Ableman Tornado Pratt

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-31419-5
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

Tornado Pratt is the last of the old-style American tycoons, one who has lived his life with ferocious vigour through the vacillating fortunes of the twentieth-century USA. Paul Ableman's novel finds him in a hotel room at the end of his days, as he recounts via a dying monologue the events of his turbulent life. What is revealed, in a testimony full of jokes and surprises, is a brash, lustful, comic, profane, naïve and sentimental man who, driven on by remorse, displays a wry and perceptive honesty about himself, even as his memories begin to merge with imaginings. Often funny and sometimes moving, Tornado Pratt's voice is an unforgettable one in which he confronts his own mortality, and in which Paul Ableman gives us an astonishing, affecting and life-affirming story. Auberon Waugh called Tornado Pratt 'a magnificent and memorable novel'.

Paul Ableman (1927-2006) was a novelist, playwright and screenwriter, born in Leeds and brought up in London and New York. He was the author of five novels, most famous of which was I Hear Voices, in which his writing is inspired not only by the modernist avant garde but by psychoanalytic theory. He also wrote plays and scripts for radio, television and theatre. He was chief fiction reviewer for the Spectator and the EveningStandard, and London literary correspondent for the Australia Broadcasting Corporation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ableman, Paul

Leseproben

MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF RAT

It was before I met Nat. One night I was searching Chicago for someone—yeah, a girl called Lotte—something—and I was under the impression that Lotte was having an affair with a bootlegger called—think of it in a minute—anyhow, this liquor dealer had a number of hoods on his payroll, one of whom was a little Irishman called Pony Roach. Sometimes I shot pool with this same killer. He fascinated me—like the silken, slow-gliding snakes behind glass—hard to believe that anything as languid, elegant and mindless could deal instant death. I’d watch Pony fit a cigarette into a gold and ivory holder, stoop to plot the deflection of a pool ball and I’d imagine the thuds and muffled shrieks on some vacant lot as his big automatic hurled lead into an enemy of Jay Vasari. That’s the guy, Vasari, that Lotte was linked with—Vasari, who ended up himself shot to pieces on a street corner.

Now Roach was the only lead I had on Vasari and so I went found to his place. This was about three in the morning. I was full of whisky and recklessness. I’d never been to Roach’s place before and I was astonished at how opulent it was. There was a marquee over the sidewalk with a liveried doorman under it. Inside the hall was a pile of carpet with a very attractive tortoise-shell pattern. The elevator shot up like a tame shell and deposited me at Roach’s door. I rang the bell. A reasonable pause and then a faint shadow over the peep-hole. The sound of a chain withdrawn, the door opened and Pony, grinning but nerved up, stood there. He was surprised:

“Tornado? How’d you find me?”

“I’ve got your address.”

“How come?”

“Because you gave it to me. You wrote it yourself in my book. See?”

I held out my address book for him. He’d been pretty lushed when he’d written it and I wanted the sight of his own handwriting to reassure him. I didn’t think he’d suspect that I’d come in a hostile capacity. Tornado Pratt would hardly be suspected of being a hired strong-arm but I knew that guys like Roach like to know exactly why everything is happening the way it is. It wasn’t unknown for Chicago hoods to snap-shoot their friends if accosted by them unexpectedly.

“Sure, I remember—”

And Pony’s eyes had verified, in one quick glance, my claim. He stood back from the door.

“Great to see you, Tornado. But very unexpected. You must want something—”

“Now—”

“It’s okay, friend, everyone wants something. That’s the American way of life. Can I get you a drink?”

“Scotch—if you got it—”

“I’ve got scotch—and Irish. You ever taste John Jameson?”

“Don’t recall.”

“It’s the best whiskey there is. That’s not just patriotism. There’s something in the Irish water—some kind of element—that gives it a fine taste. Like to try it?”

“Sure—great, Pony.”

“Come on out on the patio.”

He lived like a prince that pint-sized killer. He had this sweep of flagstones on the thirtieth floor above Chicago with small flower beds, bushes in tubs, even a little pool with goldfish and a fountain. Gazing out over the parapet you could sense rather than see the great dark-cold of the lake, swept from time to time by the tiny flare of a beacon. From beneath came the continuous warning growl of the city and sitting there, waiting for Pony to wheel out the drinks-trolley, I suddenly felt what an amazing thing it was to be a man. Not to live in a hole in a tree or hillside, not to huddle from the cold in a tuft of grass, but to make yourself a garden in the sky and sip whisky there.

“Thanks, Pony.”

Some time later, I became aware that Pony was stroking my leg. I was stretched on a lounger and my first reaction was nausea, followed by a flush of rage and embarrassment. I made an effort to orientate myself. How long—half an hour? An hour maybe? No good looking at my watch because I didn’t know what time I’d arrived. “You’re drunk, man,” I whispered to myself. “But why didn’t you ask him about Lotte?” another part of me queried. Why had I accepted his drink, chewed the fat awhile and then drifted off to sleep? Why was it the minute I’d stepped out on to his terrace I’d forgotten all about Lotte? And now the little vermin was feeling me up!

You must understand, Horace, no man or boy had ever before set vicious hands on Tornado Pratt. When the kids at home went out into the long grass to handle each other, I went proudly the other way. There was no taint of that in me. From the start—from when I was twelve or thirteen and first kissed and explored Polly Robard and other girls—I was a man with a man’s feelings and a man’s equipment. It was highly disgusting to me to imagine myself doing anything like that with a guy. But I wasn’t a fool, Horace. And by that time, I wasn’t unsophisticated either. As I lay there on the lounger, going hot and cold like someone having water thrown over him in a Turkish bath, I asked myself honestly if I’d set this up—unconsciously—without realizing it. Had I, in the first place, suspected that Pony Roach had such tendencies? For instance, had I ever seen him with a broad? No, I never—hell, yes I had!—a kid called Josephine or something—one of the hostesses at Al’s place—about a year back she’d kept pretty steady company with mighty midget Pony Roach. So that proved it! I felt a surge of relief. I couldn’t have been lured by sick, scented, secret wishes to this terrace. Yeah but—why hadn’t I asked about Lotte? Maybe I’d just passed out from exhaustion. Hell, I’d been flit-assing about all night—all over Chicago—after a day’s work that would put most guys on their back—so maybe I’d just succumbed to the sheer comfort of Pony’s place.

“Cut that out,” I said softly.

“It’s okay, Tornado,” he whispered and his hand went on moving lightly down my leg, over my pants of course, and then back up to near my crotch.

“Goddamm it!” I roared. “I said, cut that out!”

But the trouble was, I didn’t roar it out loud. I roared it inside my head and I accompanied the bellow with a kick to Pony’s chin, causing him to yelp and topple over backwards. However, he didn’t do this because I had performed the action, like the bellow, inside my head and Pony didn’t even know they’d occurred. So he just continued to crouch there beside me, softly stroking my leg with his left hand and, emboldened by my apparent acceptance of his attentions, beginning to stroke my arm with his right hand.

What the hell’s going on? This is a very remarkable situation: Tornado Pratt, who has flattened guys twice his size for half his offence, allowing a perverted little gunman to seduce him. Why? I asked myself again: is it doing anything for you?

I couldn’t locate that it was, Horace. All I located was the whisky-cigar breath of Pony Roach which was getting stronger. Then, with a pang of dismay, I realized why it was getting stronger. The dwarf reptile was stooping to kiss me. His scaly, purple face was gliding out of the night towards me. Revulsion squeezed a gasp from my lips and, for an instant, my muscles tensed, preparatory to hurling taut knuckles into the intruding face. An instant later, I relaxed again, so quickly that Roach did not appear even to have noted my spasm of fury, or perhaps he interpreted it as a little convulsion of love. The reason I had relaxed again was because proximity had enabled me to see Roach’s face clearly. And, Horace, that face had on it an expression of such exalted anticipation, of such tender yearning, of such amazing innocence, that I was robbed of all resistance. Not, I hasten to emphasize, because I suddenly felt lust for Roach or discovered a spring of perversity bubbling amidst the thickets of my normal masculinity, but just because—well, goddamm it, I just couldn’t bring myself to refuse him something that shouldn’t cost me much more than the price of a bucket of mouthwash and, judging from that rapture on his face, was going to plant him, for a minute or two anyway, on the banks of Jordan. Sure, he was a gangster and a murderer. Oak View Graveyard was thick with his victims. He was an excrescence on time but what was coming down into my arms was simple longing, like that of a child for its mother or the bride for the bridegroom or Christ for his cross. So I reached up, took him gently in my arms and pressed my lips to those of Pony Roach.

And I held it as long as he wanted, which seemed a long time. I tried to make my mind blank and scour from my awareness the pressure of his lips and of his tightening hands. But he took me to the limits of my tolerance and when he finally detached his lips from mine and eased back a little, I twisted out of his grip, jumped up and hopped away from that lounger. I was numb with misery, Horace. I guessed it would be all over Chicago in a week. Pratt the cock-sucker. Ever see a mincing Tornado? Gum-chewing ball players would snigger in the night spots. Business contacts would give me a special neutral stare to prove they hadn’t heard anything. Girls would giggle. And everywhere I went, the camouflaged army of perverts would flock round with winks and nudges. My palms would be raw from the scratching of secret handshakes. If I wanted to take a piss I’d have to barricade myself in the john! I—

And that was the moment Pony picked to come up beside me and slip his arm round my waist. I spun round, Horace. The mush had set into steel...