Combat Journal for Place d'Armes. Scott Symons
For one catastrophic moment I fear Yvon is going to say “C’est Hughes … de Toronto.” And bless him for not damning me with it.
Pierrot cocks a toe up at us … bigtoe, barefoot. Same lifekit as Yvon. Jeans, plaid checkered shirt — plus a slight cravat, gold, knotted at his Adam’s apple: Little Lord Fauntleroy as good Amurrican Bad Guy … Bigtoe eyes me, still cocked (toenail cut and cleansed … into me. Taken by bigtoe! — as decisive as that unseen flankglance penetrating me in church with Yvon still unsighted. Ears thunder. Sheer lust of life.
“Cinq piastres?” The voice is mine!
“Ouaé msieur … non — sis … c’est déjà minuit pawssé”
“Je reviens tantôt.” And I am walking along the Greyway with Yvon, leaving him at his club — Eden Rock (I didn’t notice the name when we first came): odious name … en anglais du reste. Yvon smiles — “au revoir … tu étais chic avec moi … tu vas aimer Pierrot … puis il adore le 69!”
And I am at hotel, to my room, for the extra money … and then back along Greyway to Pierrot … it’s crazy, but now I know I must honour this lifelust in me, or live still-born. And within an hour of Knowing Yvon (because only the Biblical “Know,” with its capitalized “K” describes for me this kind of knowledge) I am knocking at the bullworthy door again. Betrayed back into life again by bigtoe! Pierrot answers … barefoot. Back into his room where the bare-assed Christ bleeds down the pucker-plastered blue wall. Pierrot is reading Manorama — not a mag I know, I note wryly … picture spread of other Pierrots. None of them is Pierrot: not that I expected — but none of them carries himself the same as my Pierrot. Something drastically different … in the embodiment. Pierrot senses my thought train.
“Ils sont tous Américains…. Pas comme nous autres … pas du tout.” So he knows too.
“Et pas même comme vous autres, non plus.” I bless him the condescending compliment — pauvre Angluche que moi.
“They are all Squares” — Pierrot is proud of his comment, and his English.
“And what are we?” I blurt aloud … unwitting expecting an answer — the answer. He shrugs … and quietly undoes himself … his shirt aside, and over to his sink, washes hands, feet “mais jamais ça” he smileblasts into me, patting his hand to his crotch … “je ne le lave pas — pas jusqu’à après … ça goute vrai comme ça” His smile seconds his point … Yvon’s teeth are singularly un-French-Canadian, almost Ipana bright — but Pierrot’s are indelibly Canayen … like rotted patates frites.
And in the shuddered observation note that I have some answer to my question — “what are we?” — it is this remaining capacity for some kind of life-giving dirt. “Pourriture noble” — that mould blooming on French grapes giving a lusher, richer wine. Pourriture noble … and again sight those teeth, that green bloom of fleshbronze. “Ca goute mieux” — Pierrot is hideously right. Bouquet and body … tang that doesn’t come in an economy bottle. All the difference between.
Pierrot is lying in an open loll on bedface, twitching me with bigtoe … immense beckoner as my captive eye swallows it whole and am unawares into his manscape still at ten feet distance yet touched in a way that nobody has ever touched me in my own community d’Angluche. Into it and feeding … guzzling a sheer gluttony. Pierre is a slut … and I buy his body … like over-ripe wine. (Dizzy said — was it in Coningsby? — that any man can like good wine, but it takes a connoisseur to enjoy bad wine …) watch his body cocking, his hidden Man risen under bluejeans … bigtoe down and rises rises me slowly rising with him rising me and in me am over to this manscape standing high over hawkeying this land this whole nation lying rampant under my very eye as abruptly I skydive onto this sweet prey, headfirst beakfirst onto swollen jeans nuzzle into the manmusk seeping through the closed fly breathing deep into this musk, as Pierrot grasp my head of hair, probing into my overbrush, then I am back up to eye this site again … yes, ohhh yes, it is entire land spreadeagling there entire land I always knew was there, never absolutely lost, merely out of site, and now is confronting me hands down to grasp entry opening in earthquake of us the Man of Pierrot hidden still under winding whitesheath of underwear I reach in to palm the body that clasps my hand around and around its trunk to root Pierrot sifting thigh into my gasp as I bare the massed trunk of him, uncircumscribed land naked in fullflesh, head down to bigtoe in fierce Ptolemaic circumference sucking me down down inexorable to imbed me in this land as Pierrot certain of the way divest me still standing aside him, till free naked I am fallen back into the land to plow us under … running my muzzle over this countryside surging up on me, alive into this banished world so suddenly restored whole … swarm me over Pierrotland from all directions as this manscape gets on my horse to ride into me from every direction riding all of us at once everywhere we move is always everywhere moving to everywhere else in the free fields that wind unending up our valleyside to peak and back while Magpie highdives down with Icarus into a blue-skie seat that afterwarns me now I am in the same world that Pieter Brueghel says he so rightly saw four centuries ahead of us but we forgot to entirely believe with him yet is so absolutely here now from the moment I bury my nose in this burning bush whose 10 inch stalk batters my nose is hoof of horse from that plowman behind (he doesn’t notice Icarus skindiving below) each furrow cavalcading into this eternal Campagna worldwide that I bloodhound relentless into the wideyed distance that is all immeasurable foreground Pierrot given each brush and rock and clump pummels me roundalay in my mulburied bush … as I eat this all edible manscape of Everyman feeding to my need, famished and it is true then that we poor Protestants deny the Body and Blood that was given for us as guarantee for our Sinworthiness … denying the world on this Ptolemaic platter only circumscribed here by the bounds of that dire need I nurture hearandnow while I pangful recollect divine Raphael’s “Disputa” whose very detachment from all flesh whose very vaunting perspective would cut my tenuous umbilink with all this land still left latent in me to plant and plow to belated harvesting as I soar now above the Plowman all the land white and warm beneath my birth and soar centred over all circle down and down onto the head of this brave Plowman whose toe still touches the deep earth still imbeds us all in the land that feeds us as down now onto his head I engulf in my anxious mouth for that manmusk Pierrot said he kept clean for such meet needs while I mouth this landcocked head savouring oh at longed-for last this noble rot to cleanse me knowing how rightly Moutarde de Dijon is gutted from the furrowed land while mere Amurrican hotdogs are clotted with that quickblotted tang that kills all taste of truth in Man so now I savour this sheer landmusk grateful that Pierrot thighrides into me so I grasp his bushimbedded rod striding up and down around its rot articulating my manhood at each gust of lush fleshscape salting me plow deep this landman that plows me to impending harvest Pierrot moaning steep in flush we fondle dandle clasp and run along the hedgerow by our shore I ply and row wondering this Icarean Sea wherein Pierrot has engulfed us both face to cockface and I sink to rise us again sucking huge in me the pod burst from this land spurting seed in our gathering mouthfulfilling with that first citric precision of spermblurt followed by the glut of man splashed in throat and gullet, spermspurt in nostril flaring wide as Pierrot grasps my ebbing trunk to earth of us lying thigh by thigh turning at last only to kiss the mutual musk of seed sown around our muzzle as he lopes last over to the basin to wash away any lost part of our deed as I watch knowing it is the lope I marry land to man in that conjugation all free flesh knows from a world that quakes with every step we take….
Give him his cinq piastres, plus un piastre parce qu’il est minuit passé, plus encore un piastre en souvenir de Pieter Brueghel (and his Icarus) and I am into the night air … walking with sure stride. Where — where the hell are you going, I ask me? Till I am at La Place d’Armes … and enter, and stand in the centre, free man with the key back in to the kingdom … Christ — so that is it … the veil rent from my eyes, all the Place sears in me, with a lucidity that….
I don’t stop running till I am at my hotel. Safe abed….
Ahh — so that is it. The issue is joined — squarely (heinous multiple unwitting pun!): To see La Place, to write my novel, to come alive, again, I must fall, utterly. To share my love I must humiliate me … must grovel. Stand waistdeep in