Beautiful Losers Read online

  – Father!

  – Libalobaglobawoganummynummy.

  – Father!

  – Gobblegobblegogglewoggle. Slurp.

  – Baptize me!

  – Although some find our reluctance excessive we Jesuits do not rush Indian adults along the path to Baptism.

  – I have two feet.

  – Indians are fickle. We must protect ourselves from the catastrophe of producing more apostates than Christians.

  – Wiggle.

  – Comme nous nous défions de l’inconstance des Iroquois, j’en ai peu baptisé hors du danger de mort.

  The girl slipped her foot into the moccasin and sat on it.

  – Baptize me.

  – Il n’y a pas grand nombre d’adultes, parce qu’on ne des baptise qu’avec beaucoup de précautions.

  Thus the argument progressed in the shadows on the long house. A mile away Uncle sank to his knees, exhausted. There would be no harvest! But he was not thinking of the kernels he had just sown, he was thinking about the life of his people. All the years, all the hunts, all the wars – it would all come to nothing. There would be no harvest! Even his soul when it ripened would not be gathered to the warm southwest, whence blows the wind which brings sunny days and the bursting corn. The world was unfinished! A deep pain seized his chest. The great wrestling match between Ioskeha, the White one, and Tawiscara, the Dark one, the eternal fight would fizzle out like two passionate lovers falling asleep in a tight embrace. There would be no harvest! Each day the village was growing smaller as more of his brethren left for the new missions. He fumbled for a small wolf he had carved of wood. In the autumn past he had placed the whittled nostrils to his own, inhaling the animal’s courage. Then he had breathed out deeply in order to spread the breath of the animal over a wide area in the forest, and so paralyze all the game in the neighborhood. When he had killed his deer that day he cut out the liver and smeared blood on the mouth of the carved wood wolf. And he prayed: Great Deer, First and Perfect Deer, ancestor of the carcass at my feet, we are hungry. Please do not seek vengeance against me for taking the life of one of your children. Uncle collapsed on the cornfield, gasping for breath. The Great Deer was dancing on his chest, crushing his ribs. They carried him back to the cabin. His niece wept when she saw his face. After a while, when they were alone, the old man spoke.

  – He came in, the Black Dress?

  – Yes, Father Tekakwitha.

  – And you want to be baptized?

  – Yes, Father Tekakwitha.

  – I will allow you to on one condition: that you promise never to leave Kahnawaké.

  – I promise.

  – There will be no harvest, my daughter. Our heaven is dying. From every hill, a spirit cries out in pain, for it is being forgotten.

  – Sleep.

  – Bring me my pipe and open the door.

  – What are you doing?

  – I am blowing the breath of the tobacco at them, at all of them. It was F.’s theory that White America has been punished by lung cancer for having destroyed the Red Man and stolen his pleasures.

  – Try to forgive them, Father Tekakwitha.

  – I can’t.

  As he blew the smoke weakly at the open door Uncle told himself the story he had heard as a little boy, how Kuloskap had abandoned the world because of the evil in it. He made a great feast to say good-by, then he paddled off in his great canoe. Now he lives in a splendid long house, making arrows. When the cabin is filled with them he will make war on all mankind.

  38

  Is All The World A Prayer To Some Star? Are All The Years Of The World A Catalogue Of The Events Of Some Holiday? Do All Things Happen At Once? Is There A Needle In The Haystack? Do We Perform In The Twilight Before A Vast Theater Of Empty Stone Benches? Do We Hold Hands With Our Grandfathers? Are They Warm And Royal, The Rags Of Death? Are All The People Living At This Very Second Fingerprinted? Is Beauty The Pulley? How Are The Dead Received In The Expanding Army? Is It True That There Are No Wallflowers At The Dance? May I Suck Cunts For My Gift? May I Love The Forms Of Girls Instead Of Licking Labels? May I Die A Little At The Uncovering Of Unfamiliar Breasts? May I Raise A Path Of Goosepimples With My Tongue? May I Hug My Friend Instead Of Working? Are Sailors Naturally Religious? May I Squeeze A Golden-Haired Thigh Between My Legs And Feel Blood Flowing And Hear The Holy Tick Of The Fainting Clock? May I See If Someone Is Alive By Gobbling His Come? Could It Be Recorded In The Books Of Some Law That Shit Is Kosher? Is There A Difference In Dreaming Geometry And Bizarre Sex Positions? Is The Epileptic Always Graceful? Is There Such A Thing As Waste? Is It Wonderful To Think About An Eighteen-Year-Old Girl Wearing Tight Jelly Underwear? Does Love Visit Me When I Pump Myself? O God, There Is A Scream, All The Systems Are Screaming. I Am Locked In A Fur Store But I Believe You Want To Steal Me. Does Gabriel Trip A Burglar Alarm? Why Was I Sewn Into Bed With The Nymphomaniac? Am I As Easy To Pluck As A Spear Of Grass? Can I Be Torn Away From The Roulette Wheel? By How Many Billion Cables Is The Zeppelin Secured? O God, I Love So Many Things It Will Need Years To Take Them Away One By One. I Adore Thy Details. Why Have You Let Me See The Bare Ankle Tonight In The Treehouse? Why Did You Vouchsafe Unto Me A Minute Flash Of Desire? May I Unfasten My Loneliness And Collide Once Again With A Beautiful Greedy Body? May I Fall Asleep After A Soft Happy Kiss? May I Have A Dog For A Pet? May I Teach Myself To Be Handsome? May I Pray At All?

  39

  I remember one night with F. as he drove down the highway to Ottawa where he was to make his Maiden Speech in Parliament the next day. There was no moon. The headlights flowed over the white posts like a perfect liquid eraser, and behind us we abandoned a blank blueprint of vanished roads and fields. He had pushed it up to eighty. The St. Christopher’s medal pinned to the felt above the windshield was involved in a tiny orbit lately initiated by a sharp curve.

  – Take it easy, F.

  – It’s my night! My night!

  – Yes it is, F. You finally made it: you’re a Member of Parliament.

  – I’m in the world of men.

  – F., put it back. Enough is enough.

  – Never put it back when it gets like this.

  – My God! I’ve never seen you so big! What’s going on in your mind? What are you thinking of? Please teach me how to do it. Can I hold it?

  – No! This is between me and God.

  – Let’s stop the car. F., I love you, I love your power. Teach me everything.

  – Shut up. There is a tube of sun cream in the glove compartment. Open the glove compartment by depressing the button with your thumb. Dig into the tangle of maps and gloves and string and extract the tube. Screw off the cap and squeeze a couple of inches of cream into my palm.

  – Like this, F.?

  – Yeah.

  – Don’t shut your eyes, F. Do you want me to drive?

  Oh, what a greasy tower he there massaged! I might as well have addressed myself to the missing landscape we flung in our wake, farm houses and oil signs bouncing like sparks off our fenders as we cut open the painted white line at ninety, fast as an acetylene saw. His right hand beneath the steering wheel, urging, urging, he seemed to be pulling himself into the far black harbor like a reflexive stevedore. What beautiful hair poked out of his underwear. His cufflink gleamed in the maplight, which I had switched on the better to witness the delicious operation. As his cupped hand bobbed faster the needle tickled ninety-eight. How I was torn between the fear for my safety and the hunger to jam my head between his knees and the dashboard! Whish! went an orchard. A Main Street flared up in our headlights – we left it in cinders. I longed for the little wrinkles of his tightening scrotum to trap the tatters of my lips. F.’s eyes closed suddenly as if they had been squirted with lemon. His fist closed hard around the pale slippery shaft and he commenced to throttle himself madly. I feared for the organ, feared and coveted it, so hard it gleamed, streamlined as a Brancusi, the swelled head red and hot as a radioactive fireman’s helmet. I wanted an anteater’s tongue
to whip off the wet pearl which F. himself now noticed and with a happy violent motion incorporated into the general lubrication. I could bear my loneliness no longer. I ripped the buttons of my old-fashioned European trousers in my frenzy to touch myself as a lover. What a handful of blood I was. Zoom! A parking lot blazed and expired. The warmth spread through leather gloves which I had not time to remove. Kamikaze insects splashed against the glass. My life was in my hands, all the messages I longed to deliver to the Zodiac gathered to begin their journey and I moaned with the intolerable pressure of pleasure. F. was screaming gibberish, his spit flying in all directions.

  – Face me, face me, face me, suck bright, suck bright, F. wailed (if I remember the sounds correctly).

  Thus we existed in some eye for a second: two men in a hurtling steel shell aimed at Ottawa, blinded by a mechanical mounting ecstasy, the old Indian land sunk in soot behind us, two swelling pricks pointing at eternity, two naked capsules filled with lonely tear gas to stop the riot in our brains, two fierce cocks separate as the gargoyles on different corners of a tower, two sacrificial lollipops (orange in the map light) offered to the ruptured highway.

  – Ay ay ay ay ay! cried F. from the very top of his ladder.

  – Slof tlif, sounded the geysers of his semen as they hit the dashboard (surely the sound of upstream salmon smashing their skulls on underwater cliffs).

  As for me, I knew that one more stroke would deliver me – I hovered on the edge of my orgasm like a parachutist in the whistling doorway–I was suddenly forlorn –I was suddenly without desire – I was suddenly more awake (for this fraction of a second) than ever before in my whole life –

  – The wall!

  The wall occupied the whole windshield, first as a blur, then focused precisely as if an expert had adjusted the microscope – every pimple of the concrete three-dimensional – bright! precise! – fast film of the moon’s hide – then the windshield blurred again as the wall rushed into the glass of the headlights – I saw F.’s cufflink skimming the edge of the steering wheel like a surfboard –

  – Darling! Ehhhffff.…

  – Rrrrriiiiippppp, went the wall.

  We passed through the wall because the wall was made of a scrim of painted silk. The car bumped over an empty field, the torn fabric clinging to the chrome Mercedes hood emblem. The undamaged headlights illumined a boarded-up hot-dog stand as F. applied the brake. On the wood counter I noticed an empty bottle with a perforated cap. I stared blankly at it.

  – Did you come? asked F.

  My prick hung out of my fly like a stray thread.

  – Too bad, said F.

  I started to shiver.

  – You missed a great come.

  I placed my clenched fists on the top of the dashboard and laid my forehead on them, weeping in spasms.

  – We went to a lot of trouble rigging the thing up, renting the parking lot and all.

  I jerked my face toward him.

  – We? What do you mean “we”?

  – Edith and I.

  – Edith was in on it?

  – How about that second just before you were about to shoot? Did you sense the emptiness? Did you get the freedom?

  – Edith knows about our filthy activities?

  – You should have kept on with it, my friend. You weren’t driving. There was nothing you could do. The wall was on top of you. You missed a great come.

  – Edith knows we’re fairies?

  I threw my hands at his neck with a murderous intention. F. smiled. How thin and puny my wrists looked in the dim orange light. F. removed my fingers like a necklace.

  – Easy. Easy. Dry your eyes.

  – F., why do you torture me?

  – O my friend, you are so lonely. Each day you get lonelier. What will happen when we are gone?

  – None of your fucking business! How dare you presume to teach me anything? You’re a fake. You’re a menace! You’re a disgrace to Canada! You’ve ruined my life!

  – All these things may be true.

  – You filthy bastard! How dare you admit they’re true?

  He leaned forward to switch on the ignition and looked at my lap.

  – Button up. It’s a long cold drive to Parliament.

  40

  I have been writing these true happenings for some time now. Am I any closer to Kateri Tekakwitha? The sky is very foreign. I do not think I will ever tarry with the stars. I do not think I will ever have a garland. I do not think ghosts will whisper erotic messages in my warm hair. I will never find a graceful way to carry a brown lunch bag on a bus ride. I’ll go to funerals and they won’t remind me of anything. It was years and years ago that F. said: Each day you get lonelier. That was years and years ago. What did F. mean by advising me to go down on a saint? What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is a caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shapes of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love. It makes me think that the numbers in the bag actually correspond to the numbers on the raffles we have bought so dearly, and so the prize is not an illusion. But why fuck one? I remember once slobbering over Edith’s thigh. I sucked, I kissed the long brown thing, and it was Thigh, Thigh, Thigh – Thigh softening and spreading as it flowed in a perfume of bacon to the mound of Cunt – Thigh sharpening and hardening as I followed the direction of its tiny hairs and bounced into Kneecap. I don’t know what Edith did (maybe one of her magnificent lubrication squirts) or what I did (maybe one of my mysterious sprays of salivation) but all at once my face was wet and my mouth slid on skin; it wasn’t Thigh or Cunt or any chalk schoolboy slogan (nor was I Fucking): it was just a shape of Edith: then it was just a humanoid shape: then it was just a shape – and for a blessed second truly I was not alone, I was part of a family. That was the first time we made love. It never happened again. Is that what you will cause me to feel, Catherine Tekakwitha? But aren’t you dead? How do I get close to a dead saint? The pursuit seems like such nonsense. I’m not happy here in F.’s old treehouse. It’s long past the end of summer. My brain is ruined. My career is in tatters. O F., is this the training you planned for me?

  41

  Catherine Tekakwitha was baptized on the eighteenth of April (the Month of Bright Leaves) in the year 1676.

  Please come back to me, Edith. Kiss me, darling. I love you, Edith. Come back to life. I can’t be alone any more. I think I have wrinkles and bad breath. Edith!

  42

  A few days after her baptism Catherine Tekakwitha was invited to a great feast in Québec. Present were the Marquis de Tracy, the intendant Talon, the Governor M. de Courcelle, the Mohawk Chief Kryn, who was one of the fiercest converts Christianity has ever commanded, and many handsome ladies and gentlemen. Perfume rose out of their hair. They were elegant in the manner only citizens two thousand miles from Paris can be. Wit flourished in every conversation. Butter was not passed without an aphorism. They discussed the activities of the French Academy of Sciences, which was only ten years old. Some of the guests had spring pocket watches, a new timepiece invention which was sweeping Europe. Someone explained another
recently developed device used to regulate clocks, the pendulum. Catherine Tekakwitha listened quietly to everything that was said. With a bowed head she received the compliments which the quillwork on her deerskin gown evoked. The long white table shone with the pride of silver and crystal and early spring flowers, and for a minor second her eyes swam in the splendor of the occasion. Handsome servants poured wine into glasses that resembled long-stem roses. A hundred candle flames echoed and re-echoed in a hundred pieces of silver cutlery as the fragrant guests worked over their slabs of meat, and for a minor second the flashing multiple suns hurt her eyes, burned away her appetite. With a tiny abrupt movement which she did not command, she knocked over her glass of wine. She stared at the whale-shaped stain, frozen with shame.

  – It is nothing, said the Marquis. It is nothing, child.

  Catherine Tekakwitha sat motionless. The Marquis returned to his conversation. It concerned a new military invention which was being developed in France, the bayonet. The stain spread quickly.

  – Even the tablecloth is thirsty for this good wine, joked the Marquis. Don’t be frightened, child. There are no punishments for spilling a glass of wine.

  Despite the suave activity of several servants the stain continued to discolor larger and larger areas of the tablecloth. Conversation dwindled as the diners directed their attention to its remarkable progress. It now claimed the entire tablecloth. Talk ceased altogether as a silver vase turned purple and the pink flowers it contained succumbed to the same influence. A beautiful lady gave out a cry of pain as her fine hand turned purple. A total chromatic metamorphosis took place in a matter of minutes. Wails and oaths resounded through the purple hall as faces, clothes, tapestries, and furniture displayed the same deep shade. Beyond the high windows there were islands of snow glinting in the moonlight. The entire company, servants and masters, had directed its gaze outside, as if to find beyond the contaminated hall some reassurance of a multicolored universe. Before their eyes these drifts of spring snow darkened into shades of spilled wine, and the moon itself absorbed the imperial hue. Catherine stood up slowly.