Antrim, Donald - Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World

“Good thinking, Tom,” said Jerry. Then: “You want to know what book I liked?”

“What?” asked Tom.

“Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism.”

“The Kernberg?”

“Yes.”

We all drank, as if following a toast. Jerry elaborated: “I prefer a clothbound book with thin pages sewn in muslin to a medium-width spine. Anything with a lot of plates is going to be a problem. Art books for instance. You pitch one of those museum catalogues and you feel like your shoulder’s going to come out of the socket.”

“It’s the varnished pages,” Tom said.

I concurred. “They are a bitch.”

Was it a weakness, my facile desire to go along with the guys at the expense of the books? Or was it more complex, a sincere inclination to favor present human company, fellowship and community, over the obscure pleasures of printed narratives? Certainly the air was cool at this time of evening. A wail of birdsong ascended from the gray-green trees. The men’s voices were deep, the world seemed good, there were plenty of unimpaired books left lying on the floor and in the backpack. What did it matter which books? The essence of culture is found in all its artifacts.

With this in mind I surreptitiously took inventory of the assorted tattered volumes tumbled beside my chair. Pleasing to note were a quantity of university press editions, which would’ve been prohibitively expensive, new. One book, Thieleman J. van Braght’s hard-to-find classic of Anabaptist distress, The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians Who Baptised Only Upon Confession of Faith, and Who Suffered and Died for the Testimony of Jesus, Their Savior, From the Time of Christ to the Year A.D. 1660, struck me as an ideal gift for Meredith. It would show my love for her, by demonstrating enthusiasm for her commitment to religion and the spiritual life of children.

Martyrs Mirror is a big book, eleven hundred plus double-columned pages of “eyewitness” and court-record accounts of severe bodily torments, punishments, and executions, encyclopedically detailed and chronologically arranged, many accompanied by engraved plates illustrating dramatic scenes like “Vitalus Buried Alive at Ravenna,” “Phocas Put to Death in a Lime Kiln,” “Two Young Girls Led to Execution,” and the poignant, closely observed “Georg Wanger in the Dungeon”—this last depicting the figure of a Christian (middle-aged, male, forlorn) reclining on a bed of straw. Gloom descends. In the etching’s foreground a pair of largish toads seem to gaze reverentially up at the martyr-to-be, while near his feet, one of which is rudely chained to a wall, a viper coils to strike. Looming contours framing the illustration’s lower quadrant may be mere rubbish, but they may also be skeletons and/or corpses. What a scene. It never occurred to me to include reptiles in my own dungeon. But of course. It made so much sense. What fun I’d have later, down in the basement, roughing out plans for a few 1:32-scale “bathsoap” bog denizens.

“You’re one sick fuck, Pete.” It was Nixon, leaning forward to examine the hefty volume open on my lap. He chuckled, a menacing, beery chuckle. “Heh heh.”

“True scholarship knows neither health nor infirmity, Bill, only esteem for the heritage of man, and fearlessness before the misery in all our hearts.”

That shut him up. Jerry said, “Pete, I take it you refer to the dark side of human nature. Is ‘misery’ the word you want to use?”

“Maybe not, Jer. Maybe just ‘pain.’”

“How about, um, ‘despondency’?” suggested Tom.

“‘Heartache,’” Abe said.

“‘Anguish,’” added Jerry. Which earned a “Hmn” from Bill, who contributed, “‘Rage.’”

We all thought about that for a minute, about rage. Jerry observed, “Good insight, Bill.” Both Tom and Abe nodded their heads in agreement with this, smiling and saying, in near unison and with genuine if slightly sodden enthusiasm, “Yeah, definitely.”

Which seemed to serve as a point of closure. It was that point during polite conversation when talk must either cease or become intimate, self-revelatory, deep … our cue to rise and begin gathering our things. Tom said, “Put the empties in the backpack, guys. I’ll take them home and saw them up for my pit. That is, if no one else wants them.”

The other guys shook their heads no, and I said, “Hey, why don’t I help out by taking these library books.”

Abe asked me, “What do you want with a pile of dusty old books, Pete?”

“Nothing. A little night table reading.”

“That stuff? Before bed ?” Jerry meant, I guess, Martyrs Mirror.

Bill said, “Barbara and I often enjoy thrillers before turning out the lights.”

“Well, Bill,” I said, commencing stacking — dictionaries and Martyrs Mirror on the bottom, miscellaneous professional-level science and psychology texts in the middle, a few soiled paperbacks on top—“Well, Bill, reading of any kind is better than no reading at all.”

Of course I left behind the thesaurus, which I honestly consider pernicious.

Evening, and the park’s dense thickets of trees and bushes seemed washed in eerie, nighttime shades. About that landscape one could truly claim: It was a jungle. Now off we went, single file down the gazebo steps, into it. The books in my arms rode heavy, towered head-high; I was forced to gaze around them in order to see the back of the man in front of me, Bill’s back. In front of Bill, Abe and Jerry pushed through the weeds. Tom walked far out in front — point man. The trust-and-estates lawyer was visible as the red fabric of his backpack, audible as the sound of beer cans clinking softly, musically inside the pack, and as a gentle voice drifting back down the line, man to man, issuing safety commands: “Step high,” or “Easy over these rocks,” or “Let’s go left around these wood lilies, okay?” Meanwhile the precious books shifted and slid between one another, their dark and light spines touching my face, bumping my face. Small dry kisses on the nose, and my arms aching from the cumbersome weight of paper. A few paces ahead, Bill lumbered through thorny briars that snapped back in his wake to slap or drag across the backs of my hands — a painful, localized flogging. Consider the martyrs. Here was my punishment: a hundred herbal lashes across the wrists and forearms for delivering literature out of the wilderness. How exciting, this difficult passage toward hearth and home. How I ached, along the long walk, for Meredith’s touch. Desire came, a dull electric hum situated low in the belly, giving me the beginnings of an erection. Or perhaps this was merely the result of the steady, jostling pressure against my groin of all the weighty books. The configurations of the erotic are many and varied, and who can deny the arousing and, might I add, altogether requisite function of narrative in sexual fantasy. I imagined us sprawled together, my fish wife and I, open-mouthed and fucking in lovely harmony atop a sea of books, some scattered open (I’d offer to recline on the books myself, to protect Meredith from the sharp corners of the bindings), their pages damp and turned to vital texts describing the orgiastic death wails of the burned, the impaled, the drowned, and the flayed. I couldn’t wait to get back to the house, to show Meredith my wounds and let her tenderly apply ointment and gauze bandages while I recounted the events of this brave day with the town fathers, The Day of Much Blood and Pain, and the Saving of the Schoolbooks. It gave me a nice idea for a mayoral-campaign slogan: PETE ROBINSON BLEEDS FOR YOUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE. I made a mental note to scribble this gem down when I got home, so as not to forget it once my hands were healed and no longer hurting.