The Jules Verne Steam Balloon Read online

  27

  Bunce, Hugo said. Five kilometers, ten lengths of the pool, and I find a girl looking hopeful on my doorstep and her little brother, The Rabbit Who Invented Electricity, looking bored. He wants to go to the beach, Mariana said. Does his big sister? Hugo proposed the river instead. Is it textile? Oh no, there’re boys there from school naked as they came into the world, and as innocent, and as loud. Lay out croissants and jam while I shower, Hugo said, and explain why I’m happily lecherous so early on a Saturday. Crazy, I guess, Mariana said. It is standing sort of straight out, isn’t it? And slipping its big pink head out of its hood. A cold shower? Mariana suggested. Pure thoughts? Shower with you, Franklin said, untying his shoes. Two cold showers, Mariana said, and shall I make coffee, and why do I have a monkey for a brother? Is that him there, under the suds? Grit your teeth, Hugo said, cold rinse, needle spray. They both howled, falsetto and baritone. Nobody, Franklin said, has dried me in ages. Lean over and I’ll dry you next. Not only did your dick not wilt in the shower, Mariana said, but now the little shaver has his up, too. Lovely, said Hugo. Let’s bounce the bedsprings, eat, and go to the river. I’ll eat all the breakfast, Franklin said, and hide my eyes and think pure thoughts if my pizzle will let me.

  28

  I’ll understand it, Mariana said. You too, but not him. Yes, said Hugo, but you have given me the bow of Hercules. Didn’t need to give you his balls, Mariana said.

  29

  So Muggins came over here the first time to be sketched, Mariana said, and radiated charm from wall to wall? He was two hours late, Hugo said. I didn’t recognize the sign at the time. He explained, when I asked him to, that he met somebody on the way he wanted to talk to. I’m listening, Mariana said. I’d made supper, which he picked at. He posed well enough, and I got two good drawings. We talked about all sorts of things over beer afterwards. He recited a poem, rather awful, but with expression.

  30

  In moments of sweet clarity, Hugo said, I doubt if we can communicate at all. You mean one thing, I hear another, benignly in banter, violently in an argument. But, said Mariana, we’ve never had an argument. Of course not, Hugo said, and don’t intend to. I mean that human beings probably can’t make each other understand what they mean. We have to get our meaning from art, from writing. That’s awful, Mariana said.

  31

  Rutger barefoot on his shoulders, Anders stood, all the way to tiptoe. A fingerhold on the sill and Rutger monkeyed up the wall. A heave, and he was in Meg’s room. He blew a kiss to Anders in the dark. Hours later he shinnied through his own window at NFS Grundtvig, feet wet with dew, in briefs only, hair tangled. Anders, Kim asleep in his arms cheek to cheek, woke and whispered hi! Rutger wrapped himself in a blanket and sat beside the bed. Came three juicy everlastingly sweet ballcramping times, on a pallet, as the bed sounds like a tin wheelbarrow loaded with kettles over cobbles, Meg’s roommate obligingly away. Then, just as they were in the heaves and wild thumping of the third fuck, there was some species of Gorgon stalking the hall and opening doors. He’d just had time to pull on briefs and drop from the window. Passed a rabbit, he said, but I turned an ankle somewhere along the way and hopped the last fifteen or so meters. My feet are ruined forever. Isn’t it time for Nipper there to be decanted from your bed and sent home? You look wonderful, Anders said, with your hair all a charming mess.

  32

  Meadows, Anders said. If I could write a poem it would be about a meadow. A symphony, Kim said. Only music could get the feel of a meadow, I think. Monet, Rutger said, painted lots of meadows, and Pissarro. Lots of painters. Russians, Norwegians, they’re good at meadows. So what do I say? Kim asked, who had to write an essay on meadows. Sunday afternoon, Meg visiting her parents, they were walking in the long meadow that flowed speckled with wildflowers and butterflies down from the knoll back of the wood to the river. Us and those cows yonder, Anders said, we have the world to ourselves. I love quiet. Be inventive: say the long quiet of a meadow, the green minty grassy smell. They sat. Kim took off his shoes and socks. Kim’s brown as a nut all over, Anders said, the brownest he’s ever been. Anders pulled off Kim’s jersey, standing over him and hauling it up inside out over rolling bony shoulders. Bare feet in clover and daisies, he said, I’ll put that in. Wild strawberries, chickweed, darnel, cowflop. He stood by caprice and doffed his britches. Baby in his nappies, Rutger said. A sight, said Anders. Baby out of his nappies, Kim said, tossing his briefs in the air. See, Anders said, nutbrown all over. You’re going to have a cock, Rutger said. Why do we wear clothes, Kim asked, when it feels so good to have air all over you? To keep people from going crazy looking at you, Anders said.

  33

  I like my sandbar, Franklin said, like my river. Also Hugo’s house all one room and a big window in the roof. Sand on your dick and balls, Mariana said, brushing. And, said Franklin, you and Hugo have come three times and I’ve only come once. Hejsa! that feels yummy. This isn’t icky? Hope not, Hugo answered for her. But, said Franklin, his eyes squeezing closed, acute pleasure making his fingers spread and his mouth a muzzle, when she lollies your dick you’re kissing her between the legs, and then you fuck. Oh jo, Hugo said, sweet and slow. Hunch in, and you’ll get a flutter of tongue-tip on the backdrag. Warm and wet, Franklin said, and good. Me next, Hugo said. Mariana shooed him away, smoothing hands up Franklin’s thighs to his collarbones. Faunulus on the mossbank, Pastorella on her knees. The blithering phone. Hallo, jo. Not really: an afternoon with friends. Love to, but can’t. Later, then, or another time. Bore’s delight, the telephone. Going to come, Franklin said. Coming! he sang. Figmilk, said Mariana, a nice skeet and a fribble. What a blush! Hugo hefted him out of the chair and crushed him in a hug. Bet you, he said, you can’t come again, two handrunning, and then we’ll all be even, and start over.

  34

  His top lip jibbed out and tucked at the corners by baby fat, lively eyes speculative and fluttery by spells, Kim laughed at Anders’s bashfulness. He was at the bus stop, as they’d agreed, in, as Anders said, the world’s shortest pants, book satchel foolishly balanced on his head, coquettish looks out of the sides of his eyes. Anders slid his bike sideways right to his toes, radiant, breathless. Eyes met, but they said nothing. Kim on the seat holding him by the waist, Anders biked off down the macadam road that went through the woods. Only when they’d reached the beech copse with high ferns and moss clearing did Anders say, And how was school? Just school, Kim said. We’re going to have sensitivity classes, so we’ll be aware of our bodies, and our space, this teacher, she’s a woman, said, I think her name is Miss Pumpkin or Squash or Beanvine. Girls have boney hips, do you know? I’m going to like geography and in Danish we have to learn some kind of dumb poem about Iceland. Are we going to take our pants off? I guess I was feeling my peter through my pants when we were standing around, because teacher frowned and shook her head. Did you jack off last night? But yes, Anders said, and yesterday afternoon, and a long time at both. It’s out here somewhere that Rutger fucks Meg into fits. Have you fucked girls? Kim asked.

  35

  Well, she said, you’re crazy. Some crazies are a misery to themselves, and some a nuisance to the world, but you’ve figured out a shipshape Calvinist glitch-free craziness in absolute kilter, so that your eyes fly open at six, you hit the floor like an Olympic champion, hard-on and all, jump into a dinky pair of shorts, jog three kilometers, swim ten lengths of the gym pool, nip back here for wheatgerm carrot smush while reading Greek, communing with your charming freckle-nosed kammerat Jesus, shower with unreasonable thoroughness while singing hymns, dress in a French shirt and American tie, English jacket and experienced jeans that show how horsily you’re hung, teach your classes, Latin, gym, and Greek, meet me, pretend you’re interested in what I’ve done while eating me with your eyes, bring me here for wiggling sixtynine on the bed, tongue like an eel, melt my brain, fuck me simpleminded, race off and instruct your Boy Scouts in virtue, knots, and nutritive weeds, sprint back here, fuck me into a fi
t, teach me English while fixing supper, show me slides of Monet and Montaigne, fuck me again, walk me home, make eyes at Franklin, come back and read two books at once, say your prayers, jack off for an hour, and sleep like a lambkin. It isn’t bright, you know.

  36

  Gustav, said Mariana on her back in clover and daisies, chewing a leaf of mint, big brown eyes, thatch of hair always washed and feathery. Handful of balls and a stout stubby dick. And Jorgen his buddy, blond as a duckling, long all over, long chin, long forehead, long legs, long peter, big feet. Stammered something horrendous. Gustav finished his sentences for him. We had a rabbit hole of a place, cozy inside under brambles. Crawled in on hands and knees. A snuggery of great privacy, though a bit crowded with the three of us. And from the military academy across the way, Hjalmar, who rammed and grunted and was fitted out like the assistant classics master at NFS Grundtvig, or a horse.

  37

  In Argentina, Anders said, they arrest people who have read Einstein, torture them with electric shocks through the dick or cunt, and drop them while they’re still alive from a helicopter into a marsh outside Buenos Aires. They’re doing this now, forty years after Buchenwald. A Russian truck driver has just been arrested for owning a copy of the poet Mandelstam printed in the west, and given seven years hard labor in Siberia. Einstein! He was a Jew, you see, and the church tells the fat-necked military that his physics threatens to undermine belief. The USA has enough atomic bombs to blow the planet into orbiting rubble. And all these bullies want to idiotize us into thinking of all affection except that decreed by the state as immoral. Pigs, Kim said. Anders said: Don’t insult pigs.

  38

  Tom Agernkop, strand of hair across an eye, signaled Anders with a look and confirming nod. So Anders followed him to the far edge of the soccer field. You saw us, Tom said, picking a blade of grass and chewing it, Lemuel and me, hugging in the shower. Anders shrugged. Your business entirely, he said. Who’ve you told? Nobody. What’s to tell? Rutger my roommate, maybe. A mouthbreather, Tom. Meaty upper lip, Greek nose, honest eyes. Look, it’s fine by me, Anders said. Nothing scary about it. You love each other. Tom grunted, squeezed his crotch, flipped his hair out of his eyes, talked. It just happened, he sighed. It’s very good, tender, exciting. It’s terrific to be so close to him. We’re each other, you know? And he’s so fucking good-looking and good-natured. We were real dimwits, at first, hot blushes and cold feet. That was dumb. Now, though, we’re out to love each other into feeblemindedness, like maybe they’ll have to carry us limp to a home, with permanent smiles on our faces. You’re giving me ideas, Anders said, and also a hard-on. Gud! Can I tell Lemuel? Who is it? Let me ask him before I tell you, OK? But absolutely, Tom said. Lucky, whoever he is.

  39

  The housemaster Holger Sigurjonsson with Pascal in tow looked in by way of bedcheck, Rutger towelling his hair, Anders writing in his journal. Pascal, seven-eighths naked and slender as a greyhound, grubbing at the pod of his briefs, broke off his discourse on trilobites and the planet Mars to inspect the girls on Rutger’s wall. How goes it, you two? the housemaster said to give Pascal his fill of the pictures. Tosset! Anders said, standing to thumb down his briefs. Rimbaud in French, Mimnermos in Greek, and gametophytes in botany. What’s this girl doing? Pascal asked. O the infants around this place! Rutger said. She’s whiffling her kildrer and coming like Beethoven’s niende. What did you think she was doing? Got me, Pascal said, I’m cryptogonadal still. Iceland, Middelhavet, and Bornholm, he said of three maps on Anders’s wall, and you, Anders, stark naked. Is that your blue grizzly tent? Hej! that’s Kim Eglund with you. He’s neat. Fellow baby, said Rutger. Who are these kids with their peepees standing out? Swedes, Anders said, riffling Pascal’s hayrick hair. With it, the housemaster said. Come on, Pascal. OK, Boss, Pascal said, trying to read a bit of Anders’s journal while being herded out by Rutger.

  40

  The disk of the Medusae is as truly an abactinal structure as the calyx of the Crinoids. As in all Discophorae, the substance of the disk is a gelatinous mass, consisting of immense cells, the caudate prolongations of which traverse it in different directions, assuming the appearance of flat muscular fibres. But this appearance is deceptive, and the substance of the disk does not, in reality, contain distinct muscles, though it is highly contractile, especially in the thinner part of the margin. Its movements are owing to the structure of the lower floor. The amount of water contained in the tissue of the disk is truly extraordinary. A specimen, weighing thirty-five pounds, exposed to evaporation, left a viscous mass, chiefly composed of common salt, showing the water to be common seawater. The salt having been washed out with fresh water, and the organic substance dried simply in the sun, weighed less than an ounce. For all its pellucid grace and unearthly subtlety of curtained tentacles and hyaline genitalia in radial clusters on a cincture, the Cyanea jellyfish is little more than organized water.

  41

  Owl call low and clear after bedcheck and lights out. Rutger said, There’s your boyo. Quit looking like a calf that’s lost its mama and haul him in through the window. Skinned a knee, Kim whispered after he’d been hugged hard and was shucking his briefs, but the rope works fine. He stripped in moonlight, Anders lifting the sheet for him to skittle into bed. Let’s see the knee, Rutger said. I’ve got iodine. A hard-on already. That’s the spirit. Yeeouch! Like don’t pour the whole bottle on, Rutger friend, huh? Keep the bedclothes over you, Rutger said, tucking them in and mussing Kim’s hair, so that I don’t get ideas or a skeet of sperm in my eye. Love good. Did you, Kim asked, do it with Meg this afternoon? Twice, Rutger said. With our jeans under her butt in the ferns, after the foreplay of the century, talk about fine tuning. I hear snurfling, I hear Kim sighing. We love you too, Rutger, Kim said.

  42

  So, said Hugo, Tom. Come in: timing’s perfect. I’ve come at a bad time, Tom said with a robin’s hop of blinks and rueful smile. Not a bit of it, Hugo said pulling on denim shorts and combing his hair with his fingers. My Mariana and I were just getting out of the sack when you knocked. Hi! said Mariana shoving her arms into Hugo’s shirt, modern times and all that. You’ve seen scads of stitchless girls before, and maybe one or two in hr. Tvemunding’s bed. I couldn’t be the first. Tom, uneasy but boldly shy, sheep snarls in the silkfloss hanks of his rascal hair, his scruffy shirt parting at the shoulder seams, tail out in one side, shuffled, forced his big hands into the pockets of his jeans shorts, looked hacked, and sat with a bounce when Hugo pushed him into a chair. Here, said Mariana, pariser leftbank intellectual coffee with four sugarcubes in it, did I guess right? Mange tak, said Tom. So? Hugo said, you look demented. When, said Tom, can I come back? Right now, Hugo said. Frøken Landarbejder, besides being the soul of discretion, will probably understand you better than I. If that’s the way you want it, hr. Tvemunding, Tom said, miffed. Tom! Hugo said, relax, eh? We’re all friends. Some of us, Lemuel and I and a few more, want to start a club for friends who love each other, and we need a faculty sponsor with balls and a very broad mind, Tom said. Our part in the Revolution, you know. Revolution, Hugo said, ah yes, the Revolution. Sounds wild, Mariana said. Explain it all.

  43

  Anders had sat cockminded through the dullest English class of the century, besotted with Kim’s grubby sneakers that made his feet too big, like a puppy’s outsized paws, socks, dinky short pants, net briefs with their narrow midseamed cotton panel in front, his toes, legs, the celts of his knees, his springy supple peter growing like a weed. Gym, its perfunctions. Lunch, raisin pudding yet again. A wink from Tom. Kim, brash devil, scrunched the crotch of his snippety jeans shorts as Anders reached the bus stop on his bike. The high ferns, spackle light and green shadow through the beeches, Kim tumbling down his briefs and into Anders’s hug, they breathed in the same measure, rubbing noses, grazing lips, touching tonguetips. You’re crazy, you know, Kim whispered, but you’ve got to stay crazy. I know, Anders said. Even before lights out last night, I began jacking off, to keep
our afternoon yesterday in my head, some of which I told Rutger, and kept it up, and didn’t see any point in quitting. So it rained sperm all night on my side of the room. I got a second wind toward sunrise, a fever in my dick, my balls sore, but your eyes looking sideways, like now, kept me going. Toes, smile, knees.

  44

  Quick, Rutger said, standing to slip off his briefs. Our keeper and Chipmunk. Check, said Anders, whippering his dick to a lolling halfminded erection. Pok pok pok! Pascal was saying as he spun in, turning on his heels, the explorer craft from outer space, swoosh, has come to bed check, where are we? Ah yes, Rutger and Anders. Commander Sigurjonsson! Hi boys, said the housemaster. O wow! said Pascal, new pictures. On Rutger’s wall an athletic youngster fucking a deliciously shapely girl whose enthusiasm was unqualified, on Anders’s a towheaded skyblue-eyed summerbronzed naked adolescent with a lucky penis and plump scrotum. Pascal, flicking his fingers on his ribs, inspected both. The housemaster sighed. Rutger leaned in a long stretch from his chair, caught Pascal by the hips, turned him around, and yanked down his piffling underpants. Just looking, he said. I’m slow, Pascal said. You should help it along, Rutger said, forefinger and thumb. In moderation, the housemaster said, looking troubled. Show me, said Pascal. You have the highest IQ in all of NFS Grundtvig, Rutger said, and don’t know how to play with your peter? It’s retarded, Pascal said.