A Viking mead hall – capacious; huge. A massive smorgasbord way off to one side – but the hall is so huge, it bends with the curvature of the Earth, and you can’t even see the food, unless you climb specially built platforms that look like Norse longships that have been stood on end along strategic points in the hall. These are crowded around by excited and childish assholes and he can’t get to them. But it doesn’t matter – whether they like it or not, his name is going down in the scrolls forever.
Dignitaries prance around in tuxedoes with tails, their chests diagonally draped with broad ribbons, some decorated with large star-like medals – as though the Austro-Hungarian Empire had never ended; as though the world of Marcel Proust had never faded from memory.
Suddenly, everyone is called to order and the vast rows of seats are filled – it seems by numbered invitation, revealing a dais front and center studded with microphones.
He can’t seem to find or recall having a ticket, and sort of passes by the black-garbed sentinel-collector, peering at him hard, summoning up his authority and importance into the look, although the guard doesn’t seem to notice, or maybe just hunches his shoulders and folds away under a crumpling black cape and an eye mask that continues to stare up through empty holes.
For good measure, Plumka stomps the pile.
And then he figures out by a sort of foreknowledge and intuition what seat should be his and he takes it – not quite at the end of a row, and in a row not quite toward the front – and some people look at him, while others ignore him, but all their looks or seeming indifference bespeak recognition on some level – in a variety of cases, grudging. Fuck them, the fucking assholes.
He looks around. Who’s that? Back there, over to the left. It’s Elias Canetti, author of “Auto-da-Fe” and not much else. Canetti sees Andrzej Plumka, and lifting his large tottering head gives him a haughty, dismissive downward look from beady eyes through black-rimmed glasses.
Oh, yeah, Canetti?! I’m going to make you fucking squirm, fuck wad. What the fuck did you get the Nobel Prize for? I’m going to shame you, make you wish you’d never… because I’m better than you – Plumka’s piercing, vicious gaze now tears into Canetti – I’M FUCKING BETTER THAN YOU!!! – you fucking little prick! You miserable, vicious, cantankerous fucking little worm, you fu-… I’M GONNA FUCK YOU, I’LL FUCK YOU!!! Canetti turns his large arrogant head away and down into the chair and then is there no more, having dissolved under the power of Plumka’s ferocious will.
Yeah, good – that’s right – FUCKING GOOD!!!
There’s another man in approximately the same visual field. Yeah, he recognizes him. It’s Jean Paul Sartre, neither looking at Plumka nor not looking – completely in line with his character – to Plumka, this is acceptable. Yeah, he’s all right, no pretentions, refused the prize, I kind of admire that, I’ll probably make a joke when they give me the check that’s just short of the same gesture, like, ‘It’s about fucking time…’
He looks around and sees American greats that never got the prize; some there, and some who weren’t there, but looked like they were supposed to be, but either didn’t want to attend the ceremony, due to the humiliation, or because they simply didn’t want to acknowledge the institution – and rightfully so, Plumka thinks, awed and humbled by the respect he holds for these masters – there’s William Gaddis, and David Foster Wallace (who had been beating Plumka to this before dying tragically), and DeLillo, and Cormac McCarthy – what kind of fucking name is that?; he just wants to rub it into that miserable prick – he’s doing it already – it’s not worth more than a dismissive smirk – yeah, he’s not even looking over – good, good, because I’m fucking better than you, you miserable prick – Ooo, ooo, “The Road,” ooo, “No Country for Old Men” – ooooo, fucking ooooo… I beat you, I fucking beat you! What are you trying to fucking prove – Oh, oh, oh, we don’t acknowledge us, of course, of course, we’re here to make a show of ignoring superior…
And then there’s Thomas Pynchon and Philip Roth. The utmost respect here. Plumka looks at Roth – all those books, all those fucking books, and yet it was Plumka who was here – he had beaten him, Roth, who now looks over at Plumka, knowing Plumka acknowledges him as the master who most influenced him. Pynchon doesn’t look, but that’s different from McCarthy, because Pynchon also knows, so it’s all right – and Roth’s sad, tired eyes meet Plumka’s, and he nods his head in acknowledgement, and Plumka nods back, doing his best to project his esteem and tremendous respect for Roth, saying with a look of unsullied sincerity that he wouldn’t be collecting this prize today if it hadn’t been for him.
Janusz Grushka, someone calls into the system. Here? You have to pick up your prize, Pearka… people are waiting for you to… People look around… Is Jerzy Olivka…
These were maybe all his names, and this was finally that moment, and Plumka gets out of his seat tentatively, at first not really knowing how he should comport himself or what to do, but when he then steps out into the aisle to walk to the dais, people look at him, drawing their heads back, as if in disgust and offended…
Oh, yeah, yeah, sure, more of the same – let’s just fucking pretend you don’t know me… go fuck yourse-… and he starts his acceptance speech from the other side of the dais, but now he is on a small stage behind a wobbly lectern:
We are left raising a trembling arm accept this award, one mighty, a last puny cry to defy, though how small and weak and frail, our shivering frames out on the rock battered waves, the storm, defy our mortal posterity into that one last little squeaking horrible fierce cry, that finally we are human here our breath into the spirit of the universe casting that one eternal message that we are…
The hall is a tiny sideshow theater, there are only a few people scattered among the old, soda and food-stained, folding, red crushed-velvet chairs, talking to each other, occasionally looking up at the naked Plumka to make a comment, but being otherwise oblivious, getting up and leaving…
Aaahh, I think you should be working on your next parody piece instead of sleeping, says the chief editor of Kyiv Edited – an Internet publication vengefully launched by The Ferret against arch-enemy Kyiv Unedited – Zippy Zamazda, to Andrew Plumb. Zamazda’s upper lip curls in contempt, his fat Zebra head tilts back in unsurpassed arrogance, shaking with indignation.
Plumb lifts his groggy head from his arm and wipes the drool from his lower lip. He realizes he’d been dreaming. As he gains full composure, his mouth contorts, and in a slow, vicious, scratchy-voiced snarl drawls… FUUUUUCK YOOOOOUUU…
Filed by Jack Step, July 1, 2013