Beautiful Losers Read online

  46

  – I am sick, but I am not too sick, said Catherine Tekakwitha’s uncle.

  – Let me baptize you, said the Black-Robe.

  – Do not let any of your water fall on me. I have seen many die after you have touched them with your water.

  – They are in Heaven now.

  – Heaven is a good place for Frenchmen, but I wish to be among Indians; for the French will give me nothing to eat when I get there, and the French women, will not lie with us under the shadowy firs.

  – We are all of the same Father.

  – Ah, Black-Robe, were we of one Father we should know how to make knives and coats as well as you.

  – Listen, old man, in the hollow of my hand I hold a mystic drop which can snatch you from an eternity of woe.

  – Do they hunt in Heaven, or make war, or go to feasts?

  – Oh, no!

  – Then I will not go. It is not good to be lazy.

  – Infernal fire and torturing demons await you.

  – Why did you baptize our enemy the Huron? He will get to Heaven before us and drive us out when we come.

  – There is room for all in Heaven.

  – If there is so much room, Black-Robe, why do you guard the entrance so jealously?

  – There is little time left. You will surely go to Hell.

  – There is much time, Black-Robe. If you and I should talk until the weasel befriends the rabbit, we would not break the rope of days.

  – Your eloquence is diabolic. Fire waits for you, old man.

  – Yes, Black-Robe, a small shadowy fire, about which sit the shades of my relatives and ancestors.

  When the Jesuit left him he called for Catherine Tekakwitha.

  – Sit beside me.

  – Yes, Uncle.

  – Remove the blanket which covers me.

  – Yes, Uncle.

  – Look at this body. This is an old Mohawk body. Look closely.

  – I am looking, Uncle.

  – Do not weep, Kateri. We do not see well through tears, and although that which we see through tears is bright it is also bent.

  – I will look at you without tears, Uncle.

  – Remove all my garments and look at me closely.

  – Yes, Uncle.

  – Look for a long time. Look closely. Look and look.

  – I will do as you say, Uncle.

  – There is much time.

  – Yes, Uncle.

  – Your Aunts are spying through the spaces between the bark but do not distract yourself. Look and look.

  – Yes, Uncle.

  – What do you see, Kateri?

  – I see an old Mohawk body.

  – Look and look and I will tell you what will happen when the spirit begins to leave my body.

  – I cannot listen, Uncle. I am a Christian now. Oh, do not hurt my hand.

  – Listen and look. What I tell you cannot offend any god, yours or mine, the Mother of the Beard or the Great Hare.

  – I will listen.

  – When the wind is no longer in my nostrils my spirit body will begin a long journey homeward. Look at this wrinkled, scarred body as I speak to you. My beautiful spirit body will begin a hard, dangerous journey. Many do not complete this journey, but I will. I will cross a treacherous river standing on a log. Wild rapids will try to throw me against sharp rocks. A huge dog will bite my heels. Then I will follow a narrow path between dancing boulders which crash together, and many will be crushed, but I will dance with the boulders. Look at this old Mohawk body as I speak to you, Catherine. Beside the path there is a bark hut. In the hut lives Oscotarach, the Head-Piercer. I will stand beneath him and he will remove the brain from my skull. This he does to all the skulls which pass by. It is the necessary preparation for the Eternal Hunt. Look at this body and listen.

  – Yes, Uncle.

  – What do you see?

  – An old Mohawk body.

  – Good. Cover me now. Do not weep. I will not die now. I will dream my cure.

  – Oh, Uncle, I am so happy.

  As soon as smiling Catherine Tekakwitha left the long house her cruel Aunts fell on her with fists and curses. She fell beneath their blows. “Ce fut en cette occasion,” writes P. Cholenec, “qu’elle declara ce qu’on aurait peut-être ignoré, si elle n’avait pas été mise a cette épreuve, que, par la miséricorde du Seigneur, elle ne se souvenait pas d’avoir jamais terni la pureté de son corps, et qu’elle n’appréhendait point de recevoir aucun reproche sur cet article au jour du jugement.”

  – You fucked your Uncle! they cried.

  – You uncovered his nakedness!

  – You peeked at his tool!

  They dragged her to the priest, le P. de Lamberville.

  – Here’s a little Christian for you. Fucked her Uncle! The priest sent away the howling savages and examined the young girl stretched bleeding on the ground before him. When he was satisfied he drew her up.

  – You live here like a flower among poison thorns.

  – Thank you, my father.

  47

  Long ago (it seems) I awakened in my bed with F. pulling my hairs.

  – Come with me, my friend.

  – What time is it, F.?

  – It is the summer of 1964.

  He wore a curious smile on his face which I had not seen before. I cannot explain it, but it made me shy, and I crossed my legs.

  – Get up. We’re going for a walk.

  – Turn around while I get dressed.

  – No.

  – Please.

  He pulled the sheet from my body, still heavy with sleep and the dreams of a lost wife. He shook his head slowly.

  – Why didn’t you listen to Charles Axis?

  – Please, F.

  – Why didn’t you listen to Charles Axis?

  I squeezed my thighs tighter and laid the nightcap across my pubic hair. F. stared at me relentlessly.

  – Confess. Why didn’t you listen to Charles Axis? Why didn’t you send away the coupon on that distant afternoon in the orphanage?

  – Leave me alone.

  – Just look at your body.

  – Edith had no complaints about my body.

  – Ha!

  – Did she ever say anything to you about my body?

  – Plenty.

  – Such as?

  – She said you have an arrogant body.

  – What the hell is that supposed to mean?

  – Confess, my friend. Confess about Charles Axis. Confess your sin of pride.

  – I have nothing to confess. Now turn around and I’ll get dressed. It’s too early for your cheap koans.

  With a lightning flash he twisted my arm in a half-nelson, twisted me off the nostalgic bed, and forced me to confront the full-length mirror in the bathroom. Miraculously the nightcap had adhered to the wiry growth of my pubic hair. I shut my eyes.

  – Ouch!

  – Look. Look and confess. Confess why you ignored Charles Axis.

  – No.

  He tightened his expert grip.

  – Oh, oh, oh, please! Help!

  – The truth! You disdained the coupon because of the sin of pride, didn’t you. Charles Axis wasn’t enough for you. In your greedy brain you cherished an unspeakable desire. You wanted to be Blue Beetle. You wanted to be Captain Marvel. You wanted to be Plastic Man. Robin wasn’t even good enough for you, you wanted to be Batman.

  – You’re breaking my back!

  – You wanted to be the Superman who was never Clark Kent. You wanted to live at the front of the comic. You wanted to be Ibis the Invincible who never lost his Ibistick. You wanted SOCK! POW! SLAM! UGG! OOF! YULP! written in the air between you and all the world. To become a New Man in just fifteen minutes a day meant absolutely nothing to you. Confess!

  – The pain! The pain! Yes, yes, I confess. I wanted miracles! I didn’t want to climb to success on a ladder of coupons! I wanted to wake up suddenly with X-ray Vision! I confess!

  – Good.
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  He turned the half-nelson into an embrace and drew me to him. My fingers were very skillful there in the porcelain gloom of my prison bathroom. As I undid the top clasp of his beltless Slim Jim slacks, I flicked away the nightcap. It fell between my toes and his shoes like an autumn figleaf in a utopia of nudists. The curious smile hadn’t left his luscious mouth.

  – Ah, my friend, I have waited a long time for that confession.

  Arm in arm, we walked through the narrow harbor streets of Montréal. We watched great showers of wheat fall into the holds of Chinese cargo boats. We saw the geometry of the gulls as they drifted in perfect circles over center points of garbage. We watched great liners shrink as they hooted down the widening St. Lawrence, shrink into shining birch-bark canoes, then into whitecaps, then into the mauve haze of distant hills.

  – Why do you smile like that all the time? Doesn’t your face get sore?

  – I’m smiling because I think I’ve taught you enough.

  Arm in arm, we climbed the streets that led to the mountain, Mont Royal, which gives its name to our city. Never before had the shops of Ste. Catherine Street bloomed so brightly, or the noon crowds thronged so gaily. I seemed to see it for the first time, the colors wild as those first splashes of paint on the white skin of the reindeer.

  – Let’s buy steamed hot dogs in Woolworth’s.

  – Let’s eat them with our arms crossed, taking risks with mustard.

  We walked along Sherbrooke Street, west, toward the English section of the city. We felt the tension immediately. At the corner of Pare Lafontaine Park we heard the shouted slogans of a demonstration.

  – Québec Libre!

  – Québec Oui, Ottawa Non!

  – Merde à la reine d’angleterre!

  – Elizabeth Go Home!

  The newspapers had just announced the intention of Queen Elizabeth to visit Canada, a state visit planned for October.

  – This is an ugly crowd, F. Let’s walk faster.

  – No, it is a beautiful crowd.

  – Why?

  – Because they think they are. Negroes, and that is the best feeling a man can have in this century.

  Arm in arm, F. pulled me to the scene of commotion. Many of the demonstrators wore sweatshirts inscribed with QUEBEC LIBRE. I noticed that everyone had a hard-on, including the women. From the base of a monument, a well-known young film maker addressed the cheering assembly. He wore the scholarly thin beard and violent leather jacket so commonly seen in the corridors of L’Office National du Film. His voice rang out clearly. F.’s judo pressure cautioned me to listen carefully.

  – History! the young man called over our heads. What have we to do with History?

  The question inflamed them.

  – History! they shouted. Give us back our History! The English have stolen our History!

  F. pressed deeper into the mass of bodies. They received us automatically, like quicksand swallowing up the laboratory monster. The echoes of the young man’s clear voice hung above us like skywriting.

  – History! he continued. History decreed that in the battle for a continent the Indian should lose to the Frenchman. In 1760 History decreed that the Frenchman should lose to the Englishman!

  – Booo! Hang the English!

  I felt a pleasant sensation at the base of my spine and jiggled ever so slightly against the thin nylon dress of a fanatic, who cheered behind me.

  – In 1964 History decrees, no, History commands that the English surrender this land, which they have loved so imperfectly, surrender it to the Frenchman, surrender it to us!

  – Bravo! Mon pays malheureux! Québec Libre!

  I felt a hand slip down the back of my baggy trousers, a female hand because it had long fingernails smooth and tapered as a fuselage.

  – Fuck the English! I shouted unexpectedly.

  – That’s it, F. whispered.

  – History decrees that there are Losers and Winners. History cares nothing for cases, History cares only whose Turn it is. I ask you, my friends, I ask you a simple question: whose Turn is it today?

  – Our Turn! rose in one deafening answer.

  The crowd, of which I was now a joyful particle, pressed even closer about the monument, as if we were a nut on a screw to which the whole city we longed to possess wound us tighter and tighter like a wrench. I loosed my belt to let her hand go deeper. I did not dare turn around to face her. I did not want to know who she was – that seemed to me the highest irrelevance. I could feel her nylon-sheathed breasts squash against my back, making damp sweat circles on my shirt.

  – Yesterday it was the Turn of the Anglo-Scottish banker to leave his name on the hills of Montréal. Today it is the Turn of the Québec Nationalist to leave his name on the passport of a new Laurentian Republic!

  – Vive la République!

  This was too much for us. Almost wordlessly we roared our approval. The cool hand turned so now her palm was cupped around me and had easy access to the hairy creases. Hats were jumping above us like popping corn, and no one cared whose hat he got back because we all owned each other’s hats.

  – Yesterday it was the Turn of the English to have French maids from our villages in Gaspé. Yesterday it was the Turn of the French to have Aristotle and bad teeth.

  – Booo! Shame! To the wall!

  I smelled the perfume of her sweat and birthday presents, and that was more thrillingly personal than any exchange of names could be. She herself thrust her pelvic region hard against her own trouser-covered hand to reap, as it were, the by-products of her erotic entry. With my free hand I reached behind the both of us to grab like a football her flowery left cheek, and so we were locked together.

  – Today it is the Turn of the English to have dirty houses and French bombs in their mailboxes!

  F. had detached himself to get closer to the speaker. I snaked my other hand behind and fastened it on the right cheek. I swear that we were Plastic Man and Plastic Woman, because I seemed to be able to reach her everywhere, and she traveled through my underwear effortlessly. We began our rhythmical movements which corresponded to the very breathing of the mob, which was our family and the incubator of our desire.

  – Kant said: If someone makes himself into an earthworm, can he complain if he is stepped on? Sekou Touré said: No matter what you say, Nationalism is psychologically inevitable and we all are nationalists! Napoleon said: A nation has lost everything if it has lost its independence. History chooses whether Napoleon shall speak these words from a throne to a throng, or from the window of a hut to a desolate sea!

  This academic virtuosity was a little problematical for the crowd and provoked only a few exclamations. However, at that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I saw F. lifted on the shoulders of some young men. A wildcat cheer went up as he was recognized, and the speaker hastened to incorporate the spontaneous outburst into the intense orthodoxy of the whole crowd.

  – We have among us a Patriot! A man the English could not disgrace even in their own Parliament!

  F. slid back into the reverent knot which had hoisted him, his clenched fist raised above him like the periscope of a diving sub. And now, as if the presence of this veteran conferred a new mystic urgency, the speaker began to speak, almost to chant. His voice caressed us, just as my fingers her, just as her fingers me, his voice fell over our desire like a stream over a moaning water wheel, and I knew that all of us, not just the girl and me, all of us were going to come together. Our arms were tangled and squashed, and I did not know if it was I who held the root of my cock or she who greased the stiffening of her labia! Every one of us there had the arms of Plastic Man, and we held each other, all naked from the waist, all sealed in a frog jelly of sweat and juice, all bound in the sweetest bursting daisy chain!