Thomas M. Disch - Camp Concentration

VIP免费

2024-12-20 0 0 256.19KB 90 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

CAMP CONCENTRATION

by Thomas M. Disch

Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of

Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of

Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United

States by Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York, in 1969. Vintage Books and

colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MAY 1999

ISBN 0-375-70545-7

This book is dedicated, with thanks,

to John Sladek and Thomas Mann,

two good writers.

Now, reader, I have told my dream to thee;

See if thou canst interpret it to me,

Or to thyself, or neighbor. But take heed

Of misinterpreting; for that, instead

Of doing good, wifi but thyself abuse.

By misinterpreting evil issues.

Take heed, also, that thou be not extreme,

In playing with the outside of my dream.

Nor let my figure, or similitude,

Put thee into a laughter or a feud;

Leave this for boys and fools; but as for thee,

Do thou the substance of my matter see.

Put by the curtains; look within my veil;

Turn up my metaphors and do not fail.

There, if thou seekst them, such things to find,

As will be helpful to an honest mind.

What of my dross thou findest there, be bold

To throw away, but yet preserve the gold.

What if my gold be wrapped in ore?

None throws away the apple for the core.

But if thou shalt cast all away as vain,

I know not but 'twill make me dream again.

John Bunyan,

The Pilgrim's Progress

BOOK ONE

May 11Young R.M., my Mormon guard, has brought me a supply of paper at last.

It is three months to the day since I first asked him for some. Inexplicable,

this change of heart. Perhaps Andrea has been able to get a bribe to him.

Rigor Mortis denies it, but then he would deny it. We talked politics, and I

was able to gather from hints R.M. let drop that President McNamara has

decided to use "tactical" nuclear weapons. Perhaps, therefore, it is to

McNamara, not to Andrea, that I am indebted for this paper, since R.M. has

been fretting these many weeks that General Sherman, poor General Sherman, had

been denied adequate hitting power. When, as today, R.M. is happy, his fearful

smile, those thin lips pulled back tightly across the perfect deathshead

teeth, ifickers into being at the slightest pretense of humor. Why do all the

Mormons I have known have that same constipated smile? Is their toilet

training exceptionally severe?

This is my journal. I can be candid here. Candidly, I could not be more

miserable.

May 12Journals, such as I have erewhile attempted, have a way of becoming

merely exhortatory. I must remember, here, to be circumstantial from the

start, taking as model that sublime record of prison existence, _The House of

the Dead_. It should be easy to be circumstantial here: not since childhood

has mere circumstance so tyrannized me. The two hours each day before dinner

are spent in a Gethsemane of dread and hope. Dread lest we be served that vile

spaghetti once again. Hope that there may be a good hunk of meat in my ladle

of stew, or an apple for dessert. Worse than "chow" is each morning's mad

spate of scrubbing and polishing to prepare our cells for inspection. The

cells are as bony-clean as a dream of Philip Johnson (Grand Central Bathroom),

while we, the prisoners, carry about with us the incredible, ineradicable

smell of our stale, wasted flesh.

However, we lead here no worse a life than we would be leading now

outside these walls had we answered our draft calls. Nasty as this prison is,

there is this advantage to it--that it will not lead so promptly, so probably,

to death. Not to mention the inestimable advantage of righteousness.

Ah, but who is this "we"? Besides myself there are not more than a dozen

other conchies here, and we are kept carefully apart, to prevent the

possibility of esprit. The prisoners--the _real_ prisoners--hold us in

contempt. They have that more sustaining advantage than righteousness--guilt.

So our isolation, my isolation, becomes ever more absolute. And, I fear, my

self-pity. There are evenings when I sit here _hoping_ that R.M. will come by

to argue with me.

Four months! And my sentence is for five years. . . . That is the Gorgon

of all my thoughts.

May 13I must speak of Smede. Warden Smede, my arch enemy. Smede the arbitrary,

who still refuses me library privileges, allows me only a New Testament and a

prayer book. It is as though I had been left, as was so often threatened, for

my summer vacation with the loathed Uncle Morris of my childhood (who

counseled my parents that I would "lose my eyes" by reading too much). Bald,

booming, fat with the fatness of a ruined athelete: Smede. One might despise

him only for having such a name. Today I learned from the small portion of my

monthly letter from Andrea that the censor (Smede?) had not blacked out that

the proofs of _The Hills of Switzerland_, which had been sent to me here, were

returned to the publisher with a note explaining the rules for correspondents

with prisoners. That was three months ago. The book is in print now. It has

been _reviewed!_ (I suspect the publisher hurried so in the hope of getting a

little free publicity from the trial.)

The censor, naturally, removed the review Andrea had enclosed. Agonies

of vanity. For ten years I could lay claim to no book but my wretched doctor's

thesis on Winstanley; now my poems are in print--and it may be another five

years before I'm allowed to see them. May Smede's eyes rot like potatoes in

spring! May he convulse with the Malaysian palsies!

Have tried to go on with the cycle of "Ceremonies." Can't. The wells are

dry, dry.

May 14Spaghetti.

On nights like this (I write these notes after lights-out, by the glow

of the perpetual twenty-watter above the toilet bowl) I wonder if I have done

the right thing in electing to come here, if I'm not being a fool. Is this the

stuff of heroism? or of masochism? In private life my conscience was never so

conscientious. But, damn it, this war is _wrong!_

I had thought (I had convinced myself) that coming here voluntarily

would be little different from joining a Trappist monastery, that my

deprivations would easily be bearable if freely chosen. One of my regrets as a

married man has always been that the contemplative life, in its more rarefied

aspects, has been denied me. I fancied asceticism some rare luxury, a

spiritual truffle. Ha!

On the bunk beneath mine a Mafia petit bourgeois (snared on tax evasion

charges) snores his content. Bedsprings squeak in the visible darkness. I try

to think of Andrea. In high school Brother Wilfred counseled that when lustful

thoughts arose we should pray to the Blessed Virgin. Perhaps it worked for

him.

May 15Nel mezzo del camin di nostra vita indeed! My thirty-fifth birthday, and

a slight case of the horrors. For a few moments this morning, before the metal

shaving mirror, my double, Louie II, was in the ascendant. He mocked and raged

and muddied the banner of faith, not to mention hope (already quite muddy

these days), with his scurrilities. I remembered the dismal summer of my

fifteenth year, the summer that Louie II was in sole possession of my soul.

Dismal? Actually, there was a good deal of exhilaration in saying _Non

serviam_, an exhilaration that is still confused with my first memories of

sex. Is my present situation so very much different? Except that now,

prudently, I say _Non serviam_ to Caesar rather than to God.

When the chaplain came by to hear my confession I didn't speak of these

scruples. In his innocence he would have been apt to take the side of the

cynical Louie II. But he has learned by now not to employ the meager resources

of his casuistry against me (another retrograde Irish Thomist, he) and

pretends to accept me at my own moral valuation. "But beware, Louis," he

counseled, before absolving me, "beware of intellectual pride." Meaning, I

have always supposed, beware of intellect.

How to distinguish between righteousness and self-will? Between the two

Louies? How, once committed, to stop _questioning?_ (That is the question.)

Does someone like R.M. have such problems? He gives the impression of never

having had a doubt in his whole life--and Mormons seem to have so much more to

doubt.I am being less than charitable. Those wells, too, are drying up.

May 16We were sent out of the prison today on a detail to cut down and burn

blighted trees. A new virus, or one of our own, gone astray. The landscape

outside the prison is, despite the season, nearly as desolate as that within.

The war has at last devoured the reserves of our affluence and is damaging the

fibers of the everyday.

Returning, we had to file through the clinic to get our latest

inoculations. The doctor in charge held me back after the others had left. A

moment's panic: Had he recognized in me the symptoms of one of the war's new

diseases? No, it was to show me the review of _The Hills of S!_ Bless, bless.

Mons in _New Dissent_. She liked it (hurray) though she took exception,

expectably, to the fetish poems. She also missed the references to Rilke,

which I so labored over. Weh! While I read the review the good doctor injected

what seemed like several thousand cc's of bilgy ook into my thigh; in my

happiness I scarcely noticed. A review--I am _real!_ Must write a letter to

Mons, thanking her. Perhaps R.M. will mail it for me. Maybe I'll even be able

to start writing again.

May 17The two faggots with whom, grudgingly, the Mafia and I share our cell

(it is not, you will observe, _theirs_) are suddenly not speaking to each

other. Donny sits on the can all day and tinkles blues. Peter broods butchly

on his bunk. Occasionally Donny will address a loud complaint to me,

concerning Peter's promiscuities, real or imagined. (When do they find

opportunities for unfaithfulness?) Danny, younger and black, is feminine, even

in his bitchiness, which is skilled and futile. Peter, at thirty, is still

rather handsome, though his face has a seamy, second-hand look. They are both

here on narcotics charges, though it is Peter's distinction that he once stood

trial for murder. One gets the impression that he regrets having been

acquitted. Their passion has too much of the element of necessity about it to

be quite convincing: If you were the only boy in the world, and I were the

only other. Now who's being bitchy?

I must say, though, that I find this sort of thing more palatable at

second hand--in Genet, for instance. My liberality balks before the real

thing.So there is, in this context, an advantage in being as fat as I am. No

one in his right hand would lust after this body.

I had thought once of doing an inspirational book for fat people called

_Fifteen Famous Fatsos_. Dr. Johnson, Alfred Hitchcock, Salinger, Thomas

Aquinas, Melchior, Buddha, Norbert Wiener, etc.

The bedsprings are quiet tonight, but ever and again, between the

Mafia's snores, Danny or Peter heaves a sigh.

May 18An hour this evening with young Rigor Mortis. The epithet may be unjust,

since R.M. is the nearest thing to a friend that I've found here. He is, for

all his orthodoxies, serious-minded, a man of goodwill, and our talks are, I

hope, more than exercises in rhetoric. For my own part, I know that I feel,

beyond my evangelistic urge to bring him round, an almost desperate desire to

understand him, for it is R.M. and his like who perpetuate this incredible

war, who believe, with a sincerity I cannot call into doubt, that in doing so

they perform a moral action. Or am I to accept the thesis of our neo-Millsians

(neo-Machiavellians, rather), who maintain that the electorate is simply

practiced upon, the groundlings of this world drama, that their secret masters

in the Olympus of Washington mold their opinions as easily as they

(admittedly) control the press.

I might even wish that were so. If persuasion were so easy a task,

perhaps the few voices of righteousness might hope to have some effect. But it

is a fact that not I nor anyone I've known on the Committee for a Unilateral

Peace has ever convinced anyone of the folly and immorality of this war who

was not at heart already of like mind, who needed no convincing but only our

reassurances.

Perhaps Andrea is right; perhaps I should leave the war to the

politicians and the propagandists--the experts, as they are called. (Just so,

Eichmann was noted as an "expert" on the Jewish problem. After all, he spoke

Yiddish!) Abandon controversy that I may consecrate my talents exclusively to

the Muses.

And my soul, then, to the Devil?

No, though opposition is a hopeless task, acquiescence would be worse.

Consider Youngerman's case: _He_ acquiesced, he left well enough alone, he

muzzled conscience. Did irony sustain him? Or the Muses? When you rise to

deliver a commencement address and half the audience walks out, where is your

lofty indifference then, O poet? And his last book-- so bad, so bad!

But Youngerman at least knew the meaning of his silence. When I speak to

R.M. the language itself seems to alter. I grasp at meanings and they ifit

away, like minnows in a mountain stream. Or, a better metaphor, it is like one

of those secret doors that one used to see in horror movies. It appears to be

part of the bookcase, but when the hidden spring is released it turns around

and its reverse side is a rough stone face. Must try and develop that image.

The last word on R.M.: We do not, and I fear we cannot, understand each

other. I sometimes wonder if the reason isn't simply that he's very stupid.

May 19The Muse descends--characteristically assuming the mortal guise of an

attack of diarrhea, abetted by headache. Auden observes somewhere (in the

"Letter to Lord Byron"?) how often a poet's finer flights are

due/rumpty-tumpty-tumpty to the flu.

Though a small paradox, it should go without saying that I have not felt

so well in months. In honor of the occasion, I will transcribe my little poem

(the slightest of lyrics, but Lord! how long it has been since the last one):

The Silkworm Song

How can I possibly

Be ready to enter

That cedarwood box

Isn't it obvious

It isn't time

I'm in my prime

The dew is scarcely dry

Behind my ears

Words cannot describe

My tears

And the singing

Listen to it

The very stones are dumb

With ecstasy

How can I possibly

Go down

In that darkness

Leaving my soul behind

Listen to the singing

Butterflies

And broken pots

Come into the box

No no I may not

Stop the spinning

Of butterifies and broken pots

O stop

[_Here the handwritten portion of Louis Sacchetti's journal ends. All the

following passages were typed on a different size and stock of paper. Ed._]

June 2I am being held prisoner! I have been kidnapped from the prison where I

by law belong and brought to a prison in which I do not belong. Legal advice

is denied me. My protests are ignored with maddening blandness. Not since the

playground tyrannies of childhood have the rules of the game been so utterly

and arrogantly abrogated, and I am helpless to cope. To whom shall I complain?

There is not even a chaplain in this place, I'm told. Only God hears me now,

and my guards.

In Springfield I was a prisoner for a stated reason, for a fixed term.

Here (wherever that may be) nothing is stated, there are no rules. I demand

incessantly to be returned to Springfield, but the only answer I receive is to

have waved in my face the slip of paper that Smede signed approving my

transfer. Smede would have approved my being gassed, if it came to that. Damn

Smede! Damn these new anonymities in their spiff, black, unidentifying

uniforms! Damn me, for having been fool enough to place myself in a situation

where this sort of thing can happen. I should have been foxy, like Larkin or

Revere, and faked a psychosis to stay out of the Army. This is where all my

fucking prissy morality gets me--fucked!

What caps it off is this: The aged mediocrity before whom I am regularly

brought for interviews has asked me to keep a record of my experience here. A

journal. He says he admires the way I write! I have a real gift for words,

this aged mediocrity says. Ye Gods!

For over a week I tried to behave like a proper prisoner of war--name,

rank, and Social Security number--but it's like the hunger strike I attempted

way back when in the Montgomery jail: People who can't diet four days running

shouldn't attempt hunger strikes.

So here's your journal, aged asshole. You know what you can do with it.

June 3He thanked me, that's what he did. He said, "I can understand that you

find all this very upsetting, Mr. Sacchetti." (Mr. Sacchetti, yet!) "Believe

me, we want to do everything in our power here at Camp Archimedes to make the

transition easier. That's my Function. Your Function is to observe. To observe

and interpret. But there's no need to start right away. It takes time to

adjust to a new environment, I can certainly understand that. But I think I

can safely say that once you have made that adjustment you'll enjoy your life

here at Camp Archimedes far more than you would have enjoyed Springfield--or

than you've enjoyed Springfield in the past. I've read the few notes you kept

there, you know--"

I interrupted to say that I _didn't_ know.

"Ah yes, Warden Smede was kind enough to send them along, and I read

them. With great interest. In fact, it was only at my request that you were

allowed to begin that journal. I wanted a sample of your work, so to speak,

before I had you brought here.

"You really presented a very harrowing picture of your life in

Springfield. I can honestly say I was shocked. I can assure you, Mr.

Sacchetti, that _here_ you'll suffer no such harassments. And there's none of

that disgusting hanky-panky going on here either. I should think not! You were

_wasting_ yourself in that prison, Mr. Sacchetti. It was no place for a man of

your intellectual attainments. I am myself something of an Expert in the R & D

department. Not maybe what you'd call a Genius, exactly, I wouldn't go as far

as that, but an Expert certainly."

"R & D?"

"Research and Development, you know. I have a nose for talent, and in my

own small way, I'm rather well known. Inside the field. Haast is the name,

Haast with a double _A_ ."

"Not _General_ Haast?" I asked. "The one who took that Pacific island?"

My thought, of course, was that the Army had got me after all. (And for all I

know that may yet be the case.)

He lowered his eyes to the surface of his desk. "Formerly, yes. But I'm

rather too old now, as I believe you have yourself pointed out, eh?" Looking

up resentfully: "Too _aged_ . . . to remain in the Army." He pronounced _aged_

as a single syllable.

"Though I have preserved a few Army ties, a circle of friends who still

respect my opinion, aged as I am. I am surprised that _you_ associate my name

with Auaui. . . 1944 was rather before your time."

"But I read the book, and that came out in . . . when? . . . 1955." The

book I referred to, as Haast knew at once, was Fred Berrigan's _Mars in

Conjunction_, a very slightly fictionalized account of the Auaui campaign.

Years after the book appeared I met Berrigan at a party. A splendid, intense

fellow, but he seemed to be sweating doom. That was just a month before his

suicide. All of which is another story.

Haast glowered. "I had a nose for talent in those days too. But talent

sometimes goes hand in glove with treason. However, there is no point in

discussing the Berrigan affair with you, as you've obviously made up your

mind."He returned then to the Welcome Wagon bit: I had the run of the library;

I had a $50 weekly allowance (!) to spend at the canteen; movies on Tuesday

and Thursday nights; coffee in the lounge; that sort of thing. Above all, I

must feel free, feel free. He refused, as he always had before, to explain

where I was, why I was there, or when I might expect to be released or sent

back to Springfield.

"Just keep a good journal, Mr. Sacchetti. That's all we ask."

"Oh, you can call me Louie, General Haast."

"Why, thank you. . . Louie. And why don't you call me H.H.? All my

friends do."

"H.H."

"Short for Humphrey Haast. But the name Humphrey has the wrong

associations in these less liberal days. As I was saying--your journal. Why

don't you go back and ifil in where you left off, when you were brought here.

We want that journal to be as thoroughgoing as possible. Facts,

Sacchetti--excuse me, Louie--_facts!_ Genius, as the saying goes, is an

infinite capacity for taking pains. Write it as though you were trying to

explain to someone outside this. . . camp. . . what was happening to you. And

I want you to be brutally honest. Say what you think. Don't spare _my_

feelings."

"I'll try not to."

A wan smile. "But try and keep one principle in mind always. Don't

become too, you know. . . obscure? Remember, what we want is facts. Not . . ."

He cleared his throat.

"Poetry?"

"Personally, you understand, I have nothing against poetry. You're

welcome to write as much of it as you like. In fact, do, do, by all means.

You'll find an appreciative audience for poetry here. But in your journal you

must try to make sense."

Fuck you, H.H.

(I must here interpose a childhood memory. When I was a paper boy, at

about age thirteen, I had a customer on my route who was a retired Army

officer. Thursday afternoon was collection day, and old Major Youatt would

never pay up unless I came into his dim, mementoed living room and heard him

out. There were two things he liked to soliloquize about: women and cars. On

the first subject, his feelings were ambivalent; an itchy curiosity about my

little girl friends alternated with oracular warnings about V.D. Cars he liked

better: his eroticism was uncomplicated by fear. He kept pictures in his

billfold of all the cars he had ever owned, and he would show them to me,

tenderly gloating, an aged lecher caressing the trophies of past conquests. I

have always suspected that the fact that I was twenty-nine years old before I

learned to drive a car derived from my horror of this man.

The point of the anecdote is this--that Haast is the mirror image of

Youatt. They are cut with the same template. The key word is _fitness_. I

imagine Haast still does twenty push-ups in the morning and rides a few

imaginery miles on his Exercycle. The wrinkly crust of his face is crisped to

a tasty brown by a sun lamp. His sparse and graying hair is crew cut. He

carries to an extreme the maniacal American credo that there is no death.

And he is probably a garden of cancers. Isn't that so, H.H.?)

_Later_:

I have succumbed. I went to the library (of Congress? it is _vast!_) and

checked out some three dozen books, which now grace the shelves of my room. It

is a room, not a cell at all: the door is left open day and night, if there

can be said to be a day and night in this unwindowed, labyrinthine world. What

the place lacks in windows it makes up for in doors: there are infinite

recessions of white, Alphavillean hallways, punctuated with numbered doors,

most of them locked. A regular Bluebeard's castle. The only doors I found open

were to rooms identical to mine, though apparently untenanted. Am I in the

vanguard? A steady purr of air conditioners haunts the hallways and sings me

to sleep at, as the saying goes, night. Is this some deep Pellucidar?

Exploring the empty halls, I oscillated between a muted terror and a muted

hilarity, as one does at a slightly unconvincing but not incompetent horror

show. My room (you want facts, you'll get facts):

I love it. Look at how dark it is. One might almost call it stark. The

white paint is no longer white. It is more like moonlight than like white

paint. I almost faint, looking at it. I think it is yellow, but I am unable to

say. H.H. isn't going to be happy, I can tell. (Honestly, H.H., that just

happened.) For instant poetry it doesn't quite come up to the level of

"Ozymandias," but in all modesty I will be satisfied with less, yes.

My room (let's try it again):

Off-white (there's the difference, in brief, between fact and poesy);

original abstract oil paintings on these off-white walls, in the impeccable

corporate taste of the New York Hilton, paintings as neutral in content as

blank walls or Rorschach cards; expensive Danish-mod slabs of cherrywood

tricked out here and there with cheery, striped, cubical cushions; an Acrilan

carpet in off-ochre; the supreme luxury of wasted space and empty corners. I

would estimate that I have five hundred square feet of floor space. The bed is

in its own little ell and can be screened from the main body of the room by

vapid, flowery drapes. There is a feeling that all four off-white walls are of

one-way glass, that every drooping milky globe of light masks a microphone.

What gives?

A question that is on the tip of every guinea pig's tongue.

The man who stocks the library has more exquisite taste than the

interior decorator. For there was not one, not two, but three copies of _The

Hills of Switzerland_ on the shelf. Even, so help me God, a copy of _Gerard

Winstanley, Puritan Utopist_. I read _Hills_ through and was pleased to find

no misprints, though the fetish poems had been put in the wrong order.

_Still later_:

I have been trying to read. I take up a book, but after a few paragraphs

it loses my interest. One after another, I set aside Palgrave, Huizinga,

Lowell, Wilenski, a chemistry text, Pascal's _Provincial Letters_, and _Time_

magazine. (We are, as I suspected, using tactical nuclear weapons now; two

students were killed in a protest riot in Omaha.) I haven't felt a like

restlessness since my sophomore year at Bard, when I changed my major three

times in one semester.

The giddiness infects my whole body: There is a hollowness in my chest,

a dryness in my throat, an altogether inappropriate inclination to laughter.

I mean, what's so funny?

June 4A soberer morning-after.

As Haast requests, I will recount the events of the interim. May they be

used in evidence against him.

The day after "The Silkworm Song"--that would be May 20--I was still

sick and had remained in the cell while Donny and Peter (already reconciled)

and the Mafia were out on a work detail. I was summoned to Smede's office to

receive at his hand the package containing my personal effects. He made me

check it item for item against the inventory that had been drawn up the day

I'd entered prison. Searing blasts of hope, as I imagined that some miracle of

public protest or judicial conscience had set me free. Smede shook my hand,

and, delirious, I _thanked_ him. Tears in my eyes. The son of a bitch must

have been enjoying himself.

He handed me over then, with an envelope the same sickly yellow color as

my prisoned flesh (this was the Sacchetti dossier, surely) to two guards in

black uniforms, trimmed in silver, very Germanic and, as we used to say, tuff.

Calf-high boots, leather straps that formed a veritable harness, mirror

sunglasses, the works: Peter would have groaned with envy, Donny with desire.

They said not a word but went straight to their work. Handcuffs. A limousine

with curtains. I sat between them and asked questions of their stone faces and

shielded eyes. An airplane. Sedation. And so, by a route unmarked even by

bread crumbs, to my comfy little cell in Camp Archimedes, where the witch

feeds me very good meals. (I have only to ring a bell for room service.)

I arrived here, I'm told, the twenty-second. First interview with H.H.

the next day. Warm reassurances and obstinate mystifications. As noted, I

remained nonconimunicative until the second of June. Those nine days passed in

an Empyrean of paranoia, but that, like all passions, ebbed, diminished to an

ordinary humdrum horror, thence to an uneasy curiosity. Shall I confess that

there is a kind of pleasure to be had in the situation, that a strange castle

_is_ rather more interesting than the same old dungeon all the time?

But confess it to whom? To H.H.? To Louie II, whom I must confront in

the mirror almost every day now?

No, I shall pretend that this journal is just for me. My journal. If

Haast wants a copy, Haast will have to supply me with carbon paper.

_Later_:

I wonder, reading over "The Silkworm Song," if the fifth line is quite

right. I want an effect of disingenuous pathos; perhaps I've achieved no more

than a cliché.

June 5Haast informs me, by inter-office memo, that the electric typewriter I

use is part of a master-slave hookup that automatically produces, in another

room, second, third, and fourth impressions of everything I type. H.H. gets

his _Journal_ fresh off the press--and think of all the money he saves not

having to supply me with carbon paper.

Today, the first evidence that there is that here which merits

chronicling:

On the way to the library to get tapes to play on my hi-fl (a B & O, no

less) I encountered one of the spirits inhabiting this circle of my new hell,

the first circle, if I am to go through them in a proper, Dantean

order--Limbo--and he, stretching the analogy a bit further, would be the Homer

of this dark glade.

Dark it was, for the fluorescent fixtures had been removed from this

length of corridor, and as in a glade a constant and chill wind swept through

the pure Eucidean space, some anomaly in the ventilating system, I suppose. He

stood there blocking my way, his face buried in his hands, corn-silkwhite hair

twined about the nervous fingers, swaying and, I think, whispering to himself.

I approached quite close, but he did not rouse from his meditation, so I spoke

aloud: "Hello there."

And when even this drew no response, I ventured further. "I'm new here.

I was a prisoner at Springfield, a conchie. I've been brought here illegally.

Though God knows to what purpose."

He took his hands from his face and looked at me, squinteyed, through

the tangled hair. A broad, young face, Slavic and guileless--like one of the

second-string heroes in an Eisenstein epic. The broad lips broadened in a

chill, unconvinced smile, like a stage moonrise. He lifted his right hand and

touched the center of my chest with three fingers, as though to assure himself

of my corporeality. Assured, the smile became more convinced.

"Do you know," I asked urgently, "where we are? Or what's to be done

with us?"

The pale eyes looked from side to side--in confusion or fear, I could

not tell.

"What city? what state?"

Again, that wintry smile of recognition, as my words bridged the long

distance to his understanding. "Well, the nearest any of us can tell, we're in

the mountain states. Because of _Time_, you know." He pointed to the magazine

in my hand. He spoke in the most nasal of Midwestern voices, in an accent

unmodified by education or travel. He was in speech as in looks a model Iowa

farmboy.

"Because of _Time?_" I asked, soniewhat confused. I looked at the face

on the cover (General Phee Phi Pho Phum of North Malaysia, or some other

yellow peril), as though he might explain.

"It's a regional edition. _Time_ comes out in different regional

editions. For advertising purposes. And _we_ get the mountain states edition.

The mountain states are Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado . . ." He named their

names as though twanging chords on a guitar.

"Ah! Yes, I understand now. Slow of me."

He heaved a deep sigh.

I held out my hand, which he regarded with undisguised reluctance.

(There are parts of the country, the West Coast especially, where because of

the germ warfare the handshake is no longer considered good form.) "The name's

Sacchetti. Louis Sacchetti."

"Ah! Ah yes!" He took hold of my hand convulsively. "Mordecai said you

were coming. I'm so glad to meet you. I can't express--" He broke off,

blushing deeply, and pulled his hand out of mine. "Wagner," he mumbled, as if

an afterthought. "George Wagner." Then, with a certain bitterness, "But _you_

would never have heard of me."

I've encountered this particular form of introduction so often at

readings or symposia, from other little-magazine writers or teaching

assistants, smaller fry even than myself, that my response was almost

automatic. "No, I'm afraid I haven't, George. Sorry to say. I'm surprised, as

a matter of fact, that you've heard of _me_."

George chuckled. "He's surprised . . ." he drawled, "as a matter of fact

. . . that I've heard of _him!_"

Which was no little disconcerting.

George closed his eyes. "Excuse me," he said, almost whispering. "The

light. The light is too bright."

"This Mordecai that you mentioned . . . ?"

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

CAMPCONCENTRATIONbyThomasM.DischCopyright1968,copyrightrenewed1996byThomasM.DischAllrightsreservedunderInternationalandPan-AmericanCopyrightConventions.PublishedintheUnitedStatesbyVintageBooks,adivisionofRandomHouse,Inc.,NewYork,andsimultaneouslyinCanadabyRandomHouseofCanadaLimited,Toronto.Originall...

展开>> 收起<<

Thomas M. Disch - Camp Concentration.pdf

共90页,预览18页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Thomas M. Disch - Camp Concentration

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: