I have heard it went well, this latest of the Excesses of the Sodomites, with the ice cream barely melting, and everyone going home full and fiery.
The answer this time was "Poe-tree emotion," therefore "Poetry in motion," and that pleased everyone.
Not me. Not Brian. Not Nkeithi.
This was the fourth of the week's Excesses, so no one complained that it lasted but an hour.
This has been a good week!
Not for me. Not for Brian. Not for thoughtful, wealthy Nkeithi.
Nkeithi just looks at the ceiling. She's got an obsession with cracks, thinks there's something about them. "Random yet obtuse," she calls them. "Leaks in the dome," she calls them.
"My aching heart throbs only for you," I tell her.
The Excesses of the Sodomites was a record last week, for someone had delivered "Causation" by means of "Caw, Alsacian-La!" The entourage was stunned because of obscurity. But also because of opacity. The discoverer was the twin of the wit, and they bought a crate. Donatelli's Joy. Red fudge.
"I would give you a thousand crates," I tell Nkeithi. She is fair and has eyelids a little too large for her eyes, just perfect. Neither of us has ever discovered a pun. That is dangerous, but we aren't concerned. We are perfectly at ease, and completely uneasy. We love each other and the bloom of our lips.
It is only the passion that stands in our way. I am fatally attracted to these gatherings, these ridiculous scurryings of townsfolk, when we stand near each other, we townsfolk, and reminisce, and figure things out, yea slew upon slew of things, and we don't even question the future elucidation of yet more things....
"Truth and devices," Nkeithi mutters, swatting at a fly. "They confuse them! Truth is what you have that is pretty real, and devices is everything else. The difference between, say, knowing Bernard's pretence and, say, knowing that Bernard pretends." Her visage is cloudy but is just starting to lighten. Instinctively I try to keep her rolling.
"But everyone devises," I say. "Every wit, at the least."
"And a wit is the one who will found and founder, eh? The wit is the daring yakker? A clown with a bag?" Nkeithi turns over to face the wall. She is not bugged, though. This is odd. I try not to appreciate her quick curves but to watch all the walls for reflections--a shadow might keep me posted.
"Well all right," I finally say. "Maybe it's a big waste of time. Maybe it's a big fucking cruel, wasteful, ill-rigged state of meanness. Maybe it's the biggest miser fucking the stupidest corn farmer in the world. Maybe we're out of rights. Out of employment."
"Damn," Nkeithi mutters, shifting herself slightly. What is she doing?
"And maybe it's a big darling waste. All those wits a-parading their efforts, just looking up and down, checking out the townsfolk, pretending to be insight, true meaning...." I can feel her head brighten. I egg her on. "Well maybe you have it. Maybe you're right. But honey, if we didn't have wits...."
Suddenly Nkeithi is on her back and looking right at me with pain in her eyes. She puts a hand on her lower back. I ask if she's all right, but she just turns back to the wall. Strange.... I press on.
"Um, listen honey, there's nothing wrong with devices. I mean if you didn't have devices, what would you do? Where's the fault? It doesn't impede. It doesn't sniffle at all the wrong moments, so to speak. A wit..."
Nkeithi now screams. I get hit; I grab her back and she smiles.
And now, I can feel it.
A crick.
At "A wit."
Obvious keys.
A crick.
A wit.
The keys.
A crick.
Shaw.
Keys.
I tilt my head and put my foot on the bed, smiling wide. Nkeithi sits up, smiling wide. I lay my hand on her head and smile so wide it hurts my eyes. Nkeithi's face tilts to the right. I speak.
"A crick--Shaw keys. A rickshaw ease. We are."
Nkeithi takes my hand and we make mad nudity all over the bed. And then we leave. "We will take them by storm," she says. "Why didn't we think of this earlier?" I say. "Why hasn't anyone else?" she says. "Maybe it's too difficult." "This does beat 'Causation.'" "It beats everything," I say. "There's no way we can go wrong."
And we don't. We do a little waltz by Donatelli, the Red Deliverer waltz, and bring tubs and tubs of ice cream, too much, and the townsfolk get a little jittery from the sugar, and we're all dressed up and correct but they can tell something's wrong, they can tell we've got a finger on the pilot light, and they all go slack in the face as we say it.... They've got our message, they're stunned.... They'd lynch us if they weren't so intelligent....
They look at us, look at us, look at us. The atmosphere has certainly soured. A sturdy young man looks at us sourly and speaks, resentfully.
"From across the bold-streaming waters.
"In China there was Wu Liang. He owned a buggy with a little man that ran it and every day he made it to go get the people, in it they rode. A thousand days. Thousands of men and ladies.
"Ouch! The man is dead! He lies clawing at dirt in clutching-up of his muscles. 'Oh,' says Wu Liang. 'All this time I have been enjoying the life and the puller of my buggy is dead. I think there is too much triteness in the common life. The life of the people is more of worth than to be pulled about by a dying man. There surely is more!'"
Nkeithi and I go home to contemplate things, like whether or not we've done any good, and where's Brian, and how come a town can understand a critique of three words so well they get stunned and hyperbolic.
"Maybe they're not so bad after all," one of us says, nudging the other, taking in the stars, kicking the dew, and hoping for joy, joy, joy.