MEMP’IS
BOOK SIX – “MEMPHIS,
TENNESSEE”
(Sunday {Venuday},
January 7, 2035, and After)
Barred
from the motorpool, Norlin
endures the short walk east on Cain, then half a block back to 450 8th Street, Southwest,
under weeping purple skies whose Elvis-tears drive the policeman onward, soaked
to the skin under his cheap, futile Departmental umbrella . On the corner, Henry Hat… cactus-dry beneath
galoshes and xanthous slicker… lounges beneath the
shelter of a cornice, deftly sliding the dotted paint-by-numbers canvas
(substantially enhanced, by now, with blue, red and yellow blotches) from the
portfolio and studying (or, perhaps, admiring) its chromoplastic
vissure
while Norlin removes his skimmer, cold hands
fumbling.
"Put that away.
Mondretto will not resist arrest. It is his desire
to be captured."
Norlin shakes his head; water
flies everywhichway (although it appears to dissipate
before reaching Henry Hat and his tableaux).
"Is that your psychology of the criminal mind... as you are given
to understand it?"
"Of this criminal, yes."
Norlin looks down at his weapon, finally pushes it back into the pocket of his
overcoat (where it nestles within Lisa Marie Klort's
rumpled, crusted panties). The suspect's
lozenge is a commercial warehouse; windows hinting floors somewhat taller than
usual... fifteen of them, dating the structure back to the earliest days of
Triple-J's suzerainty. There is faint,
century-old jas wafting out one of the windows... Count
Basie, perhaps, Norlin remembers. Or, maybe, Duke Ellington.
"Knowing this fellow," Norlin
presumes, staring upwards to count windows and receiving, for his trouble, a
mouth and nostrilsful of rain, "his studio would
probably be on the eighth floor. But
where..."
"He is an egoist," the man in yellow
reminds. "His ego would command a
view of the Trouble Factory, through that lozenge across the street and those
on Seventh…not to mention the Jatesaneum and, quite
possibly, the Specimen Depository, as also..."
Norlin drifts away from the door,
past some ancient, battered metal garbagecans upon
which unholy rain beats a frenzied tattoo... gazes between buildings to the
Trouble Factory, shimmering in New Plastic mist, then up, again, towards the
windows. He points...
"There!"
Henry
Hat, having replaced the wrapping paper over his half-completed Mondretto-by-the-numbers, sidles past, glancing into the trashcans
as he passes. Face down in one are
several rough, pencil sketches... the suncop removes
the topmost, shakes it dry and glances, then lifts the remainder and stuffs
them beneath his impermeable without showing any to Norlin.
"He's
waiting for us. More, perhaps, than
we've wanted him and awaited this moment, he's anticipated this opportunity."
The
ground floor door is unlocked, allowing the policemen entry into a corridor of
doors behind which hum strange, unseen machineries. Soon, they are facing an
untrustworthy-looking elevator with an old-fashioned manual crank. Norlin's fist
closes around the handle, pressing it forward until the lift begins its
lurching, shuddering ascent until, on the eighth floor, radiance streams
through the only open door in sight.
Walking resolutely towards the felon's studio, Henry Hat juggles his
connect-the-dots canvas and the discarded sketches within his raincoat - the
Corporal overtakes him, knocks on the bare, flaking concrete sill, announcing
himself...
"Police!"
"I've been waiting for you," the criminal
answers, from within his lair.
Norlin's first estimation of Mondretto is that he's an undistinguished fellow... average
or somewhat beneath in stature and thin, at that; balding, almost severe in a
white dress shirt, gray slacks and the nondescript blue suedette
shoes found in any discount bin at the Onlimart...
only his eyes betraying the germ of eager, glowing fanaticism. The studio, too, is sparsely furnished -
although its dangling wires and exposed pipes remind Norlin
of C-Squad, as do the stains and fungi on those walls. Rain spatters in through an open window,
beneath which the criminal's ancient turntable revolves, thrusting hot jazz
from a black disk out into the flailing storm.
There is a well-traveled card table... only one battered chair, but
several empty produce crates from the Chinese Market, also... and perhaps a
score of overturned plastic chemical drums.
An icebox and solitary hotplate, a shelf of black and white labeled
canned food and, in one empty can, a tulip, lacquered black. There are copies... or, perhaps, as the
policeman considers now, stolen (or at least salvaged, given the chaotic
ruination of so many East and WestAmerican museums in
the k’ball) originals... of Mondrians
on the walls, innumerable shrouded paintings atop the plastic drums, perhaps
hundreds more stacked up against the walls, flanking a Parisian streetsign (this assuredly stolen): Rue du Depart. A lone easel,
its masterpiece veiled by a dustless (yet grimy) pillowcase.
A miasma of depression like midsummer Baratarian
humidity envelops the Corporal. He has
risked his life, put his position in peril... for this!
Another kebbin' crazy...
"Henry! Corporal Norlin...
at last!" prattles the gregarious criminal,
flailing his skinny arms, pumping his fist toward the decaying walls. Even at a distance, Mondretto's
rancid breath precedes his greeting; a tang of illicit salt herring that turns Norlin's stomach until he looks away, whereupon an inexpert
imitation of Broadway Boogie Woogie afflicts his
vision. "At last! Can I bring you something?" their host
pants, "...water, an Integral. I'm
afraid all I have are fifty-fives. I have a low tolerance for extremities..."
"Just sit over there," Norlin
points to the chair, "and keep your kebbin'
hands on that table where I can see them."
"Integrals will be fine," Henry Hat counterindicates - inclining his head towards Norlin, away from the view of their suspect. "Thank you for your hospitality,
and we are very, very interested in
what you have to say…" and,
silently, he mouths the word "Confess!"
until Norlin shrugs.
The criminal retrieves a bottle opener and three 55's from the icebox,
setting them on a table in a straight line.
He frowns… pushes the foremost an inch to the left, its neighbor a
half-inch to the right, then invites the police…
"The bar is open.
Help yourselves!"
Norlin rolls a few drops round
his palate, wary of poison or some sort of incapacitating agent... even more of
Dr. Shore's furtive laxatives... but it's just a bland, old, slightly fusty
55. Probably well past its expiration
date - and the insipid beverage motivates the policeman to get on with his
interrogation.
"Sir," he commences, "…you have represented
yourself as Mondretto, no doubt an act of
discipleship towards that antek'ball painter,
deceased, now, how long… a century?"
"O no, hardly that, only ninety-some years! And, lest we commence this interview upon a
foundation of misunderstandings, let me assure you that… whereas Mondrian was,
and is, my primary teacher and I, therefore, his diminutive… we are not
entirely in accord; were he around to-day, my argument would be that he is not
sufficiently Mondrianiste. Of course, time is at issue, also… were he
alive and the beneficiary of all of this century's scientific progress, he
might well have evolved into replacing his New Plastic with my New Plasmic…"
"Perhaps," Norlin
hurries, "but what I intend to establish is that Mondretto
is a nom de plume or, as our coroner
or another of the French-speaking Baratarians might
say, nom de mort. Your given name is something else, entirely,
and is, I submit, Andrew Kowl. Your occupation is," and he cannot help
allowing a certain pride and contempt to colour his
speech, "a portrait artist, usually operating out of the Chinese
Market. Commercial portraiture…"
Mondretto*Kowl
lifts his arms, palms out. "We all
have to support ourselves," he allows.
"Although there are other
occupations that have proven more lucrative - bank robbery, for example."
Neither confirming nor denying Norlin's
charge, Mondretto*Kowl
merely replies: "Well, the best materials are jesk'balling
expensive…"
The recording on their suspect's turntable finishes, and an
automatic device… Norlin recalls his father telling
him that such machines were common, many decades before the k'ball…
retracts with a click, dropping another of the circular disks to the rotating
plane, whereupon the needle begins coaxing an unfamiliar melody from the tiny
grooves…
"Harlem Nocturne?" Henry
Hat surmises. The criminal merely lifts
his bottle in assent. "Strange,
isn't it… a man as yourself, obsessed… well, let us agree - concerned… with the
great game of the straight and curved should prefer such an antique, almost
baroque device."
"My teacher was as great a practitioner in the unity
of opposites as he was in the primacy of New Plastic angularity," Mondretto*Kowl replies, and Norlin cannot help noticing that one of the criminal's blue
suedetto shoes is tapping the paint-spattered floor,
following the rhythms of the jas. "In fact,
he came to mistrust any limitations,
including those posed by the boundaries of canvas. Those black lines…" and he inclines the
Integral towards one of the leaning paintings, "…well, they are intended
to infer continuation of the vissure out into the limitless void; bringing the universe
under my own New Plasmic thumb. Whereas Jezekial
Jeremiah Jates…"
"I wondered how long you could endure," observes
the suncop, "without dragging in the Adversary."
"Triple J," and Mondretto*Kowl fairly spits, pronouncing the name as a curse,
"well… he was untrue, even to his own warped visions of Undulation, Fusion
and, especially, Recursion. Warped, do
you see? Curved…"
"We see," Norlin
answers, disgusted. "Hurry
up!"
"The great compromiser,
willing to refract, to bend…"
and Norlin's scowl dashes the criminal's smug
expression, his words quickening… "a Tragedian at
heart, no better than Oud, or Vantongerloo…"
Figuring that he should follow Trouble Factory
interrogation guidelines (lest some clever k'ball
from the Law Firm exploit some minor Compliance violation to separate the
criminal from his duly deserved appointment with the Solar Furnace), Norlin extracts notepad and pencilstub,
looks up and asks… "repeat those names, sir, if
you will… spell them out fully, and explain their relevance to this case. Also, if you have information as to the
present whereabouts of either of these individuals, kindly disclose it now, or you
may face additional charges of obstructing a Trouble Factory
investigation."
"Good luck finding those!" scoffs Mondretto*Kowl - and Henry Hat
stares downward at his yellow shoes, embarrassed for the Corporal. "Both have been dead for a century, more
or less… they were colleagues of Mondrian, at first, but ended up
adversaries. Vantongerloo,
was a wretched symbolist… never accomplishing much, a wannabe, as the old folks
might say… my teacher dismissed him as an ordinary Theosophist. Oud, however, he was far more capable, hence vile, an
architect, a man of mystery and menace…"
"A menacing architect?" is Henry Hat's
question. "How was that?"
"He drafted schemata for buildings that would not fall
down."
Norlin has been taking notes in a
sort of scribbled shorthand, but the pencilstub
ceases moving... he blinks, stares at the criminal (and wonders, briefly, if he
should visit the Onlimart and avail himself of
spectacles)…
"And what the k'ball is
wrong with that?"
"When Oudplastic is replaced
by New Plasma, that impure animality in Man
engendered by confinement within impure walls, floors and ceilings shall
disappear. Not that I oppose Triple-J on
the issue of carnality," the quicksketch man
hastens to append, "it is, rather, that pure animal instinct should be
left to animals, while impure Undulation, Fusion and Recursion are to be swept
away by a Creative Destruction, extending to the architectural, as to all
corporeal things. The Jatesaneum being only the beginning…"
"Then you are
a murderer!" Norlin pounces.
"Not so! My New Plasmic explosives did not harm a soul - it was the corrupt
concrete and falling balconies of Jatesist Baroque
negligence that caused those deaths. And
- what of it, what are a few lives in the balance against the institution of a
whole, New Plasmic Becoming?"
"You're insane!" Norlin
charges, aware in the instant that he does of the gross travesty of the
accusation.
Mondretto*Kowl
sweeps the charge away with the flat edge of a palm.
"We
approach… without endorsing, exactly… the means
of baroque, as those barbarians in Mormentz express
themselves - nor, even, their nebulously apocalyptic ends. At least, there must be acknowledging of the vissure they
pose… a realignment of elemental compositions, rather as the master dismissed
Cubists, Futurists and such while, nonetheless, recognizing their worth in
contributing to the breakdown of corrupt morphoplasticity. A fundamental reordering of air, water, earth
and fire, if you will…"
"Like
the Cannonball?" Henry Hat attempts to be helpful…
"A temblor of the tenuosity of
aesthetics?" Mondretto
inquires back. "I'm sorry - I've an
unfortunate affection for alliteration.
Whoops!… I did it again! I'm not from around these parts, you
know…"
"So
we have gathered, Mr. Kowl," Norlin
agrees.
"The world is all a stage - my stage - and I've created New Plasmic
scenery and, also, sandbags to ring down a heavy, heavy curtain, long-overdue,
upon a sick and decadent society. Jatesland's City Council, the Law Firm and Trouble Factory
have all forced Jatesism down the gullets of the
gullible... sorry!… as those Strasbourgers forced
grain upon their geese to enlarge their livers - with predictable consequence
to the geese, and to the gluttons who consumed them. Barataria pulls the
strings of lifestyle crime, bringing their polluted geese ever into and out of
the bunghole of Compliance so as to ensure propagation of an ever-hurrying,
ever-scurrying captive population. They
are all in on it," scowls the quicksketch man, "the banks, fexxers,
the planetaries – worst of
all: the clueless rabble, the presumed innocents!" Abruptly, he lifts a pile of paintings
reposing against a mildewy wall under a window, next
to the turntable, and hoists them up, lumbering towards one of those rough
tables of planks, pilfered industrial drums and Integral 55 cartons.
The Harlem Nocturne plays on.
"You ask… if I so hate Jates,
why would I sabotage Pearson, the Venusian?" Norlin nods, though
reluctantly. "I have no affection
for Mars, one way or the other, but my teacher warned, time and again, that the
influence of the feminine destroys any nation foolish enough to embrace its
curvature. "When a nation relaxes
its masculine vigilance and embraces feminine values, warned a prophet of the
Pampas, deterioration sets in; barbarism sniffs opportunity and conquerors
contrive to put it out of business. When
Ray Eberle and Glenn Miller sing 'at last, my heart
is wrapped in clover...' what does that
mean? Has the beating heart been ripped
out, served up upon a nest of cattle fodder?
Or, is the clover interiorized...
a strange growth, perhaps constricting the lungs. Or liver!
So, then - why sabotage Pearson? Merely to cause chaos?
Absolutely!"
"That's all?"
Norlin scratches his neck.
"Isn't that sufficient? Here!…" and the
artist fairly stumbles over his feet in his haste to display, to the two
policemen, painted evidences of his crimes…
The "Harlem Nocturne" having concluded, a
sentient silence permeates the studio and Mondretto*Kowl stumbles, spilling his armful of paintings across his
improvised table.
"Record's over. That's what they’re called," the
Corporal asks, "records? My father
used to talk about them, they went round and round…
the jas, as
you call it, the different people's music, and Elvis. Do you have anything by Elvis Presley?"
Mondretto*Kowl
straightens as if some devil's flaming poker's been jammed up his fexxer. "That…
that baroque, hillbilly k'ball… my campaign as
regards the Veronica opposes Jates, but,
emphatically, not for any benefit to Elvis.
He was a lyricist… a mediocre strummer of guitars and so, howsoever
unknowing, a Corporal in the army of Apollo against the legions of Bacchus and
an enemy of planarity - sufficient! That
the Trouble Factory schemes to discredit this overrated, bloated little man and
suppress his music is reprehensible only for its unintended sanction against
the New Plasma, jas
and bodily integrity… were it entirely up to me, as it may yet be, his blue
suede shoes, sad hotels, clams and hound dogs would pass into a starless void
without comment and, so, without regret.
But, as one cannot always choose allies - the task is to keep one's eye
firmly upon the enemy, and…"
"One's artificial eye?" Norlin
replies. "Curiously ah… Oud-plastik sentiments from the Iatollah
of Incunabula, the self-anointed Pontiff of the New Plasma…"
"You flatter me," Mondretto*Kowl warns, raising a finger, "…or mock me, one being
the same as the other, in New Plasmic philosophy of
opposition. Which brings me to your
probable charge - utilization of analog, circular disks as alternative to
digital JatesCubes is not hypocrisy, per se, merely
reification of the powers of Creative Destruction. When jas became baroque, that son of a Mississippi pig thief was
one of those barbarians risen to annihilate it; each successive degenerate
cultural wave annihilating the precedent, lesser evil as brutally and
efficiently as the Thracian women tore another lyricist apart in another, better
time…"
"Orfeo!"
Henry Hat informs Norlin.
"His case is outside our statute of
limitations," the Corporal scowls…
"One
day, after the New Plasma has taken hold, so-called music shall have been
purified down to a sequence of adversarial sounds and noise," the quicksketch man proposes, windmilling
his thin arms in a sort of rapture, "performed, unvaryingly, upon diverse
electronic apparatus controlled by electronic composers according to stringent,
mathematical equations. Then, too, and
only then, we shall see an end of deterioration of the land of the free into
rancid, little security states. True
crime, as my teacher delineated, is maintenance of obsolete systems…but perhaps
I speak too much…"
"Perhaps," Norlin
agrees. "So let us speak of the
Third-Fifth Bank, and its confederates."
The culprit's shoulders sag. "Well… k'ball!… it's no easy matter, mixing Protein X, and the components
are expensive! We don't all come from money, you know? If I'd had to finance my explorations on
portraits of squirming little morons like Jody, Corporal… well, at least I had
the pleasure of meeting his mother. Can
you believe what Reason said while you were peering through that ridiculous,
HRI-approved telescope?… yes, Corporal, I see,
and the glass I see through affords
me vistas of penetrability that you miserable policemen can only dream of in
your sordid, Trouble Factory dreams… she said: 'Why Mister Kowl,
everyone says that you're so pure!' Imagine that, Corporal…"
Norlin's fists ball,
involuntarily, and he steps forward - whereupon Mondretto*Kowl shrinks back, warning "Compliance!"
"Let the fellow complete his confession," Henry
Hat advises. "As he is doing such a
splendidly thorough job of that…"
Fists tensed, Norlin turns and
walks to the window, staring out into the rain where, as it seems, the very
streets of Jatesland are warping, melting, hissing
and crackling and reminding the Corporal of chicken frying in the pan years
ago, when he was a boy before the Cannonball, a boy in the United States of
America…
"If you could… uh… change the record while you are at
it," the suspect ventures, "there is a retraction mechanism, but it's
suspect, after all these years. Like me,
I guess… there are records stacked against the wall, choose what you
will…"
And, bending his aching knees, Norlin
finds himself thumbing through square envelopes containing round disks - the
names and pictures of mostly dark persons tugging at the corners of his
memory. Fractious images float upwards
like corpses in a river - and, with them, a phantasm of advice from his father,
something about an A-train…surely preferable to the B, C or F-train.
Without even knowing so, he has picked up the enclosure
containing an anthology of Duke Ellington - he lifts it to the criminal for his
approval… his approval!… and sets it
down upon the turntable, lowering the volume, however, so as to continue his
interrogation…
"So - did you send more of your little dillingers, as the Trouble Factory
calls them, to the Specimen Depository?"
A New Plasmic grin softens the rictus of the criminal's face, his features veritably melting
with and melding to the achingly-pristine orchestration of the dark persons on
the round disk. "Not as you
think," corrects Mondretto*Kowl,
"as its ridiculously baroque Director will confirm, I had, by that time,
refined my palette to utilize simple shapes, composed entirely in primary
colors as, also, black, white and grays…"
"That Director, what was his name?" Norlin fumbles.
"Kleervogl," Henry Hat
helps out. "Kleinus
von Kleervogl."
"Him," the Corporal nods. "He saw shapes, forms he named in a
foreign language - German, I think, but nobody else within or outside saw a k'ballin' thing!"
"Of course they didn't!" the quicksketch
man sneers, "your common witnesses have not the
first inkling of planarity. Only when
they encircled and enclosed the Veronica and were, hence, exposed would the shapen have been
visible… there is a depth, I do not deny, but I defy you to perceive it even
through the most powerful Jatesian glass. You could mount a dozen such lenses… a thousand
of them!… one atop the other, and still
not discern their presence, but they would be there, all the same, just as,
perhaps, they are here…"
And the Corporal is seized by a compulsion to thrash and
batter at the air before his face… as if he's wandered into a jungle of
clinging cobwebs and stinging insects.
The quicksketch
man chuckles.
"Oh don't fear attack by shapen or, even formen; they are
here, to be sure… but they will not, and cannot, inflict harm on any object
without first being infused by tension.
They may become capricious without tension; a tension, however, that I, Mondretto, daub into their genesiology. Without this essential, germinal tincture,
they're invisible… ineffable… harmless as mice."
"I… I don't believe you," Norlin
answers, mulishly.
"Go to the Chinese Market if you will, and any
Celestial may inform you that geometry, like rhythm, draws upon those invisible
energies that compose the life-force… what Triple-J, with his rules and Solar
Furnace, called the vissure. And, so, we have Jatesian
law and Jatesist schools - they propagate such lies, impose
upon youth fictions and the contradictions of circular thought and ethical
curvature… a posture of moral cunning and leveraged expedience; empty mental
calories that displace rationality and the expressions of the Universal. As my mentor affirmed that his New Plastic
would be reasonable," and the quicksketch man
gives Norlin a wink, "…my New Plasma has liberated Reason to soar to new,
and unexpected heights…"
"We'll see how you may sing your jas, once you're locked up in the
bowels of the Trouble Factory," the Corporal brays back, fists clenched,
"or… or, in…"
"In Stimwood?"
"They don't take murderers there, more likely you'll
wind up in… in…"
Norlin had thought to mention
that murderers are more likely to end up before Lady G and, then, into the
Solar Furnace than in a Jatesist Academy, but, then,
remembers Zihei.
And Wilson, probably… not to mention Dr. Shore....
"Murderers! Oh my, Officer…come
now... I wouldn't hurt a clone,"
the artist scoffs, "well that's not exactly true, but near enough. Those who perished at the Tulane, for
example, they were dispatched by a creature of my own device, true, but I did not have a legally culpable hand
in their actual destruction, nor that of the ridiculous Italian. And that creature of mine impersonating a doop impersonating the Comte… well, he was no more alive
than one of those ashtrays boys like your Jody, Corporal, are still forced to
turn out in school art classes, decades after the smoking of anything has been
prohibited."
Norlin starts. "I'll thank you not to make further
mention of my son, or my, my..."
"Sorry,"
Mondretto retreats, wrists fluttering vacantly. "Igor Topple... he'd already come to his unfortunate end when I encountered him,
dead as poor Frank, in the vicinity of the South Node... you might say I even
provided him with a life, of sorts, beyond the grave, if only for a while. Of course, Frankie's remains were collected
by that horrid fellow with the dogs… so I decided to have a little sport with
Mr. Said, and his pleader while ensuring my sentiments
would be made known to the Trouble Factory.
That vile, little man... he richly deserved his comeuppance. Professor Pearson has been inconvenienced...
that his wrongheaded crusade has been justly discredited is only lagniappe, as the natives hereabouts
say... and my recreation of Frank Desperate... well, since he no longer
existed, in the first place… except in a few dried-up pellets of canine fex… you might say that I've returned to him a place in the
firmament out of a rag, a bone, a few hairs..."
"Hair?" Norlin
frowns with recognition. "You're Terushka's kebbin'
Monsignor..."
"...hairs," Mondretto snickers, "...a caprice, mine, and also a necessary component of
Proteins X and Y.
Whether you shall prefer to think of me as demon barber or holy fool,
even Creator, so to speak, I shall not give objection. And, once Barataria
has completed its task of New Plasmic Becoming… one
consequence of which shall be the disintegration of putrescent Jatesian curvature dissolved into the vissure of virginal linearity… the physical glass-smuggler, newly
reconstructed, will be spewed forth into this new, plastic world as an
autonomous, new plastic automaton. An
Adam, if you will... my progenitor of that New Man whose capacities even poor
Triple-J stood incapable of comprehending.
More experienced in the turbulence of this existence... if not wiser...
no wonder the poor dook committed suicide and drew,
with him, thousands of pathetic followers, no more than bugs, drawn to false
light."
"But all those who died at the Jatesaneum?"
Norlin persists, "...not to mention what those kebbin' lunatics up at Mormentz
have in mind?"
Mondretto*Kowl
dismisses the Corporal's implication with a shrug. "People... no less than societies... the
true lifestyle criminals
who measure virtue and wealth by coerced offerings of loathesome
excretions, deserve everything that's coming to them. Look at how the Comte's murderous Clone Six
has, as you know, beaten the system. He
just might enjoy life for many years as a very, very wealthy doop. More likely,
he'll trip himself up somewhere down the road, but all future choices are his…
I wash my hands." And the quicksketch culprit demonstrates just that, before the suncop and the Corporal.
"I do my job, and when my work is done, my creations have been
granted autonomy to utilize or to abuse my gift as they desire… it is all that
the world asks of God, why not of Mondretto? A Becoming of pixels… so
many little, little New Plasma portraits with stubby, digital fingers and toes,
scurrying pointillistically down linear boulevards
without a thought of diagonal short-cuts. Diagonalism, like
the convex, belongs to an outmoded past…"
"Then
you stand with those murderous phibes of Mormentz," Norlin charges,
"and their creators' plot to slaughter innocent children in their Jatesian sleep."
"I
stand for chaos - all forms of
chaos," the thin, fastidious criminal emphasizes, once again. "Obsolete agendas, artifacts, even whole
peoples will have to face annihilation before the New Plasmic
Becoming may take place. As for Gene and
Noira Debonair," Mondretto*Kowl scoffs, "for their failure and lack of vision,
they deserve everything the Trouble Factory has in mind for them… like the
Cubists and Futurists, they have served Chaos faithfully, if not exactly
competently, and you... Norlin... have been the
unwitting vehicle by which their unfortunate collision with the law shall
transpire..."
Henry
Hat has been looking from the paint-by-number sketch to the tip of his shoe
with a sallow studiousness that now dictates he raise
his eyes, and voice…
"The
Corporal does have a point about the
explosions at the Jatesaneum," the suncop confronts linearity's apostle. "Quite a few of his colleagues perished
in that fiasco…"
"Really? Really? Do you feel
any true personal loss, Corporal Norlin, would you
weep for any of those who… well, let
us face the music…" and the quicksketch man
turns in the direction of the Victrola with a lupine
grin, "…to the Trouble Factory, you were, are and will ever remain a
pariah. Of all those consumed, is there
one… even one… whom you would see my New Plasma return to, well, not life, but
a semblance thereof. Somewhat charred,
to be sure, but, as beauty sometimes may not be symmetrical, such lurching, inhabited
shapen
would, in their unity of life and death, symmetry and dissonance, perhaps
achieve vissure
further from the dull graveclothes of humanity,
nearer the chaotic ecstasy of Becoming...”
"Monsters!" Norlin
recoils.
"New
Plasmic monsters, if you will,
their physical deformities correctable by New Plasmic
surgery. And think, now… as I have
created, or re-created, Frank as my New Plasmic Adam,
have I also set my Eve loose on this Garden and, also, my reptiles? Ask, Corporal, only ask… and I will show
you…"
"No,
thank you. But what about the
Veronica?" asks the head of C-Squad, unsure, now, whether Mondretto*Kowl's offer has been
genuine or only a sly taunt.
"That!
It might interest you... or, perhaps, not!... to know how I uncovered the
secrets behind Protein X - more from alchemical and Theosophical sources than
from pure science, though Einstein and Crick were not without their
merits. Of course there was a weakness
that I have only recently corrected: being intangible, my Dillingers...
as the Trouble Factory has so quaintly dubbed them... could only employ their
varied qualities of persuasion, the brandishing of weapons incapable of damage
or insincere promises of the raptures of Eros, to convince so many dull,
predictable, material human beings to place those physical objects which I
desired in locations where I could retrieve them. But I continued my researches and, in time,
discovered another, better
substance... call it Protein Y if you will... that achieves the unfulfilled
dreams of my teacher's New Plastic. By
his last New York canvases of nineteen forty-one and forty-two, nearly a
century ago, Mondrian developed an obsession with actualizing, through portraiture,
the linear motion of streets, the whir of traffic, pedestrians, the punctuation of traffic signals. New Plasma, pixillated, binds to select corporeal objects of the
carboniferous persuasion, once certain essences of the subject are incorporated
into the paint. It might be a
human being or other living thing... a plant, a clone... or it might be an
organic but inanimate object. A JatesBar, perhaps, or even..."
And,
turning to one of the shrouded canvases, Mondretto
whisks its covering away. A leering,
digital Frank Desperate holds open a woman's handbag… in the depths of which
reposes the Veronica, cylindrical and dense as the congealed light of a
thousand chalky stars...
"...
a purse!"
"That's
Reason's!" Norlin starts. "Your kebbin'
Frank Desperate... did you set him up to break into my wife's apartment and
steal her purse?"
Mondretto
sniggers.
"Your
ex-wife, Norlin, said she had found her purse - and money, every kebbin'
cent! Remember? All that was retained was a fingernail's
worth of fabric, enough to fold into my oils to create and bring to life this image of a purse which is, nonetheless,
transmutable between the (senseate-only) Frank
Desperate, and (wholly corporeal) Veronica..."
"Which,
of course, you had to physically place within the purse..." anticipates
Henry Hat.
"Imagine. I actually held it in my hand: the Veronica!" A faraway gleam briefly inhabits the criminal
artist's maniacal gaze, such clarity that Norlin can
almost see through the criminal's skull to the blankness behind... spattered
blankness, like a filthy C-Squadroom wall. "So dense - heavier
than gold, and so much more valuable!
And where it is going, now, no longer to serve as torch, blazing a path
for those who usurp unjust authority by commandeering the fex,
no less than the souls, of human beings?
They meant to anatomyze it in the Solar Furnace at the height of
Centennial, you understand – Jatesday noon... the day
after tomorrow... whatever that will
be called; I find it increasingly difficult to follow the calendrical
manipulations of your City Council. To
besmirch, then obliterate, all corporeal evidence of the King's humanity, even
as they cast their pallor of opacity across his pitiful, mulatto emanations,
thereby causing a Jatesist congealing of faith and
despair as will advance, well, let us call it the encirclement of posterity."
"You
don't strike me as much of an Elvis fan," Norlin
finds a temerity to interrupt. "And it k'ballin'
well ain't my
City Council…"
Mondretto blinks, pursing his lips as
limpid strains of brass and woodwind arise from the circling disk on the
antique turntable. "Of course, I'd
prefer that any genius of improvised jas to the maudlin miscegenation of plodding, cotton-pickin' blues and hillbilly yodels, as messiah to the masses, but they are the masses, of course," he sneers, "and, as they have
only Elvis Presley standing between them and Triple-J's void of silence, well,
you're so square, baby, I just don't care…"
"I
believe that that was Buddy
Holly," Henry Hat corrects…
"Irrelevant!"
Mondretto snaps, and, between the icy lightnings of his blanched, turquoise stare, Norlin understands the man to be a murderer of the first
order, and much worse, besides… a murderer who believes.
"My
teacher arrived at the conviction that the purpose of life is the end of art - rather, its transformation
into a non-art which expresses, but is
not life. An artlessness of opposition: rest and motion, line and curve, the
bounded and the infinite. Even the Futilists and Cubese never suffer
by intensification. The visionary
discards repetition as an offence to evolution - tainted information, poor
whores with sores."
"A
fex," Henry Hat posits, "dangling from the
fissure growing in the vissure…"
"Then what about the Veronica?"
Norlin breaches the dispute, "…if it's still
with Frank... whatever he is... the keb's got my kebbin' career in that purse..."
"Well,
then... you shall just have to exercise your police minds a bit, won't
you?" And, after tapping two
fingers to his skull, the quicksketch man lifts
another disk from floor to turntable.
"Chattanooga Choo Choo?"
he suggests, and Norlin is perplexed, then overtaken by another distant memory. "Mondrian's affection for the
boogie-woogie is, itself, baroque… New Plastic, not New Plasma… a piano is
impure, but not so vile as violins and trumpets over
all. As for Frank Desperate…"
And,
riffling through a stack of canvases leaning against the wall, Mondretto*Kowl's cadaverous
fingers select… that, and that, and that…
"Here is your fugitive!" and the
artist finally hoists the topmost of his selections onto the table… plop!… in front of Norlin's nose. There is a bewildering constellation of
points, some few of which, attached to lines at right angles, depict an essence
of the man taped to C-Squad's refrigerator door, only now crouching upon debris
in a flooded wasteland, holding up an object that might be Reason's purse (or a
New Plasma simulacrum of it). But, it
might be something else, entirely.
Seizing a pencil, Norlin slashes at the canvas
in an attempt to connect the dots, only to have Mondretto*Kowl knock his hand aside…
"No diagonals,
please.
The truth may be revealed somewhat later, but shall be revealed co=linear,
after all…"
"That's
assault upon a law enforcement officer," the Corporal growls…
"Would
I show you assault?" The quicksketch man snorts.
"I, Mondretto… who see all that is past
and all of the future through invisible spectacles of the New Plasma,"
…and he taps his forehead again... a madman, Norlin
is certain, now… "I will show you destiny, if you have courage to confront
it." And he tugs the second of his
canvases up and over that of Frank Desperate… this almost entirely speckled,
with only a few short segments… he retrieves the pencil and extends it, point
first, towards Norlin.
"No? How about that which is the destiny of all -
my Incunabula," Mondretto*Kowl
nods towards the veiled canvas on the easel.
When Norlin shakes his head, the quicksketch man hoists the last of his selections atop the
table, then takes up his palette and brush, and
points. "You may retain your
illusion of free will, Corporal, for awhile, but he cannot…"
And
Norlin discerns the pointillist scaffolding of Henry
Hat's discovered portrait, which is now being completed with an astonishing
rapidity, proving the New Plasmacist every bit the
marvel that so captivated Jody (not to mention his mother). The solar transient removes his yellow hat,
lifting a puce-spotted hand to scuff thin, straw-coloured
hair as Mondretto*Kowl's
flying fingers punctuate every pixel with primary shades of white and yellow,
complemented… with broader strokes, as if to emphasize his genius, of black and
dark gray shadowing. With a weary,
grinding sigh, Henry Hat sags into the suspect's stark, angular chair,
trembling like a jaundiced volcano.
"Protein
Y," the quicksketch man shrugs. "While you did not give up any hair… or fex, or fingernail clippings… to the good Reverend, as he
did," jerking a thumb at Norlin, "…well…
that's not really necessary in this instance, Henry, is it?" And, holding two fingers over the aperture of
his bottle of Integral 55, he spatters the tonic over the canvas, whereupon the
planar Henry Hat begins to blur, to melt, to dissolve into sulfurous,
canary-colored ooze while, before Norlin's very eyes,
the real suncop… that very officer who has
accompanied the Corporal on his rounds of criminal discovery, finding clues in
a fingernailsworth of sludge and making salient
observations… begins decomposing before Norlin's
widening eyes…
"I…
I…" Henry Hat begins…
"You
what?" sneers Mondretto*Kowl…
"I
don't know… who am I?"
"You're
with the Solar Commission," Norlin prompts, before
frowning, himself, barely cognizant of the case slipping away "…if you are
not a Suncop, then who are you?"
Henry
Hat's voice withers like an October leaf.
"Copper good, lemons not transparent enough..."
And
then, before the vocalist… a man dead for, perhaps, a century… finishes
crooning "…you can choo-choo me home,"
Henry Hat has dissolved into a reeking puddle of phlegm, oozing across the
artist's floor, smoky yellow tendrils snaking around Norlin's
shoes as he steps back in fear and disgust.
"Who
are you?" the Corporal asks,
again, but the yellow phlegm on Mondretto's floor has
already burned linear slashes into the rough boards - bubbling and reeking,
already evaporating into noxious billows of yellow dust, blown round by humid
winds that have blustered in through the open window (and, perhaps, by the
undulations of the jas).
"Who
are you? Who are you? Who is… who was he, Kowl?"
"Don't
call me that!" retorts the angry criminal.
"I'll
call you anything I kebbin' want to," Norlin bellows back, "…since it's you that's been kebbin' my wife…"
"She," Mondretto*Kowl reminds the Corporal, "left you!"
"It's
not Reason, it's about Jody. You…"
and Norlin extends a finger
at the quicksketch artist, "are a bad influence…"
"I
have already explained," the criminal replies, archly, as the eccentric
mechanism of the record player engages and the needle drops into the midst of
"Chattanooga Choo-Choo" once again,
"the boy's a cipher, a malignancy… one of those lambs born to be shorn by
the exquisite blade of the Becoming… and not at issue, by any standard. Now, how about another gyre of my old-new
music… 'Mood Indigo", I think? Or… Norlin? Norlin?"