Chapter 3 -2

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SNOW WHITE: IN THE AREA OF FEARS, SHE FEARS MIRRORS APPLES POISONED COMBS IN addition to washing the buildings, we make baby food, Chinese baby food: BABY BOW YEE (chopped pork and Chinese vegetables) BABY DOW SHEW (bean curd stuffed with ground pike) BABY JAR HAR (shrimp in batter) BABY GOOK SHAR SHEW BOW (sweet roast pork) BABY PIE GUAT (pork and oysters in soy sauce) BABY GAI GOON (chicken, bean sprouts and cabbage) BABY DIM SUM (ground pork and Chinese vegetables) BABY JING SHAR SHEW BOW (sweet roast pork and apples) That is how we spend our time, tending the vats. Although sometimes we spend our time washing the buildings. The vats and the buildings have made us rich. It is amazing how many mothers will spring for an attractively packaged jar of Baby Dim Sum, a tasty-looking potlet of Baby Jing Shar Shew Bow. Heigh-ho. The recipes came from our father. "Try to be a man about whom nothing is known," our father said, when we were young. Our father said several other interesting things, but we have forgotten what they were. "Keep quiet," he said. That we remember. He wanted more quiet. One tends to want that, in a National Park. Nothing is known about him still. He gave us the recipes. He was not very interesting. A tree is more interesting. A suitcase is more interesting. A canned good is more interesting. When we sing the father hymn, we notice that he was not very interesting. The words of the hymn notice it. It is explicitly commented upon, in th e text.

"I UNDERSTAND all this about Bill," Henry said. He had unlocked the locks on the bar and we were all drinking. "Nevertheless I think somebody ought to build a fire under him. He needs a good kick in the back according to my way of thinking. Couldnt we give him a book to read that would get him started. It bothers me to come in at night and see him sitting there playing Hearts or something, all that potential being pissed away. We are little children compared to him , in terms of possibility, and yet all he seems to want to do is sit around the game room, and shuffle the Bezique cards, and throw darts and that sort of things, when he could be out realizing his potential. We are like little balls of dust under his feet, potentially, and he merely sits there making ships inside bottles, and doing scrimshaw, and all that, when he could be out maximizing his possibilities. Boy I would like to build a fire under that boy. damned if i know what to do about this situation which is vexing me in a hundred ways. Its just such a damned shame and crime I cant stand it, the more I think about it. I just want to go out and hurl boxes in the river, the more I think about it, and rage against fate , that one so obviously chose to be the darling of the life-principle should be so indolent, impious and wrong. I am just about at the end of my tether, boys, and Ill say that to his face, too!"

AT dinner we discussed the psychiatrist. "And the psychiatrist?" we said. "He was unforgivable," she said. "Unforgivable?" "He said I was uninteresting." " "He should not have said that." "He said he wasn't in this for the money." "For what then?" "He was in this for grins, he said." "The expression is unfamiliar." "There were not a million grins in my history, he said." "That was shabby of him." "He said lets go to a movie for Gods sake." "And?" "We went to a movie." "Which?" " A Charlton Heston." "How was it?" "Excellent." "Who paid?" "He." "Was there popcorn?" "Mars Bars." "Did you hold hands?" "Naturellement." "And after? " "Drinks." "And after that?" "Dont pry." "But," we said putting down the duck, "three days at the psychiatrists. . ." We regarded Snow White, her smooth lips and face, her womanly figure swaying there, at the window. Something was certainly wrong, we felt. "Most life is unextraordinary," Clem said to Snow White, in th e kitchen. "Yes," Snow White said, "I know. Most life is unextraordinary looked at with a womans desperate eye too it might interest you to know." Dan keeps telling Snow White that "Christmas is coming!" How can he be killed most easily? With the fewest stains?

THE pretty airline stewardess regarded Clems chest through his transparent wash-and-wear nylon shirt. "He has that sort of fallen-in chest many boys from the West have, as if a cow had fallen on him, in his early life. Only one shirt. The shirt on his back. How appealing that is! Surely I must do something for this poor Westerner!" In the rear baggage compartment Clem sweated over the ironing board Carol had made out of a pile of old suitcases. "Snow White waits for me," Clem reflected while ironing his shirt. "Although she also waits for Bill, Hubert, Henry, Edward, Kevin and Dan, I cannot help feeling that, when everything is said and done, she is essentially mine. Even though I am aware that each of the others feels the same way." Clem replaced the iron in the bucket. His shirt looked fine now, just fine. The aircraft landed softly, just as it should. The stairway fell correctly onto the landing strip. The passengers followed protocol in getting off, the most famous emerging first, the most ignoble emerging last. Clem was in the lower middle. He regarded the Volkswagens crowding the Chicago streets, the children freaking out in their Army surplus, the black grime falling from the sky. "So this is the Free World! I would so like to make love in a bed, just once. Making it in the shower is fine, on ordinary days, but on ones vacation there should be something a little different, it seems to me. A bed would be a sensational novelty. I must seek out a bordel. I assume they can be found in the Yellow Pages. It is not Snow White that I would be being unfaithful to, but the shower. Only a collection of white porcelain and shiny metal, at bottom."