Is the novel dead? If not, it is the most absurdly complacent of art forms, whorish in inclination, lugubrious in discipline. That narrative structure self-destructs is too apparent a point to need pressing, or that the story will warble on its pedestrian way, letting style be buggered.
Thus: after his meeting with Aquinas numerous adventures befell Dion, of which I shall relate some thought not by any means all. Before doing so let us jump ahead to five or six months after his relationship with Mary has been established. It is, let us agree, the first weekend in May, late one Saturday afternoon; the streets of Montrose are loud with mockingbirds and lovers, the girlboys pedantically fashionable in their see-through demeanor.
What is significant about this day is that it marks Dion’s first penetration of Mary’s apartment, an entrance of some moment, akin to that of Richard Nixon miming a golf swing from the gate of the Forbidden City, Peking, or Theseus disembarking on Naxos.
They rendezvous on the sidewalk outside of Rudyard’s but do not go inside, both of them being stony broke, without funds, on their way to the poorhouse, dry as squeezed turnips, paupered and penniless, poor as churchmice, utterly stint, etc. They walk the few blocks along Waugh and round the corner onto Peden to the building where she lives, a largish structure suffering from, and offending passersby with its angular deformity and its comprisal of some five separate architectural styles, each more baroque than the last. Mary’s rooms are on the second and topmost floor.
They are met at the door by her massive orange tomcat, Cecilia. (Mary insists it is an androgynous name.)
-Out you go, my little rogue, Mary says, booting softly the cat’s hind legs.
-go terrorize the stupid doggies, puss-puss.
The girl is a cat lover, Dion says to himself and Mary, reading his mind, replies:
-Cats are so nice because they allow us to be surreptitious fascists, without having to relinquish our socialist facades.
While Mary sets a kettle of water to boil on the stove’s ring of blue flame Dion reconnoiters her tiny room.
In one corner is a rolled up cot, black butterflies on a lilac sky. A single chair is set before the uncurtained window, occupied by a half-empty sake bottle. An autographed photo of Enrico Berlinguer oppresses a small square of the white emptiness of one wall. The opposite wall is liberated by a color photo of Twiggy, clipped from a newspaper. An empty vase upon the windowsill throws concave splinters of light upon the bare floor. Beside the vase is a shoebox, one side neatly carved away, containing a handful of books. Lighting a cigarette, Dion scans the titles. L’Age de craie by Mandiargues, a paperback dictionary of carpentry terms, Selected Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva, Little Bear Goes To The Moon, The Feudal Monarchy In Northern France, 1230-1730, Wildflowers Of Brittany with prints by Ruddel and Junot.
There is little else. A rubble of cords and broken fuzzboxes litter one corner, Cecilia’s toys another.
Mary comes in, unrolling a large poster.
-I found this today. It’s from the Musee du Cathedral in Strasbourg.
She flattens it out upon the floor and Dion kneels beside her, head inclined towards her own.
The poster depicts a naked couple facing frontwards and holding hands against a background of green hills down which tumble stags and lions and unicorns, bleeding under the weight of rat-like dogs. Overhead, roulettes of fire scourge the pinnacles of darkened cities. The couple bears the same expression of serene childish intelligence. Human, untouchable, lewd, miserable, and lovely. The woman is in her late teens, the man in vigorous youthful thirties; both exquisite in their symmetry and soft hairiness. Iron muscles swell from the man’s calves and arms, his penis slung like a spike above a pair of egg-shaped testicles, the woman’s breasts upturned in tiny whiteness, the nipples mere cherries of blood. But both bodies, Dion sees suddenly, are riddled with holes from which protrude the convulsive tubular silver of innumerable worms.
-God, that’s awful, he whispers.
-Yes, Mary murmurs in his ear, but it’s so beautiful.
The serenity of the faces seems to merge to tautness that will split, buckle into pain, livid with the coiling horror of the banquet. But the tension holds in perfect stillness and their eyes well with unreal intelligence, the gai savoir of the irrevocably damned.
The kettle plumes, shrill upon the fire.