(As Radiohead plays “Lotus Flower,” softly, from speakers embedded in the paneled walls. Slavoj rests at a corner table, one hand holding his head while the other thumbs a copy of the King James Bible. Invisible Hand arrives with a tray of drinks. Slavoj looks up.)

 

Slavoj

This morning I woke up sucking my thumb.

 

Invisible Hand

Mon semblable, mon frère!

 

Slavoj

Then the cat jumped on my crotch.

 

Invisible Hand

These are the traces of an alien culture.

 

Slavoj

She worked her way up to my beard and then gave me a cat bath with her tongue. I felt perverse because I had an erection and the cat purred as she squatted on my chest.

 

Invisible Hand

Did you know, Lichtenstein produces more false teeth and sausage casings than any other country in the whole world. Eleven municipalities, each about the size of a Fiat, and low taxes, which is why Lichtenstein contains more corporations than people.

 

Slavoj

Sometimes I think I will take you between my great Hegelian thighs and crush you until you cannot spit up your own blood.

 

Invisible Hand

Then, handless, whom would you squeeze, and to what ends?

 

Slavoj

I don't know. I hadn't gotten that far.

 

(Here he begins to cry into his Slivovitz, though it is only 9AM.)

 

Invisible Hand

Silly Serb bastard, why are you here?

 

(And now a mechanically operated screen drops from the bar. The spathiphyllum, they wave suggestively. Slavoj rises in the empty bar, gesturing with his gall.)

 

Slavoj

(Pointing at the screen. Video rolls.)

Twenty-four years ago I met her. One night in an early Autumn snow we watched the light on the Clock Tower glow, even though it was not working. Walking back into her room, she squeezed her breast out from beneath her sweater and like nursing mothers are wont to do, latched her baby before I had even time to see, though I did not need to, you know, because I fell into a trance. Don't laugh. I recalled nursing. Felt my pores opening, though milkless, just cried into my muff, the heat of that radiated room disappearing, bodyless, delicious snow falling up.

 

Invisible Hand

As metaphor, I've always been drawn to such images.

 

Slavoj

Images I know. I've been watching Schindler's List and Au Revoir Mes Enfants over and over. What I experienced was not an image, at least not in the sense of a figuration.

 

Invisible Hand

The low-brow and the high-brow.

 

Slavoj

You'd think I'd prefer Enfants, but List (that fucking Spielberg soul) has that girl in the red dress, and that's a little bit of a scream against the night.

 

Invisible Hand

As is the baby and the snow?

 

Slavoj

No. That's what I'm telling you. It was no image. No metaphor or symbol.

(And here he spills some plum brandy on the floor.)

It was felt.

(Pounding his chest.)

 

Invisible Hand

(Makes a similar pounding motion, but no sound is heard.)

 

Slavoj

That little sack of flesh, begging at his mother's nub, set my whole head wandering time. Filled with the juice of the universe. Which was just us. There in that room. But it was a metonymy...

 

Invisible Hand

Speaking as something of an analogy.  

 

Slavoj

No, onanist.

 

Invisible Hand

Touché, comrade.

 

Slavoj

The epistemology of grace is always inadequate.

(Sighs.)

 

Invisible Hand

(Forming a clenched fist of prayer.)

 

Slavoj

But why is grace so debilitatingly morose?

 

Invisible Hand

I suspect that morose is a poor choice of words, as is the adverb. The phrase, too, “Good-bye, my children.”

 

Slavoj

Yes, thank you. The red dress as well.

 

Invisible Hand

Have another.

(He motions to the barkeep.)

 

Slavoj

The equation of love is endings.

 

Invisible Hand

You sound the poet.

 

Slavoj

As was St. John. Words the milk of the soul.

 

Invisible Hand

Be plain.

 

Slavoj

The endings and beginnings, they are simultaneous.

 

Invisible Hand

Give me more. I am an open palm.

 

Slavoj

The essence of Christ is not competition, it is open weeping without logic. This is the Word.

 

Invisible Hand

You're losing me. Have another.

 

Slavoj

(Staring into his glass.)

How do I explain grace to you?

 

Invisible Hand

I never married.

 

Slavoj

Did you have loves?

 

Invisible Hand

Yes.

 

Slavoj

Who were they?

 

Invisible Hand

I have never told anyone.

 

Slavoj

I know about you. Only a closeted gay man could fuck the sonnet so completely.

 

Invisible Hand

Bartender!

 Slavoj

(Slavoj rises again, addressing the empty bar.)

Hand, you know the smell of snow in Autumn, last dregs of vodka in the perfect glass, size seven jeans too short for your daughter's legs, pugnacious cheeses piquant but just ripe, your Chevy's sub-par radio blasting Springsteen right before your Parkway breakdown. 

(Here the Hand orders a shiny Absolut.)

Oh, I know the stony crevices grace crawls into waiting out the long spring thaw. Balls and whistles! The carnival man's sad embrace of the lion, cotton candy, and the enormous woman's tiny heart he wouldn't betray for all the ticket sales you might squeeze from out the public fist. 

 

Invisible Hand

(Agitated now.)

Was there an orchestra at Auschwitz or was there NOT?

 

Slavoj

(Seated again.)

Ask Maus.

 

Invisible Hand

“Hard to classify,” the Pulitzer board said.

 

Slavoj

For those who heard the orchestras, it was real. Others aren't sure. Others are dead. Like the cello player of Sarajevo, playing during the bombardments, it is a crystal, and through it you see refractions of your own mind, claiming itself.

 

Invisible Hand

(Pulling out his Iphone.)

Patrick M of Maryland writes on Tripadvisor of the Garden of Eden Bar, “i stopped by all three nights we were there.my wife enjoyed her one night there .went topless for an hour.we loved thee night breese .by the way we are in our 60;s. can;t wait to go back for a week this winter.” [sic]

 

Slavoj

(Reading from his Ipad)

The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own gravediggers.

 

Invisible Hand

Optimist.

 

Slavoj

Shall we dance, my friend? I am feeling free. Three hands we have between us, an enormous wrist, two nipples, and this snow.

 

Invisible Hand

(Donning a red raincoat and rising.)

You lead.

(“Lotus Flower” crescendos and the two dance a wild jig off the stage.)