Pirouettes Get No Applause in Goldengrove
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Katharine jerked her head back and forth, while the sound of James' laughter was amplified, as if through a microphone. She turned her head to one side and saw that everyone was laughing and pointing their fingers at her. When she looked back up at James, she saw that he was no longer attired in a surgical gown, but was wearing a Maoist jacket and a beenie-shaped cap, with a black visor, the outfit of the communist ruling elite in China. In his hand he wielded a little red book, which he used like a baton to punctuate each point he made. He was standing high on a podium above her. "Comrades, you see here before you, like a roped calf awaiting the branding iron, the fruits of capitalist bourgeois hypocrisy. Abhorring licentiousness on the surface and practicing it in private. Good little Catholic girl who uses each confession to renew her license to sin! Pleasures stolen stealthy as a scarf in the hands of a shoplifter." There followed a thunderous sound of applause. Katharine looked around herself to find that she was in a vast auditorium filled with thousands of people, in the orchestra, in all the balconies. All the people were Chinese, and all wore Maoist uniforms and carried little red books. Their applause was rhythmically regular and measured out in a steady, marching tempo. "And who is the cloak for her sins?" James asked. "The Church! That has, for centuries, used conventional ideas of right and wrong to keep the masses from the pure pursuit of light and truth, and has used the promise of Heaven to restrain the healing and regenerating powers of revolution. But now, such hypocrisy has fallen back upon her own head and that of her household." When Katharine turned her head to one side, she saw that she was no longer in an auditorium, but was standing upright on a high platform in the middle of Tiennaman Square. She was tied to a stake. It was an overcast day. And she was surrounded by Red Guards. James was standing on a scaffold erected in the middle of the Square. In the distance, a man wearing a white dunce cap was being herded along by a group of angry youths who shook their little red books at him, and occasionally swatted him with sticks while jeering unintelligible epithets at him in Chinese. As the man drew closer, Katharine saw, with horror, that it was her father, Mr. Fred Monahan. There were welts all over his arms and bruises on his face. His head had also been completely shaved and crowned by a tall white dunce cap. "Father!" she cried out in anguish. "Oh, my God! Stop it! Stop it! You're hurting him!" Hearing malevolent laughter, she looked up at a high scaffolding and saw James' face, vindictively triumphant. "That's right, Comrades!" he goaded them on. "Give it to him!" "James, tell them to stop it! Please!" she begged him. **** Katharine looked back at the obstetrician. It was no longer James, but an orchestra conductor with a shock of wavy gray hair and wearing black ducktails. Raising his arms from his sides, he lowered them suddenly, and the opening chords of Swan Lake resounded throughout a huge theatre, on whose stage stood the obstetrics table. A vaporous substance started streaming out of Katharine's vagina and rose upward, bearing with it an odor like that of incense. "Ah! A fragrance pleasing to the Lord!" the orchestra conductor reverently intoned, his head tilted back in ecstasy. The stream gathered in intensity and length, rising like Old Faithful from her. She then heard a woman's voice, and looking to her right, saw that the nurse next to the orchestra conductor was Sister Clare, dressed in her habit of her order. "The most sacred altar to the Lord is a broken and sorrowful heart," she said. "Oh God!" Katharine exclaimed. The geyser spewed forth like a waterfall suffused with all the colors of the rainbow. Then, it gradually assumed bodily shapes ranging from the lowest to the highest forms in the animal phyla: an amoeba, an eel, a fish, a whale, a reptile, an ape, and finally a man. It rose to the ceiling, and suddenly, the vaporous substance around it dissipated to reveal Ivan Tonyanoff in his early career, all dressed in the costume of The Firebird, and doing a soaring leap high above everyone's heads to the strains of Stravinski. "Why, it's Tonyanoff!" Polly Hancock exclaimed. "I didn't think he was dancing anymore," Desiree said. "Look how young he looks!" Polly said. Much to Katharine's astonishment, Tonyanoff began dancing with some of the people who are assembled there. He picked up Desiree and lifted her pudgy body high up above his head. "Oh, Ivan, stop it!" she giggled. "Ticklish?" Ivan asked. "I'm not!" Polly Hancock stepped boldly forward to offer her terspichorean services. Tonyanoff and Polly Hancock did a slow, sinuous, sexy Tango with each other. Rudolph, sufficiently jealous, tried to break in, but was brushed away by a giant golden wing. To everyone's amazement, Tonyanoff was transformed into an enormous Bird of Paradise that flew skyward.
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About the Book
To the other passengers aboard a transatlantic ocean liner, Katharine Monahan might seem like a typical sixteen-year-old American girl on her way to study in a Junior-Year-Abroad program. What they don’t know is that her family physician has given her only a year to live. Desperate to realize every dream she’s ever had, she has left family, school, and friends in New Orleans to live in the only place she believes she truly belongs: Paris, France. But the Paris of 1986 proves not to be the Paris of Piaf, Chevalier, and Colette. Language and cultural barriers, hard as they may be, will prove the least of the crises she will face. Lonely and alienated in her newly adopted home, she finds solace and companionship with a congregation of expatriate American artists and misfits at Lost Generation Bookstore. Shadowed by the consciousness of her own mortality and driven by a panic-stricken desire to drink up as much experience as she can leads her into a number of bizarre relationships and even dangerous situations which challenge every moral, religious, and political belief she has ever held, but also expose the political and moral hypocrisy of those with whom she is involved. Among these is an expatriate American with heavy Marxist-Leninist leanings as well as a questionable past; a fashion designer with an equally questionable sexuality; a wealthy American businessman, who knows only how to wield power but is incapable of love, and a spoiled art student, whose immediate family prove to be a sample of French bourgeoisie life at its worst. Strengthened by her ordeals, she is suddenly overcome by a tragic new set of circumstances she cannot handle. Fleeing to the south of France, she is taken into the home of a wealthy Riviera couple, whose hospitality is inspired by motives less disinterested than they at first seem. A pilgrimage to Lourdes in the company of a kind yet worldly-wise young nun seems to promise a way out of her predicament. But upon her return to Paris, she encounters new pressures which eventually force her to make the most critical decision of her life: the choice between the ways of the world or the ways of the spirit.
About the Author
Leland William Howard was born in Jackson,
Tennessee. He attended the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, and
for many years resided in New Orleans where he worked as a hospital orderly,
groundskeeper, and secretary. He was also a periodic contributor to Impact, Gulf South News and The
Advocate. He was an active member of the Louisiana Gay Political Action
Caucus, Crescent City Coalition, and a member of the New Orleans Gay Men’s
Chorus which participated in the First National Gay Choral Festival held at
Lincoln Center in New York City in September 1983.
In 1986 he embarked upon a year of study at both the
Cours de Civilisation Francaise de la Sorbonne and L’Alliance Francaise in
Paris. Upon his return to the States, he studied acting under the late Herbert
Berghof at the HB Studio, interpreting the female characters in Shakespeare’s
plays. In 1990 he acted as administrative assistant and publicist for the
summer season of The Millbrook Playhouse in Mill Hall, Pennsylvania, publishing
a number of feature and interview stories in local and regional newspapers in
Central Pennsylvania, amongst them the Lockhaven
Express and The Centre Daily Times.
Returning to New Orleans in 1991, he completed his
first novel, THE GRASS HUT, and a novella, ON
THE EDGE. Since his return to New York, he has written a second novel, PIROUETTES GET NO APPLAUSE IN GOLDENGROVE,
which he recently adapted into a screenplay and a short-story collection
entitled THE STAIN ON THE PEW AND OTHER
STORIES. His latest short story, ELIZABETH,
can be seen in the Fall Issue of The
Olivetree Review. Leland William Howard is also a subject of biographical
record in the Millenium Edition of Marquis’ Who’s
Who in the World (the 17th Edition). He presently resides in New York City
with his beloved Bordie Collie mix, Betsy.