William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Sitting astride him, tall and black, she gazed down at him with loving eyes. Yes, he was close to another pair of eyes, brown eyes which blinked and sometimes cried and sometimes even saw the soul-smell of another human being, smelled the feeling and heard the smell of skin, dust on skin, dirt and sand rubbing between bodies. And once again he believed; so he was innocent again; he had never sinned. He did not need to think anymore because what he and she called love (it must have been love) numbed everything else into irrelevance while his world decayed. How could he make his life right? Where would anything end? She led him into the Pleroma to show him the Four Darknesses of Cain and the Four Lights. And because he was a Canaanite now and forever, he preferred the Darknesses to the Lights. Cain was not so evil, he kept saying to himself. Cain at least killed his brother only out of jealousy, not as a sacrifice to God, Who called on Abraham to sacrifice his son, and Who sacrificed Jesus to Himself to consolidate Himself upon the world of Canaanites whose demonic dreams and desperations sent them wandering from one necessity to another until all volition had been scorched out of them, and they gave or thieved without sin. It was a sin when Cain killed Abel, but in his centuries of after-struggle across primeval continents all of a lichenous red color darkened by blue haze, he committed no further sin when he killed and robbed for his living, just as the false Irene was sinless, and Domino with her crazed lightning-flashes of intellect sought only to escape her own torment like a fish wriggling on a gill-hook, so wasn’t she sinless, too? Wasn’t the Queen perfect? (He didn’t think that merely because she loved him. He swore it.)

You love me? she said.

Yeah.

You gonna let me hurt you?

Sure. Yes, I will.

Does it hurt now, baby, what I’m doin’ to you?

I feel it, all right.

Tell me to do it again.

Do it again, Africa.

Does it hurt?

It kind of… — Oh! It hurts!

Does it hurt?

Yeah. I love you—

Does it hurt?

Oh—

He thought less and less about Irene — less about his business also, and people who met Tyler at this stage frequently thought him abstracted, careworn, apprehensive, even sad. In truth he’d changed vastly, as he himself knew, although whether for worse or for better he really couldn’t say. The Queen absorbed him. He believed that he was learning intensely beautiful and secret things.

Heh, heh, heh! Justin got hit by a car!

And the red ambulance light pulsed right through the window of Jonell’s Bar, where a man was saying: I’ll sell it to you for twenny dollars. (Around the corner, Chocolate didn’t hear. She was busy singing to the passing cars: This is your knot, this is my slot, do it on the dot, cash!)

Lookit Justin there! Fool got hit by a car!

Heh, heh, heh!

Your cab’s here, said the old barmaid to a drunk.

I didn’t call no cab.

Oh, yes you did.

I’m not leavin’.

Oh, get out! — The barmaid tried to snatch his beer away, but he seized it and brandished it threateningly over her face.

Heh, heh, heh!

You see that wrestling thing on TV? laughed the twenty-dollar man. Now these two here, they’re gonna wrestle. Bets, anyone? I bet twenny dollars on Clarice!

Heh, heh, heh! Ran right over Justin’s leg!

Justin? Why, sure enough, it really is Justin. I always hated that goddamned pimp.

Get out! Get out! screamed the barmaid.

You need a hand, Clarice?

Get him out!

A big man came and began to gently push the drunk between the shoulderblades. The drunk wheeled round cursing and punching.

Whoah, said the big man. I was just trying to give you a hand. Asshole! Sonofabitch! Oh, well.

He’s just drunk, the twenty-dollar man soothed him.

Yeah, I knew that, said the big man.

The drunk staggered outside and waved his taxi away imperiously. The taxi driver grimaced, waiting for the one whom he was sure would be the real fare, the willing, generous customer of whom we all dream. Then the drunk caught sight of the cherry-colored ambulance lights. He shambled over to his fellow spectators and began to enjoy the ambulance’s screams. But somebody cut the siren, and he swore, disappointed.

Oh, I’m all right, said the tall man, sitting regally in the back of the ambulance. Blood ran down his ankles. White men in white coats attended him most obsequiously, and the crowd gazed up at him through the open door. He was their entertainment.

Who’s that nigger? said the drunk.

Watch your mouth, a black man warned him. If you wasn’t such a lush I’d beat your whitebread ass.

Perhaps that sallow drunk should have taken the hint. But he needed to feel confident in his life. It was only when he drank that he felt he could be anything. He felt this precisely because his perceptions had grown so constricted that he could no longer be cognizant of his limitations, like those old people who when sight, hearing and memory slip away make unflattering remarks in loud voices about others who are still present but out of their dwindling sensory range. How amazed they’d be, if they understood that the nasty man who’d long since vanished from their apprehension like last Thursday’s television show had just now heard them denounce his nastiness! For they’d meant no harm! Backstab gossip doesn’t harm anybody, does it? It’s only steam-letting, social sport, wit, liveliness, self-comfort like complaining over an arthritic wrist.

The tall man, King for a day, extended his right arm to the crowd in a Roman salute. — How about if you just lie down right back here? a paramedic murmured, but the tall man angrily shrugged off his touch.

I know who he is! the drunk suddenly shouted, proud of his immense knowledge. He’s a boxer! He’s what’s-his-name! He fought Mike Tyson! But did he win?

The crowd started to snicker, and the drunk, pleased with the attention, went on: If they were both at their peak, then Tyson would win. But Tyson’s all fucked up. He’s dead and gone.

I’m all right, said Justin.

Oh, he thinks he’s all right, sneered the drunk. If he’s all right, then what’s with the men in the fucking white coats?

I’m all right, Justin repeated happily.

You think we were talking about you? shouted the drunk. We were talking about Mike Tyson. Who gives a rat’s ass about you? What kind of representative of the black people are you?

Blame it on the fucking black, man. Just blame everything, said the man who’d threatened to kick the drunk’s ass. He blindsided the drunk with an imensely powerful punch which sent the drunk whirling down like Lucifer into hell. His head struck the pavement with a cracking noise. Then he lay still.

You got room for one more? called a man to the ambulance crew, and the crowd laughed.

The black man kicked the drunk’s head again and again, shouting: You fucking white nigger!

Justin, doped up and cracked up, had witnessed none of this. He was sure that all the commotion had been applause. He could not remember when he had been so joyful. Last week when Maj had gone off on Domino and then with her face self-carved into an unfriendly mask commanded him to step across the street so that she could mutter more of her private things with that Henry Tyler, he’d felt insulted, almost cursed, and his rage at her, which was really jealousy, seeped upward into his chest, making him dread himself even through the scratched and smeary lenses of his fatalism, and that jealousy was actually grief because this Queen whom he’d so faithfully served treasured up no more love for him. He’d wanted to change and leave nothing of himself behind, not even his wrinkled skin. And now his glory grew as multi-hued as the bright clothes which hung at sidewalk sales on Mission Street; and his dignity ascended; words and glances licked him like incense-smoke, and he became theatrical to please the world. No goddamned medic was going to stop him. He had never experienced any inability to understand why Domino set fires, why Strawberry robbed him and cheated on him and then sneered the fact in his ear with her ugly trashy goadings until he had to break her jaw; every wild beast roared sometimes, and now it was his turn, especially because roaring temporarily expelled the immense physical pain of his two broken legs as well as the spiritual pain of betrayal by the Queen, pain which clung to him like ice cold iron whose bitterness could be dismissed only at the cost of torn skin. And now, piquant sauce for his dish of plenty, Strawberry herself came running up Jones Street, screaming: Justin, Justin, oh, my God, Justin! She leaped into the back of the ambulance, whose pebblechromed bumper dazzled her with its silver perfection, asked the paramedics if he was all right, held his hand. — I’ll buy you a soda at the hospital, she whispered tearfully.