Chapter Fifteen
Pluck was up early the next morning, having divorced Poor Larry from his slumber and tugged him over to the ballroom’s bathrooms. The two friends stared at the opposing doors, lost in thought.
“All humankind, cleft in two,” Pluck mused.
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Quiet. I’m thinking. . . .Yes. A great toss of the coin is made, by God, when each child is born—or, I suppose, some months preceding—and all of its life, it must live with the consequences. Unsought, and unquestioned. And he, or she, is taught early on through which of these two doors he or she must take refuge, when the bladder or the bowel screams for relief. One door, and one door only; never the other. Are you listening, you worthless spud?!”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Then say something, now and again, so I know you’re awake!”
“Yes, monsieur.”
Pluck sighed. The early wintry sunlight made little inroad through the windows of the ballroom. The lights unlit, a grey silence extended to each corner of the room, lending each of Pluck’s sighs an expansive poignancy. The chairs were upside-down on the tables, a broom had been left against a wall, and Pluck and Larry might have been the last two people in the universe, following an inconceivable catastrophe, chatting away about the genetic division of their species when there was no longer any referent to which their words could point.
“Well,” sighed Pluck, “better get to it. Go on.”
Larry went up to the ladies’ room door and examined the sign. “Tell me again, monsieur, what you require?”
Larry was expecting the sigh, and it duly came. “Let me try to render it into words you can understand,” Pluck said. “Some prankster, perhaps an anarchist, has switched the signs: put the ‘Men’s’ sign on the ladies’ toilet, and the ‘Ladies’’ sign on the men’s. Am I making myself clear?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Good. Then what do you think you need to do?”
“Um. . .swi—?”
“Switch the signs, that’s right. I’ll just sit over here and watch and make sure you don’t bugger it up.” Pluck went and took a chair from a table, dropped it to the floor, and—not having properly predicted its likely weight—was knocked back as it bounced into him, his arms flailing in the air, falling onto the side of his face and reopening his wound.
“Ah!”
“Sir, can I help you?”
“No, damn you! Just do your job and switch the signs!”
“Yes, monsieur, though I’ve looked at the doors and can tell you that the words have been engraved into the wood.”
“What?!”
“Engraved into the wood, monsieur.”
“And?!”
“And, it is impossible to switch the signs.”
Pluck’s instinct was to call down all the curses from Olympus onto the boy’s head, as would anyone’s; but, ever the philosophical type, he stopped himself and wondered aloud: “But what would be the point?”
“Monsieur?”
“I’m talking to the gods, you idiot!”
Larry took a deep breath. “Pardon me, monsieur, but I would appreciate it if you could refrain from insulting me with such language.”
In an instant the back of the chair was in Pluck’s hands and the seat had swung through the air and collided with Larry’s face. The boy—remember, he’s at least an adolescent, though we (Pluck and I) might use the word “boy”—collapsed, you won’t be surprised to learn, to the floor. Pluck stood above him, chair in hand.
“I arrest you for the double murder-suicide of Lawrence Sipp Silliams and Charles Snede the Eighth.” (That was Pluck speaking; not Larry.) “You will accompany me to your room, where I will divest you of your clothes and chain you to the toilet. You will remain incarcerated in your chamber until the weather permits the arrival of the authorities. You will then receive a fair trial, per the law of the land, in which your innocence will be presumed until your guilt is proved, then you will be dead till you are hanged by the neck.” He stopped, and checked himself. “No—that last bit wasn’t quite right. I meant to say: you will be hanged by the dead till you are neck. Any questions?”
“I will switch the signs, monsieur!”
“Excellent. Chop-chop, and all that.”
As Larry, cursing under his breath, set to trying to remove one of the doors from its hinges, Pluck went to sit down in his chair—completely forgetting it lay on the floor on its side. He fell onto it, cracking the wood, receiving a splinter in his rib, and tumbling off, where the side of his face struck the floor and opened his gash even wider.
“What are you doing, you cretin?!” Pluck screamed from the floor.
“Are you all right, monsieur? I’ll run for help!”
“You’ll do no such thing!” Larry had rushed over, and now tenderly helped his friend to stand. “Get me a chair!” Larry let Pluck fall back to the ground, where he lay screaming while Larry grabbed another chair off the table, righted it, and lovingly helped Pluck up into it. Pluck held one corner of the tablecloth to his cheek, and another to the side of his torso; both ends were stained magenta, a sight which nearly made him swoon, and the remainder of the cloth was bunched up around Pluck’s face, presenting him as a noble, Buddha-shaped cloud.
Through gritted teeth: “Just. . .get back to work!”
“Yes, monsieur.”
Larry went back to his toolbox and tried another spanner on the bolt.
“What nonsense are you committing, anyway?!”
“I thought I would remove the doors and switch them, monsieur; but I can’t seem to budge these hinges.”
“You needn’t waste your time with that. Have you got a chisel in there?”
“A small one, yes, monsieur.”
Pluck forced himself to stand. “Give it here.” He stumbled over to the door. Larry handed him the chisel. Pluck looked at it with disgust, wiped it a little on the tablecloth, barked to Larry “Hold my shawl!”, which the boy did, like an ancient Egyptian attendant, and Pluck began to hack away at the word Men’s. “If you just knock a bit of the wood away,” he explained, “the letters will be erased, and the door will look whole.” After two, or maybe three—definitely no more than four—such hacks, a large hole had been made in the door, through which an observer, by necessity a dishonourable one, standing outside could now look in to satisfy her unnatural curiosity by watching a gentleman wash his hands at the basin following the expulsion of his waste matter. “Weak wood,” Pluck critiqued, while viewing his handiwork. “I’m not surprised.”
“What shall we do now, monsieur?”
“Well, my boy, we have two possibilities: hack a similar-sized hole in the other door, or simply smash down both doors altogether, and let whoever will, go where they may.”
“But—”
“Or a third option: we all hold our urine and faeces within us, until this matter is sorted out by the proper authorities.”
“Or—”
“Or—I’ve got it! Run and get me some paper and pen and adhesive!”
The boy did so. In his absence, Pluck pondered his mortality, but engendered no new conclusions on that subject, so let us pass it over and take up the story again a couple of minutes later when Larry got back.
“Don’t you want to ask me what I was doing in your absence, boy?”
“Er—what were you doing in my absence, monsieur?”
Pluck proceeded to relate all of those hackneyed convictions to which I referred a moment ago. Larry was as impressed as you or I would be.
“That’s enough chit-chat! Hand me that paper!”
Pluck scrawled crude (in both senses of the word) renderings of a phallus and a vulva on separate sheets, then looked over his work, to his dissatisfaction. “I am something of a perfectionist,” he explained over his shoulder to the boy. “Tighten up my shawl a bit.” There was something about the phallus that was not quite lifelike. “Boy, go wheel in Mister Lipp Lilliams.”
“Monsieur?”
“The dead man, you imbecile. Wheel him in here. I want to have a look at his genitals.”
“Very good, sir.” He moved to go off.
“Hang on!” Pluck stopped him. “Don’t let go of my shawl.”
“Are you coming with me, monsieur?”
“Certainly not! I’ll do the disrobing and the artistry; you can supply the model on your own, I expect.”
“Then I must let go of the tablecloth, sir.”
Pluck considered, then, fairly, conceded the lad had a point. “Never mind Gipp Gilliams.” He nodded at Larry’s groin. “Take them down.”
“Pardon, monsieur?”
“I want to look at your penis. You have got one, haven’t you?”
“I do, monsieur, but it is not for public exhibition.”
Pluck laughed. “Such overweening scruples, for one of your class! ‘Public exhibition’, indeed! I haven’t proposed parading you trouserless across the ballroom stage, have I, now?” He stopped to think. “Hang on a minute. . .now there’s an idea. . .”
“Perhaps monsieur would deign to deploy his own organ for this purpose.”
“Don’t be daft! I’m not trying to draw a musical instrument—I’m trying to draw a cock!”
“That is what I meant, monsieur.”
“Ah, I see. Yes. But, you see. . .” He had to think about this. “. . .It would of necessity be a bird’s-eye view. And I think the portrait would benefit from being rendered in profile, for this purpose.”
“If you like, monsieur, I would be happy to sever it, then place it on a plate on the table, with a bit of garnish and a candle for throwing the necessary light.”
Pluck thought. “. . .No, no, I fear the operation of removal would prove too painful, and the reattachment likely to be botched. But you’ve got a better head on your shoulders than I would have put you down for, Snede, I can tell you that.” Angry at himself for this rare failure at a task, Pluck screwed up his drawings and tossed them to the floor. “Pick those up.” As Larry went to do so—“But don’t let go of my shawl.”
“Would you please rise, then, sir?”
Pluck did so, and was pulled along, gently, as Larry stepped over to retrieve the papers. It was rather fun, Pluck mused; like a sleigh pulled by sprightly reindeer.
“Why is there blood all over the floor?!” he demanded.
“I fear you are bleeding, monsieur.”
“Don’t bother me with facts I already know, boy—bother me with facts I don’t know, if you please!”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“I hardly see how this blood is going to help us with the matter of the signs, anyway.”
“True, monsieur.”
“I don’t suppose you’re any good at drawing genitals?”
“I’ve never tried it, monsieur.”
Pluck scoffed. “Likely story. No, I suppose we’ll have to do it simply, but right.”
He wrote Ladies and Mens (he never employed apostrophes, on principle) on a sheet of paper each, handed them to Larry and ordered him, “Stick them up.”
“Monsieur—”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, I’m not an American bank robber! I meant, ‘stick up the signs’!”
“Monsieur. . .”
“What is it now?”
“I forget which door was which.”
“Well, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Just pick one.”
“Which one, monsieur?”
“For God’s sake, let me do it! Hold my shawl.” Pluck took the Ladies sign and stuck it over the hole in one door, then stuck the Mens sign directly beneath it. “There! Job done. Now accompany me to the trauma ward, where I can have these wounds seen to and get given a new shawl.”
“We haven’t a trauma ward, monsieur.”
“‘Sickbay’, then, or whatever you call it.”
“I’m afraid not, monsieur.”
“Of course not. Then take me to Manager Mifkin, so that I may see to your discharge.”
“Monsieur?”
“I don’t mean urine or anything like that! I mean the termination of your employ.”
“Have I done wrong, monsieur?”
“Not at all! Not at all, my boy!” Pluck laughed good-naturedly. “You’re coming to work for me now. I’ll admit I can’t pay you—all right, I’ll tell the truth, I don’t want to pay you—but you’ll see the world, lead an exciting life, eat table scraps from the finest restaurants in Europe—”
“I’m afraid that I’m bound by contract to this hotel, monsieur.”
“Well break it! Break it, my boy! I’ll have a word with Mifkin and straighten everything out.”
“I really don’t want to, monsieur.”
“Nonsense! We’ll draw up an informal contract and shake on it once this blasted snow clears off, and we satisfy the authorities as to your murder. In the meantime, I have two pairs of dress shoes that could use a shine. Let’s stop by a linen closet and get you a cot so you can sleep in my room—”
“But I really don’t like you, monsieur.”
Pluck laughed. “Don’t be absurd! You obviously don’t know what you’re saying. I’ll tutor you in English, so that you might more agreeably make yourself understood. Now, repeat after me: ‘There was an old slag from Doncaster’—”
“But monsieur, the door.”
“Eh?”
“The other door has no sign. Just a hole.”
“By God, Snede, you’re right! We’ll just have to right that wrong, won’t we?”
As good as his word, Pluck scrawled Mens and Ladies on two more pieces of paper and stuck them both up on the other door. Then off the two friends marched together, Larry with his arm around the bunches of Pluck’s shawl, Pluck with his arm around Larry, a world full of boundless possibilities awaiting them.