Letters полностью

R.P. then makes a small sign to Merope, no more than a twitch of the mouth and turn of the hand, and she begins peeling off her Salvation Armies for the cameras. I am more and more cheered: Merry’s jugs are gross of nipple and ill suspended, her thighs and bum unappealingly slack for a girl’s and striated already, her legs unshaven. Naked, she stands self-consciously in the (ever dimming) lights: a lumpy Lake Erie Venus shooing flies.

MERRY B. (approximately): Shoo!

AUDIO TWEEDLE (to A.M.): Let the Muse come to you and Reggie now. The camera will show which medium she inspires.

And dear A.M. (an able ad-libber when he’s up for the game): She’s not my muse, Reg. Exhibition is your business.

R.P. (with smile): You withdraw?

A.M. (ditto, and still ad libitum, mind): I cannot withdraw from what I decline to penetrate. Germaine and I stand pat.

This sally gained something, no doubt, from the ambiance. I happily took my Author’s arm; he bussed my cheek; the lights dimmed another quantum. Reggie shrugged, fetched up the little megaphone he’d affected in the Scajaquada Scuffle, and terminated what will no doubt prove to be the longest stretch of dialogue in this flick by calling down into the magazine for “Private Blank.”

Yup. Forth issued into the failing light the former Mrs Ambrose Mensch: dazed, sullen, and much the worse for whatever wear she’d been at. Marsha’s complexion was flushed and mottled, her gait unsteady; her eyes were wide and glassy, her hair and frock a wreck, as if she’d been in dire clutches indeed. But she was smiling, albeit loonily, as she wandered our way, waving a tiny American flag.

Ambrose squeezed my arm. Jacob Horner cried her name and hurried (for him) from the shadows behind us — we’d not seen him there — to her side. Marsha blinked and flagged him wanly off, as if he were a lake fly. Merope wondered to the Director whether it was okay to put her clothes back on — but Prinz was watching us watch Marsha. Though Ambrose’s concern was evident from his grip, he said and did nothing, sensibly leaving to Horner the anxious interrogation of His Woman.

He got not much out of her — or of Prinz, whom he understandably pressed to tell where she’d come from, where been, and doing what with whom. She’d been to “the other farm,” Marsha woozily acknowledged, and now was back at this one; bugger the rest of it. She declined to be taken to the infirmary, or home to bed. She managed after all a sort of smirk of recognition at Ambrose and me. The cameras rolled.

Joe Morgan, expressionless, appeared beside Prinz, who tersely called for “the Exercycles.” Grips at once fetched forth from the magazine a pair of those machines and placed them side by side before the Director, who clearly had prepared this odd business in advance. Docile Marsha mounted as readily as she could manage, saying Ouch, wow, I’m still sore, and began pedalling. Frowning Horner joined her on the other. Merope (dressed now) resumed her chair and lost interest in the spectacle.

It’s the Horseback-Riding scene, Tweedledum explained to a microphone held by his comrade. How can that be? that chap dutifully enquired. In the original it’s “Rennie Morgan” who gives “Jacob Horner” his riding lessons. Where’s Ms Golden?

It was her or me, Marsha muttered. What on earth, I whispered to Ambrose. He shook his head, touched my hand, replied that it looked to him very much as if his ex-wife was stoned out of her mind. Marsha was pedalling now more industriously; one would say almost grimly. Horner reached over to dab her brow with his handkerchief. Looking straight at Ambrose she enounced: You’ll get yours, too.

Prinz signalled Audio Tweedle (so it appeared to us), and, a moment after, there issued from some loudspeaker in the magazine — unnaturally clear, even strident, but as whacked-out mechanical as Marsha’s was whacked-out narcotic — the voice of Bea Golden, delivering what sounded like a pronunciamento: As of yesterday, “Phi-point of the calendar year and of LILYVAC’s Five-Year Plan,” the Mating Season was closed. Today—“St Neapolus’s Day and Bicentennial of the Emperor’s birth”—began “the Fall Work Period of Year E: i.e., Year Four of the Five-Year Plan.” Which, however, in the light of “the Perseid Illuminations,” might well prove to be “Year N, the first of a new Seven-Year Plan.” Et cetera, and don’t ask me! To be fertile matters little, Bea’s voice went on; to be fertilised, little more (this, John, addressed as if directly to Ambrose and me!): What matters is the bringing to term and the successful delivery of that Hero who is both Saviour and Golden Destroyer. Germaine Gordon Pitt, Lady Amherst: nota bene! Morgana Le Fay: your turn will come! The New Golden Age will commence April 5, 1977!