The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [167]
For a thousand, two thousand miles the roads and the earth have led up to it. The mountains have snubbed down to hills, lapsed into plains, rolled on majestically in leisurely convolutions and regroupings. No one ever really comprehends it, the vast table of America, and the pin points, the accretions, the big city and the iron trails leading to it.
The nexus.
(All the frenetic schemings, the cigar smoke, the coke smoke, the carbolic and retch of the el, the frightened passion for movement of an ant nest suddenly jarred, the vast hurried grabbing plans of thousands of men whose importance is confined to a street, a café, and there is no other sense than one of the present. History is remembered with a shrug; its superlatives do not match ours.
The immense ego of city people.
How do you conceive your own death, your own unimportance in all that man-created immensity, through all the marble vaults and brick ridges and the furnaces that lead to the market place? You always believe somehow that the world will end with your death. It is all more intense, more violent, more rutted than life anywhere else.)
And in the humus around the mushroom stem grow the suburbs.
Since we added that last wing, we got twenty-two rooms now, Lord knows what the hell we're gonna do with 'em, Bill Hearn shouts. But Ina you can't tell her a goddam thing, she figures she needs it, and we got it.
Now, Bill, Ina says. (A pretty woman who looks younger, slimmer, than the mother of a twelve-year-old son. No beauty, however. There is the thin aseptic mouth, the slightly bucked teeth, the midwestern woman's denial of juice.)
Well, I'm a regular as an old shoe, Bill Hearn says. There ain't any pretense about me, and if I come off an old scratch farm, I ain't a bit ashamed of it. The way I see it a man needs a parlor or a living room, a coupla bedrooms, a kitchen, maybe a rumpus room downstairs, and y' got enough, agree with me, Mrs. Judd?
(Mrs. Judd is plumper, softer, more vacant-looking.) I suppose so, Mr. Hearn. Mr. Judd and I are mighty pleased with our place in Alden Park Manor, an apartment's so easy to keep.
Nice place, Germantown. We have to visit the Judds there, Ina.
Any time, I'll show you the sights, Mr. Judd says. There is silence, and they eat self-conscious, muting the noise of their tableware. Lovely view out there, Mrs. Judd comments.
It's the only place you can get away from the heat in Chicago, Ina says. We're so backward to New York, you think they would have had a roof garden on a hotel here before this. It's so hot for May. I can't wait until we get out to Charlevoix. Pronounced: Choliveoil.
Michigan, that's a green state, Bill Hearn says. There is silence again, and Mrs. Judd turns to Robert Hearn and says, you're such a big boy for twelve, Bobby, I thought you were a little more.
No, ma'am, only twelve. He ducks his head uncomfortably as the waiter places the roast duck before him.
Don't mind Bobby, he's just kind of shy, Bill Hearn booms, he certainly ain't a chip off my old block. Pushing his scant black hair over the bald spot on his head, his little red nose a button in the round sweating jowls of his face.
When we were out to Hollywood, Mrs. Hearn says, we got taken over the Paramount lot by some assistant director fellow, Jew, but he was sort of nice. He was telling us all about the stars.
Is it true Mona Vaginus is a tramp? Mrs. Judd asks.
(Looking at Bobby, and whispering.) Oh, an awful tramp, the things she's supposed to do. But she hasn't got much of a future anyway now that those talkie pictures are the only ones being made.
This ain't the place to talk business, Mr. Judd of Budd (Hearn laughs), I guess you hear that all the time, Judd of Budd, but the truth is you're in business to do business, and a curiosity enough, I'm out for the same thing, so it's just a case of our compromising on the price, but there's one thing this Thompson machine is on the way out and if the reformers come in it's going to be a case of playing ball with 'em, or else havin' to put perfume in the factory