Lingual synthesis: Wittgenstein, Lévi-Strauss, Chomsky—I suspect it is what they were getting at: Attempts to reduce vast fields of Philosophy, Anthropology, and Linguistics to sets of parameters that not so much define as mirror the way in which philosophical, anthropological, and linguistic information respectively fit into, upon, and around the mind itself. Those particularly parametric works (the Tractatus, La Geste d’Asdiwal, Syntactic Structures—though all three men have written much longer works, work of this type must be very short; none of these is above 30 thousand words) do not discuss fields of study; they drop careful, crystalline catalysts, which on any logical mind (as opposed to trained minds familiar with galleries of evidence and evaluations) perforce generate complicated and logical discussions of the subject using whatever evidence is at hand, limited only by the desire or ability to retain interest in the dialogue propagating in the inner ear.
In an age glutted with information, this “storage method” is, necessarily, popular. But these primitive
was the end of the page. He did not turn to the next. Wittgenstein, Lévi-Strauss, Chomsky: He mulled their sounds. A year, a year and a half ago, he had read everything he could find by one.
He had never heard of the other two.
“Lingual synthesis…” That was nice on the tongue. “…particularly parametric works…” He picked up Brass Orchids, balanced it on blunt fingers. “…careful, crystalline catalysts…” He nodded. A particularly parametric work of careful, crystalline catalysts in lingual synthesis. That, at any rate, was the type of object it ought to be. Well, it was short.
One of them turned in the bed.
One of them turned again.
He looked across the room:
The tent of a knee. An arm over an arm.
The chair back was cool against his. Caning prickled the bottom of one thigh. The plants leaned from their pots.
He pinched the bright chain across his belly.
Dark ones coiled the clothing on the floor.
Suppose, he thought, she wants me to stay and him to go. Well, I get rid of the bastard. Suppose she wants me to go? I get rid of all the bastards.
But she won’t. She likes privacy too much. Why else would she go along with this? Along? Something in me would like to have it that she is doing this for me. But all joy in it comes from those moments when it is obviously as real as her music and personally otherwise.
I am restless.
She turns restlessly.
His arm, limp, moves with her moving shoulder.
Lanya blinked, raised her head. Kid watched her eyes close and her head lay down. He was smiling. He turned Brass Orchids in his hands, turned the loose pages, as though he might heft, through some quality other than weight, the difference.
The notebook was open again at the list. Puzzling, he read the names once more (it was almost too dark), this time right to left, bottom to top:
Preston Smith
Thomas Sask
Linda Evers
Ann Harrison
Peter Weldon
George Newman
William Dhalgren
Priscilla Meyer
Susan Morgan…
Madeleine Terry…
3
“Why’d she kick us out?”
“She didn’t kick us out. She had things to do. She’ll be down to see us. Don’t worry.”
“I ain’t worrying.” Denny balanced along the curb edge. “Shit, I could have stayed up there for the rest of my life and been happy. You on one end and her on the other.”
“How’d you manage to eat?”
“Present company excepted—” Denny tugged at his vest—“I’d just send out for it. You sure she wasn’t mad at us?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay…you really think she’s gonna come down and visit the nest?”
“If she doesn’t, we’ll go up and see her. She’ll come.”
“She’s a nice person!” Denny emphasized each stress with a beat of his chin. “And I really like that song. ‘Diffraction,’ huh?”
Kid nodded.
“I hope she comes down. I mean I know she likes you, ’cause you wrote a book and everything, and you know her a long time. But I’m just a fuck-up. She ain’t got no reason to like me.”
“She does anyway.”
Denny frowned. “Sure acts like it, don’t she?”
The street light above them pulsed…at half strength; then died. The sky sheeted over with one more film of darkness. The only other light to come on was two blocks away; it pulsed, pulsed, pulsed again.
Someone moved into it and shouted, “Hey! Hey, Kid! Denny!” Others trooped into the wavering circle.
“What the hell are they doing here?”
Denny shrugged.
In the middle of the next block, Dollar, lugging the brass lion on its broken base, pushed between Copperhead and Jack the Ripper. “Hey, we gotta move, you know? We’re movin’ again!” Dollar was grinning.
Copperhead was not. “The fuckin’ house burnt up on us! How you like that? The fuckin’ house burnt up!” A knapsack, one green with his fatigues, swung about his shins. He hefted the strap to the other hand.
“Jesus,” Denny said. “All my shit…?”
“What happened?”
“Nothin’,” Copperhead shrugged. “You know…it just, well….”
“The whole damn block,” Siam said. “About an hour ago. Shit, it was something!”
Kid felt his heart thump once (like it always did when he found out somebody he knew had died); in the hollow remains, he thought: That isn’t so much a reaction as it is a fear of what the reaction might be. The house burnt down? The…house burnt down? But that seems so easy. The house…
He asked: “Was Nightmare there?”
“Fuck,” Copperhead said. “Fuck. He and the Lady was off somewhere. Thirteen was gone somewhere too. Fuck.”
Glass chuckled. “I could smell Thirteen’s stash burning right up. Sure wished I knew where he kept it, and I would have got it out for him. But when it was burning—” he swung a pillowcase down from his shoulder into his arms—“you sure could smell it. You know I been in seven God-damn fires. Seven times I had my house burn out from under me. Lost my mother in a God-damn fire.”