“No.”
“And turn off the gas stove before you go to bed.”
“Okay.” He shut the door to the cold, dark bedrooms. No point in holding a long conversation. He’d tell Mom about Mamie’s proposed trip to Flushing tomorrow. Time enough. What the hell was the Hebrew word? Biyah? Beer, he had wisecracked. By this act. . of my copulating with you. .
He pulled out the black looseleaf notebook with the blue-bound copy of Milton’s poems on it from the pantry shelf under the china closet, took them to the green-oilcloth-topped kitchen table, and sat down. How the hell could a guy stay as pure as Milton did? Jesus, angelic, and looked it. Traveled all over Italy. Must’ve been plenty of cash around.
Ira opened the book to where he had left off. Never mind the dreaming. He’d have to skim like hell. And tomorrow, Jesus, yes, he’d have to call Edith — no, Stella first, you boob. Get lost in your book, for Christ’s sake. Maybe coffee later. He read, skimmed, held steady on a line, forgot the burden of his troubles in its beauty. Boy, look at that about Satan’s shield: Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb/Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views. . Galileo, Tuscan artist. . If you could only have gone up to Galileo, and said: Hey, listen, Gallo, old boy. Instead of wasting your time trying to find out the speed of light from one mountaintop to another, keep your eye on one of those moons of Jupiter. Notice how long it takes before you see it again as the earth moves round the sun.
What a discovery. Trickle. Trickle. Gurgle. Gurgle. Leaky toilet flush valve in the box over the stool. Not a roach in sight. Scan me out that in iambic pentameter. Trickle, trickle, leaky flush — that’s a dactyl, hoople-head.
The way Mom picked up Morris, leaning way back like those ivory figurines of Mary holding baby Jesus to conform to the shape of the tusk — ah, the tusk again.
Read, will you?. . Ira leafed through pages, flattened the text. Man, what that guy knows. What did Mott say? In between studying Hebrew and Chaldean, you were supposed to pick up Italian on the side. Pages passed. The tenement creaked. The blue fringe of gas flame along the bar in the open gas stove hissed quietly.
Remember Belial’s argument. How did Milton say it? Counseled ignoble ease and peaceful sloth. Who opposes him? Beelzebub. With what rebuttal? Get at God via Man. Right? Seduce them to our party, that their God/May prove their foe. Okay. Belial versus Beelzebub. What time is it? Getting on twelve. A light wind had come up, driveled in colloquy with washlines in the backyard, seeped through the kitchen window, ever so slightly swayed the window shade. How long would he study? How long would his eyes last reading a blind poet? Ira allowed himself the luxury of letting the printed lines swim out of focus.
No, he couldn’t ask Mom to lend him money out of what she was saving for a Persian lamb coat. He’d have to tell her what it was for, even if he could find out who did abortions (without asking Edith who did hers).
“Oy, gevald,” he could just hear Mom cry out. “How could you bring yourself to do such a thing!” And he: “I could, that’s all.” She’d forgive him, she’d forgive him even if she knew he used to screw Minnie.
There were some things you couldn’t understand: motherhood: she had conceived him, gestated him, just as maybe Stella had conceived by him and was gestating part of him, changing him from son to father. Couldn’t you just hear Mom and Mamie haggling over what share of the midwife’s bill or doctor’s bill each ought to pay? Nah. Better ask Leo. He wouldn’t have to say whom he knocked up. Just knocked up a jane.
The irony of it all. A short while ago, Edith had had her uterus scraped, or what the hell ever they do. They go into the cunt somehow: vagina — those fancy goddamn words — with that kind of light on a mirror, parabolic, spherical, with a peephole in it. Open wider. Say a-a-h. Which one of those nimble, little, flagellant, little, spermy, little, protozoan bastards got to her. Christ, he thought he had a bag on; he could have sworn he had a bag on. Next time wear two — if there is a next time. Call him Houdini, if he gets out. You and your stale jokes.
Read, will you. . Print swam back into focus, into ken. Okay. Satan is elected: And through the palpable obscure find out/His uncouth way. . Jesus, a guy ought not read this for tests. He ought to just read it and read it and read it. Oh, hell. . is right. At least to Book III tonight. How many more pages would that be? He moistened his finger, counted: twelve. Well, get going.
Meanwhile the Adversary of God and Man,
Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design,
Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates of Hell
Explores his solitary flight: sometimes
He scours the right hand coast. .
He felt completely alone. With an open book before him. In a green-painted kitchen. Bile green, Mom called it. Green icebox alarm clock on it at twenty to two: 1:40 ante meridian. Box of household matches beside the clock: Big Ben. Everything had connotations: the wrong ones at the wrong time.
Candlesticks yellow on white tablecloth, burned out to little drapes of wax. And outdoors the limitless cave of night like a cold eternity. Big Ben. Oh, Jesus, he’d forgotten. Stella was the one that should have happened to: oh, boy, he’d forgotten altogether. O-o-oh, o-o-oh. His mind was pulled apart. That dumbbelclass="underline" “Is it all right if you don’t get your period in four days?” No, she didn’t say that. She said if it’s four days late. Boy, what a dumbbell. Tough luck — he didn’t know anything about it: tell her to tell Joe, tell Mamie, she was out with a — no, some goy caught her in the hallway, or better, a Portorickan. Said he’d choke her unless — They’ve got enough dough to find a midwife, or someone skilled in the business. Right?
He was thinking old thoughts, rehashing the rehash. And if she accused him, the dummy, never, he when? Oh, that was enough. But you know, to go over old fantasies again, what do they call it, make a virtue of necessity — some virtue: if he had to marry her, she’d be his slave: get him that, and cook him this. And he’d back-scuttle her every night, maybe day and night and Shabbes too. Would it be as wonderful as that night he’d hoisted her aloft on his stiff petard right under Mamie’s snore? No, that was like the penultimate rocket display with the American flag breaking out in red, white, and blue balls of flame — better than that: golden lions of Judah rampant on a field of sapphire. Hey, you know, that was one time cubic phylacteries turned into spheres, orisons into orgasm.
Shut up. You’re in trouble. Read, will you, for Christ Jesus. If you weren’t such a goddamn dope, you’d have been through Book II long ago. What d’ya got to say for yourself, Lucifer, shorn of glory?
Here we are, here we are: he ought to get a concordance — how he loved Milton. What gigantic talk. There was nobody like him; not even Shakespeare could command such ordinance of vowels as Milton, could consign such encyclopedic cohort of learning to his fable. Boy: Far less abhorred than these/Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts/Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore. . Ah. Ira stopped to meditate. The guy was a Puritan — unlike Shakespeare — and Ira himself was a Puritan, fouled up and gone astray. He admired Shakespeare, marveled at his inordinate, inexhaustible dramatic, linguistic prowess, but the artist was ever detached, ever uncommitted, unreeling out of his limitless being myriad characters in myriad situations, himself seemingly bound to no mystique. That was it. And Milton was bound. As Ira himself once was, still wanted to be, no longer could be. Mystique, devotion, sanctity — he was always running up against them, couldn’t rid himself of them. What a cinch — if he could.