Chapter Fifty Five: Sundaes

 

Sundaes

 

It was only a matter of time before Frank arrived in Ballybunion; in fact it was possible that he was already in the small seaside town, but Kay trusted the rhythms of her automatic physical and neural processes: Frank was so enormously traumatic to her in every respect that her system would react as soon as he approached both geographically and temporally. She would sense his presence in every cell before he entered the country, let alone North Kerry. She had set the bait in South East London and ever since she had been reeling him in. It was time to set the trap, and until her brush with death in the caves she had no idea what “the trap” was to be. Now she needed two things: a place rather like the betting shop in Brockley where she could disappear behind the anonymity of a function while she watched for Frank, and time to inspect and develop her killing floor.

It was a clear, warm day towards the end of August. The sight of the families queuing for ice-creams at a small café on the main street  made her heart empty at the thought of what she lacked; the vacuum that defined her identity; that which she had not, that which she was not.

I suppose that’s normal if your dad is a cannibal, she thought, and decided to celebrate her not-ness with an ice-cream cone. The obvious choice was raspberry ripple, since blood was the condiment of choice for the discerning cannibal, but the image of her father rocking and moaning in the straightjacket nullified her taste for sweet bright red veins in cream and she went for lemon sorbet.

“Well you are only the second person to buy this,” commented the woman in her 50s who was obviously the proprietor. I make all the ice-creams and I was asked to make a sorbet by a local, and apart from once he has never bothered to come down and buy one. Here, have an extra scoop!”

Kay bit gently into the now severely top-heavy cone. The cold and the citrus curled around each other and formed a snake of flavour, ice, emotion and intention which permeated every cell. She turned and surveyed the street through analytic eyes which had massive storage potential. This was her spot. Frank could not enter town and avoid detection here. She cast a glance at the staff: mostly girls who would be off to college soon. She was going nowhere in this game whether she were to win or lose.

“Hi, my name is Kay McNamara. I just moved here and need a job. If you need staff…”

“If I need staff? You are joking! As soon as college starts up I have to do it all on my own. Of course I need staff. Come in Monday to find out how we do things and you are hired. My name is Joanne, but you can call me Great One. That’s a joke by the way, I’m only a bit on the tubby side.”

“You look great to me. See you Monday,” replied Kay and walked with a lighter pace than usual down to the cliffs. She ran her tongue around the melting lemon sensation as she meditated upon the cave hidden under the tons of granite. A song kissed her memory…she would soon go down to her killing floor. She was cold, she was ready and life was very tasty.

Chapter Fifty Four

The Responsive Eye

Robert was the first to greet them as they arrived at the gallery, exuding paranoia and largesse in equal quantities. Neither Helen nor Frank were impressed, although for different reasons: Helen, because her work was, since ’58, superfluous to that of “The Guys”. Frank, meanwhile, was engaged in deciding between two exquisite ends for Spong. These seemed mutually exclusive, but Frank was an artist in his own unique way, and he was teasing incessantly at a way of ending Spong that united both strands of his wrath and gave them more than adequate satisfaction.

“Listen to this Frank: Subjective perversions of the contents of objective perception. That’s what it’s all about; that’s what we do when we make this shit!” and he swung his arms dramatically to include everything visible from this point and beyond in MoMA. “That’s what some German guy called Külpe said anyhow, and I believe him”.

Frank had known Külpe well during his teenage years: the psychologist to be was only a few months younger than Frank, and they had met at a Summer School for gifted children in Denmark around 1876. He remembered both an intense discussion on the possibility of imageless thought and some rather unsatisfactory mutual masturbation. This was indeed an imageless thought, since the event had occurred in complete darkness and silence while the other boys slept. Frank smiled away the memory and considered some paintings: he had already seen the Louis, both in the studio and then at the Emmerich house. It was impressively large and used the pouring and staining techniques Morris had stolen from Helen. It had gravity, was about gravity and viewed in that way the colours were just contemporary, and of course the contemporary meant nothing to Frank unless he could profit by exploiting it.

And suddenly there was Ellsworth standing by his piece: Green, Blue, Red. He was speaking to a group of journalists, but the painting was speaking only to Frank. He saw two phials; one blue and one green against an enormous red field. One was the container for the virus, the other for the cerebral fluid. One had to precede the other, and he realised that he had to give this one time. Spong must carry the virus to other vapid sensualists first, and then be given a partial death in contribution to Frank’s inexorable growth. Central park in the dark was going to be the seed bed of Frank’s greater sentence on those who had sullied his one pure love.

A glorious Frank Stella confronted him now: Line Up; four sequences of dissected triangles heading for the centre of the canvass, their arrival there slightly mistimed. This had purpose. This steeled Frank’s nerve to carry out his awful vengeance. There was the centre, and his purpose would get there in a slightly staggered way. Right now, he had to be more than nice to Spong, who was fawning on some potential buyer by demanding cigarettes from Helen as if she were his best friend. Helen handed over the whole pack of Luckies and returned to Frank scowling.

“Arrogant bastard,” she muttered into Frank’s ear. “He thinks I’m just a fag-hag. I’d love to fuck him over in front of everyone. He’s a leech: look what he did to Jack”.

Frank did something that he found most difficult, but necessary, for he needed accomplices: he put his arm around Helen’s shoulders and whispered “And we will fuck him over, Helen; remember that. We will fuck him over with all his witless, untalented, sycophantic friends.” Helen kissed his cheek, her breath heavy with champagne and nicotine.

“Ellsworth and Morris are heading down to the Half-Note. Coltrane is being broadcast live on WABC. Let’s go now. And Frank, you make perfumes, you’re nor going to ice him”.

Frank could feel the ageless air of the cave suddenly. The babble of conversation ceased; the paintings seemed to fade to grey tone tiles in a suspension of time. He most definitely would ice Spong, but before that he must take them all down. The Jack affair had taught him that physical love was for creatures who preferred their own bodily excretions to the pure possibilities of the mind. He had come a long way from that night in The Pepper Mill, but similar techniques were needed now to achieve his ends. He was going to have to seduce Spong before killing him.

“Let’s go now and get a good seat and some fine Vodka. You can tell me all about the people Spong hangs with now.”

Helen took his hand. “You’ll have it all by the time our asses hit the bar stools!”

Chapter 53, Station to Station

Station to Station

The year was 1897 and Frank was 36. The rotting tooth had been the first imperfection delivered to his body by age, but it had told him that the time was approaching when he would seek recourse to the cave, the nutriment and what it contained. Travel to Edgeøya was easy enough to arrange but took several days from Paris; requiring a train journey from Gare du Nord to Brussels and then to Copenhagen. From here the train ferry, the Helsingør – Helsingborg route aboard the latest ship, the paddle steamer Thyra would get him over the short 2.5 nautical miles crossing to Sweden. Frank still felt it necessary to leave for Svalbard on mining industry supply ships from Norway. Once in his native country he could go where he wanted with no questions asked, and he knew which skippers would drop him off in Edgeøya with appropriate discretion. There was also the small detail that the owners of the French train company operating out of Gare du Nord were both regular customers for his most potent narcotic gas and enthusiastic participants in the bestial orgies he helped orchestrate; thus assuring him of a free private compartment at least as far as the Belgian capital.

Katt had changed everything: his identical copy of the marmalade queen had inherited learnt behaviour from the original after he had mixed cerebral matter from the fore brain with the cat’s life blood in the nutriment. He had transferred memory from original to copy. This was enough for Frank. His next transfer of memory would be performed upon himself, the target being his other pale body floating in an Arctic cave pool. The Princess could help his personal project along by one more crucial step however: it had occurred to Frank that he might increase his already impressive intellectual capacity by adding a contributor to the transfer process. Frank was currently engaged in the onanistic process, long and delicate as he preferred, of selecting the correct intellectual and practical experience that would allow him to grow and expand his ability to both survive and enrich himself. He was fully aware that living for a very long time also required an updating of the interests. An immortal dinosaur remained a big lizard. His early introduction to Wallace and Darwin had not been forgotten. Just as his geographical return to Edgeøya was a matter of moving from station to station, so would be his individual evolution. He thought of mad Nietzsche and smiled. He detested the German’s moustache and his notions of what the Superman should do. Frank was to be the Superman, and he should do nothing, he would do whatever he wished. He also detested pubic hair, and he imagined that of Nietzsche to be particularly appalling. Frank regarded shaving as a whole-body experience, and an essential aspect of intellectual clarity. His contempt for Nietzsche would have an important role to play in his life 40 years later, but by then he would be three times the man he was now, and soon to incorporate a fourth personality into the Greater Frank.

He lifted a glass of iced tea to his lips and the stabbing pain in his tooth took him instantly from Gare du Nord to Gare Austerlitz: he needed to get his dental work finished by Dr Jean-Louis Meaursault. He depressed the button which would alert the staff to his request and carefully placed his papers into the desk before locking. His ideas were already protected by their complexity and the fact that they were written in Norwegian, but Frank trusted no-one. Although he had full confidence in his gas to remove all pain from the dental carnage to come, he swallowed a large glass of Absinthe before following the maid to the waiting Phaeton carriage. The twin grey mares propelled him rapidly from the expanse of the estate to the dark grove which Browne had called Cleis’ quim. Within the hour he stood before the pre-revolution block in which was situated the office of his dentist. Meaursault appeared promptly at his knock and ushered him to the Wilkerson chair. Perhaps under the socially liberating influence of the absinthe Frank entered into conversation with the dentist.

“M. Meaursault, what interests do you have beyond your profession, I know you refrain from the hedonism of many of my other customers, but you must be an intelligent fellow to work as you do,” Frank tried to think of the most absurd hobby to put the man at ease; “Pottery possibly?”

Of course, Frank’s psychological ploy worked, and the dentist laughed. “No M. Kørner, but in the arts. I am an afficionado of new music, and Paris is the place to hear it. Only last night I was present at a sublime performance of pieces by Saint-Saëns and Ravel. Do you know their works?”

“I fear I know nothing of music apart from that sung in my native Norway.” Frank was keen to know more of this world, wishing to delay the application of the ether for a few minutes until his curiosity had been satisfied.

“You are missing a musical evolution in Paris at this moment, M. Kørner, every type of music is being transformed by composers of the finest degree. All forms from different cultures are being explored, adapted and refined. It is both beautiful for its own sake and yet presages great promise for the happy union of all peoples of all nations in the century to come. Art, and particularly music will liberate mankind from war to a glorious equality and fraternity in creative expression.”

With these heartfelt words Meaursault placed the leather bag of gas over Frank’s nose and mouth and counted down: “dix, neuf, huit…”

An ostrich composed of diamonds in primary colours marched across Frank’s field of perception, and it did so over and over again, jumping a box in time to an imagined melody that came from Spain, Russia and Norway. This gave Frank his first taste of the visceral pleasure of music and his first contributor, the only contributor he would take, kill and immortalise for reasons other than pique.

On regaining consciousness Frank sought two things: a tool to enter the dentist’s skull and a means of liquifying and extracting the content required.  He had them identified before he could speak. As the numbness left his lips, he received the offered cup of wine. As Meaursault busied himself with cleaning his instruments Frank picked up the long pliers and with a savage upthrust, inserted them into the space behind the left ear. He then let the suction tube take their place and pushed it in far enough to be inside the frontal lobe. Now maximum suction was applied and at first reluctantly, but then more rapidly, clots of cerebral matter entered the collecting cylinder. He would macerate them next and enclose in ice for the long journey ahead.

As he locked the door, the precious substance secreted in a pocket, Frank had one more altruistic thought, possibly his last: he would deliver on his promise to Cleis, although she wouldn’t like it, a deal was a deal.