Robert Coover - Pricksongs & Descants

Still, in the silence, or so you tell yourself, so it seems: an aura of hope. Moderator relaxed, smiling kindly. Lifts brows in calm anticipation. Audience suppressed to a patient murmur. Will he do it? Will you do it? Fat man, perishing, balloons and snorts. Lovely Lady watches, admires. Encourages. They need you. You take strength from their need, and clear your throat.

“Oh, come, cornel” exclaims the Moderator. “Reckon you not this old refrain? To replicate is but to repent and lost is less recalled!”

Applause and cheers greet his eloquence, accepting which he preens and smiles. But what does it mean? what does it mean? “Muteness is mutinous and the mutable inscrutable!” cries the Moderator, warm ing to the moment now, riding on waves of grand hosannas. “Inflexibly same and the lex of the game!”

Nothing, nothing there at all. Think back. Wear and tear. Wary. Tarry. Salmonberry. Faster I Sticklestuff and Dryden’s belly. Crowd roars. Moderator stands to bow. Crimson semen green as—? Green as—? Faster! Could she wear it? Bear it? Bare it! That’s it! Keep it going! Keep it—!

“Too—!” gasps Mr. America, blind and flaccid, nearly faceless, and he has no breath to finish, yet his mouth gapes, struggling.

You speak: “I think—”

“ Admirable !” smiles the Moderator grimly, bringing caustic laughter from the Audience. “So what?”

“—That, if the subject is animal—”

Unexpected crash of laughter. Lady blushes, lowers lashes.

Moderator, crimson with giggling and with tears in his eyes, cries: “Good God! I should hate to conceive of it otherwise!” Whoop! goes the Audience, louder than ever, and even the cameras twitch spasmodically.

“Keep it clean, son!” cackles the Aged Clown.

“But—!”

“I said, keep it clean !”

Immaculate butt? Incredible!

“—Late!” concludes the fat man, releases wind, and dies. Dead. Only friend in the house. No loss felt, but no relief either. The challenge is still the same one.

“Come, come, sir!” cries the Moderator, much amused, but rising now and pressing forward. “You must have contrived some concrete conjunctions from the incontrovertible commentary qua commentary just so conspicuously constituted!” Deafening applause.

Dig in! Tie it up! The truth is: “The truth is—”

“The truth is,” shouts the Moderator, jabbing at him with an angry finger, “ you have lost !”

“But I haven’t even—!”

“ Why are you here ,” the Moderator explodes, losing all patience, “if not to endeavor to disentangle this entanglement? In short, Bad Sport, you would be wise to remember that the saga of sagacity is the purse of pebspicacity!” Wild applause, cheers, hoots, screams. “Reason is the resin, the college of knowledge!” Uncontrollable uproar. Moderator rips off bowtie and flings it like a rose to the stamping shrieking crowd. Lamps flame up. “Failed! You have failed! And you must pay the consequences!”

“But the truth is—”

“The truth is,” crows the old Clown and leaps upon the table; Lovely Lady takes his quaking claw and hops up to join him:

“There once was a young bellydancer—”

Lady strips to half chemise as Audience whistles and heaves coins to the stage. Somewhere a brass band plays Eastern music. With her thumbs, she pushes the chemise to half-mast on her hips. Wear it: bare it, bright as berries, and the old dog rose…

“Who supposed that her art was the answer—”

Above or below? Waist: waste. Scruples, pink as salmon. Crimson. Female belly, darts and thrusts…

“But one night in a bump,

She fractured her rump—”

Lovely Lady halts abruptly, knees bent out, twitching like a spastic, navel aimed at you: Eye of the World — then staggers, thus in mid-bump, about the table, eyes wide and mouth puckered, to the con vulsive delight of the entire world, then drops — bam! — stiff as a scute to the table…

“—And perished grotesquely of cancerl”

Audience paroxysms reach new frenzies as Lady vibrates in last throes and ossifies, legs up toward the lenses. “Yes, the truth is,” gasps the guffawing Moderator when he’s able, wiping his eyes with a linen cloth:

“Don’t twiddle or piddle

Or diddle your middle

While riding a riddle, old Sport—

Lovely Lady miraculously revives, and with a wink of the Eye of the World, lures you to the tabletop. Laughs crash and thunder. Whistles, catcalls, hostile hoots. Cameras crouch, pounce, jab, retract. The fat man, you see, was not Mr. America after all, but Mr. Amentia. Should have known. Changes everything…

“—For the frame is the same In fame or in shame And the name of the game—”

Clown and Lady grip an arm apiece. A noose descends — yes, yes, it all depends…

“—is La Mort!”

“I thought—” But the Audience drowns you out. Well, they are happy, think about that. The noose is fitted.

“You thought—?” asks the Moderator and the crowd subsides.

“I thought it was all for fun.”

“That is to say,” smiles the Moderator wearily, “much ado about nothing.”

“That’s it! that’s it! Yes! that’s what I was trying to—!”

The Moderator shakes his head. At heart, a tough old boy.

“Sorry.” He rests his chins in his pudgy fist, smile informed by a surfeit of knowledge. Nods gravely at Clown and Lady.

“Keep it clean, son!” rattles the old Clown, jabbing you goodhumoredly with his elbow. Well of laughter. Always the laughter. A second constant.

Noose is scratchy. Tickles your throat. Swallow. Can’t swallow.

Lovely Lady’s scented breath is in your ear. “Don’t be gone long, darling,” she coos and dispatches you with a parting goose.

Whoop! Off you go!

The dog rose and there depended

Lamps expand — whap!

burst into crimson flares…

Eyes of the

So long, Sport.

○ ○? ○

2

The Marker

Of the seven people (Jason, his wife, the police officer, and the officer’s four assistants), only Jason and his wife are in the room. Jason is sitting in an armchair with a book in his hand, a book he has doubtless been reading, although now he is watching his wife get ready for bed. About Jason: he is tall and masculine, about 35, with strong calloused hands and a sensitive nose; he is deeply in love with his wife. And she: she is beautiful, affectionate, and has a direct and charming manner of speaking, if we were to hear her speak. She seems always at ease.

Nude now, she moves lightly about the room, folding a sweater into a drawer, hanging up Jason’s jacket which he had tossed on the bed, picking up a comb from the floor where it had fallen from the chest of drawers. She moves neither pretentiously nor shyly. Whatever meaning there might be in her motion exists within the motion itself and not in her deliberations.

At last, she folds back the blankets of the bed (which is across the room from Jason), fluffs her short blonde hair, crawls onto the fresh sheets on her hands and knees, pokes gently at the pillows, then rolls down on her back, hands under her head, gazing across the room at Jason. She watches him, with the same apparent delight in least motions, as he again picks up his book, finds his place in it, and inserts a marker. He stands, returns her gaze for almost a minute without smiling, and then does smile, at the same time placing his book on the table. He removes his clothes, hooking his trousers over the back of the armchair and tossing the other things on the seat cushion. Before extinguishing the light behind his chair, he glances across the room at his wife once more, her tanned body gay and relaxed, a rhythm of soft lines on the large white canvas of the bed. She smiles, in subtle recognition perhaps of the pleasure he finds in her. He snaps out the light.