Streaming chair, rug, jug, I whipped into the last hall, kicked into high for the heart-bursting straightaway, and a person — shortish, bald, bow tie, drink in chubby grip — was there, like the eternal child who plays in the road before the speeding Ferrari, or the peasant lifting slow, clotted, laborious face to a thunder of horses and hounds, but this particular incarnation of the common denominator leaned toward a painting, touching, smelling, wallowing in the color and texture of converging neural streams which filled the airy delta between himself and better life on the wall, and was unaware of me, running, whole man running, legs, arms, head running, stomach, knees, balls running, and he still savored the painted dream as he looked up into the oncoming real, the drink warm in his forgotten fist, all of him big, bigger in my eyes, looking up with no intention, no expectation, and before his eyebrows fully elevated, eyes fully opened, and pulpy sluggish lip curled fully away from stained teeth, my hands struck his neck. Behind me was a faint thud. Empty rumble of a rolling glass.
I reentered the drawing room with expanded lungs. Heat in my eyes. Couples were still dancing, others sprawled. Nobody watched Swoon and the other man, lugubrious with exhaustion, flailing in slow arcs, rarely hitting. Rancid breath lay in the torpid, festering air. Screams came from the distance. No cigarette was put out or drink lowered. Between me and the couch, where Stanger and Mildred sat necking, there was a forest of shifting fashions, the black tuxedos and the clothing of the guests, pinks, greens, blues, and yellows crying out for pleasures of middle age. It hummed everywhere, omnivorous conversation of a dying party that insisted on living. Nell stepped out of it. “Let’s dance.” Her voice was grim, as if dancing were war, but it had an undercurrent of something more particular. Instantly, I became a dancing fool. She danced me off to the zoo and said it.
“Undress.”
Her clothes were a heap of white, pink, and gold. She sprawled on the bear, its fangs encrusted, shining blood. Her limbs cast out in the languid shape of her mood, suggesting nets. Her voice was soft, yet coarse in tone. “Get it, Phillip. On the shelf in the closet.”
Still in my shirt and tie I trotted to the closet to get it, whatever it was. On a shelf about chest high lay three hundred sausages, coiled in convoluted complications, a monster brain. A long gray iron chain. The prospect of such appetite suffused me with feelings of poverty, no education, and moral shock, but in one clean movement of self — disgust I laid on hands like he who knows. The chain chuckled as my fingers pierced its holes. I pulled. It came slowly, heavily, as each link stirred from sleep, and then too heavily, gaining speed, personal will, clamor, a raging snake of cannonballs pouring through my hands to bury my feet, shins, knees. Writhing, arms out, I was half man, half bonsai tree with impoverished roots, strangled in its springs, sucking denial. “I hate pain,” I screamed. Nell bobbled up off the bear. She seized the chain, tugged. I pummeled the top of her head. For real, not in a sexual way. She said, “Quit that.” I shouted sincerely, “I hate pain. I’ll beat your head off,” pummeling. She lugged; steady, patient strength; the motion of serious, honest work. In different conditions, I’d have considered it beautiful; her naked, multidimpled back, rippling, heaving spine against iron. I beat the measure of her lugging into her head and shouted my refrain. At last I fell free and could properly convulse. She rolled onto me, tried to soothe me with mothery tongue, breasts, and holes, but something had happened to make me unreceptive, inconsolable, as if my body, in trauma, had shaken free of my mind, and now my eyes, my flesh in every place retreated, fleeing toward the murdered buffalo, gazelle, and giraffe. “That,” I gasped, “rub with that.” She, too, seemed unselved, brained. She rose, stumbling across the room to grab the giraffe by the nostrils and tear it off the wall. She returned, kneeled, rubbed its eyes and great slop of lip carefully, gently, against my face and neck, then back and forth between my legs until I felt better. I dressed rapidly. She stared, sitting on the floor beside the giraffe, a limp, naked, stupid woman. I let myself think of her that way. “Get dressed, woman.” She crawled to the heap of clothing and clawed out her underpants. I left for the drawing room. Not once had I struck her in a deliberate and evil way. I thought of that as I limped down the hall. I felt myself ringing like a bell that calls men from this world. For the first time that evening, if not in my life, doing nothing, I’d done tremendously. Though nothing definite had been said, I knew the job was mine. It was inconceivable that it wasn’t mine. I hadn’t hit her. I hadn’t even wanted to. In the force of not wanting, I’d made the job mine. This wasn’t magical thinking. This was true; or the world was chaos and less than hell. Nevertheless, I was prepared to accept a word, a strong hint. I didn’t need legal forms, a ten-page contract, sixteen carbons. I would approach Stanger now. The confrontation would be his chance to talk, not mine. I had the job. He had only, for his salvation, to confirm it, suggest an idea of wages per annum. My limp deepened. I deepened it. Hard, good lunge. Dragging foot. An arm hooked back for balance, for the feel of bad damage swinging itself, dragging, lunging down the hall. What rough beast? What rough beast, indeed.
Suddenly the hallway didn’t look familiar. I’d taken a wrong turn, perhaps two, but there was a door. It had no knob, a swinging door. I shoved it wide. Something registered. Just as quickly, it was gone, wiped out, retrogressively unseen. I was back in the hall again, the door was shut. I was about to continue lunging on to the next door, the next turn, when I realized I’d fallen into my old ways, protecting myself, letting myself believe there were things one mustn’t see. I’d been through that, I’d seen, transcended. I could see anything now, see it squarely, name it with exactitude and indifference. I shoved the door again. It opened on a brilliant kitchen, a long counter with a tall, steel coffee urn. I’d seen that. The black servant stood on the counter beside the urn. That, too. Pissing into the urn. Yes, yes; that, too. He wore sunglasses as if to shield his eyes against the glare of his yam. “That’s offensive,” I said, naming it. He shook his last drops into the urn, hopped off the counter, zipped up, and began putting cups and saucers on a tray. When he finished he turned to me and said, “We’re born offensive, brother.” He stepped toward me, hand extended, palm up. “Give me some skin, brother.” The flat, gleaming opacity of his sunglasses seemed menacing, but I lunged to meet him and drew my palm down his. We locked thumbs, pressed forearms and elbows together. He was all right, but boiling in me now was a phrase for Mildred: “Don’t drink the coffee.” I returned to the drawing room with it, and in the weariness of this crowd, I felt it dissolve into the quiet voice of a Britisher, like head boy at a school for supersadists, fashioning managerial scum for the colonies: “Mildred, get your coat.” Terribly mild, yet the pitch of majestic will. She and Stanger were locked, pretzeled together, still necking, his hand was plunged beneath her dress, but she wiggled hard, slapped knees together, sprang up. Suddenly my wife! He sprang up behind her. There were people everywhere, some standing behind their couch, others sprawled at their feet, and yet only I could invade their privacy, only I had the power of invasion attributed ordinarily to voyeurs and God. The power against which society makes laws, or out of which it claims to draw them. Now there was stir all about the room. My power had spread, initiating small spasms, like a wind seen in the motion of trees. And Nell appeared, the hostess again, cooing good-nights and so-good-yous. She smiled at me in a frowning, quizzical, sad, not miserable way. I read her lips: “Coffee?” Thus encouraging me to stay a bit after the others. I smiled regrets and waved lyrical goodbye. From the depths, dimly, mechanically, came “Eeee.” Some of the guests who seemed to hear it tried to look worried.