Chapter Two of Willoughby

Telemachus

Mom, you have been putting that gown together for months, and it looks not any more finished than a month ago. “Telemachus, you’re seven, what do you know?” Telemachus recoils, his face droops, and his eyelids shut three-quarters. “I’m sorry. Come here.” Telemachus comes to his mother and puts his head into her bosom. He wants her to stroke his hair and maybe even sing as she did long ago. “You’re no longer a little boy. It can take a while for a sensitive boy to learn to be a man. You need to start now.” You say I’m seven and what do I know. How do I know what it is to be a man? “Well, that cleverness of yours is being a man like your father. There are men down the street, across town, and one in this house who can teach you to be a man in every other way. Cleverness is not something you learn.” And Father will not return to teach me? Antony stinks. “That is the story behind this gown. It should mean I will remarry, and you will have a new father. The seven years your father is gone is the time passed enough to think he is never returning.” How do I know of anyone I have never seen? “Your question is cleverness surpassing manliness. Be careful. Antony and every other man, and especially the Pastor, will not like that. I loved your father in every way I love you. But your father was a man in every way beyond cleverness, and even young as you are now, you may not have time to learn to be fully a man.” Telemachus takes Penny’s hand and grasps as hard as he can. “I love you, and it will be Antony who will teach you to be a man.”

Antony walks into Penny’s bedroom. “You know, that gown gets no more finished each day that goes by. Hey, little man.”

Telemachus recoils at Antony tousling his hair.

“Got those leg exercises going on?”

No, sir.

“Penny, we have this favor to ask you.”

Of her.

“You should be more concerned about not remaining a little man and get to your leg exercise and not so concerned about grammar. Penny, we wish to use your hPhone for an important task. The hPhone of Alec, son of Jeremy, martyr to the faith.”

“Please don’t call him that. I mean ‘martyr to the faith.’ The only faith he had was in our Patroclus ­– with love and trust. That is why he fought against the Guerreros Unidos in that stupid gang war.”

“As the wife of the best friend to martyr to the faith you were allowed possession of an evil device.”

“So long as I keep its registration and subscription in Telemachus’ name.”

What?

“Technically, it is your hPhone, little man.”

Cool.

“And we have not used it but a few times years ago. What do you want?”

“For you to call Polyphemus.”

“That monster! Why?”

“It will be tracked and recorded, and we want it that way.”

“I don’t think so.”

“If your dead husband is anything to you, you will. As you fancy, we will find him alive, but otherwise his body must be returned to Willoughby for proper burial.”

Telemachus sees his mother’s face droop, her eyelids shut three-quarters, and her mouth agape. “And my widowhood made certain.” Father is dead? She searches in a bookshelf behind a book, The Ottoman Centuries by Lord Kinross. “And here the phone is.” Penny fumbles with the phone. In the center of the room is fashioned the holographic image of a young man, a shimmering reflection of a tall and blond, handsome man who stands upright and confident and looks to his right then to his left then forward. Father? “No. That's Alec. I don’t remember how this works.” Give it to me, Mom. He pushes three digital buttons. There. In the center of the room is fashioned the holographic image of a young woman, a shimmering reflection of a tall and milk-chocolate, beautiful woman who stands upright and confident and looks to her right then to her left then forward. Mom.

“So, Antony, now what?”

“This is the number to call. You just have to play along. He’s been told why you are calling.”

“Why am I calling?”

“To seek zir help to find Chris, son of Larry.”

“Polyphemus? Ze is going to do that?” She dials.

The boy sees the holographic image of a deformed polyp floating on the Shores of Galilee, a smiling and hideous Cyclops with an eye, looking upwards, surrounded by tentacles of hair, lying on zir side on a purple divan. “My dear Penelope.”

“Phemus.”

“So long, so long, so long it has been.”

“Chris had just left on his journey.”

“You are quite a pretty Negress. Not quite so African, of course. I came into existence just before the Degradation Era of the 20s­; you were alive but just a toddler, 2018 — Oumou Kanoute she was, quite an African Negress, and my first assignment. The lovely little narrative of ‘eating while black’ at Smith College. We destroyed three lives of whites because Black Lives Matter, and who would not want to call that girl a trashy black bitch? But naturally, no one did. Not a single person, white or black. These expensively educated women of all races might all be Chelsea Clinton, no different, in all time, Lucrezia Borgia, Empress Wu. Against the insurrection of the ’16 Reformation, the Matriarchy promised pain for a Man to get old and be without a Cause, for a Woman never has a Cause but that which is. The Matriarchy is the end of Progress, a Boy forever young in a Mother’s bosom.”

“I understand you know where Chris could be.”

“Indeed I might. Or did. But please listen to my new song I have composed in honor of the new President of China.”

“But… Sure.”

Fa la la la la la. Fa la la la la la.

Society will banish the whole State machine

To a place which will then be the most proper one:

The museum of antiquities side by side

With the spinning wheel and the bronze ax, don’t you see?

“Lovely.”

“But there’s more.”

Fa la la la la la. Fa la la la la la.

Authority of government over persons

Will be replaced with the administration of

Things and the direction of the processes of

Production. The State withers away. Fa la la.

“Lovely.”

“Chris has no existence as far as any determinant operates.”

Father is dead?

“That can mean he is in one of three places in the world. The most likely is in the Islamic Republic of Turks-Caicos.”

Father is a Muslim?

I have ways to breach into communications. So, let’s see.

“Okay.”

“Next Chapter.”