The Jules Verne Steam Balloon Page 8
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What I didn’t know, stor Hugo, Mariana said, was what a hideaway from the world your place is. Freedom itself, Hugo said, nidge away, sweet girl. She’d turned up bushed, with Franklin, pitched her jeans across the room, flopped into the big reading chair, nudged down her flimsy underpants, and begun to quiddle her kildrer, to jolt off the kicker she’d been playing toward all day. Woke up horny, she said, worked it to a buzz, and then off and on, two minutes here and five there, a sweet shiver and a tickly ripple. Franklin, Hugo’s scout hat over his ears and eyes, was trying to crack limbs for kindling over his knee like Hugo, who was laying a fire before which they were to eat. Sitting on the floor, Franklin said with approval, all beside each other, sandwiches and milk and pickles. But first, Spejder Franklin, I must hug and kiss Mariana awhile, and get hugged and kissed. Why don’t you see how much more firewood you can pick up over beyond the soccer field? Can I wear your hat? Absolutely, Hugo said. Let me tighten the strap and tie your shoe.
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OK, said Franklin, two armloads of firewood. Admirable spadger, Hugo said. Your smart generous pretty sexy sweet sister says we can fall upon our supper, soon as I light the fire and lay things out, or you can have your dink jiggled to your heart’s content, so you won’t feel left out, jo? Franklin, Mariana said, is the only little brother in the world who can fake a blush and say honest? with such innocence. What he means, Hugo said pulling on a sweater and hooking his briefs off the floor with a toe, is that he chooses to grub by the fire. Not really, Franklin said. O yes, but really, Mariana said, throwing cushions toward the hearth. Nothing like both, Hugo said. Fire’s catching good. Mariana laying out plates and glasses, Hugo fetching eats. Franklin wriggled down his pants, which would not then go over his shoes. Hugo obligingly unlaced them, pried them off socks and all, and made a neat stack of shoes, socks, pants, and underpants beside Franklin. Nice pinkish-brown peter, he said. As soon as Franklin comes, Mariana said, he starts over. Mouth full of pressed veal and orange slices, Franklin grumped contentedly, stripped his foreskin back, and drank deep from his milk. Plop him between us, Mariana said, and we’ll take time about. Did you fuck good? Franklin asked politely. Mariana leaned around and kissed him on the nose, which wrinkled.
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This place, Meg said, could use a broom driven by a strong and busy elbow, and a mop, and all the windows open the whole of a breezy day. What it really needs, Rutger said, is two mattresses lifted in the old Danish manner from the supply room. My knees survived the sand last summer, and forest-floor grit, moss, sticks, and boulder rubble, but these pine planks are going to sandpaper them raw. They’d unfolded and laid out a sail, the area of which brought them chummily together, so that Meg, thoroughly fucked and wrung limp by a whalloping sweet orgasm, could reach over and muss Kim’s hair and tickle the back of his neck. Modesty, she’d said when they were undressing, sort of has to be dispensed with, jo? Kim, pulling his jersey over his head with his back to her while Anders untied his sneakers and slid down his briefs, did a military about-face, with eyes shut and a broad smile. O what a charming pink blush! she said, pulling him into a hug. Timidly he hugged back, and then hugged warmly, with a kiss for her nose. She returned the kiss on his navel, and gave him up to Anders’s claiming arms.
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If you put it that way, Hugo said, then yes I was a fool. But it pleased me to be a fool. In the dark you learn by bumping into things. But, Mariana said, he knew what you would bump into. He knew what would hurt you. I taught him, all unknowing, Hugo said, how to hurt me. That turned out to be his style: to listen in silence and a mask of charming innocence, and lay in wait. Because that’s all he had: the power to hurt. Don’t ask me why. It’s a gratuitous meanness that’s everywhere nowadays. In people without character, it’s a passive vindictiveness. They are too lazy and unmotivated to be evil actively, that’s too much trouble for the drifting will. But if opportunity puts anything alive in their path, they kill it, for the idle sport of it. To care about anything is a threat to their slothful passivity, so carelessness becomes the only plan you can see in their liquid will. If you encounter a flower bed, trample it. It’s the casualness of their hate that’s so discouraging. No, Mariana said, it’s the difference. What you say is true, but what makes you hurt inside is how different this trashy kid is from everything that’s familiar to you. You give people things, and this kid smilingly accepted what you gave him and smashed it with his foot before your eyes.
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What we have, Hugo said, is an unfinished room with good proportions and pleasant light once we wash these windows as clean and bright as Perrier water. No other NFS Grundtvig clubroom will be half so spiffy modern. We can sandpaper the floor to a plain Shakerish natural finish. Composition boards for walls. Let’s paint everything white overhead except the rafters, which want to be Mondriaan Red, jo? on the uprights and Sailor Suit Blue on the beams. What else do we want? No chairs, Tom said, but maybe a table? A bookshelf, posters, slogans painted right onto the composition board. Danish Spartan it all needs to be. OK, Hugo said, let’s see it with work, then. Lemuel’ll be here in a bit, Tom said, and Kim and Anders later. Composition board to be delivered tomorrow. So let’s sweep and scrub and haul junk out and cancel cobwebs. We want the outside stairs painted, too, and the door. Danish Blue. Light bulbs, a journal for minutes, paint, sandpaper, Windex, rags, detergent, a pail, hard brushes, hammers, nails, a roll of white gummed stripping. Ho, Anders! Ho, Kim! With brooms. And Rutger! I like cleaning things, Rutger said. Don’t get ideas. I’m here as an enemy of dust and a lover of straight lines and clean surfaces.
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God knew exactly where he lived. In among all those warehouses and dockside pubs. The school had his mother’s address only, and she had no phone. My feelings were hurt, I suppose: snubbed. But that was an afterthought. I was anxious, befuddled. What I discovered two days later was that he had simply forgotten. He’d run into an old friend that Wednesday afternoon that he was to move in, when I was to make the effort to do something about him, give him a home, feed him, make a close friend of him. When I finally saw him, he grinned nonchalantly. He was, he said, thinking about my offer to take him in. Why had he not called or signalled for two days? I said, Look. People don’t act like this. O I’m a shit, he said. Besides, your kind of structured middleclass life is not mine. It’s against my Buddhist principles to live on a schedule. Your Buddhist principles! These, it turned out, he’d acquired from McTaggart’s Transcendental Meditation Group, which he’d twice attended. McTaggart is one of the English masters, and has his group. He talks a lot of bilge which, because of its gaseous vagueness, appeals to the feebleminded, ladies from town, slobs, prigs, and nonstarters of all sorts. A free spirit, said my Bicycle Rider, blows about like a leaf in the wind.
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Tidsskriftet Hermes. Ih! Letters from Oskar and Papa. Nature, Arkaeologi, Haydn’s Mass in Time of War, hollyhocks, a sermon on responsiveness, a twinge of rheumatism, and some jolly good damson preserves. Oskar into the antinuke protests, a salt-free diet, and a Swedish girl’s knickers. A cycling-capped blond purk, alert blue eyes, pik dangling through his open jeans, smiled a cocky grin from the cover of Hermes. Meget vel! Hugo said to himself on a 15årig inside, splitternøgen and healthy as a horse, heel of right thumb along shaft of distended penis, ball of thumb on glans, fingers curled underneath and partly around, face faunish, nose pert, eyebrows arched, feathery eyelashes lowered in gaze at penis, at least 18 cm, foreskin rolled back of glans in a fat wet crumpled ruck, the thick stalk ridged with callopy wales branched over by a relief of veins, glans in snubby profile glossy with a slick of bulbourethral drool. On his bike, with a buddy. And, three pages along, wilted and content on a sleeping bag on a forest floor, he gazes amiably, with a nacreous splash beside his left nipple, a milky spatter across his midriff, and a puddle of cloudy egg white on his abdomen, with runnels into his scant crimp of pubic hair and into his navel.
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If
the Angraecum in its native forests secretes more nectar than did the vigorous plants sent me by Mr. Bateman, so that the nectary ever becomes filled, small moths might obtain their share, but they would not benefit the plant. The pollinia would not be withdrawn until some huge moth, and with a wonderfully long proboscis, tried to drain the last drop. If such great moths were to become extinct in Madagascar, assuredly the Angraecum would become extinct. On the other hand, as the nectar, at least in the lower part of the nectary, is stored safe from the depredation of other insects, the extinction of the Angraecum would probably be a serious loss to these moths. We can thus understand how the astonishing length of the nectary had been acquired by successive modifications. As certain moths of Madagascar became larger through natural selection in relation to their general conditions of life, either in the larval or mature state, or as the proboscis alone was lengthened to obtain honey from the Angraecum, those orchids which compelled the moths to insert their proboscides up to the very base would be best fertilized.
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Kim, the blue bill of his red cycling cap turned up, and Tom, his amiably mussed hair brilliant under the steep pitch of Hugo’s skylight, sat on the bed. Anders, hugging his knees, and Hugo, holding his elbows, head down, listening, agreeing with nods and doubting with his shoulders, sat on the floor. Lemuel, thumbs in the belt loops of his short pants, stood and talked. As I see it, he said, we’ll be just another school club like Botany, Greenpeace, or Hiking. Hr. Tvemunding is, Gud vœre lovet, our faculty sponsor. Hugo, said Hugo. In class, in the gym, in the quad, hr. Tvemunding, but in the fellowship of the club, Hugo, please. And before we proceed, let’s do what I have my scouts do, all of us hug each other. Us too! said Mariana, arriving with Franklin. Mariana and Hugo with tongues in each other’s mouths, Mariana and Anders with an awkward squeeze, Mariana and Kim friendlily, Mariana and Lemuel warmly, Mariana and Tom sweetly, Mariana and Franklin with a kiss bravely consented to and wiped off. Hugo and Anders robustly, with a soldierly kiss on the cheek, Hugo and Kim timidly but repeated boldly, Hugo and Lemuel tightly, Hugo and Tom sexily, Hugo and Franklin (when caught) recklessly, with squeals.
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Anders and Kim chastely, nubbling noses, until a nej hør nu from Tom, whereupon they kissed with closed eyes and roaming hands, Anders and Lemuel, spiritedly, Anders and Tom, brashly, Anders and Franklin audaciously. Kim and Lemuel confidently, Kim and Tom with madcap indiscretion, Kim and Franklin impishly, prodding each other’s crotches. Lemuel and Tom with easy affection, Lemuel and Franklin outrageously, with hoots and promiscuous kisses and tickles and goosings and a roll across the floor. Tom joined in, capturing Franklin from Lemuel, who captured him back, with the loss of a sneaker. His jersey ruckled to his chin and his britches half off, Franklin, howling that he was being kissed to death, wrenched a gym shoe off Lemuel and tugged Tom’s shirt over his face. Oh ho! Lemuel hooted, pinning Franklin in a hug while Tom deprived him of his britches, and on second thought, unzipped and hauled off Lemuel’s, too. Us against him! said Lemuel to Franklin, and they threw Tom and debreeched and deshirted him.
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Pentstemon Glaber, Pursh. Very glabrous, leaves usually glaucous, sessile, entire, the cauline lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate. Flowers large, in a thyrsoid panicle, sepals broadly ovate, submembranous upon the margin, obtuse or more or less pointed. Corolla bright purple, widely dilated above, the limb shortly two-lobed, with the lobes rounded and spreading equally. Anthers loosely hairy or glabrous, the divaricate cells dehiscent from the base nearly to the summit, but not expanded. Sterile filament short and hirsute towards the apex, or glabrous. Specimens accord nearly with Var. Occidentalis Gray (P. speciosus, Dougl.), having the anthers and sterile filament glabrous and the leaves often narrow, the numerous violet-purple flowers an inch or more in length. Washington Territory (Douglas) and Nevada (Beckwith, Stretch). Frequent in the valleys and foothills from the Trinity to the Havallah Mountains, Nevada, 5 to 7000 feet altitude, May–June. Var. Utahensis. Stems straight and slender, cauline leaves long, oblanceolate, tapering to the clasping base, sepals ovate-acuminate, not at all membranous, anthers and sterile filament hirsute.
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Stitch of bronze midges over daisies, bees working wild hyacinths, butterflies yellow and white nuzzling clover at the meadow’s edge, Kim and Anders glistening wet rolled their shoulders and stretched like limbering gymnasts to dry in the hot light and sweet air from the river. Lovely, hr. Sigurjonsson called from the spit, joining them with Pascal astride his shoulders, a skinny basunengel whose wet eyelashes gave a look of wild freshness to his teasing gaze. You’re like the picture in your room, Anders, he said, you and Kim on that beach. That was last summer, Anders said, when we became friends. And, the housemaster said, you’ve been fast friends ever since. Jacobsen says, I believe in Niels Lyhne, that the tenderest and noblest affection is that of boys for each other. It is both warm and shy, not quite daring to show itself with a hug, a glance, or in words. It’s all tacit, reluctant, anxious. Beautifully, it is a fusion of admiration, selfless generosity, loyalty, and a great quiet happiness. Got it in one, said Anders, sliding his arm across Kim’s shoulders, Kim an arm across his. Opkastig, said Pascal. Do that again. Whereupon the housemaster lifted Pascal down and lay in the sun on the spit. Sludder, said Pascal, and bosh. Pascal, said the housemaster, don’t be a snob.
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Guess what, Mariana said. Mom was out for the night with her friend the toothbrush moustache and I was reading a bit before dropping off. Unge hr. Franklin was mucking around with the stamps and album you gave him, like a lamb in clover, and then here he was in nothing but his nightshirt and best cherub’s grin, climbing into bed with me. So what the heck. A hug is a hug, and the essential differences in anatomy that he explored by hand come under the heading of education. The little devil, Hugo said. And then what did you do? Explored back, she said, and jacked him off thoroughly, but not so thoroughly that he didn’t repeat the pleasure while I hugged him, with the odd kiss on the cheek or a nice puff in his hair. And then we fell asleep. He’s comfortable to have in bed, and smells good. He acted grown-up this morning, and kept offering me things at breakfast, as polite as if feeling his sister’s breasts had civilized him more than all the shouting at him I’ve done over the years. Perhaps we’ve discovered something? He also said, though it’s not the first time, that he thinks you’re great, and wonders if you like him as much as he likes you. Of course I like Franklin, Hugo said, he’s our Cupid.
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Meadow flowers, Kim said, hard yellow buttons, white stars, blue bells tight against stalks, pinks and purples. Nations of gnats, mists of midges sawing through the air. Are you enlisting nature to excite your dick? Rutger asked. He lay drowsy and shirtless beside Anders. Mna, Kim said, my hand strays when I’m bare-assed. It is, now that you mention it, feeling good. Anders beckoned him with a crooked finger. Ak ja, Rutger said, our englebarn is going to sprinkle the meadow with his own personal dribble, three whole drops. Kim crawled between them, flopped on his back, nestling his head on Anders’s shoulder, sprawling his spread legs over theirs. He gawked at Rutger eye to eye, and at Anders, who licked the tip of his nose. Sunday afternoon in the middle of the meadow, he said to the sky. Rutger slid his hand down Kim’s abdomen, nipped his penis between two fingers, and played it in a wobble. Hejsa! Anders said. Cool it, Rutger said, I’m only being friendly, though it’s interesting that my prick seems to be making an unseemly display of its manly size. Woof! said Kim, you’re good. I’m blushing, Anders said. Rutger sat up, for better purchase. When it’s feeling really lovely, he said, Anders can take over. What a happy grin. Rutger, Kim said, is our best friend, isn’t he, Anders?
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The Bicycle Rider was as unresponsive as God. The young are in their own minds immortal, and assume Olympian indifference to their own deaths. They die drunk on dormitory floors, in automobile wrecks, hundreds a day, on futile battlefields, needles under their tongues, in their arms, in epileptic seizu
res for want of a fix, but this violent and pitiful mortality does not disturb their liquid minds any more than the screams of the dying at Waterloo caught the attention of the geese in the sky above them.
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Neither la poussière olympique nor the waters of Galilee had touched him. He partook of nothing Hugo could eventually recognize. He had found a new way to be inhuman. His face, a harmony of Scandinavian lines and Slavic planes, gave no hint of his addiction to lysergic acid, from age twelve, or of his cold hatred of his family, of his delight to hurt.
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He was thinking, he said out of the blue the last time he was here to pose, of laying off the acid for awhile. He’d had forty-one hits in the previous five weeks, thirty in the past three. Indulgence, yes, he said, but not indulgence carried to the extreme. Lysergic acid diethylamide, a wheat smut that corrodes synapses in the brain while binding with its tissues, causing the delusions of dementia praecox. Using it is deliberately simulating a senile deterioration of the mind. The pushers on Nordkalksten cut it with strychnine, and with speed. He was willing to endure stomach cramps that bit his guts for days to have these waking bad dreams that he called mind-expanding. Shit was what I said. What else, said Mariana, was there to say?
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He would come home through the vicious traffic of Nordkalksten on his bicycle, carry it up back stairs in an alley. A hovel, when I saw it. Trash everywhere. Britchesless, for the acid was his sex, he would melt a tab of the acid under his tongue, whacking off, beginning to see the world through a tacky snow of purple and silver flakes, lines bending, volumes swelling and diminishing, all colors mixing with yellow. There was a feeling of grand euphoria, of well-being, of success, of being immensely clever and wise and at peace. Drunk, said Mariana. Drunk is drunk.