William Gaddis - A Folic Of His Own

— Oscar? You want some tea or something before I do this laundry?

— What?

— I said do you want…

— I heard you. Don't you see I'm working? Do you have to interrupt me to talk about the laundry?

— I didn't mean…

— What time is it. I've got to make some calls, the thread's broken anyway. There's a shirt on the floor in the library, you can put that in, and will you make me some tea? The card table shuddered with his weight getting to his feet, getting to the phone with a torn envelope dialing the number scribbled there, — This is Mister Crease, may I speak with Mister Mohlenhoff? listening intent, clicking his teeth, slamming it down, and again — This is Mister Crease, may I speak to Sam? No, Sam Lepidus, don't you know your own… clicking his teeth, listening, slamming it down, thumbing the pages of the directory for — the Royal Court theatre? clearing his throat — yes, this is Mister Crease, Oscar Crease. I'm trying to reach Sir John… what? Oh. Thank you, may I try later? setting it down gently and lingering there over it as though fearful of leaving it untended till his vacant gaze settled on the vacant screen both of them, a minute later, asparkle with the flashy hues and fleshy petals of the promiscuous farflung family Orchidaceae, its wiles arrayed in every deceitful variation of shape and odour, colour and design to target randy insects with spurious promises of sex and nectar provoking frenzies of pseudocopulation and the consequent deposit of their pollen elsewhere it would do the most good, rearing up with — was that the phone?

— What? No I just brought your tea Oscar, I…

— Here, put it right here, sit down.

— I can't, I have to do the…

— Will you simply sit down? heaving aside to allow her room enough there for his arm to fall over her shoulders as a male wasp harassed an orchid artfully fashioned after his female counterpart, inadvertently picking up its pollen sacs for delivery to the ovarylike repository of the petaled temptress down the way, a hand slipping under the yoke of her blouse as the heady aroma of rotting meat exuding from another floral dissembler brought eager carrion flies on a similar skewed mission, bees stung with desire by the meretricious scent of female bees and bees elsewhere drunk with the fragrant promise of nectar staggering aloft so laden with pollen stuck to their backs they could barely complete their appointed rounds, his fingers parting a button, and another, delving deeper to pluck at the blossoming pink cresting to their touch, eliciting a moan mingling pleasure and distress as the screen swelled with the veined purple pouch of the lady's slipper — though it looks more like the Greeks' word for it, orkhis, for testicle, doesn't it? eliciting a giggle, — here, put your hand…

— No don't Oscar, please.

— It's all right, the laundry can wait.

— No but somebody might come peeking in the window.

— Christina's having a nap and nobody's peeking in the window.

— Like that man that came before? and he was peeking in before we even saw him out there? and if they're looking for me and saw me in here doing this with you that's all they'd…

— Doing what! Listen, nobody's looking for you, don't…

— They are too! That's why I'm staying here isn't it? and if Al's trying to find me he'll look everyplace. You don't know Al.

— Thank God. Who's Al.

— I told you, he's this husband I had that wants to get me in court with a summons like you just got to be a witness for screwing that sleazeball lawyer and if he saw me in here with your hand down my…

— Oscar?

— See? She squirmed free.

— I thought you were working. I've been doing the crossword upstairs trying not to disturb you. Are you watching this thing?

— It was my nature program, listen Christina. I'm not doing crossword puzzles down here, you can work for just so long with this creative tension I need and once the thread is broken you don't just sit there trying to think of a five letter word for…

— I think I just heard it. Now where are you going.

— I told you. I have to get together my notes for this talk on Shiloh, the battle at Shiloh, it was the second great battle of the war he went on, covering his wavering retreat from this hostile incursion with the haphazard deployment of Grant's forces in the face of the surprise Confederate advance on Pittsburg Landing in an April dawn near Shiloh church till he gained the redoubt of cardboard cartons still stacked there in the hall where he pawed through folders, loose notes, exam books, raw troops on both sides fueled by the exuberance of battle as disorder mounted among the Confederates under the howl of indiscriminate shells from Union gunboats on the Tennessee in two days of carnage leaving each side with ten thousand casualties and neither the winner, straightening up at last arms laden with folders spilling notes over the cartons like Grant brooding over the abandoned camps of the enemy, a carnival of bloodshed resumed elsewhere later and on a more modest scale on the evening news where religion seized the headline with an assault on the Babri Masjid mosque in far off Uttar Pradesh, exhausting its allotted news slot to make way for a moribund procession of sheer naked misery in the bulging eyes and distended bellies of a famine in the far away Sudan hastened to its destinationless close by good news nearer home for sufferers from athlete's foot, overweight, gas, and the spectacle of a two foot deep river of molten cheese, butter and lard issuing from a warehouse fire in the Midwest destroying thousands of tons of government surplus food, prompting no more than a reminder to put butter on the shopping list when suppertime came round, another night of winds vexing slates and shutters and the day bringing a show cause order from the Historical Society demanding an explanation for his failure to surrender those certain documents pertaining to Captain (later Justice) Thomas Crease which properly belonged to the ages — just daring to use those words it's, it's plain impudence.

— Well? Call your lawyers.

— I've called them, Christina. I called Mohlenhoff, they said he was in court. I called Sam and he was in court and I just called them again. They said Mohlenhoff would get back to me, they said Mister Lepidus said to tell me these things take time and I've been calling the theatre trying to reach…

— Calling the zoo and asking for Mister Fox, are you ten years old all over again? calling the drugstore to ask if they have Prince Albert in the can so you can tell them to let him out? Can't you think of better ways to waste your time?

— I can't send this script to an important director like this can I? It just needs a final polish, a fresh copy before he sees it, now will you…

— I thought you were polishing your great speech on Shiloh.

— I'm trying to do both! Now will you let me get back to work? his voice a minute later feigning the honeyed pomposity of the Old South with — the proper idea of these things, now didn't they? Aristotle, he was the Greek philosopher, I can show you somewhere what he had to say about, and the pencil again, — what he said about natural slaves. That there's some just naturally meant to be slaves? Ah… dropping to a rich baritone, — but to let a man's colour decide it, sir?

— And if you're going to light another of those things for God's sake do it outside, you smoked one in here last night after I went to bed and my eyes are still watering. Lunch? A sandwich, anything, right here at the card table so he could keep working, one day fading to the next on the repetitious drone of his voice dulled as the sky out there lowering over the pond where it might have been any daylight hour, to burst without warning like a break in the weather radiant in the surge of a brogue with — When men behave like savages, after all, with no respect for law and order, how must they be treated? Why, like savages! paused crossing through a line — but get them together they'll rise up and go wild with their brawling and drink and howling for justice, with no respect for decent people like ourselves. You must knock a bit of justice into them now and again, is the mail here yet?