As talk turns to Moscow, relations with The Half Guinea go from bad to worse
“Will you calm that damn dog down and get its paws off my kid!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Hunchy. He’s sitting right here next to me reading the paper.”
“He wants to hump my kid! Take him out of here – get him out!”
The Half Guinea meets me half way and yanks hard on the fucking ugly mutt’s chain, making it yowl and whine from the pain and the choking, and with its tail between its legs, erection retracted back into its gut, it slinks ignominiously under the table, curling dejectedly around The Half Guinea’s greasy legs. It’s so pathetic the way The Guinea has the cur dressed in a faux trench coat and fedora hat, like it’s some kind of detective. But I decide not to address this embarrassment.
“Thanks. Say, is your name hyphenated or not?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I need it for this damn review.”
“I don’t give a shit.”
“So what about that rabbit.”
“Okay, Hunchy, so there was this rabbit, see, and after the idea of the flood was over, it knelt down among the flower bells and started praying to the rainbow through the spider’s web, when all of a sudden –”
“Nah, Guinea, it’s not going to work. Try another one.”
“Why, what’s wrong with it?”
“It’s not funny.”
“How do you know until you’ve heard the rest of it?”
“I said –”
“Okay, okay. How about this: You! Hypocrite reader, my double, my brother –”
“Are you talking to me?”
“Who do you think I’m talking to?”
“Well, who are you addressing? What’s this – hypocrite reader? Who’s a hypocrite, why? And why reader? Reader of what? This review? It’s not even written yet. And why antagonize the audience?”
“It doesn’t have to be this review, Hunchy. It could be anyone. We’re all readers – of one sort or another. I mean –”
“I can tell you right now it’s not going to work.”
“But –”
“I said no! Try again.”
“Aaaaahhh… okay, so there was this neutral American guy wearing a trench coat and fedora and he owned a bar in the heavy fog next to the airstrip in Morocco.”
“I like it already. Go on.”
“Aaahh, yeah, and so one day a woman he loved in Paris comes into his bar with her husband, and –”
“The fucking bitch…”
“Yeah, that’s right, Hunchy, and it makes him all emotional, see, and…”
“Who?”
“The American.”
“Go on.”
“And so after she leaves, the Germans come in and say to him, ‘If you denounce her as part of the French Resistance, you’ll remain in business, but if you don’t, we’ll shut you down sooner than you can say “Vive la France,”’ to which the American tells them to take a hike, but they just say, ‘You’ve got twenty-four hours to make up your mind, or it’s curtains,’ and they leave, like they own the place.”
“Those fucking krauts. What right did they have?”
“Well, you see, Morocco belonged to France, but the krauts just marched all over the frogs back home, taking them over, so while Morocco might have been French de jure, it was already de facto German. They could do just about whatever they wanted – almost…”
“Almost!”
“Yeah, that’s right, Hunchy.”
“So what happened next?”
“Well, so it’s nighttime and the American guy is sitting in his own bar drinking himself into a stupor to make the problem go away but he knows he’s just making it worse, and the black guy who works for him…”
“There’s a black guy who works for him?! What’s he do?”
“Well, he plays the piano in the bar and generally takes care of his boss in a sort of quiet, understated way.”
“Is he playing the piano now?”
“No, Hunchy, it’s too serious and somber a situation. He’s treading delicately, being cautious, resourceful, reserved, sensitive, manly, dignified and diplomatic, so as not to upset his boss worse than he’s already upset, while at the same time being pragmatic and down to earth. He knows his boss well. He’s got experience.”
“Yeah, Guinea, that’s a tough one. So what’s he do?”
“Well, we don’t really see him. He’s off to the side somewhere, out of the picture, but still there, if you know what I mean. Maybe he’s quietly polishing his piano keys.”
“Yeah, Guinea, he should always be doing something with that piano.”
“And so it is.”
“Does he say anything?”
“Yeah, he says, ‘Damn, Bosses, that’s a fine dee-lemmer yo’ gots yo’selves into, through no faults o’ yo’s owns,’ and the American guy says –”
“This is the punch line, isn’t it?!”
“That’s right. And so he says, ‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, she had to walk into mine…’”
I shook the place with laughter until the mirrors cracked. The glass in the door shattered and the minus Celsius winter came blowing into the joint.
“Say, that was a good one, Guinea. What’s it mean?”
“Well, it sort of means you can never go home again.”
“No, I don’t think that’s true. I knew a guy from Ithaca once.”
“He made it back home, Hunchy?”
“It took him a while, but yeah.”
“No – I mean, you can never go home again like you can never step into the same river twice. It will always be different from before. Even if you get back, it will never be the same home you left. It’s as if once you’ve left, there’s no home waiting for you anymore.”
“Like Moscow, Guinea?”
“The Third Rome, Hunchface. That’s where I want to be.”
“Never use the word face with me again. What third Rome?! That’s the biggest load of megalomaniacal hubris I’ve ever heard. There was never a second Rome, so how can there be a third? There’s only one Rome!”
“The Russians say Moscow is the Third Rome because the other two fell. Byzantium, rebuilt and renamed as Constantinople, became the Second Rome after it took over from the first Rome, which spelled one sort of fall for it. And then the definitive fall for the First Rome occurred soon after, when it was overrun by pagan hordes. When Constantinople, the Second Rome, fell to the Infidel, the crown and scepter passed to Moscow. Seems like they’re right to me.”
“You stupid fucking Guinea. You’ve read too much Dostoevsky.”
“I’m strictly a Tolstoy man.”
“The Rome I know is still standing, Guinea. Constantinople is under the Infidel, but it’s also still standing. That’ll make its return to the Greeks all the more glorious when it happens – and it will happen. And Rome will be one again. There’s only one Rome, and its empire is so vast that it ruled as its second self, as Byzantium in the East. This world is made of two halves, West and East, not three, and when Byzantium joins Rome, the kingdom will be one again, sanctified and crowned by Jerusalem, and Moscow will fall! The double-headed eagle, which it stole from Byzantium, turned aberration under Russia, a two-headed monster, is a split personality at war with itself, which wants to devour everything on either side of it but doesn’t know which way to turn, a paranoid schizophrenic with a persecution complex and delusions of grandeur, a house divided against itself, and it will, Guinea, tear itself apart – and fall.”
“Sure, Hunchy, like killing two birds with one stone – ha-ha, ha, ha-ha-ha-ha…”
Meanwhile, the damp, rank stench from the mutt is making me sick.
“The true and only Heir to Byzantium,” I continue, “is Kyiv – humble, simple, in all its humility. Kyiv! Time and again, it has fallen but it is also still standing. And right now, it holds the scepter, and it wears the crown, and Moscow never did and never will have anything to do with it. Kyiv is the Heir! And no other was ever meant to be.”
I duly continue: “And when the yoke of the Infidel finally falls from Byzantium, the Infidel lying defeated under Byzantium’s heel, Kyiv, the humble caretaker, will then return the crown and scepter to its true owner and take its rightful place within the kingdom – and among the stars! And false Moscow will be no more! For, Kyiv is before Moscow ever was, and when that pretender’s gone, Kyiv will continue to be!” [The Kyiv Unedited Secret Editorial Board expels an apologetic sigh of relief with the nervously awaited peroration of this gigantic, grotesque, and ominously raving half-mortal’s rant, which is clearly delusional.]
I am so wound up with my anti-Russian/anti-Asiatic/anti-Ottoman tirade against The Half Guinea that I do not notice the dog, which, having somehow grown, is clutching my kid around the shoulders with its paws, and its rod is somewhere at the kid’s backside, high up on the stool, and with its tongue hanging out and saliva dripping from its mouth, the dog is pumping away, happy as a lark. Venus Baby giggles and chortles, clapping his hands, like he’s enjoying it.
“I swear by Zeus and Jove, Guinea, I’M GOING TO KILL THAT FUCKING DOG!!!”
The Half Guinea yanks the mutt by the chain, whisking self and dog out the door so fast I don’t even see it happen. I hear only the repugnant dog of wounded pride, his baying and howling receding in the distance, far up Shevchenko Boulevard, ever farther and farther away.
Has The Hunched Cornish antagonized anyone with this review? I figure it’s not my problem.
The Hunched Cornish, February 1, 2014