Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

“Perhaps not. But I believe there is much to be said for active withdrawal. Not apathy, you understand, not acquiescence or inertia. Ah! My English vocabulary is coming back like the swallows to Cappuccino. No, what I am speaking of is a refusal to participate. A choice to live in a kind of voluntary exile. To observe the dragon from a distance, to study its strengths and weaknesses but to reject it, resist it, by refusing to engage it and give it energy. For example, we Pachomians, after our excommunication, debated going off, one by one, to Third World villages, where we would try to convince a few native women of the wisdom and urgency of limiting procreation. Our successes probably would have been small, our psychic expenditures great. Instead, we decided to stay here in the wilderness, secluded in holy shadow, shooting sometimes our tiny arrows from concealment but mainly working on the growth of our souls, and guarding . . . that which is ours to guard. So, Mr. Switters, what do you think of active withdrawal? Is it selfish? Is it cowardly? Irresponsible?”

“Nope,” he said between sips. “Not if you’re fully conscious.”

From the way in which she tilted her head, leaning toward him ever so slightly while the flabby razor of incomprehension carved a little crease in her brow, it was obvious Domino was unsure what he meant exactly by “fully conscious.” He ought to have been able to explain, to inform her that full consciousness referred not so much to a state in which a person always behaved in a manner he or she knew to be just, regardless of public opinion, though that was important; nor even to an awareness so keen that the person never allowed fear, ego, desire, or convenience to delude him or her into believing their behavior was more just than it actually was, though that was nearer the point; but rather, to the clear and persistent realization that at bottom, all human activity was cosmic theater: a grand and goofy and epic and ephemeral show, in which an individual’s behavior, good or bad, was simply the acting out of a role, the crucial thing being to stand back and observe one’s performance even as one was immersed in it. Switters ought to have been able to elucidate for the simple reason that this definition of “fully conscious” closely resembled the unwritten, unspoken creed of the CIA angels. However, Bobby Case had warned him that it was always a mistake to attempt to define terms such as full consciousness. “Even iffen you do a good job of it,” Bobby said, “you’ll end up sounding like a checkbook mystic or some New Age mynah bird, and most folks won’t get it anyhow.” According to Bobby, a person got it—bingo!—or they didn’t; no amount of spelling it out or scholarly discourse was going to peel the peach. And, come to think of it, had Sailor Boy, after issuing his concise counsel, ever felt the need to add anything more? Not once. That settled it. Switters lowered his lids, blanking out Domino’s not quite comprehending gaze. He smacked his lips. “Mmm. A most accommodating vintage. Makes my palate feel like the jewel in the lotus, like a taxfree investment, like a pocket street-map of Hollywood, like Lincoln’s doctor’s dog, like—”

“A mediocre wine and you know it,” she corrected him, though a certain glint in her eye indicated that she, influenced now, might be incubating a thirst of her own. “Well,” she said, “even if you don’t object philosophically to active withdrawal, that doesn’t mean you are personally suited for it. For example, we are very orderly here.”

“So? Nothing wrong with that—as long as you don’t deceive yourself into believing your order is superior to somebody else’s disorder.”

“But, disorder is—”

“Often just the price that’s charged for freedom. Order, so-called, has claimed more victims historically than disorder, so-called; and besides, if properly employed, language can provide all of the order a person might ever need in life. Language—”

“You’re throwing me off track. Save language for later.” She nodded at the wine. “All right. I’ll have one sip.” Accepting the glass from him (there was only the one), she went on. “What I’m trying to say is, I worry—all of the sisters worry—that should you accept our invitation, you will find the necessary routines of the Pachomian oasis to be boring and dull.” Rather abruptly, she raised the glass to her mouth and drained it.

A ruby droplet, at once as authentic as blood and as artificial as a bauble of carnival paste, glistened on her upper lip like an Aphrodite love boil, and Switters felt a bewildering urge to expunge it with his tongue. Easy, big fella. “A legitimate concern,” he agreed, “although I’ve generally managed to find a modicum of what we childish Americans call ‘fun’ and you more refined Europeans term ‘pleasure’ any place the bus has dropped me off.”

“That is a talent,” she said, sighing. “Unless you can count Italian nights at the dining hall or romping in rainwater in Vatican bikinis—which is what the sisters were doing at the moment you passed by with your nomads and heard them laughing—we nuns have never placed much emphasis on pleasure. Joy, perhaps, but certainly not fun. So, that is something else you could do for us here: teach us how one might remain sensitive and compassionate, yet still enjoy oneself in such a defiled, destructive age.”

“Oh, I don’t know. . . .”

“But, you see, we must not be thinking only of ourselves, we must not be unfair. You, Mr. Switters, must find pleasure at our Eden, as well, or else you will be dissatisfied here. So. That is where Fannie comes in.” She poured the last of the wine into the glass and passed it back to him.

He frowned. “Fannie?”

“Why, yes. Fannie.” And at that point, the middle-aged palm tree, without so much as swaying, dropped a coconut onto his skull. “Fannie wants to fuck your brains out,” she said.

He jounced a spatter of vin rouge onto the knee of his last clean trousers. And if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, he blushed. He knew he blushed because he could feel himself blushing, which caused him to blush all the pinker. Blushing did not suit a man such as Switters any more than sheep’s lingerie suited a wolf. Domino was surprised by his shock but was also more than a trifle amused.

“What’s the matter?” she asked coyly. “Have I made another passe remark? Doesn’t anyone say ‘fuck your brains out’ anymore? Has it followed ‘cotton-picking’ into the vernacular dustbin?”

“Caught me off guard, that’s all,” Switters muttered. “Didn’t expect—”

“And well you shouldn’t expect such talk from me. I don’t even like to think about these matters. So let’s get it over with quickly.” She took the glass from him and wiped it with a handkerchief before drinking. “It is not unusual for a novice in a nunnery to indulge in what the Church terms the ‘self-abuse.’ You know what I mean. It is discouraged, even punished, but to a certain extent expected and tolerated. Fannie, however, was incorrigible. She played with herself in chapel, at Holy Communion; she diddled in the confessional even as she was asking forgiveness for diddling. It’s reported she masturbated with one hand while counting her rosary prayers with the other. In every additional respect, she was the model novice, hard-working and devout, so the mother superior believed Fannie to be in the grips of an Asmodeus, a demon that is said to possess young nuns to make them lustful. Every exorcist priest in Ireland had a go at her, and when exorcism failed, the Irish shipped her off to a convent in France, where her behavior might be better understood. Why do so many people believe that the French are the sex race, the world leaders in eroticism? Why?”

“Because they’ve never been to Thailand.”

“Really? The Thai are better at sex than us?” Switters thought he detected a soupcon of wounded national pride. “In any case, Fannie ended up with the Pachomians, and now she’s released from vows and is hot to trot: another obsolete expression, I suppose. She likes you. She’s still young and attractive. I find it degrading to pimp like this, but as it may be the only way to assure that both of you are content to remain at the oasis. . . .”

“Well, you can stop it right now. As far as I’m concerned, Fannie can stick with her finger.”

“Why? Don’t you find her appealing?”

“She’s not so bad.” He was about to add, “For a woman of her age,” when it occurred to him that such a sentiment could be both undiplomatic and self-incriminating. What he said instead, however, was worse. He didn’t intend to say it, wasn’t sure he meant it. It contradicted, in fact, the very comment he had so prudently suppressed, a remark that for all of its insensitivity had at least been truthful. He felt ventriloquized, as if the imp in him, for reasons that it alone understood, was throwing its voice. “I guess I thought maybe you and I might . . .”

“Ooh-la-la! No, no, no. You and I? That is ridiculous.”

“Why? Don’t you find me appealing?”

“You’re not so bad,” she said, giving it right back to him (or to the trouble-making bugger who had hijacked his larynx). “For a man of your age.” Had she read his mind? Her tone became more serious. “I lost my virginity when I was sixteen.” (An image of Suzy went zinging through his brain like a hot pink bullet.) “It took me years to get it back. If I ever lose it again, which is rather unlikely, it will be to a man with whom I’m united in Christ. That wouldn’t be you, would it, Mr. Switters?”

“Offhand, I’d say the odds are against it. But stranger things have happened.” (Shut up, you little