Schutz

"Is it not risible," said Chesterton, closing the gilt volume with a harrumph, "that we put so much time and energy into the production of these cumbersome and manifestly impractical boxes of vellum? Is it not risible? Is it not?" Holden Quartermain of Catbox-on-Hatbox thumbed the ornate lid of his snuffbox, and called for Schutz. Schutz appeared, like a camel fitted with saddle and canteen, a pair of white gloves in mid-air making the sign for applause, because Schutz was invisible. Chesterton had a large red face. He refused to look at Schutz, for he was terribly envious of that gentleman's gentleman. Schutz agreed that it was indeed risible. White fingers gesticulated, articulated his four-fifths of the conversation. Donita Maria Graciela Sofia Perez de Quartermain was bathing. She dreamed of the long white fingers of Schutz. She dreamed of an olive grove and apricot brandy, streaks of moonlight on her snifter, her Winchester cigarillo kissed with saffron lipstick. Quartermain put up his hand, for he was in no mood to talk of books. "Did you know that Schutz, our good man here, has swum the British Channel on all seven continents? That he has made love to dozens of the world's most beautiful women? That he speaks fourteen languages, including semaphore? That he is a paramedic, a paralegal, and a Notary Public? That he has won cash prizes for his underwater subaquatic photography? That he has taught History and Medieval Cartography at Cambridge? That he has six certified toes on his left foot and is a qualified dental assistant as well as a licensed Speech Pathologist?" "You don't say?" said Chesterton with a cheeky scowl, spilling vinegar crisps all over his necktie. Isabella helped her lady into a turquoise pongee bathrobe, tied the delicate sash around the protuberant midden, poked her index at the distended navel. "Only a few more weeks!" she said giddily. "Oh that Schutz! What a rakish rapscallion he is! No?" "Oh yes," Donita agreed emphatically, "He is nothing but a scoundrel! A blackamoor, a cunting devil of a drake!" The women began to salivate with excitement. In only a few moments the two women were jumping up and down on Donita Quartermain's four-poster bed. Schutz was a braggart. He had the fastest hands in Seville, he boasted. He was the best swordsman in Heidelberg, claimed that swaggering cock-a-hoop. Down under he was a legendary breaker of horses. In Canada he had bagged moose, caribou, elk. He had caught salmon with his bare gloves in the north of England. "His yard is the length of two spools of yarn," Donita explained, "It spends itself like a bottle of shaken French wine. Dollops of his raffish passion fly every which way, like transparent tapioca pudding!" "Oh it must be something!" spurted Isabella. She imagined paper dragons in a Chinese parade, except instead of paper they were made of tapioca pudding. She thought of chilled platters and sea-foam salads, white curds immersed in crystalline citrus-green, and the little curds had cocksure faces with winking eyes. Donita went on, "Inside you feel thunderstruck, and a thousand golden gongs clang as if clacked with titanium clappers, and every nerve sings Mahlerian, undulates with sinister vibrato, and roses burgeon, unblossom in each tintinnabulating bone, burst like backward sunsets, like soft abrupt explosions. O Isabella, Chesterton is right! How tedious, how futile these blustery chains of words! Schutz is silent and unseen." "That varlet! That scalawag!" cried Isabella, unable to mask the meaty noumenon that was her jealousy. It grew out of her shoulder-blades, split and deltaed like antlers. She opened a second bottle of Wild Turkey, changed her ropa interior. She was a virgin, she confessed at last, and Donita's mouth was a capital U with polished white choppers set uniformly, like fluorescent lights, across the top. A fortnight later, young master Quartermain made his earthly debut. The physician on hand was forced to open up the beautiful young mother, wrench the early-bird from its sticky, tentacled cage. Poor Holden Quartermain fell into a faint. The nurses tittered behind their gloves. Chesterton was called in immediately. Looking straight through that writhing miscreant who had become so suddenly a persona non grata, the intelligent man turned and shouted with all his breath, "Schutz! You rogue, you blackguard!" But Schutz was nowhere to be seen. x