Chapter 19 17-1

An outpost of civilization or human habitation. Dwellings in neat rows back to back to back to back. Children at play on roofs. Where are the streets? asked the Dead Father. There appear to be none, said Julie. Perhaps tunnels in the earth? Or maybe they squeeze between the houses, making themselves all teensy-weensy and not forgetting to gaze into the windows as they pass. It is Planning, said Thomas, a New Town. One must achieve the rim to be killed by auto. Circulation is not a big thing here, said a stander-by. Why is that man, that one of you, the distinguished-looking one, being dragged? What has he committed? Why are those nineteen puffing and sweating away, on the cable Why are you three not puffing and sweating away on the cable? I do not understand your table of organization.

He is a father, said Thomas. Terrible news, said the man, you cant bring him in here. He is fatigued. We are fatigued. We can pay. You'll have to deballock him and wipe your feet on the mat, said the man, whose face contained beardescules at odd points, such as the lips and center of the forehead. Do you need a deballocking knife? Scissors? of glass? Letter opener? Fingernail clippers? He is a sacred object, in a sense, Thomas said. No more of your bubblegum. Which way is the flophouse? There are two, the citizen said. The good one and the bad one. The bad one has the best girls. The good one has the best pate. The bad one has the best beds. The good one has the best cellar. one has the best periodics. The good one has the best security. The bad one has the best band. The good one has the best roaches. The bad one has the best martinis. The good one has the best credit cards. has the best table silver. The good one has the best views. The bad one has the best room service. The good one has the best reputation. The bad one has the best fa?ade. bad one has the best carpet. The good one has the best bathrooms. The bad one has the best bar. The good one has the best Dun & Bradstreet. The bad one has the best portraits. The good one has the best bellmen. bad one has the best potted plants. The good one has the best ashtrays. The bad one has the best snails. The good one has the best postcards. has the best breakfast. The good one --

Between the good one and the bad one, Julie said, there appears to be little choice. There are also private houses but none large enough or foolish enough to attempt to accommodate your party, said the man. That thing there would scare the children out of their wigs, did they get but a glimpse of it. He is talking about you, Emma said to the Dead Father. The Dead Father beamed. He says you'll frighten the children. Happiness of the Dead Father. Him, the citizen said, him cant be brought in without the fixing. I can lend you a Skilsaw. ; I would prefer not to, said the Dead Father.

He prefers not to, Thomas told the citizen. Well damn and blast, said the citizen, who would imagine otherwise? Yet a rule is a rule. Edmund, Thomas called. Edmund presented himself. How would you like to buy a drink or so for this citizen of this fine community? Thomas asked. You may charge it to me. Tremble of happiness running through Edmund from top to bottom (visible). Edmund and the citizen off to the alehouse arm-in-arm. Now, Thomas said, lets inspect the accommodations. After looking at the good one, they chose the bad one. Julie and Thomas in their room, sitting on the bed. Picture on the wall, Death of Sigismur.

Amazing how he holds on to his balls, said Julie, that is a curious thing, I dont understand it. I understand it, said Thomas. Doesn't know when its time to hang it up, she said, how old do you think he is? He claims one hundred and nine, said Thomas, but he may be stretching it. He may be shrinking it. I dont know. Three of our people are clones I think. Which three? The three with the red hair and the limp. Thomas lay back upon the bed. What a disgusting idea, he said. How is it that you gave him back his leg after you had whacked it off? Purely practical. He staggers better with it. We have ends in view.

So we do, she said, so we do. A knock on the chamber door. Who's there? called a voice, from outside the door. Shall we answer? Julie asked. Who's there? The voice called again. Who wants to know? Julie shouted. There was a silence. Peter, the voice said, at length. Do we know anyone named Peter? I know no one named Peter. What do you want, Peter? she called. I have to mist the plant, Peter called. Thomas looked about him. A cactus sat on the dressing table. Does one mist a cactus? Julie asked. Let him in, Thomas said. Julie opened the door. Some people know what they are doing, Peter said, and some dont.

He began wrapping wet cheesecloth around the cactus. Well there tall thin fellow, said Julie, why are you here? I heard there were strangers. We dont often get strangers. I wanted to give it to you. Wanted to give what to us? He appears to be a dolt of some kind, Thomas said, sotto voce. The book, Peter said. What is the book about? Peter had a frayed tattered disintegrating volume with showers of ratsnest falling out of it clutched to his chest. It is a manual, he said. Might be of some small use to you. On the other hand, might not. Are you the author? Julie asked. Oh no, said Peter. I am the translator.

From what language was it translated? It was translated from English, he said, into English. You must have studied English. Yes I did study English. Is it long? Thomas asked, looking at the thin book. It is not long, Peter said, and at the same time, too long. Then, furiously: Do you know what translators are paid? Not my fault, Julie said, as with much else in the world, not my fault. Pennies! Peter proclaimed. Are you selling us this book? No, Peter said nobly, I am giving it to you as a gift. It is not worth selling. He unwrapped the cheesecloth from the cactus. Edition of forty, he said, printed originally on pieces of pumpernickel. This is the second edition.

We must give you something, Thomas said, what can it be? You are strangers, Peter said. Your approval would be enough. You have it, said Julie. She kissed Peter on the forehead. I am justified, Peter said, for the time being. I can struggle on, for the time being. I am reified, for the time being. Exit of Peter. He didn't ask much, said Thomas. His bargaining position is not the best, Julie said. He is a translator. They lay on their stomachs in the bed, looking at the book. The book was titled A Manual for Sons. The author was not credited. "Translated from the English by Peter Scatterpatter" was found on the title page.

They began to read the book. A MANUAL FOR SONS TRANSLATED FROM THE ENGLISH BY PETER SCATTER PATTER (1) Mad fathers (2) Fathers as teachers (3) On horseback, etc. (4) The leaping father (5) Best way to approach (6) Ys (7) Names of (8) Voices of (9) Sample voice, ABC (10) Fanged, etc. (11) Hiram or Saul (12) Color of fathers (13) Dandling (14) A tongue-lashing (15) The falling father (16) Lost fathers (17) Rescue of fathers (18) Sexual organs (19) Names of (20) Yamos (21) "Responsibility" (22) Death of (23) Patricide a poor idea, and summation

Mad fathers stalk up and down the boulevards, shouting. Avoid them, or embrace them, or tell them your deepest thoughts -- it makes no difference, they have deaf ears. If their dress is covered with sewn-on tin cans and their spittle is like a string of red boiled crayfish running head-to-tail down the front of their tin cans, serious impairment of the left brain is present. If, on the other hand, they are simply barking (no tin cans, spittle held securely in the pouch of the cheek), they have been driven to distraction by the intricacies of living with others. Go up to them, and, stilling their wooden clappers by putting your left hand between the hinged parts, say you're sorry. ceases, this does not mean that they have heard you, it only means they are experiencing erotic thoughts of abominable luster. Permit them to enjoy these images for a space, and then strike them sharply in the nape with the blade of your tanned right hand . Say you sorry again. It won't get throu gh to them (because their brains are mushroom) but in pronouncing the words, your body will assume an attitude that conveys, in every country of the world, sorry -- this language they can understand. Gently feed them with bits of leftover meat you are carrying in your pockets. First hold the meat in front of their eyes, so that they can see what it is, and then point to their mouths, so that they know that the meat is for them. Mostly, they will open their mouths , at this point. If they do not, throw the meat in between barks. If the meat does not get all the way into the mouth but lands upon (say) the upper lip, hit them again in the neck, this often causes the mouth to pop open and the meat sticking to the upper lip to fall into the mouth. Nothing may work out in the way I have described; in this eventuality, you can do not much for a mad father except listen, for a while, to his babble. If he cries aloud, "Stomp it, emptor!" then you must attempt to figure out the code. If he cries alo ud, "The fiends have killed your horse!" note down in your notebook the frequency with which the words "the" and "your" occur in his tirade. If he cries aloud, "The cats in its cassock and flitter-te- hee moreso stomp it!" remember that he has already asked you once to "stomp it" and that this must refer to something you are doing. So stomp it. Fathers are teachers of the true and not-true, and no father ever knowingly teaches what is not true. In a cloud of unknown, then, the father proceeds with his instruction. Tough meat should be hammered well between two stones before it is placed on the fire, and should be combed with a haircomb and brushed with a hairbrush before it is placed on the fire. Iron lungs and cyclotrons are also useful for the purpose. On arriving at night, with thirsty cattle, at a well of doubtful character , one deepens the well first with a rifle barrel, then with a pigsticker, then with a pencil, then with a ramrod, then with an ice pick, "bringing the well in" finally with needle and thread. Do not forget to clean your rifle barrel immediately. To find honey, tie a feather or straw to the leg of a bee, throw him into the air, and peer alertly after him as he flies slowly back to the hive. Nails, boiled for three hours, give off a rusty liquid that, when combined with oxtail soup, dries to a flame col or, useful for warding off tuberculosis or attracting native women. Do not forget to hug the native women immediately. To prevent feet from blistering, soap the inside of the stocking with a lather of raw egg and steel wool, which together greatly soften the leather of the foot. Delicate instruments (such as surveying instruments) should be entrusted to a porter who is old and enfeebled; he will totter along most carefully. For a way of making an ass not to bray at night, lash a heavy child to his tail; it appears that when an ass wishes to bray he elevates his tail, and if the tail cannot be elevated, he has not the heart. Savages are easily satisfied with cheap beads in the following colors, dull white, dark blue, and vermilion red -- expensive beads are often spurned by them. Non-savages should be given cheap books in the following colors, dead white, brown, and seaweed -- books praising the sea are much sought after. Satanic operations should not be conducted without first consult ng the Bibliotheque Nationale. When Satan at last appears to you, try not to act surprised. Then get down to hard bargaining. If he likes neither the beads nor the books, offer him a cold beer. Then -- Fathers teach much that is of value. Much that is not. Fathers in some countries are like cotton bales; in others, like clay pots or jars; in others, like reading, in a newspaper, a long account of a film you have already seen and liked enormously but do not wish to see again, or read about. Some fathers have triangular eyes. Some fathers, if you ask them for the time of day, spit silver dollars. Some fathers live in old filthy cabins high in the mountains, and make murderous noises deep in their throats when their amazingly sharp ears detect, on the floor of the valley, an alien step. Some fathers piss either perfume or medicinal alcohol, distilled by powerful body processes from what they have been, all day long, drinking. Some fathers have only one arm. extra arm, in addition to the normal two, hidden inside their coats. On that arms fingers are elaborately wrought golden rings that, when a secret spring is pressed, dispense charity. Some fathers have made themselves over into convincing replicas of beautiful sea animals, and some into convincing replicas of people they hated as children. Some fathers are goats, some are milk, some teach Spanish in cloisters, some are exceptions, some are capable of attacking world economic problems and killing them, but have not yet done so, they are waiting for one last vital piece of data. Some fathers strut but most do not, except inside; some fathers pose on horseback but most do not, except in the eighteenth century; some fathers fall off the horses they mount but most do not ; some fathers, after falling off the horse, shoot the horse, but most do not; some fathers fear horses, but most fear, instead, women; some fathers masturbate because they fear women; some fathers sleep with hired women because they fear women who are free; some fathers never sleep at all, but are endlessly awake, staring at their futures, which are behind them. The leaping father is not encountered often, but exists. Two leaping fathers together in a room can cause accidents. The best idea is to chain heavy-duty truck tires to them, one in front, one in back, so that their leaps become pathic small hops. That is all their lives amount to anyway, and it is good for them to be able to see, in the mirror, their whole life histories performed, in a sequence perhaps five minutes long, of upward movements which do not, really , get very far, or achieve very much. Without the tires, the leaping father has a nuisance value which may rapidly transform itself into a serious threat. Ambition is the core of this problem (it may even be ambition for you, in which case you are in even greater danger than had been supposed), and the core may be removed by open-liver surgery (the liver being the home of the humours, as we know). I saw a leaping father in the park, he was two feet off the ground and holding a one-foot-in-diameter, brown leather object that h e was pushing away from himself -- a sin of some sort, I judged. He was aiming it at a net supported by a steel ring but the net had no bottom, there was no way on earth that the net would retain the sin, even if the father had been able to place the sin safely in the net. The futility of his project saddened me, but this was an appropriate emotion. There is something very sad about all leaping fathers, about leaping itself. feet on the ground, in situations where the ground has not been cut out from under me, by the tunneling father. The latter is usually piebald in color, and supremely notable for his nonflogitiousness. The best way to approach a father is from behind. Thus if he chooses to hurl his javelin at you, he will probably miss. For in the act of twisting his body around, and drawing back his hurling arm, and sighting along the shaft, he will give you time to run, to make reservations for a flight to another country. To Rukmini, there are no fathers there. In that country virgin corn gods huddle together under a blanket of ruby ​​chips and flexible cement, through the long wet Rukminian winter, and in some way not known to us produce offspring. The new citizens are greeted with dwarf palms and certificates of worth, are led (or drawn on runnerless sleds) out into the zocalo, the main square of the country, and their augensheinlich parentages recorded upon a great silver bowl, and their fingerprints peeled away, so that nothing can ever be proven. Look! In the walnut paneling of the dining hall, a javelin! The paneling is wounded in a hundred places. I knew a father named Ys who had many many children and sold every one of them to the bone factories. The bone factories will not accept angry or sulking children, therefore Ys was, to his children, the kindest and most amiable father imaginable. He fed them huge amounts of calcium candy and the milk of minks, told them interesting and funny stories, and led them each day in their bone-building exercises. "Tall sons," he said, "are best." Once a year the bone factories sent a little blue van to Yss house. The names of fathers. Fathers are named: Aalbiel Aariel Aaron Aba Ababaloy Abaddon Aban Abathur Abbott Abdia Abel Abiou Achsah Adam Adeo Adityas Adlai Adnai Adoil Adossia Aeon Aeshma Af Afkiel Agason Agwend Albert Fathers have voices, and each voice has a terribilita of its own. The sound of a fathers voice is various: like film burning, like marble being pulled screaming from the face of a quarry, like the clash of paper clips by night, lime seeing in a lime pit, or batsong. The voice of a father can shatter your glasses. Some fathers have tetchy voices, others tetched-in-the-head voices. It is understood that fathers, when not robed in the father-role, may be farmers, heldenors, tinsmiths, racing drivers, fist-fighters, or salesmen. Most are salesmen. Many fathers did not wish, especially, to be fathers, the thing came upon them, seized them, by accident, or by someone elses careful design, or by simple clumsiness on someones part. Nevertheless this class of father -- the inadvertent -- is often among the most tactful, light-handed, and beautiful of fathers. If a father has fathered twelve or twenty-seven times, it is well to give him a curious look -- this father does not loathe himself enough. This father frequently wears a blue wool watch cap, on stormy nights, to remind himself of a manly past -- action in the North Atlantic. Many fathers are blameless in all ways, and these fathers are either sacred relics people are touched with to heal incurable illnesses, or texts to be studied, generation after generation, to determine how this idiosyncrasy may be maximized. Text-fathers are usually bound in blue. The fathers voice is an instrument of the most terrible pertinaciousness. Sample voice A: Son, I got bad news for you. You wont understand the whole purport of it, cause you only six, a little soft in the head too, that fontanelle never did close properly, I wonder why. But I cant delay it no longer, son, I got to tell you the news. There aint no malice in it, son, I hope you believe me. The thing is, you got to go to school, son, and get socialized. Thats the news. son, I dont blame you. Its a terrible thing, but there it is. Wed socialize you here at home, your mother and I, except that we cant stand to watch it, its that dreadful. And your mother and I who love you and always have and always will are a touch sensitive, son. We dont want to hear your howls and screams. Its going to be miserable, son, but you wont hardly feel it. And I know youll do well and wont do anything to make us sad, your mother and I who love you. I know youll do well and wont run away or fall down in fits either. Son, your little face is pitiful. Son, we cant just let you roamthe streets like some kind of crazy animal. Son, you got to get your natural impulses curbed. You've got to get your corners knocked off, son, you got to get realistic. They going to vamp on you at that school, kid. going to tear up your ass. They going to learn you how to think, you'll get your letters there, your letters and your figures, your verbs and all that. Your mother and I could socialize you here at home but it would be too painful for your mother and I who love you. You're going to meet the stick, son, the stick going to walk up to you and say howdy-do. You're going to learn about your country at that school, son, oh beautiful for spacious skies . They going to lay just a raft of stuff on you at that school and I caution you not to resist, it aint appreciated. Just take it as it comes and you'll be fine, son, just fine. You got to do right, son , you got to be realistic. Theyll be other kids in that school, kid, and ever last one of em will be after your lunch money. But don t give em your lunch money, son, put it in your shoe. If they come up against you tell em the other kids already got it. That way you fool em, you see, son? Whats the matter with you? And watch out for the custodian, son, hes mean. He dont like his job. He wanted to be president of a bank. Hes not. Its made him mean. Watch out for that sap he carries on his hip. Watch out for the teacher, son , shes sour. Watch out for her tongue, it'll cut you. Shes got a bad mouth on her, son, dont balk her if you can help it. I got nothing against the schools, kid, they just do in their job. Hey kid whats the matter with you kid? And if this school dont do the job well find one that can. Were right behind you, son, your mother and I who love you. Youll be gettin your sports there, your ball sports and your blood sports and watch out for the coach, hes a disappointed man, some say a sadist but I dont know about that. You got to develop your body, son. If they shove you, shove back. Dont take nothin off n obody. Dont show fear. Lay back and watch the guy next to you, do what he does. Except if hes a damn fool. If hes a damn fool youll know hes a damn fool cause everybody be hittin on him. bout that school, son. They do what they do cause I told them to do it. Thats why they do it. They didnt think up those ideas their own selves. we told them to do it. Behave yourself, kid! Do right! Youll be fine there, kid, just fine. Whats the matter with you, kid? Dont be that way. want to go and see the ice-cream man? Go get you an ice cream, son, and make sure you get your sprinkles. Go give the ice-cream man your quarter, son.