Big Sur/Chapter 28
Strange—and Perry Yturbide that first day while Billie’s at work and we’ve just called his mother now wants me to come with him to visit a general of the U.S. Army—“Why? and what’s all these generals looking out of silent windows?” I say—But nothing surprises Perry—“We’ll go there because I want you to dig the most beautiful girls we ever saw,” in fact we take a cab—But the “beautiful girls” turn out to be 8 and 9 and 10 years old, daughters of the general or maybe even cousins or daughters of a nextdoor strange general, but the mother is there, there are also boys playing in a backroom, we have. Elliott with us whom Perry has carried on his shoulders all the way—I look at Perry and he says “I wanted you to see the most beautiful little cans in town” and I realize he’s dangerously insane—In fact he then says “See this perfect beauty?” a pony tailed 10 year old daughter of the general (who aint home yet) “I’m going to kidnap her right now” and he takes her by the hand and they go out on the street for an hour while I sit there over drinks talking to the mother—There’s some vast conspiracy to make me go mad anyway—The mother is polite as ordinarily—The general comes home and he’s a rugged big baldheaded general and with him is his best friend a photographer called Shea, a thin well combed welldressed ordinary downtown commercial photographer of the city—I dont understand anything—But suddenly little Elliott is crying in the other room and I rush in there and see that the two boys have whacked him or something because he did something wrong so I chastise them and carry Elliott back into the livingroom on my shoulders like Perry does, only Elliott wants to get down off my shoulders at once, in fact he wont even sit on my lap, in fact he hates my guts—I call Billie desperately at her agency and she says she’ll be over to pick us all up and adds “How’s Perry today?”—“He’s kidnapping little girls he says are beautiful, he wants to marry 10 year old girls with pony tails”—“That’s the way he is, be sure to dig him”—In her musical sad voice over the phone.
I turn my poor tortured attention to the general who says he was an anti-Fascist fighter with the Maquis during World War II and also a guerilla in the South Pacific and knows one of the finest restaurants in San Francisco where we can all go feast, a Fillipino restaurant near Chinatown, I say okay, great—He gives me more booze—Seeing the amusing Irish face of Shea the photographer I yell “You can take my picture anytime you want” and he says sinister: “Not for propaganda reasons, anything but propaganda reasons—What the hell do you mean propaganda reasons, I aint got nothin to do with propaganda” (and here comes Perry back through the door with Poopoo holding his hand, they’ve gone to dig the street and have a coke) and I realize everybody is just living their lives quietly but it’s only me that’s insane.
In fact I yearn to have old Cody around to explain all this to me tho it soon becomes apparent to me not even Cody could explain, I’m beginning to go seriously crazy, just like Subterranean Irene went crazy tho I dont realize it yet—I’m beginning to read plots into every simple line—Besides the “general” scares me even further by turning out to be a strange affluent welldressed civilian who doesnt even help me to pay the tab for the Fillipino dinner which we have, meeting Billie at the restaurant, and the restaurant itself is weird especially because of a big raunchy mad thicklipped sloppy young Fillipino woman sitting alone at the end of the restaurant gobbling up her food obscenely and looking at us insolently as tho to say “Fuck you, I eat the way I like” splashing gravy everywhere—I cant understand what’s going on—Because also the general has suggested this dinner but I have to pay for everybody, him, Shea, Perry, Billie, Elliott, me, others, strange apocalyptic madness is now shuddering in my eyeballs and I’m even running out of money in their Apocalypse which they themselves have created in this San Francisco silence anyway.
I yearn to go hide and cry in Evelyn’s arms but I end up hiding in Billie’s arms and here she goes again, the second evening, explaining all her spiritual ideas—“But what about Perry? what’s he up to? and who’s that strange general? what are you, a bunch of communists?”