The Pagan House Read online

  ‘Okay, then. I’m hungry. Let’s eat.’

  He walked very slowly but they still covered ground until, despite all his efforts, they were in the car-park of the Campanile.

  ‘What we doing in this place? I thought we were going to get pizza?’

  She walked purposefully across the road to Dino’s. Edgar followed.

  7

  We confess Christ within us a risen Savior, and fully believe that by yielding ourselves to the inspiration of his spirit we can do all things. So far from finding ourselves cramped and fettered, we are realizing that ‘where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty’ of speech and action. Had we no Christ within, a mere display of ourselves might with propriety be called arrogance; but the confidence and freedom which it is our privilege to exercise toward him, will in due time characterize our intercourse with each other, and the simplicity and absence of affectation which distinguish childhood will also be the distinguishing traits of children of God.

  ‘Notes on Shame and Bashfulness’, The Spiritual Moralist,

  Mary Pagan, March 1851

  At the Home Talk, when John Prindle Stone, newly returned to the family from his missionary travels to the west, extends the Operations against Shame and Bashfulness, George Pagan experiences a heaviness in his belly, a dryness in his throat.

  ‘The purpose,’ John Prindle says, sitting in a chair like any other, ‘is neither to embarrass nor to ridicule. Neither is there the intent to orgy. Babylon is where our neighbours choose to live.’

  Gathered in the Hall, the communitarians nod, as if comprehending their leader’s words when, rather, they are confounded by them. Mary sits a few rows away from George, a faint smile on her face indicating her pre-initiation in John Prindle’s newest plan. The Association has grown settled in its routines, become complacent in the quotidian, this establishment of a new, ordinary kingdom, which, for those familiar with the workings of John Prindle’s spirit, should have alerted them to the likelihood of an imminent Stirring-Up.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ says John Prindle Stone, ‘we extend the Operations against Shame and Bashfulness.’

  John Prindle Stone, stroking his beard, an action that in a lesser man might connote self-love, announces the formation of a Committee to supervise the running of the Operations. These, our spiritual engineers, the list of whom, George Pagan is at first relieved, then irked, not to hear his name among. Drily, like a foreman of works, John Prindle outlines the procedures for the next Operations: removal of all water-closet doors from hinges (hardware and parts to be stored in the workshop); fearless Sincerity to be the keynote of all communication, physical, verbal and amative; and a state of Edenic nakedness to be enacted in daylight hours, to be performed free of shame or vain display, for a limited time of perhaps a week, the exact duration to be decided by the Committee members, excepting, of course, protective clothing to be worn by those working in the trap shop, at the printing press, at the kiln, and most likely the laundry, although the Committee would rule upon that also.

  ‘In case of inclement weather,’ he says, forestalling the easier questions he sees rising to the lips of his audience, ‘good sense shall guide us.’

  A moment or two of almost silence passes between the last echo of text and the first murmur of commentary. A chair squeaks, Seth Newhouse fills his pipe—he has not yet conquered the Tobacco Principality—John Prindle asks if there are any questions.

  There are none: no one wishes to appear ashamed of shame. Chairs are pushed aside, members of the band take up their instruments (for there is a programme to be followed: this is a Thursday and there is always music and dancing on Thursday), and George Pagan is pleased to have a violin to tune, a bow to tap against his trouser leg. Before the dancing can begin, a useful denouncement issues from the visiting mother of one of the members, who had enjoyed a pleasant probationary stay thus far. The widow Mrs Short, newly born into the Association, remembers the manners and prejudices of her former existence and, red-faced, with dowager jowls ashake, bemoans the sin that declares itself so brazenly to be sinless, the crimes that her hosts and, she had thought, redeemers are committing against common decency, the scales that have fallen from her eyes, the satanic monster apparent, the creature made bare, undisguised, shameless. It is at these confrontations that John Prindle excels, although, in this unequal encounter, so enraged and foolish is his adversary that even Abram Carter would hold sway, and as he enlarges upon the terms ‘common’ and ‘decency’, with gentle irony and godly sincerity, his un-redoubtable opponent is left disarmed, weeping, astonished, and almost convinced of the falsity of anything she had ever believed to be true.

  George Pagan awakes the following morning in trepidation, dreading the extended Operations Against Shame and Bashfulness. Shadow shapes pass across the sheet separating his sleeping area from Harriet’s, unclothed silhouettes stretched into monstrous distortions by the morning breeze. George Pagan removes his nightshirt. He sits on his bed as he has on any day, so why should this one feel so very different? Solemnly, George Pagan, the wooden floor cool against his toes, pushes aside the dividing sheet to join his community on its new morning.

  Elaborate courtesies preside at the breakfast table, May I ask you to pass the gravy, sister? and Yes, indeed, the day is clement. George Pagan wills his attention to rise from the buckwheat pancakes and baked potato in front of him. The Operations against Shame and Bashfulness must not founder in bashfulness renewed. He smiles at his companions beside him, whose answering smiles demonstrate their concord, the collective resolve not to fail this latest challenge. It is the sheer variety of physical types that he notices first. He is not surprised by Seth Newhouse’s muscular frame—and Newhouse, efficient in nakedness as he is in every project, sits compactly, lightly haired (although George Pagan had expected a more bearish physique). Brother Carter, of course, takes to the expedition with vigour and flair, finding frequent reasons to display himself on the walk from dining hall to kitchen, ever eager to fetch more maple syrup for his brothers and sisters.

  George had expected to be timid, blushing, newly virginal, crouching bashful beneath the reminder of sin in the Garden, but, in this bright spring light, to his, and, he suspects, others’ surprise, he takes to the state of sinless nakedness wholeheartedly, showing neither an excess of modesty nor its animalistic opposite, which John Prindle calls the Babylonian Spirit—and for which Brother Carter is punished by the penalty of having to wear his clothes for a day. Indeed, it is a positive exultation that George Pagan feels, as if his skin is stronger following its casting-away of clothes. Even the act of evacuation is a source of gratification. In the benevolent proximity of the public eye he feels the generous gaze of God most warmly.

  The widow Short, too: her pink, creamy folds, her large arms folded beneath her immense breasts, the zany grin on her suddenly beautiful face. She, too, has given of herself, yielded to the Association in its operations. Her son Mordecai, though, is, as ever, aloof, sallow, bashful. He works in the pea garden with his harvesting bag held bashfully over his groin.

  When the week of extended Operations is over, and the Association returns to the polite state that the unenlightened call civilized, George is sorry. He has avoided the pitfall of vainglorious display and conversely the selfish withdrawal that calls itself modesty. Yes, there are scratches on his skin from careless walks through the woods, and it was he who, on the perimeter of the cornfield, was seen by a Lutheran neighbour who crossed himself and spat three times, but in this week of the extended Operations he has felt as close to the celestial music of the senses and thus to heaven and perpetual life as on few occasions besides.

  8

  The Indian Fighters clattered to some kind of stop, aftershock thuds of Rocky’s drums, dirty trailing chords. Husky Marvin, head bowed, stepped back, one hand loosely holding on to the microphone stand. Edgar applauded.

  Edgar was sitting in the doorway to the back room of Dino’s, tolerated because he had arrived with Michelle, who
was as easy and knowledgeable in this world as her brother was in Coach Spiro’s. She sat against Doug Ashton’s bass amplifier, rolling a joint that she twisted at the end and pulled through her dampened lips. Edgar had last seen a joint in an era before Jeffrey, when Mon’s boyfriend was Rufus, who had curly black hair and pale brown skin and wild slovenly ways that Edgar (pre-history, BE, Before Edgar) had admired. He had liked being with Rufus, had enjoyed the weight of his company and mourned his passing, after Monica had ended things, citing his impossible geniality, his lack of ambition.

  Michelle passed the joint to Sky, who lit it up. It was much smaller than the joints that Rufus rolled. Rufus billowed smoke from the sofa in a slow act of letting-go. Sky sucked in three, four, five quick, hard drags, holding the smoke down before breathing it all out in one explosion. By the time the joint had come around to Edgar, it was a third of its original size, damp and blackened along the seam. He tried sucking on it as Sky had done and his lungs filled with dark horror, twisting him double, coughing, hacking, needing to inhale and having to exhale at the same time, locked into an airless evil place that echoed with the sound of his own choking and the others’ laughter; he was inside that hellish room where the band was doomed perpetually to play.

  ‘Way to go, Edgar,’ Sky said.

  ‘One two three four!’ Rocky yelled, and the band started up again. Husky Marvin shut his eyes and gripped the microphone stand tighter and released his voice, which rose above the ugly swamp that his bandmates made out of metal.

  Edgar subsided. He sat beside Michelle against the vibrating amplifier. He watched from a distance his damaged world.

  Proud of his putative ancestor’s prowess in love, Ray Newhouse was no less proud of his own expertise on the electric guitar. He played twiddly anaemic lead, with whiny trebly little shrieks and intricate work on the high strings, sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor, his small head bent over his instrument, oblivious to everything but the intricate movements of his fingers, not noticing the others’ changes in rhythm or key, or even that Doug Ashton had kicked the guitar-lead out of the amplifier and that all his gorgeous trills and frills were unhearable except in Ray Newhouse’s own head.

  Edgar doubted he could ever move again. But what if he had to go to the toilet? He worried, worse than he had ever worried about anything before, how he could make that horror-journey. Then he worried harder about the repercussions if he failed. What if he pissed himself? What if he already had?

  The band fell to a lumbering stop. Rocky and Doug complained about each other’s time-keeping. Sky shook his shag of blond hair, examined his fingers, used his guitar pick to lever away some of the grease beneath his nails.

  ‘Was that a customer?’

  It had been designated Edgar’s job to look out for customers.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he managed to say, and his voice came out of some faraway place, which was maybe where wind came from too, he would have to investigate this perception when his thoughts and breathing and blood had become more reliable, if they ever did.

  Ray unfurled the banner he had made, red background, with a pale limp cylinder cracked in two under some sort of black object.

  ‘What is that?’ Michelle said.

  ‘What do you think it is?’

  ‘She don’t know, asshole. Why do you think she asked?’ Doug said.

  ‘It’s a flag. Band needs a flag. Hang it behind us on stage.’

  ‘What stage? We ain’t never played yet, and with you in the band we ain’t never going to.’

  ‘We know it’s a flag,’ Sky said. ‘But what’s that on it, that black kind of thing thing?’

  ‘And what’s that white thing?’

  ‘It’s a tomahawk,’ Ray said, wide-eyed at everyone else’s stupidity.

  ‘And that black thing? What’s that?’

  ‘Horse’s head?’ Rocky said.

  ‘I’m betting it’s one of those doofusses they have in Australia,’ Sky said. ‘What do you call them? Like a Frisbee? You throw it except it comes back?’

  ‘Boomerang,’ Edgar quavered out.

  ‘It’s a gun,’ Ray said.

  ‘Looks more like some kind of musical notation,’ Marvin said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Ray said in triumph. ‘It’s both.’

  ‘’Cept it don’t look like neither,’ Sky said.

  ‘Well you should fucking do it then. Took me hour and a half to make that.’

  ‘Is it supposed to mean something?’

  ‘Well, duh. It’s symbolic. The power of the Indians crushed under the might of the gun and rock ’n’ roll.’

  ‘What power of the Indians?’ Michelle asked.

  ‘They haven’t even got their bingo hall.’

  ‘I hear they’re getting these gas and cigarette franchises.’

  ‘And a casino. Word is bingo hall’s going to become a casino.’

  ‘Not happening,’ Doug said. ‘Firewater and falling over is all they can do.’

  ‘Happening right now. Construction already starting.’

  ‘I hear they got some like major investor from Thailand?’

  ‘I heard the Philippines.’

  ‘Jack Diamond in the liquor store? He told me it was the Mob.’

  ‘Since when did they let you in the liquor store?’

  ‘Redskins and half-breeds going to be printing money up there. Governor’s given his say-so.’

  ‘Governor’s a faggot.’

  ‘Fuckin’-A.’

  ‘You see?’ Ray said. ‘All this is in the flag. And more. People going to know we’re the Indian Fighters.’

  ‘Uh, excuse me?’ said Marvin. ‘I thought it was Indian Fighters in, like, Indian Fighters. You know, spirit of the noble warrior, Indian brave? That’s what I thought it meant.’

  ‘Oh. Did you?’ Doug said.

  ‘I thought so too,’ Rocky said.

  Doug glared at his brother.

  Ray jeered at Marvin, ‘You some kind of faggot, Marvin? I heard you were in Warren the Fag’s faggotty opera.’

  ‘You in an opera, Marvin?’ said Sky.

  Marvin shrugged. The shame of it was written on him.

  ‘I don’t want to be in the band if the singer’s some Indian-lover opera guy.’

  ‘And we don’t want you in the band anyhow so that’s not a problem, is it?’ said Sky, who threw the first pizza box at Ray’s head. Doug and Rocky threw the most. Ray kept ducking and looked as if he was going to cry and reached to Michelle for consolation, but Michelle recognized where the power was, and wasn’t, in this room and threw several boxes at him herself.

  Rocky sat at his drums and beat out time on the snare. ‘Come on! Let’s play some rock ’n’ roll. One, three four!’

  The Indian Fighters started up again. Ray plugged in his guitar lead and Doug kicked it out again. Sky turned his back. Ray, as if performing a burial, packed away his guitar case and walked out. Edgar, seeing this as maybe his only chance to get away, followed him. At the corner of Route 5 and Prindle, outside the Onyataka Silverware factory, Edgar managed to say, ‘Do you know anything about dead cats, Ray?’ and the guitarist sprayed him with imaginary bullets from his guitar case and walked away, hunched.

  Edgar felt as unready and incapable of action as he had ever been in his life. Walking was a trial. Breathing was an issue. He needed to lie down. He was outside the Campanile. Edgar performed the bravest act he could attempt. He pushed open the door of the Campanile, where all the tables were empty and mauve prints of Italian piazzas and gilt mirrors hung on the lavender-striped walls, and Electa was at the maître d’ station with a stack of menus and a dust of flour on her cheek.

  ‘Table for one?’ she asked him.

  ‘No. Uh, yeah. No. Please,’ Edgar said.

  She put him in a seat by the window, which was exposed to stares from passers-by and was blindingly sunny.

  ‘Can I sit over there?’ he managed to ask, pointing to one of the tables in the shadows towards the back.


  ‘Those are reserved. Did Sir make a booking?’ she said.

  ‘No. He, I, didn’t.’

  ‘Our specials today are home-made New England clam chowder, amatriciana sauce on the pasta of your choosing and a seafood gumbo à la casa.’

  ‘I just need. Want—’

  ‘I’ll take your order now. We’re rushed off our feet.’

  Electa looked around at the gloomily deserted room, which the air-conditioner worked noisily hard to freeze.

  ‘Uh, okay. I’ll take a pizza. Margarita.’

  ‘Small?’ sneered Electa.

  ‘Large,’ Edgar said defiantly.

  He promised himself to begin his apologies—for breaking their date, for himself, for everything—when she came back with his glass of water, but she brought him a root beer instead, which silenced him, so he resolved that he would speak to her while she was lighting the candle in its plump orange glass, but he could only watch her doing that, the steady sureness of her hand, the delicacy of her wrist, the dark hairs lying transverse across her yellow skin, and when he had discovered a kind of calmness in closing his eyes, the pizza arrived in its immensity of steel-trayed horror.

  Edgar chewed endlessly at unswallowable bulges of grease and gloop, and she stood there, openly laughing at him.

  But he was Edgar, who had taken drugs, and nothing should be beyond his capacity. So when Electa spoke to him just when he was at his most defenceless, with the most intractable lump of sludge in his mouth, Edgar rose to the challenge.

  ‘How was it on the markets today? Portfolio going strong?’

  ‘Bootde szerimina.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Edgar forced himself to swallow; the bolus of gloop rose back up, and he could see it as a little doughy cheesy monster with grinning evil mouth and tenacious hands, and he made himself not think about it and forced it down again. ‘About the cinema.’

  ‘Please. Don’t mention it. I know how busy you are. Have you found your darling little cat-killer yet?’