Stanley Elkin - The MacGuffin

The MacGuffin

Stanley Elkin

I d like to express my gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation for putting Joan and me up in Ballagio on Lake Como over in Italy in the villa they run there for the villaless, where I not only wrote part of and got a pretty good handle on the rest of The MacGuffin, but also managed to spend the five happiest weeks of my life.

to Joan

CONTENTS

T hough he was probably about the right age for itfifty-eightDruff didnt supposenot even when he was most fitfully struggling to bring forth a name like something caught in his throat, or spit out the word momentarily stuck on the tip of his tonguethat what he was experiencing was aphasia, or Alzheimers, or the beginnings of senility, or anything importantly neurological at all. Though he wouldnt have been surprised if something dark was going on in the old gray mattera kind of lava tube forming, say, or, oh, stuff creeping in the fossil record, putty leaking into his creases and crevices, his narrows, folds and fissures, some sluggish, white stupidity forming and hardening there like an impression formed in a mold. He hadnt become absent- minded. Indeed, if he was asked to do anything, anything at allcall up to his son when he had finished his shower, pass on telephone messages, tell Rose Helen that the jeweler had called, the clasp on her necklace was ready, she could pick it up when she wantednot only did he deliver the messages intact, he couldnt rest until they were delivered; the light, ordinary tasks being what theyd always been, annoying chores, petty charges of being, small anxieties, like, oh, detours on unfamiliar roads whose extent was not known to him, or the go-here, go-there arrangements of red tape. Which was ironic, wasnt it, his being City Commissioner of Streets and all.

It wasnt fugue state, although hed noticed of late (of late? of late? when did you first notice it?) that information seemed to go in one ear and out the other. Hed become impatient with information unless it was organized as opinion, a column in a newspaper was an example, or a memo someone in his department had signed off on (signed off on?), and then he might recall only the opinion but couldnt for the life of him give the reasons for it. It wasnt even that Druff was particularly forgetful, and his character, though it occasionally failed to concentrate, never forgot.

Ratherthere was no way he could measure thisit was as if he had somehow mysteriously lost, well, force. It seemed to him that people made allowances for him, that he lived under some new and infuriating dispensation, on some plane of condescension, like the handicapped, or at least the elderly, in a sort of wit-reamed oblivion. The same people, his oldest acquaintances some of them, who in the past had always been at least a little afraid of him, or at least a little warynot, mind, obsequious, never obsequious; for theyd known that, caught in their kindness, they had more to fear from him than ever they did from mere opposition, or even open confrontationfell all over themselves to dredge up anecdotes about him, ancient tales of his old heroic sangfroid. (If they only knew how froid! Druff thought over the chirps and squeaks and other freezing noises in his head, helpless to provide anything for their conversation, to add or detract, chilly behind his smile.)

Though it was Druffs opinion they were still afraid of him, not of his power, but of their own. (Why, theyd traded places!) As if, when it came to Druff, they chose forbearance and restraint. No, that was dumb. They chose nothing. It was still a women-and-children-first world, and they werent afraid of their power at all, merely mindful of it. City Commissioner of Streets or no City Commissioner of Streets, Druff, in his real avatar, the one they automatically rose to give up their seats to or hold open doors for or help with his packages, was their little old lady. (So what, incidentally, was all that shit about that they had to fear from him if he caught them in their kindness? A lump on stumps could have caught them in their measly, inchworm charities.) What was a poor City Commissioner of Streets to do? Well, if he was really getting stupid, hold on tight, disclose nothing, do whatever he could to muffle the dark screech of the slow stalactitesstalagmites?dripping in his skull. Trump their tolerance with tolerance, and other-cheek the very breath from their bodies. As, knowing his limitations, but calling it delegation of responsibility, some entirely honorable division of labor, he was on terms with, though dared not second-guess, the civil engineers who worked for him, educated hard-hat types who did the scientific heavy lifting in his department. Hey, he was only little old Bob Druff, City Commissioner of Streets. Not His Highness, not Your Lordship, or Senator, or the Right Honorable anyone at all. He wasnt even Professor Druff, less real clout to his title than the president of a humane society. Only the buck stopped there.

And, God help him, the bucks. For his dubious kid kenneled in graduate school, for the built-ins in his back yardthe barbecue, the poolfor the tall, unlovely weathered gray wooden fence around that yard, for the additions to his homethe deceptive bungalow in the modest neighborhood, as riddled with gear (high-tech furnishings in the snazzy basement and remodeled rooms) as an embassy, for the top-of- the-line Chrysler in his garage, for his cashmeres, silk suits and cambricsall the difficult cloth of theirRose Helens and hiscompromised wardrobe.

Honest? He was honest. He supposed he was honest. Though the graft poured in. They threw it at him, the graft. He didnt even have to solicit. (As councilman, as council president, and later as under- mayor, hed taken even less advantage.) So he was honest. In those days, the golden age of his brains, he knew where they were, but had never sought to find, the buried bodies. (He was a politico. It was a kind of received wisdom, the gossip you took in with your mothers milk. You didnt seek out information. You didnt buy it. Aldermen didnt have spies. You just knew. As far as he was concerned, there were no marks against his innocence.)

Anyway, it was his force hed have liked to recover, or was at least nostalgic for, his edge and intelligence.

Though maybe, he informed Dick, the plainclothes chauffeur whisking him on this beautiful spring day on a leisurely cruise through the park, searching out potholes, that famous golden age of my brains I do so like to discuss, was only the absence of overload, in the days before my computer chips, say. Incidentally, I see by the morning paper on my lap here that scientists working on three continents have succeeded in photographing atoms blown up ten million timescount em, Dick, ten millionin some new superconductor material. Researchers came up with this compound. They mix these powders and bake them up in ovens. Copper and oxygen. A couple others. Barium. One your commissioner never heard of. Yttrium? Copper, oxygen, yttrium and barium powder. Oxygen cookies. The copper, yttrium and barium assortment. They think what lets them carry so much current with such little energy losssounds like crowd control; we know about that in the department of streets, dont we Dick?are flaws, imperfections in the alignment of the atoms.

I was reading that paper myself, Commissioner.

Were you, Dick?

Well, the obits anyway. Macklin died.

Macklin, Macklin Marvin Macklin? He died, Marvin Macklin? (God knew how hed come up with that first name; he had not a clue who the guy was.) Dick took the limo deep into the bottom of a pothole. After a long illness.