34
“HELLO THERE. GREETINGS.”
The Star Maker sat up in bed, knitting, a patch over the right eye. The bassinet Mortimer had last seen at the studio stood under the window in the Star Maker’s suite at the Clinic.
“Star Maker,” Mortimer demanded, “why are you still having me followed?”
“Sit down, my boy. Pour yourself a drink.”
Mortimer eagerly sloshed brandy into a glass. “Why are you here?” he asked.
The Star Maker blushed, actually blushed.
“I will be operating out of here for at least nine months to come.”
“Nine?”
The Star Maker chortled, swollen breasts shaking. “But it can’t show yet,” the Star Maker said, flushed with pleasure.
“What can’t show yet?”
“That I’m pregers.”
“Pregnant? You?”
“Well, let’s not put the cart before the horse. However, I can reveal this much. I’m very, very overdue this month.”
“Overdue!”
“Mn. Join me in a cigar?”
Mortimer, his hands shaking, lit a cigar for himself and one for the Star Maker. The Star Maker inhaled deeply and set the knitting aside.
“Star Maker, may I ask you a personal question?”
“Shoot, dear.”
“Are you a man or a woman?”
“But don’t you know? Haven’t you guessed? I,” the Star Maker said, “am a modern medical miracle.”
Mortimer hastily poured himself another brandy.
“There are many sexes,” the Star Maker said, “and gradients on the Kinsey scale, categories within categories. Hetero, homo, Lesbian, the mundane variants, are all familiar to you, I’m sure. But there are the more complicated genders. There are the transvestites and, above all, the transsexuals. Tiresias changed himself into a woman because he felt that the woman’s kicks during intercourse were ten to the man’s one, and, damn it, he had the odds very nearly right. The East Indian King, Mahabharata, transformed himself for the same hedonistic reasons. Nero … well he’s still a dodgy case, but history abounds with more recent examples. The Chevalier d’Éon, for instance, lived forty-nine years as a man and thirty-four as a woman. L’Abbé d’Entragues had a shot at feminine facial beauty by submitting to frequent facial bleedings. A certain Mlle. Jenny Savalette de Lange died at Versailles in 1858 and was found out to be a man. More recently there was the sensational case of Christine Jorgensen, born a man, transformed into a woman by a with-it Scandinavian doctor. The true transsexual, Mortimer, is a man born into a woman’s body or vice versa. The most unhappy of God’s creatures until he or she is operated on.
“I first became fascinated by these unfortunates some fifty years ago, when transsexual surgery was still in the Kitty Hawk stage. And then, maybe ten years ago, I learned of the genius of Casablanca, Dr. Georges Burou, who has been of such help to TS’s of both sexes … though, characteristically, I’m afraid, the Russians are miles ahead of us in penis making –”
“I knew that would interest you.”
“ Why should it interest me, you bastard?”
“Because obviously, my dear, if they can build from scratch, sometimes requiring as many as thirty operations, then they can also add to what is already there, don’t you think?”
Mortimer stared into his glass.
“Whatever you decide, you must say no to the prosthesis.”
“To the what?”
“Artificial penises. They go in for it a lot in the States. It’s plastic, Mortimer. Déclassé. No damn fun at all, and then you’ve got to worry during the summer heat waves, electric blankets in winter are out of course, and so are hot baths and –”
“I have absolutely no interest in the matter.”
The Star Maker was seemingly unconvinced. “To return to the great Burou. He, needless to say, doesn’t mess about with plastic pricks at all. He has been of enormous help to the male TS, who wishes to be womanized. He has in fact again and again made the most marvy cunts, working with nothing more than a drippy, wizened old prick. He inverts the skin, don’t you see? There’s nothing quite like it for a new vaginal canal, because the penis, any old penis, is so rich in nerve ends and –”
“I don’t want to talk about it any more, please.”
“Well, I had been keeping a file on TS surgery for years and at the same time I began to worry about my own mortality. You do worry, you know, when the younger fellas begin to go. Churchill, Maugham, Beaverbrook … I knew morbid days, Mortimer. Even with my mobile hospital and spare-parts men at my beck and call, could I die too?”
“Too?”
“Exactly how I felt. Oh, Lord, what a waste, I thought. And me with no heir.”
“Couldn’t you marry?”
“For money? I have more than I can count.”
“But, my dear child, I only love me.”
The Star Maker leaned forward and Mortimer relit the cigar.
“Great ideas, my boy, are born accidentally. Newton and the apple, Watt and the teakettle.… Well, one day Dino Tomasso and I had a tiff, over his coming to London, and he actually said to me, Go fuck yourself, Star Maker.… Go fuck yourself, go fuck yourself … What a brilliant notion. Why not, I thought. Do you follow me so far?”
Mortimer nodded.
“If they can make cunts for men and outfit girls with cocks, well, why not everything, the whole shebang, within one human body?”
“What about … defecation?” was all Mortimer could think of asking.
“Through a pouch. Here.”
“Christ.”
“It’s taken countless operations … set-backs … grafts that wouldn’t take … more and more spare-parts men … secrecy … Until, well, here I am, ducks,” the Star Maker said, raising arms, one reaching higher than the other.
Mortimer felt his stomach rising within him.
“Since God, the first self-contained creator, Mortimer, I am now able to reproduce myself. I will have a son.”
“What if it’s a girl?”
“But I fully intend to have more than one. Only children are so spoiled, don’t you think?”
“I don’t believe a word of it. You’re insane.”
“Fifty years ago would you have believed in men flying into space?”
Mortimer didn’t answer.
“There is inner space as well as outer, you see. And it’s fun, oh it’s such fun. In all my years, I have enjoyed nothing more than making love to me,” the Star Maker said, embracing, nuzzling upper arms, kissing, licking.
Mortimer averted his eyes.
“It’s so good to be able to give it to myself regular. What’s wrong?”
“I’m going to be ill.”
“Over there, honey,” the Star Maker said, indicating a door.
Mortimer rushed, retching, for the toilet, where he was sick again and again. On the glass shelf over the sink, after-shave lotion and a bottle of Joy stood side by side. Mortimer finally lit a cigarette, washed, and returned to find the Star Maker sipping a glass of warm milk.
“And how are you?” the Star Maker said. “Have you been able to get it up since our last chat?” Mortimer glared.
“Forgive me. Of course you have. Polly Morgan is positively blooming.”
“Star Maker, I have only one reason for being here. To tell you that I’m resigning.”
“Well, you have changed your tune, haven’t you? On the phone you said you were eager to take over. It’s definite, you said.”
“I don’t want to work for you.”
“A better offer?”
“Hardly.”
“I see.”
“I will not repeat your secrets to anyone.”
“You’re a man of your word.”
“However, I have taken the precaution of setting down what I know about the Our Living History series. I have left this information somewhere in a sealed envelope. If any harm comes to me or Polly Morgan –”
“What nonsense!”
“Your men follow me wherever I go.”
“Why, that’s frightful. I had no idea, I’ll put a stop to that immediately.”
“You’d better. Because if you don’t –”
“Please don’t threaten me, Mortimer. Let’s remain friends.”
Mortimer lit one cigarette off another.
“I still wish you’d take over Oriole from Tomasso. You look poorly, son. Why not think it over a bit longer?”
“My decision is final.”
“Well, in that case there is nothing more for me to do than wish you the best of luck.”
“And call off your men, please.”
“I will do nothing to harm you, my boy, so long as you give me your word not to speak of my private affairs.”
“Gladly.”
“No hard feelings, eh, Mortimer?”
“None.”
“You’ll come to the christening, then.”
“I couldn’t bear to miss it. So long, Star Maker.”
The Star Maker blew him a kiss and then pressed the buzzer for Miss Mott.
“Yes?”
“Get me Tomasso on the phone. Instantly.”
The Star Maker explained to Tomasso exactly what had to be done.
“Yes,” Tomasso said. “Can do. Right away.” He hung up and dialed long distance. “Get me Frankfurt,” he said.