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Authors: E.L. Doctorow
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if the guy hadn’t taken them away? Their parents probably only too relieved. I suppose money changed hands. Bill and Betty must have been young, in their teens or early twenties. And he gave them a profession, a means of self-respect, whereas back home they would have been forever misfits, tolerated, made fun of, or treated with insulting sympathy. But it all smacks of Europe, you know? This sensibility. At least the Munchkins in the filmhad a fictive identity, they weren’t midgets performing, they were these fantasy creatures made up not to look like themselves. Not Bill and Betty or the other Lilliputians. Don’t you think this has Europe written all over it?
I’m not sure what you mean.
I mean serfdom, indentured oppression, and all their damn uniforms and monarchal wars and colonizations and autos-da-fé. Baiting bears, that’s what I mean, the European culture of bearbaiting. Freak taunting. Jew killing. That’s what I mean.
[
thinking
] She was so happy. So I didn’t say anything. Did I tell you I had bought her an engagement ring before we made the trip west?
No.
I did. I was doing all sorts of un-Andrew things. Holding hands in public, being happy. And now, on the beach, clowning around, trying to do my cartwheels, my handstands, and falling and getting up with a mask of sand on my face. How she laughed. And as it happens with new lovers, we were tinder. The passion fired up from anything—laughter, the keenness of the moment. Close your eyes, she said, and I felt her brushing the sand away. And then all at once she pushed me down, and as I lay back she was upon me, mouth on mouth, vehemently yanking my trousers down and then flipping us over so that I lay on top of her. When had she pulled up her shiftto bare herself? And then the three little words: Put it in, she said. Put it in!
You needn’t go into details, Andrew.
It may begin as devotional, your lovemaking, but the brain goes dark, as a city blacks out, and some antediluvian pre-brain kicks in that all it knows to do is move the hips. It is surely some built-in command from the Paleozoic Era and may be the basis of all drumming.
Drumming?
What I mean to say is you’re not at your most observant at these times. As if what remaining human mind you have, whatever dim consciousness, has located itself somewhere in the depths of your testicular being. That’s why I didn’t hear its engine and why I did not immediately understand why the beach seemed to be flying away in the sandstorm around us. But then I looked into her eyes: They were blinded white in terror—of me, or of the unnatural blazing light above us? I have wondered about this ever since—surely it was the searchlight, the whoop whoop air-scything of the helicopter rotors. But given what was later to happen, I’ve never been able to convince myself that it wasn’t in terror of me, of the emblazoned Paleozoan she had lain down with. But in any event I knew instantly that the situation was antithetical. I held my hand over her face, hiding her from them, keeping her hidden with my body, while with my other handI essayed to pull my trousers up. Perhaps you know about the beaches at night, in Southern California, how they were patrolled.
I think I may have heard something of the sort.
Yes. And the loudspeaker coming over the roar of the rotors—you cannot believe how low they had settled in the sky just above us—the operators of this black buglike monster, punishing us with flying sand, hovering over us as we scampered to our feet and ran, I holding my shirt over her head, and they keeping us in their beam, accusing us of unspecified but monstrous misdemeanor, of blaspheming civilized life, of contaminating a precious sanctuary of innocent children and players of volleyball.
And then the light went out and the damn thing swooped up and away, kicking sand in our faces as we stood there with our arms shielding our eyes. A few moments later it was as if nothing had happened, the
I’m not sure what you mean.
I mean serfdom, indentured oppression, and all their damn uniforms and monarchal wars and colonizations and autos-da-fé. Baiting bears, that’s what I mean, the European culture of bearbaiting. Freak taunting. Jew killing. That’s what I mean.
[
thinking
] She was so happy. So I didn’t say anything. Did I tell you I had bought her an engagement ring before we made the trip west?
No.
I did. I was doing all sorts of un-Andrew things. Holding hands in public, being happy. And now, on the beach, clowning around, trying to do my cartwheels, my handstands, and falling and getting up with a mask of sand on my face. How she laughed. And as it happens with new lovers, we were tinder. The passion fired up from anything—laughter, the keenness of the moment. Close your eyes, she said, and I felt her brushing the sand away. And then all at once she pushed me down, and as I lay back she was upon me, mouth on mouth, vehemently yanking my trousers down and then flipping us over so that I lay on top of her. When had she pulled up her shiftto bare herself? And then the three little words: Put it in, she said. Put it in!
You needn’t go into details, Andrew.
It may begin as devotional, your lovemaking, but the brain goes dark, as a city blacks out, and some antediluvian pre-brain kicks in that all it knows to do is move the hips. It is surely some built-in command from the Paleozoic Era and may be the basis of all drumming.
Drumming?
What I mean to say is you’re not at your most observant at these times. As if what remaining human mind you have, whatever dim consciousness, has located itself somewhere in the depths of your testicular being. That’s why I didn’t hear its engine and why I did not immediately understand why the beach seemed to be flying away in the sandstorm around us. But then I looked into her eyes: They were blinded white in terror—of me, or of the unnatural blazing light above us? I have wondered about this ever since—surely it was the searchlight, the whoop whoop air-scything of the helicopter rotors. But given what was later to happen, I’ve never been able to convince myself that it wasn’t in terror of me, of the emblazoned Paleozoan she had lain down with. But in any event I knew instantly that the situation was antithetical. I held my hand over her face, hiding her from them, keeping her hidden with my body, while with my other handI essayed to pull my trousers up. Perhaps you know about the beaches at night, in Southern California, how they were patrolled.
I think I may have heard something of the sort.
Yes. And the loudspeaker coming over the roar of the rotors—you cannot believe how low they had settled in the sky just above us—the operators of this black buglike monster, punishing us with flying sand, hovering over us as we scampered to our feet and ran, I holding my shirt over her head, and they keeping us in their beam, accusing us of unspecified but monstrous misdemeanor, of blaspheming civilized life, of contaminating a precious sanctuary of innocent children and players of volleyball.
And then the light went out and the damn thing swooped up and away, kicking sand in our faces as we stood there with our arms shielding our eyes. A few moments later it was as if nothing had happened, the
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