Triumph of the Spider Monkey Read online

  In a frenzy I slashed at the client’s bare exposed face and could not hear what people were shouting. A kind of blackness came over me. I seemed to fall through the floor, as if the thick white woolly carpeting of that expensive home vanished and there were coarse floorboards with cracks between them and boards missing in places, through which I fell in my excitement. On all sides I danced and lunged. I was wiry, wily. I was galvanized with energy as if energy shot through me in spasms.…And then I was being dragged somewhere, then someone was shouting at me that it was a mistake, we had broken into the wrong house, and I must stop what I was doing. Must stop! Gotteson need never stop, I told him. Why should Gotteson stop once he begins? It is all inertia, a vast mountain slow to begin its upheaval and then hungry to continue, in fact unstoppable. Gotteson showed no mercy.

  And so I pretended madness, to save myself from disaster. Yet I was always sane. I am like you: a progression of states of mind, forms of sanity that keep moving and eluding definition. I was always sane and had practiced insanity so well that in falling through the floorboards I came upon an earlier wiser self, that seemed to know the way out of that house and had no need for the shouting of my friend. Outside, on the terrace, I was overcome by a flash of certainty, a forward-leaping vision of what I must do—what I had already done, in the future, and only needed to remember now in detail—and I wound the leather thong around my friend’s neck in order to strangle him into collapsing, not into absolute death, and so escape. All this was done with calculation, though it took place in two or three minutes—rushed and frenzied and noisy—and I ran back down the hill through the underbrush to safety.

  A Maniac is immortal. He cannot be killed except by his own manipulations.

  THE COURTSHIP OF THE SPIDER MONKEY

  there she is awaiting him

  alone in a hole

  that is a room

  in a house honeycombed

  with holes

  hand-over-hand he climbs

  foot-over-foot up the side of the house

  the master of gravity

  concentrated as a bridegroom

  the Moon and the Machete

  communicate with winks

  The courtroom is restless. The third juror from the left, in the back row, is staring at the Maniac with a look glistening as the Maniac’s. There is something about the Machete that excites us all.

  3

  The Machete

  It sliced up more people than they have records for, how’s that for a tease? You think that the State’s records show everything?—every slash? There were more brides than I remember. The Machete was, is, two and a half feet long, purchased at an Army-Navy Surplus Store in town here, a blade of steel, a sturdy man-sized handle, nothing like that thing the Prosecution has under its control. That blade is dull. If it is stained, the stains are rust and not blood. You can’t bring the Spider Monkey’s powers into the Hall of Justice; you can’t even see the Machete except by moonlight

  Doreen B. waited like a tender space to be threaded, the way you thread a needle. I didn’t know her name until the next day, until the newspapers came out.

  4

  Gotteson’s Juvenilia

  Poems written at the age of 15, about which

  his English teacher at the Vocational High School

  in Newark, New Jersey, said “These are

  the products of a sick mind, Bobbie.”

  THE TRAIN

  a toy train the size of a real train

  was stalled in the dark in a field

  the temperature on both sides of the glass was 0°

  but the passengers were shouting anyway to get out

  they were pounding on the windows

  so I drove out with a fireman’s ax

  to smash the windows and let them loose

  but the ax got away from me and flew through the dark

  and when it returned to me it was bloody

  and there were hairs on it

  this taught me to be patient

  and wait in the dark

  THE COCOON

  I was sleeping in the cocoon

  stretched out to the exact size of the cocoon

  five foot seven and a half inches

  I was sleeping there and very happy

  then the alarm rang

  my foster-brothers ran into the room

  my foster-father grabbed me by the ankles

  I screamed for him not to pull me down backwards

  but he laughed and said “Time to get up!”

  they all laughed and dragged me backwards

  out of the cocoon

  when you are yanked backwards like that

  the insides of the cocoon turn to razors

  even your eyes are pressed into your head

  by the time your head is free

  your brain is suffocated

  but you get dressed anyway

  and go to school anyway

  hoping no one will notice

  THE FOOD-CHAIN BLUES

  when you are inside the package

  you can’t read the insignia on front

  or the magic Date of Expiration

  past which you will turn

  unhygienic

  5

  Unrehearsed Interview

  With a Child Therapist, Somewhere in Newark

  THERAPIST

  …your mother has issued a complaint, says she had to call the police on you, Bobbie. For shame! What’s your explanation this time? Why do you make life so hard for yourself and your family and this office?

  BOBBIE

  …not my family. They’re not my family.

  THERAPIST

  Your father isn’t well, it says here. Kidney ailment, eh? Your mother has issued a formal complaint saying that she’s at the end of her rope, her exact words; she can’t handle you and her own children—says all three of you are uncontrollable—

  BOBBIE

  They promised not to go after me. They said so. I told them I could protect myself.…said I’d take them both with me. I could do it.—It wasn’t my father; it was my foster-father. It wasn’t kidneys that killed him. Somebody backed over him in a—

  THERAPIST

  …Looking through your files is quite a revelation. Quite a revelation!…Did poorly on the Wenshler Verbal Skills when you were six…I.Q. somewhere between 48 and 78…Hardison-Radt Abstraction-Perception very, very poor…Faulty development of conceptualizing abilities… plus disjointed motor coordination and speech mannerisms.…What’s that sniffling? Are you sniffling?

  BOBBIE

  No. Not me.

  THERAPIST

  It’s obvious that you need love, obvious as the funny pug nose on your face, eh-heh, but who has got the stomach for it…the crucial question of our era. Eh? The last time I fell for that sniffling trick, my boy, and put my hand out to one of you—a cute little creature with cartoon freckles and big brown weepy eyes—the little bastard bit my finger down to the bone, bit right through the joint and swallowed the fingertip, nail and all. Here, look at this. How I screamed! What agony!—And for what? What was accomplished? They offered to stomach-pump my fingertip out of him and graft it back on me, but no thanks! I didn’t even want it back after that disgusting experience.…how to continue as a professional with integrity, a complex multi-dimensional young man with high ideals, confronted hourly by meager one-dimensional stereotypes like you.…I want subtlety, is it too much to ask?…Your father’s dead, you say? Did you say he’s dead?

  BOBBIE

  It wasn’t my father.

  THERAPIST

  That reminds me, Bobbie, the law requires that you be placed at all times in a home with both parents living— with both a mother and a father. So I’m afraid we’ll have to move you.

  BOBBIE

  I’m ready to go.

  THERAPIST

  It will only take a few weeks to get the papers cleared, and in the meanwhile I can have one of the secretaries type up these forms.…Why are you s
quirming like that? Don’t you feel well?

  BOBBIE

  I’m ready to go. Wherever you people send me. I can pick up and go anywhere. I’m ready. I’m ready all the time— night or day. I don’t sleep. I stay awake so I can be ready.

  THERAPIST

  That’s fascinating, Bobbie. And you’re only—how old?— this record says you’re fourteen, but you look older to me. You look a lot older to me. You’re about the hairiest monkey-ugly fourteen-year-old bastard I’ve seen in a long time, Bobbie. It’s pathetic, actually. I think what we’ll do is, to take a few short-cuts, just telephone juvenile court and set up a date, and that way your mother can dump you without a lot of red tape. Back you go into the bin! Back for the tax-payers to feed! Yes, it’s the same old story. Your original mother dumped you, and the State took you on. Fed you, changed your diapers, educated you, set you up in excellent foster homes, but you can’t appreciate it, can you?—with your monkey-ugly little face, that certainly looks as if it needs a shave. Is that the beginning of a beard…? It’s obscene, actually, to sit knee-to-knee with a creature like you. You’re not human. You don’t appreciate what people do for you. Huge taxes go into public education, yet kids like you roam the streets illiterate; you can barely read the street signs and can manage to tell one brand-name of automobile from another only by counting the number of letters.…

  BOBBIE

  I’m ready to go…I can go to the next place from here…I can walk to it.…I’ve defeated the force of gravity.…I can go anywhere.

  THERAPIST

  Uh, yes. It’s obvious to our office that you’re going to grow up as an institutionalized person, and from the looks of you you’ll be involved in a murder in a few years—from the looks of your shoulders and arm muscles you’ll probably do the strangling, though it could be the other way around if you cross up your sweetheart and he gets angry at you. But I could be mistaken: you could grow up on the Outside. In which case I’m sure you will do the murdering yourself. But you won’t make a penny out of it. The royalties will go to complete strangers. The starring role in the movie will go—of course—to someone handsomer than you, and of course much taller. You’re just too short to be taken seriously. No, you won’t make a penny out of it, you’ll be famous but back in the bin again, eating out of the tax-payers’ hand forever. That’s the way it is with little monkey-bastards like you, you just lose. Right? It’s a losing game. You can’t win.…But there’s no point in crying about it, or whatever you’re doing. That wheezing noise won’t change the constitution of the universe, Bobbie. Forget it. I’ll get you back in Boys’ Home right in the city here and you’ll be off the streets and safe for a while from your own evil nature. Will you please stop crying? Don’t you have a Kleenex? It’s disgusting, actually, to have to witness behavior like yours…a man like myself begins with high ideals, goes into graduate school prepared to devote himself to humanity, and what does he end up sitting knee-to-knee with?—little blue-chinned muscle-bound monkey-faced bastards like Bobbie Gadsen…or Gotsen…or Gotteson, whatever the hell this word is, the typist X’d half the word out. You’re a word that’s been half-X’d out, Bobbie! Poor little bastard!

  6

  El Portal

  The First Night

  “I’ll just pretend you’re not here,” she said.

  “What should I do?” I said.

  She walked away. She turned her back to me. I could see the spine beneath the skin, rippling there, the vertebrae moving like tiny knuckles…and the front of her face was slit sideways with a grin, I knew it though I couldn’t see it.

  “What should I do?” I shouted.

  She laughed and walked away. She walked across the terrace. The wind got into her fluffy pale hair and she clutched at it with both hands, helplessly. She turned her body so that the wind moved with it, eased along it. She was laughing. I stared at her and knew what I was expected to do. They were expecting me to do it. She jumped up on the wall—it was a narrow wall made of rock—and walked along on top of it, her arms outstretched as if she were sleepwalking, balancing herself above that fifteen hundred foot drop. She glanced back at me, her eyes narrowed in excitement. The sun was behind a thin tissue of clouds. A rainbow formed and dissolved. She was laughing, her porcelain-white teeth were laughing at me, she cried over her shoulder, “You little monkey!—hairy little honey-monkey!” This made me laugh, against my will. They were watching. They were expecting me to do something. So I ran across the terrace and followed along beside her, while she pranced above me, darting these little mock-loving glances at me, drawing her lips together in a shocked pout, then smiling, then grinning, while behind her things were sailing in the air—circling—constantly circling and looking for food—“Watch out for the buzzards, they might get in your hair,” I said. She giggled. I didn’t touch her, just to tease her. “They might get in your hair like bats and snarl you all up, tear into you, they might poke out your eyes and that wouldn’t be so funny, would it?” I cried. From this angle I could see the thickening flesh around her jaw, she wasn’t as young as I had thought, and the flesh of her upper arms was loose, very pale, wobbly, strange.…“You should wear more clothes,” I said. “You should cover yourself up more. Except your legs, your legs are all right…your legs are very nice.” She couldn’t hear me because of the wind, she paused and cupped her hand to her ear. “Your legs are very nice!” I shouted.

  “Louder!” she said, waving over my head. I supposed there was a camera and a sound-track machine behind me. How close were they?— would they use a zoom lens? I danced along beside her, beginning to snatch at her, just picking at her as if I were picking feathers—little pinches of my thumb and forefinger—pinching her thighs, her legs while she giggled and hopped away from me. One of the hawks darted down straight into the water behind us. She screamed, surprised. She jumped down from the wall and into my arms. We staggered backward, laughing. I began to tear at her clothing. It was all open in the back, scooped down to below her waist, and I tore it into pieces while she screamed and tried to get her fingers around my throat. “No you don’t, no you don’t!” I said.

  “I’m not one of your little-girl sluts!” she screamed. “I’m famous! I don’t need you! I don’t need to be humiliated like this!—Stop that, you little bastard, I’ll have you arrested—stop that!— I said stop that!”

  “Your face is slipping to one side,” I whispered. “Your mascara is running—”

  But she was scratching at me and didn’t hear. “Little wop bastard! Little monkey-bastard!”

  “I’m not a wop,” I said. “I’m an American.—Don’t you care, your make-up is all slipping down?”

  We wrestled together on the flagstone terrace. She shrieked and tried to roll away from me. I straddled her. “I have a son your age, stop this, I have a son—I have two sons—I don’t need you to do this—I’m above this—I—I’ll have you put on Death Row!—stop it!—you’re diseased, you’re sub-human, stop it, my children are here—they’re watching—I know they’re loose and watching—stop— wait—” I put my hand over her mouth, the gritty dirty palm of my right hand. She tried to wrench away. How we laughed together, secretly!—behind my hand, how we laughed! And the universe grew powerful, every cell of my body leaped with the desire to do well, and I—

  She got loose and waved wildly back at the house, where they were standing and applauding. She jumped to her feet, but I grabbed hold of her leg at the calf, then at the thigh, and yanked her down again. “Stop him, I’m sick, I’m raw, I’m worn out!” she cried, but they ignored her screams; only the cameraman approached us, barefoot, crooning words that seemed to be addressed to me. I didn’t pay attention to them. Found a clump of her blond hair in my fist. “Oh Bobbie, Bobbie, Bobbie you maniac,” someone crooned. It might have been the cameraman. It might have been Melva.

  Afterward sometime I lay at the shallow end of the pool, utterly still. The pores of my body were now closed. I could hear them inside the house. I thought, I will cl
ose myself from them. But one eye remained open, sharply, slyly, focussing on Bobbie Gotteson now on film, one of his performances now on film, one of his performances on film at last, though it wasn’t the performance Bobbie had hoped to give. But…!

  Oh Bobbie, Bobbie, Bobbie you handsome monkey, you sweet maniac, oh Bobbie, where did you come from?— what powers do you possess?

  7

  The Maniac Meditates

  Upon His Powers and When They First Got Him into Trouble

  I heard somebody yelling at her in my own voice—it was a boy yelling—a boy maybe eleven or twelve years old— yelling—

  Didn’t she know, the nasty stinky ugly old bitch, that I could set fire to this place if I wanted to?—could set fire to the stinky place we lived in and the stinky living room sofa where I had to sleep and the stairs and the whole building—didn’t she know this simple fact? Didn’t she know that I could set fire to her too and she’d go up in smoke, her baggy dresses and her underskirts and underwear all flaming up in smoke, didn’t she know—?

  Which one of them was this?

  One of them, I don’t know which one; one of my mothers.

  Yes, just listen: I yelled at her (it was some woman grabbing me by the shoulders tough and ready to bite and screaming back into my face) and when that didn’t work I whispered starting to sob, didn’t she know that I could do anything if I let my mind free?—if I unleashed it to do my secret will? And she just shook me and screamed and banged me against the wall and the radiator and my powers rushed to me, filling out my skinny arms and legs and chest, but she had more power, she had the power of thumping me back against the radiator so my left leg was in terrible pain and I could not get my mind razor-sharp enough to slice sideways through her. “…could light fire to you and you’d go up…” but nobody gave a damn, but right at that instant the melody of a song shot through my mind…and much, much later…much later…five or six years later…fooling around with a guitar in the Recreation Unit…the melody and the complete lyrics of my first song came to me, complete. Do you know it? Does anybody know it? They stole it and changed the words but the words are Could set fire! to you! and you’d go up! and no other words.…