P.Q. Perron is a startingly original talent and a relative newcomer to the small press literary scene -- someone we expect great things from in the future. This long poem marks a second appearance in an Asterius Press publication. Another poem recently appeared in 13thWR. A third is forthcoming in Devil Blossoms.
Like wire-mended faience tonight my slapstick comedy with Sganarelle before me through my fractured French filters. Ratty, natty costumes off some backwater jake trading out for better or barefaced plunder of a cheeseparing relative with bats in his attic. Stagehands in backdrop-black speak in fingers, rubber soled twinkling toeing the scene a little off-kilter for the lothario pranks, atiptoe pratfalls. It might be Molière sitting there in the black, right where characters pop out like boiled grins onto spliced celluloid. Oompa music offstage alogically crackles a '20's cabaret opener even I can understand with my pig-German. Audience looks can inscrutinize.
Ladies! Gentlemen! Children!
Now our show begins! Welcome!
Act I
Exhaust. Engines racing. (Le Mans? – non, le junkyard off the autoroute.) Sganarelle tumbles through a flimsy scrim onto stage blotto, bottle intact, not the face you'd see on a napoleon: lewd, crude, shrewd – blame-less, then the shrew too, trashy hair, fit to rag, Doc Martens, what might be called indecently clad, except for the eighth-month swell. He crouches with his bottle, they grub around for insults, his sluice down a gargoyle's gutter, turned-wine pucker lost on me, except I know guttural gargling at lightening ferocity means his worst. Her I understand perfectly: she makes sure her man doesn't miss a syllable of her swashbuckling riposte, touchée. (Where are the children?
Feuds like these
have crusted family trees;
mothers like him,
illegitimate dauphins:
small, matted hair,
sans le sou, sans le père.)
He's swaying up from his squat. Now they're at each other! It's hand-to-hand! An apron flies! Sawdust bats thud like mortadella on bladders of oil! Now they're on the floor, two slowworms twisting around each other out of view under a clothesline!
We settle in for a genuine apaché
to the seventeenth century farcical cardboard degree.
Backstage, pif! paf! they boff each other about, we see it all, projected on a sheet, big as life, petty as Punch and Judy. Two curiosity seekers who happen on the scene throw aside the wrinkled sheet on the painstakingly rumpled clothesline between backstage and us, and – are we interrupting something? – she's on top! black-eyed! Now she's mad, hell-bent on revenge! It's written all over that face of braille as she eavesdrops, straining to hear the chagrins of the two!
A myopic plan from skunked vindictiveness spits
and bubbles in her doughy mind's ululating pits.
No Iago, no predator she.
Don't do it, girl! Just let the crapaud be!
Will she out-Sganarelle Sganarelle and reverse rogue chance?
This might be tragic in a different happenstance.
"A doctor? You need a doctor? Have I got a doctor for you!"
And, voilà! Sganarelle trips in, obliging the two.
Premeditation is to pray.
Her plan won't see the light of day!
Desperation has made the two blind: dashing beside greasy Sganarelle, they're but
feckless go-fers, flunkies for a rich old man.
Simply put (simply taking), in a bind,
they lure Sganarelle off,
curvaceous bottle before him like truffle before a swine.
Act II
Enter the nurse. Skirt. Up to here. Leg. All the way up. Stilettos. Dragging a cigarette. Pushing a perambulator. Sganarelle winds his head around like an eel. Pretty soon they're rolling around on the floor. He breathes a hand under a furry sweater, the other up a gartered thigh. She kicks. What part of non can he not understand? She's walking the floor with fingertips. He grabs her ankles, leering. Finally she hits him - coyly - and after a suspicious delay, we notice. These things are not otherwise unnoticed, and here comes her knight!
We note her flunky savior is no gentleman:
we've watched him for a while now, watching them.
Tiens! His eyes have murder in their hue!
Oh, là là! It's her man! Mocks the tape offstage, "Cuckoo!"
He shoots Sganarelle a glare of choked hatred,
(How dare you besmudge my virtuous queen?
Now you will catch hell, Sganarelle, harlequin!)
Funny, pathetic, just - one look tells all.
But - what? Sganarelle has the guy, hélas, by the balls,
poor bastard, blue with impotence: a minion is bound by apathetic laws of inertia, but
Sganarelle glides like hope before the old man!
(What can this old fool not see that I can?)
Act III
Enter the old man's blind spot: the demure, the dainty, the delicate demoiselle daughter in Chinese pj's and circus slippers. She swoons into the arms of a nearby hunk in leather riding pants. They drag her to a chair, pigeon-toed and rubber-legged. We titter. As they chatter all around in argument, her neat little knobbed head lolls about to see who's watching, then mouths a sound of flatulence on her wrist! We guffaw. She preens. The players stare at her, horrified. They can't believe Monsieur's mignonne has just farted.
What can be the malady of milady, mal lady? Sganarelle poses her a question. Nyanyabluhsluhbluh, she says. "Hein?" he says. She blubbers again. "Quoi?" rhymes with hay.
We listen, a critical juncture for all: Will this fraud be disabled?
this cad's skein unravel? a scapegoat's unwitting cabal?
Again! He upends our sensible universe! Incredibly,
the lame walk, and the girl begins to talk --
"I want to marry him!" from the sexy hunk, astride,
slim legs wrapped like ivy around his buff rawhide.
She bites his ear, she's…now they're riding off!
Stolen! Abducted! Her father starts to cough,
filial abandonment has lodged hard in his maw.
Not even au revoir to le bon papa!
The next is a blur. The flunky has a rope!
To hang Sganarelle? What a turn! Is there no hope?
Where's the little wife whom he battered in first scene?
The one who just betrayed him – Oh, where, oh, where's Martine?
The noose is on, and now our Sganarelle is good as done!
And none too soon. It's time he taste his own foul medicine.
Hang him from the highest tree. Drown him.
Put his neck in a vice. Stab him through the heart.
Flay his face, smooth as a baby's after blackout
strangle-holds. Take him out back. Replace the
sawdust with lead. Castrate him and rub in salt.
Split his head open with an ax to let in sense.
Push him off an airplane. Poison the wine.
Inject his veins with battery acid. Adjust the rack.
Unhinge the iron maiden. Reinstate the guillotine.
Evisc--
"What's this?!" calls Martine, blooming out of the black. "My husband, HUNG!?" she howls. Silence. Except for me, a certain je ne sais quoi having adulterated my translation.
She saves him, as usual. As usual, away they go. He's off somewhere, several lives left, remorseless, on some curb, on some drunk, on some Martine panting to be bruised. Through all, absolved. Last season, the miser. Next, the tartuffe. Cured, I take the slow tram home,
my enfant terrible, Héloïse!, in deep repose.
Next, a lengthy run of La Vie en rose?