For a time I lay there on the floor. Then, because I could not sleep, I went back to the desk and picked up Wormwood. He was not very large—maybe thirty centimeters tall—but being made of solid brass he was very heavy. It was too dark for me to see where to put the key, so I rubbed Wormwood’s base and felt where his toes curled into the bark of the stump; I rubbed Wormwood’s skull and ears, and I put my finger into his mouth. At last I found the place—a small hole in Wormwood’s back, between his shoulder blades. I slipped in the key and slowly wound Wormwood up. A small sound came from him, a little like the sound a clock makes before it strikes the hour, only far fainter. And then I saw Wormwood’s penis—invisible before—rising between his thighs like a great green finger. Slowly, slowly it rose, revealing a majestic set of balls. At that instant Gran’père seemed to crow and M’man, waking, cried out: “What is it?” Springing to her feet, she stood over Gran’père shouting, “What is it? What is it?” I put out my hand to hide Wormwood’s penis but there was no need; it had vanished.
Magarethe came running up the stairs and p’tit Pierre too; suddenly there was a commotion in the room as though a flock of birds was feeding there or a flock of sheep on their way to slaughter, bleating. My heart was in my throat and I could think of nothing but winding Wormwood up again. M’man called to me then: “Vite,” she cried, “Hurry, Nanu! Come to your Gran’père’s bedside right away, because he is dying. Come here at once, Nanu.”
“He’s dead,” Margarethe said even before I reached him; and as M’man and I looked on she tied Gran’père’s jaw shut with a handkerchief. He looked very odd—as though he’d just had a tooth pulled—and I could tell that p’tit Pierre was thinking the same thing.
Then Margarethe walked to Gran’père’s desk. Overturning the china vase she said: “There were two coins; where are they? Did you take them, Nanu?” M’man shrieked: “Give them back! Otherwise we cannot close his eyes!” and she grabbed me by the arm. Terrified, I pulled the coins from my pocket. When M’man slapped me—and she slapped me hard—the key flew from my hand, flashing once in the lamplight as it fell, flashing once again as it hit the floor.
for Harry Mathews
Our name is Gabriel Temporal-Lux-Blason, son of Hermine Temporal-Lux and Gerard Blason: Phallic Instrument of French Imperialism, for fifty years actively dangerous, gaga for ten and now defunct. As We tackle this memoir, Hermine weeps and Gerard seeps into mud.
Simple names are never good enough and this is why Hermine Temporal-Lux is also called “the Angel of Patience” and Gerard Blason “the Butcher of Madagascar.” These designations serve to preface the following: If We are Gabriel Temporal-Lux-Blason, We are also known as “Soft-in-the-Head” (although our head is as hard as yours; We know this having tested it again and again against the Bughouse walls, walls of mortared brick).
We, also known as the “the Lunatic,” are the author of unique scholarly works, including “Domesticity as Universal Error,” “Cosmic Disorder and the Ordered Domicile,” “Delirium as System,” “The Inspired Integument,” “Birth: A Questionable Event,” “The Ideal Uses of the Trochus: An Architectural Manifest,” “Reflections on the Fall of Man, the Flood, God’s Wrath and an Inventive Solution”; author of an ongoing inquiry into the similarities between the Turritella, the mazurka, the tongue of the anteater, the corkscrew, the soup mill; author of an infinite set of pamphlets, including “Architectural Indications of the Inner Ear,” “The Anti-Gravity Domicile,” “The Submersible Domicile,” “The Quasi-Perpetual Environment,” and “An Inquiry into the Structural Limits of Time.” (All these fascicles are printed on dove gray Arches and may be had from us for the price of postage.)
If the brain, as We believe, is shaped by thoughts and not the other way around, then our own is composed of one nacreous coil, our thoughts sweeping upward under the influence of a lucent tide, the whole protected by a layering of scales. It is evident that as long as We are living, this supposition cannot be demonstrated. The Memoir, in this instance, must be read as our testament: We wish our skull’s contents to be scrutinized by Dr. Aromal with delicacy and exemplary gravity. After, the brain is to be placed in a canopic jar and given to our mother. It is our hope that, should the brain be of ideal conformation, Dr. Aromal will oversee a lithographic series, printed on Arches and prefaced by Aromal’s inquiry and our brief paper: “The Brain as the Blueprint of a Transcendent Architecture.”
There is no doubt in our mind that it was Père’s description of the assassination of the sea tortoise that so addled us initially. The tortoise, its legs caught in a noose, wheels about the boat as gulls circle overhead shrilly piping. When the tortoise is exhausted, a boy (or several, depending on the turtle’s size) dives into the water and, seizing it, rolls it into the boat, where it is stunned with a hammer and kept helpless on its back.
Already a fire is smoking up the beach. Hauled to shore, the tortoise is thrust into a pit where, thrashing, he is roasted alive under a heap of burning embers. Père insisted on the quality of the meat—especially the flesh beneath the breastplate. He made this joke: “The tortoise carries his stewpot and coffin on his back. He is called tortoise,” Père continued, “because he twists about as he bakes.”
We were perhaps five at the time and found the tale odious; that a creature could be cooked alive in its own shell seemed especially wicked. We were devastated by the realization that living things were killed to be cooked and eaten, that the ribs of the lamb served as a rack for the meat. “It is the leg bone,” Père joked as he carved the Sunday roast, “that gives the dish its shape.” Pitiless Père! As he described the turtle feast on the beach, We squirmed on his lap and looked helplessly on as Death entered the room and the parlor was metamorphosed into a furnished tomb. The turtle’s anguish, the disgrace of its end, gyred in our little head. Seeing how frightened We were, how agitated, how pale, Père held us fast and insisted on describing a market on the Madagascar coast where one may see, set out on their backs on large tables, living turtles cut from their shells and lying in pools of blood. This blood is scooped up by female butchers (also intimately described; Père had never forgotten the ladies of Madagascar) and sold to clients who, having brought their own bowls, drink the fresh blood then and there. Hearing this We began to squeal but still Père was not done; to tell the truth he had only just begun. (Where was Mère? In the kitchen overseeing the jam-making. This story takes place in berry season.)
Turtle meat is—as you have ascertained—prized in Madagascar, and now that the turtle is free of its shell and bellowing, a steak is cut from its breast and then another; the entrails sliced away, the feet sold next and the liver. Soon all that remains are its lungs, heart, and head. O horror! The turtle’s eyes are still blinking, its beak opening and closing. And as if this were not enough to keep a child from sleeping for the rest of his days, Père now recalled the head of a decapitated prisoner he had seen when he was himself a little boy, rolling onto a cobbled courtyard before being picked up and dropped into a basket. “Its eyes were open wide,” Père said, “and its lips were flecked with foam. Had it been able to speak, it would have cursed the day of its birth.”
Despite his firm grasp, We leapt from Père’s knees as though they were red-hot and We hit the ceiling, screaming. This was the first time We blew our stack, and Mère came running with her spoon, her lips sticky with jam. We were on the carpet now, spinning like a top. Père gave us a terrific kick to shut us up and We—reduced to a quivering jelly—were hauled off to our room by Père—thundering like Jehovah, Mère behind weeping, her spoon in the air like a wand, the cook after, and last of all our nurse sniveling into her skirts. As soon as We reached the nursery, We threw ourself under the bed and refused to budge; anyone who attempted to pull us out was bitten. Père insisted We be “let to rot.”
It was there,