WHARTON!

Saturday, 23 June 2007

WHARTON!

[Other installments of Sekocom, Inc. games include DISADVENTURE!, DISADDENDUM!, DISMORALIZED!, DISINSOMNIA!, WHARTON!, GRADING!, DISBELIEF! and DISCONVENTION!.]

Copyright (c) 1980, 1982, 1983, 2006 Sekocom, Inc. All rights reserved.
WHARTON! is a registered trademark of Sekocom, Inc.
Revision 23 / Serial number 8940726

West of an Old House, long in the Family

You are standing next to an old house. It has large mansard roofs, big chimneys, and to the east is a formal Italianate garden with a circular courtyard, high hedges and an elaborate eighteenth-century-style trellis.

> e

You are in a formal Italianate garden with a circular courtyard, high hedges and an elaborate eighteenth-century-style trellis. To the north is a pergola filled with statuary. To the south is an old fishpond guarded by solemn-looking stone dogs.

> s

You stand before an old fishpond guarded by solemn-looking stone dogs. To the east is a retaining wall with a gate which opens into a narrow cabinet garden containing playful rococo statues and shells and stones set in the walls, and a fountain.

> e

You are in a narrow cabinet garden containing playful rococo statues and shells and stones set in the walls, and a fountain. To the south is a small flight of steps leading up to a lemon garden with its "limonaia" where lemon and orange trees, camellias and other semi-tender shrubs are stored in winter. To the your left are dark ilex woods. To your right, the "boschetti."

> eat bruschetta

You would be better served eating the holly, although it is mildly toxic and likely to cause vomiting or diarrhea.

> eat bruschetta

You cannot eat "boschetti."

> do anyway

You eat a small garden, bloat terribly, feel death pangs, recover, and find yourself in a narrow cabinet garden containing playful rococo statues and shells and stones set in the walls, and a fountain. To the south is a small flight of steps leading up to a lemon garden with its "limonaia" where lemon and orange trees, camellias and other semi-tender shrubs are stored in winter. To the your left are dark ilex woods. To your right, the "boschetti." Happy?

> no

Like I care.

> s

You climb a small flight of steps leading up to a lemon garden with its "limonaia" where lemon and orange trees, camellias and other semi-tender shrubs are stored in winter. In the distance you hear people talking and the subtle hum of a classical quartet. To the east is a Colonial verandah.

> eat lemon and orange

You are still full from eating a small garden. You look at the lemon, then the orange, with evident disgust.

> e asshole

You are in a verandah. The subtle hum is less subtle and you can almost make out what they say about you in the room to your left.

> what they say

Go south and I'll let you listen in.

> s already

You are standing in the hallway leading to a Louis XV bedroom stuffed with Queen Anne furniture. To your left is a gauche chinoiserie dining room. To your right, a Renaissance ballroom.

> people what they say

They know you've been brooding over something lately, and they must find out what it is, as it's in their interest to do so, since they always tell you what they think. They know that if only you trust them, but as you have been so odd lately, they can't think what you've been plotting, or whether the Lord Trevanna has divined your intentions.

> um what

You have been withdrawn of late, so their concern is no surprise.

> who cares

They evidently do.

> brandish sword

You remove your wit from you heart-pocket and approach the women. They cease to gossip.

> brandish sword

They blush under the force of your compelling wit.

> kill kill kill

You slay them with your tongue. Their guilt for spreading unfounded rumors weighs upon them.

> what

Isabel addresses you—

> who

Isabel. She says that only this morning you were her supreme court of justice, but that there was no appeal from your verdict. That not an hour ago you decided a case for her—against herself! And now—. And now the worst of it is that it's not because you've changed. How does she know if you've changed? You haven't said a hundred words to her. And yet the years must have enriched you—she daresays you've doubled your capital. You've been in the thick of life, and the metal you're made of brightens with use. Success on some men looks like a borrowed coat, she says, but it sits on you as though it had been made to order. She sees all this; she knows this; but she doesn't FEEL it. She doesn't feel anything, anywhere, she is numb.

> brandish sword now

You say to her, why good God, we belonged to each other—that you won't let her go—

> let her go

—that you've fought for things since that weren't worth a crooked sixpence; fought as well as other men. And she—she—you lost her because you couldn't make a scene—you might have survived them, as men have been known to. They're not necessarily fatal.

> yes are kill self

She finds your self-deprecating display charming.

> no with sword

You remove a handkerchief from the breast pocket of your dinner jacket.

> where grue

You walk into a gilt bamboo jardiniere, in which the primulas and cinerarias are punctually renewed, and which blocks access to the bay window, where the old-fashioned would have preferred a bronze reduction of the Venus of Milo. The sofas and arm-chairs of pale brocade are cleverly grouped about little plush tables densely covered with silver toys, porcelain animals and efflorescent photograph frames, and tall rose-shaded lamps shoot up like tropical flowers among the plants. There is no grue here, but to the right is still the Renaissance ballroom.

> fine fine go ballroom

You stand in the doorway, studying the petty manoeuvres of the women and the resigned amenities of their partners. You wonder whether these were your friends, these mincing women, all paint and dye and whalebone, these apathetic men who looked as much alike as the figures that children cut out of a folded sheet of paper. Was it to live amongst such puppets, you ask yourself, that you sold your soul? The bald man with the globular stomach who made his pile in wrecking railroads and the political lawyer who had been mixed up to his own advantage in an ugly lobbying transaction, whose wife was such a good manager that they kept a brougham and victoria and always put in their season at Newport and their spring trip to Europe, whose little ferret-faced youth pretends this is not a domino-party at which the guest are forbidden to unmask—

> kill self kill self kill self

"I'M A JEW!" you yell.

Jun 23, 2007 9:20:24 PM | Academia, Books, Dissertation, Edith Wharton