|
Spaghetti
From a Collection of Crowley's Plays and Scenarios
Monday. John Brown, prosperous, stout citizen of 49, walking home from business. He stops to listen to an Italian organ grinder. (Monkey here would be good business, this same man an monkey to appear in later scenes.)
John seems to be trying to recollect something — the smile comes slowly; he pats his stomached, says: “I'll have spaghetti for dinner.” He reaches home, tells his wife. There is no spaghetti in the house. Sends for it, girl buys it, gets talking, another customer picks up her parcel by mistake while she goes home absent-mindedly, with his. Wife points to clock, rest of evening spoiling: “All right; to-morrow will do.”
Tuesday. 12.30. John going out for lunch. On a news stand he picks up a dime novel called “Dick Darter's Desperate Deeds, or the Black Hand of Giovanni Biyondo.” The Italian setting reminds him that he wants spaghetti. He goes to an Italian restaurant — is stopped at the door by a business acquaintance, an evident millionaire, in an auto, who insists on taking him to lunch with him.
John wants to order spaghetti, hesitates. Scene of contest between desire and fear. “Terrapin!” — but he can't enjoy it, and looks lost-doggishly at other tables.
6.30. Home spaghetti cooking. John inspects it, gloats in anticipation. Wife finds tomato sauce low in bottle — sends maid out. John seats himself in dining room and begins reading “Dick Darter,” etc.
Wife called to telephone.
John intensely interested, showing some excitement.
Vision of Italian brigands with daggers and mandolins, blowing up a lot of things — lots of smoke. Dissolve into spaghetti burning to cinders.
Wife rushes from phone, John comes out of vision — furious, slams book down and stalks from room.
Wednesday. 12.30. John starts for lunch. His partner comes in with a press of work — can't leave the office — sandwich and a glass of milk. John works very hard and gets nervous.
On his way home (5.30), he stops to have his boots blacked by an Italian. He begins to find the expression of the boy sinister, and is half scared.
6.30. A dinner of spaghetti ready. John enthusiastic. Takes his wife dancing. They pull the cloth off —spaghetti ruined. John walks around the table three times and does other superstitious rites to change his luck, rather comically, resigned.
Thursday. In subway, going to business. Two people, obviously Italian singers, opposite him. They are talking rather mysteriously and John gets nervous about it, thinking himself involved. Changes his seat.
12.30. Walks to Italian restaurant, finds police have closed it for selling wine. Angry scene. He hails a taxi, to drive to nearest Italian place. The car collides: he has to get out. No means of transport in sight. He finds he is at the door of a fortune teller. Determines to consult him. Asks: “Shall I get my wish?” Reply: “You will, and be the sorriest man in the city!”
He walks away with evident craving, strikes a hall advertising: “Spaghetti Eating Competition.” He pays and enters. There is a long table loaded with spaghetti and 20 men eating for dear life. He wants to compete: is refused, the lists being closed. He tries to break in and is thrown out. He passes a little shop where a man is eating spaghetti in a window. He offers to buy the man's dinner. The man takes no notice. John becomes insistent; the man takes a card from his pocket with a pencil and writing tablet. The card reads: “I am deaf and dumb. Please write what you would say.”
John writes his request buy meanwhile the man has finished his meal. John walks home a moral wreck. He gets mixed up in a street row between Italians. This upsets his nerve more than ever and, as he walks on, he looks constantly backwards as though he were being followed, and starts at shadows.
6.30. Home. His wife cheers him. She shows him the stacks of spaghetti and whole rows of bottles of tomato sauce. John locks the doors, puts up the shutters, takes out two revolvers and puts them on the table. Dinner arrives: he eats heartily of the spaghetti, becomes drowsy, falls with his face in his fifth helping — wakes up, drowses off again.
He is back in the spaghetti-eating place, but the men are tiny and the spaghetti a mountain. He jumps on it from the ceiling, after a desperate climb. The men grow immense and drive him out with their forks. He climbs up a fork and jumps again, lands, wakes, and finds his head in his plate.
He drowses off again.
He notices that his wife's hand is a piece of spaghetti, calls her attention to it. She does not understand. Her arm is now spaghetti, her evening dress is tomato sauce, she becomes entirely made of spaghetti. He thinks she is ill, goes to her with a husband's familiarity. She resents it.
“How dare you!”
“Can't I put my hand on my wife's shoulder?”
“I'm not your wife, I'm Mrs. Spaghetti. Look at yourself.” She leads him to a mirror. He is unchanged. She says:
“You're ill, I'll send for Dr. Spaghetti.”
She goes to telephone, which is made of spaghetti, John examining it with amazement after the call is through. He walks about bewildered, and under his eyes various objects become composed of spaghetti. The doctor arrives; he is, of course, made of Spaghetti: asks the symptoms. The wife says:
“He is a cannibal.”
John is astounded.
“You're a man?”
“Yes.”
“Man is spaghetti.”
The doctor produces a large book with pictures showing bones as uncooked spaghetti, muscles as stringy spaghetti, blood vessels as spaghetti with tomato sauce flowing through them, brains as overcooked spaghetti.
“I'm crazy,” says John.
“Result of spaghetti habit. I'll take you in my sanitarium for a cure.”
John miserably agrees: doctor leaves.
John takes the address of the sanitarium and goes out. He re-examines the card and discovers it has changed and bears a Black Hand. As he starts back appalled, he is seized by masked men, armed to the teeth. They throw him into a motor car, take him to a house and into an underground chamber. He finds himself in the presence of a tribunal. Hooded men sit on a dais. On the walls are skulls, gallows and other terrifying symbols. They accuse him of being a traitor to the brotherhood. They threaten him with torture, but he sees a number of bombs on the table, manages to get free for a moment and throws a bomb. There is a terrific explosion and he crawls away from the ruins of the house. In the street, he takes out the doctor's card, which is itself once more. In his panic he calls a taxi, gives the address to the man and drives off.
John arrives at sanitarium. Doctor explains that plan is to make his patient dislike spaghetti by giving him nothing else. John goes down steps into garden. Spaghetti is thrown in front of him and he slips and falls and hurts himself. Chairs are all of spaghetti and break under him, so he sits on the ground. Presently they bring him a plate of spaghetti. He has got very hungry and attacks it, finding it only a pasteboard imitation. He throws it away, calling attendants. They bring him another plate — it smells dreadful, and he jumps and runs away from it. He sits down again — they bring him another plate. This time the first mouthful tastes bad. He orders another plate. The spaghetti are made of wood and they throw them at each other. Another dish. Just as he is going to start a woman patient steals up, empties the dish into her uplifted skirts and vanishes. Another dish comes. The spaghetti are filled with nails. Another plate — a demon head pops out, jibbers at him — he bolts.
He becomes violent but the attendants are armed with spaghetti of large size like sand bags, knocking him down and beating him with them. They then tie him up in ropes of it and put him in a room with plates of it all around which he cannot reach. The police arrive at the sanitarium with batons of spaghetti and try to arrest him on a charge of murder.
He bolts and takes refuge behind a barrel organ (shown in first scene.) The police dash by him but the barrel organ man seizes him. “He is once more in the clutches of the Camorra.”
He now sees the organ slowly turn into a coffin and the man and his wife explain that they are going to bury him alive. They put him in and nail him down. He struggles furiously but gradually suffocates. He then finds that his head has dropped into his plate of spaghetti, and he starts up awake.
Drowses off again. He now tries to run away from the graveyard. This is very muddy. He stops at the boot-black's for a shine. The boy begins — he notices a very flashing smile and a great lustre on his boots, and is horrified to perceive that the boy is sharpening two daggers on his boots. He flees, trips over a heap of spaghetti which is used for mending the road, and falls headlong. The boy falls over him. They struggle. John gets the dagger and attacks the boy, but dagger turns into knife and fork and he continues his flight. Crowds are pursuing him. He leaps over a low well into a garden and finds himself back in his room at the sanitarium, where he is shown the corpse of the dead Mr. Spaghetti with tomato sauce still floating from it.
They find the knife and fork with which he committed the crime. They take him before the magistrate. He asks for bail and the two Italian singers of the subway come forward and offer it. John leaves the court with them smiling, and thanks them. He shakes hands — sees their hands are black! They say:
“Show your gratitude by joining our Society.”
He agrees, trembling. They take him to a house, entering by a small side door. They give passwords to the guardian, who obscurely suggests a stage door-keeper. They prepare him for initiation by stripping him of everything but a pair of B.V.D's. They put an enormous hat with Gainsborough feathers on his head. He is told to prepare to enter the chamber of the ordeal. They push him through a small door and he finds himself in the middle of a stage where Italian Opera is being played. Nobody notices him and he becomes more and more embarrassed, and tries to escape. At last Dante rises from the gallery, and denounces him. The opera becomes a riot. He darts hither and thither, vainly seeking to escape. One of the boxes has its curtains drawn. He clambers desperately into it and discovers it to be a cell in Murderer's Row. A procession stops at the door and they take him out to be hanged.
A noose of spaghetti is then put round his neck and the bolt pulled. He shoots through the trap and finds himself in a vast desert made entirely of spaghetti, some of them form columnar crags like Fingal's cave, some of them lying flat.
He ultimately finds a subway station, which he enters. The train is a bottle of tomato sauce, the tube is spaghetti. The conductor asks for his fare, but his pockets have nothing in them but spaghetti and he is thrown out at the next station.
On the platform are lines of masked men with daggers. They all have huge moustaches and grin savagely. On the opposite platform are rows of Italian girls with peasant dresses and mandolins.
He keeps on trying to cross to them but either one of the men pulls him back or an express rushes by and drives him back. Finally he leaps on a train and is carried away. The conductor again asks for his fare but John cleverly gives him the password of the secret Society. The conductor goes away, apparently satisfied, but John notices, with terror, that he is consulting a statue of Garibaldi at the end of the car. The statue gesticulates — the train stops: an immense Black Hand, only just small enough to go into the car comes down. It seizes John, dragging him on to the platform. John wriggles out of the hand and escapes to the elevator, emerging to the surface.
Here all the spaghetti turn to snakes before his eyes. He dives into the subway again, this time on the uptown side. At the station terminus he gets out; it is an immense empty place. He sits down with relief.
“Thank heavens, no more spaghetti!”
He then notices that he is sliding towards the centre of the plate and cannot stop despite frantic efforts.
Another person now approaches, very stern and with wings. John trembles. The angel produces a scroll, labelled:
“John Brown's Sins.”
The scroll is opened. It is full of dates, consecutive, with the words: “Ate Spaghetti” against each of them.
The angel shakes his head:
“I'm sorry; but you're a Spaghetti Hound, no less.”
John begins to sink through the plate. He finds himself clinging to a rope of spaghetti, down which he slips. It gets darker and darker and then brightens up, but with much smoke. He no finds himself caught in the prongs of a fork which is in the hands of a demon enthroned on a bottle of tomato sauce. Below the throne is a great cauldron of boiling spaghetti; and the demon, after one contemptuous glance, pitches him, head first, into the middle of it. To find his wife touching him on the shoulder and his head fallen over on his plate once more.
He rises trembling with rage, dashes into the kitchen and destroys all the supplies.
He then embraces his astounded wife, and raising his right hand and eyes to Heaven, cries “Withy God's help, never again!”
|