Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, book 1)

The Rosy Crucifixion 1

Sexus

VOLUME ONE

1

It must have been a Thursday night when I met her for the first time—at the dance hall. I reported to work in the morning, after an hour or two's sleep, looking like a somnambulist. The day passed like a dream. After dinner I fell asleep on the couch and awoke fully dressed about six the next morning. I felt thoroughly refreshed, pure at heart, and obsessed with one idea—to have her at any cost. Walking through the park I debated what sort of flowers to send with the book I had promised her (Winesburg, Ohio). I was approaching my thirty-third year, the age of Christ crucified. A wholly new life lay before me, had I the courage to risk all. Actually there was nothing to risk: I was at the bottom rung of the ladder, a failure in every sense of the word.

It was a Saturday morning, then, and for me Saturday has always been the best day of the week. I come to life when others are dropping off with fatigue; my week begins with the Jewish day of rest. That this was to be the grand week of my life, to last for seven long years, I had no idea of course. I knew only that the day was auspicious and eventful. To make the fatal step, to throw everything to the dogs, is in itself an emancipation: the thought of consequences never entered my head. To make absolute, unconditional surrender to the woman one loves is to break every bond save the desire not to lose her, which is the most terrible bond of all.

I spent the morning borrowing right and left, dispatched the book and flowers, then sat down to write a long letter to be delivered by a special messenger. I told her that I would telephone her later in the afternoon. At noon I quit the office and went home. I was terribly restless, almost feverish with impatience. To wait until five o'clock was torture. I went again to the park, oblivious of everything as I walked blindly over the downs to the lake where the children were sailing their boats. In the distance a band was playing; it brought back memories of my childhood, stifled dreams, longings, regrets. A sultry, passionate rebellion filled my veins. I thought of certain great figures in the past, of all that they had accomplished at my age. What ambitions I may have had were gone; there was nothing I wanted to do except to put myself completely in her hands. Above everything else I wanted to hear her voice, know that she was still alive, that she had not already forgotten me. To be able to put a nickel in the slot every day of my life henceforth, to be able to hear her say hello, that and nothing more was the utmost I dared hope for. If she would promise me that much, and keep her promise, it wouldn't matter what happened.

Promptly at five o'clock I telephoned. A strangely sad, foreign voice informed me that she was not at home. I tried to find out when she would be home but I was cut off. The thought that she was out of reach drove me frantic. I telephoned my wife that I would not be home for dinner. She greeted the announcement in her usual disgusted way, as though she expected nothing more of me than disappointments and postponements. «Choke on it, you bitch,» I thought to myself as I hung up, «at least I know that I don't want you, any part of you, dead or alive.» An open trolley was coming along; without a thought of its direction I hopped aboard and made for the rear seat. I rode around for a couple of hours in a deep trance; when I came to I recognized an Arabian ice cream parlor near the water-front, got off, walked to the wharf and sat on a string-piece looking up at the humming fret-work of the Brooklyn Bridge. There were still several hours to kill before I dared venture to go to the dance hall. Gazing vacantly at the opposite shore my thoughts drifted ceaselessly, like a ship without a rudder.

When finally I picked myself up and staggered off I was like a man under an anaesthetic who has managed to slip away from the operating table. Everything looked familiar yet made no sense; it took ages to coordinate a few simple impressions which by ordinary reflex calculus would mean table, chair, building, person. Buildings emptied of their automatons are even more desolate than tombs; when the machines are left idle they create a void deeper than death itself. I was a ghost moving about in a vacuum. To sit down, to stop and light a cigarette, not to sit down, not to smoke, to think, or not to think, breathe or stop breathing, it was all one and the same. Drop dead and the man behind you walks over you; fire a revolver and another man fires at you; yell and you wake the dead who, oddly enough, also have powerful lungs. Traffic is now going East and West; in a minute it will be going North and South. Everything is proceeding blindly according to rule and nobody is getting anywhere. Lurch and stagger in and out, up and down, some dropping out like flies, others swarming in like gnats. Eat standing up, with slots, levers, greasy nickels, greasy cellophane, greasy appetite. Wipe your mouth, belch, pick your teeth, cock your hat, tramp, slide, stagger, whistle, blow your brains out. In the next life I will be a vulture feeding on rich carrion: I will perch on top of the tall buildings and dive like a shot the moment I smell death. Now I am whistling a merry tune—the epigastric regions are at peace. Hello, Mara, how are you? And she will give me the enigmatic smile, throwing her arms about me in warm embrace. This will take place in a void under powerful Klieg lights with three centimeters of privacy marking a mystic circle about us.

I mount the steps and enter the arena, the grand ball-room of the double-barrelled sex adepts, now flooded with a warm boudoir glow. The phantoms are waltzing in a sweet chewing gum haze, knees slightly crooked, haunches taut, ankles swimming in powdered sapphire. Between drum beats I hear the ambulance clanging down below, then fire engines, then police sirens. The waltz is perforated with anguish, little bullet holes slipping over the cogs of the mechanical piano which is drowned because it is blocks away in a burning building without fire escapes. She is not on the floor. She may be lying in bed reading a book, she may be making love with a prize-fighter, or she many be running like mad through a field of stubble, one shoe on, one shoe off, a man named Corn Cob pursuing her hotly. Wherever she is I am standing in complete darkness; her absence blots me out.

I inquire of one of the girls if she knows when Mara will arrive. Mara? Never heard of her. How should she know anything about anybody since she's only had the job an hour or so and is sweating like a mare wrapped in six suits of woolen underwear lined with fleece. Won't I offer her a dance—she'll ask one of the other girls about this Mara. We dance a few rounds of sweat and rose-water, the conversation running to corns and bunions and varicose veins, the musicians peering through the boudoir mist with jellied eyes, their faces spread in a frozen grin. The girl over there, Florrie, she might be able to tell me something about my friend. Florrie has a wide mouth and eyes of lapis lazuli; she's as cool as a geranium, having just come from an all-afternoon fucking fiesta. Does Florrie know if Mara will be coming soon? She doesn't think so... she doesn't think she'll come at all this evening. Why? She thinks she has a date with some one. Better ask the Greek—he knows everything.

The Greek says yes, Miss Mara will come... yes, just wait a while. I wait and wait. The girls are steaming, like sweating horses standing in a field of snow. Midnight. No sign of Mara. I move slowly, unwillingly, towards the door. A Porto Rican lad is buttoning his fly on the top step.

In the subway I test my eyesight reading the ads at the farther end of the car. I cross-examine my body to ascertain if I am exempt from any of the ailments which civilized man is heir to. Is my breath foul? Does my heart knock? Have I a fallen instep? Are my joints swollen with rheumatism? No sinus trouble? No pyorrhea? How about constipation? Or that tired feeling after lunch? No migraine, no acidosis, no intestinal catarrh, no lumbago, no floating bladder, no corns or bunions, no varicose veins? As far as I know I'm sound as a button, and yet... Well, the truth is I lack something, something vital...

I'm love-sick. Sick to death. A touch of dandruff and I'd succumb like a poisoned rat.

My body is heavy as lead when I throw it into bed. I pass immediately into the lowest depth of dream. This body, which has become a sarcophagus with stone handles, lies perfectly motionless; the dreamer rises out of it, like a vapor, to circumnavigate the world. The dreamer seeks vainly to find a form and shape that will fit his ethereal essence. Like a celestial tailor, he tries on one body after another, but they are all misfits. Finally he is obliged to return to his own body, to reassume the leaden mould, to become a prisoner of the flesh, to carry on in torpor, pain and ennui.

Sunday morning. I awaken fresh as a daisy. The world lies before me, unconquered, unsullied, virgin as the Arctic zones. I swallow a little bismuth and chloride of lime to drive away the last leaden fumes of inertia. I will go directly to her home, ring the bell, and walk in. Here I am, take me—or stab me to death. Stab the heart, stab the brain, stab the lungs, the kidneys, the viscera, the eyes, the ears. If only one organ he left alive you are doomed—doomed to be mine, forever, in this world and the next and all the worlds to come. I'm a desperado of love, a scalper, a slayer. I'm insatiable. I eat hair, dirty wax, dry blood clots, anything and everything you call yours. Show me your father, with his kites, his race horses, his free passes for the opera: I will eat them all, swallow them alive. Where is the chair you sit in, where is your favorite comb, your tooth brush, your nail file? Trot them out that I may devour them at one gulp. You have a sister more beautiful than yourself, you say. Show her to me—I want to lick the flesh from her bones.

Riding towards the ocean, towards the marsh land where a little house was built to hatch a little egg which, after it had assumed the proper form, was christened Mara. That one little drop escaping from a man's penis should produce such staggering results! I believe in God the Father, in Jesus Christ his only begotten Son, in the blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Ghost, in Adam Cadmium, in chrome nickel, the oxides and the mercurichromes, in water-fowls and water-cress, in epileptoid seizures, in bubonic plagues, in Devachan, in planetary conjunctions, in chicken tracks and stick throwing, in revolutions, in stock crashes, in wars, earthquakes, cyclones, in Kali Yuga and in hula-hula. I believe. I believe. I believe because not to believe is to become as lead, to lie prone and rigid, forever inert, to waste away... Looking out on the contemporary landscape. Where are the beasts of the field, the crops, the manure, the roses that flower in the midst of corruption? I see railroad tracks, gas stations, cement blocks, iron girders, tall chimneys, automobile cemeteries, factories, warehouses, sweat shops, vacant lots. Not even a goat in sight. I see it all clearly and distinctly: it spells desolation, death, death everlasting. For thirty, years now I have worn the iron cross of ignominious servitude, serving but not believing, working but taking no wages, resting but knowing no peace. Why should I believe that everything will suddenly change, just having her, just loving and being loved? Nothing will be changed except myself. As I approach the house I see a woman in the back-yard hanging up clothes. Her profile is turned to me; it is undoubtedly the face of the woman with the strange, foreign voice who answered the telephone. I don't want to meet this woman, I don't want to know who she is, I don't want to believe what I suspect. I walk round the block and when I come again to the door she is gone. Somehow my courage too is gone.

I ring the bell hesitantly. Instantly the door is yanked open and the figure of a tall, menacing young man blocks the threshold. She is not in, can't say when she'll be back, who are you, what do you want of her? Then good-bye and bang! The door is staring me in the face. Young man, you'll regret this. One day I'll return with a shot-gun and blow your testicles off... So that's it! Everybody on guard, everybody tipped off, everybody trained to be elusive and evasive. Miss Mara is never where she's expected to be, nor does anybody know where she might be expected to be. Miss Mara inhabits the airs: volcanic ash blown hither and thither by the Trade winds. Defeat and mystery for the first day of the Sabbatical year. Gloomy Sunday amongst the Gentiles, amongst the kith and kin of accidental birth. Death to all Christian brethren! Death to the phoney status quo!

A few days passed without any sign of life from her. In the kitchen, after my wife had retired, I would sit and write voluminous letters to her. We were living then in a morbidly respectable neighborhood, occupying the parlor floor and basement of a lugubrious brown stone house. From time to time I had tried to write but the gloom which my wife created around her was too much for me. Only once did I succeed in breaking the spell which she had cast over the place; that was during a high fever which lasted for several days when I refused to see a doctor, refused to take any medicine, refused to take any nourishment. In a corner of the room upstairs I lay in a wide bed and fought off a delirium which threatened to end in death. I had never really been ill since childhood and the experience was delicious. To make my way to the toilet was like staggering through all the intricate passages of an ocean liner. I lived several lives in the few days that it lasted. That was my sole vacation in the sepulchre which is called home. The only other place I could tolerate was the kitchen. It was a sort of comfortable prison cell and, like a prisoner, here I often sat alone late into the night planning my escape. Here too my friend Stanley sometimes joined me, croaking over my misfortune and withering every hope with bitter and malicious barbs.

It was here I wrote the maddest letters ever penned. Any one who thinks he is defeated, hopeless, without resources, can take courage from me. I had a scratchy pen, a bottle of ink and paper—my sole weapons. I put down everything which came into my head, whether it made sense or not. After I had posted a letter I would go upstairs and lie down beside my wife and, with eyes wide open, stare into the darkness, as if trying to read my future. I said to myself over and over that if a man, a sincere and desperate man like myself, loves a woman with all his heart, if he is ready to cut off his ears and mail them to her, if he will take his heart's blood and pump it out on paper, saturate her with his need and longing, besiege her everlastingly, she cannot possibly refuse him. The homeliest man, the weakest man, the most undeserving man must triumph if he is willing to surrender his last drop of blood. No woman can hold out against the gift of absolute love.

I went again to the dance hall and found a message waiting for me. The sight of her handwriting made me tremble. It was brief and to the point. She would meet me at Times Square, in front of the drug store, at midnight the following day. I was to please stop writing her to her home.

I had a little less than three dollars in my pocket when we met. The greeting she gave me was cordial and brisk. No mention of my visit to the house or the letters or the gifts. Where would I like to go, she asked after a few words. I hadn't the slightest idea what to suggest. That she was standing there in the flesh, speaking to me, looking at me, was an event which I had not yet fully grasped. «Let's go to Jimmy Kelly's place», she said, coming to my rescue. She took me by the arm and walked me to the curb where a cab was waiting for us. I sank back into the seat, overwhelmed by her mere presence. I made no attempt to kiss her or even to hold her hand. She had come—that was the paramount thing. That was everything.

We remained until the early hours of the morning, eating, drinking, dancing. We talked freely and understandingly. I knew no more about her, about her real life, than I knew before, not because of any secrecy on her part but rather because the moment was too full and neither past nor future seemed important.

When the bill came I almost dropped dead.

In order to stall for time I ordered more drinks. When I confessed to her that I had only a couple of dollars on me she suggested that I give them a check, assuring me that since she was with me there would be no question about its acceptance. I had to explain that I owned no check book, that I possessed nothing but my salary. In short, I made a full clearance.

While confessing this sad state of affairs to her an idea had germinated in my crop. I excused myself and went to the telephone booth. I called the main office of the telegraph company and begged the night manager, who was a friend of mine, to send a messenger to me immediately with a fifty dollar bill. It was a lot of money for him to borrow from the till, and he knew I wasn't any too reliable, but I gave him a harrowing story, promising faithfully to return it before the day was out.

The messenger turned out to be another good friend of mine, old man Creighton, an ex-minister of the gospel. He seemed indeed surprised to find me in such a place at that hour. As I was signing the sheet he asked me in a low voice if I was sure I would have enough with the fifty. «I can lend you something out of my own pocket», he added. «It would be a pleasure to be of assistance to you.»

«How much can you spare?» I asked, thinking of the task ahead of me in the morning.

«I can give you another twenty-five», he said readily.

I took it and thanked him warmly. I paid the bill, gave the waiter a generous tip, shook hands with the manager, the assistant manager, the bouncer, the hat check girl, the door man, and with a beggar who had his mitt out. We got into a cab and, as it wheeled around, Mara impulsively climbed over me and straddled me. We went into a blind fuck, with the cab lurching and careening, our teeth knocking, tongue bitten, and the juice pouring from her like hot soup. As we passed an open plaza on the other side of the river, just at daybreak, I caught the astonished glance of a cop as we sped by. «It's dawn, Mara,» I said, trying gently to disengage myself. «Wait, wait», she begged, panting and clutching at me furiously, and with that she went into a prolonged orgasm in which I thought she would rub my cock off. Finally she slid off and slumped back into her corner, her dress still up over her knees. I leaned over to embrace her again and as I did so I ran my hand up her wet cunt. She clung to me like a leech, wiggling her slippery ass around in a frenzy of abandon. I felt the hot juice trickling through my fingers. I had all four fingers up her crotch, stirring up the liquid moss which was tingling with electrical spasms. She had two or three orgasms and then sank back exhausted, smiling up at me weakly like a trapped doe.

After a time she got out her mirror and began powdering her face. Suddenly I observed a startled expression on her face, followed by a quick turn of the head. In another moment she was kneeling on the seat, staring out of the back window. «Some one's following us,» she said. «Don't look!» I was too weak and happy to give a damn. «Just a bit of hysteria,» I thought to myself, saying nothing but observing her attentively as she gave rapid, jerky-orders to the driver to go this way and that, faster and faster. «Please, please!» she begged him, as though it were life and death. «Lady,» I heard him say, as if from far off, from some other dream vehicle. «I can't give her any more... I've got a wife and kid... I'm sorry.»

I took her hand and pressed it gently. She made an abortive gesture, as if to say—«You don't know... you don't know... this is terrible.» It was not the moment to ask her questions. Suddenly I had the realization that we were in danger. Suddenly I put two and two together, in my own crazy fashion. I reflected quickly... nobody is following us... that's all coke and laudanum... but somebody's after her, that's definite... she's committed a crime, a serious one, and maybe more than one... nothing she says adds up... I'm in a web of lies... I'm in love with a monster, the most gorgeous monster imaginable... I should quit her now, immediately, without a word of explanation... otherwise I'm doomed... she's fathomless, impenetrable... I might have known that the one woman in the world whom I can't live without is marked with mystery... get out at once... jump... save yourself!

I felt her hand on my leg, rousing me stealthily. Her face was relaxed, her eyes wide open, full, shining with innocence... «They've gone,» she said, «it's all right now.»

Nothing is right, I thought to myself. We're only beginning. Mara, Mara, where are you leading me? It's fateful, it's ominous, but I belong to you body and soul, and you will take me where you will, deliver me to my keeper, bruised, crushed, broken. For us there is no final understanding. I feel the ground slipping from under me...

My thoughts she was never able to penetrate, neither then nor later. She probed deeper than thought: she read blindly, as if endowed with antennae. She knew that I was meant to destroy, that I would destroy her too in the end. She knew that whatever game she might pretend to play with me she had met her match. We were pulling up to the house. She drew close to me and, as though she had a switch inside her which she controlled at will, she turned on me the full incandescent radiance of her love. The driver had stopped the car. She told him to pull up the street a little farther and wait. We were facing one another, hands clasped, knees touching. A fire ran through our veins. We remained thus for several minutes, as in some ancient ceremony, the silence broken only by the purr of the motor.

«I'll call you to-morrow,» she said, leaning forward impulsively for a last embrace. And then in my ear she murmured—«I'm falling in love with the strangest man on earth. You frighten me, you're so gentle. Hold me tight... believe in me always... I feel almost as if I were with a god.»

Embracing her, trembling with the warmth of her passion, my mind jumped clear of the embrace, electrified by the tiny seed she had planted in me. Something that had been chained down, something that had struggled abortively to assert itself ever since I was a child and had brought my ego into the street for a glance around, now broke loose and went sky-rocketing into the blue. Some phenomenal new being was sprouting with alarming rapidity from the top of my head, from the double crown which was mine from birth.

After an hour or two's rest I got to the office which was already jammed with applicants. The telephones were ringing as usual. It seemed more than ever senseless to be passing my life away in the attempt to fill up a permanent leak. The officials of the cosmococcic telegraph world had lost faith in me and I had lost faith in the whole fantastic world which they were uniting with wires, cables, pulleys, buzzers and Christ only knows what. The only interest I displayed was in the pay check—and the much talked of bonus which was due any day. I had one other interest, a secret, diabolical one, and that was to work off a grudge which I had against Spivak, the efficiency expert whom they had brought in from another city expressly to spy on me. As soon as Spivak appeared on the scene, no matter in what remote, outlying office, I was tipped off. I used to lie awake nights thinking it out like a safe-cracker— how I would trip him up and bring about his dismissal. I made a vow that I would hang on to the job until I had knifed him. It gave me pleasure to send him phoney messages under false names in order to give him a bum steer, covering him with ridicule and causing endless confusion. I even had people write him letters threatening his life. I would get Curley, my chief stooge, to telephone him from time to time, saying that his house was on fire or that his wife had been taken to the hospital—anything that would upset him and start him off on a fool's errand. I had a gift for this underhanded sort of warfare. It was a talent that had been developed since the tailoring days. Whenever my father said to me—«Better cross his name off the books, he'll never pay up!» I interpreted it very much as would a young Indian brave if the old chief had handed him a prisoner and said— «Bad pale face, give him the works!» (I had a thousand different ways of annoying a man without running foul of the law. Some men, whom I disliked on principle, I continued to plague long after they had paid their petty debts. One man, whom I especially detested, died of an apoplectic fit upon receiving one of my anonymous insulting letters which was smeared with cat shit, bird shit, dogshit and one or two other varieties, including the well-known human variety.) Spivak consequently was just my meat. I concentrated all my cosmococcic attention on the sole plan of annihilating him. When we met I was polite, deferential, apparently eager to cooperate with him in every way. Never lost my temper with him, though every word he uttered made my blood boil. I did everything possible to bolster his pride, inflate his ego, so that when the moment came to puncture the bag the noise would be heard far and wide.

Towards noon Mara telephoned. The conversation must have lasted a quarter of an hour. I thought she'd never hang up. She said she had been rereading my letters; some of them she had read aloud to her aunt, or rather parts of them. (Her aunt had said that I must be a poet. She was disturbed about the money I had borrowed. Would I be able to pay it back all right or should she try and borrow some? It was strange that I should be poor—I behaved like a rich man. But she was glad I was poor. Next time we would take a trolley ride somewhere. She didn't care about night clubs; she preferred a walk in the country or a stroll along the beach. The book was wonderful—she had only begun it this morning. Why didn't I try to write? She was sure I could write a great book. She had ideas for a book which she would tell me about when we met again. If I liked, she would introduce me to some writers she knew—they would be only too glad to help me...

She rambled on like that interminably. I was thrilled and worried at the same time. I had rather she put it down on paper. But she seldom wrote letters, so she said. Why I couldn't understand. Her fluency was marvellous. She would say things at random, intricate, flame-like, or slide off into a parenthetical limbo peppered with fireworks—admirable linguistic feats which a practiced writer might struggle for hours to achieve. And yet her letters—I remember the shock I received when I opened the first one—were almost childlike.

Her words, however, produced an unexpected effect. Instead of rushing out of the house immediately after dinner that evening, as I usually did, I lay on the couch in the dark and fell into a deep reverie. «Why don't you try to write?» That was the phrase which had stuck in my crop all day, which repeated itself insistently, even as I was saying thank you to my friend MacGregor for the ten-spot which I had wrung from him after the most humiliating wheedling and cajoling.

In the darkness I began to work my way back to the hub. I began to think of those most happy days of childhood, the long Summer days when my mother took me by the hand, led me over the fields to see my little friends, Joey and Tony. As a child it was impossible to penetrate the secret of that joy which comes from a sense of superiority. That extra sense, which enables one to participate and at the same time to observe one's participation, appeared to me to be the normal endowment of every one. That I enjoyed everything more than other boys my age I was unaware of. The discrepancy between myself and others only dawned on me as I grew older.

To write, I meditated, must be an act devoid of will. The word, like the deep ocean current, has to float to the surface of its own impulse. A child has no need to write, he is innocent. A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with the virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in. His inspiration is deflected at the source. If it is a world of truth, beauty and magic that he desires to create, why does he put millions of words between himself and the reality of that world? Why does he defer action—unless it be that, like other men, what he really desires is power, fame, success. «Books are human actions in death,» said Balzac. Yet, having perceived the truth, he deliberately surrendered the angel to the demon which possessed him.

A writer woos his public just as ingnominiously as a politician or any other mountebank; he loves to finger the great pulse, to prescribe like a physician, to win a place for himself, to be recognized as a force, to receive the full cup of adulation, even if it be deferred a thousand years. He doesn't want a new world which might be established immediately, because he knows it would never suit him. He wants an impossible world in which he is the uncrowned puppet ruler dominated by forces utterly beyond his control. He is content to rule insidiously—in the fictive world of symbols—because the very thought of contact with rude and brutal realities frightens him. True, he has a greater grasp of reality than other men, but he makes no effort to impose that higher reality on the world by force of example. He is satisfied just to preach, to drag along in the wake of disasters and catastrophes, a death-croaking prophet always without honor, always stoned, always shunned by those who, however unsuited for their tasks, are ready and willing to assume responsibility for the affairs of the world. The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination. The first quivering word he puts to paper is the word of the wounded angel: pain. The process of putting down words is equivalent to giving oneself a narcotic. Observing the growth of a book under his hands, the author swells with delusions of grandeur. «I too am a conqueror—perhaps the greatest conqueror of all! My day is coming. I will enslave the world—by the magic of words...»» Et cetera ad nauseam.

The little phrase—Why don't you try to write?— involved me, as it had from the very beginning, in a hopeless bog of confusion. I wanted to enchant but not to enslave; I wanted a greater, richer life, but not at the expense of others; I wanted to free the imagination of ail men at once because without the support of the whole world, without a world imaginatively unified, the freedom of the imagination becomes a vice. I had no respect for writing per se any more than I had for God per se. Nobody, no principle, no idea has validity in itself. What is valid is only that much—of anything, God included—which is realized by all men in common. People are always worried about the fate of the genius. I never worried about the genius: genius takes care of the genius in a man. My concern was always for the nobody, the man who is lost in the shuffle, the man who is so common, so ordinary, that his presence is not even noticed. One genius does not inspire another. All geniuses are leeches, so to speak. They feed from the same source—the blood of life. The most important thing for the genius is to ,make himself useless, to be absorbed in the common stream, to become a fish again and not a freak of nature. The only benefit, I reflected, which the act of writing could offer me was to remove the differences which separated me from my fellow-man. I definitely did not want to become the artist, in the sense of becoming something strange, something apart and out of the current of life.

The best thing about writing is not the actual labor of putting word against word, brick upon brick, but the preliminaries, the spade work, which is done in silence, under any circumstances, in dream as well as in the waking state. In short, the period of gestation. No man ever puts down what he intended to say: the original creation, which is taking place all the time, whether one writes or doesn't write, belongs to the primal flux: it has no dimensions, no form, no time element. In this preliminary state, which is creation and not birth, what disappears suffers no destruction; something which was already there, something imperishable, like memory, or matter, or God, is summoned and in it one flings himself like a twig into a torrent. Words, sentences, ideas, no matter how subtle or ingenious, the maddest flights of poetry, the most profound dreams, the most hallucinating visions, are but crude hieroglyphs chiselled in pain and sorrow to commemorate an event which is (intransmissible. In an intelligently ordered world there would be no need to make the unreasonable attempt of putting such miraculous happenings down. Indeed, it would make no sense, for if men only stopped to realize it, who would be content with the counterfeit when the real is at every one's beck and call? Who would want to switch in and listen to Beethoven, for example, when he might himself experience the ecstatic harmonies which Beethoven so desperately strove to register? A great work of art, if it accomplishes anything, serves to remind us, or let us say to set us dreaming, of all that is fluid and intangible. Which is to say, the universe. It cannot be understood; it can only be accepted or rejected. If accepted we are revitalized; if rejected we are diminished. Whatever it purports to be it is not: it is always something more for which the last word will never be said. It is all that we put into it out of hunger for that which we deny every day of our lives. If we accepted ourselves as completely, the work of art, in fact the whole world of art, would die of malnutrition. Every man Jack of us moves without feet at least a few hours a day, when his eyes are closed and his body prone. The art of dreaming when wide awake will be in the power of every man one day. Long before that books will cease to exist, for when men are wide awake and dreaming their powers of communication (with one another and with the spirit that moves all men) will be so enhanced as to make writing seem like the harsh and raucous squawks of an idiot.

I think and know all this, lying in the dark memory of a Summer's day, without having mastered, or even half-heartedly attempted to master, the art of the crude hieroglyph. Before ever I begin I am disgusted with the efforts of the acknowledged masters. Without the ability of the knowledge to make so much as a portal in the facade of the grand edifice, I criticize and lament the architecture itself. If I were only a tiny brick in the vast cathedral of this antiquated facade I would be infinitely happier; I would have life, the life of the whole structure, even as an infinitesimal part of it. But I am outside, a barbarian who cannot make even a crude sketch, let alone a plan, of the edifice he dreams of inhabiting. I dream a new blazingly magnificent world which collapses as soon as the light is turned on. A world that vanishes but does not die, for I have only to become still again and stare wide-eyed into the darkness and it reappears... There is then a world in me which is utterly unlike any world I know of. I do not think it is my exclusive property —it is only the angle of my vision which is exclusive in that it is unique. If I talk the language of my unique vision nobody understands; the most colossal edifice may be reared and yet remain invisible. The thought of that haunts me. What good will it do to make an invisible temple?

Drifting with the flux—because of that little phrase. This is the sort of thinking that went on whenever the word writing came up. In ten years of sporadic efforts I had managed to write a million words or so. You might as well say—a million blades of grass. To call attention to this ragged lawn was humiliating. All my friends knew that I had the itch to write—that's what made me good company now and then: the itch. Ed Gavarni, for example, who was studying to become a priest: he would have a little gathering at his home expressly for my benefit, so that I could scratch myself in public and thus make the evening somewhat of an event. To prove his interest in the noble art he would drop around to see me at more or less regular intervals, bringing cold sandwiches, apples and beer. Sometimes he would have a pocketful of cigars. I was to fill my belly and spout. If he had had an ounce of talent he would never have dreamed of becoming a priest... There was Zabrowskie, the crack telegraph operator of the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company of North America: he always examined my shoes, my hat, my overcoat, to see if they were in good condition. He had no time for reading, nor did he care what I wrote, nor did he believe I would ever get anywhere, but he liked to hear about it. He was interested in horses, mud-larks particularly. Listening to me was a harmless diversion and worth the price of a good lunch or a new hat, if needs be. It excited me to tell him stories because it was like talking to the man in the moon. He could interrupt the most subtle divagations by asking whether I preferred strawberry pie or cold pot cheese for dessert... There was Costigan, the knuckle-duster from Yorkville—another good stand-by and sensitive as an old sow. He once knew a writer for the Police Gazette; that made him eligible to seek the company of the elect. He had stories to tell me, stories that would sell, if I would come down off my perch and lend an ear. Costigan appealed to me in a strange way. He looked positively inert, a pimple-faced old sow with wiry bristles all over; he was so gentle, so tender, that if he had disguised himself as a woman you would never know that he was capable of shoving a guy against a wall and pummeling his brains out. He was the sort of tough egg who can sing falsetto and get up a fat collection to buy a funeral wreath. In the telegraph business he was considered to be a quiet, dependable clerk who had the company's interest at heart. In his off hours he was a holy terror, the scourge of the neighborhood. He had a wife whose maiden name was Tillie Jupiter; she was built like a cactus plant and gave plenty of rich milk. An evening with the two of them would set my mind to work like a poisoned arrow.

Of friends and supporters I must have had around fifty. Of the lot there were three of four who had some slight understanding of what I was trying to do. One of them, a composer named Larry Hunt, lived in a little town in Minnesota. We had once rented him a room and he had proceeded to fall in love with my wife—because I treated her so shamefully. But he liked me even better than my wife, and so, upon his return to the sticks, there began a correspondence which soon became voluminous. He was hinting now of coming back to New York for a little visit. I was hoping that he would come on and take the wife off my hands. Years ago, when we had just begun our unhappy affair, I had tried to palm her off on her old sweetheart, an up-State boy called Ronald. Ronald had come to New York to ask her hand in marriage. I use that high-flown phrase because he was the sort of fellow who could say a thing like that without looking foolish. Well, the three of us met and we had dinner together in a French restaurant. I saw from the way he looked at Maude that he cared more for her, and had more in common with her, than I would ever have. I liked him immensely; he was clean-cut, honest to the bone, kind, considerate, the type who would make what is called a good husband. Besides, he had waited for her a long time, something which she had forgotten, or she would never have taken up with a worthless son-of-a-bitch like myself who could do her no good... A strange thing happened that evening, something she would never forgive me for were she ever to learn of it. Instead of taking her home I went back to the hotel with her old sweetheart. I sat up all night with him trying to persuade him that he was the better man, telling him all sorts of rotten things about myself, things I had done to her and to others, pleading with him, begging him to claim her. I even went so far as to say that I knew she loved him, that she had admitted it to me. «She only took me because I happened to be around», I said. «She's really waiting for you to do something. Give yourself a break». But no, he wouldn't hear of it. It was like Gaston and Alphonse of the comic strip. Ridiculous, pathetic, altogether unreal. It was the sort of thing they still do in the movies and people pay to see it... Anyway, thinking of Larry Hunt's coming visit I knew I wouldn't repeat that line. My one fear was that he might have found another woman in the meantime. It would be hard to forgive him that.

There was one place (the only place in New York) that I enjoyed going to, particularly if I were in an exalted mood, and that was my friend Ulric's studio uptown. Ulric was a lecherous bird; his profession brought him in contact with stripteasers, cock-teasers, and all sorts of sexually bedeviled females. More than any of the glamorous lanky swans who walked into his place to undress I liked the colored maids whom he seemed to change frequently. To get them to pose for us was not an easy job. It was even more difficult, once we had persuaded them to try it, to get them to drape a leg over an arm-chair and expose a little salmon-colored meat. Ulric was full of lecherous designs, always thinking up ways to get his end in, as he put it. It was a way of emptying his mind of the slops he was commissioned to paint. (He was paid handsomely to make beautiful cans of soup, or corn on the cob, for the back covers of the magazines.) What he really wanted to do was to make cunts, rich, juicy cunts that you could plaster over the bath-room wall and so bring about a pleasant, agreeable bowel movement. He would have made them for nothing if some one had kept him in food and pin money. As I was saying a moment ago, he had an extraordinary flair for dark meat. When he had arranged the model in some outlandish position—bending over to pick up a hairpin, or climbing a ladder to wash a spot off the wall —I would be given a pad and pencil and told off to some advantageous spot where, pretending to draw a human figure (something beyond my powers), I would feast my eyes on the choice anatomical portions offered me whilst covering the paper with birdcages, checker-boards, pineapples and chicken tracks. After a brief rest we would elaborately aid the model to regain her original position. This necessitated some delicate maneuvering, such as lowering or raising the buttocks, lifting one foot a little higher, spreading the legs a little more, and so on. «I think that's about got it, Lucy», I can hear him say, as he deftly manipulated her into an obscene position. «Can you hold that now, Lucy?» And Lucy would let out a niggerish whine signifying that she was all set. «We won't keep you long, Lucy», he would say, giving me a sly wink. «Observe the longitudinal vagination», he would say to me, employing a high-falutin' jargon which Lucy found impossible to follow with her rabbit ears. Words like vagination had a pleasing, magical tintinnabulation for Lucy's ears. Meeting him in the street I heard her say to him one day—«Any vagination exercises to-day, Mister Ulric?»

I had more in common with Ulric than with any of my other friends. For me he represented Europe, its softening, civilizing influence. We would talk by the hour of this other world where art had some relation to life, where you could sit quietly in public watching the passing show and think your own thoughts. Would I ever get there? Would it be too late? How would I live? What language would I speak? When I thought about it realistically it seemed hopeless. Only hardy, adventurous spirits could realize such dreams. Ulric had done it—for a year— by dint of hard sacrifice. For ten years he had done the things he hated to do, in order to make his dream come true. Now the dreams was over and he was back where he had started. Farther back than ever, really, because he would never again be able to adapt, himself to the treadmill. For Ulric it had been a Sabbatical leave: a dream which turns to gall and wormwood as the years roll by. I could never do as Ulric had done. I could never make a sacrifice of that sort, nor could I be content with a mere vacation however long or short it might be. My policy has always been to burn my bridges behind me. My face is always set toward the future. If I make a mistake it is fatal. When I am flung back I fall all the way back—to the very bottom. My one safeguard is my resiliency. So far I have always bounced back. Sometimes the rebound has resembled a slow motion performance, but in the eyes of God speed has no particular significance.

It was in Ulric's studio not so many months ago that I had finished my first book—the book about the twelve messengers. I used to work in his brother's room where some short time previously a magazine editor, after reading a few pages of an unfinished story, informed me cold-bloodedly that I hadn't an ounce of talent, that I didn't know the first thing about writing—in short that I was a complete flop and the best thing to do, my lad, is to forget it, try to make an honest living. Another nincompoop who had written a highly successful book about Jesus-the-carpenter had told me the same thing. And if rejection slips mean anything there was simple corroboration to support the criticism of these discerning minds. «Who are these shits?» I used to say to Ulric. «Where do they get off to tell me these things? What have they done, except to prove that they know how to make money?»

Well, I was talking about Joey and Tony, my little friends. I was lying in the dark, a little twig floating in the Japanese current. I was getting back to simple abracadabra, the straw that makes bricks, the crude sketch, the temple which must take on flesh and blood and make itself manifest to all the world. I got up and put on a soft light. I felt calm and lucid, like a lotus opening up. No violent pacing back and forth, no tearing the hair out by the roots. I sank slowly into a chair by the table and with a pencil I began to write. I described in simple words how it felt to take my mother's hand and walk across the sun-lit fields, how it felt to see Joey and Tony rushing towards me with arms open, their faces Learning with joy. I put one brick upon another like an honest brick-layer. Something of a vertical nature was happening—not blades of grass shooting up but something structural, something planned. I didn't strain myself to finish it; I stopped when I had said all I could. I read it over quietly, what I had written. I was so moved that the tears came to my eyes. It wasn't something to show an editor: it was something to put away in a drawer, to keep as a reminder of natural processes, as a promise of fulfillment.

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.

What happened to me in writing about Joey and Tony was tantamount to revelation. It was revealed to me that I could say what I wanted to say—if I thought of nothing else, if I concentrated upon that exclusively—and if I were willing to bear the consequences which a pure act always involves.

2

Two or three days later I met Mara for the first time in broad daylight. I was waiting for her in the Long Island depot over in Brooklyn. It was about six in the afternoon, daylight saving time, which is a strange sun-lit rush hour that enlivens even such a gloomy crypt as the waiting room of the Long Island Railroad. I was standing near the door when I spotted her crossing the car tracks under the elevated line; the sunlight filtered through the hideous structure in shafts of powdered gold. She had on a dotted Swiss dress which made her full figure seem even more opulent; the breeze blew lightly through her glossy black hair, teasing the heavy chalk-white face like spray dashing against a cliff. In that quick lithe stride, so sure, so alert, I sensed the animal breaking through the flesh with flowery grace and fragile beauty. This was her daytime self, a fresh, healthy creature who dressed with utter simplicity, and talked almost like a child.

We had decided to spend the evening at the beach. I was afraid it would be too cool for her in that light dress but she said she never felt the cold. We were so frightfully happy that the words just babbled out of our mouths. We had crowded together in the motorman's compartment, our faces almost touching and glowing with the fiery rays of the setting sun. How different this ride over the roof-tops from the lonely anxious one that Sunday morning when I set out for her home! Was it possible that in such a short span of time the world could take on such a different hue?

That fiery sun going down in the West—what a symbol of joy and warmth! It fired our hearts, illumined our thoughts, magnetized our souls. Its warmth would last far into the night, would flow back from below the curved horizon in defiance of the night. In this fiery blaze I handed her the manuscript to read. I couldn't have chosen a more favorable moment or a more favorable critic. It had been conceived in darkness and it was being baptized in light. As I watched her expression I had such a strong feeling of exaltation that I felt as if I had handed her a message from the Creator himself. I didn't need to know her opinion, I could read it on her face. For years I cherished this souvenir, reviving it in those dark moments when I had broken with every one, walking back and forth in a lonely attic in a foreign city, reading the freshly written pages and struggling to visualize on the faces of all my coming readers this expression of unreserved love and admiration. When people ask me if I have a definite audience in mind when I sit down to write I tell them no, I have no one in mind but, the truth is that I have before me the image of a great crowd, an anonymous crowd, in which perhaps I recognize here and there a friendly face: in that crowd I see accumulating the slow, burning warmth which was once a single image: I see it spread, take fire, rise into a great conflagration. (The only time a writer receives his due reward is when some one comes to him burning with this flame which he fanned in a moment of solitude. Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.)

When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat—at least that is my experience. Then they either fail you utterly or they surpass themselves. Sorrow is the great link—sorrow and misfortune. But when you are testing your powers, when you are trying to do something new, the best friend is apt to prove a traitor. The very way he wishes you luck, when you broach your chimerical ideas, is enough to dishearten you. He believes in you only in so far as he knows you; the possibility that you are greater than you seem is disturbing, for friendship is founded on mutuality. It is almost a law that when a man embarks on a great adventure he must cut all ties. He must take himself off to the wilderness, and when he has wrestled it out with himself, he must return and choose a disciple. It doesn't matter how poor in quality the disciple may be: it matters only that he believe implicitly. For a germ to sprout, some other person, some one individual out of the crowd, has to show faith. Artists, like great religious leaders, show amazing perspicacity in this respect. They never pick the likely one for their purpose, but always some obscure, frequently ridiculous person.

What aborted me in my beginnings, what almost proved to be a tragedy, was that I could find no one who believed in me implicitly, either as a person or as a writer. There was Mara, it is true, but Mara was not a friend, hardly even another person, so closely did we unite. I needed some one outside the vicious circle of false admirers and envious denigrators. I needed a man from the blue.

Ulric did his best to understand what had come over me, but he hadn't it in him then to perceive what I was destined to become. How can I forget the way he received the news about Mara? It was the day after we had gone to the beach. I had gone to the office as usual in the morning, but by noon I was so feverishly inspired that I took a trolley and rode out into the country. Ideas were pouring into my head. As fast as I jotted them down others came crowding in. At last I reached that point where you abandon all hope of remembering your brilliant ideas and you simply surrender to the luxury of writing a book in your head. You know that you'll never be able to recapture these ideas, not a single line of all the tumultuous and marvellously dove-tailed sentences which sift through your mind like sawdust spilling through a hole. On such days you have for company the best companion you will ever have—the modest, defeated, plodding workaday self which has a name and which can be identified in public registers in case of accident or death. But the real self, the one who has taken over the reins, is almost a stranger. He is the one who is filled with ideas; he is the one who is writing in the air; he is the one who, if you become too fascinated with his exploits, will finally expropriate the old, worn-out self, taking over your name, your address, your wife, your past, your future. Naturally, when you walk in on an old friend in this euphoric state he doesn't wish to concede immediately that you have another life, a life apart in which he has no share. He says quite naively—«Feeling rather high to-day, eh?» And you nod your head almost shamefacedly.

«Look, Ulric,» I said, bursting in on him in the midst of a Campbell's Soup design, «I've got to tell you something, I'm bursting with it.»

«Sure, fire away,» he said, dipping his water color brush in the big pot on the stool beside him. «You don't mind if I go on with this bloody thing, do you? I've got to finish it by tonight.»

I pretended I didn't mind but I was disconcerted. I pitched my voice lower in order not to disturb him too much. «You remember the girl I was telling you about—the girl I met at the dance hall? Well I met her again. We went to the beach together last night...»

«How was it... good going?»

I could see from the way he slid his tongue over his lips that he was priming himself for a juicy yarn.

«Listen, Ulric, do you know what it is to be in love?»

He didn't even deign to look up in answer to this. As he deftly mixed his colors in the tin tray he mumbled something about being possessed with normal instincts.

I went on unabashed. «Do you think you might meet a woman some day who would change your whole life?»

«I've met one or two who've tried—not with entire success, as you can see,» he responded.

«Shit! Drop that stuff a moment, will you? I want to tell you something... I want to tell you that I'm in love, madly in love. I know it sounds silly, but this is different—I've never been like this before. You wonder if she's a good piece of tail. Yes, magnificent. But I don't give a shit about that...»

«Oh, you don't? Well, that's something new.»

«Do you know what I did to-day?»

«You went to the Houston Street Burlesk maybe.»

«I went to the country. I was walking around like a madman....»

«What do you mean—has she given you the gate already?»

«No. She told me she loved me... I know, it sounds childish, doesn't it?»

«I wouldn't say that exactly. You might be temporarily deranged, that's all. Everybody acts a bit queer when he falls in love. In your case it's apt to last longer. I wish I didn't have this damned job on my hands—I might listen more feelingly. You couldn't come back a little later, could you? Perhaps we could eat together, yes?»

«All right, I'll come back in an hour or so. Don't run out on me, you bastard, because I haven't a cent on me.»

I blew down the stairs and headed for the park. I was riled. It was silly to get all steamed up before Ulric. Always cool as a cucumber, that guy. How can you make another person understand what is really happening inside you? If I were to break a leg he would drop everything. But if your heart is breaking with joy—well, it's a bit boring, don't you know. Tears are easier to put up with than joy. Joy is destructive: it makes others uncomfortable. «Weep and you weep alone»—what a lie that is! Weep and you will find a million crocodiles to weep with you. The world is forever weeping. The world is drenched in tears. Laughter, that's another thing. Laughter is momentary—it passes. But joy, joy is a kind of ecstatic bleeding, a disgraceful sort of super-contentment which overflows from every pore of your being. You can't make people joyous just by being joyous yourself. Joy has to be generated by oneself: it is or it isn't. Joy is founded on something too profound to be understood and communicated. To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts.

I couldn't remember ever seeing Ulric positively joyous. He could laugh readily enough, a good healthy laugh, too, but when he subsided he was always a bit below par. As for Stanley, the nearest semblance to mirth he could produce was a carbolic acid grin. There wasn't a soul I knew who was really gay inside, or even resilient. My friend Kronski, who was now an interne, would act as though he were alarmed if he found me in an effervescent mood. He spoke of joy and sadness as if they were pathological conditions—opposite poles in the manic-depressive cycle.

When I got back to the studio I found it crowded with friends of his who had arrived unexpectedly. They were what Ulric called fine young blades from the South. They had come up from Virginia and North Carolina in their trim racing cars and they had brought with them a few jugs of peach brandy. I didn't know any of them and I felt a bit uncomfortable at first, but after a drink or two I limbered up and began talking freely. To my amazement they seemed not to understand what I was talking about.

They excused their ignorance in a sly and embarrassing way by saying that they were just common country folk who knew more about horses than books. I wasn't aware of having mentioned any books, but that was their way, as I soon discovered, of telling me off. I was definitely an intellectual, say what I would. And they were very definitely country gentlemen, with boots and spurs. The situation was getting rather tense, despite my efforts to talk their language. And then of a sudden it became ridiculous, owing to a stupid remark about Walt Whitman which one of them had chosen to address to me. I had been exalted for the better part of the day; the enforced promenade had sobered me up somewhat, but with the peach brandy flowing and the conversation all at loose ends I had gradually become exhilarated again. I was in a mood to combat these fine young blades from the South, more particularly because what I had on my chest to get off was being squelched by the senseless hilarity. So when the cultured young gent from Durham tried to cross swords with me about my favorite American writer I was at him hammer and tongs. As usual in such circumstances I overshot the mark.

The place was in an uproar. Apparently they had never seen any one so earnest about an unimportant matter. Their laughter made me furious. I accused them of being a bunch of drunken sots, of being idle sons of bitches, ignorant, prejudiced, the product of good for nothing whore-mongers, et cetera, et cetera. A tall, lanky chap, who later became a famous movie star, rose to his feet and threatened to crack me down. Ulric came to the rescue in his suave, silky way, the cups were filled to the brim and a truce declared. At that moment the bell rang and a good-looking young woman made her way in. She was presented to me as the wife of somebody or other whom the others all seemed to know and to be very solicitous about. I got Ulric to one side to find out what it was all about. «She's got a paralytic husband,» he confided. «Nurses him night and day. Drops in now and then to have a little drink—it's getting too much for her, I guess.»

I stood apart and sized her up. She looked like one of those over-sexed females who, while playing the role of the martyr, manage somehow to get their needs satisfied. She had hardly gotten seated when two other females buzzed in, one of them quite decidedly a trollop, the other just somebody's wife, and rather rusty and shopworn at that. I was hungry as a bear and getting fantastically tight. With the arrival of the women I completely lost my combativeness. I thought of only two things—food and sex. I went to the can and absent-mindedly left the door unlocked. I had backed up a bit because of a slow poisonous hard on which the brandy had induced and, as I stood thus, pecker in hand and aiming at the bowl in a high curve, the door suddenly opened. It was Irene, the paralytic's wife. She made a smothered exclamation and started to close the door, but for some reason, perhaps because I seemed utterly calm and nonchalant, she stood at the door-sill and while I finished my piss, she talked to me as though nothing unusual were happening. «Quite a performance,» she said, as I shook the last few drops out. «Do you always back up that way?» I caught her by the hand and pulled her in, locking the door with the other hand. «No, please don't do that,» she begged, looking thoroughly frightened. «Just one moment,» I whispered, my cock brushing against her dress. I fastened my lips to her red mouth. «Please, please,» she begged, trying to squirm out of my embrace. «You'll disgrace me.» I knew I had to let her go. I worked fast and furiously. «I'll let you go,» I said, «just one more kiss.» With that I backed her against the door and, without even bothering to lift her dress, I stabbed her again and again, shooting a heavy load all over her black silk front.

My absence wasn't even noticed. The Southern boys were clustered around the other two females, doing their best to get them cock-eyed in short order. Ulric asked me slyly if I had seen anything of Irene.

«I think she's gone to the bathroom,» I said.

«How was it?» he said. «Are you still in love?»

I gave him a wry smile.

«Why don't you bring your friend around some night,» he went on. «I can always find a pretext to get Irene over. We can take turns at giving her consolation, what?»

«Listen,» I said, «lend me a dollar, will you? I've got to eat, I'm famished.»

Ulric always had a way of looking bewildered, nonplussed, when you asked him for money. I had to take him short like that or he'd edge out of it in that smooth, irresistible way he had of refusing. «Come on,» I said, taking him by the arm, «this is no time to fumble and stammer.» We went to the hall where he furtively slipped me a bill. Just as we were approaching the door Irene came out of the bathroom. «What, you're not going, are you?» she asked, coming up to me and slipping her arms in ours. «Yes, he's got to hurry off now,» said Ulric, «but he's promised to come back later.» And with this we put our arms around her and smothered her with kisses.

«When am I going to see you again?» said Irene. «I may not be here when you return. I'd like to have a talk with you.»

«Just a talk?» said Ulric.

«Well, you know....» she said, finishing it off with a lascivious laugh.

The laugh got me in the scrotum. I got hold of her again and pushing her into a corner I put my hand on her cunt, which was blazing, and slid my tongue down her throat.

«Why do you run away now?» she murmured. «Why don't you stay?»

Ulric stepped in to get his share. «Don't worry about him,» he said, fastening on her like a leech. «That bird doesn't need any consolation. He's got more than he can handle.»

As I slipped out I caught a last imploring signal from Irene, her back bent almost in half, her dress up above her knees, Ulric's hand creeping up her leg and fastening on her warm cunt. «Whew! what a bitch!» I mumbled, as I slid down the stairs. I was faint with hunger. I wanted a steak smothered in onions and a schooner of beer.

I ate in the back of a saloon on Sixth Avenue, not far from Ulric's place. I had what I wanted and was still ten cents to the good. I felt genial and expansive, in a mood to accept anything. My mood must have been written on my face because, as I stood a moment at the doorway to take in the scene, a man airing a dog saluted me in friendly fashion. I thought he had mistaken me for some one else, something which frequently happens to me, but no, he was just friendlily inclined, perhaps in the same glowing mood as myself. We exchanged a few words and presently I was walking along with him and the dog. He said he lived nearby and that if I cared to join him in a friendly drink I might accompany him to his apartment. The few words we had exchanged convinced me that he was sensitive, cultured gentleman of the old school. As a matter of fact he intimated, almost in the next breath, that he had just returned from Europe where he had been living for a number of years. As we reached his apartment he was relating a story about an affair he had had with a countess in Florence. He seemed to take it for granted that I knew Europe. He treated me as if I were an artist.

The apartment was rather sumptuous. He immediately brought out a beautiful box of excellent Havana cigars and asked me what I preferred to drink. I took a whisky and settled down in a luxurious armchair. I had the feeling that this man would be putting money in my hand before long. He listened to me as though he believed every word I uttered. Suddenly he ventured to ask if I were not a writer? Why? Well, from the way I looked around, the way I stood, the expression about the mouth—little things, undefinable, a general impression of sensitivity and curiosity.

«And you?» I asked, «what do you do?»

He made a deprecatory gesture, as though to say, I'm nothing any more. «I was a painter once, a poor one, too. I don't do anything now. I try to enjoy myself.»

That set me off. The words just fell out of me, like hot shot. I told him where I stood, how messy things were, how things were happening nevertheless, what grand hopes I had, what a life lay before me if I could only take hold of it, squeeze it, marshall it, conquer it. I lied a bit. It was impossible to admit to him, this stranger who had come to my rescue out of a clear sky, that I was a total failure.

What had I written thus far?

Why, several books, some poems, a batch of short stories. I rattled on at top speed so as not to be caught in trivial questions of fact. About the new book I had begun—that was to be something magnificent. There were over forty characters in it. I had made a great chart on my wall, a sort of map of the book—he must see it some time. Did he remember Kirillov, that character in one of Dostoievski's works, who had shot or hanged himself because he was too happy? That was me all over. I was going to shoot everybody off—out of sheer happiness... To-day for example, if he could only have seen me a few hours ago. Completely mad. Rolling in the grass by the side of a brook; chewing mouthsful of grass; scratching myself like a dog; yelling at the top of my lungs; doing handsprings; even got down on my knees and prayed, not to ask for something, but to give thanks, thanks for being alive, for being able to breathe the air.... Wasn't it wonderful just to breathe?

I went on to relate little episodes out of my telegraphic life: the crooks I had to deal with, the pathological liars, the perverts, the shell-shocked bums sitting in the lodging houses, the slimy, hypocritical charity workers, the diseases of the poor, the runaway boys who disappear from the face of the earth, the whores who try to muscle in and work the office buildings, the cracked pots, the epileptics, the orphans, the reformatory lads, the ex-convicts, the nymphomaniacs.

His mouth hung open like a hinge, his eyes were popping out of his head: he looked for all the world like a good-natured toad that had been hit with a rock. Have another drink?

Sure! What was I saying? Oh yes... in the middle of the book I would explode. Why not? There were plenty of writers who could drag a thing out to the end without letting go of the reins; what we needed was a man, like myself for instance, who didn't give a fuck what happened. Dostoievski hadn't gone quite far enough. I was for straight gibberish. One should go cuckoo! People have had enough of plot and character. Plot and character don't make life. Life isn't in the upper storey: life is here now, any time you say the word, any time you let rip. Life is four-hundred and forty horsepower in a two-cylinder engine—

He interrupted me here. «Well, I must say that you certainly seem to have it... I wish I could read one of your books».

«You will,» I said, carried away by internal combustion. «I'll send you one in a day or two.»

There was a knock at the door. As he got up to open it he explained that he had been expecting some one. He begged me not to be disturbed, it was merely a charming friend of his.

A gorgeously beautiful woman stood in the doorway. I rose to greet her. She looked Italian. Possibly the countess he had spoken of earlier.

«Sylvia,» he said, «it's too bad you didn't come a little sooner. I've just been listening to the most wonderful stories. This young man is a writer. I want you to know him.»

She came close and put out her two hands for me to grasp. «I am sure you must be a very good writer,» she said. «You have suffered, I can see that.»

«He's had the most extraordinary life, Sylvia. I feel as though I haven't even begun to live. And what do you suppose he's doing for a living?»

She turned to me as if to say that she preferred to hear it from my own lips. I was confused. I had not been prepared to meet such a stunning creature, so full of assurance, so poised, and so thoroughly natural. I wanted to get up and place my hands on her hips, hold her thus and say something very simple, very honest, as one human being to another. Her eyes were velvety and moist; dark, round eyes that glistened with sympathy and warmth. Could she be in love with this man who was so much older? From what city did she come and out of what world? To say even two words to her I felt that I had to have some clue. A mistake would be fatal.

She seemed to divine my dilemma. «Won't some one offer me a drink?» she asked, looking first at him and then at me. «Port, I think», she added, addressing herself to me.

«But you never take anything!» said my host. And he rose to help me. The three of us were standing close together, Sylvia with empty glass upraised. «I am very glad things have turned out this way,» he said. «I couldn't have brought together two people more opposite in every way than you two. I am sure you will understand one another.»

My head was spinning as she raised the glass to her lips. I knew that this was the preliminary to some strange adventure. I had a strong intuition that he would presently find some excuse to leave us alone for a while and that without a word being said, she would pass into my arms. I felt too that I would never see either of them again.

In fact, it happened precisely as I had imagined. In less than five minutes from the time she arrived my host announced that he had a very important errand to run and begged us to excuse him for a little while. He had hardly closed the door when she came over to me and sat herself in my lap, saying as she did so—«He will not be back to-night. Now we may talk.» I was more frightened than startled by these words. All sorts of ideas flashed through my mind. I was even more taken aback when she added after a pause—«And what about me, am I just a pretty woman, perhaps his mistress? What do you think my life is like?»

«I think you're a very dangerous person,» I answered spontaneously and with truthfulness. «I wouldn't be surprised if you were a famous spy.»

«You have strong intuitions,» she said. «No, I am not a spy, but....»

«Well, if you were you wouldn't tell me, I know that. I really don't want to know about your life. Do you know what I'm wondering? I'm wondering what you want of me. I feel as if I were in a trap.» «That's unkind of you. Now you're imagining things. If we did want something of you we would have to know you better, wouldn't we?» A moment's silence, then suddenly: «Are you sure you want to be nothing more than a writer?»

«What do you mean?» I retorted quickly. «Just that. I know you are a writer... but you could also be other things. You're the sort of person who could do anything he chose to do, isn't that so?» I'm afraid it's just the contrary,» I replied. «So far everything I've tackled has ended disastrously. I'm not even sure that I'm a writer, at this moment.»

She rose from my lap and lit herself a cigarette. «You couldn't possibly be a failure,» she said, after a moment's hesitation in which she seemed to be collecting herself to make some important revelation. «The trouble with you,» she said slowly and deliberately, «is that you've never set yourself a task worthy of your powers. You need bigger problems, bigger difficulties. You don't function properly until you're hard pressed. I don't know what you're doing but I'm certain that your present life is not suited to you. You were meant to lead a dangerous life; you can take greater risks than others because.... well, you probably know it yourself.... because you are protected.»

«Protected? I don't understand,» I blurted out. «Oh yes you do,» she answered quietly. «All your life you've been protected. Just think a moment.... Haven't you been near death several times.... haven't you always found some one to help you, some stranger usually, just when you thought all was lost? Haven't you committed several crimes already, crimes which nobody would suspect you of? Aren't you right now in the midst of a very dangerous passion, an affair which, if you weren't born under a lucky star, might lead you to ruin? I know that you're in love. I know that you're ready to do anything in order to satisfy this passion.... You look at me strangely... you wonder how I know. I have no special gifts— except the ability to read human beings at a glance. Look, a few moments ago you were waiting eagerly for me to come to you. You knew that I would throw myself in your arms as soon as he left. I did. But you were paralyzed—a little frightened of me, shall I say? Why? What could I do to you? You have no money, no power, no influence. What could you expect me to ask of you?» She paused, then added: «Shall I tell you the truth?»

I nodded helplessly.

«You were afraid that if I did ask you to do something for me you would not be able to refuse. You were perplexed because, being in love with one woman, you already felt yourself the potential victim of another. It isn't a woman you need—it is an instrument to liberate yourself. You crave a more adventurous life, you want to break your chains. Whoever the woman is you love I pity her. To you she will appear to be the stronger, but that is only because you doubt yourself. You are the stronger. You will always be stronger—because you can think only of yourself, of your destiny. If you were just a little stronger I would fear for you. You might make a dangerous fanatic. But that is not your fate. You're too sane, too healthy. You love life even more than your own self. You are confused, because whomsoever or whatever you give yourself to is never enough for you—isn't that true? Nobody can hold you for long: you are always looking beyond the object of your love, looking for something you will never find. You will have to look inside yourself if you ever hope to free yourself of torment. You make friends easily, I'm sure. And yet there is no one whom you can really call your friend. You are alone. You will always be alone. You want too much, more than life can offer...»

«Wait a moment, please,» I interrupted. «Why have you chosen to tell me all this?»

She paused a moment, as if hesitating to answer this directly. «I suppose I am merely answering a question in my own mind,» she said. «To-night I must make a grave decision; I leave in the morning on a long journey. When I saw you I said to myself —this may be the man who can help me. But I was wrong. I have nothing to ask of you... You may put your arms around me, if you like... if you are not afraid of me.»

I walked over to her, clasped her tightly and kissed her. I drew my lips away and looked into her eyes, my arms still about her waist.

«What is it you see?» she said, gently disengaging herself.

I moved away from her and looked at her steadily, for several moments, before answering. «What do I see? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. To look into your eyes is like looking into a dark mirror.»

«You're disturbed. What is it?»

«What you said about me—it frightens me... So I'm no help to you, is that it?»

«You have helped, in a way,» she replied. «You always help, indirectly. You can't help radiating energy, and that is something. People lean on you, but you don't know why. You even hate them for it, though you act as though you were kind and truly sympathetic. When I came here to-night I was a bit shaken inwardly; I had lost that confidence I usually have. I looked at you and I saw... what do you think?»

«A man flushed with his own ego, I suppose.»

«I saw an animal! I felt that you would devour me, if I were to let myself go. And for a moment or two I felt that I wanted to let myself go. You wanted to take me, throw me down on the carpet. To have me that way wouldn't have satisfied you, would it? You saw in me something you had never observed in another woman. You saw the mask which is your own.» She paused for just a second. «You don't dare to reveal your real self, nor do I. That much we have in common. I live dangerously, not because I am strong, but because I know how to make use of others' strength. I am afraid not to do the things I do because if I were to stop I would collapse. You read nothing in my eyes because there is nothing to read. I have nothing to give you, as I told you a moment ago. You look only for your prey, your victims on whom you fatten. Yes, to be a writer is probably the best thing for you. If you were to act out your thoughts you would probably become a criminal. You have always the choice of going two ways. It is not the moral sense which deters you from going the wrong way—it is your instinct to do only that which will serve you best in the long run. You don't know why it is you abandon your brilliant projects; you think it is weakness, fear, dubiety, but it isn't. You have the instincts of the animal; you make everything subservient to the desire to live. You would not hesitate to take me against my will, even if you knew you were in a trap. The man trap you are not afraid of, but the other trap, the trap which would set your feet in the wrong direction, that you are wary of. And you are right.» Again she paused. «Yes, you did me a great service. If I had not met you to-night I would have given in to my doubts.»

«Then you are about to do something dangerous,» I said.

She shrugged her shoulders. «Who knows what is dangerous? To doubt, that is dangerous. You will have a much more dangerous time of it than I. And you will cause a lot of harm to others in defending yourself from your own fears and doubts. You are not even sure at this moment that you will go back to the woman you love. I have poisoned your mind. You would drop her like that if you were sure that you could do what you wanted without her aid. But you will need her and you will call it love. You will always fall back on that excuse when you are sucking the life out of a woman.»

«That is where you are wrong,» I interrupted with some heat. «It's me who gets sucked dry, not the woman.»

«That is your way of deceiving yourself. Because the woman can never give you what you want you make yourself out to be a martyr. A woman wants love and you're incapable of giving love. If you were a lower type of man you would be a monster; but you will convert your frustration into something useful. Yes, by all means go on writing. Art can transform the hideous into the beautiful. Better a monstrous book than a monstrous life. Art is painful, tedious, softening. If you don't die in the attempt, your work may transform you into a sociable, charitable human being. You are big enough not to be satisfied with mere fame, I can see that. Probably, when you have lived enough, you will discover that there is something beyond what you now call life. You may yet live to live for others. That depends on what use you make of your intelligence.» (We looked at one another keenly.) «For you are not as intelligent as you think you are. That is your weakness, your overweening intellectual pride. If you rely exclusively on that you defeat yourself. You have all the feminine virtues, but you are ashamed to acknowledge them to yourself. You think because you are strong sexually that you are a virile man, but you are more of a woman than a man. Your sexual virility is only the sign of a greater power which you haven't begun to use. Don't try to prove yourself a man by exploiting your powers of seduction. Women are not fooled by that sort of strength and charm. Women, even when they are subjugated mentally, are always master of the situation. A woman may be enslaved, sexually, and yet dominate the man. You will have a harder time than other men because to dominate another doesn't interest you. You will always be trying to dominate yourself; the woman you love will only be an instrument for you to practice on...»

Here she broke off. I saw that she expected me to go.

«Oh, by the way,» she said, as I was making my adieu, «the gentleman asked me to give you this»—and she handed me a sealed envelope. «He's probably explained why he couldn't make a better excuse for leaving so mysteriously.» I took the envelope and shook hands with her. If she had suddenly said: «Run! run for your life!» I would have done so without question. I was completely mystified, knowing neither why I had come nor why I was leaving. I had been whisked into it on the crest of a strange elation the origin of which now seemed remote and of little concern to me. From noon to midnight I had gone full circle.

I opened the envelope in the street. It contained a twenty dollar bill enclosed in a sheet of paper on which was written «Good Luck to you!» I was not altogether surprised. I had expected something of the sort when first I laid eyes on him...

A few days after this episode I wrote a story called «Free Fantasia» which I brought to Ulric and read aloud to him. It was written blindly, without thought of beginning or end. I had just one fixed image in mind throughout, and that was of swinging Japanese lanterns. The piece de resistance was a kick in the slats which I gave the heroine in the act of submission. This gesture, which was aimed at Mara, was more of a surprise to me than it could possibly be to the reader. Ulric thought the writing quite remarkable but confessed he couldn't make head nor tail of it. He wanted me to show it to Irene whom he was expecting later. She had a perverted streak in her, he said. She had returned to the studio with him late that night, after the others had gone, and she had almost bled him to death. Three times ought to be enough to satisfy any woman, he thought, but this one could keep it up all night. «The bitch can't stop coming,» he said. «No wonder her husband's a paralytic—she must have twisted the Cock off him.»

I told him what had occurred the other night when I left the party abruptly. He shook his head from side to side, saying—«By God, those things never happen to me. If anybody but you were to tell me a story like that I wouldn't believe it. Your whole life seems to be made up of just such incidents. Now why is that, can you tell me? Don't laugh at me, I know it sounds foolish to ask such a question. I know too that I'm a rather cagey bird. You seem to lay yourself wide open—I suppose that's the secret of it. And you're more curious about people than I will ever be. I get bored too easily—it's a fault, I admit. So often you tell me of the wonderful time you've had—after I've left. But I'm sure nothing like you relate would happen to me even if I were to sit up all night... Another thing about you that gets me is that you always find a character interesting whom most of us would ignore. You have a way of opening them up, of making them reveal themselves. I haven't got the patience for it... But tell me honestly now, aren't you just a bit sorry that you didn't get your end in with what's her name?»

«Sylvia, you mean?»

«Yes. You say she was a Loulou. Don't you think you could have stayed another five minutes and had what was coming to you?»

«Yes, I suppose so...»

«You're a funny fellow. I suppose you mean to say that you got something more by not staying, is that it?»

«I don't know. Perhaps I did, perhaps not. To tell you the truth, I forgot all about fucking her by the time I was ready to leave. You can't fuck every woman you run into, can you? If you ask me, I was fucked good and proper. What more could I hope to get out of her if I had gone through with it? Maybe she'd have given me a dose of clap. Maybe I would have disappointed her. Listen, I don't worry too much if I lose a piece of tail now and then. You seem to be keeping some kind of fuck-ledger. That's why you don't loosen up with me, you bugger, you. I have to work on you like a dentist to extract a measly buck from you; I go round the corner and a stranger whom I speak to just a few minutes leaves a twenty dollar bill for me on the mantelpiece. How do you explain that?»

«You don't explain it,» said Ulric, making a wry grin. «That's why things never happen to me, I guess... But I do want to say this,»» he continued, getting up from his seat and frowning over his own cussedness, «whenever you find yourself in a real pinch you can always rely on me. You see, I don't worry much about your privations usually because I know you well enough to realize that you'll always find a way out, even if I happen to let you down.» «You sure have a lot of confidence in my ability, I must say.»

«I don't mean to be callous when I say a thing like that. You see, if I were in your boots I'd be so depressed that I wouldn't be able to ask a friend for help—I'd be ashamed of myself. But you come running up here with a grin, saying—'I must have this... I must have that.' You don't act as if you needed help desperately.»

«What the hell,» I said, «do you want me to get down on my knees and beg for it?»

«No, not that, of course. I'm talking like a damned fool again. But you make people envious of you, even when you say you're desperate. You make people refuse you sometimes because you take it for granted that they should help you, don't you see?» «No, Ulric, I don't see. But it's all right. Tonight I'm taking you to dinner.»

«And to-morrow you'll be asking me for carfare.» «Well, is there any harm in that?» «No, it's just cock-eyed,» and he laughed. «Ever since I know you, and I know you a long while, you've been hitting me up—for nickels, dimes, quarters, dollar bills.... why once you tried to bludgeon me for fifty dollars, do you remember? And I always keep saying no to you, isn't that so? But it doesn't make any difference to you apparently. And we're still good friends. But sometimes I wonder what the hell you really think of me. It can't be very flattering.»

«Why, I can answer that right now, Ulric,» I said blithely: «You're....»

«No, don't tell me now. Save it! I don't want to hear the truth just yet.»

We went to dinner down in Chinatown and on the way home Ulric slipped me a ten dollar bill, just to prove to me that his heart was in the right place. In the park we sat down and had a long talk about the future. Finally he said to me what so many of my friends had already told me—that he had no hopes for himself but that he was confident I would break loose and do something startling. He added very truthfully that he didn't think I had even begun to express myself, as a writer. «You don't write like you talk,» he said. «You seem to be afraid of revealing yourself. If you ever open up and tell the truth it will be like Niagara Falls. Let me tell you honestly—I don't know any writer in America who has greater gifts than you. I've always believed in you—and I will even if you prove to be a failure. You're not a failure in life, that I know, though it's the craziest life I've ever known of. I wouldn't have time to paint a stroke if I did all the things you do in a day.»

I left him, feeling as I often did, that I had probably underestimated his friendship. I don't know what I expected of my friends. The truth is I was so dissatisfied with myself; with my abortive efforts, that nothing or nobody seemed right to me. If I were in a jam I would be sure to pick the most unresponsive individual, just to have the satisfaction of wiping him off my list. I knew full well that in sacrificing one old friend I would have three new ones by the morrow. It was touching, too, to run across one of these discarded friends later on and find that he bore me no hatred, that he was eager and willing to resume the old ties, usually by way of a lavish meal and an offer to lend me a few dollars. In the back of my head there was always the intention of surprising my friends one day by paying off all debts. Nights I would often lull myself to sleep by adding up the score. Even at this date it was already a huge sum, one that could only be settled by the advent of some unexpected stroke of fortune. Perhaps one day some unheard-of relative would die and leave me a legacy, five or ten thousand dollars, whereupon I would immediately go to the nearest telegraph office and dispatch a string of money orders to all and sundry. It would have to be done by telegraph because if I were to keep the money in my pocket more than a few hours it would vanish in some foolish, unexpected way.

I went to bed that night dreaming of a legacy. In the morning the first thing I heard was that the bonus had been declared—we might have the dough before the day was over. Everybody was in a state of agitation. The burning question was—how much? Towards four in the afternoon it arrived. I was handed something like 350 dollars. The first man I took care of was McGovern, the old flunkey who guarded the door. (Fifty dollars on account.) I looked over the list. There were eight or ten I could take care of immediately—brothers of the cosmococcic world who had been kind to me. The rest would have to wait until another day—including the wife whom I had decided to lie to about the bonus. Ten minutes after I had received the money I was arranging to throw a little spread at the Crow's Nest where I had decided to make the pay-off. I checked rip the list again to make sure I had not overlooked any of the essential ones. They were a curious lot, my benefactors. There was Zabrowskie, the crack telegrapher, Costigan, the knuckle-duster, Hymie Laubscher, the switch-board operator, O'Mara, my old crony whom I had made my assistant, Steve Romero from the main office, little Curley, my stooge, Maxie Schnadig, an old stand-by, Kronski, the interne, and Ulric of course... oh yes, and MacGregor, whom I was paying back merely as a good investment.

All told I would have to shell out about three hundred dollars—250 dollars in debts and a possible fifty for the banquet. That would leave me flat broke, which was normal. If there were a five spot left over I'd probably go to the dance hall and see Mara.

As I say, it was an incongruous group I had gathered together, and the only way to unite them in fellowship was to make merry. First of course I paid them off. That was better than the best hors d'oeuvre. Cocktails followed promptly and then we fell to. It was a staggering meal I had ordered and there was plenty to wash it down with. Kronski, who was not used to liquor, got tipsy almost immediately. Had to go out and stick a finger down his throat long before we came to the roast duckling. When he rejoined us he was pale as a ghost: his face had the hue of a frog's belly, a dead frog floating on the scum of a stinking swamp. Ulric thought he was a rum bird—had never met a type like that before. Kronski, on the other hand, took a violent dislike to Ulric, asking me on the side why I had invited a polite fart like that. MacGregor positively detested little Curley—couldn't understand how I could be friendly with such a venomous little crook. O'Mara and Costigan seemed to be getting along best of all; they fell into a lengthy discussion about the relative merits of Joe Gans and Jack Johnson. Hymie Laubscher was trying to get a hot tip from Zabrowskie who made it a point never to give tips because of his position.

In the midst of it a Swedish friend of mine named Lundberg happened to walk in. He was another one I owed money to but he never pressed me to pay up. I invited him to join us and, taking Zabrowskie aside, I borrowed back a ten spot in order to settle accounts with the new arrival. From him I learned that my old friend Larry Hunt was in town and eager to see me. «Get him here,» I urged Lundberg. «The more the merrier.»

While the festivities were in full swing, after we had sung «Meet Me To-Night in Dreamland» and «Some of These Days,» I noticed two Italian boys at a nearby table who seemed eager to be in the fun. I went over to them and asked them if they would like to join us. One of them was a musician and the other was a prize-fighter, it appeared. I introduced them and then made a place for them between Costigan and O'Mara. Lundberg had gone out to telephone Larry Hunt.

How he had gotten on to such a subject on such an occasion I don't know, but for some reason or other Ulric had gotten it into his head to make me an elaborate speech about Uccello. The Italian boy, the musician, pricked up his ears. MacGregor turned away disgustedly to talk to Kronski about impotency, a subject which the latter delighted to explore if he thought he could make his listener uncomfortable thereby. I noticed that the Italian was impressed by Ulric's glib flow. He would have given his right arm to be able to speak English like that. He was also flattered to think that we were talking so enthusiastically about one of his own race. I drew him out a bit and, realizing that he was getting drunk on language, I got exalted and went off into a mad flight about the wonders of the English tongue. Curley and O'Mara turned to listen and then Zabrowskie came round to our end of the table and drew up a chair, followed by Lundberg who informed me quickly that he hadn't been able to get hold of Hunt. The Italian was in such a state of excitement that he ordered cognac for everybody. We stood up and clinked glasses. Arturo, that was his name, insisted on giving a toast—in Italian. He sat down and said with great fervor that he had lived in America ten years and had never heard the English language spoken like this. He said he would never be able to master it now. He wanted to know if we talked this way ordinarily. He went on like this, piling one compliment upon another, until we were all so infected with a love of the English language that we all wanted to make speeches. Finally I got so drunk on it that I stood up and, downing a stiff drink at one gulp, I launched into a frenzied speech which lasted for fifteen minutes or more. The Italian kept wagging his head from side to side, as if to signify that he couldn't stand another word, that he would burst. I fastened my eye on him and drowned him with words. It must have been a mad and glorious speech because every now and then there was a salvo of applause from the surrounding tables. I heard Kronski murmuring to some one that I was in a fine state of euphoria, a word which touched me off anew. Euphoria! I paused the fraction of a second while some one filled my glass and then I was off, down the stretch, a gay mud-lark flinging words in every direction. I had never in my life attempted to make a speech. If some one had interrupted me and told me I was making a wonderful speech I would have been dumbfounded. I was out on my feet, in the language of the ring. The only thing I had in mind was the Italian's hunger for that marvelous English which he would never be able to master. I hadn't the slightest idea what I was talking about. I didn't have to use my brain—I simply stuck a long, snake-like tongue into a cornucopia and with a felicitous flip I spooled it off.

The speech ended in an ovation. Some of the guests at the other tables came over and felicitated me. The Italian, Arturo, was in tears. I felt as if I had unwittingly let off a bomb. I was embarrassed and not a little frightened by this unexpected display of oratory. I wanted to get out of the place, get off by myself and feel what had happened. Presently I made an excuse and, taking the manager aside, I told him I had to leave. After footing the bill I found I had about three dollars left over. I decided to beat it without saying a word to anybody. They could sit there till Kingdom Come—I had had enough of it.

I started walking uptown. Soon I was on Broadway. At Thirty-Fourth Street I quickened my pace. It was decided—I would go to the dance hall. At Forty-Second Street I had to elbow my way through the pack. The crowd excited me: there was always the danger of running into some one and getting diverted from one's goal. Soon I was standing in front of the joint, a little out of breath and wondering if it were the right thing to do. At the Palace opposite, Thomas Burke of the Covent Garden Opera was being featured as the headliner. The name «Covent Garden» stuck in my crop as I turned to ascend the stairs. London—it would be swell to take her to London. I must ask her if she would like to hear Thomas Burke...

She was dancing with a young-looking old man as I entered. I watched her a few minutes before she espied me. Dragging her partner by the hand she came over to me with a radiant flush. «I want you to meet an old friend of mine,» she said, presenting me to the white-haired Mr. Carruthers. We greeted one another cordially and stood chatting for several minutes. Then Florrie came along and whisked Carruthers off.

«He seems like a fine chap, «I said. «One of your admirers, I suppose?»

«He's been very good to me—he nursed me when I was ill. You mustn't make him jealous. He likes to pretend that he's in love with me.»

«To pretend?» I said.

«Let's dance», she said. «I'll tell you about him some other time.»

While we were dancing she took the rose she was wearing and stuck it in my buttonhole. «You must have been enjoying yourself to-night,» she said, getting a whiff of the booze. A birthday party, I explained, leading her towards the balcony to have a few words with her in private.

«Do you think you could get away to-morrow night —go to the theatre with me?»

She squeezed my arm by way of assent. «You look more beautiful than ever to-night,» I said, holding her close.

«Be careful what you do,» she murmured, looking stealthily over her shoulder. «We mustn't stay here long. I can't explain it now but you see, Carruthers is very jealous and I can't afford to make him angry. Here he comes now... I'll leave you.»

I purposely refrained from looking round though I was dying to study Carruthers more closely. I hung over the flimsy iron rail of the balcony and became absorbed in the sea of faces below. Even from this low height the crowd took on that dehumanized appearance which comes with weight and number. If there were not this thing called language there would be little to differentiate this maelstrom of flesh from other forms of animal life. Even that, even the divine gift of speech, hardly served to make a distinction. What was their talk? Could one call it language? Birds and dogs have a language too, probably just as adequate as that of the mob. Language only begins at the point where communication is endangered. Everything these people are saying to one another, everything they read, everything they regulate their lives by is meaningless. Between this hour and a thousand other hours in a thousand different pasts there is no fundamental difference. In the ebb and tide of planetary life this stream goes the way of all other streams past and future. A minute ago she was using the word jealous. A queer word, especially when you are looking at a mob, when you see the haphazard mating, when you realize that those who are now locked arm in arm will most likely be separated a little while hence. I didn't give a fuck how many men were in love with her as long as I was included in the circle. I felt sorry for Carruthers, sorry that he should be a victim of jealousy. I had never been jealous in my life. Maybe I had never cared enough. The one woman I had desperately wanted I had relinquished of my own free will. To have a woman, to have anything, as a matter of fact, is nothing: it's the living with a person that matters, or the living with possessions. Can you go on forever being in love with persons or things? She could just as well admit that Carruthers was madly in love with her—what difference would it make in my love? If a woman is capable of inspiring love in one man she must be capable of inspiring it in others. To love or be loved is no crime. The really criminal thing is to make a person believe that he or she is the only you could ever love.

I went inside. She was dancing with some one else. Carruthers was standing alone in a corner. Impelled by a desire to give him a little consolation I went up to him and engaged him in conversation. If he were in the throes of jealousy he certainly didn't show it. He treated me rather cavalierly, I thought. I wondered was he really jealous or was she only trying to make me think that in order to conceal something else. The illness she had spoken of—if it were so serious then it was strange that she hadn't mentioned it before. The way she had alluded to it made me think it was a fairly recent event. He had nursed her. Where? Not at her home surely. Another little item came to mind: she had strongly urged me never to write to her at her home. Why? Maybe she had no home. That woman in the yard hanging up clothes—that was not her mother, she said. Who was it then? It might have been a neighbor, she tried to insinuate. She was touchy about the subject of her mother. It was her aunt who read my letters, not her mother. And the young man who answered the door—was he her brother? She said he was, but he certainly didn't resemble her. And where was her father all day, now that he was no longer breeding race horses or flying kites from the roof? She evidently didn't like her mother very much. She had even let out a broad hint once that she wasn't sure whether it was her mother.

«Mara's a strange girl, isn't she?» I said to Carruthers after a lull in our rather brittle conversation.

He gave a short shrill laugh and, as though to put me at ease about her, replied: «She's just a child, you know. And of course you can't believe a word she says.»

«Yes, that's just the impression she gives me.» said I.

«She hasn't a thing on her mind except having a good time,» said Carruthers.

Just then Mara came along. Carruthers wanted to dance with her. «But I promised this one to him,» she said, taking my hand.

«No, that's all right, dance with him! I've got to go anyway. I'll see you soon, I hope.» I sailed out before she had a chance to protest.

The following evening I was at the theatre ahead of time. I bought seats down front. There were several other favorites of mine on the program, among them Trixie Friganza, Joe Jackson, and Roy Barnes. It must have been an all-star bill.

I waited half an hour beyond the appointed time and still no sign of her. I was so eager to see the show I decided not to wait any longer. Just as I was wondering what to do with the extra ticket a rather handsome Negro passed me to approach the box office. I intercepted him to inquire if he wouldn't accept my ticket. He seemed surprised when I refused to accept money from him. «I thought you were a speculator,» he said.

After the intermission Thomas Burke appeared before the footlights. He made a tremendous impression upon me, for reasons which I shall never be able to fathom. A number of curious coincidences are connected with his name and with the song which he sang that night—-«Roses of Picardy.» Let me jump seven years from the moment the night before when I stood hesitantly at the foot of the steps leading to the dance hall....

Covent Garden. It is to Covent Garden I go a few hours after landing in London, and to the girl I single out to dance with I offer a rose from the flower market. I had intended to go direct to Spain, but circumstances obliged me to go straight to London. A Jewish insurance agent from Baghdad, of all places, is the one to lead me to the Covent Garden Opera which has been converted into a dance hall for the time being. The day before leaving London I pay a visit to an English astrologer who lives near the Crystal Palace. We have to pass through another man's property in order to get to his house. As we are walking through the grounds he informs me casually that the place belongs to Thomas Burke, the author of Limehouse Nights. The next time I attempt to go to London, unsuccessfully, I return to Paris via Picardy and in travelling through that smiling land I stand up and weep with joy. Suddenly, recalling the disappointments, the frustrations, the hopes turned to despair, I realized for the first time the meaning of «voyage». She had made the first journey possible and the second one inevitable. We were never to see each other again. I was free in a wholly new sense— free to become the endless voyager. If any one thing may be said to be accountable for the passion which seized me and which held me in its grip for seven long years then it is Thomas Burke's rendering of this sentimental ditty. Only the night before I had been commiserating Carruthers. Now, listening to the song. I was suddenly stricken with fear and jealousy. It was about the one rose that dies not, the rose that one keeps in one's heart. As I listened to the words I had a premonition that I would lose her. I would lose her because I loved her too much, that was how the fear shaped itself. Carruthers, despite his nonchalance, had put a drop of poison in my veins. Carruthers had brought her roses; she had given me the rose he had pinned to her waist. The house is bursting with applause. They are throwing roses on the stage. He is going to give an encore. It is the same song—«Roses of Picardy». It is the same phrase which he is coming to now, the words which stab me and leave me desolate—«but there is one rose that dies not in Picardy... 'tis the rose that I keep in my heart!» I can't stand it any longer, I rush out. I rush across the street and bound up the steps to the dance hall.

She's on the floor, dancing with a dark-skinned fellow who is holding her close. As soon as the dance is out I rush over to her. «Where were you?» I ask. «What was the matter? Why didn't you come?»

She seemed surprised that I should be so upset over such a trivial thing. What had kept her? Oh, it was nothing at all. She had been out late, a rather wild party... not with Carruthers... he had left shortly after me. No, it was Florrie who had organized the party. Florrie and Hannah—did I remember them? (Did remember them? Florrie the nymphomaniac and Hannah the drunken sot. How could I forget them?) Yes, there had been a lot to drink and somebody had asked her to do the split and she had tried... well, and she had hurt herself a bit. That was all. I should have realized that something had happened to her. She wasn't the sort who made dates and broke them—just like that.

«When did you get here?» I asked, remarking to myself that she seemed quite intact, unusually cool and collected, in fact.

She had come just a few minutes ago. What difference did it make? Her friend Jerry, an ex-pugilist who was now studying law, had taken her to dinner. He had been at the party last night and had been kind enough to see her home. She would see me Saturday afternoon in the Village—at the Pagoda Tea Room. Dr. Tao, who ran the place, was a good friend of hers. She would like me to meet him. He was a poet.

I said I would wait around for her and take her home, by subway this time if she didn't mind. She begged me not to bother—I would get home so late and so on. I insisted. I could see that she wasn't too pleased. In fact she was plainly annoyed. In a moment she excused herself to go to the dressing room. That meant a telephone call, I was certain. Again I wondered if she really lived at this place she called home.

She reappeared with a good-natured smile, saying that the manager had offered to let her off early. We might go at once, if we liked. First we were to have a bite somewhere. On the way to the restaurant, and all through the meal, she kept up a rapid-fire talk about the manager and his little kindnesses. He was a Greek with a tender heart. It was extraordinary what he had done for some of the girls. How did she mean? Like what? Well, like Florrie, for instance. The time Florrie had had an abortion—that was before she met her doctor friend. Nick had paid for everything; he had even sent her to the country for a few weeks. And Hannah, who had had all her teeth extracted... Well, Nick had presented her with a lovely set of false teeth.

And Nick, what was he getting for all his trouble, I inquired blandly.

«Nobody knows anything about Nick,» she continued. «He never makes any overtures to the girls. He's too busy with his affairs. He runs a gambling joint uptown, he plays the stock market, he owns a bath house at Coney Island, he has an interest in a restaurant somewhere... he's too busy to think about such things.»

«You seem to be one of the favored ones,» I said. «You come and go as you please.»

«Nick thinks the world of me,» she said. «Perhaps because I attract a different type of man than the other girls.»

«Wouldn't you like to do something else for a living?» I asked abruptly. «You're not meant for this sort of thing—that's why you're such a success, I guess. Isn't there something else you'd rather do, tell me?»

Her smile indicated how naive my question was. «You don't think I do this because I like it, do you? I do it because I earn more money than I could elsewhere. I have a lot of responsibilities. It doesn't matter what I do—I must earn a certain amount of money each week. But don't let's talk about that, it's too painful. I know what you're thinking about, but you're wrong. Everybody treats me like a queen. The other girls are stupid. I use my intelligence. You notice that my admirers are mostly old men...»

«Like Jerry, you mean?»

«Oh Jerry, he's an old friend. Jerry doesn't count.»

I dropped the subject. Better not to inquire too deeply. There was one little thing that bothered me however, and I broached it as gently as I could, Why did she waste time on such trollops as Florrie and Hannah?

She laughed. Why, they were her best friends. They would do anything for her, they worshipped her. One has to have some one he can rely on in a pinch. Why, Hannah would hock her false teeth for her if she asked her to. Speaking of friends, there was a wonderful girl she would like to introduce me to some day—quite another type, almost aristocratic. Lola was her name. She had a little colored blood in her, but it was scarcely noticeable. Yes, Lola was a very dear friend. She was sure I would like her.

«Why not make a date?» I suggested promptly. «We could meet at my friend Ulric's studio. I've wanted you to meet him too.»

She thought that would be excellent. Couldn't say when it would be, though, as Lola was always going off on trips. But she would try to make it soon. Lola was the mistress of some rich shoe manufacturer; she wasn't always free. But it would be good to have Lola—she had a racing car. Perhaps we could drive out into the country and stay the night somewhere. Lola had a way about her. She was just a little too haughty, in fact. But that was because of her colored blood. I mustn't let on that I knew anything about that. And as for my friend Ulric—I wasn't to breathe a word of that to him.

«But he likes colored girls. He'll be crazy about Lola.»

«But Lola doesn't want to be liked for that reason,» said Mara. «You'll see—she's very pale and very attractive. Nobody would suspect that she had a drop of colored blood in her.»

«Well, I hope she's not too proper.»

«Yow don't need to worry about that,» said Mara promptly. «Once she forgets herself she's very gay. It won't be a dull evening, I assure you.»

We had a bit of a walk from the subway station to her home. Along the way we stopped under a tree and started to mush it up. I had my hand up her dress and she was fumbling with my fly. We were leaning against the tree trunk. It was late and not a soul in sight. I could have laid her out on the sidewalk for all it mattered.

She had just got my pecker out and was opening her legs for me to ram it home when suddenly from the branches above a huge black cat pounced on us, screaming as if in heat. We nearly dropped dead with fright, but the cat was even more frightened since its claws had gotten caught in my coat. In my panic I beat the hell out of it and in return was badly clawed and bitten. Mara was trembling like a leaf. We walked into a vacant lot and lay on the grass. Mara was fearful I might get an infection. She would sneak home and come back with some iodine and what not. I was to lie there and wait for her. It was a warm night and I lay back full length looking up at the stars. A woman passed but didn't notice me lying there. My cock was hanging out and beginning to stir again with the warm breeze. By the time Mara returned it was quivering and jumping. She kneeled beside me with the bandages and the iodine. My cock was staring her in the face. She bent over and gobbled it greedily. I pushed the things aside and pulled her over me. When I had shot my bolt she kept right on coming, one orgasm after another, until I thought it would never stop.

We lay back and rested awhile in the warm breeze. After a while she sat up and applied the iodine. We lit our cigarettes and sat there talking quietly. Finally we decided to go. I walked her to the door of her home and as we stood there embracing one another she grabbed me impulsively and whisked me off. «I can't let you go yet,» she said. And with that she flung herself on me, kissing me passionately and reaching into my fly with murderous accuracy. This time we didn't bother to look for a vacant patch of ground, but collapsed right on the sidewalk under a big tree. The sidewalk wasn't too comfortable—I had to pull out and move over a few feet where there was a bit of soft earth. There was a little puddle near her elbow and I was for taking it out again and moving over another inch or so, but when I tried to draw it out she got frantic. «Don't ever take it out again,» she begged, «it drives me crazy. Fuck me, fuck me!» I held out on her a long while. As before, she came again and again, squealing and grunting like a stuck pig. Her mouth seemed to have grown bigger, wider, utterly lascivious; her eyes were turning over, as if she were going into an epilectic fit. I took it out a moment to cool it off. She put her hand in the puddle beside her and sprinkled a few drops of water over it. That felt marvelous. The next moment she was on her hands and knees, begging me to give it to her assways. I got behind her on all fours; she reached her hand under and grabbing my cock she slipped it in. It went right in to the womb. She gave a little groan of pain and pleasure mixed. «It's gotten bigger,» she said, squirming her ass around. «Put it in again all the way... go ahead, I don't care if it hurts,» and with that she backed up on me with a wild lurch. I had such a cold-blooded erection that I thought I'd never be able to come. Besides, not worrying about losing it, I was able to watch the performance like a spectator. I would draw it almost out and roll the tip of it around the silky, soppy petals, then plunge it in and leave in there like a stopper. I had my two hands around her pelvis, pulling and pushing her at will. «Do it, do it,» she begged, «or I'll go mad!» That got me. I began to work on her like a plunger, in and out full length without a let-up, she going Oh—Ah, Oh —Ah! and then bango! I went off like a whale.

We brushed ourselves off and started back towards the house once again. At the corner she stopped dead in her tracks and, turning round to face me squarely, she said with a smile that was almost ugly— «And now forthe dirt!»

I looked at her in amazement. «What do you mean? What are you talking about?»

«I mean,» she said, never relinquishing that strange grimace, «that I need fifty dollars. I must have it tomorrow. I must. I must.... Now do you see why I didn't want you to take me home?»

«Why did you hesitate to ask me for it? Don't you think I can raise fifty dollars if you need it badly?»

«But I need it at once. Can you get a sum like that by noon? Don't ask me what it's for—it's urgent, very urgent. Do you think you can do it? Will you promise?»

«Why of course I can,» I answered, wondering as I said so where in hell I would get it in such quick time.

«You're wonderful,» she said, seizing my two hands and squeezing them warmly. «I do hate to ask you. I know you have no money. I'm always asking for money—that seems to be all I can do—get money for others. I hate it, but there's nothing else to do. You trust me, don't you? I'll give it back to you in a week.»

«Don't talk that way, Mara. I don't want it back. If you're in need I want you to tell me. I may be poor but I can raise money too now and then. I wish I could do more. I wish I could take you out of that damned place—I don't like seeing you there.»

«Don't talk about that now, please. Go home and get some sleep. Meet me at twelve-thirty to-morrow in front of the drug store at Times Square. That's where we met before, you remember? God, I didn't know then how much you would mean to me. I took you for a millionaire. You won't disappoint me to-morrow—you're sure?»»

«I'm sure, Mara.»

Money always has to be raised in jig time and paid back at regular stipulated intervals, either by promises or in cash. I think I could raise a million dollars if I were given enough time, and by that I don't mean sidereal time but the ordinary clock time of days, months, years. To raise money quickly, however, even carfare, is the most difficult task one can set me. From the time I left school I have begged and borrowed almost continuously. I've often spent a whole day trying to raise a dime; at other times I've had fat bills thrust into my hand without even opening my mouth. I don't know any more about the art of borrowing now than I did when I started. I know there are certain people whom you must never, not under any circumstances, ask for help. There are others again who will refuse you ninety-nine times and yield on the hundredth, and perhaps never again refuse you. There are some whom you reserve for the real emergency, knowing that you can rely on them, and when the emergency comes and you go to them you are cruelly deceived.. There isn't a soul on earth who can be relied on absolutely. For a quick, generous touch the man you met only recently, the one who scarcely knows you, is usually a pretty safe bet. Old friends are the worst: they are heartless and incorrigible. Women, too, as a rule, are usually callous and indifferent. Now and then you think of some one you know would come across, if you persisted, but the thought of the prying and prodding is so disagreeable that you wipe him out of your mind. The old are often, like that, probably because of bitter experience .

To borrow successfully one has to be a monomaniac on the subject, as with everything else. If you can give yourself up to it, as with Yoga exercises, that is to say, whole-heartedly, without squeamish-ness or reservations of any kind, you can live your whole life without earning an honest penny. Naturally the price is too great. In a pinch the best single quality is desperation. The best course is the unusual one. It is easier, for example, to borrow from one who is your inferior than from an equal or from one who is above you. It's also very important to be willing to compromise yourself, not to speak of lowering yourself, which is a sine quanon. The man who borrows is always a culprit, always a potential thief. Nobody ever gets back what he lent, even if the sum is paid with interest. The man who exacts his pound of flesh is always short-changed, even if by nothing more than rancor or hatred. Borrowing is a positive thing, lending negative. To be a borrower may be uncomfortable, but it is also exhilarating, instructive, life-like. The borrower pities the lender, though he must often put up with his insults and injuries.

Fundamentally borrower and lender are one and the same. That is why no amount of philosophizing can eradicate the evil. They are made for one another, just as man and woman are made for each other. No matter how fantastic the need, no matter how crazy the terms, there will always be a man to lend an ear, to fork up the necessary. A good borrower goes about his task like a good criminal. His first principle is never to expect something for nothing. He doesn't want to know how to get the money on the least terms but exactly the contrary. When the right men meet there is a minimum of talk. They take each other at face value, as we say. The ideal lender is the realist who knows that to-morrow the situation may be reversed and the borrower become the lender.

There was only one person I knew who could see it in the right light and that was my father. He was the one I always held in reserve for the crucial moment. And he was the only one I never failed to pay back. Not only did he never refuse me but he inspired me to give to others in the same way. Every time I borrowed from him I became a better lender—or I should say giver, because I've never insisted on being repaid. There is only one way to repay kindnesses and that is to be kind in turn to those who come to you in distress. To repay a debt is utterly unnecessary, so far as the cosmic bookkeeping is concerned. (All others forms of bookkeeping are wasteful and anachronistic.) «Neither a borrower nor a lender be,» said the good Shakespeare, voicing a wish-fulfillment out of his Utopian dream life. For men on earth, borrowing and lending is not only essential but should be increased to outlandish proportions. The fellow who is really practical is the fool who looks neither to the left nor the right, who gives without question and asks unblushingly.

To make it short, I went to my old man and without beating about the bush I asked him for fifty dollars. To my surprise he didn't have that much in the bank but he informed me quickly that he could borrow it from one of the other tailors. I asked him if he would be good enough to do that for me and he said sure, of course, just a minute.

«I'll give it back to you in a week or so,» I said, as I was saying good-bye.

«Don't worry about that,» he replied, «any time will do. I hope everything's all right with you otherwise.»

At twelve-thirty sharp I handed Mara the money. She ran off at once, promising to meet me the next day in the garden of the Pagoda Tea Room. I thought it a good day to make a little touch for myself and so I trotted off to Costigan's office to ask for a five spot. He was out, but one of the clerks, suspecting the nature of my errand, volunteered to help me out. He said he wanted to thank me for what I had done for his cousin. Cousin? I couldn't think who his cousin might be. «Don't you remember the boy you took to the psychiatric clinic?» he said. «He was a. runaway boy from Kentucky—his father was a tailor, remember? You telegraphed his father that you would take care of the boy until he arrived. That was my cousin.»

I remembered that lad very well. He wanted to be an actor—his glands were out of order. At the clinic they said he was an incipient criminal. He had stolen some clothes belonging to a buddy of his while at the Newsboy's Home. He was a fine lad, more of a poet than an actor. If his glands were out of order then mine were completely disorganized. He had given the psychiatrist a kick in the balls for his pains—that's why they had tried to make him out a criminal. When I heard about it I laughed my head off. He should have used a blackjack on that sadistic Jake of a psychiatrist.... Anyway, it was a pleasant surprise to find I had an unknown friend in the wardrobe attendant. Nice, too, to hear him say I could have more any time I was in need of a little change. In the street I bumped into an ex-wardrobe attendant now working as a messenger. He insisted on giving me two tickets for a ball to be run under the auspices of the Magicians and Conjurors' Association of New York City of which he was the president. «I wish you could get me a wardrobe attendant's job again,» he said. «I have so many things to attend to now since I'm president of the Association that I can't do justice to the messenger work. Besides, my wife is going to have another baby soon. Why don't you come up to see us—I have some new tricks to show you. The little boy is learning to be a ventriloquist; I'm going to put him on the stage in a year or so. We have to make a living somehow. You know, magic doesn't pay very much. And I'm getting too old to run my feet down too much. I was cut out for the professional life. You understand my personal capabilities and idiosyncrasies. If you come to the ball I'm going to introduce you to the great Thurston— he's promised to be there. I've got to go now—I've got a death message to deliver.»

You understand my personal capabilities and idiosyncrasies. I stood at the corner and wrote it down on the back of an envelope. Seventeen years ago. Here it is. Fuchs was his name. Gerhardt Fuchs of FU Office. Same name as that of the «hundski picker in Glendale where Joey and Tony lived. Used to meet this other Fuchs coming through the cemetery grounds, a sack of dog, bird and cat shit over his shoulder. Brought it to a perfumery house somewhere. Always smelt like a skunk. A foul, evil-minded bugger, one the original tribe of blind Hessians. Fuchs and Kunz—two obscene birds who could be seen drinking every night in Laubscher's Beer Garden near the Fresh Pond Road. Kunz was tubercular, a dermatologist by profession. They talked a bird and skin language over their stinking pots of beer. Ridgewood was their Mecca. Never spoke English unless they had to. Germany was their God and the Kaiser His spokesman. Well, bad 'cess to them! May they die like dirty umlauts— if they haven't already. Funny, though, to find a pair of inseparable twins with names like that. Idiosyncratic, I should say....

3

And now it's Saturday afternoon, the sun's out bright and strong, and I'm sipping some pale Chinese tea in Dr. Wuchee Hachee Tao's garden. He's just handed me a long poem about Mother written on fire-cracker paper. He looks like a superior type of man—not very communicable either. I'd like to ask him something about the original Tao but it so happens that at this point in time, retrogressively speaking, I haven't yet read the Tao Teh Ching. If I had read it I wouldn't need to ask him any questions—nor in all probability would I be sitting in his garden waiting for a woman named Mara. Had I been intelligent enough to have read that most illustrious and most elliptical piece of ancient wisdom I would have been spared a great many woes that befell me and which I am now about to relate.

As I sit in the garden, B. C. 17, I have utterly different thoughts than these. To be quite honest, I can't recall a single one at this moment. I vaguely remember that I didn't like the poem about Mother —it struck me as being sheer crap. And what's more, I didn't like the Chink who wrote it— I remember that very distinctly. I know too that I was getting furious because it was beginning to look like another stand-up. (Had I imbibed a bit of Tao I would not have lost my temper. I would have sat there as contented as a cow, thankful that the sun was out and grateful to be alive.) To-day as I write this there is no sun and no Mara and, though I have not yet become a contented cow, I feel very much alive and at peace with the world.

I hear the telephone ringing inside. A slatfaced Chink, probably a professor of philosophy, tells me in chopstick language that a lady wishes to speak to me on the telephone. It's Mara, and to believe her she's only just getting out of bed. Has a hangover, she informs me. So has Florrie. The two of them are sleeping it off in a hotel nearby. What hotel? She doesn't want to say. Just wait a half hour and she'll doll herself up. I don't feel like waiting another half hour. I'm in a bad mood. First it's the split and then it's a hang-over. And who else is in bed with her, I want to know. Couldn't possibly be a man whose name begins with a C, no? She doesn't like that. She doesn't allow anybody to talk to her that way. Well, I'm talking that way, do you hear? Tell me where you are and I'll be up to see you in a jiffy. If you don't want to say then to hell with you. I'm sick of.... Hello, hello! Mara!

No answer. Well, that must have touched her to the quick. Florrie, that's the little bitch who's responsible for it. Florrie and her itchy fur-lined muff. What are you to think when all you ever hear about a girl is that she can't find a prick big enough to suit her? To look at her you'd think a good fuck would knock the slats out of her. About 103 in her stocking feet. A hundred and three pounds of insatiable flesh. A booze artist to boot. An Irish slut. A sluttee, if you ask me. Putting on a stage accent as if to pretend that she'd once been a Ziegfeld Follies girl.

A week rolls by and no word from Mara. Then out of the blue a telephone call. She sounds depressed. Could I meet her for dinner somewhere, she wants to talk to me about something very important. There's a gravity in her voice which I haven't detected before.

In the Village, as I'm hurrying to keep the appointment, who should I run into but Kronski. I try to wave him off but it's no go.

«What's the great hurry?» he asks with that bland, sardonic grin he always summons at the wrong moment.

I explain to him that I have a date.

«Are you going to eat?»

«Yes, I'm going to eat, but alone,» I say pointedly—

«Oh no you're not, Mister Miller. You need company, I can see that. You're not in such fine fettle to-day.... You look worried. It's not a woman, I hope?»

«Listen, Kronski, I'm going to meet somebody and I don't want you around.»

«Now, Mister Miller, how can you talk that way to an old friend? I insist on accompanying you. I'm going to buy the meal—you can't resist that, can you?»

I laughed in spite of myself. «All right, shit, tag along then. Maybe I'll need your help. You're no good to me except in a pinch. Listen, don't start any funny work. I'm going to introduce you to the woman I'm in love with. She probably won't like your looks, but I want you to meet her anyway. Some day I'll marry her and, since I can't seem to get rid of you, she might as well begin to tolerate you now as later. I have a hunch you won't like her.» «This sounds very serious, Mister Miller. I'll have to take steps to protect you.»

«If you start meddling I'll crown you,» I answered, laughing savagely. «About this person I'm in dead earnest. You never saw me that way before, did you? You can't believe it, eh? Well, just watch me. Tell you how earnest I am.... if you get in my way I'll murder you in cold blood.»

To my surprise Mara was already at the restaurant. She had chosen a lonely table in a dark corner. «Mara,» I said, «this is an old friend, Dr. Kronski. He insisted on coming along. I hope you don't mind.» To my astonishment she greeted him cordially. As for, Kronski, the moment he laid eyes on her he dropped his leer and banter. Even more impressive was his silence. Usually, when I presented him to a female, he became garrulous and made a sort of fluttering noise with his invisible wings.

Mara too was unusually calm; her voice sounded soothing and hypnotic.

We had scarcely given the order and exchanged a few polite words when Kronski, looking at Mara steadily and appealingly, said: «Something has happened, something tragic, it seems to me. If you'd rather have me go I'll leave right now. To tell the truth, I'd prefer to stay. Perhaps I can be of help. I'm a friend of this guy and I'd like to be a friend of yours. I mean it sincerely.»

Rather touching, this. Mara, visibly moved, responded warmly.

«By all means stay,» she said, extending her hand cross the table in token of trust and confidence. «You make it easier for me to talk being here. I've heard a lot about you, but I don't think your friend did you justice,» and she looked up at me reprovingly, then smiled warmly.

«No,» said I quickly, «it's true I never do give an honest picture of him.» I turned to him. «You know, Kronski, you have about the most unlovely character imaginable and yet...»

«Come, come,» he said, making a wry grimace, «don't begin that Dostoievski line with me. I'm your evil genius, you were going to say. Yes, I do have some queer diabolical influence over you, but I'm not confused about you as you are about me. I sincerely like you. I'd do anything you asked if I thought you meant it—even if it brought harm to some one I dearly loved. I put you above every one I know, why I can't say, because you certainly don't deserve it. Right now I'll confess I feel sad. I see that you love each other and I think you're meant for each other, but....»

«You're thinking that it won't be so hot for Mara, that's it, eh?»»

«I can't say yet,» he said, with alarming seriousness. «I see only this, that you've both met your match.»

«So you think I'd really be worthy of him?» said Mara very humbly.

I looked at her in amazement. I never suspected that she could say a thing like that to a stranger.

Her words fired Kronski. «Worthy of him?» he sneered. «Is he worthy of you? that's the question. What has he ever done to make a woman feel worthy of him? He hasn't begun to function yet—he's in a torpor. If I were you I wouldn't put an ounce of faith in him. He isn't even a good friend, let alone a lover or a husband. Poor Mara, don't worry your head about such things. Make him do something for you, spur him on, drive him nuts if you have to, but make him open up! If I were to give you an honest piece of advice, knowing him and loving him as I do, it would be this: lacerate him, punish him, goad him to the last ditch! Otherwise you're lost—he'll devour you. Not that he's a bad sort, not because he means harm... oh no! he does it out of kindness. He almost makes you believe that he has your own interest at heart when he sinks his hooks into you. He can tear you apart with a smile and tell you that he's doing it for your own good. He's the diabolical one, not me. I pretend, but he means everything he does. He's the cruelest bastard that ever walked on two legs—and what's queer about it is this, that you love him because he is cruel, or perhaps because he's honest about it. He warns you in advance when he's going to strike. He tells you it smilingly. And when it's over he picks you up and brushes you off tenderly, asks you did he hurt you very much and so on—like an angel. The bastard /» «Of course I don't know him as well as you do,» said Mara quietly, «but I must confess he's never revealed that side of his nature to me—not yet, at any rate. I only know him to be gentle and good. I hope to act so that he'll always be that way with me. I not only love him, I believe in him as a person. I would sacrifice everything to make him happy....»

«But you're not very happy right now, are you?» said Kronski, as though ignoring her words. «Tell me, what has he done to make you—?»

«He hasn't done anything,» she said spiritedly. «He doesn't know what's bothering me.»

«Well, can you tell me?» said Kronski, altering his voice and moistening his eyes so that he resembled a piteous, friendly little whelp.

«Don't press her,» I said, «she'll tell us in due time.» I was looking at Kronski as I spoke. His expression suddenly changed. He turned his head away. I looked at Mara and there were tears in her eyes; they began to flow copiously. In a moment she excused herself and went to the washroom. Kronski looked at me with a wan dead smile, the look of the sick clam expiring in moonlight.

«Don't take it so tragically,» I said. «She's a brave sort, she'll pull out of it.»

«That's what you say! You don't suffer. You get emotional and you call it suffering. That girl's in trouble, can't you see? She wants you to do something for her—not just wait till it passes. If you don't pump her I will. This time you've got a real woman. And a real woman, Mister Miller, expects something of a man—not just words and gestures. If she wants you to run away with her, to leave your wife, your child, your job, I'd say do it. Listen to her and not to your own selfish promptings!» He slumped back in his seat and picked his teeth. After a pause—-«And you met her in a dance hall? Well, I must congratulate you for having the sense to recognize the genuine article. That girl can make something of you, if you'll let her. If it's not too late, I mean. You're pretty far gone, you know. Another year with that wife of yours and you're finished.» He spat on the floor in disgust. «You have luck. You get things without working for them. I work like a son of a bitch and the moment I turn my back everything crumbles.»

«That's because I'm a Goy,» I said jestingly.

«You're no Goy. You're a black Jew. You're one of those fascinating Gentiles that every Jew wants to shine up to. You're.... Oh, good you mentioned that. Mara is a Jewess, of course? Come now, don't pretend you don't know. Hasn't she told you yet?»

That Mara should be a Jewess sounded so highly preposterous I simply laughed in his face.

«You want me to prove it to you, is that it?»

«I don't care what she is,» I said, «but I'm sure she's not Jewish.»

«What is she then? You don't call that a pure Aryan, I hope?»

«I never asked her,» I replied. «You ask her if you like.»

«I won't ask her,» said Kronski, «because she might lie to me in front of you—but I'll tell you whether I'm right or not the next time I see you. I guess I can tell a Jew when I see one.»

«You thought I was a Jew you first met me.» He laughed outright at this. «So you really believed that? Haw haw! Well, that's pretty good. You poor sap, I told you that just to flatter you. If you had a drop of Jewish blood in you I'd lynch you, out of respect for my people. You a Jew?... Well, well....» He rolled his head from side to side with tears in his eyes. «First of all a Jew is smart,» he began again, «and you, you're certainly not smart. And a Jew is honest—get that! Are you honest? Have you got an ounce of truth in you? And a Jew feels. A Jew is always humble, even when he's arrogant.... Here comes Mara now. Let's drop the subject.»

«You were talking about me, weren't you?» said Mara, as she sat down. «Why don't you go on? I don't mind.»

«You're wrong,» said Kronski, «we weren't talking about you at all...»

«He's a liar,» I broke in. «We were talking about you, only we didn't get very far. I wish, Mara, you'd tell him about your family—the things you told me, I mean.»

Her face clouded up. «Why should you be concerned about my family?» she said, with an ill-disguised show of irritation. «My family is thoroughly uninteresting.»

«I don't believe it,» said Kronski blankly. «I think you're concealing something.»

The look that passed between them gave me a jolt. It was as if she had given him the signal to proceed cautiously. They understood one another in some subterranean fashion, in a way which excluded me. The image of the woman in the backyard of her home came vividly to my mind. That woman was no neighbor, as she had tried to insinuate. Could it have been her step-mother? I tried to recall what she had told me about her real mother but immediately became lost in the complicated maze she had woven about this obviously painful subject.

«What is it you'd like to know about my family?» she said, turning to me.

«I don't want to ask you anything that would make you uncomfortable,» I said, «but if it isn't indiscreet would you mind telling us about your step-mother?»

«Where did your step-mother come from?» asked Kronski.

«From Vienna,» said Mara. «And you, were you born in Vienna too?»

«No, I was born in Roumania, in a little mountain village. I may have some Gypsy blood in me.»

«You mean your mother was a Gypsy?»

«Yes, there's a story to that effect. My father is said to have run away with her on the eve of his marriage to my step-mother. That's why my mother hates me, I guess. I'm the black sheep of the family.»

«And you adore your father, I suppose?»

«I worship him. He's like me. The others are strangers to me—we haven't anything in common.»

«And you support the family, is that it?» said Kronski.

«Who told you that? I see, so that's what you were talking about when...»

«No, Mara, nobody told me. I can see it in your face. You're making a sacrifice of yourself—that's why you're unhappy.»

«I won't deny it,» she said. «It's for my father I'm doing it. He's an invalid, he can't work any more.»

«What's the matter with your brothers?» «Nothing. Just lazy. I spoiled them. You see, I ran away when I was sixteen; I couldn't stand the life at home. I stayed away a year; when I returned I found them in misery. They're helpless. I'm the only one who has any initiative.»

«And you support the entire family?»

«I try to,» she said. «Sometimes I want to give up—it's too big a burden. But I can't. If I were to walk out they would starve to death.»

«Nonsense,» said Kronski heatedly. «That's the very thing you ought to do.»

«But I can't—not while my father is alive. I'd do anything, I'd prostitute myself, rather than see him in want.»

«And they'd let you do it, too,» said Kronski. «Look, Mara, you've put yourself in a false position. You can't assume all the responsibility. Let the others take care of themselves. Take your father away—we'll help you to look after him. He doesn't know how you get the money, does he? You haven't told him that you work in a dance hall, have you?»

«No, I haven't. He thinks I'm in the theatre. But my mother knows.»

«And she doesn't care?»

«Care?» said Mara, with a bitter smile. «She wouldn't care what I did so long as I keep the house together. She says I'm no good. Calls me a whore. I'm just like my mother, she says.»

I interrupted. «Mara,» I said, «I had no idea it was as bad as this. Kronski's right, you've got to extricate yourself. Why don't you do as he suggests—leave the family and take your father along with you?»

«I'd love to,» she said, «but my father would never leave my mother. She's got a hold over him—she's made a child of him.»

«But if he knew what you were doing?»

«He'll never know. I won't let anybody tell him. My mother threatened to tell him once: I told her I'd kill her if she did.» She smiled bitterly. «Do you know what my mother said? She said I had been trying to poison her.»

At this point Kronski suggested that we continue the conversation uptown at the home of a friend of his who was away. He said we could spend the night there if we liked. In the subway his mood changed; he became again the leering, bantering, diabolical, pale-faced toad that he usually was. This meant that he considered himself seductive, felt empowered to ogle the attractive looking females. The perspiration was pouring down his face, wilting his collar. His talk became hectic, scattered, altogether without continuity. In his distorted way he was trying to create an atmosphere of drama; he flapped his arms loosely, like a demented bat caught between two powerful search-lights.

To my disgust Mara appeared to be amused by this spectacle. «He's quite mad, your friend,» she said, «but I like him.»

Kronski overheard the remark. He grinned tragically and the perspiration began flowing more freely. The more he grinned, the more he clowned and aped it, the more melancholy he looked. He never wanted anybody to think him sad. He was Kronski, the big, vital, healthy, jovial, negligent, reckless, carefree fellow who solved everybody's problems. He could talk for hours on end—for days, if you had the courage to listen to him. He awoke talking, plunging immediately into hair-splitting arguments, always about the fate of the world, about its bio-chemical nature, its astrophysical constitution, its politico-economic configuration. The world was in a disastrous state: he knew, because he was always amassing facts about the shortage of wheat or the shortage of petroleum, or making researches into the condition of the Soviet Army or the condition of our arsenals and fortifications. He would say, as if it were a fact beyond dispute, that the soldiers of the Soviet Army could not make war this winter because they had only so many overcoats, so many shoes, etc. He talked about carbohydrates, fats, sugar, etc. He talked about world supplies as though he were running the world. He knew more about international law than the most famous authority on the subject. There wasn't any subject under the sun about which he did not appear to have a complete and exhaustive knowledge. As yet he was only an interne in a city hospital, but in a few years he would be a celebrated surgeon or psychiatrist, or perhaps something else, he didn't know yet what he would elect to be. «Why don't you decide to become President of the United States?» his friends would inquire ironically. «Because I'm not a half-wit,» he would answer, making a sour puss. «You think I couldn't become President if I wanted to? Listen, you don't think it takes brains to become President of the United States, do you? No, I want a real job. I want to help people, I don't want to bamboozle them. If I were to take this country over I'd clean house from top to bottom. To begin with I'd have guys like you castrated....» He'd go on this way for an hour or two, cleaning up the world, putting the big house in order, paving the way for the brotherhood of man and the empire of free thought. Every day of his life he went over the affairs of the world with a fine comb, cleaning out the lice that made men's thinking lousy. One day he'd be all heated up about the condition of the slaves on the Gold Coast, quoting you the price of bullion on the half-shell or some other fabulous statistical concoction which inadvertently made men hate one another and created superfluous jobs for spineless, weak-chested men on financial dope sheets, thus adding to the burden of intangible political economies. Another day he'd be up in arms about chromium or permanganate, because Germany perhaps or Roumania had cornered the market on something or other which would make it difficult for the surgeons in the Soviet Army to operate when the big day arrived. Or he would have just garnered the latest dope on a new and startling pest which would soon reduce the civilized world to anarchy unless we acted at once and with the greatest wisdom. How the world staggered along day after day without Dr. Kronski's guidance was a mystery which he never cleared up. Dr. Kronski was never in doubt about his analyses of world conditions. Depressions, panics, floods, revolutions, plagues, all these phenomena were manifesting themselves simply to corroborate his judgment. Calamities and catastrophes made him gleeful; he croaked and chortled like the world toad in embryo. How were things going with him personally—nobody ever asked him that question. Personally it was no go. He was chopping up arms and legs for the moment, since nobody had the perspicacity to ask anything better of him. His first wife had died because of a medical blunder and his second wife would soon be going crazy, if he knew what he were talking about. He could plan the most wonderful model houses for the New Republic of Mankind but oddly enough he couldn't keep his own little nest free of bedbugs and other vermin, and because of his preoccupation with world events, setting things to right in Africa, Guadaloupe, Singapore, and so on, his own place was always just a trifle upset, that is to say, dishes unwashed, beds unmade, furniture falling apart, butter running rancid, toilet stopped up, tubs leaking, dirty combs lying on the table and in general a pleasing, wretched, mildly insane state of dilapidation which manifested itself in the person of Dr. Kronski personally in the form of dandruff, eczema, boils, blisters, fallen arches, warts, wens, halitosis, indigestion and other minor disorders, none of them serious because once the world order was established everything pertaining to the past would disappear and man would shine forth in a new skin like a new-born lamb.

The friend whose house he was taking us to was an artist, he informed us. Being a friend of the great Dr. Kronski that meant an uncommon artist, one who would be recognized only when the millenium had been ushered in. His friend was both a painter and a musician—equally great in both realms. The music we wouldn't be able to hear, owing to his friend's absence, but we would be able to see his paintings— some of them, that is, because the great bulk of them he had destroyed. If it weren't for Kronski he would have destroyed everything. I inquired casually what his friend was doing at the moment. He was running a model farm for defective children in the wilds of Canada. Kronski had organized the movement himself but was too busy thinking things out to bother with the practical details of management. Besides, his friend was a consumptive, and he would have to remain up there forever most likely. Kronski telegraphed him now and then to advise him about this and that. It was only a beginning—soon he would empty the hospitals and asylums of their inmates, prove to the world that the poor can take care of the poor and the weak the weak and the crippled the crippled and the defective the defective.

«Is that one of your friend's paintings?» I asked, as he switched on the light and a huge vomit of yellowish green bile leaped out from the wall.

«That's one of his early things,» said Kronski. «He keeps it for sentimental reasons. I've put his best things away in storage. But here's a little one that gives you some idea of what he can do.» He looked at it with pride, as if it were the work of his own off-spring. «It's marvelous, isn't it?»

«Terrible,» I said. «He has a shit complex; he must have been born in the gutter, in a pool of stale horse piss on a sullen day in February near a gas house.»

«You would say that,» said Kronski vengefully. «You don't know an honest painter when you see one. You admire the revolutionaries of yesterday. You're a Romantic.»

«Your friend may be revolutionary but he's no painter,» I insisted. «He hasn't any love in him; he just hates, and what's more he can't even paint what he hates. He's fog-eyed. You say he's a consumptive: I say he's bilious. He stinks, your friend, and so does his place. Why don't you open the windows? It smells as though a dog had died here.»

«Guinea pigs, you mean. I've been using the place as a laboratory, that's why it stinks a bit. Your nose is too sensitive, Mister Miller. You're an aesthete.»

«Is there anything to drink here?» I asked.

There wasn't, of course, but Kronski offered to run out and get something. «Bring something strong,» I said, «this place makes you retch. No wonder the poor bastard got consumptive.»

Kronski trotted off rather sheepishly, I looked at Mara. «What do you think? Will we wait for him or shall we beat it?»

«You're very unkind. No, let's wait. I'd like to hear him talk some more—he's interesting. And he really thinks a lot of you. I can see that by the way he looks at you.»

«He's only interesting the first time,» I said. «Frankly, he bores me stiff. I've been listening to this stuff for years. It's sheer crap. He may be intelligent but he's got a screw loose somewhere. He'll commit suicide one day, mark my words. Besides, he brings bad luck. Whenever I meet that guy things turn out wrong. He carries death around with him, don't you feel that? If he isn't croaking he's gibbering like an ape. How can you be friends with a guy like that? He wants you to be a friend of his sorrow. What's eating him I don't know. He's worried about the world. I don't give a shit about the world. I can't make the world right, neither can he... neither can anybody. Why doesn't he try to live? The world mightn't be so bad if we tried to enjoy ourselves a little more. No, he riles me.»

Kronski came back with some vile liquor he claimed was all he could find at that hour. He seldom drank more than a thimbleful himself so it didn't make much difference to him whether we poisoned ourselves or not. He hoped it would poison us, he said. He was depressed. He seemed to have settled in for an all-night depression. Mara, like an idiot, felt sorry for him. He stretched out on the sofa and lay his head in her lap. He began another line, a weird one—the impersonal sorrow of the world. It was not argument and invective as before but a chant, a dictaphone chant addressed to the millions of unhappy creatures throughout the world. Dr. Kronski always played this tune in the dark, his head on some woman's lap, his hand dragging the carpet.

His head nestling in her lap like a swollen viper, the words sieved through Kronski's mouth like gas escaping through a half-opened cock. It was the weird of the irreducible human atom, the sub-soul wandering in the cellar of collective misery. Dr. Kronski ceased to exist: only the pain and torment remained, functioning as positive and negative electrons in the vast atomic vacuum of a lost personality. In this state of abeyance not even the miraculous Sovietization of the world could rouse a spark of enthusiasm in him. What spoke were the nerves, the ductless glands, the spleen, the liver, the kidneys, the little blood vessels lying close to the surface of the skin. The skin itself was just a bag in which were loosely collected a rather messy outfit of bones, muscles, sinews, blood, fat, lymph, bile, urine, dung, and so on. Germs were stewing around in this stinking bag of guts; the germs would win out no matter how brilliantly that cage of dull gray matter called the brain functioned. The body was in hostage to Death, and Dr. Kronski, so vital in the X-ray world of statistics, was just a louse to be cracked under a dirty nail when it came time to surrender his shell. It never occurred to Dr. Kronski, in these fits of genito-urinary depression, that there might be a view of the universe in which death assumed another aspect. He had disembowelled, dissected and chopped to bits so many corpses that death had come to mean something very concrete—a piece of cold meat lying on the mortuary slab, so to say. The light went out and the machine stopped, and after a time it would stink. Voila, it was as plain and simple as that. In death the loveliest creature imaginable was just another piece of extraordinary cold plumbing. He had looked at his wife, just after the gangrene had set in; she might have been a codfish, he intimated, for all the attractiveness she displayed. The thought of the pain she was suffering was overruled by the knowledge of what was going on inside that body. Death had already made his entry and his work was fascinating to behold. Death is always present, he asserted. Death lurks in dark corners, waiting for the opportune moment to raise his head and strike. That is the only real bond we have, he said—the constant presence of death in all of us always.

Mara was quite taken in by all this. She stroked his hair and purred softly as the steady stream, of singing gas parted from his thick bloodless lips. I was more annoyed by her evident sympathy for the sufferer than by the monotony of his weird. The image of Kronski huddled up like a sick goat struck me as distinctly comical. He had swallowed too many empty tin cans. He had nourished himself on discarded automobile parts. He was a walking cemetery of facts and figures. He was dying of statistical indigestion.

«Do you know what you ought to do?» I said quietly. «You ought to kill yourself—now, tonight. You haven't anything to live for—why kid yourself? We'll leave you in a little while and you just do away with yourself. You're a smart alec, you must know a way to do it without making too much of a mess. Really, I think you owe it to the world. As it is, you're only making a nuisance of yourself.»

These words had an almost electrical effect upon the suffering Dr. Kronski. He actually bounded to his feet in one porpoise-like movement. He clapped his hands and danced a few steps with the grave of a spavined pachyderm. He was ecstatic, in the way that a sewer digger becomes ecstatic when he learns that his wife has given birth to another brat.

«So you want me to get rid of myself, Mister Miller, that's it, eh? What's the great hurry? You're jealous of me, are you? Well, I'm going to disappoint you this time. I'm going to stay alive and make you miserable. I'm going to torture you. One day you're going to come to me and beg me to give you something to put you out of harm's way. You're going to beg me on your knees and I'm going to refuse you.»

«You're crazy,» I said, stroking him under the chin.

«Oh no I'm not!» he answered, patting my bald knob. «I'm just a neurotic, like all Jews. I won't ever kill myself, don't fool yourself. I'll be at your funeral and I'll be laughing at you. Maybe you won't have a funeral. Maybe you'll be so in debt to me that you'll have to will me your body when you die. Mister Miller, when I start carving you up there won't be a crumb left over.»

He reached for a paper knife on the piano and placed the point of it on my diaphragm. He traced an imaginary line of incision and flourished the knife before my eyes.

«That's how I'll begin,» he said, «in your guts. First I'll let out all that romantic nonsense which makes you think you lead a charmed life; then I'll skin you like a snake so as to get at your calm, peaceful nerves and make them quiver and jump; you'll be more alive under the knife than you are right now; you'll look queer with one leg on and one leg off and your head sitting on my mantelpiece with your mouth fixed in a perpetual grin.»

He turned to Mara. «Do you think you'll still be in love with him when I dress him for the laboratory?»

I turned my back on him and went to the window. It was a typical back view in the Bronx: wooden fences, clothes poles, wash lines, mangy grass plots, serial tenement houses, fire escapes, et cetera. Figures prowled back and forth before the windows in all states of attire. They were getting ready to retire in order to go through with the morrow's meaningless humdrum. One out of a hundred thousand might escape the general doom; as for the rest it would be an act of mercy if some one came in the night and slit their throats while they slept. To believe that these wretched victims had it in them to create a new world was sheer insanity. I thought of Kronski's second wife, the one who would eventually go crazy. She was from these parts. Her father ran a stationery stone; the mother lay in bed all day nursing a cancerous womb. Her youngest brother had the sleeping sickness, another was paralyzed, and the oldest one was a mental defective. An intelligently ordered state would have put the whole family out of commission and the house with it... I spat out of the window in disgust. Kronski was standing beside me, his arm around Mara's waist. «Why not jump it?» I said, throwing my hat out the window.

«What, and make a mess for the neighbors to mop up? No sir, not me. Mister Miller, it seems to me that you're the one who's anxious to commit suicide. Why don't you jump?»

«I'm willing,» I said, «provided you jump with me. Let me show how easy it is. Here, give me your hand...»

«Oh, stop it!» said Mara. «You're behaving like children. I thought you two were going to help me solve my problem. I've got real worries.»

«There are no solutions,» said Kronski glumly. It's impossible to help your father because he doesn't want to be helped. He wants to die.»

«But I want to live,» said Mara. «I refuse to be a drudge.»

«That's what everybody says, but it doesn't help. Until we overthrow this rotten capitalistic system there'll be no solution to...»

«That's all rot,» Mara broke in. «Do you think I'm going to wait for the revolution in order to live my life? Something has to be done now. If I can't solve it any other way I'll become a whore—an intelligent one, of course».

«There are no intelligent whores,» said Kronski. «To prostitute the body is a sign of feeble intelligence. Why don't you use your brains? You'd have a better time of it if you became a spy. Now that's an idea! I think I could dig up something for you along those lines. I have some pretty good connections in the Party. Of course, you'd have to give up the idea of living with this bird,» and he jerked his thumb in my direction. «But a dame like you,» and he eyed her gloating from head to foot, «could take her pick. How would you like to pose as a countess or a princess?» he added. «A hundred a week and all expenses paid... not so bad, what?»

«I make more than that now,» said Mara, «without the risk of being shot.»

«What?» we both exclaimed at once. She laughed. «You think that's big money, do you? I need much more than that. If I wanted to I could marry a millionaire to-morrow; I've had several offers already.»

«Why don't you marry one and divorce him quickly,» said Kronski. «You could marry one after another and become a millionairess yourself. Where's your brains? You don't mean to tell me you have scruples about such things?»

Mara didn't know quite how to answer this. All she could think to say was that it was obscene to marry an old derelict for his money.

«And you think you could be a whore!» he said scornfully. «You're as bad as this guy here—he's corrupted by bourgeois morality too. Listen, why don't you train him as your pimp? You'd make a fine romantic couple in the underworld of sex. Do that! Maybe I can bring you some trade now and then.»

«Dr. Kronski,» I said, giving him the bland and amiable smile, «I think we'll be taking leave of you now. This has been a most pleasant and instructive evening, I assure you. When Mara gets her first dose of syphilis I'll be sure to call on you for your expert services. I think you've solved all our problems with admirable finesse. When you send your wife to the asylum come and spend a little time with us—it will be jolly to have you around, you're inspiring and entertaining, to say the least.»

«Don't go yet,» he begged, «I want to talk to you seriously.» He turned to Mara. «Just how much do you need immediately? I could lend you three hundred dollars, if that would help. I'd have to have it back in six months, because it isn't mine. Listen, don't run off now. Let him go—I want to tell you a few things.»

Mara looked at me as if to ask whether this was just talk on his part.

«Don't ask his advice,» said Kronski. «I'm sincere with you. I like you and I want to do something for you.» He turned round on me gruffly: «Go on, go home, will you? I'm not going to rape her.»

«Shall I go?» I asked.

«Yes, please do,» said Mara. «Only why did the idiot wait so long to tell me this?»

I had my doubts about, the three hundred dollars but I left anyway. In the subway, faced with the broken-down night riders of the big city, I fell into a deep introspection, such as comes over the hero in modern novels. Like them, I asked myself useless questions, posed problems that didn't exist, made plans for the future which would never materialize, doubted everything, including my own existence. For the modern hero thought leads nowhere; his brain is a collender in which he washes the soggy vegetables of the mind. He says to himself that he is in love and he sits in the moving underground trying to run like a sewer. He beguiles himself with pleasant thoughts. For example this one: he is probably kneeling on the floor, stroking her knees: he is working his sweaty ham-like paw slowly upwards over the cool flesh: he is telling her in glutinous language how unique she is; there never was any three hundred dollars but if he can get it in, if he can get her to open her legs a little more, he'll try to raise something; while she is sliding her twat closer and closer, hoping that he'll just be satisfied to suck her off and not make her go the whole hog, she tells herself that it's no betrayal because she warned all and sundry with explicit frankness that if she had to do it she'd do it and she must do something. God help her, it's very real and very urgent: she can get away with this easily enough because nobody knows how many times she's let herself be fucked for a little loose change; she's got a good excuse, not wanting her father to die like a dog; he's got his head between her legs now, his tongue is hot; she slips down lower and puts a leg around his neck; the juice is flowing and she feels hornier than she ever felt; is he going to tantalize her all night? She takes his head in her hands and runs her fingers through his greasy hair; she presses her cunt against his mouth; she feels it coming, she squirms and wriggles, she gasps, she pulls his hair. Where are you? she screams to herself. Give me that fat prick! She pulls frantically at his collar, yanks him off his knees; in the dark her hand slips like an eel into the bulging fly, cups the fat swollen balls, traces with thumb and finger the stiff chicken neck of the penis where it dives into the unknown; he's slow and heavy and he pants like a walrus; she raises her legs high, slings them round his neck. Get it in, you fuss-pot! Not there—here! She puts her fist around it and leads it to the stable. Oh, that's good. Oh! Oh! Oh God, it's good this way, keep it in, hold it, hold it. Get it in deeper, push it in all the way... there, that's it, that's it. Oh, Oh! He's trying to hold it. He's trying to think of two things at once. Three hundred dollars... three greenbacks. Who'll give it to me? Jesus, that feels marvelous. Jesus, hold that now! Hold it! He's feeling and thinking at the same time. He feels a little clam without a shell opening and closing, a thirsty flower clamping the end of his prick. Don't move now, he says to himself. Just watch it with closed eyes. Count one two three four. Don't move, you bastard, or I'll spill it. Do that again! Jesus, what a cunt! He feels for her boobies, rips the dress open, laps a nipple greedily. Don't move now, just suck, that's it, like that. Easy now, easy! Jesus, if we could only lie like this all night. Oh Jesus, it's coming. Move, you bitch! Give it to me... faster, faster. Oh, Ah, Sis, Boom, Blam!

Our hero opens his eyes and becomes himself again —that is to say, the man known herein as myself, who refuses to believe what his mind tells him. They are probably having a long talk, I say to myself, drawing a curtain over the pleasant substitution. She wouldn't think of letting a greasy, sweaty incubus like that touch her. He probably tried to kiss her but she knows how to take care of herself all right. Wonder if Maude's still awake? Feeling horny myself. Walking towards the house I open my fly and let my pecker out. Maude's cunt. She can certainly fuck when she's a mind to. Get her half asleep, her blinders off. Just lay there quiet like, snuggle up spoon fashion. I put the key in the lock and shove the iron gate. Cold iron against a quivering prick. Must sneak up on her, slip it to her while she's dreaming. I slip quietly upstairs and shuffle out of my clothes. I can hear her turning over, getting ready in her sleep to turn her warm ass on me. I slide gently into bed and cup myself around her. She's pretending to be out, dead to the world. Not too fast or she'll wake up. Must do it in my sleep like or she'll be insulted. I've got the tip of it in the loose hairs. She's lying terribly still. She wants it, the bitch, but she won't let on. All right, play dead dog! I move her a little, just a wee bit. She responds like a water-soaked log. She's going to lie heavy like that and pretend she's asleep. Yes, I've got it half in. I have to move her around like a hoist, but she's movable and everything's smoothly oiled. It's wonderful to fuck your own wife as if she were a dead horse. You know every ripple in the silken lining; you can take your time and think about anything you like. The body is hers but the cunt's yours. The cunt and the prick, they're married, by crikey, no matter if the bodies are going different ways. In the morning the two bodies will face each other and make small change; they will act as if they were independent, as if the penis and the other thing were only to make water with. Being sound asleep she doesn't mind how I joggle her. I've got one of those dumb, senseless hard-ons, like my prick was just a rubber hose and no nozzle to it. With the tips of my fingers I can move her at will. I shoot a load into her and leave it in, the thick rubber hose, I mean. She's opening and closing like a flower. It's agony, but the right kind of agony. Flower says: Stay there, sonny boy! Flower talks like a drunken sponge. Flower says: I do take this piece of meat to cherish until I wake. And what says the body, the independent hoist moving on ball-bearings? Body is wounded and humiliated. Body lost its name and address temporarily. Body would like to cut prick off and keep it like a kangaroo, forever. Maude is not this body lying ass skyward, the helpless victim of a rubber hose. Maude, if the author were God and not her husband, sees herself standing prissily on a green lawn, holding a beautiful red parasol. There are beautiful gray doves pecking at her shoes. These lovely doves, as she thinks them to be, are saying in their koochkoo way, what a gracious, bountiful creature you are. They make white shit all the while, but being doves sent from heaven above, the white part is only angel cake and shit is a bad word which man invented when he put on clothes and civilized himself. If she should squint her eye while saying benediction over God's little pigeons she would see a shameless hussy offering a naked man the hind part of her body, just like a cow or a mare in the field. She doesn't want to think of this woman, especially in such a disgraceful posture. She tries to keep the green grass around her and the parasol open. How lovely to stand naked in the pure sunlight conversing with an imaginary friend! Maude is talking very elegantly now, as if dressed all in white and the church bells tolling: she is in her own private corner of the universe, a nun-like creature telling off the Psalms in Moon. She stoops to stroke the head of a dove, so soft and feathery, so warm with love, a piece of blood wrapped in velvet. The sun is shining brilliantly and now, oh how good it is, it is warming her cool hinder parts. Like a merciful angel she spreads her legs apart: the dove flutters between her legs, the wings brush lightly against the marble arch. The little dove is fluttering madly; she must squeeze his soft little head between her legs. Still Sunday and not a soul in this corner of the universe. Maude is talking to Maude. She is saying that if a bull came along and mounted her she would not budge an inch. It feels good, doesn't it, Maude, she whispers to herself. It feels so good. Why don't I come here every day and stand this way? Really, Maude, this is wonderful. You take off all your clothes and stand in the grass; you bend over to feed the pigeons and the bull climbs up over the hill and puts his terrible long thing inside you. Oh God, but it's terribly good to have it this way. The clean green grass, the smell of his warm hide, that long, smooth thing he moves in and out—O God, I want him to fuck me like he would a cow. O God, I want to fuck and fuck and fuck...

4

The following evening my old friend Stanley drops in to see me. Maude detests Stanley, and with good reason, because every time he looks her way he blows her down with a silent curse. His look says very clearly—«If I had that bitch in my place I'd take the axe to her and hew her down.» Stanley is full of submerged hatreds. He looks as gaunt and wiry now as he did when he came out of the cavalry at Fort Oglethorpe years ago. What he's looking for is something to murder. He'd murder me, his best friend, if he could get away with it. He's foul on the world, green all the way back to the bile with accumulated hatred and vengeance. What he comes around for is to make sure that I am not making any progress, that I'm sinking deeper and deeper. « You'll never get anywhere,» he says. «You're like me— you're weak, you have no ambition.» We have one ambition in common, which we make light of: to write. There was more hope for us fifteen years ago, when we were writing letters to one another. Fort Oglethorpe was a good place for Stanley; it made him a drunkard, a gambler, a thief. It made his letters interesting. They were never about the army life but about exotic, romantic writers whom he tried to imitate when he wrote. Stanley should never have come back North; he should have gotten off the train at Chickamauga, wrapped himself in tobacco leaves and cowdung, and taken himself a squaw. Instead he came back North to the funeral parlor, found himself a fat Polish wench with fertile ovaries, saddled himself with a brood of little Poles, and tried in vain to write standing up over the kitchen tubs. Stanley rarely talked about anything in the present; he preferred to spin incredible yarns about the men he loved and admired in the army.

Stanley had all the bad traits of the Poles. He was vain, vitriolic, violent, generous in a false way, romantic as a brokendown hack, loyal as a fool and deeply treacherous to boot. Above all, he was simply corroded with envy and jealousy.

There is one thing I like about the Poles—their language. Polish, when it is spoken by intelligent people, puts me in ecstasy. The sound of the language evokes strange images in which there is always a greensward of fine spiked grass in which hornets and snakes play a great part. I remember days long back when Stanley would invite me to visit his relatives; he used to make me carry a roll of music because he wanted to show me off to these rich relatives. I remember this atmosphere well because in the presence of these smooth-tongued, overly polite, pretentious and thoroughly false Poles I always felt miserably uncomfortable. But when they spoke to one another, sometimes in French, sometimes in Polish, I sat back and watched them fascinatedly. They made strange Polish grimaces, altogether unlike our relatives who were stupid barbarians at bottom. The Poles were like standing snakes fitted up with collars of hornets. I never knew what they were talking about but it always seemed to me as if they were politely assassinating some one. They were all fitted up with sabres and broad-swords which they held in their teeth or brandished fiercely in a thundering charge. They never swerved from the path but rode rough-shod over women and children, spiking them with long pikes beribboned with blood-red pennants. All this, of course, in the drawing-room over a glass of strong tea, the men in butter-colored gloves, the women dangling their silly lorgnettes. The women were always ravishingly beautiful, the blonde houri type garnered centuries ago during the Crusades. They hissed their long polychromatic words through tiny, sensual mouths whose lips were soft as geraniums. These furious sorties with adders and rose petals made an intoxicating sort of music, a steel-stringed zithery slipper-gibber which could also register anomalous sounds like sobs and falling jets of water.

On the way home we always rode through dreary, sombre patches of land studded with gas tanks, smoking chimneys, grain elevators, car barns and other bio-chemical emulsions of our glorious civilization. The way home bore in on me the fact that I was just a shit, another piece of stinking offal like the burning garbage piles in the vacant lots. All the way in there would be the acrid stench of burning chemicals, burning refuse, burning offal. The Poles were a race apart and their language clung to me like smoking ruins from a past I had never known. How was I to guess, then, that one day I would be riding through their outlandish world in a train filled with Jews who shivered with fear when ever a Pole addressed them? Yes, I would be having a fight in French (me the little shit from Brooklyn) with a Polish nobleman—because I couldn't bear to see these Jews cowering in fear. I would be traveling to the estate of a Polish count to watch him paint maudlin pictures for the Salon d'Automne. How was I to imagine such an eventuality, riding through the swamp lands with my savage, bile-ridden friend Stanley? How could I believe that, weak and lacking ambition, I should one day tear myself away, learn a new language, learn a new way of living, like it, lose myself, sever all ties, look back on this which I am riding through as if it were a night-mare told by an idiot in a railway station on a bitter cold night when you change trains in a trance?

On this particular night little Curley happened to drop in. Maude had no use for Curley either, apart from the thrill he gave her when he slyly caressed her bottom as she stooped to put the meat in the oven. Curley always thought he did these things without any one noticing him; Maude always let people do these things to her as if they happened by accident; Stanley always made it very clear that he saw nothing, but under the table you could distinctly observe him pouring nitric acid over his rusty brass knuckles. Myself, I noticed everything, even the new cracks in the plaster wall which I stared at so intensely when alone that, if I were given time, I could read back at top speed, without missing a comma or a dash, the whole history of the human race leading up to the particular square inch of plaster on which my eyes were focused.

This particular night it is warm outdoors arid the grass is velvety. There is no reason to stay indoors and silently murder one another. Maude is eager for us to evacuate; we are polluting the sanctuary.

Besides, she is going to menstruate in a day or two and that makes her more than ever weepy, miserable and despondent. The best thing would be for me to step outdoors and accidentally walk into a fast truck; that would be such a marvelous relief to her that it seems incredible to me now why I never did a little tiling like that to oblige her. Many a night she must have sat alone and prayed that I would come back to her on a stretcher. She was the sort of woman who, if a thing like that were to occur, would say very frankly—«Thank God, he's done it at last!»

We walked to the park and lay flat on our backs in the short grass. The sky was friendly and peaceful, a bowl without limits; I felt strangely at ease, detached, serene as a sage. To my surprise, Stanley was whistling a different tune. He was saying that I owed it to myself to make a break, that as a friend of mine he was going to help me do what I couldn't do alone.

«You leave it to me,» he muttered, «I'll fix it for you. But don't come to me afterwards and say that you regret it,» he added.

How was he going to fix it? I demanded.

That was none of my business, he gave me to understand. «You're desperate, aren't you? You want to get rid of her, that's all, isn't that so?»

I shook my head and smiled, smiled because it seemed utterly preposterous that Stanley, of all people, could be so confident of arranging such a decisive coup. He acted as if he had plotted it all out a long time ago, as if he had merely been waiting for the opportune moment to broach the subject. He wanted to know more about Mara—was I absolutely sure of her?

«Now about the kid,» he said, in his usual cold-blooded way, «that's going to be tough on you. But you'll forget about her after a time. You were never meant to be a father. Only, don't come to me and ask me to fix it up again, understand? When I do this job it's going to be settled once and for all. I don't believe in half-way measures. Now, if I were you I'd go to Texas or some place like that. Don't ever come back here! You've got to start all over again, as if you were just beginning your life. You can do it, if you want to. I can't. Tm trapped. That's why I want to help you. I'm not doing this for your sake—I'm doing it because it's what I'd like to do myself. You can forget me too while you're at it. I'd forget everybody if I were in your boots.» Curley was fascinated. Wanted to know immediately if he couldn't go with me.

«Don't take him along, whatever you do!» Stanley blurted savagely. «He's no good—he'd be in the way, that's all. Besides, he's not to be trusted.» Curley was hurt and he showed it. «Listen, don't rub it in,» I said. «I know he's no good, but what the hell...»

«I don't mince matters,» said Stanley bluntly. «As far as I'm concerned, I don't want to see him ever again. He can go away and die for all I care. You're soft—that's why you're in such a lousy mess. I haven't any friends, you know that. I don't want any. I don't do anything for anybody out of pity. If he's hurt it's too bad, but he'll have to swallow it as best he can. I'm talking seriously. I mean business.»

«How do I know I can trust you to handle this right?»

«You don't have to trust me. One day—I won't say when—it'll happen. You won't know how it happened. You'll get the surprise of your life. And you won't be able to change your mind because it'll be too late. You'll be free whether you like it or not—that's all I can tell you. It's the last thing I'll do for you—after that you take care of yourself.

Don't write me that you're starving because I won't pay any attention to you. Sink or swim, that's the size of it.»

He got up and brushed himself off. «I'm going,» he said. «It's settled then?»

«O.K.,» I said.

«Give us a quarter,» he said, as he was about to walk off.

I didn't have a quarter on me. I turned to Curley. He nodded, to indicate he understood, but made no move to hand it over.

«Give it to him, will you,» I said, «I'll return it to you when we get home.»

«To him?» said Curley, looking at Stanley contemptuously. «Let him beg for it!»

Stanley turned his back and walked off. He had the loping gait of a cowboy. Even from the back he looked like a thug.

«The dirty bastard!» mumbled Curley. «I could stick a knife in him.»

«I almost hate him myself,» said I. «He'll wither and die before he softens. I don't know why he's doing this for me—it's not like him.»

«How do you know what he's going to do? How can you trust a guy like that?»

«Curley,» I said, «he wants to do me a favor. Something tells me it's going to be unpleasant, but I don't see any other way out. You're just a kid. You don't know what it's all about. I feel relieved somehow. It's a turn in the road.»

«Reminds me of my father,» said Curley bitterly. «I hate him, hate his guts. I'd like to see the two of them hanging from the same post: I'd like to burn them up, the dirty bastards.»

A few days later I was sitting in Ulric's studio waiting for Mara to arrive with her friend Lola Jackson. Ulric had never met Mara.

«You think she's good stuff, eh?» he was saying, meaning Lola. «We won't have to stand on too much ceremony, what?»

These feelers which Ulric always put out amused me highly. He liked to be guaranteed that the evening would not be entirely wasted. He was never certain of me when it came to women or friends; in his humble opinion I was just a wee bit too reckless.

However, the moment he laid eyes on them he felt reassured. In fact, he was bowled over. He took me aside almost at once to congratulate me on my taste.

Lola Jackson was a queer girl. She had only one defect—the knowledge that she was not pure white. That made her rather difficult to handle, at least in the preliminary stages. A little too intent upon impressing us with her culture and breeding. After a couple of drinks she unlimbered enough to show us how supple her body was. Her dress was too long for some of the stunts she was eager to demonstrate. We suggested that she take it off, which she did, revealing a stunning figure which showed to advantage in a pair of sheer silk hose, a brassiere and pale blue panties. Mara decided to follow suit. Presently we urged them to dispense with the brassieres. There was a huge divan on which the four of us huddled in a promiscuous embrace. We turned the lights down and put on a record. Lola thought it too warm to keep anything on except the silk stockings.

We had about a square yard of space in which to dance flesh to flesh. Just as we had changed partners, just as the tip of my cock had buried itself in Lola's dark petals, the phone rang. It was Hymie Laubscher telling me in a grave and urgent voice that the messengers had declared a strike. «You'd better be on hand early to-morrow morning, H. M.,» he said. «No telling what will happen. I wouldn't have bothered you if it hadn't been for Spivak. He's on your trail. He says you ought to have known that the boys were going on strike. He's hired a fleet of taxi cabs already. There's going to be hell to-morrow.»

«Don't let him know you got in touch with me,» I said. «I'll be there bright and early.»

«Are you having a good time?» piped Hymie. «No chance of my horning in on the party, is there?»

«I'm afraid not, Hymie. If you're looking for something I can recommend you one up at I. Q. office—you know, the one with the big teats. She goes off duty at midnight.»

Hymie was trying to tell me something about his wife's operation. I couldn't make it out because Lola had slipped up alongside me and was petting my cock. I hung up in the midst of it and pretended to explain to Lola what the message was about. I knew Mara would be on my heels in a moment.

I had just gotten it half way in, Lola's back bent almost in half, and still talking about the messenger boys, when I heard Ulric and Mara stirring. I pulled away and picking up the phone I called a number at random. To my astonishment a woman's voice answered sleepily—«Is that you, dear? I've just been dreaming about you.» I said Yes? She went on, as if still half asleep: «Do hurry home, won't you dear? I've been waiting and waiting. Tell me you love me...»

«I'll make it as quick as I can, Maude,» I said, in my own clear natural voice. «The messengers are on strike. I wish you'd call...»

«What's that? What are you saying? What is this?» came the woman's startled voice.

«I said rush a few waybills up to D.T. office and ask Costigan to...» The phone clicked.

The three of them were lying on the divan. I could smell them in the dark. «I hope you don't have to go,» said Ulric in a smothered voice. Lola was lying over him, her arms around his neck. I reached between her legs and caught hold of Ulric's pecker. I was on my knees, hi a good position to tackle Lola from the rear should Mara suddenly decide to go to the lavatory. Lola raised herself a bit and sank down on Ulric's prick with a savage grunt. Mara was tugging at me. We lay down on the floor beside the divan and went to it. In the midst of it the hall door opened, the light was suddenly switched on, and there stood Ulric's brother with a woman. They were a bit drunk and had apparently returned at an early hour to do a bit of quite fucking on their own.

«Don't let us stop you,» said Ned, standing in the doorway inspecting the scene as if it were an every day affair. Suddenly he pointed to his brother and shouted—«Holy Smokes! What's happened? You're bleeding!»

We all looked at Ulric's bleeding cock; from the navel down to his knees he was a mass of blood. It was rather embarrassing for Lola.

«I'm sorry,» she said, the blood dripping down her thighs, «I didn't think it would be so soon.»

«That's all right,» said Ulric, «what's a little blood between bouts?»

I went with him to the lavatory, pausing a moment on the way to be presented to his brother's girl.

She was pretty far gone. I held out my mitt to shake hands and in reaching for it she accidentally made a pass for my prick. That made everybody feel a little easier.

«A great work-out,» said Ulric, washing himself assiduously. «Do you think I might take another crack at it? I mean, there's no particular harm getting a little blood on the end of your cock, is there? I feel as though I'd like to have another go at it, what say?»

«It's good for the health,» I said cheerily. «Wish I could swap places with you.»»

«I wouldn't be averse to that at all,» said he, sliding his tongue lecherously over his lower lip. «Do you think you can manage it?»

«Not to-night,» I said. «I'm going now. I've got to be fresh and spruce to morrow.»

«Are you going to take Mara with you?»

«I sure am. Tell her to come in here a minute, will you?»

When Mara opened the door I was powdering my cock. We fell into a clutch at once.

«What about trying it in the tub?»

I turned the warm water on and threw in a bar of soap. I soaped her crotch with tingling fingers. By this time my prick was like an electric eel. The warm water felt delicious. I was chewing her lips, her ears, her hair. Her eyes sparkled as if she had been struck by a fistful of stars. Every part of her was smooth and satiny and her breasts were ready to burst. We got out and, letting her straddle me, I sat on the edge of the tub. We were dripping wet. I reached for a towel with one hand and dried her a bit down the front. We lay down on the bath mat and she slung her legs around my neck. I moved her around like one of those legless toys which illustrate the principle of gravity.

Two nights later I was in a depressed mood. I was lying on the couch in the dark, my thoughts shifting rapidly from Mara to the bloody, futile telegraph life. Maude had come over to say something to me and I had made the mistake of running my hand carelessly up her dress as she stood there complaining about something or other. She had walked off insulted. I hadn't been thinking about fucking her—I just did it naturally, like you'd stroke a cat. When she was awake you couldn't touch her that way. She never took a fuck on the wing, as it were. She thought fucking had something to do with love: carnal love, perhaps. A lot of water had passed under the bridge since the days when I first knew her, when I used to twirl her around on the end of my cock sitting on the piano stool. Now she acted like a cook preparing a difficult menu. She would make up her mind deliberately, letting me know in her sly, repressed way that the time had come for it. Maybe that's what she had come for a moment ago, though it was certainly odd the way she begged for it. Anyway I didn't give a fuck whether she wanted it or not. Suddenly, though, thinking of Stanley's words, I began to have a yen for her. «Get in your last licks,» I kept saying to myself. Well, maybe I'd go up and tackle her in her pseudo-sleep. Spivak came to mind. He was watching me like a hawk the last few days. My hatred for the telegraph life was concentrated in my hatred for him. He was the bloody cosmococcus in person. Must polish him off somehow before they fire me. I kept thinking how I could lure him to a dark wharf and have some obliging friend push him overboard. I thought of Stanley. Stanley would relish a job like that....