The Complete Roderick

‘That’s goddamn profound.’

Dr Tarr said, ‘Yes, what’s interesting about these Catholic miracles like levitation, take the flying monk for instance, Giuseppe Coppertino in the sixteenth What I mean is I’ve been working out the psychic forces involved…’

Allbright leaned another way. ‘Look, you want my advice? You want my advice? You want to get close to God you just go out and buy yourself the biggest goddamn computer you can buy. You know why?’

Mr Vitanuova kept shrugging and smiling. ‘Look, I pay my dues, I figure—’

‘…our little mascot,’ said one of the fraternity boys. ‘Our little robot mascot. Roderick, go on, say hello to the nice lady, hee hee hee.’

Across the room Ben Franklin looked up. Just a minute, thought I… thought I heard…’ But a second later Mr Kratt’s heavy hand was on his shoulder.

‘Have fun, bub. Just taking Mrs McBabbitt home now, but you stay, have a — have a good time.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Oh one thing, all these people yakkin’ about religion gave me another brainstorm here, make a note of this: edible talk-backs. I figured maybe break into the Catholic market there, Mr Vitanuova just telling me how they do it in the mass and all—’

‘Yes sir, but I just wanted to see someone—’

‘In a minute, bub, you just listen. Howsabout a talking host, see?’

Franklin turned to face him. ‘A what? Television…?’

‘You don’t listen, see? Nobody listens, I mean a host, a piece a bread they use for masses, Mr V. tells me the priest just holds it up and says this is my body. This is my body. Well look, wouldn’t it be more convincing if the bread itself does the talking?’

‘I don’t know…’

‘Hello, Ma,’ said a small voice.

‘Hee hee hee, hello Ma he says, here lady you can hold him a while if you want, I gotta find my buddies — Hey you guys!’ One Digamma Upsilon Nu sweatshirt went to join two others at the table of drinks. Near by, the two critics looked over copies of the beautifully-printed catalogue.

Mr Kratt’s hand squeezed Ben’s shoulder. ‘No, well just make a note of that, we’ll talk it over some other time, okay? Could be a whole new market there.’

Allbright was shouting: ‘The Mormons, they got a big goddamn computer out in Salt Lake City, counting up the souls — they got it made, see? Because you know who’s gonna get into Heaven? I’ll tell you who, the big insurance companies, the government, the credit card companies, the Pentagon, all going to Heaven! Everybody that gets control of the magic numbers, that’s who!’

Dr Tarr began filling his pipe. ‘Yes there could be something in that, the psionic effect of complex machines, pure complexity…’

‘I know.’ Mr Vitanuova winked. ‘Like they say, garbage in, garbage out. And I know garbage.’

Ben Franklin thrust his face between them. ‘Listen, has anybody seen the white-haired woman? She was here a minute ago holding this little robot mascot thing, anybody…?’

Next he tried the two critics, who shrugged and went on reading:

The paintings of EDD MCFEE, though superficially identical (each being a 1 cm square of Boheme 0085 Violet centred on a 74 cm square white ground) draw their individuality from the time and locus (solely determined by random numbers) in which they were painted. No. 1, Juryroom Trout, was painted at 3 a.m. GMT on May 2, 1979, at an exact location in the Sahara, for example (2°W, 29°N). Yet McFee’s work, while rigorously Conceptualist in performance, manages at the same time to defy the canons of that limited and uncongenial mode. A bold form, an unexpected colour — these interact to both direct and keep pace with his concept, welding precision of thought to plasticity of expression in a carefully orchestrated equation of space/time. It is, moreover, a transcendental equation. Form is embedded in time, space in colour, design becomes discovery. The result, a reified Conceptual-ism, displaces the traditional stylized ‘thought-experiment’ with a new, holistic approach. Performance is redeemed by object. His aim, then, is to…

‘His aim,’ said the taller critic, ‘is to produce some hard goods collectors can buy, without feeling they’ve been ripped off even when they have.’

‘You playing this one down, then?’

‘Hell no, Mr K. shoots a grand an inch for a good review…’

Edd McFee, looking dapper even in his Army fatigues, was talking to the woman in the Abbott & Costello t-shirt when Ben approached.

‘What old lady? Naw, I never seen her, ask, ask somebody else… now like I was saying, Carrie, religion is fine, like it’s a deep one-to-one interpersonal relationship with Somebody, sure that’s what everybody wants. Only as an artist I got this problem: I can create but I can’t really love, see? So what I’m looking for is a woman to have a deep interpersonal relations with, I mean relationship with…’

Ben Franklin tried to ask the fraternity boys, but they had begun to sing. There was no one else to ask but the waiters and that guy with the birthmark. But the waiters were busy packing up, and the guy with the birthmark was sitting on the floor playing with pieces of mirror. Ben took a last glass of champagne and, standing alone, tried to arrange his face in a nonchalant expression. He pretended to look at the nearest painting, though in fact he failed even to notice that someone had defaced it (adding to the small purple square a large black moustache). ‘…garbage out,’ said Allbright. That’s profound, you know?’ Dr Tarr giggled. ‘In vino, veri true.’ ‘Right. The C-charged brain, the C-charged…’ Lyle Tate picked up two pieces of mirror and held them so that he could see himself perfected, the dark blaze gone, his face become a bright symmetrical mask. The smile was slightly V-shaped, but so much the better, he thought, murmuring, ‘…animal lamina… burn, rub… th’ gin forests, er, of night…’ and finally, ‘Eye sees tiger dreg, it sees eye…’ as the howling chorus crashed about him.

Roll me ooooover
In the cloooover

XII

Miss Borden unreeled a gold chain with a tiny ballpoint pen at the end. ‘Okay Bill, spit it out.’

‘Shouldn’t you see the boy yourself first?’

‘He’s off today. Mr Wood’s taking him to the city I guess for some eye tests, anyway you have observed him?’

‘Yes, well no not in a direct observational, more in a peripherally informalized situ—’

‘You’ve seen him in the hall, I know. Go on.’

‘Yes, contacted him a few times in the hall and elicited a response or two, nothing def—’

‘How’s his reading?’

‘Reading skills, yes he did say he was having trouble with this new reader Mrs Dorano assigned.’

She marked on the yellow form. ‘Reading problem. I was afraid of that, now how does he get along with other kids?’

‘Socially he’s, there seems to be a nomenclatural mixup there, some difficulty with meaningful involvement in the cultural mainstream… maybe an identity crisis even; other kids keep calling him a robot you know? And when I asked him why, he said, “Because I am a robot.”’

She shook her head. ‘All too familiar these days, schizoid pattern: usually parents both work, kid’s alone too much—’

‘Divisive destructuring of the ego conceptualiza—’