the Crusaders is that the Crusaders lost. Ha, isn't that a switch, come to think of it—that the only Crusaders left in the entire Western world are the Israelis, the very Jews who huddled and shrank and grinned and nodded for two thousand years? The Jews are lucky. They know who they are and they have Israel. We have to make our own Israel, but we know who we are.

We know who we are and where we stand. There will be leaders and there will be followers. There are now, only neither knows which is which. There will be men who are strong and pure of heart, not for Christ's sake but for their own sake. There will be virtuous women who are proud of their virtue and there will be women of the street who are there to be fucked and everyone will know which is which. You can't tell a whore from a lady now, but you will then. You will do right, not because of Jew-Christian commandments but because we say it is right. There will be honorable men and there will be thieves, just as now, but the difference is one will know which is which and there will be no confusion, no nice thieves, no honorable Mafia. There are not many of us but since we are ready to die and no one else is, we shall prevail.

Women? What about women? You heard me. A man, a youth, a boy will know which women are to be fucked and which to be honored and one will know who to fuck and who to honor.

Freedom? The New Woman will have perfect freedom. She will be free to be a lady or a whore.

Don't women have any say in this? Of course. And we will value them exactly as much as they value themselves. They won't like it much, you say? The hell with them. They won't have anything to say about it. Not only are they not strong enough. They don't care enough. Guinevere didn't think twice about adultery. It was Lancelot, poor bastard, who went off and brooded in the woods.

No more fuck-up about who fucks and who gets fucked. The best of women will be what we used to call ladies, like your Virgin. Our Lady. The men? The best of them will be strong and brave and pure of heart, not for Christ's sake, but like an Apache youth or a Lacedemonian who denies himself to be strong. The others can whoremonger and screw whom they choose. But we will prevail.

No, it is not you who are offering me something, salvation, a choice, whatever. I am offering you a choice. Do you want to become one of us? You can without giving up a single thing you believe in except milksoppery. I repeat, it was your Lord who said he came to bring not peace but a sword. We may even save your church for you.

You are pale as a ghost. What did you whisper? Love? That I am full of hatred, anger? Don't talk to me of love until we shovel out the shit.

What? What happened then? Don't look so fearful. Nothing. I saw a dirty movie, that's all.

Friday afternoon at the movies. That's what I should call my own little film or videotape, which Elgin, my cinematographer, made of our little film company resting from their labors.

It was all very simple. Elgin came to my pigeonnier after lunch, entered as briskly as a vacuum-cleaner salesman, too briskly, with a large valise-like box and a case of reels and, without looking at me, set his suitcase on my desk, opened it, plugged it in, clipped two wires to the back of my TV, showed me how to put the reels in, and, without once having raised his eyes, made as if to leave.

“Elgin. Wait.”

He stood in the doorway, freeze-framed, waiting for me to push a button and set him going.

“Elgin, the film company is pulling out tomorrow. So you might be able to pull your equipment out today. I'll let you know after I've seen these.”

“I done already pulled it out,” said Elgin not briskly at all but sullenly, as if I had violated some unspoken agreement. What agreement?

“Then you—”

“You won't need to do any more taping.”

I looked at him.

“I see. That'll be all. Go put your tour-guide coat on.”

He looked at me strangely, at first I thought sullenly, then I saw he was ashamed. I felt a sudden anger. Later, to my astonishment, it came over me why I was angry. Again a confession which does me little credit but it is important I tell you the truth. I had to admit I was angry because he had
looked
. Looked at the videotape. Then it was I discovered in myself what I had so often despised in others. For I had expected Elgin to do what I told him, to be a technological eavesdropper and spy for me but not listen or look. More than that: I had expected that somehow he
could not
look—just as the hicks I despised believed that through some magical or at least providential dispensation the Negro bellboy cannot see the naked white woman in the same hotel room. Cannot even if he wanted to: she is somehow invisible.

There is nothing like a liberal gone sour.

But I was wrong. He was ashamed, not of what he had seen, but of what he took to be his failure. A
technical
failure. I should have known.

“I'm sorry,” he said, hanging his head.

“I am too.” I still thought he meant he was sorry he had looked.

“It's a negative effect I can't explain.”

“Negative effect?”

“Did you ever hold a magnet against a TV screen?”

“No.”

“It pulls the images out of shape—the images being nothing but electrons, of course.”

“Yes, electrons.”

“I only watched enough to see that the effect is a little weird—But I think you may still have what you want.”

“Thank you.” Ha. Then he was my nigger after all, and if he could look, wouldn't, didn't. Or better, he looked for technical reasons but forbore to see. He was the perfect nigger.

He closed the door softly but presently opened it again. Again it was a Buell who still had the power to set things straight.

Elgin still didn't look at me. All he said, face courteously inclined in the cracked door, as courteous as a Montgomery bellboy, you see, I'm not looking—was: “Mr. Lance, let me know if there is anything you need.”

“Okay.”

Note the exquisite courtesy of “anything you need.” He didn't say: Let me know if you need any help, I'll help you. He could have been understood as offering to bring a glass of water, a bourbon. It was for me to fathom the rest.

He looked now. He looked at me as sorrowfully as you—to hell with him.

One night at supper during a lull in the conversation Lucy, my daughter, who had said little or nothing and, feeling the accumulating necessity of saying something suitable, saw her chance and piped up, frowning and ducking her dark-brown head and saying it seriously: “It just occurred to me last night: here I am an adult human being, a person, and I have never seen my own cervix.”

There was a silence. I found myself worrying more about her worrying about her halting conversational entry than about her not seeing her cervix. But Raine and Dana nodded thoughtfully and even, I could see, with a certain courtesy and kindliness as if to encourage her timid foray into their lively talk. Raine put her arm around Lucy, gave her a hug, and said to me:

“Think of it! A mature woman who has never seen her own cervix!”

I thought about it.

Merlin, who did not like Raine, said not to Lucy but to Raine: “So what? I've never seen my own asshole. What's the big deal?”

But it was Lucy who blushed and ducked her head even lower.

8

FRIDAY AFTERNOON AT THE MOVIES: A DOUBLE FEATURE

WHAT I MAINLY REMEMBER
of the tapes is not the tapes themselves but the day outside. The videotapes, which came out as a movie on my tiny Trinitron and which I watched as gravely as I used to watch afternoon reruns of
Gunsmoke
, I think of now as a tiny theater set down in a great skyey afternoon loud with the rattle of blackbirds. The thunderstorm was gone, the hurricane was still a great Catherine wheel spinning slowly in the Gulf casting its pall of wind and rain two hundred miles ahead to the northeast while its northwestern quadrant sucked in the northern fall, the deep clear Canadian air funneling down, cirrus-flecked five miles high. There was no sign of a hurricane except a sense of urgency and a high commotion in the air. Restive blackbirds took alarm, rose in clouds from the marshes, settled, and rose again.

Something was indeed wrong with Elgin's camera. The figures, tiny figurines, were reddish, like people in a film darkroom, and seemed to meet, merge, and flow through each other. Lights and darks were reversed like a negative, mouths opened on light, eyes were white sockets. The actors looked naked clothed, clothed naked. The figures seemed to be blown in an electronic wind. Bodies bent, pieces blew off. Hair danced atop heads like a candle flame. I stared. Didn't Elgin say the figures were nothing but electrons?

FIRST FEATURE: MISS MARGOT'S ROOM

Who were these two dim rosy figures moving silently in a red sea?

I rewound the reel and examined the reel case. The label was neatly printed,
MISS MARGOT'S ROOM
, exactly like the chaste and formal museum signs mounted on the brass posts supporting velvet ropes in Belle Isle.

Two figures were standing, talking. They were not naked. Their clothes were light and their faces dark. It was Merlin and Margot. I recognized the shape of Merlin's rooster shock of hair even though it flickered on his head like Pentecostal flame. Margot I knew instantly from the bright earmuff fluffs of hair at her ears and her mannish yet womanish way of setting her fist on her hip.

When they talked, their mouths opened on light.

They embraced.

The sound was not much better than the video. The voices were scratchy and seemed to come not from the room but from the sky like the blackbirds rattling and rising and falling. When they turned, their voices went away. Half sentences blew away like their bodies.

They embraced again. Merlin held her off, their bodies flowing apart like a Y.

MERLIN
: You know that I always—
(pause)
—wish you every—

(You know that I always will love you? I wish you every happiness?)

MARGOT
:
(An assentive murmur.)

MERLIN
: But what an ire—Oh, Christ—end—of a phizz infirm—

(But what an irony! Oh, Christ that it should end because of a physical infirmity?)

MARGOT
: It did—

(It didn't?)

MERLIN
:—a disproportion like Lee losing Gettysburg because of di—

(Diarrhea?)

MARGOT
: Don't be

MERLIN
: It's flat-out god—unax—Jesus.

(It's flat-out goddamn unacceptable, Jesus?)

MARGOT
: Jesus, men. You are all so—

(Jesus what?)

Were they talking about me?

No.

They embrace again. Blobs like breasts swell on Merlin's shoulder and blow off toward Margot.

MERLIN
: I fear for—But I wish you both ever—

(I fear for you. But I wish you both every happiness.)

You both? Me? No.

MARGOT
: (
A deprecative murmur.)

MERLIN
: I love you so f (?)—v (?)—much.

(I love you so fucking much? so very much? probably the former considering the two-syllable beat.)

MARGOT
: I love you—oh s—(?)—oh sh—(?)

(I love you too. Oh so much. Or: I love you too. Oh shit, or sheet? or she-it. Probably the last, two beats, two syllables, and knowing Margot.)

MERLIN
: DO you believe I love—enough—truth?

(? ? ?)

MARGOT
:
(A wary murmur.)

MERLIN
: Why—wonder—

(? ? ?)

MERLIN
: —could be exploit—

(He could be exploiting you?)

MARGOT
:
(Turning away: they come apart, Y becoming II.)

MERLIN
:
(An expostulation.)

MARGOT
: !

MERLIN
: —mon—

(? ? ?) (Money?)

MARGOT
: NO.

MERLIN
: Christ—not—even sure—part.

(Christ, you're not even sure you have the part?)

MARGOT
: You bas—

(You bastard.)

MERLIN
: Well—?

MARGOT
: Up—oars, oo bas—

(Up yours, you bastard.)

MERLIN
: Oh, Jesus—I'd kike—oars.

(Oh, Jesus how I'd like to be up yours?)

MARGOT
:
(An indifferent murmur.)

MERLIN
: Besides that—a basic incap—intimace—

(Besides that he has a basic incapacity for intimacy?)

MARGOT
: I don't care.