Bah Hah Yonamah

By Garden Urthark

After a journey of nearly 5,000 years, an ancient Egyptian pyramid arrives in Washington, DC, by way of Las Vegas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Garden Urthark
• Release date: Apr 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310244674

Garden Urthark

Bishuasi, la mia amore,nella mia vita, che meravglia.Mi trovo fra la perduta gente,voglio mangiare la tua melauna pezza alla volta, mentre,era tu, beh, che me l'ha offerta.Tu faccia me matto! Mia testavole con uccelli belle belle,mio cuore con luce dei stelle,brucciando secoli e secoli.Galessie brute e bellegridano contro nostri nemici!Vieni ai miei abbraccio muoro, da vero, senza bacci.Translation into English / Traduzione in ingleseSalvation, my love,in my life, what a wonder.I find myself among the lost people,I want to eat your appleone piece at a time, while,it was you, well, who offered it to me.You make me crazy! My headflies with beautiful beautiful birds,my heart with starlight,burning centuries and centuries.Brute and beautiful galaxiesthey shout against our enemies!Come to my hugsor I die, truly, without kisses.Garden Urthark is an enterprise that contains, as in an ark, the revolutionary process of transforming reality into a vision of human love and freedom.

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Bah Hah Yonamah

by

Garden Urthark

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2009 Albert J. Miele, Jr.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this eBook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied, and distributed for noncommercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favorite eBook retailer to discover other books by this author. Thank you for your support.

All parts of this book are fiction, and names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

To my wife, Sung,

and our son, A.J.

Please, no squeeza da banana!

(Louis Prima)

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

A Bob Hope’s Ending

Postscript

About the Cover Artist

Cover Illustration by Sung Kim

About Garden Urthark

Discover Other Titles by Garden Urthark

Connect with Garden Urthark Online

1

[Narrated by Tony Bumppo:]

I had decided to become a playboy: in the Catskills? No. The pyramid I was in was of a different category, and there was no maid service. Reincarnation not being a philosophy as much as a need, there were times I thought I'd, ach! ugh!—run out of Kleenex from all the dust! While everybody else had a girlfriend or a wife to look after, I had what you might call an aversion—an aversion, yeah, to keeping up with all my various and sundry charts, my requisitions from an inhospitable multitude which accompanied me. You know what I mean: laughter was not my idea of an alternative, yet uncontrollable outbursts began to enchant the tenants of my genetic code, given so many centuries—of indifference.

I went to the movies:

I'll give you the scenario. I was gettin’ a haircut when I seen this guy in my living room.

Watch it! the copilot interrupted, only to be ignored.

Whaddayou crazy? the pilot argued: Ya see the way the tree tops—he made a fish-like movement with his hand, bearing down hard in a swoop over some jungle.

I thought we was gonna be hit! the copilot coughed.

My wife, Bea, talkin: talking! the pilot went on.

We been over that, the copilot whined.

Ain't you got no humor? the pilot asked, then, noticing something: You can get it for me wholesale! He brought the chopper into a dive: Capito? he demanded, in Italian, sending a sputter of machine gun fire into the treetops.

[Change of scene to a Greenwich Village cafe in New York.]

Where were we? Have you ever been up late at night like a marathon runner with a message of bad news?

Like turning a page in a comic, I learned to recognize—pardon me (he addressed a waitress): Two scoops, please—that desire in a woman, according to certain ancient texts, authorities . . . (She brought him the ice cream.) No napkin? . . . could determine the inverse square law of . . . (She brought him a napkin.) That'll be fine" . . . female mating habits, notwithstanding that costs should rise when frustrations decline.

[Change of scene back to television: then, on television:]

[Trumpets sound with flash of electric blue and hot pink, neon-framed credits, beginning, Starring Jerry Dangerfield, with a trumpet windup to Tony's voice-over narration:]

Mona warned me . . .

[Multiple screen neon-framed shots of pretty legs.]

I had decided . . .

[Trumpets]

Mona!

[Trumpet whine]

I had decided . . .

[Silence]

I had decided to put a thousand lunar calendar years of dreamily mulling over the flaws and failures of my one chance for reincarnation—if I could only be a man—into a down payment of fifty camels for a wife: Mona!—she demanded, no, required, well, uh, where would we get the camels?

[Time passed.]

The first thing I would need would be an apartment.

[More time passed.]

And what would we do for money? I watched some TV:

A screen door slammed.

I told Nicky not, said Mom, to let that Joey Heatherton play with Timmy's toys.

Oh! Nicky's footsteps pounded to her room.

If I told her once, I told her . . . Dad broke off, then continued—If she's gonna move, fine! But I'm tired of hearing her insolent remarks.

Dennis, Nicky commanded, are you gonna?

What? that frog-like adolescent twang sang out, fighting every millimeter of guppy.

[Credits on TV with a change of channel: flick, flick]

And the cast of General Hospital.

[Flick]

With appearances by Bones, Jim, and Spock from Star Trek.

And I watched TV.

It isn't Jim! Bones rushed into a room paralyzed with onlookers, which included Spock, and gruffly pulled a fuse from an android look-alike of Kirk. The real Kirk, presumably in on the secret, then joined the silent group, turning a corner into the room.

[Jerry Dangerfield takes over as narrator.]

Nothin doin’, Jerry mimicked: Yaooh can either clean up your act and get me the camels or I'm gonna put you on the third ring of Saturn widdout a credit card. Aw, yeah, yeah: in my mind, I mocked what Pharaoh might have said to me. But Pharoah was actually easy to get along with, just as long as you were in by nine. What he didn't like, I never figured out. Late nights up with his zombies, I had had my fill of him and his pyramid. But who, what am I, God, to be so blessed?

I had plenty to read: (from Slick Finger Sly)!

I took the train—He dead—over to some new Washington Square of a winter, hot with a cold like the quiver of a sidewalk with a body on it, just after the spirit's gone to a brighter shade of year.

All I had were what a lady thought important enough to let me find: a lipstick in a silver-plated casing, of the standard red in color, some Kleenex, white, fluffy, what's this? and scented, ooh, couple o' toothpicks—I had climbed up to help a knight once, when the old general died, back in L.A.—a key ring, a makeup kit, with mirror, the color of dried blood—and found a stone like a ruby, but like nothin’ from this lady's world— bunch of crystals, what they were, scraped up in a handful with a pen knife, in a soft sweet calf-leather pocketbook that could snap you shut with a clasp of gold. I could jump for a gal, yeah, right over the moon.

And I watched TV:

Oh, Perry, interjected Perry's colleague.

Yes, Paul.

Stella, Perry Mason, with his dark-eyed innocence to protect the law, accelerated a whim like the tire of a Packard over gravel, when the headlights go swimming among the shrubbery and the lurk of danger is like the plug of a .38: That case, what was it, the one Marlowe settled, look of puzzlement, over in San Francisco, the porno ring, black mail?

Where do you think we are, Perry? Stella cautioned, with a glance at the crowd around them: they took a seat on the metro.

The crown jewels—what? inquired Stella's eyes to Perry's comment, stolen from, Perry went on, the King of Hell.

A briefcase opened, spring metal sound. From Melville? he asked at a metro stop. Paul looked to correct him, raising his eyebrows.

Tired? Stella concluded, more than asked.

No, Perry snapped.

[Tony Bumppo again as narrator.]

Cruising Vegas! If I had been out till nine, I wanted out till 9:30. Did I want out? Like a gatekeeper who collected the veil for every Aphrodite like a men's room attendant in an atrium of Erishkegal's Desert Inn, who didn't make the grade for hat check, I had a convertible like a third-row seat in the Second Temple, on country club carpet spotted with every gum drop, syrup, and ash of cigar, ground by every spike, pump, and drooling unsanctified loafer—Vegas might not be Egypt—Gizeh could be pizza for all I knew about getting along with Pharaoh—but let me put it to you this way: if he wasn't asleep, you were, so if you were up, which wasn't often, Pharaoh meant—everything you were doin’ while he was not there. At that time, we worked the Casinos: we were doormen, bellhops, cab drivers—it was the one time I had been awake a consecutive series of days roughly contemporaneous with the inhabitants of the planet: in at least 5,000 years . . .

2

He needs help, she muttered.

Tien, he thought?

No, himself, she thought.

But it looks dead.

Who?

Hoang-Ha's comment hung in the air, no, like gunpowder, exploded (gunpowder from a Strategic Hamlet program rather than a revolutionary war entrenchment—not a musket but an M16 went off).

You wanted that changed?

We didn't do enough work on 'nat. You want with an h at the end?

No . . .

Name again?

That's all I have time for, Tien.

Don't worry about every bump in the road, she thought.

How much writing do you want? Hoang-Ha exclaimed.

They write reports, Tien jabbered.

Uh huh . . . about . . . It.

I don't think we can make it.

What do you mean? Hoang-Ha falteringly made a bid as if with poker chips for his flower (Tien).

We're getting ready to do him in, she thought aloud. Do you think we can ever love each other enough? she inquired.

Uh huh, Hoang-Ha attested, bleating in his wife's face.

Boo ha, Hoang-Ha! Tien mocked.

Boo ha, Tien! But to me you'll always just be Pooksie. (He enjoyed using an Americanism that he'd just picked up.)

Look, how many kids duh yuh have by me? Tien challenged.

I have just so many, Hoang-Ha muttered.

Hahahaha, she laughed, four, just those four hyperspatial laughs. Yeah, she laughed, perhaps giving off some pheromone, You and your mother! (Tien had picked up an Americanism of her own.)

No, you can't do that. (He caught something he didn't like on the report.)

What do you mean? Tien's sweet strength inspired him. Then: I wanted to talk to you, Tien complained absentmindedly.

Uh oh, big trouble: Who does? Hoang-Ha replied.

Wait a minute, Tien interrupted, I think, she swallowed, I'm getting a reading.

She was in that room too long, Hoang-Ha thought.

Whadda'you do about it? Tien thought. He came in here, I mean, Boo! he was just here, and I don't know what to think.

Rurrrh!

Did you hear that?—I have a way of testing! Hoang-Ha exclaimed. No, Tien interjected. The monster, nuh, the serpent, let's call it, no, and her nervousness freed some flood of impossible pyrotechnics through the glittering tunnels of her veins, like tunnels lined with gemstones of a fire further than Venus might be from half the distance to Mars by the Moon: He's—no, it's not quite a serpent so much as a . . . a . . . a . . . dragon!

And he's not small, Hoang-Ha interrupted, no stated, no, wanted to correct his Tien's perception.

You better believe it, Tien uttered.

Get that work done! Hoang-Ha shouted, catching her enthusiasm.

Uh huh, Tien agreed, invoking as if in prayer a part of her own beloved Pooksie to love her more. Yet if love were like a fuel you could run out of, she had no love for Hoang-Ha. Love not being that to her, she herself had felt? no, yeah, felt a bit—a bit of the fear Hoang-Ha knew for a man to feel against so great an adversary. Human emotions needed to be tempered down, she always thought, as if the water used to cool them were not enough—that that purgation which might lead to a calm self united enough to take on any enemy could put one under a hegemony of emotions like that of a tyrant—who?—an oligarch, let's say, who ruled over a nation of slaves—that purgation could leave a human being out like a plate of flood to be devoured by a hungry alien—huh?

Tell me about it, Hoang-Ha razzed.

Wait a minute, Tien commanded. You can't write.

Who can't?

No, I got that, Tien reassured Hoang-Ha, then getting excited—We got it, huh huh, huh huh, yeah we got it.

We got what?

No, you left that out, Tien went on. This has gotta be good now.

All right, we'll make it good, Hoang-Ha decided. Don't laugh, but I think we have something here.

Yeah, we have something, all right, Tien reassured her future husband. By the time we got around to it, she grunted, indicating by this the extra amount of energy expended.

We were lucky to have that chance. Hoang-Ha punted on fourth down into Tien's lotus hands. At least, the ball was coming to her, since, as Hoang-Ha concluded, Even a fifty yard punt could not possibly reach our part of this battle with Gilgamesh. He paused: Then we forgot all that other?

No, we lost that other thought, Tien agreed, then: This is hilarious, huh?

No, it's gotta have everything in it now, Hoang-Ha responded. He was like a mad scientist just up from his laboratory.

Naw, Tien jabbered.

Who said that? Hoang-Ha asked playfully, indicating the possibility of a large but fake anger. Would you cut it off, then? A moment of doubt followed. Then: Wait a minute, what's happening here?

RRRRuhhr!

I can't get a plot together . . . Hoang-Ha joked.

Whad'id you say? (Tien didn't understand what he'd meant.)

RRRrrr!

. . . to kill the monster, uhhh? (Hoang-Ha finished his sentence.)

You laugh, Tien mocked.

There was a puzzle here to be considered. In a sentence—in a phrase, as they say, Tien and Hoang-Ha were in love: Tien got on the phone, I need 120 men, three tanks, the law, two bazookas, and three mortars to get this Godzilla cleaned outta here. Then, almost as an afterthought: Order me up some helicopters.

There was a pause, see, because, who? Hoang-Ha, could not tolerate Tien's having made the order for helicopters without consulting with him first. It was a situation that could blow up like the pictures of a pinup mentioned at the wrong moment.

Look, Tien, Hoang-Ha expounded, We're the only ones that'uv really sighted this thing like Godzilla—we'll call it Gilgamesh . . . Then he lost his tract of thought for a moment.

You gotta watch out, the flower of Hoang-Ha cautioned—because there was already a local newspaper account about the monster.

Ah, interjected Hoang-Ha.

A hundred-twenty men, thought Tien. Will it be enough to destroy the monster? Never mind the tanks, she confided to Hoang-Ha, the 120 men we want with them may not be enough.

A hundred-twenty men with the law, bazookas, mortars and choppers should be enough to knock off any King Kong.

I think they did call out a National Guard for King Kong rather than just the New York police force, Tien thoughtfully responded.

The monster was visible over the city, Hoang-Ha read from a local paper, then (aside), if city you would call it. Then he resumed reading: So that, as it approached the suburbs, it could be seen towering up to destroy houses, cars, and people. Hoang-Ha quit reading. After all, he and Tien, as associates in the Scientific Observatory of Alien Life Forms (SO-ALIF) would handle the emergency with all due dispatch. Yes, indeed: Hoang-Ha now contacted the local police to tell them that he wouldn't be needing their immediate help because the army would be being called up against the monster for the time being.

True, Tien and Hoang-Ha were but youngsters under the threat provided them by this creature each would call Gilgamesh, rather than King Kong, say, or Godzilla, that Asiatic creature so completely a duplicate of this present one, but Hoang-Ha, used to a soldier's life, was at least a young man without a war at the present, since Vietnam, to worry about. He found himself in that icky-sticky position one can get into when being overwhelmed by as many as one woman. It was not that Hoang-Ha was not angry at not having ordered in the troops himself, but it was just that he had a congenital distrust for all such calls for help outside the immediately controllable. A few beats of the eyelash, a head nod, nod of the head in return, along with whatever unconscious communications built up in an entire people over the duration of the entire Vietnam War, including the pre-U.S. involvement there, whatever silent communications could occur, would settle it that Tien would finally end up making the call. But that was not the way to meet? no, to beat the monster, the two young lovers seemed to know.

Still, Hoang-Ha hated all of that.

There were 120 men on the way. He didn't have time to think it all through—the logistics. He was in love with Tien. And now he could see that the monster was on the periphery of the city-suburb of Bethesda.

Rrrrhhh!

He was as big as the close-up of a man's head on a drive-in picture screen. And—he looked so much like Godzilla, that, never mind . . . Hoang-Ha thought: but not to finish a thought—that was a sign of something: Never mind! That was a sure sign for worry! There were no tunnels to hide in, even if he had dug one like one of the hundreds of miles of tunnels which latticed the undersurface of the terrain of Vietnam, dug by the Viet Cong (he had actually hid in one once, during a bombing raid).

What do you think, Tien,