There was a professional knock on the blond door.
– It must be him, I said.
– Should we put our clothes on?
– Why bother.
We did not even have to open the door. The waiter had a passkey. He was wearing the old raincoat and mustache, but underneath he was perfectly nude. We turned toward him.
– Do you like Argentine? I asked for the sake of civil conversation.
– I miss the newsreels, he said.
– And the parades? I offered.
– And the parades. But I can get everything else here. Ah!
He noticed our reddened organs and began to fondle them with great interest.
– Wonderful! Wonderful! I see you have been well prepared.
What followed was old hat. I have no intention of adding to any pain which might be remaindered to you, by a minute description of the excesses we performed with him. Lest you should worry for us, let me say that we had, indeed, been well prepared, and we hardly cared to resist his sordid exciting commands, even when he made us kiss the whip.
– I have a treat for you, he said at last.
– He has a treat for us, Edith.
– Shoot, she replied wearily.
From the pocket of his overcoat he withdrew a bar of soap.
– Three in a tub, he said merrily in his heavy accent.
So we splashed around with him. He lathered us from head to foot, proclaiming all the while the special qualities of the soap, which, as you must now understand, was derived from melted human flesh.
That bar is now in your hands. We were baptized by it, your wife and I. I wonder what you will do with it.
You see, I have shown you how it happens, from style to style, from kiss to kiss.
There is more, there is the history of Catherine Tekakwitha – you shall have all of it.
Wearily we dried each other with the opulent towels of the hotel. The waiter was very careful with our parts.
– I had millions of these at my disposal, he said without a trace of nostalgia.
He slipped into his raincoat and spent some time before the full-length mirror playing with his mustache and slanting his hair across his forehead in just the way he liked.
– And don’t forget to inform the Police Gazette. We’ll bargain over the soap later.
– Wait!
As he opened the door to go, Edith threw her arms about his neck, pulled him to the dry bed, and cradled his famous head against her breasts.
What did you do that for? I demanded of her after the waiter had made his stiff exit, and nothing remained of him but the vague stink of his sulphurous flatulence.
For a second I thought he was an A——.
Oh, Edith!
I sank to my knees before your wife and I laid my mouth on her toes. The room was a mess, the floor spotted with pools of fluid and suds, but she rose from it all like a lovely statue with epaulets and nipple tips of moonlight.
Oh, Edith! It doesn’t matter what I’ve done to you, the tits, the cunt, the hydraulic buttock failures, all my Pygmalion tampering, it means nothing, I know now. Acne and all, you were out of my reach, you were beyond my gadgetry Who are you?
You’re not joking? Then I’m only fit to suck your toes.
Wiggle.
Later and later.
I remember a story you once told me, old comrade, of how the Indians looked at death. The Indians believed that after physical death the spirit made a long journey heavenward. It was a hard, dangerous journey, and many did not complete it. A treacherous river had to be crossed on a log which bounced through wild rapids. A huge howling dog harassed the traveler. There was a narrow path between dancing boulders which crashed together, pulverizing the pilgrim who could not dance with them. The Hurons believed that there was a bark hut beside this path. Here lived Oscotarach, meaning the Head-Piercer. It was his function to remove the brains from the skulls of all who went by, “as a necessary preparation for immortality.”
Ask yourself. Perhaps the treehouse where you suffer is the hut of Oscotarach. You did not know the operation was so long and clumsy. Again and again the blunt tomahawk pokes among the porridge. The moonlight wants to get into your skull. The sparkling alleys of the icy sky want to stream through your eyeholes. The night winter air which seems like “diamonds held in solution,” it wants to flood the empty bowl.
Ask yourself. Was I your Oscotarach? I pray that I was. The surgery is deep in progress, darling. I am with you.
But who could perform the operation on Oscotarach? When you understand this question, you will understand my ordeal. I had to apply to public wards in pursuit of my own operation. The tree-house was too lonely for me: I had to apply to politics.
The thumb of my left hand was all that politics relieved me of. (Mary Voolnd does not mind.) The thumb of my left hand is probably rotting this very moment on some downtown Montréal roof, or splinters of it in the soot of a tin chimney. That is my relic case. Charity, old friend, charity for the secularists. The treehouse is very small and we are many with an appetite for the sky in our heads.
But with my thumb went the metal body of the statue of the Queen of England on Sherbrooke Street, or as I prefer, Rue Sherbrooke.
BOOM! WHOOSH!
All the parts of that hollow stately body which had sat for so long like a boulder in the pure stream of our blood and destiny – SPLATTER! – plus the thumb of one patriot.
What a rain there was that day! All the umbrellas of the English police could not protect the city from that change of climate.
QUEBEC LIBRE!
Alarmclock Bombs!
QUEBEC OUI OTTAWA NON.
Ten thousand voices that only knew how to cheer a rubber puck past a goalie’s pads,
