The chauffeur shrugged, folded his camera and climbed in. ‘’Kay, take it easy. Maybe you seen a lot of lynchin’s, I ain’t.’
Ben looked at the sleeping figure. It had stopped snoring and was now muttering, ‘Pleassssure. Pleassssure.’
‘Just start the car and drive.’
‘You crazy? Through that buncha—’
‘Then turn around and drive the other way, let’s just get out of here.’
‘Yeah but like I said we can’t go nowhere this way, like I said when we come off at the wrong exit — didn’t I tell you it was the wrong exit? — all we can do now is stay on this here highway 811 until we hit the old Interstate and then cut back—’
‘All right, just — just a minute, let me think.’
‘Some thinker,’ said the chauffeur, lighting a hand-rolled cigarette. ‘Look buddy we’re stuck here, why doncha just sit back and watch the show?’
‘Show? Is that all it is to you, a show? You don’t care do you, people committing murder — like that? It’s just something on TV, that it?’
‘Look, no offence, manner of speakin’, okay? Okay? I’m entitled to my opinion too, you know, it’s a free fuckin’ country.’
‘All right, all—’
‘Just because I work for a livin’ don’t mean I’m shit, okay?’
‘All right!’
‘Okay, just wanted to get that straight.’ The chauffeur twitched his shoulders, shrugging off any yoke of oppression Ben might care to impose, and sat forward: a free man in a free country, watching a free show.
Ben reached for the phone, hesitated, gnawed his knuckles for a while, and finally tried waking Mr Kratt.
‘Wha? Whoza?’
‘There’s a lynching going on, sir. Right over there. Shouldn’t we — call the highway patrol?’
‘Outa your head, bub. Word gets out I’m nosing around down here we’ll have every yak-head in the State tryina buy in on this land deal. Jesus, might as well take a full-page ad in the paper, announce a gold rush — use your head, for Christ’s—’ and he was asleep again.
Ben looked away from the execution into darkness. Toys. A show. Revenge of the common man upon the common object, wasn’t that it? Because it wouldn’t do, it had never done, to think of the object of their cruelty as fully human. So the effigy created by Albertus Magnus (smashed down by Aquinas) turns up as Friar Bacon’s talking head (to be smashed by a servant) and again as the automaton of Descartes (‘ma fille Francine’, flung into the sea by yet another fearful soul) even while dummies of Guido Fawkes began to burn in the streets of London for the pleasure of children. Common children, always more ready than even their parents to punish the presumption of a servant.
Well yes, he might work that up into an article, why not? The Common Man and His Image? ‘Fascination with clockwork in the 17th cent. coincides with idea of commonwealth, all part of same big movement,’ he wrote, turning the notebook to the light. ‘Clock explained all, from Newton’s heaven to Malynes’s laws of economics — Huygens creating clockwork artisans for the King of France even while (after?) Mechanic Philosophers promoted a new democratic religion among the living artisans. Groups naming themselves by function — Quakers, Shakers, Ranters, Diggers, Levellers — as though describing their work within the great timepiece.’ What was the point of all this? What was it?
‘Christ, said the chauffeur. ‘Christ! Looka that.’
‘Shut up, will you?’
‘Who you tellin’ to shut up, listen fuckhead, I—’
‘Sorry. Sorry.’ Revolution, that was the point. ‘Jacquard loom working a genuine revolution behind the scenes — Mme DeF. — In 1791 (?) Godwin wrote: “A servant who –“’ What was the quote? While he waited for it, the chauffeur said:
‘Hey look, uh, Mr Frankelin, I think we got trouble with the right rear tyre, hey?’ ‘What?’
‘Right rear tyre, I think it’s down. Your side, you mind gettin’ out and look at it?’
Still frowning at the notebook he climbed out.
‘Have a nice night, Mr Frankelin.’
‘What? Oh — hey what—?’
And he hardly heard the screams (‘God! His head come off!’) so intent was he suddenly on the sound of the automatic door-closer, the click of the automatic lock, the sight of the chauffeur giving him the finger as the limousine glided away into the night.
XXV
Yet the old myth dies hard. We are still tempted to argue that if the clown’s antics exhibit carefulness, judgement, wit, and appreciation of the moods of his spectators, there must be occurring in the clown’s head a counterpart performance to that which is taking place on the sawdust. If he is thinking what he is doing, there must be occurring behind his painted face a cognitive shadow-operation which we do not witness, tallying with, and controlling, the bodily contortions which we do witness.
One record finished, and in the interval a shrill voice said: ‘Well we’re practically related. My ex married his ex’s first husband’s widow — only I guess they split up lass week…’
One of the groom’s coarse cousins, naturally; there was relief among the bride’s friends when the disc-jockey slipped another record into the silence.
One or two couples started dancing on the patio; Allbright and Dora waltzed smoothly into the library and out again, their steps not noticeably slowed by the added weight of several first editions.
‘Hey Allbright!’ It was Lyle Tate, keeping his birthmark in shadow as he came past the disc-jockey’s glass booth. ‘Jeez, and Dora — you two are the only people I know here. Who is this mob? Who is everybody?’
Allbright shrugged, shifting books. ‘Everybody.’
‘No but I mean Jane Hannah’s not here, Jack Tarr’s not here—’
‘Tarr? I thought you hated his guts.’
‘Yeah but only when he was around. Guess he hasn’t got the guts to go anywhere today, there’s a story going around that he’s been cheating on some psychic research stuff. They say he got a pigeon to be clairvoyant something like a hundred times, pushing the right button in a Skinner box, you know? A hundred times. Only trouble was the pigeon was dead at the time, biggest damn miracle since Lazarus — speaking of which, Allbright you don’t look so great. What’s that, dried blood on your face, bruises or dirt?’
‘We fall over from time to time,’ Allbright said. ‘We fall. One of the privileges of the C-charged brain…’
‘We? You mean—?’ Lyle looked to Dora, who nodded.
‘Rodin,’ said a shrill voice somewhere. ‘Yas yas yas.’
Dora said, ‘I guess I’m doomed anyway. Might as well go down the toilet with Allbright as by myself.’
‘Doomed, what do you mean doomed? Down the—?’
‘We’re all doomed,’ said Allbright. ‘Jesus it’s obvious enough; everybody goes around worrying about machines taking over, shit, they took over long ago, isn’t that obvious?’
‘But no, listen, what happened to your plan for—?’
‘Between computer poetry and vibrator love people don’t get a hell of a lot of room to manoeuvre, isn’t that obvious?’
‘No but your plan for ripping off bank computers, what happened to that? You said a friend in the nut-house steered you—’
‘The steersman, yes, aren’t we all — but you mean Dan, good old Dan. Well you know I went back to see him, tell him how great it was after they fry your brains, burn out a few pink and blue lights you feel a lot better. I did, I know. I did. I felt better. Not stupider, just happier, that’s what I told him.