Tommy Wieringa - Little Caesar

The silence around that silver cylinder full of sweetness was extremely pleasant.

‘That wasn’t very. . nice, Ludwig,’ Sarah said after a moment.

I was speechless. She should be standing by me, at my side! Not facing off against me! After the victory, the defeat appeared without delay; my mother was sitting with her face averted, her eyes full of tears. Tears, goddamn it. Oh, you bastard, now you’ve ruined everything. And Sarah is looking at you with the most painful kind of distance, and now she’s moving over beside her to put a hand on her shoulder and comfort that tainted whore. A different word. The charm bracelet on her wrist tinkles softly as she runs her hand up and down my mother’s back. My mother, who smiles at her and dabs at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips — all female bonding at this table, it’s unbearable, what a seedy little tableau. And isn’t it amazing that I, the link between those two, have now completely disappeared from the whole situation? A chemical process is what it is: after the reaction the catalyst is regenerated, unchanged, and I am alone again.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ my mother said. ‘Mothers are always a kind of punching bag, aren’t they? Almost all men hate their mothers. That’s just the way it is.’

Sarah slides back around in the booth to where she was sitting. She blows on her tea as though it were very hot indeed.

We drove through Santa Monica, the evening was still young.

‘I thought she was really nice,’ Sarah said.

‘You don’t know her,’ I say, looking straight ahead.

Futile. You can’t hand over your world to someone else. I was breathing through a screen of repulsion. She’d taken sides with her. Neutrality I could have understood; partiality in the wrong direction was unforgivable. I hadn’t been expecting it, my defenses were down. My mother had seduced Sarah and simply wormed her way between us. She had become my rival for Sarah’s attention and loyalty.

Sarah’s room was too small for sitting around together in silence. I went outside, my disappointment in one hand, my wounded soul in the other. I felt the lack of a house to go to, wherever I went I would be a guest. The streets were lined with low, dusty trees whose leaves had curled from the drought. When ultramarine overwhelmed the sky I sauntered back and came in the door with the insouciance of a cat who has disappeared for a few days. Again the candles, the incense rising in a shaky column, the mysticism of a shaman’s cave. I tried not to look at the dead child, the focal point of the room.

‘You’re not talking,’ she said. ‘Apparently you’re very angry about something, but how can I do anything if you won’t talk?’

The listless mantra that accompanies failure. She said, ‘I don’t know, but what are you doing here if you don’t want to talk?’

I turned around and walked back down the steel steeps, back to the street. High, searing pride took my breath away. The unconditionality could end that quickly, that quickly you could be transformed from lover into unwelcome guest. After a fashion, I actually reveled in the bonfire of self-destruction. Behind me the sound of fast, light little footsteps.

‘I’m running after you this time,’ she said, ‘but next time you can figure it out for yourself. What do you want, Ludwig? I don’t know why you’re acting like this.’

For a moment I thought about ignoring her and walking on, but realized that that would be overplaying my hand.

‘I didn’t mean to send you away,’ she said, ‘I asked why you were with me if you acted like that. It was a question, okay, a question!’

My body heavy with inertia, I let myself be led back to the house. Later on she took my cock in her mouth, which was still hot from a cup of tea. A scream escaped me when I came. A few minutes later I heard the sound of spitting coming from the bathroom: she had kept the sperm in her mouth all that time.

The Indians, a coalition of tribes, had been bused in from the mountains to take part in the march on the Court of Appeals in Pasadena. As there had been during the demonstration in front of the gallery, there was a young man who seemed to be leading the operation. He was the one who held the megaphone, he led the prayer before the procession started moving. It was just past noon, the sun was shining hotly. In the middle of the circle a blind old Indian lit a fire of dried sage and mimed a series of incantations to the heavens and the earth. A banner read NO DESECRATION FOR RECREATION. A smoking stick was handed around and everyone waved it around their head before passing it on. The stick came to Sarah and me.

‘Purification,’ she said quietly. ‘Wait. .’

She waved the stick, first over my head, then over her own, and handed it to the nappy-haired boy beside her. Someone screamed into the megaphone, For the rights of Nature! Of the Earth! Of Humanity!

The megaphone was passed around. Some people were unable to find the right button. We were called upon to free ourselves from the sickness of greed and appetite. The slogans flew wildly back and forth. A group of anti-globalists, it seemed, had joined forces with the Indians. The march began. Drums pounded.

‘Tribal elders to the front!’ the leader shouted.

He had a pointy nose, his skin was the color of hazelnuts. I could see why people would want to follow him, his charisma seemed like something that could be expressed in wattage. Sarah was pushing the shopping cart again, this time filled with photocopied pamphlets. She handed out bananas and water to the hungry and thirsty. She was our mother. Behind us, a group of Indians were dancing — a handsome man in a red loincloth laid down the beat with the strips of bells tied to his ankles. He danced the whole way, his body gleaming with sweat. I shriveled under his sacred earnestness. What was I but an intruder and an impotent practitioner of irony? Sarah screamed along with the slogans; when she tossed her fist in the air, her top slid up over her belt. I saw her pale stomach. I knew what she smelled like, I was familiar with her taste.

From the sidewalk, groups of skeptical blacks were watching the parade go by. There could have been no greater distance than that between those grim Indians and the blacks, who just stood there grinning. How differently they viewed the soil! The Indians were demonstrating here for the preservation of their holy ground, which the blacks associated with the forced labor of their ancestors and had radically turned their backs on. Sarah asked me to take the shopping cart while she went into a Hooters franchise to pass out broadsheets to the leering men. I couldn’t stand still in the current, I was pushed along from behind and in turn found myself pushing a shopping cart, amid a procession of Indians and anti-globalists, to a courthouse where a verdict was supposed to be overturned. You never saw a normal, reasonable person at gatherings like this, only the crackpots with rings in their noses, wearing their army surplus outfits and chanting slogans, the dull rhythm of which expressed, above all, a sense of stagnation.

Sarah came up behind me and I passed the shopping cart to her. I asked myself whether I would ever be capable of bonding with something the way she did, or whether cowardly skepticism would reign forever in that barren, prematurely old soul of mine. When we got to Colorado Boulevard I said, ‘I’m dropping out for a minute. Going to get a hamburger.’

‘Now? You’re kidding!’

I gave her a quick kiss and stepped out of the parade. At a bit of a distance I let the procession pass by and shivered at the melancholy sound an Indian was producing on a conch shell — a baby whale that had lost its mother.

I walked back to Hooters. There, in those profane surroundings, I let myself be served a hamburger by a girl who barged her breasts ahead of her like icebergs. Then I used the pay phone to call Loews and ask if they had any work for me. I was put through to Berny Suess.