Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (21 page)

He wriggled into his undersized boy scout shirt, relic of Taos, and admired himself in Fitzgore’s gilt-framed baroque mirror. Five-year pin, assistant-patrol-leader bars, wolf patch on the shoulder, ready to go. He laced up his boots (no socks), tilted the baseball cap over his eyebrows, and crash, he was out the door. He ran head on into George and Irma Rajamuttu, who had materialized spooklike in the hall, no doubt responding to his cry. They were cloaked in gauze wrapups, eyes jaundiced, and they held tinkling glasses of gin and grenadine. “Goodness gracious me,” said George, jarred sideways.

“The Vale of Kashmir,” yelled Gnossos, flying past. “Curried duck!”

“Orange dal,” called Irma after him, the first words he had ever heard her speak. But there was no time. He was climbing the hill in seven-league bounds, flapping his arms, trying to fly. Past the law school, with its Tudor courtyard for duels; the student union, where students hovered with May flies already buzzing in their blood; the high Clock Tower sounding the half-hour in its pointed head; the arts quad with sweatsocks and sneakers everywhere, faces turning to catch the apparition that galloped by; over the Harpy Creek Bridge, where he made whooping sounds; down the footpath by the still-incomplete Larghetto Lodge.

The shores of Maeander Lake were trapped high on the hill, held in manmade place by the partially concealed hydroelectric dam, where the thaw had sure as hell begun. Massive blocks of ice had heaved up from the surface, tumbled over the shore, and knocked trees flat against the ground with the unbridled force of their motion. The first muddy waters were beginning to pulse through the dam flues, heave against the concrete abutments, spout at the waiting gorge a hundred feet below. He ran around the muddy path, ankles sloshing, stopping to tug on a half-defeated tree and help it to the earth. Better all at once, might be suffering, get a stethoscope, listen to its agonies. He halted once, his breath taken away as one
of the enormous iceblocks slid effortlessly past his nose. There were no trees to obstruct, and it moved a full ten feet before it stopped. “Whoo-hoo,” he yelled, and swung up on its tilted, slippery surface, using a dangling branch as if he were Tarzan. He scrambled to the ragged peak and jumped up and down, driving his weight solidly into his bootheels as he landed. He did it with three successive blocks, finally cracking the third one, leaping free before it lumbered apart. Then at the bridge, where the young creek was struggling through the narrows, he paused and listened. Yes. Can you hear the blood soughing? Wind in the lung’s leaves? So many million fibers and cells, surely their collision and tug must have a murmur. The seepage of bile, fluid trickling in the spine, the frequency of growing hair, high and piercing like a nail scratching on a pane of glass.

For a moment there seemed to be silence. But under the still-unbroken surface of the narrows he heard the gurgling roll of new waters. Here and there he could see beneath a transparent, brittle sheet of ready-to-collapse ice, frothy bubbles skimming along on the underside, seeking a path, collecting strength. He climbed to the outside of the bridge, balancing on the thin field-stone lip that ran along its perimeter, then leaned over cautiously and found a grip, first with one hand, then with the other. Kicking off his weight, he swung free; and thirty feet above the lake he hovered like a pendulum. Now giggling quietly, he inched along until he sensed an area where the snow and ice might be strong enough. Oh, sweet Mortality, I love to tease your scythe, and he let go, just like that, feet apart, arms high in the air, a forefinger holding down his baseball cap, rucksack aflutter.

He was flying.

His feet struck and he sank, spreading elbows to brake, stopping only when he was in to the nose. His toes had failed to touch water. Up, up, old Pooh Bear, the body bears heat. He twisted his way loose, stretched flat out, then crawled to firmer snow. He kneeled, stood, walked, hopped, and finally ran across the chunky, broken surface, bounding from block to block, keeping his stride, forcing a rhythm, figuring if he kept the proper pace and failed to find a foothold, he’d make the next one. Drun droon droon.

On the far shore of civilization a bus was approaching the Harpy Creek stop. Gnossos waved his cap and sprinted the final fifty yards, just squeezing through the doors, chilly beads of perspiration running into his eyes. He gave the driver a silver dollar and got a dirty look for change. Poor man, no nose for the spring wind. “Thaw,” he whispered as explanation, grinning madly.

“Saw?” asked the driver, nervous, mistaking a lisp.

“Caw,” said Gnossos, still whispering, opening and closing the fingers of his left hand like a flying crow.

“Sure,” said the driver uneasily, letting out the clutch with a chop, glancing in all the mirrors, handing him quarters for the fare machine. Gnossos answering, “Seesaw.”

“Marjorie Daw,” from the driver, shifting gears, gripping the wheel.

Gnossos goading him to distraction, pocketing the bread, sliding into a seat, not paying, the driver failing to notice, nearly colliding with a covey of coeds. They scattered like quail, and Gnossos chuckled, wiping his palms on his baseball cap, turning it backward, Yogi Berra sliding down the window by his side. “Fresh air,” he explained to the woman with a prune-whip face. Her hat had nearly blown off in the sudden blast. “It’s spring,” he tried. “Look.”

But she couldn’t.

Downtown in Kresge’s he bought a bottle of Revlon bubble bath, two giant-size Yardley lavender bath soaps, a tortoise shell comb, and a back brush for stray pimples. He had to try four drugstores before he was able to find oils and salt, and then only after he’d cornered and confused the teenage salesgirl. She had Jean Harlow hair and was lost behind cardboard displays of nail polish, dentifrice, chewing gum, and hairnets. Violet by a mossy stone. “Bath oil,” he repeated, pushing the baseball cap down over his eyes, flirting, leaning forward with his elbows in a counter of Tums and other reliefs for the rigors of acid indigestion. “Oil for the bath, if you dig.” Her platinum hair shimmered in pharmaceutical fluorescence, her lips glowed with the color of ionized muscatel grapes.

“I heard y’inna first place, but what do you mean, like Nivea for in case y’skin dries out, or what’s she want it for, anyway?”

“What’s who want it for, baby?”

“Y’mother, whoever y’get it for.”

Gnossos seeing his problem, thinking a moment, then crooking his finger to motion her closer, winking. The girl looked around, leaned forward with an uncertain frown, a lump under her lip where she was rolling her tongue. “It’s for me,” he murmured.

The tongue went back into place. “What are y’kidding?”

“To make me lovable is why.”

“What? Hehe.” The girl looking for an ally.

“Velvety to the touch, man, smooth; you dig smooth?”

“Now
look
. Hehe.”

“Ancient custom is all, balm for warrior, makes you good to feel, right?”

“Oh go on.”

“You got any?”

“Hehe. What?”

“Bath oil, man.”

“That you put right in the water?”

“You get the picture.”

“I’ll ask the manager.” The girl skipped off, ears deaf to her doom, and talked to an old bone of a man in wire glasses at the soda fountain. See her in a year, straddling some pump-jockey in the front seat of a ’46 Ford, knocked up. Watching Gunsmoke in their underwear, cans of Black Label, cross-eyed kid screaming in a smelly crib. Ech. Immunity not granted to all. Be Christian, help her.

She came back with a small carton and handed him a bottle of highly viscous, umber-colored Charles of the Ritz bath oil.

“Two,” he said, getting the silver dollars ready. “Don’t wrap them, I’ve got a thing,” pointing at the rucksack, taking both bottles, then handing one back.

“What are y’doing? Y’just paid for that.”

“I know, man. It’s for you.”

“What?”

“To make you smooth. Lovable.”

“Oh go on. Hehe.”

“You’re one of God’s chosen creatures, baby, I can tell. Do you know who I am?”

“Go on.”

“I’m the Holy Ghost. Maybe look you up sometime, who knows, give you a ride in my Maserati. You dig Maserati?”

“What are y’kidding?” rolling her tongue under her lip, twisting a strand of shimmering hair, suddenly winking at him. Hey nonny no.

By the time he shouldered his way through the apartment door, the rucksack was bulging with cosmetics and foods. More vine leaves, unpolished brown rice, marinated olives, ground round, fertilized eggs, organic lemons, tarragon, bay leaves, garlic, Spanish onions, okra, resin wine, cruets of orange extract, and a new side. Heffalump, Drew Youngblood, and Juan Carlos Rosenbloom were lounging around the pad, drinking Dairy Queens out of wax cups, half listening to a Brubeck. “Gaaa,” gasped Gnossos, “Dairy Queens.”

“Just opened today,” said Youngblood, who stood and helped with the rucksack. An onion had already wobbled over the floor. Rosenbloom, sucking his straw, peering over the strawberry froth, said, “Delicious. We dong get them in Maracaibo.”

Gnossos picked up the onion and pointed at the record player. “And burn that Brubump crap, man, I’ve got new sounds. What are you doing, starting a Mickey Mouse club or what?” He handed the side to Heff, who took it and wandered over to the spindle, reading the notes. “Who’s Mose Allison?”

“Trust me,” from Gnossos, trying Rosenbloom’s froth with a finger.

“Never heard of him.”

“Not so loud, man.”

“An’ I don’t dig names like Mose, Paps. It’s Uncle Tomming.”

“He’s white, baby, don’t lose your cool. And put on side one, thing called New Ground.” Heff grunting as Gnossos walked into the kitchen to unpack his rucksack. But while he was putting away the fertilized eggs he remembered he had failed to inform the troops of the day’s revelation. He sucked in his constipated stomach, sighed, and returned to the living room, where they all sat studying the cover photograph of Back Country Suite. “Ahem,” he said. He was standing perfectly still, a hand on his head, waiting for silence. They put down their Dairy Queens and looked at him.

“Just thought I’d pass the word, babies, before legend distorts the fact. The voice of the turtle is in the air? Hey ring-a-ding-ding, and like that? Well, this spring has the blessing of the gods. The Daughters of Night are banished, zippo-bang, no more. Pappadopoulis, in fact,” he lowered his voice and raised a hushing finger like Toscanini, “is in love.” He said it again to confound any possible error. “Love. Dig it.”

Boom went the percussion of New Ground, boom fell the silence in the room, down went the Dairy Queens, and up went their eyes to look at the place where Gnossos had been but was no longer, since with the cathartic announcement he had felt an unmistakable, long-absent urge in his lower intestines and gone in a flash to the bathroom, where he had barely sat down before his bowels found their exquisite relief.

One hour after this extraordinary visceral event all the dust had settled, and Youngblood had finally completed a fist of anxious phonecalls. He had been attempting to incite diplomatically polite insurrection among the faculty. Rosenbloom was on the Navajo rug, wearing a new red and yellow rodeo shirt, tight white Levis, and jodhpurs, tracing diagrams from his volume of Clausewitz: strategic deployment, tactical flanking maneuvers, logistical supply techniques. Heffalump was curled in the fetal position on the butterfly chair in his blue-striped French sailor’s jersey, faded jeans, and heelless bucks, making notes for their twice-weekly anthropomorphic word game. Gnossos was flying back and forth across the apartment with indomitable energy, wielding brooms, dustmops, vacuum
cleaners, oil rags, Lysol, Oakite, and Mr. Clean. “Up up,” he’d chatter if a body got in his way, flicking a section of cheesecloth or chamois, polishing, cleansing, rubbing, wiping. “You’re going to get ulcers,” warned Heff, “hives or something.” Then to Youngblood, who was drawing a line through one of the names on his list, “You nearly finished, man?”

Youngblood nodded, tapping the sheet with a pencil, “It’s really picking up, you know? Philosophy, English, architecture, all with some kind of commitment. Government’s giving us a little trouble at the emeritus level but I think they’ll go.”

“We smash him, crack,” said Rosenbloom, dropping an ink blot in the eye of the university President, whose picture was on the front page of the
Sun
. The man had announced the coming demolition of another old campus building. The paper had appeared under the door after the usual mysterious, gentle rapping at dawn. “Up up,” said Gnossos, gliding past with the vacuum cleaner, eagle eye on the lookout for nail parings, dustballs, hairpins, and Oreo creme sandwich crumbs.

“Is there anything left to drink around here?” asked Heff by way of distraction. But Christian Pappadopoulis foxed him and flew to the icebox without breaking his stride, returning a six-pack of Ballantine ale and a church key with a synthetic ruby on the handle. “No stains, you guys, no spilling, little taut-ship action.”

“Hey wow,” said Heff, “where’d this compulsive house-cleaning come out of?”

“Order from chaos, babies. Art, if you dig.”

In time a bloodshot, disheveled Fitzgore wandered in, followed eventually by Agneau, who carried his fraternity newsletter under his arm. But Gnossos managed to gather up all the fetid vine leaves, lichee nuts, lemon peels, and sordid bits of ugly from the kitchen, and he stacked them in a huge polyethylene bag, which had once contained Fitzgore’s suit, while everyone else began work on a new six-pack. He slung the bag over his shoulder, turned up the final band of Back Country Suite, and went outside to find the landlord’s garbage cans. While there, he paused for some time, sniffing at the new fragrance of warmth on the southerly wind.

When he returned, whistling arpeggios with Mose Allison, the large living room was mysteriously empty. He stepped out on the front porch but there was no sign of them. Youngblood’s Anglia and Fitzgore’s Impala were still parked in front.

But inside, he detected whispers from the bathroom. He tiptoed carefully across the freshly waxed kitchen tiles. Everyone was gathered in a semicircle around the commode, peering down. Their mouths were open. Heffalump
and Youngblood held drinks, Agneau and Fitzgore leaned on each other, and Rosenbloom scratched his rump.