Year of the Rhinoceros

Chapter 9: The Pissoir of Anomie — A Candidate For Wax — Espresso On The Mozartplatz

116 ~ Year of the Rhinoceros Chapter 9 The Pissoir of Anomie — A Candidate For Wax — Espresso On The Mozartplatz MY WOMAN OF NO, my Antigone, my ineffaceable Keat, Manny says to himself. She lodged in his lunch hour like a tower of King Ludwig, soothed him like a full moon of Democracy afloat above the Chesapeake —his remaining afternoon at OWC occupied with restoring her to dignity and subtracting all but her passionate face and that dark force animating her crime-and-punishment land. If not for her reckless morality, he would be unable even now to realize that subtle yet permeating condition, that formless loathing which demanded retaliation for truth, and thereby reduced Washington and all its cells to a pissoir of perpetual anomie. Manny whimsically decided on a different course home that evening . Worm had told him of the Civil War park off 16th street, near the White House—“a place of heroes,” Worm said, and since Manny was in the mood for heroes, he searched until he discovered, rising above all, a bronze likeness of General Sherman: the scourge of the South. Staringupathim,MannyretrievedhismemoryofKeatLinderhart’sfall. Hewishedabronzeforheralso.IfShermandeservedit,shedeservediteven more. And as he transfigured her to tragic-angel-cast-down, he immersed himselfunavoidablyintheloathing, feeling at once a displacement of mind that substituted his musings with premonitory images of a discarded idol, an American Ozymandias (perhaps a statue in The Gipper’s likeness, his elephant-sized head buried nine centuries from now in Maryland topsoil) as metaphor for the end of America herself—and this scary prediction he soon realized was nothing less than a warning of predators lurking nearby, all of them eager to squash democracy. Within moments, Manny found himself surrounded by the Morlock gang. M. B. Neff ~ 117 Just like the old days in Kenosha, his imagination stepped forward with a foot the size of Chicago. He unslung his red-white-and-blue shield and immediately became President Eden. He surged with the special powers of Gipper, JFK, and Captain America. He reminded himself that glory counted for nothing, and he threw his shield at General Sherman’s jaw, knocking it clean off. The General’s blackened bronze tongue fell to his neck with a loud clang. The Morlocks became frightened and slid back to shadow. They were cowards, after all! Satisfied , Manny retrieved his shield and made for the subway. He felt no remorse for Sherman. The General had spared no one, not even those who loved him. * * * POISED TO REDEEM GOD, Manny tenderly bore Keat Linderhart home to his room in Arlington. Hour by hour, he rejuvenated her, inflated her to Florence Nightingale-like atmospheres, her surfaces and forecast radioactively tragic yet immune to oblivion. Her glow of martyrdom filled his water glass, his hands and walls, the sweet-iced don’t-touch-doughnuts of Molly Wong, and even the bubonic visage of E-Man that unnerved him as he heated a can of bean soup for dinner. Onthisspecialnightthough,asyoumightexpect,Murphy’sLawstrikes. A blasphemous event occurs. It interrupts Manny’s mental shrine erection to Keat Linderhart. Between the afterwork garbage stream in his head and the surface of mirror above his bathroom sink, Keat’s face (having grown brighter and brighter) rises up to blind him like a big glow-blob of flashlight. Her head lifts and tilts back, as if in recovery from prayer, and her eyes open, just a little till they gleam scintillate and blue as the oaf-stammering eyes of Mzz Dracos. How can he resist? Keat’s face acquires the look of Dracos, and Manny finds this “dracosmorphosis ” of her annoying, even unsettling, but he can’t maintain the purity of her image without the Vendetta usurping it in some manner. 118 ~ Year of the Rhinoceros By bed time though, he accepts the inevitability. He allows this new version of Keat Linderhart to ascend as a savior no different than himself, and as a perfection he is not worthy of. On-screen at the cinema interieur of Manny Eden, she hatches into a pretzel of dove-white limbs atop a black lake of hair: just a flash of chiaroscuro, a shriek of consummation, then onto chest-grazing breasts of milky teardrop. But wait, Manny says to himself, this is all happening too fast. The evolution of worship into bold erotica requires stage-play realism . The images of word must be chosen carefully. At 1:00 A.M...