“I’m afraid that I don’t fully understand it...”
“Then how can you presume to stand in judgment over it?”
The crowd, which had been growing restless, now murmured approval.
“Sir,” cried the wretched butler, “I beg of you...”
“Otherwise,” Cordle said with satisfaction, “I have a coat, a necktie, and an invitation. Perhaps you would be good enough to show us the Byzantine miniatures?”
The butler opened wide the door to Pancho Villa and his tattered hordes. The last bastion of civilization had been captured in less than an hour. Wolves howled along the banks of the Thames, Morelos’ barefoot army stabled its horses in the British Museum, and Europe’s long night had begun.
Cordle and Mavis viewed the collection in silence. They didn’t exchange a word until they were alone and strolling through Regent’s Park.
“Look, Mavis,” Cordle began.
“No, you look,” she said. “You were horrible! You were unbelievable! You were—I can’t find a word rotten enough for what you were! I never dreamed that you were one of those sadistic bastards who get their kicks out of humiliating people!”
“But, Mavis, you heard what he said to me, you heard the way—”
“He was a stupid, bigoted old man,” Mavis said. “I thought you were not.”
“But he said—”
“It doesn’t matter. The fact is, you were enjoying yourself!”
“Well, yes, maybe you’re right,” Cordle said. “Look, I can explain.”
“Not to me, you can’t. Ever. Please stay away from me, Howard. Permanently. I mean that.”
The future mother of his two children began to walk away, out of his life. Cordle hurried after her.
“Mavis!”
“I’ll call a cop, Howard, so help me, I will! Just leave me alone!”
“Mavis, I love you!”
She must have heard him, but she kept on walking. She was a sweet and beautiful girl and definitely, unchangeably, an onion.
Cordle was never able to explain to Mavis about The Stew and about the necessity for experiencing behavior before condemning it. Moments of mystical illumination are seldom explicable. He was able to make her believe that he had undergone a brief psychotic episode, unique and unprecedented and—with her—never to be repeated.
They are married now, have one girl and one boy, live in a split-level house in Plainfield, New Jersey, and are quite content. Cordle is visibly pushed around by Fuller Brush men, fund solicitors, head-waiters and other imposing figures of authority. But there is a difference.
Cordle makes a point of taking regularly scheduled, solitary vacations. Last year, he made a small name for himself in Honolulu. This year, he is going to Buenos Aires.
IS THAT WHAT PEOPLE DO?
Eddie Quintero had bought the binoculars at Hammerman’s Army & Navy Surplus of All Nations Warehouse Outlet (“Highest Quality Goods, Cash Only, All Sales Final”). He had long wanted to own a pair of really fine binoculars, because with them he hoped to see some things that he otherwise would never see. Specifically, he hoped to see girls undressing at the Chauvin Arms across the street from his furnished room.
But there was also another reason. Without really acknowledging it to himself, Quintero was looking for that moment of vision, of total attention, that comes when a bit of the world is suddenly framed and illuminated, permitting the magnified and extended eye to find novelty and drama in what had been the dull everyday world.
The moment of insight never lasts long. Soon you’re caught up again in your habitual outlook. But the hope remains that something—a gadget, a book, a person—will change your life finally and definitively, lift you out of the unspeakable silent sadness of yourself, and permit you at last to behold the wonders which you always knew were there, just beyond your vision.
The binoculars were packed in a sturdy wooden box stenciled, “Section XXII, Marine Corps, Quantico, Virginia.” Beneath that it read, “Restricted Issue.” Just to be able to open a box like that was worth the $15.99 that Quintero had paid.
Inside the box were slabs of styrofoam and bags of silica, and then, at last, the binoculars themselves. They were like nothing Quintero had ever seen before. The tubes were square rather than round, and there were various incomprehensible scales engraved on them. There was a tag on them which read, “Experimental. Not To Be Removed from the Testing Room.”
Quintero hefted them. The binoculars were heavy, and he could hear something rattle inside. He removed the plastic protective cups and pointed the binoculars out the window.
He saw nothing. He shook the binoculars and heard the rattle again. But then the prism or mirror or whatever was loose must have fallen back into place, because suddenly he could see.
He was looking across the street at the mammoth structure of the Chauvin Arms. The view was exceptionally sharp and clear: he felt that he was standing about ten feet away from the exterior of the building. He scanned the nearest apartment windows quickly, but nothing was going on. It was a hot Saturday afternoon in July, and Quintero supposed that all the girls had gone to the beach.
He turned the focus knob, and he had the sensation that he was moving, a disembodied eye riding the front of a zoom lens, closer to the apartment wall, five feet away, then one foot away and he could see little flaws in the white concrete front and pit marks on the anodized aluminum window frames. He paused to admire this unusual view, and then turned the knob again very gently. The wall loomed huge in front of him, and then suddenly he had gone completely through it and was standing inside an apartment.
He was so startled that he put down the binoculars for a moment to orient himself.
When he looked through the glasses again, it was just as before: he seemed to be inside an apartment. He caught a glimpse of movement to one side, tried to locate it, and then the part rattled and the binoculars went dark.
He turned and twisted the binoculars, and the part rattled up and down, but he could see nothing. He put the binoculars on his dinette table, heard a soft clunking sound, and bent down to look again. Evidently the mirror or prism had fallen back into place, again, for he could see.
He decided to take no chances of jarring the part again. He left the glasses on the table, knelt down behind them and looked through the eyepieces.
He was looking into a dimly lighted apartment, curtains drawn and the lights on. There was an Indian sitting on the floor, or, more likely, a man dressed like an Indian. He was a skinny blond man with a feathered headband, beaded moccasins, fringed buckskin pants, leather shirt and a rifle. He was holding the rifle in firing position, aiming at something in a corner of the room.
Near the Indian there was a fat woman in a pink slip sitting in an armchair and talking with great animation into a telephone.
Quintero could see that the Indian’s rifle was a toy, about half the length of a real rifle.
The Indian continued to fire into the comer of the room, and the woman kept on talking into the telephone and laughing.
After a few moments the Indian stopped firing, turned to the woman and handed her his rifle. The woman put down the telephone, found another toy rifle propped against her chair and handed it to the Indian. Then she picked up his gun and began to reload it, one imaginary cartridge at a time.
The Indian continued firing with great speed and urgency. His face was tight and drawn, the face of a man who is single-handedly protecting his tribe’s retreat into Canada.
Suddenly the Indian seemed to hear something. He looked over his shoulder. His face registered panic. He twisted around suddenly, swinging his rifle into position. The woman also looked, and her mouth opened wide in astonishment. Quintero tried to pick up what they were looking at, but the dinette table wobbled and the binoculars clicked and went blank.