Lizard Head, Chapter 1: Three Little Words

. . . and in her frustration with the slowness of time, Angel Bottomley had decided to reveal all the details of her dream and was just about to beg old Liberty, her husband, to relent when quite suddenly, without warning, he was struck by a seizure, lapsed into coma, lost all power of speech and his oversight of family affairs. Overnight that rugged old prospector and tycoon,[1] the husband whom Angel positively adored, was transformed into an invalid, sadly immobile in both brain and body. His darling devoted wife, sweet, sweet Angel, gladly took over their immense estate. Her attorney, Ackroyd Drattit, who had been quietly drafting in camera her Resurrection Project and Trust, now proceeded more quickly. For Liberty yet remained among the living and back at home and available. His hand had but to be lifted by Drattit in blessing, an inky fingerprint placed on a line, and the RP and T would be in effect. Nor would Liberty ever be off again rolling around his remote mountain lodge on Lizard Head[2] with Mrs. Beauburras.[3] Soon Angel could launch her RP and T and realize her vision. And, it should always be remembered, the Bottomley's was an "old love, proof against any tidings untoward," a confident Angel had once said to him, and, indeed, they had been married for forty years before the collapse. "Not to worry," Mrs. Bottomley acknowledged to him one day, "Darlene and Pandora still worship you."[4]

We have all heard how old loves live on in their dignified wrappings, and this one was no different. Old Liberty's adoring wife, however, was one of those people whose heart opens too deeply to the suffering of loved ones both old and new: they suffer as if sick themselves. Dr. Gaylord Lussac,[5] her personal physician who looked after Mrs. Bottomley, knew Angel quite thoroughly inside and out. In college, Gaylord and Angel had been as close as a candid camera, and they had kept in close touch through all the grave seriousness of their respective matrimonies. He knew that Angel in her empathy for the old man suffered far far too much anguish. To Dr. Lussac, she seemed she might become a danger to herself. The result of her deep empathy—emotional distress and physical exhaustion—might well become terminal, too.  This possibility worried the doctor to such an extent that he urged—no, ordered—her to absent herself awhile from the unhappy scene. Of course, he had studied the bread and tasted the butter. Go, go, he urged. If he, the doctor, needed anything, he would get in touch with Darlene. Lussac had known her father, the banker, Morgan Cowdraye, and the wife, too, and their family custom of bringing up strictly prodigies in some form or another, according to the Old Law. Therefore, he knew how Angel felt because she, who loved so much to travel, had now been confined a  full month and a half to Bottomley House at Bridal Veil Falls just like a poor person and was going stir crazy. Not only did Gaylord urge Angel to go. Even Angel herself felt that before she could get on with the RP and T project, she should have some rest and relaxation. Lussac's deft bedside manner assured her that Liberty would not pass away until after her return, so the poor woman could recoup and not herself be menaced by the death that would soon be her husband's. In the meantime, she mustn't worry herself since Drattit would take care of the her Reservation Project Reborn or whatever it was called, etc., and naturally Dr. Lussac knew she wouldn't be traveling alone (heaven forbid that Angel should ever) but as always with her former student and current assistant in tow, young Minister Dithers, who would look after her. Why, that man would kiss the very sole of her shoe if Mrs. Bottomley asked him to.

Consequently, Angel, already in her widows weeds, prepared for the worst, and stricken with obvious grief— indeed, brought very low—, coped with her pain by taking what she tearfully called "sad trips of forgetting," accompanied by her colleage and confidant, Minister Warrens Dithers, to Boston, New York, Paris, Firenze, Bologna, Venezia, Roma, Perugia, Orvieto, Gubbio, Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, San Francisco, L.A., and even at last to Santa Fe, to a little art gallery on Johnson Street — for art is a very fine soothant for the ache of an old love that is either dying or dead. And indeed this soothant Angel had often made use of as witnessed by pliant young Dithers, her gallant attendant, who was always either watching or waiting somewhere nearby or watching behind, yet this time even the art gallery did not yield her that long-sought quietus. To find the peace of mind which she was seeking, Mrs. Bottomley and Dithers, her obedient servant, had to go still farther afield, placing their hopes on an emotionally recuperative journey to the Far East.

But now the time for good fortune arrived. For it was when she was in Japan, near a train station in Metropolitan Tokyo, that the good woman came into contact with the infinitely creative mind of he who was to provide her with the knowledge and power to deliver to the the light of day and to an astonished world her plans, now underway, for a new kind of civilization brought forth by the striving and energies of women. For Angel Bottomley, encountering this man was like bumping into the zeitgeist. The time was 11:43 in the morning; the date, August 4, 1970; his name Dr. Erich von Dalkenshield.

It happened at a place called Pond Bag a few yards from Takadanobaba Train Station, a place croaking with frogs. Minister Dithers, her submissive factotum, was with camera just about to take a photo of her standing next to a charming rice paddy and waving "hullo" to a Japanese man—a farmer. At least, Angel thought he was a Japanese since he was short in stature, and she thought he must be a rice farmer because he was wearing a paddy hat. He, dressed in khaki shirt and rubber waders, was wearing a sun veil hanging down from the paddy hat brim to protect his face from the blazing sun, as Angel had observed the Japanese women do and in the old ukiyoe, too. The veil covered his face. But at her "hullo" in English, the supposed Japanese farmer turned, waved, and spoke in perfect American, "I hardly ever see any of my compatriots out here in the froglands of Pond Bag. How do you do, Madam? Dalkenshield at your service. Dr. Erich von Dalkenshield." 

Lifting the veil, he waded toward the bank of the pond, his hands wet from reaching down into the mucky goo of Pond Bag bottom, and, with the unsophisticated but devoted Dithers taking pictures, Erich von Dalkenshield strode up onto the shore like a General. Angel held out her hand for a handshake even though the man had pond ooze on his. Erich smiled at this and then held her hand, holding it gently for such a long a time while massaging the soft palm of it with his thumb that Mrs. Bottomley blushed. Her palm still being probed, she looked back at Warrens, who, watching, was slowly lowering the camera. His face registered nothing at all that was untoward. It only expressed bland. Warrens quickly began studying the camera for the next photo shot. His motto, well-known to her, was "Devotion is greater than love," and he was always kept to it.


For his part, Dalkenshield's face beamed confidence and satisfaction. He mentioned something about a hypothesis and an experiment involving the structural stiffness of loaded lily pad aerioles supporting gorgeous scarlet lamina dripping heavily at the aeriole's tips. Mrs. Angel Bottomley of Bridal Veil Falls, Lizard Head announced to Warrens that she would love to listen to Dr. von Dalkenshield talk more about this; it might require time, perhaps through afternoon. There was a Doutor coffee shop yonder. Dr. von Dalkenshield nodded. As the travelers soon came to understand, the doctor, wearing rubber chest waders and wading in that Pond Bag paddy, was in the middle of yet another world-historical scientific experiment and had just a month earlier discovered the infinite energy that flows freely throughout the universe, the pervasive vitalis universalis.

Before going with Erich to the nearby coffee shop, Angel turned aside to her submissive, Warrens. Half chiding, half-smiling, she ordered him to be on hand inside the hotel when she returned. However, there were two little things he must do. First, he was to go straight to the Imperial to phone Bottomley House to learn of recent events there, and second, tell the concierge at the Imperial to have a bench brought to her suite, at least a sturdy cushioned bench if no other was available like one of those cushioned ones Warrens had to have seen next right by the ping pong tables a previous errand had taken him to on ten where the game and fitness room was. She turned to the doctor, and they turned to go across the quiet street. Minister Warrens Dithers eyes followed Mrs. Bottomley as she and the scientist crossed a tiny little Japanese street—no more than an alley, really—, to the Doutor Coffee outlet that was there. Always attentive to the point of obsession, looking after her always, Warrens even snapped photos of Angel walking away, which photos Angel would want inside her newest publicity album.

Before telling her in any detail of his techniques, methods, experiments, and discoveries, Dr. Dalkenshield made Angel promise not to be squeamish. Certain kinds of women thought his ideas disgusting. To begin with, he spoke of certain hormonal improvements he had developed that affected Japanese women—how should he put it— very pleasantly, but he wasn't at all certain American ones, women quite different, would take the improvement the same way. The hormone itself he called "Deriva." He had compounded it from the polluted water lilies, pads, and blooms of Pond Bag and the gonadal remnants of uni-sexed frogs but was sure its essence could also be found in American waters, waters which were, as far as he could see, even more contaminated and impure. Next, holding up a vial of murky pond water to show Angel, he said that he had "... discovered early in July the vital energy of life. I noted the Pond Bag waters teeming with creatures. Life arises spontanously; I mean, the vital spirit flowing through everything gives rise to elemental life-forms and those forms the force then transforms, and now I am here to ascertain how to deliver the this life force into the hands of those who can use it for the good of all. You may want to stick by me, Mrs. Bottomley, for it has just now occurred to me that you and I could patent this."

Profoundly surprised by the congruence of their separate visions, Angel reciprocated by telling Dalkenshield of her own occult researches and of her own plans derived from them, plans soon to be implemented, for a renaissance, "a rebirthing," of the prehistoric Matriarchate that had guided humankind for hundreds of thousands of years before it was brutally destroyed by PUD and its ignorant madmen and murderers. She told him of the poisonous institution of Connubium, an institution designed to diminish, even to cripple, Woman, whose id-energy, the Kundalissima, was so much greater than Man's that it could engorge the somatic tubes (which reminded her of what he had been saying of the stiffness of the aerioles); of her secret occult researches that had led her to the belief that the id-energy had created in certain Feminine Vessels its own pathway via the engorged tubes, evolving an organ sacred to the Goddess and known to its ancient adepts as the Weibonis when levitated and used, so similar it struck her to those stiff stalks and red lamina of which he spoke; of how she had dreamed of renewals, renovations, transformations, and transmogrifications of those matriarchal physiological transfigurations engendering those bewchus reddened aerial members of the new civilization bringing PUD its destruction to birth a new nation sprung from old embers.

This new civilization, Angel smiled, spiritual, equal, peaceful, loving, and kind, would be raised like a child and encouraged to make of itself a prodigy among all the nations, at the very center of the stage of the world. She herself would provide both the spiritual and material foundation, a donation of hundreds of billions for the construction and establishment of the Womyns Citizens Republics at Lizard Head at the heart of the new nation, and for miles all around inside the territory, inside the frontiers, of the Womyns Citizens Republics, for once mens's status and womyns's would be equal de jure, although of course womyns, by law and by right being the best among equals, would rule de facto, and the very worst of the male mens, those monsters, the perverts and peekers, the cruelers and crimers, the haters of womyns, all declared outlaws and publicly in full view of all dealt with, and along with those those, too, whom she called "Grimpses, boasting braggarts, forest dwellers, fear bollegs and bogmen, greasy poles cranes and hungries, miching mallecos, xenos malakas, mlekos." At the center of all this, this new womyns’s nation, would stand a new church and chapel. 

Angel felt they were natural allies, comrades-in-arms. They needed each other: she him for the vitalis universalis and access to the Dalkenshield-developed technical science and of botanicals, and he her for her general vision of human and Horse-Womyns's existence.

It was then that Dalkenshield politely tenderly tentatively diffidently encouragingly suggested another word be added to that of the two words, Horse-Womyns, added to them for the sake of completeness, accuracy, and beauty.  He whispered the third word. He explained. Angel listened. They conferred. Angel still couldn't decide, but Erich should never think she was refusing; she wasn’t refusing; it was just so difficult to decide: such a change would so momentous, hence her hesitation. Could he give her more time? More details? How about the red lamina on their swelling tubers that glistened after withdrawal from a moisture? If she was a little confused, might he be willing to confuse her just a little bit more before she said yes? Taking a notebook from his knapsack, Dalkenshield showed his drawings and illustrations. Seeing the notebook, studying its pages, glowing with delight, Angel assented to the name-change immediately.

They then both desired a time-out. They took a taxi to the Bali An where Angel showed him her pictures. Erich was enchanted. "Oh, these cannot be yours! They're not you! I don't believe it!"  Again the congruence of their values, ideas, and feelings was stunning. Erich confessed that when she had held out her little hand to him despite his own hand being befilthed with goo and let him press his thumb into her palm, he was thrilled; but, when she told him she was not at all disgusted by his experiments, he realized with a rush that they were going to be partners for a very long time: she was unique amongst women. Well, she said, they both needed partners, it was true, but each needed more partners than simply the other, more partners were needed than just a pair, and, what's more, Angel chided him, "Please say 'womyns,' darling. That's the original ur-name of my sex, and the plural form signifies each womyns is simultaneously one and many selves and on top of that has had many metempsychotic existences through death and rebirth, the cycle of nature."



               Angel was a Blonde just like Esther & Guda,

Her mother and grandmother, and like them, Angel Cowdraye
Had a most unsual figure. Esther, her mother, had been called
"The Figure 8" or "the Wasp"