The Age of Sinatra Read online

  THE AGE OF SINATRA

  A Novel

  by

  David Ohle

  They seem to have been strangely forgetful of the catastrophe.

  —Plato, Laws iii

  Only some hazy tradition about a conflagration of the world was repeated, without knowing how or when it occurred.

  —Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision

  During the Age of Sinatra, just prior to the Forgetting of ’64, an excavation near New Oleo unearthed a casket that, when opened, held a long-haired corpse encased in a wickerlike cage of overgrown fingernails. A metal name bracelet was found around the corpse’s wrist, though rust and mold had obscured all but the middle name, which was Arvey.

  AT FOUR BELLS, winded by the short walk from his cabin and bleeding from the nose, Moldenke was the first to arrive at the Titanic’s deckside bistro, Der Kroetenkusser. Being early assured him of getting the outermost table, the one affording the best view of the promenade deck. The little tables metal top, however, was no larger than a dinner plate, and its spindly, uneven legs made tip-overs an ever present hazard. To the obsessively overcautious Moldenke, the table was something to keep a wary eye on.

  Udo, the round-faced German barman, brought Moldenke a mug of fermented mulce, a tin of phosphate powder, a bowl of cubed fungu, and a small bale of smoking hair. “Hairloom brand, Moldenke. The best. By the way, how do you like the hand? Nice job, eh?”

  The hand was cadaverous, blue, and all thumbs, the nails partly uprooted and seeping puss at the quick.

  “Fine work. Who did it?”

  “Dr. Ferry in New Oleo. If you’re ever down that way, let Ferry work on you. You look so ordinary. You should have something done. What about those tiny ears? Wouldn’t you like bigger ones? Different ones? Possibly from a French pig. Ferry’s a pig man, you know.”

  Moldenke pulled a plug of hair from the bale and sniffed it. “I’ll deform when they make it a law.”

  With his apron, Udo wiped leaking blood from one of the thumbs. “My uncle got a pair. He looks very sharp now, more streamlined. He’s thinking of a third eye.”

  Moldenke indicated a ring of pinpoint scars around his mouth. “I’m a little shy of needles and knives. When I was ten, Mother sewed my lips shut with thick, black thread for spitting on her night-blooming jasmine. I couldn’t eat, drink, or speak for three days, until my late, but kindly, father cut the thread with scissors.”

  He unzipped the front of his jumpsuit. “And this ugly, cruciform scar from nipple to nipple and neck to navel … four sheep’s hearts went in there and a lung came out. My old ticker was failing.”

  “I’m impressed. But there’s nothing like elective deformation. It’s a different thing, a different feeling. You have to admit this is quite a hand. One-of-a-kind. A conversation piece. I’m having a special glove made.”

  “Here’s a bit of conversation, Udo. This mulce stinks. Is it fresh?”

  “Oh, yes. The first mug I’ve poured.”

  “You’ve boiled it to kill the tubularia?”

  “For an hour.”

  “And the shigella?”

  “Nothing could survive. Nothing. But add a lot of phosphate to be sure.”

  “Good. Now, please take that fungu away before I retch all over your clogs.”

  “Suit yourself. Some love it, some hate it. There’s no in-between when it comes to fungu.”

  “Feed it to the gulls.”

  “I would, but they hate it.”

  Moldenke fluffed the hair with a tremor of the fingers and rolled a fat ciggie. “I thought the French had burned down the Hairloom factory and all the warehouses.”

  “They missed one on Permanganate Island.”

  “How fortunate. This smoke takes me to places where no word has ever entered, a place where nothing is comprehensible, nothing expressible. I’m quite addicted.”

  “Look at the time,” Udo said, glancing at the sky. “Radio Ratt is on the air.” He hurried to the bar and turned on his little radio. “You’d better listen, Moldenke. You know what they’ll do if you don’t.”

  This news from Radio Ratt: The president has indicated that his Bureau of Stinkers will discontinue reanimating the young. Those brought back thus far have had diminished mental capacity. One of the first to be returned, Little Jackie Dawes, wears a coat and helmet outfit of lightweight bulletproof chain mail, carries around a ragged mud-duck facsimile made of stuffed sox and pipe cleaners, and uses commodes built close to the floor so that his feet can touch the ground. Jackie sleeps the days away in a pillowed bathtub under a shade tree, a gourd of mulce resting on his fevered chest.

  “A little Ratt goes a long way,” Moldenke said. “Who elected him? When? We don’t even know what he looks like.”

  “A runt,” Udo said. “Shaped like a rutabaga I hear. Was there an election? I forgot.”

  Suddenly a wave of excitement washed across the deck. One of the ship’s crew had spotted a dead plesiosaur in the water. Dozens watched the ship’s davit haul the rotting hulk from a calm, gray sea in a rope basket.

  “Another dead plesio,” said Udo. “The one they fished up yesterday had a full-dressed American sailor inside, half digested.”

  A noisy sawfly encircled Moldenke’s head again and again. He tried to bat it from the air with one hand, then the other, but his reach fell short each time. “Udo! Kill this flying lance before it pricks me.”

  Moldenke’s mother had suffered a sawfly stinging once, on a summer outing, which sent her into a blind rage. Before it was over, she unmanned his poor infant brother, Andrew, with a pair of poultry shears and stuck his little scrotum on a picket fence. A few years later Andrew was trampled to death when the Pisstown Chaos spread to the countryside.

  Udo took up the circular chase with a sturdy straw swatter. After smashing the sawfly on the wall, he fed it to a hungry, one-winged gull hopping around the bistro looking for spills.

  By habit, Moldenke tugged lightly on his sparse chin beard, blinking one eye, then the other, but never the two at once, and added a spoonful of phosphate powder to his mulce, stirring it until thick foam spilled out of the mug and over the table top. With tremorous fingers he struck a damp, sputtering match, drew in all the smoke a single lung would allow, and let it seep out slowly through rotted teeth.

  The plesiosaur caught his attention a second time when one of the ship’s crew cut open its belly with a ditch blade and stepped back as hundreds of feet of intestine coiled into a steaming pile on the deck. When the stomach was located and opened, it yielded a slurry of half-digested junefish and sea slugs. The plesiosaur’s neck, twenty meters long, supported a head of relatively minute proportions. There were four paddlelike limbs and a short tail. Its mouth was filled with a foul-smelling brown paste and its flesh hung like drying laundry from the bones.

  When a sudden gust of wind swept the plesio’s odor past Moldenke’s nostrils, his arm twitched involuntarily, his elbow slid off the edge of the table, and he was thrown from his chair. His head struck the hard deck with the sharp kunk of a mallet pounding a peg. “Udo! Look at this table. You can’t even lean on it!”

  “Shush! Here comes the Captain,” Udo said.

  Holding his hat in front of his face, Captain Smith turned into the bistro with a slight gimp, his whites so heavily starched they rasped when he walked. He sat in the shadows at the far end of the bar, lit his hair pipe, and began reading a pre-edible copy of Ratt’s Manifesto.

  Radio Ratt:

  Attacks on the French Camps will commence following the Congress of Neutrodynes … Judith Purdel, forewoman at Pisstown’s Bloody Creek body mill, discovered the acid-soaked remains of Cumulus Crudders, a New Oleo Stinker; during an inspection. It is supposed Crudders had been su
bstantially dissolved when the mill’s containment vessel’s skin was breached and spilled 10,000 aqueous tons of stomach acid, which came down with a tidal roar on the picnicking Crudders… . Charlotte Eng, neutrodyne Queen, will marry Vincent Coop, Secretary of Neutrodyne Affairs. Her dowry includes a bucket of frozen President Kenny semen and a neut-hair counterpane. Eng arrived by orbigator from Indiana today, her gold lame tie flashing in the glacial sun. The marriage will be consummated after a feast of orchid-stuffed gibnut and hot raisin paste. The queen will ready herself for nuptials in the usual ways, tucking in her tulle, tending her hair; hanging her sash, douching, shaving, drowsing, eating sour mulce cheese, and grazing for other pleasures.

  Udo, chopping green gland for the Captain’s favorite soup, paused. “Look good, Moldenke. Here comes the ship’s designated artist. Ferry did her leg work. Removed them, switched them, and put them back. The effect is beautiful, isn’t it? No, it’s sublime.”

  A faintly camphorated scent accompanied the artist’s clumsy arrival at Moldenke’s table. She carried a sketchpad under one arm and clutched a sizable bag of charcoal sticks. She had a tired, drawn look and a creamy, translucent complexion. There were flakes of dead skin caught like sleet in her eyebrows.

  “May I?”

  “Certainly. Have we met? I can’t remember.”

  “We may have. I can’t say. In the event we haven’t, or we’ve forgotten, I’m Ophelia Balls.”

  “Moldenke, out of Indiana. Join me for a mulce.” He accomplished a sliver of a smile without showing many teeth. “Careful of the table. It’s a toddler. It loves to fall down and spill everything. By the way, that’s a sweet-looking leg job.”

  Ophelia’s jumpsuit, freshly starched and ironed, fit loosely on her skeletal frame. Above her long, black hair, soft forehead, and dreamy eyes sat a Vink thinking hat tilted rakishly to one side.

  “Thank you.”

  “Ferry, I hear, did the legs.”

  “He’s a wizard. Whatever you want, he’ll do. I’m having trouble getting used to them, though. Always at the crossroads. The left wants to turn right and the right left.”

  Moldenke wiped blood from his upper lip with the back of his hand and pinched his nostrils closed. “Do I smell a Stinker in the area?”

  “It’s the plesio,” Ophelia said. “I wish they would dispatch it.”

  “So many dead ones,” Moldenke said. “Floating by all day.”

  “It’s President Ratt, shooting them from his yacht. A disgrace. Haven’t you read about it in the papers?” She began to sketch the dead plesiosaur.

  “I don’t read the papers. Something in the ink, perhaps. I break out in fulminant hives head to toe.”

  The tip of Moldenke’s ciggie caught fire. He wet his thumb and a finger with mulce and dampened it. “This hair is fresh, it’s moist, it’s name brand, yet it wants to burn like dry leaves.” He had a sip of mulce, then spit it back. “This needs more phosphate!” He added another spoonful.

  Udo brought Ophelia a mulce. “With or without, ma’am?”

  “Without.”

  “Don’t be afraid of the foaming,” Moldenke offered. “Phosphates fertilizer for the brain. Besides, you never know what’s living in there… . I see you’re wearing a Vink thinker. Vintage, too.”

  “It’s been in the family twenty or a hundred years. Possibly centuries. No one really remembers.”

  “You don’t see Vinks much any more. I had one as a lad, but it went bad over time. Had to bury it in the garden and plant horseradish over it.”

  “This one’s addled now, too, depending on the situation and the weather, but when it was new, it made Grandma Balls the smartest girl in Pisstown.”

  “Pisstown … Pisstown,” Moldenke said. “I knew a Pisstown Balls. When I was driving one of those big pedal wagons right after the last Forgetting. I was running mulce and phosphate to the fusel oil camps. Roe Balls. His name was Roe Balls.”

  “A second cousin. The wagon overturned and a barrel of mulce fell on top of him. It burst and he drowned.”

  “So sorry to hear that. May he rest in peace.” Moldenke bowed his head.

  When Ophelia bowed hers, her Vink’s soft pseudocranium moved molelike beneath the duck-cloth fabric. “Oh, my Vink just made a connection. Moldenke … Moldenke. I know that name… .”

  “Agnes Moldenke, my mother. You’ve probably heard of her. She’s quite well known.”

  “Of course, the inventor of edible money. Your mother?”

  “Yes, she’s aboard.”

  “I’m anxious to meet her. What’s in the money? What’s it made of? Can you tell me? I know it’s a family secret, but—”

  “It’s never been disclosed, even to me.”

  “Where is it made?”

  “That, too … is a well-guarded secret. And completely proprietary.”

  “When we meet, I’ll try to pry it out of her?”

  “I’m sure you will very soon. She’s ill today, as she often is, and staying in her stateroom. The poor woman’s been through an awful ordeal. She thought some time spent in the sea air would revive her spirits.”

  “Ordeal?”

  “It can’t be talked about. She doesn’t remember. But the aftereffects never abate. Now it’s a rather stubborn case of leukorrhea, accompanied by pinworms. The worms cause no end of trouble by their habit of coming out around the anus during sleep, leading to painful scratching and restless nights. She’s able to remove them with a swab of cotton on an applicator rod. During this infestation she has been listless, anemic, and confined to bed, where she works on her memoirs whenever her strength permits. Well, as if that wasn’t enough, just this morning, after completing the sentence ‘Ink, is it not the blood of the diarist?’ she ran the metallic point of the pen into her finger, making a small wound that bled dramatically. Some of the ink was drawn into the bloodstream, and that, she fears, could lead to infection. May I roll you a ciggie, Ophelia? Genuine Hairloom.”

  “Yes, I’d love one. But I thought the French had—”

  “They overlooked a warehouse somewhere. It was on the radio.”

  “Oh, really.”

  Radio Ratt:

  The great inventor Leuko Vink, vacationing at a Firecracker Sea resort, wants to put artificial suns and moons into orbit in order to illuminate parts of Indiana at night. These luminous bodies would permit nighttime harvesting, light up darkened polar regions, and disclose pockets of anti-Ratt activity in Indian Apple, Bloomberg, and other darkened Indiana cities. Vink has assured the President that there will be enough water produced by melting polar caps to turn the Tektite Desert green. The luminous bodies are described as “free-floating chemical furnaces.” Fed by the oxygen-rich Indiana atmosphere, these glowing spheres of phosphate, radium, and fusel oil will burn for five to ten Forgettings. It is estimated that about three orbigators and eleven thousand neutrodynes would be needed to complete the massive task.

  The Titanic’s horn sounded.

  “Oh, dear,” Ophelia said. “Time to praise Arvey. Just because Ratt worships at his altar, why should we be compelled to?”

  Udo, placing another bale of hair on the table, said, “I’ve been warning Moldenke. Now I warn you, Miss Balls. Like it or not, Ratt rules. Think twice before you say these things publicly.”

  “I wonder if he even exists. He’s all over the papers, he’s on the radio, but has anyone ever seen him in the flesh?”

  “Could be a fiction.” Moldenke said. “The term ‘president’ may refer to a semiotic construct, just an idea, and not a person. How could we know? We’ve forgotten a lot.”

  “I’ve seen him,” Udo said. “In the flesh. In Bum Bay, right in front of Neutrodyne Hall, getting into his pedal car.”

  Ophelia filled her mouth with smoke, drew it into her nostrils, and giggled. “They say he has the look of an amphibian.”

  “How good it was,” Moldenke said, “when Sinatra and President Kenny were alive. It was a big country. So sparsely populated, a new face
or a new arrival was reason for rejoicing. People turned their wagons inward and came together in the circle of firelight for safety. They cut down the forests, laid railroads, roofed barns, and husked corn.”

  “This is marvelous smoke,” Ophelia said. “My Vink’s telling me to talk about all my names.”

  “Go ahead,” Moldenke said. “I’m all ears.”

  “I had a striking collection of them. After my parents’ death, I was adopted in infancy by a neutrodyne couple, the Camulettes, who gave me the name Ophelia. When Camulette died, his widow turned me over to an American settler family by the name of Fallo, who changed my first name to Sally. This name I held until age thirteen, when the Fallo’s died and I was taken in by an uncle of Mrs. Fallo, a Mr. Pester, who made me his heir and changed my name to Hester Pester—a ridiculous combination, I thought—so I induced the court to change my name to Wild Rose. But at the age of twenty, I married a German named Ochs, and although he pronounced it ‘Oaks,’ nearly everyone else called it ‘Ox.’ I was Wild Ox for as long as the marriage lasted, and until I married Mr. Balls, my brother, when I returned to my original name.” She paused for another puff of smoke. “Excuse me for going on this way.” She removed her Vink and stuffed it between her legs.

  Moldenke asked if he could hold the Vink.

  “Please, do.”

  He cradled it and rocked it back and forth. “You know,” he said, “after smoking, an aura appears around my head—seen only at night and only in the deepest dark. Moreover, it throws the phosphate of potash from the top of my eye sockets. I find it on my face at bedtime. In order to keep well, given these precursors, I must have food containing phosphate to quickly and surely rebuild brain tissue. Fresh mulce is very good in this regard.”

  “I nearly married a neutrodyne once,” Ophelia said, sighing. “The wedding day stands out in my mind. Preparations had begun weeks before … brushing my body with mummy oil, dusting it with lavender. Following neutrodyne marriage customs, I placed pads of linen in my eye sockets and shut the lids over them, so that they protruded unnaturally. It was the purest kind of joyous anticipation. But we would never marry. Billy was hanged on a spurious charge of defacing an Arvian temple by throwing excrement at its windows. Some local vagrants and tatterdemalions were guilty of the act, but all were in possession of waivers. Billy, worshiping in the temple at the time, was not. For many months he was sorely missed. I carved a small likeness of him from a knot of camphor wood and ended my virginity with it. I left it inside so that I would feel pain with every step and be reminded of my loss.”