The Müller-Fokker Effect (25 page)

Beyond lay a garden where Adams and Eves by dozens of hands all sat down to a Dutch banquet of fruit and game. And so it went.

What they found so remarkable was not the fresco technique (though in its own way the ‘finding’ of this ‘lost’ art came as a pleasant shock) but the exquisite care in detail. A frescoist must work fast, but even a master would have had to spend hours over some of the fine Flemish parts. Surely this was a work of genius, the first light of Art’s new day!

At the end, Ank unveiled his machine and explained how it worked: One device drizzled a secret formula of wet plaster into a wide trough. This was partially hardened, then propelled through the painting machine. From there it moved on steel rollers down the shed. The entire, mile-long work was a continuous slab.

This much they accepted. But when Ank began to explain the painting machine itself, the crowd made known their disbelief and anger.

‘A programmed tape? How did you program this tape?’

‘I…didn’t. It looks like the random numbers on this tape weren’t random at all. I don’t really know how it came to be that way.’

‘Preposterous!’

‘Do you expect us to believe…?’

‘Show us the machine working, sir!’

Ank gazed on the hostile faces. Only the old gentleman, a man with a cane, had a kindly expression. The rest clamored for action.

Ank bent and closed a great copper switch. The lights dimmed momentarily. There was a churning sound. Curds of plaster squittered into the trough, and the whole mass began to move, quivering, down the shed.

Where it projected from the painting machine the fresco depicted a catacomb; on its shelves, famous reclining nudes. There were four tiers in all, and now, as the critics watched with horror and amusement, the machine simultaneously completed a Goya, a Bonnard, a Tom Wesselman and an Egyptian Osiris.

‘A machine! This isn’t art, it’s obscenity!’

‘Mechanical monster!’

‘I’ve come all this way to see a
novelty
!’

‘Come, Gerard, let’s get out of this madhouse.’

The body of critics began to bunch up, shoving towards the exit. At the same time, the plaster slab started shrieking and trembling violently. Ank had used an odd formula of plaster and size, extremely elastic. Moreover it had dried unevenly in the damp shed, taking up new stresses. Because of the great weight on the metal rollers, over twenty feet of thick plaster had been pushed out of the machine before the far end began to move.

Contracting and expanding in uneven ripples, the whole slab built up enormous energy at rest, so that when it did finally expand, the far end twisted on edge and catapulted forward. Carrying everything in its path with it, it pile-drove out the door and into the path of a passing Citröen.

The man in the Citroen was an American critic of small reputation who had not been invited, but who knew someone who had. It wouldn’t be the first show this tall man with a nose like an ax-blade had crashed.

He’d had trouble renting a car at the airport, received wrong directions from several people, and now sped along convinced he was on the wrong road. He was even considering stopping at the long shed to ask directions, when an orange-drink stand hurtled out on the road in front of him. The last thing he saw was the figure behind the counter, a rosy-cheeked coquette, painted in the manner of…

Gainsborough?
he wondered, and joined that painter in the past tense.

Three great tremors passed through the length of the fresco, then it sighed and settled back, exhaling clouds of paint flakes and plaster dust. Only a few scraps of the original surface remained.

Their clothes were ruined, but the critics were able to take satisfaction from seeing ‘A.B.’ wiped out. They filed out and shared taxis back to town.

‘It
was
beautiful,’ one murmured. ‘Like the mind of man, freed from all history.’

‘Of course, of course. But unsuitable, you know.’

The Citröen had started a fire. Only the American gentleman with the gold cane stayed behind to help Ank fight it. Their efforts proved useless; the entire shed burned and collapsed, and the water they flung only served to finish the fresco’s destruction.

‘I was quitting anyway,’ Ank said. ‘Thought I’d get a job in commercial art, settle down…’

‘Perhaps I can help you. May I offer you, say, ten thousand dollars for that peculiar tape you spoke of?’

‘Ten thousand?’

The old man wrote a check and handed it to him. ‘Okay?’

When he was alone, Ank took another look at the check.

‘Mac Hines? Mac Hines?’ He slapped himself on the forehead. ‘O Jesus, that’s just great.
Machines
.’ Thinking of other famous check authors—I. B. Foxy, U. R. Stung, D. S. Windell, I. P. Freely—he tore up the obviously worthless check.

Grace before mess is read over the p.a. system while each cadet stands behind his chair in a full brace, gazing steadily at a spot one foot above the head of the cadet opposite. After grace, the cadet is allowed to seat himself in the prescribed manner: Draw back the chair, using both hands, to a minimum distance of eleven inches, step smartly to the left side of the chair and sit down quickly and quietly. Both feet are on the floor, the left hand shakes out the napkin with a distinct ‘pop’ and arranges it across the knees and thereafter remains in the lap except when cutting meat.

The cadet observes strict silence during the meal and occupies no more than the front ⅓ of his seat. He is to look neither to left nor right nor directly at the cadet opposite nor directly at his plate. He pays particular attention to the reading of military inspirational literature during the meal, and if a first-year cadet he will be able to repeat all essential points of the reading at the request of any officer.

Food is passed from the head of the table; the ranking cadet officer at the head will be served first. Food will not be requested, but passed along briskly or eaten. When the cadet observes
by ear
that the ranking officer has begun eating, he may and must follow suit.

When cutting meat the left hand takes the fork, the right takes the knife. As soon as a bite of meat is cut (no less than ¼” or more than ½” square) the right hand lays the knife on the plate at a 45° angle, cutting edge facing outwards and one inch from the edge of the plate. Right hand then takes the fork and left returns immediately to the lap. Demerits will be given for eating bread, not eating, soiled napkin.

Putting it off any longer would just be cowardice. Spot’s decision had been made a long time ago: before he had ever heard the story of Samson, before the televised transfiguration and death of Billy Koch: now it was just putting one foot in front of the other and walking toward his goal.

He waited until after the presumed last bed check (they were too numerous and irregular ever to be sure), collected his money, his comics and a change of underwear (in case he got into an accident on his way to commit suicide), and slipped out. Down the hall, past the cadet officer sleeping by the emergency door, over the spiked iron fence and into town. He caught the midnight bus for Minneapolis.

He would see Mom first, and explain to her why he was doing it. (1) She would undoubtedly try and talk him out of it, but he would be strong. There were some things, as Col Fouts was always saying, that a man had to do. And Samson had killed himself. And Christ. (2) She would just refuse to let him do it. In that case, he would kill himself on the spot, maybe by a voluntary emission of his soul (John Donne said it could be done). (3) She would understand and give him the money to get to Washington and do it properly.

He arrived before dawn, saliva running down his neck from sleeping on the bus. The key was in the mailbox. He found the house empty, disused, unfriendly, and after looking all over for Mom, went to sleep on the big bed—on top of the American flag.

At ten the next morning he was downtown with his little overseas bag, now only partly in uniform. As he stopped to ask a stranger where the National Arsenamid Corporation was (‘the television part’) a familiar car flashed by.

It was Fouts.
He recognized Spot.

As soon as Fouts saw the kid talking to what could only be a plainclothesman, he knew it was finished.

‘O Jesus O Jesus O Jesus O.’

He ran three red lights getting across town to Phenolphthalein Drive. ‘Oh, yes sir,’ the kid would be saying by now. ‘Yes, I saw the Colonel
in women’s clothes.’
And that was that.

The flight to New York, that was his only chance. Slip in among all the others, a few chameleon changes in and out of drag, into the melting pot…maybe get a studio and hide out as one of them beatnik painter types…that was the life…

There were three signs above Feinwelt’s desk at Transvestites Anonymous:

He sat beneath them like a hostile god, his rippled, ripe old face betraying no sign of forgiveness for the returned prodigal. Fouts laid the pile of nun’s clothes on the desk.

‘I guess you expect me to say “Let’s be friends”, eh Foutsy? Not a chance. I know you’re not sorry for what you did (not only to me but to the organization). You just heard about the big New York convention so you came crawling back, hoping I’d ask you to come along. Isn’t that it?’

‘I guess so.’ Fouts twisted his overseas cap.

‘You know I could have you for assault, indecency, theft, impersonation…’ A long-toothed smile.

‘I know, Mother Feinwelt. But I’m in a lot worse trouble right now. I wish the flight was leaving today, instead of next Friday.’

Feinwelt looked at him closely. Then he seemed to have a change of heart. ‘All right.’ He sighed. ‘You can go. The flight leaves Friday at ten p.m. We’ll all meet here at six p.m., bus out to the airport and check in at seven-thirty. Got that?’

‘Thanks, Mother. You’re a pal and I won’t forget this.’ Fouts almost skipped out to his car. As he drove away, he noticed a new, cheap-model car parked across the road, in the shade of a willow. The old couple in it seemed to be necking.

Hadn’t he seen them here before?

Just now there were plenty of other things to worry about. Army Security might close in anytime, he had to have a cover story. His sister was visiting him (phone her and set it up) and asked him to help her fix a hem. He’d tried on the dress and at that moment Cadet Shairp had come to the door. Rose was about his size, so any clothes lying around the place could be explained…and when that kid got back to school, there’d be some really beautiful punishment waiting for him…

By the time Fouts reached the school he felt so good that he allowed himself to break his diet, and gorge an Almond Joy.

Spot ran. The streets and alleys flashed by, broken scenes and interrupted faces: a man tying his shoelace, a woman paying a taxi, sleep-walking shoppers, a window-cleaner.

He quit when his side hurt too much, but for the rest of the day he would feel Fouts’s eyes on him, the fat hand clamping down on his shoulder: ‘Well, my boy, have we had enough running away and playing with ourselves?’

‘What a cuh-yute lit-tle uniform! What can I do for you, lover?’

‘Please, Miss, Fm looking for my mother. She works here.’

‘Well what a lucky old mother to have such a cute little sojur like you for a son! What’s her name, lover-sojur?’

‘Marge Shairp.’

As she looked through her files, the receptionist kept embarrassing Spot with winks and puckering gestures. He felt like telling her about his suicide plan (there being some things a man had to do), but shyness shut him up.

‘Not listed here, lover-lover. That don’t mean anything, though. Tell you what. You wait right here and I’ll find out which floor she works on. Okay? I’ll be right back.’

She disappeared down the dim distance of a corridor, though the sound of her heels echoed back long after she was out of sight. Spot decided she was about the sexiest, most sophisticated woman he’d ever met.

But any second Fouts would come swinging in through the revolving door and grab him. Spot looked over the stuff on the desk: Lists of numbers, offices and phones. Bound folders (no time to open them), an artificial flower and a tiny notebook full of florid handwriting. The capitals were all curlicues and extra loops, and the dots over the i’s were little circles.

‘
Daisy James
by Henry Miller…’

Nothing there. He went back to the lists. Studio A and Studio B were both on the fifth floor. That would probably be it.

With the feeling that Fouts was right behind him, he fled up the dim
STAFF ONLY
stairway.

It was really dark in Studio A, dark and churchy. There was even a bluish vigil light that turned out to be, when he got closer, a pilot light on an ordinary stove. Instead of arches and columns, there were huge tall pieces of kitchen everywhere, and each piece was complete as a chapel, with sink, stove, table, window and landscape painted just behind the glass. The water worked and the stove lighted. He thought of the dark, dusty kitchen at home, the refrigerator full of stale secrets…he knelt at a formica table, rested his forehead against the chrome edge, and asked God to help him find his mother.