The Puppies Of Terra

Chapter Nine
In which we may witness Salami, and almost everybody escapes.

The great escape plot almost foundered at its launching, due to Pluto’s artsy-fartsy insistence on arena staging.

“Theatre-in-the-round, my good God!” I exclaimed. “These are Dingoes, not Elizabethans, boy. The groundlings, the Great Unwashed, the stinking rabble that doesn’t know the difference between a Holbein and a hole in the ground. What did Bizet say when he sat down to write the Toreador Song? He said, if they want merde, I’ll give them merde. This is Mass Culture. You’re in Hollywood now. Remember it.”

“But a proscenium arch! It’s… it’s indecent! Hamlet had arena staging. It was good enough for Marlowe; it was good enough for Jonson; it was good enough for Shakespeare; and it’s good enough for me.”

“Amen, brother!” said Clea, clapping her hands.

“They used a proscenium arch at Bayreuth,” St Bernard ventured timidly. Logical discourse was not his element.

“And if it was good enough for Wagner, it should be good enough for us,” I said, grateful for whatever allies. “Illusion—that’s the ticket! People like to be fooled. Besides, if we don’t have a big old painted backdrop, how will we get everyone out the gate? This isn’t art for art’s sake, but for ours.”

“Philistine!” Pluto growled. “Have it your way tonight, but if we ever get this show out of the provinces…”

“Once we’re in Swan Lake, I wash my hands of it. But for tonight, we’d better move. Clea, start the ladies sewing up costumes and rehearsing the production numbers. Remember, sex is everything. And they’ve got to fill up a lot of time, so don’t let them have anything until they’re screaming for it—and then give them half. Palmino, you’ve got an exodus to organize and a set to pound together. Don’t fuss over the style, but make sure the backdrop is opaque. Pluto, you can start helping St Bernard with his lines.”

“But they aren’t written yet.”

“Too late, too late. Give him his lines now and write them when you get to Swan Lake. That was Shakespeare’s way. For my own part, I’ll be the rest of the day at least convincing Frangle that Salami’s going to be the solution to his morale problem.”

“Not salami,” Pluto protested, “—Salome!”

“Salami,” I said sternly. “Remember—you’re in Hollywood now.”

“Salami?” Captain Frangle asked, giving a bewildered twist to his moustaches. “For my part—that is to say, speaking unofficially—I think it could be very, uh, beautiful… is that the word? The Bible and all, yes—but nevertheless.”

“Nevertheless, Captain?”

“Nevertheless, the men, you know. The men are a crude sort, generally speaking. Not that I wouldn’t enjoy a, uh, what is the word… a little culture?… myself, you understand. I’ve always fancied myself an intellectual, you know, but nevertheless.”

“Oh, as for the men, I can assure you there won’t be anything highbrow about this production. You know the story of Salami, of course?”

“Of course. That is to say… if you could refresh my memory…?”

“By all means.” And I told him the story, more or less as it appears in Matthew and Mark and Wilde and Hofmannsthal—and in the Rita Hayworth movie that had given Pluto his inspiration. Thank heaven for the film archives at the Shroeder Kennel! Pluto had altered the traditional story somewhat in the interests of heightened vulgarity.

“And all that is in the Bible?” Frangle asked, at the conclusion of my tale.

“Even as I have said.”

“And they’re going to do that on stage—here?”

“As I’ve been given to understand, five hundred or more of the most beautiful bitches in the penitentiary are rehearsing the roles of the harem slaves. Salami herself is a vision of such chaste purity that words are inadequate.”

“It might be a very rewarding experience at that. Eh, Major? I’ve always held that religious education is essential to the moral well-being of an army. Wasn’t it Napoleon who said an army travels on its soul? Too many commanders these days are willing to let spiritual matters go to hell.”

“I never thought you were one, Captain Frangle.”

Frangle smiled and adjusted one moustache to an expression of modest self-satisfaction and the other to randy anticipation. “When does the fun begin?”

“At nine-thirty, Captain. Promptly at nine-thirty.”

Promptly at nine-forty-five, the curtain rose and one hundred and fourteen guards and three officers of the St Cloud Repatriation Center gasped as one man as they caught their first view of Herod’s Palace in Galilee, brilliantly illuminated by the four searchlights which had been taken down from the prison watchtowers. The backdrop represented an infinite perspective of lotus columns and gothic vaulted roofs, of gilded caryatids and marble pylons, of niches and cornices and ogive windows looking out upon still vaster Babylonian perspectives—a mural that had been the corporate achievement of two hundred and several pets—and looked it. The composition flowed freely from style to style, from Poussin to Chirico and thence to Constable, as naturally as a spring brook babbles over a bed of boulders. Every square inch glowed with a disquietingly gemlike light, since the paint was still fresh and sticky.

The orchestra struck up the overture—a hastily reconstituted version of the Tales of the Vienna Woods, which had, despite itself, a rather oriental character, due to our instruments: water pipes and water xylophones, garbage can tympani, and a string section of barbed wire and bedsprings.

When the effect of these splendors began to dim, Pluto, in sacerdotal robes and a long false gray beard, came centerstage and declaimed, in his most magistral tone: “And Behold!”

And behold, the chorus lines of Herod’s wives and concubines came marching in from stage right and stage left, respectively, one thousand strong. They overflowed the stage and filled the courtyard. Not Solomon in all his glory had it so good.

“And behold, it came to pass in those days that Herod was Tetrarch of Galilee. Even Herod Antipasto—”

Herod Antipasto, with a Falstaffian gut, size 15 shoes, a putty nose, and long, gray moustaches not unlike the Captain’s, entered at the end of the chorus line, hiking up his fancy robes and kicking his hairy legs, blithely out of time with the orchestra’s galop, and pinching occasional asses to the loud delight of his audience.

“Now Herod was a cruel king who liked nothing better than his brother’s wife, Herodias Antipasto—unless it was his brother’s wife’s daughter, Salami Antipasto.” Enter Herodias, swinging her boa. Enter Salami, in a sedan chair borne by eight Nubians. For the time being, Salami kept her beauty dimmed behind the curtains of the sedan chair, only peeking out briefly to wink in my direction. Frangle, sitting beside me, exclaimed: “Did you see that? Did you see how she looked right at me?”

“Now it came to pass in those days, even then, that Herod, Tetrarch of Galilee, had a big party, and he invited everybody. He invited the Romans and their wives…” Enter the Romans and their wives. “The Egyptians and their wives.” Who entered. “The Nubians and their wives.” And many more, each doing the characteristic national striptease. But somehow, no matter how many Herod invited, the courtyard never seemed to get any more crowded.

When everyone had got to the party at last, Pluto assumed a gloomy tone: “But Herod had forgotten to invite one person to his big party, and that person found out that he’d been left out in the cold, and he was very angry, and behold he was called the Baptist, even St Bernard.”

Enter the aforementioned, with much clashing of garbage cans. St Bernard sang the Toreador Song from Carmen, with new lyrics that expressed his pique at not receiving an invitation and also scolds the Tetrarch for marrying his brother’s wife. This accomplished, he joined Motherlove, as Salami, in the love duet from La Bohème.

“And behold, Herod waxed hot with anger, and he ordered his henchmen to put the Baptist down in the dungeon, and behold St Bernard the Baptist slew three hundred soldiers with the jawbone of an ass!”

And sure enough, behold—for twenty minutes St Bernard lay about him, scattering the dead on all sides. The stage swarmed with litter bearers and nurses and fresh replacements. It had scarcely been cleared stage right, before St Bernard had reaped a new harvest stage left—and singing all the while. It was a wonderful fight, and the groundlings loved it, but the odds were against him, and at last he was caught and hauled away. To celebrate Herod’s victory, a thousand new dancing girls trooped in to the strains of the Triumphal March from Aida.

Pluto’s narration went on to describe how Salami and the Baptist were passionately in love with each other, but that Herod was determined to keep them apart because he loved Salami himself. Salami, hoping to save her lover, goes to her mother Herodias, who persuades her daughter (and this is the part that Pluto lifted from the Rita Hayworth movie) to dance the Dance of the Seven Veils for the Tetrarch, who has promised her any favor in return. Salami thinks the favor will be St Bernard’s release, but bad old Herodias asks for his head on a silver salver instead. What a plot! At least, that’s what was supposed to have happened, but at the point when there was to have been the big scene between the Antipastos, man and wife, a ballet of the slave girls was interpolated. Pluto was gesturing frantically for me to come backstage. Excusing myself to Frangle, Quilty, and the Reverend Captain, I left my front-row-center seat and went to see what was amiss.

“Herod has deserted!” Clea announced in dire tone, exhibiting the castoff costume. “He couldn’t wait to run off to Needlepoint Hill with the Egyptians.”

“Are all the pets gone now?” I asked. Unnecessarily, for I could see the steady streams of prisoners still hurrying out the gate under the supervision of Palmino and his four friends—who had volunteered to miss the stage show and man the lookout towers that night. Many of the pets ran right from the wings into the departing throng as soon as their business on stage was completed.

“Only six thousand are out,” Pluto confessed. “We’re ten minutes behind schedule because of the late curtain, but we’re catching up. The problem is Herod. We forgot to assign an understudy, and nobody knows the part.”

“Somebody has to go on—that much is obvious. I don’t care who you pick.”

“We thought…” St Bernard began hesitatingly. “… that you might.”

“You see, my darling, the other pets really have no idea of what we’re about,” Clea explained. “It’s easy enough for the girls to go out there and do a little belly dance, but the actor doing Herod was beside himself with the pain of the vulgarity. And we thought that since you’ve come to know the Dingoes so well…”

“But they’ve come to know me so well too!”

“But with this big tummy and the false moustache and a putty nose and a little rouge and mascara, they won’t. Please, White Fang, don’t be difficult. We can’t make those poor slave girls dance all night.” Clea took advantage of the time to prepare me for the rôle, and by the end of her entreaty I was more fit to go on as Herod than to return to my seat in front, so I gave in. Besides, as Pluto had known very well, I love amateur theatricals.

My first scene, with Herodias, was easy to ad-lib. The bargain was struck by which Salami was to do her bit and St Bernard was to have his head taken off. Then I settled back to watch, having no other business during the dance than to scramble out on all fours and pick up each of the seven veils as Motherlove let them fall, then bay like a wolf in appreciation. In all fairness I must say that her dance merited no less.

The first veil, for instance, revealed Motherlove’s arms—as graceful and ivory a pair as ever clasped a Tetrarch’s neck, hands like two doves, tipped with long almond nails that even the cruel regimen of prison life had not spoiled.

The second veil uncovered Motherlove’s classic nose and sculpted lips, parted, as the veil fell, in a taunting and suggestive smile, more exciting than many another woman’s kiss.

Motherlove spent as much time over the third veil as if she had been undoing the Gordian knot, and when it at last fell, the audience and I broke into a roar of approval. Motherlove’s legs were long, firm and elegantly muscled. When they moved in time to the crash of the cymbals and squeal of strings, one seemed to feel that the science of anatomy held no more mysteries. Such a feeling, however, was premature.

The orchestra had grown steadily quieter throughout the dance, the tempo slower. As each veil fell, a group of musicians quit their seats at the side of the stage and went behind the backdrop where they joined the escaping throng. The noise of the exodus became perceptible as the music quietened, but Motherlove commanded the guards’ attention with queenly authority, to say the least.

The fourth veil bared her swanlike neck and creamy shoulders to the vulgar view; the fifth revealed her midriff. The lithe bare belly rolled and pulled taut, then stretched out at length, making the delicately-convoluted navel peek forth from its little hollow of flesh. The arms moved violently with the music, clapping, swinging up above the high-piled hair and chopping down in counterpoint to the musician’s beat. The music slowed to the consistency of honey. Motherlove’s almond fingers touched the hem of the sixth veil.

“Take it off!” the guards chanted. “Take it off! Take it off!” The Tetrarch was limping in circles about the stage, while Captain Frangle had leapt to his feet and was chewing at his moustaches in an agony of concupiscence. Eventually, after a long season of doubt, she took it off. Ah, then what treasures did the Tetrarch’s court behold! The two breasts were like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.

One veil remained, and one musician—Pluto, who played a flute. Motherlove loosened the knot at her hip, but she did not let the veil drop. She lifted it, she lowered it, she moved it laterally—but she did not let it drop. Of a sudden the flute broke off, and Pluto stepped forward to resume his rôle as narrator. “And behold…” he sang out.

“Behold! Behold!” the audience shouted in agreement.

“…the Baptist broke from his bonds and escaped the dungeon of the Tetrarch, and he was at hand to spare the modesty of the Princess Salami from the lustful gaze of Herod.” St Bernard carried in a heavy wooden screen, which unfolded into six sections. The Princess Salami concealed herself modestly behind this screen, one end of which butted against the wing on stage left.

“Off with his head!” I, as the Tetrarch, roared.

“Off with his head!” the audience clamored. One of them, Frangle himself, favoring more direct action, rushed at the screen to tear it down. St Bernard ran downstage to prevent him but tripped over his own loincloth. Only I, Herod Antipasto, could stay Frangle’s lewd intent.

Grasping him roughly by the lapels of his uniform, I began dragging him back to his seat, but Frangle was not to be persuaded even by superior strength. He bit and clawed and tore and grabbed at Herod’s moustaches…

“Major Worthington!” he exclaimed. “What are you about?”

Fortunately the audience was making enough noise to drown out Frangle’s cry of recognition. St Bernard assisted me in dragging the Captain behind the screen, and together we assisted the Captain to become unconscious. As each of the articles of his clothing was thrown out from behind the screen for their inspection, the guards’ laughter grew louder. At last, when the inert officer was carried away in full sight on a stretcher the house came down.

Which bit of extempore business concluded, we returned with relief to the script.

“Desist, villainous Antipasto!” declaimed St Bernard, in his best Verdian style.

“Nay, prepare to meet thy death, fool,” I replied, “for I shall see the precious ruby beneath that final veil or die in the attempt.”

“Help, help,” said Clea peeking out from behind the screen.

“Off with his head!” the guards began again to chant, drowning out the noise that the last pets were making in their escape.

I whipped out the tipped fencing foil from the sheath at my side and laid on. Though my swordsmanship was no better than might have been expected from a bumbling, fat, old Tetrarch, luck was so far on my side that St Bernard was unable to despatch me with the same ease with which he’d disposed of the previous three hundred soldiers. Then, by a clever strategem, I made him circle about so that I was between him and the screen. Then I bolted towards Salami. With a shriek Clea started running away, pressing her single remaining veil (rather larger now than it had been) to her bosom and private parts. She was hindered from running too far ahead of me by the fact that the tip of my foil had become tangled in the corner of this garment. In this manner we circled the courtyard thrice, pursued by St Bernard, who was still tripping over his loincloth and therefore could never quite catch up. The credit for all this choreography must go to Pluto.

At last Motherlove regained the sanctuary of the screen. A mist comes before my eyes and my throat tightens as I am forced again to recall the sight of my mother’s cheerful smile and the friendly wave of her hand as she departed into the wings, and thence backstage. Her rôle was at an end, and she was to follow the rest of the pets now to Needlepoint Hill. Never, never more to see her! How lovely she was in those last moments! How hard to believe that she has left the Earth and me irredeemably behind!

But there was not time then to appreciate the ineffableness of that moment, for St Bernard was laying on thick and fast, switching my padded sides and rump with his lath broadsword. Howling inanely and flailing my foil, I ran about the stage. After a few circuits thus, I ran out at the wings stage left and circled the backdrop that I might reenter on the right. Only Palmino and his four cohorts were left backstage now. The pets were all out. It lacked but fifteen minutes of midnight.

Around the courtyard, back and forth across the stage, then a quick dash behind the screen (where the audience still supposed Clea to be cowering) to catch hold of one end of a trick “veil”, which when pulled out to its full length exceeded the measurements of the stage twice over. But the jokes were wearing thin. Our audience was demanding St Bernard’s head ever more loudly. Hugger-mugger can only go so far.

Then St Bernard, hoping to liven the performance, struck me one blow that didn’t land on the padding but on me. With a cry of authentic pain, I tumbled backward into Herod’s Palace. Samson, in the house of the Philistines, did not enjoy so instant a success. Tremors passed through the eclectic canvas, and there was a minatory, splitting sound. St Bernard pulled me away before it all came down on my head.

Like the rending of the temple veil, Herod’s Palace split neatly down the central seam and fell to the right and to the left, leaving in full view the gaping gates through which the pets had departed. But they did not gape quite so much as I would have liked, and they gaped less every second, as Palmino and his four companions pushed them closed. Pluto’s plan had called for the gate to be closed and locked, but only after St Bernard and I were outside. We rushed forward too late to prevent the outer bolt from sliding into place. Palmino had double-crossed us.

The guards that had comprised the audience of Salami did not take in the full extent of the deception that had been perpetrated upon them quickly enough to prevent St Bernard and me from dashing to the barracks’ door. When they did realize that all the other pets had escaped out the gate, the main body of them forgot the two of us entirely and battered at the locked portal. A contingent of five, however, did pursue us into the barracks and challenged us to stop. Since they were off duty and unarmed, we could afford to ignore their challenge.

It would have been an easy matter then to go up the stairs to Mosely’s room and out the unbarred window and on up to Needlepoint Hill, except that—unfortunately—I tripped.

The five guards were all over me, but St Bernard flew to my rescue and beat them back with his stick of lath. Which, however, broke off at the hilt. Scrambling to my feet, I tore off my putty nose and false moustaches and ordered the guards to come to attention. “If you dare lift your hand against me, I’ll have you court-martialed!”

“Jesus Christ, it’s the Major!”

They stood uncertain whether to advance upon us or obey my command, allowing St Bernard opportunity to pick up a packed foot locker from beside one of the bunks and to hurl it at them. Bonk! Oof! Thud! Great Scott!

We rushed up the stairs and into Mosely’s room. St Bernard was out at the window almost the moment he was in at the door, and I would have followed as quickly after, but for my costume. I was stuffed too abundantly to go through.

“Hurry!” St Bernard warned, pointing to the distant figures of the last pets gathering around Needlepoint Hill, about which a nimbus of roseate light seemed to be settling. “The Masters are there now.”

I had taken off half my uniform extricating myself from my costume, and I was out on the windowledge. Too late! All about us were the armies of the Dingoes!

The soldiers closed in around St Bernard, and I threw him my foil for his defense. He warred against their electric prods bravely, but it was a hopeless contest from the first. The guards of the penitentiary were pounding on the door at my back.

An officer, his arm in a sling (the original Major Worthington?), addressed me through a megaphone. “Better jump down from that ledge, White Fang. We have orders to take you alive. The guards in that prison do not.”

In the distance, on the crest of Needlepoint Hill, the first of the redeemed pets began ascending into the skies. Soon the heavens were filled with their glorious, glowing bodies. A golden light of overwhelming beauty flooded the scene so that even the Dingo soldiers had to turn to admire it. It reminded me of… something… something I could not, quite, put my finger on.

St Bernard could however: “The Last Judgment!”

The Masters were taking back their pets in exactly the manner that Michelangelo had laid out for them six centuries before on the walls of the Sistine Chapel.

The door gave behind me, and I jumped into captivity.