Katherine Dunn - Geek Love

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Her message is succinct and pithy: Lobotomy is the ultimate shortcut to P.I.P. Arturo, she claims, is torturing his followers with prolonged, expensive, gradual amputations. He is denying, to those who have striven to emulate his ideal, the efficient, painless, virtually instantaneous access to Peace, Isolation, and Purity that it is in her power to bestow. Why wait? asks Doc P. Why itch in places you’ve no longer got? Cut once! Cut deep! Cut where it counts!

And I’m damned if she isn’t kicking up quite a ruckus. The novices are mumbling bewilderedly. The elevated are waving their stumps and asking belligerent questions. Doc P. is fomenting radical schism in the Arturan church

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Arty has a revolution to contend with and where is he? Mooning over his lost love — not Elly, but Iphigenia. He’s subtle about it. He only inquires half a dozen times a day about her health and whereabouts. The binoculars set to swivel on the tripod in his window are, he claims, for keeping an eye on the flock. Never would he use them to watch the pale Iphy in her painful progress down the row toward the Chute with her swollen belly pulling her forward while she struggles to balance the flabby monster that sprouts from her waist. She sticks one arm straight out for balance and drags that unreliable leg on the other side

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General opinion about Arty varies, from those who see him as a profound humanitarian to those who view him as a ruthless reptile. I myself have held most of the opinions in this spectrum at one time or another. Watching Arty pine for Iphy, however, I come to see him as just a regular Joe — jealous, bitter, possessive, competitive, in a constant frenzy to disguise his lack of self-esteem, drowning in deadly love, and utterly unable to prevent himself from gorging on the coals of hell in his search for revenge

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The estimable Zephir McGurk informs me, in his laconic way over checkers (a game at which his plodding methodical integrity reveals itself unassailable), that Arty had him design a bugging system that tapped the twins’ van into a recording device in Arty’s console. He can hear every word, every move

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I find this depressing. The idea of Arty sitting and listening to hour after hour of footsteps, pages turning, toilet flushing, comb running through hair. Elly’s conversation has been reduced to the syllable

mmmmmm

and Iphy is not in the mood for song. Her piano is covered with dust (according to McGurk) and Arty is listening to her file her nails

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Doc P. is frustrated by the inefficiency of Arty’s method. I mentioned Arty’s theory of acclimatization and continually renewed commitment. “One respects,” I said, “Arturo’s desire for complete understanding on the part of the Admitted. Each elevation being a voluntary step, a considered step, allows those with hesitations to back out at any time.”

But she started up on how many hours she’d spent already just taking off my four toes, and she would be hours in surgery on those remaining, and that would bring me only to the first level of elevation, while, if she were allowed to be efficient, she could take me “all the way there inside a single hour on the table.”

Her face became quite damp with her effusions, and her final outburst fogged her glasses. “Now he wants to add on lobotomy at the end! He’s talking about sending for all the completions — bringing them back from the rest home a few at a time so I can do yet another job on them! I’m spending eight to ten hours every day in surgery. I’m getting an allergic reaction to my gloves — unless it’s the soap. My hands are scaling and my knuckles are swelling.”

I knew better than to suggest hiring another surgeon to help her

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She says Iphy is enjoying a fairly normal pregnancy but may be carrying twins. I asked about Chick, who looks terrible lately. She says he’s depressed and she’s dosing him with B complex, zinc, and jumping jacks. “Exercise is the ultimate panacea.… Oxidation of impurity and so on,” says she

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I talked to Chick in back of the cat wagon this morning. An old tire lay flat in the dust and he was bouncing on it, his bare feet planted on opposite sides, his hands on top of his head, his coveralls flying loose on his thin frame. The coverall straps lay on his bare shoulders, emphasizing the skinniness of a neck the size of my wrist. He was polite as always but thinking of something else. His face turned up to me had a starved, ancient look. He said he was “waiting for Iphy.” No, he didn’t have to work today because Doc was having meetings and giving speeches. (This is the first word I heard of Doc’s Surgical Strike.)

I wanted to question him about some of the “Chick stories” going around but Iphy sagged up, lugging the drooling Elly. Chick hopped off the tire, said “So long” and ran off to her. He threw an arm around her, tucked his shoulder under Elly’s armpit to help support her dead weight. They strolled off, the three. Two? Or do we count the ballooning belly and call it four?

I saw Arty’s squad marching down the camp so I went through the fence to catch up. The way he leans forward gives an illusion of speed as the chair hums and groans over the dry ruts and dead grass in the Arturan encampment. His solemn novices don’t dare touch the chair unless he asks them to

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He stopped at the open door of a dusty sedan with white rags draped out of the windows to dry. Inside, on the back seat, lay an elevated male with his arms ending in white-wrapped bulges at the elbow and one leg ending at the knee. The plush upholstery of the car lifts a puff of dust every time the man shifts slightly in the seat

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Arty nodded in at the shadowed face. “Do you have what you need?”

The stump man wriggled, surprised, craning his neck, “Arturo, sir?” His eyes showed their whites in the dimness

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Arty’s scalp was bright in the sunlight. “Are you well treated? Do you need anything?”

“Well, that boy that’s s’posed to help me … not meaning to whine but he’s always gone. Yesterday, I couldn’t help it, I wet myself, and by the time he showed up, damned if I didn’t have diaper rash.”

Arty chuckled, nodding. “Sounds like you need a replacement. What’s that boy’s name?”

“Jason. But he’s a good boy. Just young.”

Arty swiveled in his chair and eyed his entourage. A dozen backs straightened and a dozen faces tried to look bright and eager

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“Who’ll serve this elevated man?” Arty asked. The hands shot up — all five fingers spread to show their service status

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“Miss Elizabeth,” Arty nodded. The woman stepped forward, her white dress bunching over her thickening body. Her hair bunned on top of her head. Thirty-five. Something burnt out of her soft face

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“As you hope to be served?” Arty asked

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“In my turn,” breathed the fingerful, toeful Miss E

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“When that Jason boy shows, send him to me.”

Miss E. detached herself from the group, climbed into the front seat of the sedan, and started sorting through a paper bag full of clothes for clean and dirty

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The elevated man, flat on the back seat, waved his stump arms and strained his neck in the shade of his washed bandages hanging on the windows. “As you are!” shouted the elevated man. Arty nodded and his chair turned and moved on

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Doing his rounds, he calls this. It’s a recent development, probably triggered by the Doc and her agitating. I followed him from tent to van to pickup trucks with mosquito nets and sleeping bags in back