The village hastened to obey. All the young girls stood around his bearskin, the starlets of the cornfields, the sweet weavers, girls in leisure, their hair half braided. “Toutes les filles d’vn bourg auprès d’vne malade, tant à sa prière.”
– Are you all here?
– Yes.
– Yes.
– Sure.
– Uh-huh.
– Yes.
– Here.
– Yes.
– I’m here.
– Yes.
– Of course.
– Here.
– Here.
– Yes.
– Present.
– Yes.
– I guess so.
– Yes.
– Looks like it.
– Yes.
Uncle smiled with satisfaction. Then to each one he asked an old question: “On leur demand à toute, les vnes apres les autres, celuy qu’elles veulent des ieunes hommes du bourg pour dormir auec elles la nuict prochaine.” I give the documentation out of duty, for I fear that sometimes my sorrow does violence to the facts, and I do not wish to alienate the fact, for the fact is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore. The fact is a crude spade but my fingernails are blue and bleeding. The fact is like a bright new coin, and you do not want to spend it until it has picked up scratches in your jewelry box, and it is always the final nostalgic gesture of bankruptcy. My fortune is gone.
– What young brave will you sleep with tonight?
Each girl gave the name of the that evening’s lover.
– What about you, Catherine?
– A thorn.
– That will be something to see, they all chuckled.
O God, help me get through this. I am corrupt in stomach. I am cold and ignorant. I am sick in window. I have taunted Hollywood which I love. Do you imagine what servant writes this? Old fashioned Cave-Jew yell of supplication, trembling with fear vomit at his first moon eclipse. Ara ara ara arrrooowwww. Fashion this prayer to Thee. I don’t know to get it with 1000-voice choir effect like “consider the lily.” Fashion this heap with gleaming snow-shovel facets, for I meant to build an altar. I meant to light a curious little highway shrine, but I drown in the ancient snake cistern. I meant to harness plastic butterflies with rubber-band motors and whisper: “Consider the plastic butterfly”: but I shiver under the shadow of the diving archaeopteryx.
The Masters of the Ceremony (les Maistres de la ceremonie) summoned the young men whom the girls had named, and, hand in hand, they came to the long house in the evening. The mats were spread. From one end of the cabin to the other they lay, two by two, “d’vn bout à l’autre de la Cabane,” and they began to kiss and fuck and suck and hug and moan and take off their skins and squeeze each other and nibble tits and tickle cocks with eagle feathers and turn over for other holes and lick the creases of each other and laugh when others were fucking funny or stop and clap when two screaming bodies went into a climax trance. At either end of the cabin two captains sang and rang their turtleshell rattles, “deux Capitaines aux deux bouts du logis chantent de leur Tortue.” Uncle felt better toward midnight and got off his mat and crawled slowly down the length of the cabin, stopping here and there to rest his head on a free buttock or leave his fingers in a dripping hole, taking chances with his nose between “bouncers” for the sake of microscopic perspectives, always with an eye for the unusual or a joke for the grotesque. From one sprawl to another he dragged himself, red-eyed as a movie addict on 42nd Street, now flicking a quivering cock with his thumb and forefinger, now slapping a stray brown flank. Each fuck was the same and each fuck was different, that is the glory of an old man’s cure. All his girls came back to him, all his ferny intercourse, all the feathery holes and gleaming dials, and as he crawled from pair to pair, from these lovers to those lovers, from sweet position to sweet position, from pump to pump, from gobble to gobble, from embrace to embrace – he suddenly knew the meaning of the greatest prayer he had ever learned, the first prayer in which Manitou had manifest himself, the greatest and truest sacred formula. As he crawled he began to sing the prayer:
– I change
I am the same
I change
I am the same
I change
I am the same
I change
I am the same
I change
I am the same
I change
I am the same
He did not miss a syllable and he loved the words he sang because as he sang each sound he saw it change and every change was a return and every return was a change.
– I change
I am the same
I change
I am the same
I change
I am the same
I change
I am the same
I change
I am the same
I change
I am the same
I change
I am the same
It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which changed and changed into itself over and over. When the morning came the captains shook their rattles slower. The clothes were gathered up as the dawn came on. The old man was on his knees proclaiming his faith, declaring his cure complete, as into the misty green morning all the lovers sauntered, arms about each other’s waists and shoulders, the end of night shift in a factory of lovers. Catherine had lain among them and left with them unnoticed. As she walked out in the sun the priest came running.
– How was it?
– It was acceptable, my father.
– Dieu veuille abolir vne si damnable et malheureuse ceremonie.
That last remark
