NP--here comes the judge

[Toby G Levy]

Why does the McCarthy passsage remind so much of the closing scene of V.
(before the epilogue)?:

That evening Brenda wore paisley shorts and black socks. "I write
poetry," she announced. They were at her place, a modest hotel near the
great lift.

"Oh," said Profane.

"I am the twentieth century," she read. Profane rolled away and stared
at the pattern in the rug.

"I am the ragtime and the tango; sans-serif, clean geometry. I am the
virgin's-hair whip and the cunningly detailed shackles of decadent
passion. I am every lonely railway station in every capital of Europe. I
am the Street, the fanciless buildings of government; the cafe-dansant
the clockwork figure, the jazz saxophone; the tourist-lady's hairpiece,
the fairy's rubber breasts, the traveling clock which always tells the
wrong time and chimes in different keys. I am the dead palm tree, the
Negro's dancing pumps, the dried fountain after tourist season. I am all
the appurtenances of night."

"That sounds about right," said Profane.

"I don't know." She made a paper airplane out of the poem and sailed it
across the room on strata of her own exhaled smoke. "It's a phony
college-girl poem. Things I've read for courses. Does it sound right?"

"Yes."

"You've done so much more. Boys do."

"What?"

"You've had all these fabulous experiences. I wish mine would show me
something."

"Why."

"The experience, the experience. Haven't you learned?"

Profane didn't have to think long. "No," he said, "offhand I'd say I
haven't learned a goddamn thing."

They were quiet for a while. She said: "Let's take a walk."

Later, out in the street, near the sea steps she inexplicably took his
hand and began to run. The buildings in this part of Valletta, eleven
years after war's end, had not been rebuilt. The street, however, was
level and clear. Hand in hand with Brenda whom he'd met yesterday,
Profane ran down the street. Presently, sudden and in silence, all
illumination in Valletta, houselight and streetlight, was extinguished.
Profane and Brenda continued to run through the abruptly absolute night,
momentum alone carrying them toward the edge of Malta, and the
Mediterranean beyond.

On Tue, 21 Oct 2003, Steve Maas wrote:

>From _Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West_
By Cormac McCarthy

And they are dancing, the board floor slamming under the jackboots and
the
fiddlers grinning hideously over their canted pieces. Towering over them
all
is the judge and he is naked dancing, his small feet lively and quick and
now in doubletime and bowing to the ladies, huge and pale and hairless,
like
an enormous infant. He never sleeps, he says. He says he'll never die. He
bows to the fiddlers and sashays backwards and throws back his head and
laughs deep in his throat and he is a great favorite, the judge. He wafts
his hat and the lunar dome of his skull passes palely under the lamps and
he
swings about and takes possession of one of the fiddles and he pirouettes
and makes a pass, two passes, dancing and fiddling at once. His feet are
light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He
dances
in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the
judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.

THE END
     --P. 335, Vintage International edition (1992)

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