Stanley Elkin - Boswell

“Sandusky,” I yelled, screaming to make him hear me, “Sandusky, why does a strong man wear a jock?”

“D-d-do-on-nnt. Doannt.”

“To hold his bells up.”

“D-o-o-n’t. Ple-plee — leeze.”

“Mr. Sandusky, how is a strong man like a man who serves food in a restaurant?”

“D-on’t.”

“They’re both weighters!” He laughed, strangling, but I saw that he was regaining control. It was too bad, I thought. “If you can’t join ’em, kill ’em.” The new Boswell: Boswell the Bad. Aesthetically it was a pity. I could imagine Sandusky dead, and calling the police myself to report it, and their coming and finding Sandusky’s corpse. The Corpse of Sandusky, the heroic mold, all muscles and laughs. “Of course, gentlemen, he died out of his prime, but the essential materials are still there,” I would tell them, lifting a loose flap of skin and pulling it taut. “We could take him to a taxidermist and have him stuffed. It’s what he would want.” I would explain to the Inspector that I had told him a joke and he had died. But it was too late; already Sandusky was sitting up, his feet over the edge of the bed. He looked like someone who might wake with a hangover. He was disreputable, torn, and seemed as seedy as he had when I first came in.

“That was a good laugh,” he said stupidly. He smiled, remembering it.

“Yes.”

“It’s been years since I had a laugh like that.”

“It’s good for you to laugh like that once in a while. It clears the system.”

“Well, sure,” he said, “I know. When I was developing the body I used to make it a habit to read the joke books. It’s a very good lung exercise.”

“Is that a fact?” I said. When he said “the body” I felt another twinge of anger. He had confirmed again the selflessness of his life’s effort.

“I’m a little tired now,” he said apologetically.

“Sure,” I said, “I’ll get out of here.”

“Maybe you could come back another time. I enjoyed talking to you.”

“Sure,” I said, and got up.

“Wait a minute,” he said. He came over to me. “You might as well take one of these.” He handed me one of his poses.

“Oh, I couldn’t.”

“Sure,” he said. “What the hell.” He looked at me carefully. Then, to my surprise, he reached out and touched me. He put his hands on my arms, and stooping, slid his palm down my thighs. On his hands and knees he held my calf muscle, molding it, almost. “Say,” he said, looking up at me, “that’s all right.” He straightened up. “You got any pictures of the body? I’d like to see those calves.”

“Gee, I’m sorry, Mr. Sandusky, my photographer promised he’d have some ready for me yesterday, but he ran out of the high-gloss paper we use.”

“Oh,” he said, “I see.”

“Some should be coming in soon, though,” I said. “I could let you have a chest and legs and thighs, of course, and a neck that I’m very proud of. I saw the neck proofs yesterday when I went to the shop, and I think they’re terrific.”

“I’d like to see them,” he said. “The neck was always one of my weak spots, as you probably saw.”

“No,” I said, “you had a distinguished neck.”

“Well, it was scrawny,” he said, lowering his voice. “I was susceptible to sore throats and I could never exercise it the way I should have.”

“The way it deserved.”

“Yeah,” he said, “the way it deserved.”

“Well,” I said, shoving out my hand, “thanks for everything.”

“My pleasure,” he said.

I held up the photograph he had given me and grinned.

“Forget it,” he said, “my pleasure.”

Pleasure, I thought, leaving him, what would you great men know about pleasure?

I still have in my files the photograph Sandusky gave me. A picture of a serious young man (like one of those figures you see in a tableau — can it move, does it breathe, is it real?) in a loin cloth. His arms (of course, that is merely a convenience, a convention of language; they are no more his than mine) fluid with muscle, his chest… It’s in my files. A cornerstone!

Herlitz, you comedian, you clown, you had some Old World fun with Boswell, hey? That Herlitz! He played a joke. Not just on me — on Freud, on the German generals, on the man with the monorails. He gave us projects. What, you think greatness is fun? Laughs? You think it’s all honors and international congresses and dressing for dinner? No, I tell you. Everybody dies. We’re all lashed to the mast. The man goes down beneath his cause like the soldier beneath his flag. Only his achievement, his thing, lingers. Men leave us their lousy things, that’s what. Vaccine or the patents or a greasy wallet with fourteen dollars and change and sixty dollars in uncashed traveler’s checks — it’s all the same. (They take it out of the hospital safe and send it to you in the mail. “Here are your father’s effects,” the letter says, not unkindly. They call them that, effects. Who needs his effects? I want him. )

So it was his selflessness I couldn’t stand in Sandusky, his heatless heart. Reckless! Let’s not kid ourselves, we all have to vacate the premises. But the great? They receive their eviction notices and — poof — it’s into the street at once with their furniture and effects. It’s stupid. Stupid? It’s immoral, what Forbush calls “The Mad Scientist Motif of Modern Life.” You think that’s an exaggeration? When the professor takes out the young girl’s brain and wires it up to the ape, you think maybe he’s got something against that girl? Like hell. The product at any price. So they go on pumping yellow jack into their veins, feeding themselves plague in the afternoon tea, dropping the bomb first on each other to see if it will work later on us. Like Sandusky, they build the body and scorn the soul. Maybe, at bottom, that’s good Christianity — maybe, at bottom, that’s what makes saints — but it’s immoral, damn it. Give me the self-centered who don’t make anything. Give me, by God, the raptless.

I came away shaken from my interview with Sandusky. Well, it was a disappointment, you see, a revelation. After Sandusky I would always know where I stood. It was I who had betrayed Herlitz after all. I had ignored what he had told me, that I was not a great man myself. Boswell, the sneak hero.

So I went on the wagon. I made resolutions. Lay off the great, I told myself, stay away from them. Swear off. You are not up to even the over-the-hill great, their frigid Decembers of achievement.

Ah, it was conscious though. I couldn’t help my feelings.

What I was really doing was lying low.

An excerpt from my journal:

May 14, 1948. Los Angeles.

A curious thing. Perhaps I am a man of destiny — of sorts. At least one of those people to whom things happen. Like two weeks ago when I slept with the whore. I didn’t have anything with me. But in my excitement I couldn’t wait, and since then I’ve been worried about syphilis. It’s really amazing. I know absolutely nothing about syphilis. Ignorant as a bird. I had meant to go to the library to look it up, but I never got around to it. It was really preying on my mind when a few days ago Time magazine devoted two pages to it in the Medicine section. A coincidence, I suppose, one I must make nothing of, but that sort of thing happens too frequently for me to brush it aside. I am special, unique. Not, I’m afraid, in any way that will ever do me any good, but I won’t be bored, I think. Do others feel their uniqueness as much as I do? Mine is sometimes staggeringly oppressive.