«Do they all live under the same roof?» I asked innocently.
«That's neither here nor there,» she said, strangely irritated.
I said nothing for a while. Then I ventured to ask about her sister whom she had once told me was even more beautiful than herself—«only very nor-mal», as she put it.
«Didn't you say she was married?»
«Yes, of course she is. What's that got to do with it?»
«With what?» I asked, getting a little peeved now myself.
«Well, what are we talking about?»»
I laughed. «That's what I want to know. What is it? What are you trying to tell me?»
«You don't listen. My sister—I suppose you don't believe I have a sister?»
«Why do you say that? Of course I believe you. Only I can't believe she's more beautiful than you.»
«Well she is, believe it or not,» she snapped. «I despise her. It's not jealousy, if that's what you're thinking. I despise her because she has no imagination. She sees what's happening and she doesn't lift a finger. She's absolutely selfish.»
«I suppose,» I began gently, «that it's the same old problem—they want your help. Well, maybe!....»
«You! What can you do? Please, Val, don't start talking that way.» She laughed hysterically. «God, it reminds me of my brothers. They all make suggestions—and nobody does anything.»
«But, Mona, I'm not talking in the air. !...»
She turned on me almost fiercely. «You've got your wife and daughter to look after, haven't you? I don't want to hear anything about your help. This is my problem. Only I don't know why I have to do everything alone. The boys could do something if they wanted to. God, I supported them for years. I've supported the whole family—and now they're asking more of me. I can't do any more. It isn't fair...»
There was a silence and then she continued. «My father is a sick man—I don't expect anything of him. Besides, he's the only one I care about. If it weren't for him I'd turn my back on them—I'd walk off and leave them flat.»
«Well, what about your brothers?» I asked. What's holding them back?»
«Nothing but laziness,» she said. «I've spoiled them. I led them to believe that they were helpless.»
«Do you mean that nobody is working—not any of them?»
«Oh yes, now and then one of them gets a job for a few weeks and then quits for some silly reason. They know I'll always be there to rescue them.»
«I can't go on living this way!» she burst out. «I won't let them destroy my life. I want to be with you—and they're pulling me away. They don't care what I do so long as I bring them money. Money, money. God, how I hate to hear the word!»
«But Mona,» I said gently, «I've got some money for you. Yes, I have. Look!»
I extracted the two fifty dollar bills and placed them in her hand.
To my amazement she began to laugh, a weird, three-pronged laugh which became more and more uncontrollable. I put my arms around her. «Easy, Mona, easy... you're terribly upset.»
The tears came to her eyes. «I can't help it, Val,» she said weakly, «it reminds me so much of my father. He used to do the same thing. Just when everything was blackest he would turn up with flowers or some crazy gift. You're just like him. You're dreamers, both of you. That's why I love you.» She flung her arms around me passionately and began to sob. «Don't tell me where you got it,» she muttered. «I don't care. I don't care if you stole it. I'd steal for you, you know that, don't you?
Val, they don't deserve the money. I want you to buy something for yourself—. Or», she added impulsively, «get something for the little one. Get something beautiful, something wonderful— that she'll always remember.»
«Val,» she said, trying to collect herself, «you trust me, don't you? You won't ever ask me things I can't answer, will you? Promise me!»
We were seated in the big arm chair. I held her in my lap, smoothing down her hair by way of answer.
«You see, Val, if you hadn't come along, I don't know what would have happened to me. Until I met you I felt—well, almost as if my life didn't belong to me. I didn't care what I did, if only they would leave me in peace. I can't bear to have them ask for things. I feel humiliated. They're all helpless, every one of them. Except my sister. She could do things—she's a very practical, level-headed sort. But she wants to play the lady. 'It's enough to have one wild one in the family,' she says, meaning me. I've disgraced them, that's what she thinks. And she wants to punish me, by making me submit to more and more indignities. She takes a fiendish delight in seeing me bring the money that no one lifts a finger to raise. She makes all sorts of foul insinuations. I could kill her. And my father doesn't seem to realize the situation at all. He thinks she's sweet—angelic. He wouldn't let her make the least sacrifice—she's too delicate to be exposed to the brutal contamination of the world. Besides, she's a wife and a mother. But I....» Her eyes became filled with tears again. «I don't know what they think I'm made of. I'm strong, that's all they think. I can stand anything. I'm the wild one. God, sometimes I think they're insane, the whole pack of them. Where do they think I get the money? They don't care... they don't dare to ask.»
«Will your father ever get well?» I asked after a long silence.
«I don't know, Val.»
«If he were dead,» she added, «I'd never go near the others again. They could starve to death, I wouldn't move a muscle.»
«You know,» she said, «you don't resemble him at all, physically, and yet you're so much alike. You're weak and tender, like him. But you weren't spoiled, as he was. You know how to take care of yourself, when you want to—but he never learned. He was always helpless. My mother sucked the blood out of him. She treated him like she treats me. Anything to have her own way.... I wish you could meet him—before he dies. I've often dreamed of it.» «We probably will meet some day,» said I, though I didn't think it at all likely.
«You'd adore him, Val. He has such a wonderful sense of humor. He's a great story teller, too. I think he would have been a writer, if he hadn't married my mother.»
She got up and began to make her toilette, still talking in a fond way about her father and the life he had known in Vienna and other places. It was getting time to leave for the dance hall.
Suddenly she turned abruptly away from the mirror and said: «Val, why don't you write in your spare time? You always wanted to write—why don't you do it? You don't need to call for me so often. You know, I'd much rather come home and find you working at the typewriter. You aren't to stay at that job all your life, are you?»
She came over to me and put her arms around me. «Let me sit in your lap,» she said. Listen, dear Val... you mustn't sacrifice yourself for me. It's bad enough that one of us does it. I want you to free yourself. I know you're a writer—and I don't care how long it takes until you become known. I want to help you... Val, you're not listening.» She nudged me gently. «What are you thinking of?»
«Oh, nothing,» I said. «I was just dreaming.»
«Val, do something, please! Don't let's go on this way. Look at this place! How did we ever get here? What are we doing here? We're a little mad too, you and I. Val, do start in—to-night, yes? I like you when you're moody. I like to think that you have thoughts about other things. I like it when you say crazy things. I wish I could think that way. I'd give anything to be a writer. To have a mind, to dream, to get lost in other people's problems, to think of something else beside work and money.... You remember that story you wrote for me once—about Tony and Joey? Why don't you write something for me again? Just for me. Val, we must try to do something... we must find a way out. Do you hear?»
I had heard only too well. Her words were running in my head like a refrain.
I jumped up, as if to brush the cobwebs away. I caught her by the waist and held her at arm's length. «Mona, things are going to be different soon. Very soon. I feel it.... Let me walk you to the station—I need a breath of air.»
I could see that she was slightly disappointed; she had hoped for something more positive.
«Mona,» I said, as we walked rapidly down the street, «one doesn't change all at once, like that! I do want to write, yes, I'm sure of it. But I've got to collect myself. I don't ask to have it easy, but I need a little tranquillity. I can't switch from one thing to another so easily. I hate my job just as much as you hate yours. And I don't want another job: I want a complete break. I want to be with myself for a while, see how it feels. I hardly know myself, living the way I do. I'm engulfed. I know all about others—and nothing about myself. I know only that I feel. I feel too much. I'm drained dry. I wish I could have days, weeks, months, just to think. Now I think from moment to moment. It's a luxury, to think.»
She squeezed my hand, as if to tell me she understood.
«When I get back to the house I'm going to sit down and try to think. Maybe I'll fall asleep. It seems as though I were geared up only for action. I've become a machine.»
«Do you know what I think sometimes?» I went on. «I think that if I had two or three quiet days of just sheer thinking I'd upset everything. Fundamentally everything is cock-eyed. It's that way because we don't dare to let ourselves think. I ought to go the office one day and blow out Spivak's brains. That's the first step....»
We had come to the elevated station.
«Don't think about such things just now,» she said. «Sit down and dream. Dream something wonderful for me. Don't think about those ugly little people. Think of me!»
She ran up the steps lightly, waving goodbye.
I was strolling leisurely back to the house, dreaming of another, richer life, when suddenly I remembered, or thought I remembered, her leaving the two fifty dollar bills on the mantelpiece under the vase filled with artificial flowers. I could see them sticking out half-way, just as she had placed them. I broke into a trot. I knew that if Kronski saw them he would filch them. He would do it not because he was dishonest but to torture me.
As I drew near the house I thought of Crazy Sheldon. I even began to imitate his way of speaking, though I was out of breath from running. I was laughing to myself as I opened the door.
The room was empty and the money was gone. I knew it would be thus. I sat down and laughed again. Why hadn't I said anything to Mona about Monahan? Why hadn't I mentioned anything to her about the theatre? Usually I spilled things out immediately, but this time something had held me back, some instinctive distrust of Monahan's intentions.
I was on the point of calling up the dance hall to see if by chance Mona had taken the money without my noticing it. I got up to go to the telephone but on the way I changed my mind. The impulse seized me to explore the house a bit. I wandered to the rear of the house and descended the stairs. After a few steps I came upon a large room with blinding lights in which the laundry was drying. There was a bench along one wall, as in a school room, and on it sat an old man with a white beard and a velvet skull cap. He was bent forward, his head resting on the back of his hand, supported by a cane. He seemed to be gazing blankly into space.
He gave a sign of recognition with his eyes; his body remained immobile. I had seen many members of the family but never him. I greeted him in German, thinking he would prefer that to English which no one seemed to speak in this queer house.
«You can talk English if you like,» he said, in a thick accent. He gazed straight ahead into space, as before.
«Am I disturbing you?»
«Not at all.»
I thought I ought to tell him who I was. «My name is...»
«And I,» said he, without waiting to hear my name, «am Dr. Onirifick's father. He never told you about me, I suppose?»
«No,» I said, «he never did. But then I hardly ever see him.»
«He's a very busy man. Too busy perhaps....»
«But he will be punished one day,» he continued. «One must not murder, not even the unborn. It is better here— there is peace.»
«Wouldn't you like me to put out some of the lights?» I asked, hoping to divert his thoughts to some other subject.
«There should be light,» he answered. «More light... more light. He works in darkness up there. He is too proud. He works for the devil. It is better here with the wet clothes.» He was silent for a moment. There was the sound of drops of water falling from the wet garments. I gave a shudder. I thought of the blood dripping from Dr. Onirifick's hands. «Yes, drops of blood,» said the old man, as if reading my thoughts. «He is a butcher. He gives his mind to death. This is the greatest darkness of the human mind—killing what is struggling to be born. Even animals one should not kill, except in sacrifice. My son knows everything—but he doesn't know that murder is the greatest sin. There is light here... great light... and he sits up there in darkness. His father sits in the cellar, praying for him, and he is up there butchering, butchering. Everywhere there is blood. The house is polluted. It is better here with the wash. I would wash the money too, if I could. This is the only clean room in the house. And the light is good. Light. Light. We must open their eyes so that they can see. Man must not work in darkness. The mind must be clear, the mind must know what it is doing.»
I said nothing. I listened respectfully, hynoptized by the droning words, the blinding light. The old man had the face and manners of a patrician; the toga he wore and the velvet skull cap accentuated his lofty air. His fine sensitive hands were those of a surgeon; the blue veins stood out like quicksilver. In his overlighted dungeon he sat like a court physician who been banished from his native land. He reminded me vividly of certain celebrated physicians who had flourished at the court of Spain during the time of the Moors. There was a silvery, musical quality about him; his spirit was clean and it radiated from every pore of his being.
Presently I heard the patter of slippered feet. It was Ghompal arriving with a bowl of hot milk. Immediately the old man's expression altered. He leaned back against the wall and looked at Ghompal with warmth and tenderness.
«This is my son, my true son,» he said, turning his full gaze upon me.
I exchanged a few words with Ghompal as he held the bowl to the old man's lips. It was a pleasure to watch the Hindu. No matter how menial the task he performed it with dignity. The more humble the service the more ennobled he became. He seemed never to be embarrassed or humiliated. Neither did he efface himself. He remained always the same, always completely and uniquely himself. I tried to imagine what Kronski would look like performing such a service.
Ghompal left the room for a few moments to return with a pair of warm bedroom slippers. He knelt at the old man's feet and, as he performed this rite, the old man gently stroked Ghompal's head.
«You are one of the sons of light», said the old man, lifting Ghompal's head back and looking into his eyes with a steady clear gaze. Ghompal returned the old man's gaze with the same clear liquescent light. They seemed to flood each other's being—two reservoirs of liquid light spilling over in a purifying exchange. Suddenly I realized that the blinding light which streamed from the unshaded electric bulbs was as nothing in comparison to this emanation of light which had passed between the two. Perhaps the old man was unaware of this yellow, artificial light which man had invented; perhaps the room was illuminated by this flood-light which came from his soul. Even now, though they had ceased gazing into one another's eyes, the room was appreciably lighter than before. It was like the after-glow of a fiery sunset, a supernal, empyrean luminosity.
I stole back to the living room to await Ghompal. He had something to tell me. I found Kronski seated in the arm-chair reading one of my books. He was ostensibly calmer, quieter than usual, not subdued but settled in some queer, undisciplined way.
«Hullo! I didn't know you were home,» he said, startled by my unexpected presence. «I was just glancing at some of your junk.» He threw the book aside. It was The Hill of Dreams.
Before he had a chance to resume his habitual banter Ghompal entered. He walked towards me holding the money in his hand. I took it with a smile, thanked him, and put it in my pocket. To Kronski it appeared that I was borrowing from Ghompal. He was irritated—more than that— indignant.
«Jesus, do you have to borrow from him?» he blurted out.
Ghompal spoke up at once, but Kronski cut him short.
«You don't have to lie for him. I know his tricks.»
Ghompal spoke up again, quietly, convincingly. «Mr. Miller doesn't play tricks with me,» he said.
«All right, you win,» said Kronski. «But Jesus, don't make an angel of him. I know he's been good to you—and to all your comrades on the messenger force—but that's not because he has a good heart-He's taken a fancy to you Hindus because you're queer fish, see?»
Ghompal smiled at him indulgently, as if he understood the aberrations of a sick mind.
Kronski reacted testily to this smile of Ghompal's. «Don't give me that commiserating smile,» he screeched. «I'm not a wretched outcast. I'm a doctor of medicine. I'm a...»
«You're still a child,» said Ghompal quietly and firmly. «Anybody with a little intelligence can become a doctor...»
At this Kronski sneered vehemently. «They can, eh? Just like that, hah? Just like rolling off a log—» He looked around as if searching for a place to spit.
«In India we say...», and Ghompal began one of those child-like stories which are devastating to the analytical-minded person. He had a little story for every situation, Ghompal. I relished them hugely; they were like simple, homeopathic remedies, little pellets of truth garbed in some innocuous cloak. You could never forget them afterwards, that was what I liked about these yarns. We write fat books to expound a simple idea; the Oriental tells a simple, pointed story which lodges in your brain like a diamond. The story he was narrating was about a glow-worm that had been bruised by the naked foot of an absent-minded philosopher. Kronski detested anecdotes in which lower forms of life communicated with higher beings, such as man, on an intellectual level. He felt it to be a personal humiliation, an invidious aspersion.
In spite of himself he had to smile at the conclusion of the tale. Besides, he was already repentant of his crude behavior. He had a profound respect for Ghompal. It nettled him that he had been obliged to turn sharply on Ghompal when he meant merely to crush me. So, still smiling, he inquired in a kindly voice about Ghose, one of the Hindus who had returned to India some months ago.
Ghose had died of dysentery shortly after arriving in India, Ghompal informed him.
«That's lousy,» said Kronski, shaking his head despairingly, as if to imply that it was hopeless to combat conditions in a country like India. Then, turning to me, with a sad flicker of a smile: «You remember Ghose, don't you? The fat, chubby little guy, like a squatting Buddha.»
I nodded. «I should say I do remember him. Didn't I raise the money for him to go back to India?»
«Ghose was a saint,» said Kronski vehemently.
A mild flicker of a frown came over Ghompal's face. «No, not a saint,» he said. «We have many men in India who...»
«I know what you're going to say,» Kronski broke in. «Just the same, to me Ghose was a saint. Dysentery! Good Christ! it's like the Middle Ages-worse than that!» And he launched into a terrifying description of the diseases which still flourished in India. And from disease to poverty and from poverty to superstition and from these to slavery, degradation, despair, indifference, hopelessness. India was just a vast, rotting sepulchre, a charnel house dominated by conniving British exploiters in league with demented and perfidious rajahs and maharajahs. Not a word about the architecture, the music, the learning, the religion, the philosophies, the beautiful physionomies, the grace and delicacy of the women, the colorful garments, the pungent odors, the tinkling bells, the great gongs, the gorgeous landscapes, the riot of flowers, the incessant processions, the clash of tongues, races, types, the fermentation and pullulation amidst death and corruption. Statistically correct as always, he succeeded only in presenting the negative half of the picture. India was bleeding to death, true. But the part of her that was alive was resplendent in a way that Kronski could never appreciate. He never once mentioned a city by name, never differentiated between Agra and Delhi, Lahore and Mysore, Darjeeling and Karachi, Bombay and Calcutta, Benares and Colombo. Parsee, Jain, Hindu, Buddhist—they were all one, all miserable victims of oppression, all rotting slowly under a murderous sun to make an imperialist holiday.
Between him and Ghompal there now ensued a discussion to which I only half listened. Each time I heard the name of a city I went on an emotional jag. The very mention of such words as Bengal, Gujurati, Malabar Coast, Kali-ghat, Nepal, Kashmir, Sikh, Bhagavad-Gita, Upanishads, raga, stupa, pravritti, sudra, paranirvana, chela, guru, Hounaman, Siva was sufficient to put me in a trance for the rest of the evening. How could a man condemned to lead the restricted life of a physician in a cold, brutal city like New York dare to talk about setting in order a continent of half a billion souls whose problems were so vast, so multiform, as to stagger the imagination of India's own great pundits? No wonder he was attracted to the saintly characters whom he had made contact with in the infernal regions of the most Cosmococcic Corporation of America. These «boys», as Ghompal called them (they ranged from twenty-three to thirty-five years of age) were like picked warriors, like chosen disciples. The hardships they had endured, first in getting to America, then struggling to keep body and soul together while finishing their studies, then finding the means to return, then renouncing everything in order to devote themselves to the advancement of their people— well, no American, no white American, any way, could brag of anything comparable. When now and then one of these «boys» went astray, became the lap-dog of some society woman or the slave of some ravishing dancer, I felt like rejoicing. It did me good to hear of Hindu boy lolling on soft cushions, eating rich foods, wearing diamond rings, dancing at night clubs, driving cars, seducing young virgins, and so on. I recalled a cultured young Parsee who had run off with some languorous middle-aged woman of dubious reputation; I remembered the malicious stories that were spread about him, the demoralization that he brought about among the less disciplined ones. It was grand. I followed his career with avidity, lapping up the dregs, imaginatively, as he moved from sphere to sphere. And then one day, when I was lying ill in the morgue which my wife had made of my room, he came to see me, bringing flowers and fruit and books, and he sat by my bed and held my hand, talked to me of India, of the wondrous life he had known as a child, of the miseries he had endured subsequently, of the humiliations inflicted upon him by Americans, of his hunger for life, a large life, a rich life, a splendorous life, and how he had grabbed the opportunity when it came and found it empty, empty of everything but clothes, jewels, money, women. He was giving it all up, he confided. He would go back to his people, suffer with them, raise them up if he could, and if not, die with them, die as they died, in the street, naked, homeless, shunned, despised, stepped on, walked over, spat upon, a bundle of bones which even the vultures would find it difficult to feast on. He would do this not out of guilt, remorse or repentance but because India in rags, India festering like a maggot, India starving, India writhing under the heel of the conqueror, meant more to him than all the comforts, opportunities and advantages of a heartless country like America. He was a Parsee, I say, and his family had been rich once; he had known a happy childhood at least. But there were other Hindus who had been reared in forest and field, who had lived what to us would seem an animal existence. How these obscure, shy individuals ever surmounted the stupendous obstacles which confronted them from day to day remains a mystery to me to this day. With them, at any rate, I travelled the roads that lead from village to town and town to city; with them I listened to the songs of simple folk, the tales of elderly men, the prayers of the devout, the admonitions of the gurus, the legends of the story tellers, the music of the street players, the wails and lamentations of the mourners. Through their eyes I saw the desolation wreaked upon a great people. But I saw also that there are qualities which survive the greatest desolation. In their faces, as they related their experiences, I saw reflected the gentleness, the humility, the reverence, the devotion, the faith, the truthfulness and the integrity of those millions whose destiny baffles and disturbs us. They die like flies and they are reborn; they increase and multiply; they offer up prayers and sacrifices, they resist not, and yet no foreign devil can extirpate. them from the soil which they nourish with their own impoverished carcasses. They are of all kinds, all conditions, all shades, all tongues, all cults; they shoot up like weeds and are trampled down like weeds. To lift the curtain upon even the tiniest segment of this seething life leaves the mind reeling with incertitude. Some are like hard-cut gems, some like rare flowers, some like monuments, some like blazing images of the divine, some like disembodied minds, some like rotting vegetables: side by side they move in an endless, confused throng.
In the midst of these reflections Kronski reminded me in a loud voice that he had run into Sheldon. «He wanted to pay you a visit, the blinking idiot, but I put him off... I think he wanted to lend you some money».
Crazy Sheldon! Curious that I should have thought of him on my way home. Money, yes... I had had a hunch Sheldon would be lending me money again. I had no idea what I owed him. I never expected to pay him back—neither did he. I took what he offered because it made him happy. He was as mad as a hare, but cunning and wily, practical withal. He had fastened himself to me like a leech, for some obscure reason of his own which I never even tried to fathom.
What fascinated me about Sheldon were the grimaces he made. And the way he gurgled when he spoke. It was as though an invisible hand were strangling him. To be sure, he had had some terrible experiences—in that murderous ghetto of Cracow where he was reared. There was one incident I would never forget: it had occurred during a pogrom just before his escape from Poland. He had rushed home in a panic during the butchering which was taking place in the street to find the room full of soldiers. His sister, who was pregnant, was lying on the floor, violated by one soldier after another. His mother and father, their arms trussed behind them, were compelled to watch this horrible performance. Sheldon completely beside himself, had thrown himself on the soldiers and was cut down with a sabre. When he came to his mother and father were dead: his sister's body was lying naked beside them, her belly ripped open and stuffed with straw.
We were walking through Tompkins Park the night he first related this story to me. (He repeated it a number of times subsequently, always in exactly the same way, even down to the words he used. And each time my hair stood on end and a cold shiver ran down my spine.) But that first evening, on concluding the story, I observed a queer change come over him. He was making those grimaces which I mentioned. It was as if he were trying to whistle and couldn't. His eyes, which were unusually small, sandy, inflamed, shrank to the size of two B.B. bullets. There was nothing to be seen between the lids but two burning pupils which bored clean through me. I had the most uncanny feeling when, grasping my arm and bringing his face close to mine, he began making a choking, gurgling sound which finally culminated in a noise very much like a peanut whistle. His emotions were so overpowering that for a few minutes, the while clutching me feverishly and pressing his face close to mine, there issued from his throat no recognizable human sound, nothing in the faintest resembling what we call speech. But what a language it was, this gurgling, hissing, choking, whistling frenzy! I couldn't turn my face away, even if I had wanted to; nor could I break his grip, because he had me in a vise. I wondered how long it would last, and would he throw a fit afterwards. But no!—when the emotion had subsided he began to talk in a calm, low voice, in a most matter of fact tone, indeed, quite as if nothing had occurred. We had resumed our stride and were making for the other end of the park. He was talking about the jewels which he had so cleverly swallowed, the value that had been put upon them, the way the emeralds and the rubies sparkled, how economically he lived, the insurance policies he sold in his spare time, and other seemingly unrelated facts and incidents.
He related these things, as I say, in an unnaturally subdued vein, in an almost monotonous tone of voice, except that, now and then, when he came to the end of a sentence, he would raise his voice and end unintentionally on an interrogation point Meanwhile, however, his manner was undergoing a drastic change. He was becoming, as best I can explain it, lynx-like. All that he was narrating seemed directed towards some invisible presence. He was only using me, as a listener, so it seemed, to make known in a sly, insinuating fashion things which this «other» person, present but invisible, might construe in his or her own way. «Sheldon is not a fool,» he was saying in this oblique, glancing language. «Sheldon has not forgotten certain little tricks which were played on him. Sheldon is behaving like a gentleman now, very comme il faut, but he is not asleep... no, Sheldon is always on the qui vive. Sheldon can play the fox when he needs to. Sheldon can wear nice clothes, like everybody else, and behave most courteously. Sheldon is amiable, always ready to be of service. Sheldon is kind to little children, even to Polish children. Sheldon does not ask for anything. Sheldon is very quiet, very calm, very well-behaved... BUT BEWARE!!!» And then to my surprise Sheldon whistled... a long, clear whistle which was intended, I have no doubt, as a warning to the invisible one. Beware the day! It was as clear as that, his whistle. Beware, because Sheldon is preparing something super-diabolical, something which the clumsy brain of a Polak could never imagine or invent. Sheldon has not been idle all these years...
The money lending had come about quite naturally. It began that evening over a cup of coffee. As usual I had only five or ten cents in my pocket and was therefore obliged to let Sheldon take the check. The idea of the employment manager being without spending money was so inconceivable to Sheldon that for a moment I feared he would pawn all his jewels.
«Five dollars will be enough, Sheldon,» said I, «if you insist on lending me something.»
An expression of disgust came over Sheldon's face. «Oh no, oh no-O-O!» he exclaimed in a shrill, grating voice which rose almost to a whistle, «Sheldon will never give five dollars. No-oo, Mr. Miller, Sheldon will give fifty dollars!»
And by God, with that he did fish out fifty dollars, in fives and singles. Again he put on his lynx-like air, looking beyond me as he doled the money out, and mumbling something between his teeth about showing some one what sort of man he, Sheldon, was.
«But Sheldon, I'll be broke again tomorrow,» I said, pausing to see what effect this would produce.
Sheldon smiled—a cagey, cunning smile, as if he were sharing some great secret with me.
«Then Sheldon will give you another fifty dollars tomorrow,» he said, bringing the words out with a queer hissing effect.
«I have no idea when you will get the money back,» I then informed him.
In answer to this Sheldon produced three greasy bank books from his inside pocket. The deposits totalled over two thousand dollars. From his vest pockets he extracted a few rings whose stones glittered like the authentic thing.
«This is nothing,» he said. «Sheldon is not telling all.»
This was the beginning of our relationship, a rather strange one for the employment manager of a cosmococcic corporation. I wondered sometimes if other employment managers enjoyed these advantages. When I met with them occasionally at luncheons I felt more like a messenger boy than a personnel manager. I could never muster that dignity and self-importance in which they appeared to be perpetually enshrouded.
They never seemed to look me in the eye when I spoke, but always at my baggy trousers, my run-down shoes, my torn, soiled shirt or the holes in my hat. If I told them an innocent little story they made so much of it that I was embarrassed. They were tremendously impressed, for example, when I told them about a certain messenger in the Broad Street office who, while waiting for his calls, would read Dante, Homer and Thomas Aquinas in the original. They didn't wait to hear that he had been a professor once in a university in Bologna, that he had tried to commit suicide because he had lost his wife and three children in a railroad accident, that he had lost his memory and had arrived in America with another man's passport, and that only after he had been working as a messenger for six months had he recovered his identity. That he had found the work agreeable, that he preferred to remain a messenger, that he wished to remain unknown— these things would have sounded too fantastic for their ears. All they could seize and marvel at was the fact that a «messenger», in uniform, was able to read the classics in the original. Now and then I would borrow a ten spot from one of them, after relating one of these amusing incidents, never intending to repay of course. I felt compelled to extract some little token from them—for my services as entertainer. And what hemming and hawing they resorted to before coughing up these trivial sums! What a contrast to the easy touches I made among the «goofy» messengers!
Reflections of this order always excited me to the breaking point. Ten minutes of introspective reverie and I was bursting to write a book. I thought of Mona. If only for her sake I ought to begin. And where would I begin? In this room which was like the lobby of an insane asylum? Begin with Kronski looking over my shoulder? Somewhere I had read recently about an abandoned city of Burma, the ancient capital of a region where, in the compass of a hundred miles, there once flourished eight thousand thriving temples. The whole area was now empty of inhabitants, had been so for a thousand years or more. Only a few lone priests, probably half-crazed, were now to be found among the empty temples. Serpents and bats and owls infested the sacred edifices; at night the jackals howled amidst the ruins.
Why should this picture of desolation cause me such painful depression? Why should eight thousand empty, ruined temples awaken such anguish? People die, races disappear, religions fade away: it is in the order of things. But that something of beauty should remain, and be powerless to affect, powerless to attract us, was an enigma which weighed me down. For I had not even begun to build! In my mind I saw my own temples in ruins, before even one brick had been laid upon another. In some freakish way I and the goofy messengers who were to aid me were prowling about the abandoned places of the spirit like the jackals which howled at night. We wandered amidst the halls of an ethereal edifice, a dream stupa, which would be abandoned before it could take earthly shape. In Burma the invader had been responsible for driving the spirit of man into the ground. It had happened over and over in the history of man and it was explicable. But what prevented us, the dreamers of this continent, from giving form and substance to our fabulous edifices? The race of visionary architects was as good as extinct. The genius of man had been canalized and directed into other channels. So it was said. I could not accept it. I have looked at the separate stones, the girders, the portals, the windows which even in buildings are like the eyes of the soul; I have looked at them as I have looked at separate pages of these books, and I have seen one architecture informing the lives of our people, be it in book, in law, in stone, in custom; I saw that it was created (seen first in the mind) then objectified, given light, air and space, given purpose and significance, given a rhythm which would rise and fall, a growth from seed to flourishing tree, a decline from shrivelled leaf and branch to seed again, and a compost to nourish the seed. I saw this continent as other continents before and after: creations in every sense of the word, including the very catastrophes which would make their existence forgotten...
After Kronski and Ghompal had retired I felt so wide awake, so stimulated by the thoughts which were racing through my head that I felt impelled to go for a long walk. As I was putting on my things I looked at myself in the mirror. I made that whistling grimace of Sheldon's and felicitated myself on my powers of mimicry. Once upon a time I had thought I might make a good clown. There was a chap in school who passed as my twin brother; we were very close to one another and later, when we had graduated, we formed a club of twelve which we called the Xerxes Society. We two possessed all the initiative—the others were just so much slag and driftwood. In desperation sometimes George Marshall and I would perform for the others, an impromptu clowning which kept the others in stitches. Later I used to think of these moments as-having quite a tragic quality. The dependency of the others was really pathetic: it was a foretaste of the general inertia and apathy which I was to encounter all through life. Thinking of George Marshall, I began to make more faces; I did it so well that I began to get a little frightened of myself. For, suddenly I remembered the day when for the first time in my life I looked into the mirror and realized that I was gazing at a stranger. It was after I had been to the theatre with George Marshall and MacGregor. George Marshall had said something that night which disturbed me profoundly. I was angry with him for his stupidity, but I couldn't deny that he had put his finger on a sore spot. He had said something which made me realize that our twinship was over, that in fact we would become enemies henceforth. And he was right, though the reasons he had given were false. From that day forth I began to ridicule my bosom friend George Marshall. I wanted to be the opposite of him in every way. It was like the splitting of a chromosome. George Marshall remained in the world, with it, of it; he took root and grew like a tree, and there was no doubt but that he had found his place and with it a relatively full measure of happiness. But as I looked in the mirror that night, disowning my own image, I knew that what George Marshall had predicted about my future was only superficially correct. George Marshall had never really understood me; the moment he suspected I was different he had renounced me.
I was still looking at myself as these memories flitted through my head. My face had grown sad and thoughtful. I was no longer looking at my image but at the image of a memory of myself at another moment—when sitting on a stoop one night listening to a Hindu «boy» named Tawde. Tawde too had said something that night which had provoked in me a profound disturbance. But Tawde had said it as a friend. He was holding my hand, the way Hindus do. A passer-by looking at us might have thought we were making love. Tawde was trying to make me see things in a different light. What baffled him was that I was «good at heart» and yet... I was creating sorrow all about me. Tawde wanted me to be true to myself, that self which he recognized and accepted as my «true» self. He seemed to have no awareness of the complexity of my nature, or if he did he attached no importance to it. He didn't understand why I should be dissatisfied with my position in life, particularly when I was doing so much good. That one could be thoroughly disgusted with being a mere instrument of good was unthinkable to him. He didn't realize that I was only a blind instrument, that I was merely obeying the law of inertia, and that I hated inertia even if it meant doing good.
I left Tawde that night in a state of despair. I loathed the thought of being surrounded by dumb clucks who would hold my hand and comfort me in order to keep me in chains. A sinister gayety came over me as I drew farther away from him; instead of going home I went instinctively to the furnished room where the waitress lived with whom I was carrying on a romantic affair. She came to the door in her night shirt, begging me not to go upstairs with her because of the hour. We went inside, in the hallway, and leaned against the radiator to keep warm. In a few minutes I had it out and was giving it to her as best I could in that strained position. She was trembling with fear and pleasure. When it was over she reproached me for being inconsiderate. «Why do you do these things?» she whispered, snuggled close against me. I ran off, leaving her standing at the foot of the stairs with a bewildered expression. As I raced through the street a phrase repeated itself over and over: «Which is the true self?»
It was this phrase which accompanied me now, racing through the morbid streets of the Bronx. Why was I racing? What was driving me on at this pace?
I slowed down, as if to let the demon overtake me...
If you persist in throttling your impulses you end by becoming a clot of phlegm. You finally spit out a gob which completely drains you and which you only realize years later was not a gob of spit but your inmost self. If you lose that you will always race through dark streets like a madman pursued by phantoms. You will always be able to say with perfect sincerity: «I don't know what I want to do in life.» You can push yourself clean through the filament of life and come out at the wrong end of the telescope, seeing everything beyond you, out of grasp, and diabolically twisted. From then on the game's up. Whichever direction you take you will find yourself in a hall of mirrors; you will race like a madman, searching for an exit, to find that you are surrounded only by distorted images of your own sweet self.
What I disliked most in George Marshall, in Kronski, in Tawde and the incalculable hosts which they represented, was their surface seriousness. The truly serious person is gay, almost nonchalant. I despised people who, because they lacked their own proper ballast, took on the problems of the world. The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them. I am speaking of the great majority, not of the emancipated few who, having thought things through, are privileged to identify themselves with all humanity and thus enjoy that greatest of all luxuries: service.
There was another thing I heartily disbelieved in —work. Work, it seemed to me even at the threshold of life, is an activity reserved for the dullard. It is the very opposite of creation, which is play, and which just because it has no raison d'etre other than itself is the supreme motivating power in life. Has any one ever said that God created the universe in order to provide work for Himself? By a chain of circumstances having nothing to do with reason or intelligence I had become like the others—a drudge. I had the comfortless excuse that by my labors I was supporting a wife and child. That it was a flimsy excuse I knew, because if I were to drop dead on the morrow they would go on living somehow or other. To stop everything, and play at being myself, why not? The part of me which was given up to work, which enabled my wife and child to live in the manner they unthinkingly demanded, this part of me which kept the wheel turning—a completely fatuous, egocentric notion!—was the least part of me. I gave nothing to the world in fulfilling the function of breadwinner; the world exacted its tribute of me, that was all.
The world would only begin to get something of value from me the moment I stopped being a serious member of society and became— myself. The State, the nation, the united nations of the world, were nothing but one great aggregation of individuals who repeated the mistakes of their forefathers. They were caught in the wheel from birth and they kept at it till death—and this treadmill they tried to dignify by calling it «life». If you asked any one to explain or define life, what was the be all and the end all, you got a blank look for answer. Life was something which philosophers dealt with in books that no one read. Those in the thick of life, «the plugs in harness,» had no time for such idle questions. «You've got to eat, haven't you?» This query, which was supposed to be a stop-gap, and which had already been answered, if not in the absolute negative at least in a disturbingly relative negative by those who knew, was a clue to all the other questions which followed in a veritable Euclidian suite. From the little reading I had done I had observed that the men who were most in life, who were moulding life, who were life itself, ate little, slept little, owned little or nothing. They had no illusions about duty, or the perpetuation of their kith and kin, or the preservation of the State. They were interested in truth and in truth alone. They recognized only one kind of activity—creation. Nobody could command their services because they had of their own pledged themselves to give all. They gave gratuitously, because that is the only way to give. This was the way of life which appealed to me: it made sound sense. It was life—not the simulacrum which those about me worshipped.
I had understood all this—with my mind at the very brink of manhood. But there was a great comedy of life to be gone through before this vision of reality could become the motivating force. The tremendous hunger for life which others sensed in me acted like a magnet; it attracted those who needed my particular kind of hunger. The hunger was magnified a thousand times. It was as if those who clung to me (like iron filings) became sensitized and attracted others in turn. Sensation ripens into experience and experience engenders experience.
What I secretly longed for was to disentangle myself of all those lives which had woven themselves into the pattern of my own life and were making my destiny a part of theirs. To shake myself free of these accumulating experiences which were mine only by force of inertia required a violent effort. Now and then I lunged and tore at the net, but only to become more enmeshed. My liberation seemed to involve pain and suffering to those near and dear to me. Every move I made for my own private good brought about reproach and condemnation. I was a traitor a thousand times over. I had lost even the right to become ill—because «they» needed me. I wasn't allowed to remain inactive. Had I died I think they would have galvanized my corpse into a semblance of life.
«I stood before a mirror and said fearfully: 'I want to see how I look in the mirror with my eyes closed.'»
These words of Richter's, when I first came upon them, made and indescribable commotion in me. As did the following, which seems almost like a corollary of the above—from Novalis:
«The seat of the soul is where inner world and outer world touch each other. For nobody knows himself, if he is only himself and not also another one at the same time.»
«To take possession of one's transcendental I, to be the I of one's I, at the same time,» as Novalis expressed it again.
There is a lime when ideas tyrannize over one, when one is just a hapless victim of an other's thoughts. This «possession» by another seems to occur in periods of depersonalization, when the warring selves come unglued, as it were. Normally one is impervious to ideas; they come and go, are accepted or rejected, put on like shirts, taken off like dirty socks. But in those periods which we call crises, when the mind sunders and splinters like a diamond under the blows of a sledge-hammer, these innocent ideas of a dreamer take hold, lodge in the crevices of the brain, and by some subtle process of infiltration bring about a definite, irrevocable alteration of the personality. Outwardly no great change takes place; the individual affected does not suddenly behave differently; on the contrary, he may behave in more «normal» fashion than before. This seeming normality assumes more and more the quality of a protective device. From surface deception he passes to inner deception. With each new crisis, however, he becomes more strongly aware of a change which is no change, but rather an intensification of something hidden deep within. Now when he closes his eyes he can really look at himself. He no longer sees a mask. He sees without seeing, to be exact. Vision without sight, a fluid grasp of intangibles: the merging of sight and sound: the heart of the web. Here stream the distant personalities which evade the crude contact of the senses; here the overtones of recognition discreetly lap against one another in bright, vibrant harmonies. There is no language employed, no outlines delineated.
When a ship founders it settles slowly; the spars, the masts, the rigging float away. On the ocean floor of death the bleeding hull bedecks itself with jewels; remorselessly the anatomic life begins. What was ship becomes the nameless indestructible.
Like ships, men founder time and again. Only memory saves them from complete dispersion. Poets drop their stitches in the loom, straws for drowning men to grasp as they sink into extinction. Ghosts climb back on watery stairs, make imaginary ascents, vertiginous drops, memorize numbers, dates, events, in passing from gas to liquid and back again. There is no brain capable of registering the changing changes. Nothing happens in the brain, except the gradual rust and detrition of the cells. But in the minds, worlds unclassified, undenominated, unassimilated, form, break, unite, dissolve and harmonize ceaselessly. In the mind-world ideas are the indestructible elements which form the jewelled constellations of the interior life. We move within their orbits, freely if we follow their intricate patterns, enslaved or possessed if we try to subjugate them.
Everything external is but a reflection projected by the mind machine.
Creation is the eternal play which takes place at the border-line; it is spontaneous and compulsive, obedient to law. One removes from the mirror and the curtain rises. Seance permanente. Only madmen are excluded. Only those who «have lost their mind,» as we say. For these never cease to dream that they are dreaming.
They stood before the mirror with eyes open and fell sound asleep; they sealed their shadow in the tomb of memory. In them the stars collapse to form what Hugo called «a blinding menagerie of suns which, through love, make themselves the poodles and the Newfoundlands of immensity.»
The creative life! Ascension. Passing beyond oneself. Rocketing out into the blue, grasping at flying ladders, mounting, soaring, lifting the world up by the scalp, rousing the angels from their ethereal lairs, drowning in stellar depths, clinging to the tails of comets. Nietzsche had written of it ecstatically —and then swooned forward into the mirror to die in root and flower. «Stairs and contradictory stairs,» he wrote, and then suddenly there was no longer any bottom; the mind, like a splintered diamond, was pulverized by the hammer-blows of truth.
There was a time when I acted as my father's keeper. I was left alone for long hours, cooped up in the little booth which we used as an office. While he was drinking with his cronies I was feeding from the bottle of creative life. My companions were the free spirits, the overlords of the soul. The young man sitting there in the mingy yellow light became completely unhinged; he lived in the crevices of great thoughts, crouched like a hermit in the barren folds of a lofty mountain range. From truth he passed to imagination and from imagination to invention. At this last portal, through which there is no return, fear beset him. To venture farther was to wander alone, to rely wholly upon oneself.
The purpose of discipline is to promote freedom. But freedom leads to infinity and infinity is terrifying. Then arose the comforting thought of stopping at the brink, of setting down in words the mysteries of impulsion, compulsion, propulsion, of bathing the senses in human odors. To become utterly human, the compassionate fiend incarnate, the locksmith of the great door leading beyond and away and forever isolate....
Men founder like ships. Children also. There are children who settle to the bottom at the age of nine, carrying with them the secret of their betrayal. There are perfidious monsters who look at you with the bland, innocent eyes of youth; their crimes are unregistered, because we have no names for them.
Why do lovely faces haunt us so? Do extraordinary flowers have evil roots?
Studying her morsel by morsel, feet, hands, hair, lips, ears, breasts, travelling from navel to mouth and from mouth to eyes, the woman I fell upon, clawed, bit, suffocated with kisses, the woman who had been Mara and was now Mona, who had been and would be other names, other persons, other assemblages of appendages, was no more accessible, penetrable, than a cool statue in a forgotten garden of a lost continent. At nine or earlier, with a revolver that was never intended to go off, she might have pressed a swooning trigger and fallen like a dead swan from the heights of her dream. It might well have been that way, for in the flesh she was dispersed, in the mind she was as dust blown hither and thither. In her heart a bell tolled, but what it signified no one knew. Her image corresponded to nothing that I had formed in my heart. She had intruded it, slipped it like thinnest gauze between the crevices of the brain in a moment of lesion. And when the wound closed the imprint had remained, like a frail leaf traced upon a stone.
Haunting nights when, filled with creation, I saw nothing but her eyes and in those eyes, rising like bubbling pools of lava, phantoms came to the surface, faded, vanished, reappeared, bringing dread, apprehension, fear, mystery. A being constantly pursued, a hidden flower whose scent the blood-hounds never picked up. Behind the phantoms, peering through the jungle brush, stood a shrinking child who seemed to offer herself lasciviously. Then the swan dive, slow, as in motion pictures, and snow-flakes falling with the falling body, and then phantoms and more phantoms, the eyes becoming eyes again, burning like lignite, then glowing like embers, then soft like flowers; then nose, mouth, cheeks, ears looming out of chaos, heavy as the moon, a mask unrolling, flesh taking form, face, feature.
Night after night, from words to dreams, to flesh, to phantoms. Possession and depossession. The flowers of the moon, the broad-backed palms of jungle growth, the baying of blood-hounds, the frail white body of a child, the lava bubbles, the rallitando of the snow-flakes, the floorless bottom where smoke blooms into flesh. And what is flesh but moon? and what is moon but night? Night is longing, longing, longing, beyond all endurance.
«Think of us!» she said that night when she turned and flew up the steps rapidly. And it was as if I could think of nothing else. We two and the stairs ascending infinitely. Then «contradictory stairs»: the stairs in my father's office, the stairs leading to crime, to madness, to the portals of invention. How could I think of anything else?
Creation. To create the legend in which I could fit the key which would open her soul.
A woman trying to deliver her secret. A desperate woman, seeking through love to unite herself with herself. Before the immensity of mystery one stands like a centipede that feels the ground slipping beneath its feet. Every door that opens leads to a greater void. One must swim like a star in the trackless ocean of time. One must have the patience of radium buried beneath a Himalayan peak.
It is about twenty years now since I began the study of the photogenic soul; in that time I have conducted hundreds of experiments. The result is that I know a little more—about myself. I think it must be very much the same with the political leader or the military genius. One discovers nothing about the secrets of the universe; at the best one learns something about the nature of destiny.
In the beginning one wants to approach every problem directly. The more direct and insistent the approach, the more quickly and surely one succeeds in getting caught in the web. No one is more helpless than the heroic individual. And no one can produce more tragedy and confusion than such a type. Flashing his sword above the Gordian knot, he promises speedy deliverance. A delusion which ends in an ocean of blood.
The creative artist has something in common with the hero. Though functioning on another plane, he too believes that he has solutions to offer. He gives his life to accomplish imaginary triumphs. At the conclusion of every grand experiment, whether by statesman, warrior, poet or philosopher, the problems of life present the same enigmatic complexion. The happiest peoples, it is said, are those which have no history. Those which have a history, those which have made history, seem only to have emphasized through their accomplishments the eternality of struggle. These disappear too, eventually, just as those who made no effort, who were content merely to live and to enjoy.
The creative individual (in wrestling with his medium) is supposed to experience a joy which balances, if it does not outweight, the pain and anguish which accompany the struggle to express himself. He lives in his work, we say. But this unique kind of life varies extremely with the individual. It is only in the measure that he is aware of more life, the life abundant, that he may be said to live in his work. If there is no realization there is no purpose or advantage in substituting the imaginative life for the purely adventurous one of reality. Every one who lifts himself above the activities of the daily round does so not only in the hope of enlarging his field of experience, or even of enriching it, but of quickening it. Only in this sense does struggle have any meaning. Accept this view, and the distinction between failure and success is nil. And this is what every great artist comes to learn en route—that the process in which he is involved has to do with another dimension of life, that by identifying himself with this process he augments life. In this view of things he is permanently removed—and protected—from that insidious death which seems to triumph all about him. He divines that the great secret will never be apprehended but incorporated in his very substance. He has to make himself a part of the mystery, live in it as well as with it. Acceptance is the solution: it is an art, not an egotistical, performance on the part of the intellect. Through art then, one finally establishes contact with reality: that is the great discovery. Here all is play and invention; there is no solid foothold from which to launch the projectiles which will pierce the miasma of folly, ignorance and greed. The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order, to know what is the world order in contradistinction to the wishful-thinking orders which we seek to impose on one another. The power which we long to possess, in order to establish the good, the true and the beautiful, would prove to be, if we could have it, but the means of destroying one another. It is fortunate that we are powerless. We have first to acquire vision, then discipline and forbearance. Until we have the humility to acknowledge the existence of a vision beyond our own, until we have faith and trust in superior powers, the blind must lead the blind. The men who believe that work and brains will accomplish everything must ever be deceived by the quixotic and unforeseen turn of events. They are the ones who are perpetually disappointed; no longer able to blame the gods, or God, they turn on their fellow-men and vent their impotent rage by crying «Treason! Stupidity!» and other hollow terms.
The great joy of the artist is to become aware of a higher order of things, to recognize by the compulsive and spontaneous manipulation of his own impulses the resemblance between human creation and what is called «divine» creation. In works of fantasy the existence of law manifesting itself through order is even more apparent than in other works of art. Nothing is less mad, less chaotic, than a work of fantasy. Such a creation, which is nothing less than pure invention, pervades all levels, creating, like water, its own level. The endless interpretations which are offered up contribute nothing, except to heighten the significance of what is seemingly unintelligible. This unintelligibility somehow makes profound sense. Every one is affected, including those who pretend not to be affected. Something is present, in works of fantasy, which can only be likened to an elixir. This mysterious element, often referred to as «pure nonsense», brings with it the flavor and the aroma of that larger and utterly impenetrable world in which we and all the heavenly bodies have their being. The term nonsense is one of the most baffling words in our vocabulary. It has a negative quality only, like death. Nobody can explain nonsense: it can only be demonstrated. To add, moreover, that sense and nonsense are interchangeable is only to labor the point. Nonsense belongs to other worlds, other dimensions, and the gesture with which we put it from us at times, the finality with which we dismiss it, testifies to its disturbing nature. Whatever we cannot include within our narrow framework of comprehension we reject. Thus profundity and nonsense may be seen to have certain unsuspected affinities.
Why did I not launch into sheer nonsense immediately? Because, like others, I was afraid of it. And deeper than that was the fact that, far from situating myself in a beyond, I was caught in the very heart of the web. I had survived my own destructive school of Dadaism: I had progressed, if that is the word, from scholar to critic to pole-axer. My literary experiments lay in ruins, like the cities of old which were sacked by the vandals. I wanted to build, but the materials were unreliable and the plans had not even become blueprints. If the substance of art is the human soul, then I must confess that with dead souls I could visualize nothing germinating under my hand.
To be caught in a glut of dramatic episodes, to be ceaselessly participating, means among other things that one is unaware of the outlines of that bigger drama of which human activity is but a small part.
The act of writing puts a stop to one kind of activity in order to release another. When a monk, prayerfully meditating, walks slowly and silently down the hall of a temple, and thus walking sets in motion one prayerwheel after another, he gives a living illustration of the act of sitting down to write. The mind of the writer, no longer preoccupied with observing and knowing, wanders meditatively amidst a world of forms which are set spinning by a mere brush of his wings. No tyrant, this, wreaking his will upon the subjugated minions of his ill-gotten kingdom. An explorer, rather, calling to life the slumbering entities of his dream. The act of dreaming, like a draught of fresh air in an abandoned house, situates the furniture of the mind in a new ambiance. The chairs and tables collaborate; an effluvia is given off, a game is begun.
To ask the purpose of this game, how it is related to life, is idle. As well ask the Creator why volcanos? why hurricanes? since obviously they contribute nothing but disaster. But, since disasters are disastrous only for those who are engulfed in them, whereas they can be illuminating for those who survive and study them, so it is in the creative world. The dreamer who returns from his voyage, if he is not shipwrecked en route, may and usually does convert the collapse of his tenuous fabric into other stuff. For a child the pricking of a bubble may offer nothing but astonishment and delight. The student of illusions and mirages may react differently. A scientist may bring to a bubble the emotional wealth of a world of thought. The same phenomenon which causes the child to scream with delight may give birth, in the mind of an earnest experimenter, to a dazzling vision of truth. In the artist these contrasting reactions seem to combine or merge, producing that ultimate one, the great catalyzer called realization. Seeing, knowing, discovering, enjoying—these faculties or powers are pale and lifeless without realization. The artist's game is to move over into reality. It is to see beyond the mere «disaster» which the picture of a lost battlefield renders to the naked eye. For, since the beginning of time the picture which the world has presented to the naked human eye can hardly seem anything but a hideous battle ground of lost causes. It has been so and will be so until man ceases to regard himself as the mere seat of conflict. Until he takes up the task of becoming the «I of his I».
10
Saturdays I usually quit work at noon, lunching either with Hymie Laubscher and Romero or with O'Rourke and O'Mara. Sometimes Curley joined us, or George Miltiades, a Greek poet and scholar, who was one of the messenger force. Now and then O'Mara would invite Irma and Dolores to joins us; they had worked their way up from humble secretaries in the Cosmococcic employment bureau to buyers in a big department store on Fifth Avenue. The meal usually stretched out until three of four in the afternoon. Then, with dragging feet, I would wend my way over to Brooklyn to pay my weekly visit to Maude and the little one.
As the snow was still on the ground we were no longer able to take our walks through the park. Maude was generally attired in a negligee and bathrobe; her long hair hung loosely, almost to her waist. The rooms were super-heated and encumbered with furniture. She usually kept a box of candy near the couch where she reclined.
The greetings we exchanged would make one think we were old friends. Sometimes the child was not there when I arrived, having gone to a neighbor's house to play with one of her little friends.
«She waited for you until three o'clock,» Maude would say, with an air of mild reproach, but secretly thrilled that it had turned out thus.
I would explain that my work had detained me at the office. To this she would give me a look which signified—«I know your excuses. Why don't you think up something different?»
«How is your friend Dolores?» she would ask abruptly. «Or,» giving me a sharp look, «isn't she your friend any more?»
A question like this was meant as a gentle insinuation that she hoped I was not deceiving the other' woman (Mona) as I had her. She would never mention Mona's name, of course, nor would I. She would say «she» or «her» in a way that was unmistakably clear as to whom she meant.
There was also, in these questions, an overtone of deeper implications. Since the divorce proceedings were only in the preliminary stages, since the rupture had not yet been definitely created by law, there was no telling what might happen in the meantime. We were no longer enemies, at least. There was always the child between us—a strong bond. And, until she could arrange her life differently, they were both dependent on me. She would like to have known more about my life with Mona, whether it was going as smoothly as we had expected or not, but pride prevented her from inquiring too openly. She doubtless reasoned to herself that the seven years we had lived together constituted a not altogether negligible factor in this now seemingly tenuous situation.
One false move on Mona's part and I would fall back into the old pattern. It behooved her to make the most of this strange new friendship which we had established. It might prepare the ground for another and deeper relationship.
I felt sorry for her sometimes when this unexpressed hope manifested itself only too clearly. There was never the slightest fear on my part that I would sink back into the old pattern of conjugal life. Should anything happen to Mona—the only threat of separation I could think of was death—I would certainly never resume a life with Maude. It was much more plausible that I should turn to some one like Irma or Dolores, or even Monica, the little waitress from the Greek restaurant.
«Why don't you come over here and sit beside me— I won't bite you.»
Her voice seemed to come from far away. Often it happened that when we were left alone, Maude and I, my mind would wander off. As now, for example, I would often respond in a semi-trance, the body obedient to her wishes but the rest of me absent. A brief struggle of wills always ensued, a struggle rather between her will and my absence of will. I had no desire to tickle her erotic fancies; I was there to kill a few hours and be off without opening any fresh wounds. Usually, however, my hand would absent-mindedly stray over her voluptuous form. There was nothing more to it at first than the involuntary caress that one would give a pet. But little by little she would make me aware that she was responding with concealed pleasure; then, just when she had succeeded in riveting my attention upon her body, she would make some abrupt move to break the connection.
«Remember, I'm not your wife any more!»
She loved to hurl that at me, knowing that it would incite me to renewed efforts, knowing that it would focus my mind, as well as my fingers, upon the forbidden object: herself. These taunts served another purpose too—they roused an awareness of her power to offer or deny. She always seemed to be saying with her body: «To have this you can't ignore The idea that I could be satisfied with her me.»
body only was a most humiliating one for her. «I'd give you more than any woman could offer,» she seemed to say, «if only you looked at me, if only you saw me, the real me.» She knew only too well that I looked beyond her, that the dislocation between our centers was far more real, far more dangerous, now than it had ever been. She knew too that there was no other way of reaching me than through the body.
It's a curious fact that a body, however familiar it may be to sight and touch, can become eloquently mysterious once we feel that the owner of it has become elusive or evasive. I remember the renewed zest with which I explored Maude's body after I learned that she had been to see a doctor for a vaginal examination. What gave spice to the situation was that the doctor in question had been an old suitor of hers, one of those suitors whom she had never mentioned. Out of the blue one day she announced that she had been to his office, that she had had a fall one day which she had told me nothing about, and, having lately run into her old sweetheart, whom she knew she could trust (!), she had decided to let him examine her.
«You just walked in on him and asked to be examined?»
«No, not quite like that.» She had to laugh herself at this.
«Well, what did happen exactly?»
I was curious to know whether he had found her improved or otherwise in the interval of five or six years which had elapsed. Hadn't he made any advances? He was married, of course, she had already informed me of that. But he was also extremely handsome, a magnetic personality, she had taken pains to let me know.
«Well, how did it feel to get on the table and spread your legs open—before your old sweetheart?»
She tried to make me understand that she had grown absolutely frigid, that Dr. Hilary, or whatever the devil his name was, had urged her to relax, that he had reminded her that he was acting as a physician, and so on and so forth.
«Did you succeed in relaxing—finally?»
Again she laughed, one of those tantalizing laughs which she always produced when she had to speak of «shameful» things.
«Well, what did he do?» I pressed.
«Oh, nothing much, really. He just explored the vagina (she wouldn't say my vagina!) with his finger. He had a rubber over his finger of course.» She added this as though to absolve herself of any suspicion that the procedure might have been anything more than a perfunctory one.
«He thought I had filled out beautifully,» she volunteered, to my surprise.
«Oh, he did, did he? He gave you a thorough examination, then?»
The recollection of this little incident had been stirred by a remark she had just dropped. She said she had been worried about the old pain which had reappeared recently. She redescribed the fall which she had years ago when she believed, mistakenly, that she had injured her pelvis. She spoke with such seriousness that when she took my hand and placed it above her cunt, just at the ridge of the Mons Venus, I thought the gesture one of complete innocence. She had a thick growth of hair there, a genuine rose bush which, if the fingers strayed within striking distance of it, immediately stood on end, stiffened like a brush. It was one of those bushy things which are maddening to touch through a film of silk or velvet. Often, in the early days, when she wore attractive flimsy things, when she acted coquettish and seductive, I used to make a grab for it and hold on to it while standing in some public place, the lobby of a theatre, or an elevated station. She used to get furious with me. But, standing close to her, blocking the sight of my groping hand, I would continue to hold on to it, saying: «Nobody can see what I'm doing. Don't move!» And I would continue talking to her, my hand buried in her muff, she hypnotized with fear. In the theatre, as soon as the lights were lowered, she would always spread her legs apart and let me fool with her. She thought nothing of it then to open my fly and play with my cock throughout the performance.
Her cunt still held a thrill. I was conscious of it now, my hand resting warmly on the edge of her thick sporran. She kept up a continuous flow of talk in order to postpone that embarrassing moment of silence when there would be nothing but the pressure of my hand and the tacit admission that she wished it to remain there.
As though vitally interested in what she was relating, I suddenly reminded her of the stepfather whom she had lost. As I anticipated, she thrilled immediately to the suggestion. Excited by the very mention of the name, she placed her hand over mine and pressed it warmly. That my own hand slipped a little farther down, that the fingers became entangled in the thick hairs, she seemed not to mind at all—for the moment. She carried on about him gushingly quite like a school-girl. As my fingers twined and untwined I felt a double passion stirring in me. Years ago, when I first used to call on her, I was violently jealous of this step-father. She was then a woman of twenty-two or three, her figure full-blown, mature in every sense of the word; to see her sitting on his lap before the window, at dusk, talking to him in a low, caressing voice, used to infuriate me. «I love him,» she would say, as though that excused her behavior, for with her the word love always meant something pure, something divorced from carnal pleasure. It was in Summer that these scenes occurred, and I, who was only waiting for the old duffer to release her, was all too conscious of the warm naked flesh beneath the filmy, gauze-like dress she wore. She might just as well have sat naked in his arms, it seemed to me. I was always conscious of the weight of her in his arms, of the way she settled down on him, her thighs rippling, her generous crack anchored firmly over his fly. I was certain that, however pure the old man's love for her was, he must have been aware of the luscious fruit he was holding in his arms. Only a corpse could have been impervious to the sap and the heat generated by that warm body. Moreover, the better I knew her, the more I thought it natural for her to offer her body in this furtive, libidinous way. An incestuous relationship was not beyond her; if she had to be «violated» she would prefer that it be done by the father she loved; the fact that he was not her real father, but the one she had chosen, simplified the situation, if indeed she ever permitted herself to think about such things openly. It was this damned, perverted relationship which had made it so difficult for me to bring her out into any clear, open sexual relationship in those days. She expected of me a love which I was unable to give her. She wanted me to fondle her like a child, whisper sweet nothings in her ear, pet her, pamper her, humor her. She wanted me to embrace and caress her in some absurd, incestuous way. She didn't want to admit that she had a cunt and I a prick. She wanted love talk and silent, furtive pressures, explorations with the hands. I was too forthright, too brutal, for her liking.
After she had had a taste of the real thing she was nearly beside herself—with passion, rage, shame, humiliation, and what not. She evidently had never thought it would be so enjoyable, nor so disgusting. What was disgusting—to her—was the abandonment. To think that there was something hanging between a man's legs which could make her forget herself completely was exasperating to her. She did so want to be independent—when not just a child. She didn't want the in between realm, the surrender, the fusion, the exchange. She wanted to keep that little tight core of self which was hidden away in her breast and only allow herself the legitimate pleasure of surrendering the body. That body and soul could not be separated,” especially in the sex act, was a source of the most profound irritation. She always behaved as if, having abandoned her cunt to the exploration of the penis, she had lost something, some little particle of her abysmal self, some element which could never be replaced. The more she fought against it the more complete was her abandon. No woman can fuck as savagely as the hysterical woman who has made her mind frigid.
Playing now with the stiff, wiry hairs of that bush of hers, letting a finger stray down occasionally to the tip of her cunt, my thoughts roamed vagrantly deep into the past. I had almost the feeling that I was her chosen father, that I was playing with this lascivious daughter in the hynoptic dusk of an overheated room. Everything was false and deep and real at the same time. If I were to act as she wished, act the part of the tender, understanding lover, there would be no doubt of the reward. She would devour me in passionate surrender. Only keep up the pretences and she would open those thighs of hers with a volcanic ardor.
«Let me see if it hurts inside,» I whispered, withdrawing my hand and deftly slipping it under the filmy shift and up her cunt. The juices were oozing from her; her legs slipped farther apart, responsive to the slightest pressure of my hand.
«There... does it hurt there?» I asked, piercing deep within her.
Her eyes were half closed. She gave a meaningless nod, signifying neither yes nor no. I slipped two more fingers inside her cunt and quietly stretched my length beside her. I put an arm under her head and drew her gently to me, my fingers still deftly churning the juices that were seeping from her.
She lay still, absolutely passive, her mind thoroughly absorbed in the play of my fingers. I took her hand and slid it into my fly which came unbuttoned magically. She grasped my prick firmly and gently, caressing it with a practiced touch. I stole a quick glance at her and saw an expression almost of bliss on her countenance.
This was what she loved, this blind, tactile exchange of emotions. If she could only really fall asleep now and let herself be fucked, pretend that she had no watchful, waking part in it... just give herself completely and yet be innocent... what bliss that would be! She liked to fuck with the inner cunt, lying absolutely still, as in a trance. With semaphores erect, distended, jubilant, twitching, tickling, sucking, clinging, she could fuck to her heart's content, fuck till the last drop of juice was exhausted.
It was imperative now not to make a false move, not to puncture the thin skin which she was still spinning, like a cocoon, about her naked, carnal self. To make the transfer from finger to prick required the adroitness of a mesmerist. The deadly pleasure had to be increased most gradually, as though it were a poison to which the body became only gradually accustomed. She would have to be fucked through the veil of the cocoon, just as years ago, in order to take her, I had to violate her through her nightgown.... A devilish thought came to my mind, as my cock twitched with delight under her skillful caresses. I thought of her sitting on her stepfather's lap, in the gloaming, her crack glued to his fly as always. I wondered what the expression on her face would have been had she suddenly felt that glow-worm of his penetrating her dreamy cunt; if, while murmuring her perverse litany of adolescent love in his ears, if, unconscious of the fact her gauze-like dress no longer covered her fleshy buttocks, this unmentionable thing which was hidden between his legs suddenly stood bolt upright and climbed inside her, exploding like a water pistol. I looked at her to see if she could read my thoughts, exploring the folds and crevices of her inflamed cunt meanwhile with bold, aggressive palps. Her eyes were tightly closed, her lips parted lasciviously; the lower part of her body began to squirm and twist, as if trying to free itself from a net. Gently I removed her hand from my cock, at the same time gingerly lifting a leg and slinging it over me. For a few moments I let my cock jump and quiver at the mouth of her crack, letting it slide from front to rear and back again, as if it were a flexible rubber toy. An idiotic refrain was repeating itself in my head: «What is this I hold over thy head— fine or super-fine?» I continued this little game for a tantalizing spell, now and then nosing the head of my prick in an inch or so, then running it up against the tip of her cunt and letting it nestle down in her dewy bush. All of a sudden she gave a gasp and with eyes wide open she swung full round; balanced on hands and knees, she strove frantically to catch my prick with her slimy trap. I put my two hands around her buttocks, the fingers doing a glissando along the inner edge of her swollen cunt, and opening it like you would a torn rubber ball, I placed my cock at the vulnerable point and waited for her to bear down. For a moment I thought she had suddenly changed her mind. Her head, which had been hanging loosely, the eyes helplessly following the frantic movements of her cunt, now thrust itself up taut, the gaze suddenly shifted to some point above my head. An expression of utter selfish pleasure filled the full, roving orbs, and as she began to rotate her ass, my prick only half inside her, she began to chew her underlip. With that I slid a trifle lower and pulling her down with all my force I jabbed it in up to the hilt, so deep that she gave a groan and her head fell forward on the pillow. At this moment, when I could have taken a carrot and shoved it around inside her for all the difference it would have made, there came a loud knock at the door. We were both so startled that our hearts almost stopped beating. As usual, she recovered first. Tearing herself from me, she ran to the door.
«Who's there?» she asked.
«It's only me,» came the timid, quaking voice which I recognized immediately.
«Oh, it's you! Why didn't you say so? What is it?»
«I only wanted to know,» came the faint, dragging voice with a slowness which was exasperating, «if Henry was there?»
«Yes, of course he's here,» snapped Maude, pulling herself together. «Oh, Melanie,» she said, as if the latter were torturing her, «is that all you wanted to know? Couldn't you...?»
«There's a telephone call for Henry,» said poor old Melanie. And then even more slowly, as if she were just able to get that much more out of her system: «I... think... it's important.»
«All right,» I yelled, getting up from the couch and buttoning my fly, «I'll be right there!»
When I picked up the receiver I got quite a shock. It was Curley telephoning from Cockroach Hall. He couldn't tell me what it was, he said, but I was to get home as fast as I could.
«Don't talk that way,» I said, «tell me the truth. What's happened? Is it Mona?»
«Yes,» he said, «but she'll be all right in a little while.»
«She's not dead then?»
«No, but it was a close call. Hurry up...», and with that he hung up.
In the hall I ran into Melanie, her bosom half exposed, limping along with melancholy satisfaction. She gave me an understanding look, one of pity, envy and reproach combined.
«I wouldn't have disturbed you, you know»—her voice drawled painfully upward—«if they hadn't said it was important. Dear me,» and she started dragging her body towards the stairs, «there's so much to do. When you're young....»
I didn't wait to hear her out. I ran downstairs and almost into Maude's arms.
«What is it?» she asked solicitously. Then, since I didn't answer immediately, she added: «Did something happen.... to... to her?»
«Nothing serious, I hope,» said I, fumbling about for my coat and hat.
«Must you go right away? I mean....»
There was more than anxiety in Maude's voice; there was a hint of disappointment, a faint suggestion of disapproval.
«I didn't turn the light on,» she continued, moving towards the lamp as if to switch it on, «because I was afraid Melanie might come down with you.» She fussed a little with her bathrobe, as if to bring my mind back to the subject which was uppermost in her mind.
I suddenly realized that it was cruel to run off without a little show of tenderness.
«I've really got to run,» I said, dropping my hat and coat and moving swiftly to her side. «I hate to leave you now... like this,» and taking the hand which was about to light the lamp, I drew her to me and embraced her. She offered no resistance. On the contrary, she put her head back and offered her lips. In a moment my tongue was in her mouth and her body, limp and warm, was pressing convulsively against mine. («Hurry, hurry!» came Curley's words.) «I'll make it quick,» I said to myself, not caring now whether I made a rash move or not. I slipped my hand under her gown and plunged the fingers into her crotch. To my surprise she reached for my fly, opened it, and took out my prick. I backed her against the wall and let her place my prick against her cunt. She was all aflame now, conscious of every move she made, deliberate and imperious. She handled my prick as if it were here own private property.
It was awkward trying to get at it bolt upright. «Let's lie here,» she whispered, sinking to her knees I and dragging me down likewise.
«You'll catch cold,» I said, as she feverishly attempted to slide out of her things.
«I don't care,» she said, pulling my pants down and pulling me to her recklessly. «Oh God,» she groaned, chewing her lips again and squeezing my balls as I slowly inserted my prick. «Oh God, give it to me... put it all the way in!» and she gasped and groaned with pleasure.
Not wishing to jump up immediately and make a grab for my hat and coat I rested there on top of her, my prick still inside her and stiff as a ramrod. She was like a ripe fruit inside and the pulp seemed to be breathing. Soon I felt the two little flags fluttering; it was like a flower swaying, and the caress of the petals was tantalizing. They were moving uncontrollably, not with hard, convulsive jerks, but like silken flags responding to a breeze. And then it was as though she suddenly assumed the control: with the walls of her cunt she became a soft lemon squeezer inside, plucking and clutching at will, almost as if she had grown an invisible hand.
Lying absolutely still, I surrendered myself to these artful manipulations. («Hurry, hurry!» But I recalled very clearly now that he had said she wasn't dead.) I could always summon a taxi; a few minutes more or less wouldn't matter. Nobody would ever imagine that I had stayed behind for this.
(Take your pleasure while it lasts.... Take your pleasure....)
She knew now that I wouldn't run. She knew that she could draw it out as long as she pleased, especially lying quiet this way, fucking only with that inner cunt, fucking with a mindless mind.
I put my mouth to hers and began to fuck with my tongue. She could do the most amazing things with her tongue, things I had forgotten she knew. Sometimes she slid it into my throat as though to let me swallow it, then withdrew it tantalizingly to concentrate on the signalling below. Once I pulled my prick out all the way, to give it a breath of air, but she reached for it greedily and slipped it back in again, thrusting herself forward so that it would touch bottom. Now I drew it out just to the tip of her cunt and, like a dog with a moist nose, I sniffed at it with the tip of my pecker. This little game was too much for her; she began to come, a long drawn-out orgasm that exploded softly like a five-pointed star. I was in such a cold-blooded state of control that as she went through her spasms I poked it around inside her like a demon, up, sideways, down, in, out again, plunging, rearing, jabbing, snorting, and absolutely certain that I wouldn't come until I was damned good and ready.
And now she did something she had never done before. Moving with furious abandon, biting my lips, my throat, my ears, repeating like a crazed automaton, «Go on, give it to me, go on, give it, go on, Oh God, give it, give to me!» she went from one orgasm to another, pushing, thrusting, raising herself, rolling her ass, lifting her legs and twining them round my neck, groaning, grunting, squealing like a pig, and then suddenly, thoroughly exhausted, begging me to finish her off, begging me to shoot. «Shoot it, shoot it... I'll go mad.» Lying there like a sack of oats, panting, sweating, utterly helpless, utterly played out that she was, I slowly and deliberately rammed my cock back and forth, and when I had enjoyed the chopped sirloin, the mashed potatoes, the gravy and all the spices, I shot a wad into the mouth of her womb that jolted her like an electric charge.
In the subway I tried to prepare myself for the ordeal ahead. Somehow I felt certain that Mona was not in danger. To tell the truth, the news was not altogether a shock; I had been expecting an outburst of some sort for weeks. A woman can't go on pretending that she is indifferent when her whole future is in jeopardy. Particularly a woman who feels guilty. While I didn't doubt that she had made an effort to do something desperate, I knew also that her instincts would prevent her from accomplishing her end. “What I feared more than anything was that she might have bungled the job. My curiosity was aroused. What had she done? How had she gone about it? Had she planned it knowing that Curley would come to the rescue? I hoped, in some strange, perverted way, that her story would sound convincing; I didn't want to hear some preposterous, outlandish tale which in my unsettled condition would cause me to burst out into hysterical laughter. I wanted to be able to listen with a straight face— to look sorrowful and sympathetic because I felt sorrowful and sympathetic. Drama always affected me strangely, always aroused the sense of the ridiculous, especially when motivated by love. Perhaps that was why, in moments of desperation, I could always laugh at myself. The moment I made the decision to act I became another person—the actor. And of course I always overplayed the part. I suppose that at bottom, this queer behavior was based on an incurable dislike for deception. Even though it meant saving my own skin, I hated to take people in. To break down a woman's resistance, to make her love you, to awaken her jealousy, to win her back—it went against the grain to accomplish these things by even the unconscious use of legitimate methods. There was no triumph or satisfaction in it for me unless the woman surrendered voluntarily. I was always a bad suitor. I became discouraged easily, not because I doubted my own powers but because I distrusted them. I wanted the woman to come to me. I wanted her to make the advances. No danger of her becoming too bold! The more recklessly she gave herself the more I admired her. I hated virgins and shrinking violets. La femme fatale!—that was my ideal.
How we hate to admit that we would like nothing better than to be the slave! Slave and master at the same time! For even in love the slave is always the master in disguise. The man who must conquer the woman, subjugate her, bend her to his will, form her according to his desires—is he not the slave of his slave? How easy it is, in this relationship, for the woman to upset the balance of power! The mere threat of self-dependence, on the woman's part, and the gallant despot is seized with vertigo. But if they are able to throw themselves at one another recklessly, concealing nothing, surrendering all, if they admit to one another their interdependence, do they not enjoy a great and unsuspected freedom? The man who admits to himself that he is a coward has made a step towards conquering his fear; but the man who frankly admits it to every one, who asks that you recognize it in him and make allowance for it in dealing with him. is on the way to becoming a hero. Such a man is often surprised, when the crucial test comes, to find that he knows no fear. Having lost the fear of regarding himself as a coward he is one no longer: only the demonstration is needed to prove the metamorphosis. It is the same in love. The man who admits not only to himself but to his fellowmen, and even to the woman he adores, that he can be twisted around a woman's finger, that he is helpless where the other sex is concerned, usually discovers that he is the more powerful of the two. Nothing breaks a woman, down more quickly than complete surrender. A woman is prepared to resist, to be laid siege to: she has been trained to behave that way. When she meets no resistance she falls headlong into the trap. To be able to give oneself wholly and completely is the greatest luxury that life affords. Real love only begins at this point of dissolution. The personal life is altogether based on dependence, mutual dependence. Society is the aggregate of persons all interdependent. There is another richer life beyond the pale of society, beyond the personal, but there is no knowing it, no attainment possible, without first traversing the heights and depths of the personal jungle. To become the great lover, the magnetiser and catalyzer, the blinding focus and inspiration of the world, one has to first experience the profound wisdom of being an utter fool. The man whose greatness of heart leads him to folly and ruin is to a woman irresistible. To the woman who loves, that is to say. As to those who ask merely to be loved, who seek only their own reflection in the mirror, no love however great, will ever satisfy them. In a world so hungry for love it is no wonder that men and women are blinded by the glamour and glitter of their own reflected egos. No wonder that the revolver shot is the last summons. No wonder that the grinding wheels of the subway express, though they cut the body to pieces, fail to precipitate the elixir of love. In the egocentric prism the helpless victim is walled in by the very light which he refracts. The ego dies in its own glass cage...
My thoughts were running crab-wise. Melanie's image popped up suddenly. She was always there, like a fleshy tumor. Something bestial and angelic about her. Always limping along, dragging her words, droning, drooling, her enormous melancholy eyes hanging like hot coals in their sockets. She was one of those beautiful hypochondriacs who, in becoming unsexed, take on the mysterious sensual qualities of the creatures which fill the Apocalyptic menagerie of William Blake. She was extremely absent-minded, not about the usual trivialities of routine life, but about her body. It was not at all unusual for her to roam about the house, doing the chores which never ended, with her full milk-white teats exposed. Maude was always berating her, always furious about Melanie's indecencies, as she called them. But Melanie was as innocent as an insane otter. And if the word otter seems odd it is because it is so appropriate. With Melanie all sorts of absurd images always leaped into my mind. She was only «mildly» insane, so to speak. The more her mental faculties dribbled away the more obsessive her body became. Her mind had sunk down into the flesh and, if she was awkward and doddering in her movements, it was because she was thinking with this fleshy body and not her brain. Whatever sex there was in her seemed to have become distributed throughout the body; it wasn't localized any more, neither between her legs nor elsewhere. She had no sense of shame. The hair on her cunt, if she happened to expose it at the breakfast table while serving us, was undifferentiated from her toe nails or her bellybutton. I am sure that had I ever absent-mindedly touched her cunt, while reaching for the coffee-pot, she would have reacted no differently than if I had touched her arm. Often, when I was taking a bath, she would open the door unconcernedly and hang the towels on the rack over the tub, excusing herself in a weak, self-effacing way, but never making the slightest attempt to avert her eyes. Sometimes, on such occasions, she would stand and talk to me a few moments—about her pets or her bunions or the menu for the morrow—looking at me with absolute candor, never in the least embarrassed. Though she was old and had white hair her flesh was alive, almost revoltingly alive for one her age. Naturally now and then I got an erection lying there in the tub with her looking on unabashed and talking utter gibberish. Once or twice Maude had come upon us unawares. She was horrified, of course. «You must be crazy,» she said to Melanie. «Oh dear,» the latter replied, «what a fuss you make! I'm sure Henry doesn't mind,» and she would smile that melancholy, wistful smile of the hypochondriac. Then she would shuffle off to her room which Maude had selected for her to live in. Wherever we lived Melanie's room was always exactly the same. It was a room where Dementia was caged and imprisoned. Always the parrot in its cage, always a mangy poodle, always the same daguerreotypes, always the sewing machine, always the brass bedstead and the old-fashioned trunk. A disorderly room which to Melanie seemed like Paradise. A room filled with shrill barks, with squawks punctuated by caressing murmurs, coaxings, cooings, jumbled phrases, squeals of affection. Sometimes, in passing the open door, I would catch her sitting on the bed clad only in her chemise, the parrot perched on her crooked hand, the dog nibbling at the bait between her legs. «Hello,» she would say, looking up at me with blank, bland innocence. «It's a beautiful day to-day, isn't it?» And perhaps she would push the dog away, not because of shame or embarrassment, but because he was tickling her with his diabolically cunning little moist tongue.
Sometimes I stole into her room on the quiet, just to snoop around. I was curious about Melanie, about the letters she received, the books she read, and so on. Nothing was hidden away in her room. Neither was anything ever fully consumed. There was always a little water in the saucer under the bed, always some half-nibbled crackers lying on the trunk or a piece of cake which she had bitten into and forgotten to finish. Sometimes an open book lay on the bed, the page held open by a torn slipper. Bulwer-Lytton was one of her authors, apparently, also Rider Haggard. She seemed to be interested in magic, in the black art more particularly. There was a pamphlet about Mesmerism which betrayed evidences of having been well thumbed. The most amazing discovery, tucked away in one of the bureau drawers, was of a rubber instrument which had only one vise, unless Melanie in her cracked way had intended it for some wholly innocent visage. Whether Melanie sometimes whiled away a pleasant hour with this object, as did the nuns of old, or whether she had bought it in a junk shop and hidden it away for some unsuspected use some time or other in the course of her never-ending life, was a mystery to me. It was not difficult for me to picture her lying on the filthy quilt clad in her torn chemise, poking this thing in and out of her twat in absent-minded glee. I could even picture the dog licking the juice that slowly trickled between her legs. And the parrot squawking insanely, perhaps repeating some idiotic phrase which Melanie had taught it, such as, «Ever so easy, dearie!» or «Get a move on now, get a move on!»
A queer one, Melanie, and even though her wits had flown, she understood in a primitive, almost cannibalistic way that sex was everywhere, like food and water and sleep and bunions. It used to exasperate me that Maude kept up such unnecessary pretences when Melanie was around. If we lay on the couch after dinner, to enjoy a quiet little fuck in the dark, Maude would suddenly jump up and switch on a soft light—so that Melanie wouldn't suspect what we were up to, or that she wouldn't intrude absent-mindedly to hand us a letter which she had forgotten to give us at breakfast. I used to enjoy the thought of Melanie breaking in on us (say just as Maude is climbing over me), breaking in on us to hand me a letter, and me taking the letter with a smile and a thank you, and Melanie standing there a moment to say some little nothing about the hot water being too hot or asking Maude if she wanted eggs for the morning or some head cheese. It would have given me a great kick to pull off a stunt like that on Maude. But Maude could never admit to herself that Melanie knew we had intercourse together. Regarding her either as an idiot or wholly daft, she had made herself believe that people like Melanie never thought of sex. Her step-father had had no sex life with this demented creature, that she was certain of. She wouldn't go into it, why she was so certain, but she was positive of it, and the way she dismissed the subject indicated all too clearly that she thought a crime had been done her step-father. One would almost think, to follow her, that Melanie had deliberately addled her pate in order to deprive the step-father of his sexual due.
Melanie had a soft spot in her heart for me, always took my part when I quarreled with Maude, and never once that I can remember made any attempt to reproach me for my flagrant misbehavior. It was that way from the very beginning. Maude used to try to keep her out of sight, in the early days. Melanie was something she was deeply ashamed of—a walking reminder, it would seem, of the family taint. Melanie seemed not to notice the difference between good and bad people; she had only one guiding principle, an immediate response to kindness. And so, when she discovered that I was not trying to run away from her as soon as she opened her trap, when she found that I could listen to her prattle and not become distraught, like Maude, when she found that I enjoyed food and beer and wine, especially cheeses and bolognas, she was willing to be my slave. I held the most wonderful moronic conversations with her some times when Maude was absent—usually in the kitchen with a bottle of beer between us and perhaps a little liverwurst and a bit of Liederkranz on the side. Giving her free rein as I would on such occasions, I caught remarkable glimpses of her not uninteresting past. «They» seemed to have hailed from some indolent, semi-constipated region where the Wurzburger flows. The women were always getting caught and the men were always going to jail for some trivial reason. It was a sort of Sunday School picnic atmosphere with kegs of beer, pumpernickel sandwiches, taffeta petticoats, lace drawers” and stray goats fucking contentedly on the greensward. Sometimes I had a mind to ask her if she had ever let herself be fucked by a Shetland pony. If Melanie thought you sincerely wanted to know, she would answer a question like that without the least to do. You could pass from a question like that to a query about the communion service without modulating. There was no censor standing on her subliminal threshold; messengers came and went without the least formality.
It was wonderful to see how she took up the little Jap who was our star boarder. Tori Takekuchi was his name, and a delightful, gracious, princely little chap he was. He had taken the situation in at a glance, despite his inadequate grasp of the language. Of course, being a Jap, it was easy for him to smile and beam at Melanie when she posted herself at his door-sill and prattled like a cracked nannygoat. He smiled the same way at us, even when we informed him of a grave catastrophe. I think he would have given the same smile had I told him that I was going to die in a few minutes. Of course Melanie knew that Orientals smile in this inscrutable way, but she thought Mr. T's smile—that was how she called him always, «Mr. T.»—was particularly engaging. She thought he was like a doll. So clean and tidy too! Never left a crumb of dirt behind him.
When we got more intimate, and I must say that we all became very intimate before a month or two was out, Mr. T. began bringing girls to his room. He had, to be sure, discreetly taken me aside one day and asked if he might be permitted to bring a young lady home occasionally, offering the flimsy excuse (with a broad grin) that he had business to transact. I used his excuse to obtain Maude's consent. I pretended that the little bugger was so unattractive that it couldn't possibly be anything but business which would bring a pretty American girl to his room. Maude consented reluctantly, torn between the desire to keep up appearances with the neighbors and the fear of losing a generous boarder whose money we needed.
I wasn't home when the first intruder stepped across the threshold, but I heard about it the next day—heard that she was «terribly cute». It was Melanie who spilled the beans. She was so glad that he had found a little friend—like himself.
«But she's not a friend,» Maude put in ceremoniously.
«Oh well,» drawled Melanie, «maybe it's just business... but she was awfully cute. He has to have a girl, just like any one else.»
A few weeks later Mr. T. had switched to another girl. This one wasn't so «cute». She was a good head taller than him, built like a panther, and quite obviously not there to talk business.
I congratulated him the next morning at table, asking him point blank where he had picked up such a blazing beauty.
«Dance hall,» said Mr. T.. baring his yellow fangs most amiably, then bursting into a girlish giggle.
«Very intelligent, yes?» I queried, just to keep the ball rolling.
«Oh yes, her very intelligent, her very good girl.»
«Look out she doesn't give you a dose of clap,» says I, calmly swallowing my coffee.
I thought Maude would fall off the chair. How could I talk that way to Mr. T.? It was insulting as well as disgusting, she wanted me to know.
Mr. T. looked puzzled. He hadn't yet learned the word clap. He was smiling, of course, and why shouldn't he? He didn't give a fuck what we said so long as we allowed him to do as he pleased.
Out of politeness I volunteered a definition. Headache, I explained.
He laughed uproariously at this. Very good joke. Yes, he understood. He understood nothing, the little prick, but it was polite to let him think he understood. Then I smiled too, a banjo smile, which made Mr. T. giggle some more, rinse his fingers in the water tumbler, belch and throw his napkin on the floor.
I must confess that he had good taste, Mr. T. No doubt he was generous with his money. They made my mouth water, some of them. To him I don't think their beauty meant very much; he probably was more interested in their weight, the texture of their skin, and above all, in their cleanliness. He had all kinds—red heads, blondes, brunettes, short, tall, plump, lithe ones—quite as if he had drawn them from a grab bag. He was buying cunt—and that was all there was to it. At the same time he was learning a little more English. («How you say this...?» «What that called?» «You like bon-bons, yes?») He was good at making gifts—it was an art with him. I often thought, when I saw him taking a girl to his room, heard him giggle and stammer in that fuckee-wuckee way of the Japs, how much better off the girls were to have got hold of Mr. T. than some young American college boy out on a spree. I felt sure, too, that Mr. T. always got his money's worth. («You turn over, please.» «You suck now, yes?») Compared to the artists in his own country, these dumb American bitches must have cut a sorrowful figure in Mr. T.'s eyes. I remembered O'Mara's description of his visits to the bordels in Japan. They were like opium dreams, to hear him tell. The emphasis was placed on the preliminaries, apparently. There was music, incense, baths, massages, caresses, a full orchestration of seduction and enchantment, making the final consummation a thing of unbearable ecstasy. «Just like dolls,» O'Mara would say. «And so gentle, so loving. They bewitch you.» And then he would go into raptures about the tricks they had up their sleeves. They seemed to have a manual of fuck which began where ours left off. And all this in an ambiance of delicacy, as though fucking was the spiritual art, the vestibule to heaven.
Mr. T. had to make the most of it in his furnished room, fortunate indeed if he could find a piece of punk to burn. Whether he enjoyed himself or not was hard to tell, because to all questions he invariably answered: «Very good.» Now and then, coming in late, I caught him going to the bath room after one of his sessions with an American cunt. He always went to the bathroom in straw slippers and kimono, a short kimono which just about covered his prick. Maude thought it was shocking, his running around in that rig, but Melanie thought it suited him to a T. «They all run around like that,» she said, knowing not a damned thing about it, but always ready to take the other person's side.
«Good time, Mr. T.?» I would smile.
«Very good, very good,» and then a giggle. Perhaps he would scratch his balls while baring his teeth in a grin. «Water hot, yes?» In the bathroom he would go through his endless ablutions.
If he surmised that Maude were asleep he would sometimes beckon with his finger, signifying that he had something to show me. I would follow him to his room.
«I come in, yes?» he would say, frightening the girl out of her wits. «This Mr. Miller, my friend of mine... this Miss Slith.» They were always Smith, Brown or Jones, I noticed. He probably never bothered to ask their real names .
Some of the girls were of surprising calibre, I must say. «Cute, isn't he?» they would often say. Whereupon Mr. T. would go over to the girl, as you would approach a figure in a shop window, and lift her dress. «Her very beautiful, yes?» And he'd proceed to inspect her twat as if he had bought stock in it.
«Here, you little devil, you can't do that!» the girl would say.
«You go now, yes?» That was Mr. T's way of dispatching them. It sounded crude as hell, coming from a little yellow belly. But Mr. T. was unaware of being indelicate. He had given her a good fuck, he had licked her ass, he had paid her in honest coin and given her a little gift into the bargain... what more, for Christ's sake? «You go now, yes?» And he would half close his eyes, look utterly wooden and disinterested, leaving not the least doubt in the girl's mind that the speedier she left the healthier it would be for her.
«Next time you try! Her very small..» Here he would grin, making a little gesture with his fingers to show me how smooth it went. «Japanese girl sometimes very big. This country big girl small. Very good.» He would lick his chops after a remark like this. Then, as if to make the most of the occasion, he would take a tooth-pick and, while picking his teeth, he would look for the words he had written down in his little note book. «This mean what? He would show me a word like «precarious» or «unearthly.» «Now I teach you Japanese word — OHIO! That mean Good Morning!» A broad grin. Still picking his teeth, or else examining his toes.
«Japanese very simple. All words pronounce same way,» and he would rattle off a string of words, giggling as he did so, probably because what they meant were «shit-heel,» «white bugger,» «foreign fool,» and so on. I didn't give a shit what the words meant, since I had no intention of making a serious study of Japanese. What I was more interested in was his technique of picking up white women. To hear him, it was all very simple. Of course, many of the girls were recommended from one Jap to another. And many of these same girls must have made a specialty of Japs, knowing that they were clean and generous. Hump for the Japs, that's what they were, and a profitable business it was. There was class to the Japs. They had cars of their own, dressed well, ate in good restaurants, and so on. Now a Chink was different. Chinks were white-slavers. But a Jap you could trust. And so on. I could follow their reasoning perfectly. What they appreciated most were the little gifts the Japs made them. Americans never thought of giving gifts, not usually. A guy had to be a sap to piss away his money on a gift for a whore.
I don't know why my mind reverted to the amiable Mr. T. It's a devil of a long ride to the Bronx, and if you let your mind go you can write a book between Borough Hall and Tremont. Besides, despite the exhaustive bout with Maude, one of those slow, creepy erections was coming on. It's a commonplace observation but true just the same—the more you fuck, the more you want to fuck, and the better you do fuck! When you overdo it your cock seems to get more flexible; it hangs limp, but on the alert, as it were. You only have to brush your hand over your fly and it responds. For days you can walk around with a rubber truncheon dangling between your legs. Women seem to sense it, too.
Now and then I tried to fix my mind on Mona, to set my face in plastic sorrow, but it wouldn't last. I felt too damned good, too relaxed, too carefree. Horrible as it sounds, I thought more of the fuck I anticipated pulling off once I soothed her down. I smelled my fingers to make sure I had scoured them properly. In doing so a rather comical image of Maude assailed me. I had left her lying on the floor, exhausted, and had rushed to the bathroom to tidy myself up. As I was scrubbing my cock she opens the door. Wants to take a douche immediately always fearful of getting caught. I tell her to go ahead, not to mind me. She peels off her things, fastens the hose to the gas jet, and lies on the bath mat, her legs running up the wall.
«Can I help you?» says I, drying my cock and sprinkling some of her excellent sachet powder over it.
«Do you mind?» says she, wiggling her ass so that her legs will stand up straighter.
«Open it up a bit,» I urge, taking the nozzle in readiness to insert it.
She did as I told her, pulling her gash open with all her fingers. I bent over and examined it leisurely. It was a dark, liverish color and the lips were rather exaggerated. I took them, between my fingers and rubbed them gently together, like you would two velvety petals. She looked so helpless lying with her ass propped against the wall and her legs sticking up straight, like the hands of a compass, that I had to chuckle.
«Please don't fool now,» she begged, as if the delay of a few seconds might mean an abortion. «I thought you were in such a hurry.»
«I am,» I replied, «but Jesus, when I look at this thing I get horny again.»
I inserted the nozzle. The water began running out of her, over the floor. I threw some towels down to soak it up. When she stood up I took the soap and wash rag and scrubbed her cunt for her. I soaped her well, inside and out—a delicious tactile sensation which was mutual.
It felt silkier than ever now, her cunt, and I whooshed my fingers in and out, like you'd strum a banjo. I had one of those half-hearted, swollen erections which makes a cock look even more murderous than when full blown. It was hanging out of my fly, brushing her thigh. She was still naked. I began to dry her off. To do so comfortably I sat on the edge of the tub, my cock gradually stiffening and making spasmodic leaps at her. As I pulled her close, to dry her flanks, she looked down at it with a hungry, despairing look, fascinated and yet half-ashamed of herself for acting the glutton. Finally she could stand it no longer. She got to her knees impulsively and took it in her mouth. I ran my fingers through her hair, caressed the shell of her ears, the nape of her neck, caught her teats and massaged them gently, lingering over the nipples until they stood out taut. She had unfastened her mouth and was licking it now as if it were a stick of candy. «Listen,» said I, murmuring the words in her ear, «we won't go through it again but just let me put it in a few moments and then I'll go. It's too good to stop all of a sudden. I won't come, I promise...» She looked at me imploringly, as if to say «Can I believe you? Yes, I do want it. Yes, yes, only don't knock me up, will you?»
I pulled her to her feet, turned her around like a dummy, placed her hands on the edge of the tub, and raised her bum just a trifle. «Let's do it this way for a change,» I murmured, not inserting my cock immediately, but rubbing it up and down her crack from behind.
«You won't come, will you?» she begged, craning her neck around and giving me a wild, imploring look through the mirror over the washstand. «I'm wide open...»
That «wide open» brought out all the lust in me. «You bloody bitch,» says I to myself, «that's just what I want. I'm going to piss in your palatial womb!» And with that I let it slip in slowly, little by little, moving it from right to left, grazing the pockets and lining of her wide-open cunt until I felt the mouth of her womb; there I wedged it good and solid, soldering it to her as if I intended to leave it in for good. «Oh, oh!» she groaned. «Don't move, please.... just hold it!» I held it all right, even when that rear end began revolving like a pin-wheel.
«Can you still hold it?» she murmured huskily, trying again to look round and catching her reflection in the mirror.
«I can hold it,» I said, not making the slightest movement, knowing that that would encourage her to unleash all her tricks.
«It feels wonderful,» she said, her head falling limp, as if it had become unhinged. «You're bigger now, do you know it? It is tight enough for you? I'm terribly opened up.»
«It's all right,» I said. «It fits marvelously. Listen, don't move any more... just clutch it... you know how....»
She tried but somehow it wouldn't perform, her little lemon squeezer. I withdrew abruptly, without warning. «Let's lie down... here,» I said, pulling her away and placing a dry towel under her. My cock was glistening with juice and hard as a pole. It hardly seemed to be a prick any more; it was like an instrument I had attached, an erection made flesh. She lay prone, looking at it with terror and joy, wondering what next it might think to do— yes, quite as if it were deciding things and not me or her.
«It's cruel of me to keep you,» she said, as I socked it in swiftly. The suction created a smacking sound, like wet farts.
«Jesus, now I'm going to fuck you good and proper. Don't worry, I won't come... I haven't got a drop left. Move all you want... jerk it up and down... that's it, rub it around, go on, do it... fuck your guts out!»
«Shhh!» she whispered, putting her hand to my mouth. I bent forward and bit into her neck, long and deep; I bit her ears, her lips. I pulled out again, for one tantalizing second, and bit the hair over her cunt, caught the two little lips up and slid them between my teeth.
«Put it in, put it in!» she begged, her lips slavering, her hand reaching for my prick and placing it back in again. «Oh God, I'm going to come... I can't hold it any more. Oh, oh....» and she went into a spasm, slapping it up against me with such fury, such abandon, that she looked like a crazed animal. I pulled out without coming, my prick shiny, glistening, straight as a ramrod. Slowly she rose to her feet. Insisted on washing it for me, patted it admiringly, tenderly, as if it had been found tried and true. «You must run,» she said, holding my prick between her two hands, the towel wrapped around it. And then, dropping the towel and looking away—- «I hope she's all right. Tell her so, will you?»
Yes, I had to smile thinking of this last minute scene. «Tell her so...» That extra fuck had softened her up. I thought of a book I had read which told of rather strange experiments with carnivorous animals—lions, tigers, panthers. Seems that when, these ferocious beasts were kept well-fed— over-fed, indeed—one could put gentle creatures in the same cage with them and they would never molest them. The lion attacked only out of hunger. He was not perpetually murderous. That was the gist of it....
And Maude... Having satisfied herself to her heart's content, she had probably realized for the first time that it was useless to harbor a grudge against the other woman. If, she may have told herself, if it were possible to be fucked like that whenever she wished, it wouldn't matter what claims the other one had on me. Perhaps it entered her mind for the first time that possession is nothing if you can't surrender yourself. Perhaps she even went so far as to think that it might be better this way —having me protect her and fuck her and not having to get angry with me because of jealous fears. If the other one could hold on to me, if the other one could keep me from running around with every little slut that came across my path, if together they could share me, tacitly of course and without embarrassment and confusion, perhaps after all it might be better than the old arrangement. Yes, to be fucked that way, fucked without fear of being betrayed, to be fucking your own husband who is now your friend (and perhaps a lover again), to be taking what you want of him, calling him when you need him, sharing a warm, passionate secret with him, reliving the old fucks, learning new ones, stealing and yet not stealing, but giving oneself with pleasure and abandon, growing younger again, losing nothing except a conventional tie... yes, it might be ever so much better.
I'm sure something of this sort had been running through her head, had spread its aureole about her. I could see her, in my mind's eye, languorously brushing her hair, feeling her breasts, examining the marks of my teeth on her neck, hoping Melanie would not notice them but not caring too deeply whether she did or not. Not caring greatly any more whether Melanie overheard things or not. Asking herself wistfully perhaps how it had ever come about that she had lost me. Knowing now that if she had to live her life all over again she would never act as she had, never worry about useless things. So foolish to worry about what the other woman may be doing! What matter if a man did let his feet stray now and then? She had locked herself up, put a cage around herself; she had pretended she had no desires, pretended she dare not fuck—because we weren't man and wife any longer. What a terrible humiliation! Wanting it dreadfully, longing for it, almost begging for it like a dog—and there it was all the time, waiting for her. Who cared whether it was right or not? Wasn't this wonderful stolen hour better than anything she had ever known? Guilt? She had never felt less guilty in her life. Even if the «other one» had died meanwhile she couldn't feel bad about it.
I was so certain of what had been going on in her mind that I made a mental note to ask her about it next time we met. Of course next time she might be her old self again—that was only too possible with Maude. Besides, it wouldn't do to let her see that I was too interested—that might only stir up the poison. The thing to do would be to keep it on an impersonal level. No sense in letting her relapse into her old ways. Just walk in with a cheery greeting, ask a few questions, send the kid out to play, move in close, quietly, firmly take out my prick and put it in her hand. Make sure the room was not too bright. No nonsense! Just walk up to her and, while asking how things are going, slip a hand up her dress and start the juice flowing.
That extra last minute fuck had done wonders for me too. Always, when one digs down into the reservoir, when one summons the last ounce, so to speak, one is amazed to discover that there is a boundless source of energy to be drawn on. It had happened to me before, but I had never given it serious attention. Staying up all night and going to work without sleep had a similar effect upon me; or the converse, staying in bed long past the period of recuperation, forcing myself to rest when I no longer needed rest. To break a habit, establish a new rhythm—simple devices, long known to the ancients. It never failed. Break down the old pattern, the worn-out connections, and the spirit breaks loose, establishes new polarities, creates new tensions, bequeaths new vitality.
Yes, I observed with the keenest pleasure now how my mind was sparking, how it radiated in every direction. This was the sort of ebullience and elan I prayed for when I felt the desire to write. I used to sit down and wait for this to happen. But it never did happen—not this way. It happened afterwards, sometimes, when I had left the machine and gone for a walk. Yes, suddenly it would come on, like an attack, pellmell, from every direction, a veritable inundation, an avalanche—and there I was, helpless, miles away from the typewriter, not a piece of paper in my pocket. Sometimes I would start for the house on the trot, not running too fast because then it would peter out, but easy like, just as in fucking—when you tell yourself to take it easy, don't think about it, that's it, in and out, cool detached, trying to pretend to yourself that it's your prick that's fucking and not you. Exactly the same procedure. Jog along, steady, hold it, don't think about the typewriter or how far it is to the house, just easy, steady like, that's it...
Rehearsing these odd moments of inspiration I suddenly recalled a moment when I was on my way to the burlesk theatre, «The Gayety», at Lorimer Street and Broadway. (I was riding the elevated line.) Just about two stations before my destination the attack came on. This was a very important attack because for the first time in my life I was cognizant of the fact that it was what is called «a flood of inspiration.» I knew then, in the space of a few moments, that something was happening to me which apparently did not happen to everyone. It had come without warning, for no reason that I could possibly think of. Perhaps just because my mind had become a perfect blank, because I had sunk back, deep into myself, content to drift. I recall vividly how the exterior world brightened suddenly, how like a flash the mechanism of my brain began to function with awesome smoothness and rapidity, thoughts telescoping one another, images succeeding and obliterating one another, in their frantic desire to register themselves. That Broadway which I hated so, especially from the elevated line (affording me a «superior» view, a downward look upon life, people, buildings, activities), this Broadway had suddenly undergone a metamorphosis. It wasn't that it became ideal or beautiful or unreal; on the contrary, it became terribly real, terribly vivid. But it had acquired a new orientation; it was situated in the heart of the world, and this world which I now seemed able to take in with one grasp had meaning. Before, Broadway had stuck out like an eye-sore, all ugliness and confusion; now it fell back into its proper place, an integral part of the world, neither good nor bad, neither ugly nor beautiful: it simply belonged. It was there like a rusty nail in a log thrown up on a deserted beach during a wintry storm. I can't express it better. You walk along the beach, the air is tangy, your spirits are high, you think clearly—not always brilliantly—but clearly. Then the log, a phenomenal part of the substantial world: it lies there, full of experience, full of mystery. Some man hammered that nail in somewhere, sometime, somehow. There was a reason for doing it. He was making a ship for other men to sail in. Building ships was his life-work—and his own destiny as well as the destiny of his children went into every stroke of the hammer. Now the log lies there, and the nail is rusty, but Christ, it's more than just a rusty nail—or else everything is crazy and meaningless... That's how it was with Broadway. Hams in the window, and the dreary windows of the glaziers, with lumps of putty on the counter making greasy stains in the coarse paper. Strange how man evolves through the ages—from pithecanthropus erectus to a gray-faced glazier handling a brittle substance called glass which for millions of years nobody, not even the magicians of old, had even dreamed of. I could see the street slowly sinking, fading out in time: time which passes like lead or evaporates like steam. The buildings collapsed; the boards, bricks, mortar, glass, nails, hams, putty, paper, everything receded into the great laboratory. A new race of men walking the earth (over this very same ground), knowing nothing of our existence, not caring about the past nor able to comprehend it, even were it possible to revive it. In the crevices of the earth bugs crawling about, as they had for billions of years: clinging stubbornly to their pattern, contributing nothing to evolution, defying it seemingly. They had witnessed, in their generation, every race of man tread the earth—and they had survived all the cataclysms, all the historical smash-ups. Down in Mexico, certain crawling bugs were a delicacy to the palate. There were men, still alive and walking the earth, separated not by tremendous physical distances but by mental and spiritual chasms, who took ants and fried them, and, while they rolled their tongues around with satisfaction, music played and it was a different music from ours. And like that, over all the wide earth, in the same moment of time, such vastly different things were happening, not only on land but in the air and deep in the sea.
Then came Lorimer Street station. I got out automatically, but I was powerless to move towards the stairs. I was caught in the fiery flux, fixed there just as definitely as if I had been speared by a fisherman. All those currents I had let loose were swirling about me, engulfing me, sucking me down into the whirlpool. I had to stand there like that, transfixed, for possibly three or four minutes, thought it seemed much longer. People passed as in a dream. Another train pulled in and left. Then a man bumped into me, rushing towards the stairs, and I heard him excuse himself, but his voice came from far away. In jostling me he had swung me round just a little. Not that I was conscious of his rudeness, no... but suddenly I saw my image in the slot machine where the chewing gum was racked up. Of course it wasn't so, but I had the illusion of catching up with myself—as though I had caught the tail-end of the re-installation of my old self, the familiar everyday person looking out at me from behind my own eyes. It made me just a little jittery, as it would any one if, coming out of a reverie, he should suddenly see the tail of a comet streaking across the heavens, erasing itself as it passed across the retina. I stood there gazing at my own image, the seizure gone now but the after effect settling in. A more sober exaltation making itself felt. To be drunk! Christ, it seemed so feeble compared to this! (An after-glow, nothing more.) I was intoxicated now—but a moment ago I had been inspired. A moment ago I had known what it was to pass beyond joy. A moment ago I bad forgotten absolutely who I was: I had spread myself over the whole earth. Had it been more intense perhaps I would have passed over that thin line which separates the sane from the insane. I might have achieved depersonalization, drowned myself in the ocean of immensity. Slowly I made towards the stairs, descended, crossed the street, bought a ticket, and entered the theatre. The curtain was just going up. It opened on a world even more weird than the hallucinating one I had just eased out of. It was utterly unreal—utterly, utterly so. Even the music, so painfully familiar, seemed foreign to my ears. I could hardly differentiate between the living bodies cavorting before my eyes and the glitter and paste of the scenery; they seemed made of the same substance, a gray slag infused with a low voltage of the vital current. How mechanically they flung themselves about! How absolutely tinny were their voices! I looked around, looked up at the tiers of boxes, the plush cords slung between the brass posts, the puppets seated there one above another, all gazing towards the stage, all expressionless, all made of one substance: clay, common clay. It was a shadow world, awesomely fixed. All glued together—scenery, spectators, performers, curtain, music, smoke—in a dreary, meaningless pall. Of a sudden I became itchy, so itchy that it was like a thousand fleas biting me at once. I wanted to yell. I wanted to yell something that would shock them out of this awesome trance. (Shit! Hot shit! And every one would jump to his feet, the curtain would come tumbling down, the usher would grab me by the collar and give me the bum's rush.) But I couldn't make a sound. My throat was like sandpaper. The itchiness passed and then I grew hot and feverish. Thought I would suffocate. Jesus, but I was bored. Bored as never before. I realized that nothing would happen. Nothing could happen, not even if I were to throw a bomb. They were dead, stinking dead, that's what. They were sitting in their own stinking shit, steaming in it.... I couldn't stand it another second. I bolted.
In the street everything appeared gray and normal again. A most depressing normality. People trundled along like spindled vegetables. They resembled the things they ate. And what they ate made shit. Nothing more. Phew!
In the light of that previous experience on the elevated train I realized that a new element was manifesting itself, one which had portentous significance. This element was awareness. I knew now what was happening to me, and in a measure I could control the explosion. Something lost, something gained. If there was no longer the same intensity as in that early «attack» neither was there the helplessness which had accompanied it. It was like being in an aeroplane racing through the clouds at phenomenal speed and, though unable to shut off the motor, discovering with joyous surprise that you could at any rate manage the controls.
Swung out of my accustomed orbit, I nevertheless had sufficient balance to observe my bearings. The way I now saw things was the way I would write about them one day. Immediately questions assailed me, like slings and darts from angry gods. Would I remember? Would I be able, on a sheet of paper, to exfoliate in all directions at once? Was it the purpose of art to stagger from fit to fit, leaving a bloody haemorrhage in one's wake? Was one merely to report the «dictation»—like a faithful chela obeying the telepathic behest of his Master? Did creation begin, as with the earth itself, in the fiery bubble of inchoate magma, or was it necessary that the crust first cool?
Rather frantically I excluded all but the question of remembrance. It was hopeless to think of reproducing a mental cloud-burst. I could merely try to retain certain definite clues, transform them into mnemonic touch-stones. To find the vein again was the all-important—not how much gold I could mine. My task was to develop a mnemonic index to my inspirational atlas. Even the hardiest adventurer scarcely deludes himself that he will be able to cover every square foot of earth on this mysterious globe. Indeed, the true adventurer must come to realize, long before he has come to the end of his wanderings, that there is something stupid about the mere accumulation of wonderful experiences.
I thought of Melanie whom normally, were I planning a book of my life, I would never have bothered to include. How had she managed to inject herself when ordinarily I scarcely gave her a thought? What was the significance of this intrusion? What had she to contribute? Two touchstones fell immediately into my lap. Melanie? Why yes, remember always «beauty» and «insanity.» And why should I remember beauty and insanity? Then there came to mind these words: «varieties of flesh.» This was followed by the most subtle divagations on the relation between flesh, beauty and insanity. What was beautiful in Melanie derived from her angelic nature; what was insane in her derived from the flesh. The fleshly and the angelic had parted ways, and Melanie, as inexplicably beautiful as a crumbling statue, was slowly expiring on the frontier. (There were hysterical types who also succeeded in isolating the flesh, giving it thereby a peculiar life of its own. But with them it was always possible to plug in the fuse, to restore the current, to put the mind in control again. They kept a shutter in the mind which, like the asbestos curtain in the theatre, could be unrolled in case of fire or as indication that another act had come to an end.) Melanie was like some strange naked creature, half-human, half-divine, whose whole time was spent in vainly trying to climb from the orchestra pit to the stage. In her case it made little difference whether the show was on or off, whether it was a rehearsal, an entr'acte, or a silent empty house. She clambered about with the repulsive seductiveness of the insane in their nakedness. The angels may wear tiaras or brown derbies, according to their whims, if we are to believe the vagaries of certain visionaries, but they have never been described as insane. Neither has their nakedness ever been a provocation to lust. But Melanie could be as ridiculous as a Swedenborgian angel and as provocative as a ewe in heat to the sight of a lonely shepherd. Her white hair served only to enhance the rippling allure of her flesh; her eyes were jet black, her bosom firm and full, her haunch like a magnetic field. But the more one reflected on her beauty the more obscene her insanity appeared. She gave the illusion of moving about naked, of inviting you to finger her so that she might laugh in that low, eerie way which the demented have of registering their unpredictable reactions. She haunted me like a danger signal glimpsed from a train window at night when one suddenly wonders if the engineer is awake or asleep. Just as one wonders in such moments, too paralyzed with fear to move or speak, what the precise nature of the catastrophe will be, so in thinking of Melanie's insane beauty I often gave myself up to ecstatic dreams of flesh, the varieties I had known and explored and the varieties yet to be discovered. To embark unrestrainedly on carnal adventures awakens the sense of danger. I had experienced more than once the terror and the fascination which the pervert knows when in the crowded subway he submits to the compulsion of stroking a tempting ass or squeezing the seductive teat which lies within reach of his fingers.
The element of awareness acted not only as a partial control, enabling me to move with imaginative feet from one escalator to another, but it served a more important purpose still—it stimulated the desire to commence the work of creation. That Melanie whom I had heretofore ignored, whom I had regarded as a mere cipher in the complicated sum of experiences, could prove such a rich vein, opened my eyes. It was not Melanie at all, as a matter of fact, but those word-clots («beauty,» «insanity,» «varieties of flesh») which I felt the need to explore and clothe in sumptuous style. Even if it took years to do so, I would remember this train of fabulation, capture its secret, expose it on paper. How many hundred women had I pursued, followed like a lost dog, in order to study some mysterious trait—a pair of eyes set far apart, a head hewn out of quartz, a haunch that seemed to live its own life, a voice as melodious as the warble of a bird, a cataract of hair falling like spun-glass, a torso invested with the flexibility of rubber.... Whenever the beauty of the female becomes irresistible it is traceable to a single quality. This quality, often a physical defect, can assume such unreal proportions that in the mind of the possessor her staggering beauty is nil. The excessively attractive bust can become a double-headed maggot that bores into the brain and becomes a mysterious watery tumor; the tempting overfull lips can grow in the depths of the skull like a double vagina, bringing on that most difficult of all diseases to cure: melancholia. (There are beautiful women who almost never stand before the mirror nude, women who, when they think of the magnetic power which the body wields, become terrified and shrink into themselves, fearful that even the odor which they give off will betray them. There are others who, standing before the mirror, can scarcely restrain themselves from rushing outdoors stark naked and offering themselves to the first comer.)
Varieties of flesh.... Before sleep, just as the eyelids close down over the retina and the unbidden images begin their nocturnal parade... That woman in the subway whom you followed into the street: a nameless phantom now suddenly reappearing, advancing towards you with lithe, vigorous loins. Reminds you of someone, someone just like that, only with a different face. (But ' the face was never important!) You have the memory of the ripple and flash of loins just as strong as you have somewhere in your brain the image of the bull you saw when a child: the bull in the act of mounting a cow. Images come and go, and always it is some particular part of the body which stands out, some identification mark. Names—names fade out. The endearing phrases— they too fade out. Even the voice, that which was so potent, so undoing, so altogether personal—that too has a way of vanishing, of becoming lost in all the other voices. But the body lives on, and the eyes, and the fingers of the eyes, remember. They come and go, the unknown, unnamed, mingling as freely with the others as if they were an integral part of one's life. With the unknown ones comes the remembrance of certain days, certain hours, the voluptuous way they eased into a blank moment of lassitude. You remember just how the tall one in a mauve silk dress stood that afternoon, when the sun beat down with smouldering warmth, and gazed entranced at the play of water in the fountain. You remember exactly the way your hunger expressed itself at the time—sharp, quick, like a knife-blade between the shoulders, then dying away almost as quickly, but in such pleasurable smoke, like a deep nostalgic whiff. And then another one rises up, heavy, stolid, with the porous skin of sand-stone; with her everything is centered in the head, the head which does not fit the body, the head which is volcanic, still filled with eruption. They come and go like that, clear, precise, trailing the ambiance of the collision, radiating their instantaneous effects. All kinds, all tempered by texture, weather, mood: metallic ones, marble figurines, translucent shadowy ones, flowerlike ones, svelte animals covered with pelts of suede, trapeze artists, silver sheets of water rising in human form and bending like Venetian glass. Leisurely you undress them, examine them under the microscope, bid them sway, bend, flex the knees, roll over, spread their legs. You talk to them, now that your lips are unsealed. What were you doing that day? Do you always wear your hair like that? What were you going to tell me when you stared at me that way? Could I ask you to turn around? That's it. Now cup your breasts with two hands. Yes, I could have thrown myself on you that day. I could have fucked you right on the sidewalk, and people stepping all over us. I could have fucked you into the ground, buried you there near the lake where you were sitting with legs crossed. You knew I was watching you. Tell me... tell me because nobody will ever know... what were you thinking then, that very moment? Why did you keep your legs crossed? You knew I was waiting for you to open them. You wanted to open them, didn't you? Tell me the truth! It was warm and you had nothing on under your dress. You had come down from your perch to get a. bit of air, hoping that something would happen. You didn't much care what happened, did you? You wandered around by the lake, waiting for it to get dark. You wanted some one to look at you, some one whose eyes would undress you, some one who would rivet his gaze on that warm, moist spot between your legs...
You spool it off like that, a million feet to the roll. And all the time, shifting the eyes from one to another with kaleidoscopic fury, what gets under your skin is the inexplicable nature of attraction. The mysterious law of attraction! A secret buried as deep in the isolated parts as in the mysterious whole.
The irresistible creature of the other sex is a monster in process of becoming a flower. Feminine beauty is a ceaseless creation, a ceaseless revolution about a defect (often imaginary) which causes the whole being to gyrate heavenward.
11
«She tried to poison herself!»
Those were the words that greeted me on opening the door of Dr. Onirifick's establishment. It was Curley who made the announcement, smothering his words under the rattle of the door-knob.
A glance over his shoulder told me that she was asleep. Kronski had taken care of her. He had requested that nothing be said to Dr. Onirifick about it.
«I smelled the chloroform as soon as I came in,» Curley explained. «She was seated in the chair, huddled up, as if she had had a stroke.»
«I thought maybe it was an abortion...» he added, looking a little sheepish.
«Why did she do it, did she say?»
Curley hemmed and hawed.
«Come on, don't be silly. What was it—jealousy?»
He wasn't sure. All he knew was what she blabbed on coming to. She had repeated over and over that she couldn't stand it any longer.
«Stand what?» I asked.
«Your seeing your wife, I suppose. She said she had picked the receiver up to telephone you. She felt that something was wrong.»
«How did she put it exactly, do you remember?»
«Yes, she talked a lot of nonsense about being betrayed. She said it wasn't the child you went to see but your wife. She said you were weak, that when she was not with you you were capable of doing anything...»
I looked at him in astonishment. «She really said that? You're not putting it on, are you?»
Curley pretended not to hear. He went on to speak of Kronski, how well he had behaved.
«I didn't think he could lie so cleverly,» said Curley.
«Lie? How do you mean?»
«The way he talked about you. You should have heard it. God, it was almost as if he were making love to her. He said such wonderful things about you that she began to weep and sob like a child.»
«Imagine,» he continued, «telling her that you were the most loyal, faithful fellow in the world! Saying that you had changed completely since you knew her—that no woman could tempt you!»
Here Curley couldn't restrain a sickly grin.
«Well it's true,» I said, almost angrily. «Kronski was telling the truth.»
«That you love her so much you...»
«And what makes you think I don't?»
«Because I know you. You'll never change.» I sat down near the bed and looked at her. Curley moved about restlessly. I could feel the anger in him smouldering. I knew what was at the bottom of it.
«She's quite all right now, I suppose?» I inquired after a time.
«How do I know, she's not my wife.» The words flashed back like the gleam of a knife.
«What's the matter with you, Curley? Are you jealous of Kronski? Or are you jealous of me? You can hold her hand and pet her when she wakes up. You know me...»
«Damned right I do!» came Curley's sullen reply. «You should have been here holding her hand yourself. You're never there when any one wants you. I suppose you were holding Maude's hand— now that she doesn't want you any more. I remember how you treated her. I thought it funny then—I was too young to know better. And I remember Dolores too...»
«Easy!» I whispered, motioning with my head towards the prostrate figure.
«She won't wake up so soon, don't worry.» «All right... now what about Dolores?» I said, lowering my voice. «Just what did I do to Dolores that hurt you so?»
He could say nothing for a moment. He was simply bursting with scorn and contempt. Finally he blurted it out.
«You ruin them! You destroy something in them, that's all I can say.»
«You mean that after we broke up you tried to hook Dolores and she wouldn't have you?»
«Before or after—what difference does it make,» he snarled. «I know how she felt—she used to spill it out to me. Even when she hated you she couldn't see me. She used me for a pillow. She wept all over me, as if I were made of Christ knows what... You used to sail out after those sessions in the back room beaming all over. Little Curley was left to lick up the crumbs. Little Curley would tidy things up for you. You never thought what happened when the door closed on you, did you?»
«No-o-o,» I drawled, smiling at him tauntingly. «What did happen? You tell me.»
It's always interesting to learn what does really happen when the door closes behind you. I was ready to sit back and listen with ears cocked.
«Of course,» I ventured, to stimulate him further, «you tried to make the most of the situation.»
«If you want to know,» he replied with brutal frankness, «yes, I did. Even if it was a wet deck! I encouraged her to weep, because then I could put my arms around her. And finally I managed it. I didn't do so bad either, considering the disadvantage I was under. I can tell you a few things about your beautiful Dolores...»
I nodded. «Let's hear everything. It sounds exciting.»
«What you probably don't know is the way she acts when she gets a weeping spell. You missed something.»
I tried to give him free rein, concealing my emotions behind a mask of disinterested tolerance. Curiously enough, in spite of his desire to wound me, he found it difficult to tell his story coherently, or even to take advantage of the opportunity I had given him. The more he talked the more sorry he became for himself.» He couldn't get away from his own sense of frustration. He wanted to besmirch her, and being able to obtain my approval added spice to the procedure. He thought I too would enjoy this profanation of an old idol.
«So you never really did get your end in?» I threw him a consoling glance. «Too bad, because she certainly was a good piece of hump...If I had only known about it I might have helped you. You should have said something. I thought you were too callow to ,feel that way about her. Naturally I suspected that you put your arms around her when my back was turned. I didn't give you credit, though, for taking your cock out and trying to shove it in. No, I thought you were too worshipful for that. Jesus, you were only a kid then. How old were you—sixteen, seventeen? I should have remembered about your aunt. But that was different. She raped you, wasn't that it?»
I lit a cigarette and settled back in the arm chair.
«You know, Curley, this makes me wonder a bit...»
«You mean about Maude? I never tried anything...»
«No, I don't mean that» I don't give a damn what you tried or didn't try...»
«I think you ought to be going soon,» I added. «When she comes to I'll want to talk to her. It's lucky you came when you did. H'm! I suppose I ought to thank you.»
Curley gathered up his things. «By the way,» he said, «her heart's not so good. And there's something else wrong with her too... Kronski will tell you.»
I went to the door with him. We shook hands. I felt impelled to say something.
«Listen, I don't hold it against you about Dolores, but... but don't be dropping in here when I'm away, see! You can worship her all you want—from a distance. I don't want any of this damned monkey business, do you understand?»
He gave me a murderous look and strode sullenly off. I had never spoken that way to him before and I regretted it, not because I had wounded him but because I suddenly realized that I had put an idea into his head. Now he would think himself dangerous; he wouldn't be happy until he had tested his powers.
Dolores! Well, I had learned nothing of any consequence. Still, there was something about it I didn't like. Dolores was soft. Too yielding to suit me. There was a time when I had been on the point of asking her to marry me. I recalled what it was that had prevented me from making such a blunder. It was that I knew she would say yes, weakly, because she was mentally still a virgin, unable to resist the pressure of a stiff cock. That— her weak yes, to be followed by a lifetime of blubbering regrets. Instead of helping me to forget, she would be a constant mute reminder of the crime I intended to commit. (The crime of leaving my wife.) God knows, part of me was soft as a sponge. I didn't need any one to cultivate that side of me! She was really disgusting, Dolores. Her eyes glowed with such adolescent fervor as she watched me pouring balm over the maimed and wounded. Yes, I could see her clearly now. She was like a nurse attending a physician. She wanted to mother all those poor bastards I was killing myself to aid in one way or another. She wanted only to slave all day by my side. Then offer her little cunt—as a reward, as a mark of approbation. What the hell did she know about love? She was just a puppy. I felt sorry for Curley.
Kronski had told the truth! That's what I kept repeating to myself as I sat beside the bed and waited for her to return to life. She was not dead, thank God. Merely asleep. She looked as though she were floating in luminol.
It was so unusual for me to play the role of the bereaved one that I became fascinated by the thought of how I would act if she were actually to die now before my eyes. Supposing she were never to open her eyes again? Supposing she passed from this deep trance into death? I tried to concentrate on that thought. I wanted desperately to know how I would feel if she were to die. I tried to imagine that I was a fresh widower, that I had not even called the undertaker.
First of all, however, I got up to put my ear to her mouth. Yes, she was still breathing. I pulled the chair close to the foot of the bed and concentrated as best I could on death—her death. No extraordinary emotions manifested themselves. To be truthful, I forgot about my supposed personal loss and became absorbed in a rather blissful contemplation of the desirability of death. I began to think about my own death, and how I would enjoy it. The prone figure lying there, hardly breathing, floating in the wake of a drug like a small boat attached to the stern of a vessel, was myself. I had wanted to die and now I was dying. I was no longer aware of this world but not yet in the other one. I was passing slowly out to sea, drowning without pain of suffocation. My thoughts were neither of the world I was leaving nor of the one I was approaching. In fact, there was nothing comparable to thought going on. Nor was it dreaming. It was more like a diaspora; the knot was unravelling, the self was dribbling away. There wasn't even a self any more: I was the smoke from a good cigar, and like smoke I was vanishing in thin air, and what was left of the cigar was crumbling to dust and dissolution.
I gave a start. The wrong tack. I relaxed and gazed at her less fixedly. Why should I think about her death?
Then it came to me: only if she were dead could I love her the way I imagined I loved her!
«Still the actor! You did love her once, but you were so pleased with yourself to think that you could love another beside yourself that you forgot about her almost immediately. You've been watching yourself make love. You drove her to this in order to feel again. To lose her would be to find her again.» I pinched myself, as if to convince myself that I was capable of feeling.
«Yes, you are not made of wood. You have feelings—but they're misdirected. Your heart works spasmodically. You're grateful to those who make your heart bleed; you don't suffer for them, you suffer in order to enjoy the luxury of suffering. You haven't begun to suffer yet; you're only suffering vicariously.»
There was some truth in what I was telling myself. Ever since I had entered the room I had been preoccupied with how I should act, how I should express my feelings. As for that last minute business with Maude—that was excusable. My feelings had switched, that was all. Fate had tricked me. Maude, pfui! I didn't give a fuck about her. I couldn't remember when she had ever stirred any real feeling in me. What a cruel piece of irony it would be if Mona were to discover the truth! How could I ever explain such a dilemma? At the very moment I am betraying her, as she divined, Kronski is telling her how faithful and devoted I am. And Kronski was right! But Kronski must have suspected, when he was telling her the truth, that it was built on a lie.
He was affirming his faith in me because he himself wanted to believe in me. Kronski was no fool. And he was probably a far better friend than I had ever estimated him to be. If only he didn't show such eagerness to reach into my guts! If only he would quit driving me into the open.
Curley's remark returned to plague me. Kronski had behaved so wonderfully—as if he were making love to her! Why was it that I always got a thrill when I thought of some one making love to her? Jealous? I was quite willing to be made jealous if only I could witness this power she had of making others love her. My ideal—it gave me quite a shock 'to formulate it!—was that of a woman who had the world at her feet. If I thought there were men impervious to her charms I would deliberately aid her to ensnare them. The more lovers she garnered the greater my own personal triumph. Because she did love me, that there was no doubt about. Had she not singled me out from all the others, I who had so little to offer her?
I was weak, she had told Curley. Yes, but so was she. I was weak as regards women in general; she was weak as regards the one she loved. She wanted my love to be focused on her exclusively, even in thought.
Oddly enough, I was beginning to focus on her exclusively, in my own weak way. If she had not brought her weakness to my attention I would have discovered for myself, with each new adventure, that there was only one person in the world for me— and that it was her. But now, having placed it before my mind dramatically, I would always be haunted by the thought of the power I exercised over her. I might be tempted to prove it, even against the grain.
I dismissed this train of thought—violently. That wasn't at all how I wanted things to be. I did love her exclusively, only her, and nothing on earth would make me swerve.
I began to review the evolution of this love. Evolution? There had been no evolution. It had been instantaneous. Why, and I was amazed to think that I should adduce this proof, why, even the fact my first gesture had been one of rejection was proof of the fact that I recognized the attraction. I had said no to her instinctively, because of fear. I went all over that scene in the dance hall the evening I walked out on my old life. She was coming towards me, from the center of the floor. I had cast a quick glance to either side of me, hardly believing it possible that she had singled me out. And then a panic, though I was dying to throw myself into her arms. Had I not shaken my head vigorously? No! No! Almost insultingly. At the same time I was shaken by the fear that even if I were to stand there forever she would never again cast an eye in my direction. Then I knew I wanted her, that I would pursue her relentlessly even if she had no use for me. I left the rail and went over to the corner to smoke. Trembling from head to foot. I kept my back to the dance floor, not daring to look at her. Jealous already, jealous of whomever it might be that she would choose for the next partner...
(It was wonderful to recapture those moments. Now, by God, I was feeling again....)
Yes, after a time I had picked myself up and returned to the rail, pressed on all sides by a pack of hungry wolves. She was dancing. She danced several dances in succession, with the same man. Not close, like the other girls, but airily, looking up into the man's face, smiling, laughing, talking. It was plain that he meant nothing to her.
Then came my turn. She had deigned to notice me after all! She seemed not at all displeased with me; on the contrary, she behaved as though she were going out of her way to be pleasant. And so, in a swoon, I had let her carry me round the floor. And then again, and again, and again. And even before I ventured to draw her into conversation I knew I would never leave the place without her.
We danced and danced, and when we were tired of dancing we sat in a corner and talked, and for every minute I talked or danced a clock ticked off the dollars and cents. How rich I was that night! What a delicious sensation it was to peel off dollar after dollar recklessly! I acted like a millionaire because I was a millionaire.
For the first time in my life I knew what it was to be wealthy, to be a Mogul, a Rajah, a Maharajah. I was giving my soul away— not bartering it, as did Faust, but pissing it away.
There had been that strange conversation about Strindberg, which was to run through our life like a silver thread. I was always going to reread Miss Julie, because of what she said that night, but I never did—and probably never would.
Then I waited for her in the street, on Broadway, and as she came towards me this second time she took complete possession of me. In the booth, at Chin Lee's, she became still another person. She became—and this was really the secret of her irresistible charm—she became vague.
I didn't frame it thus to myself, but as I sat blindly groping through the smoke of her words, I knew that I would fling myself like a madman into every gap in her story. She was spinning a web too delicate, too tenuous, to support the weight of my prying thoughts. Another woman acting thus would have aroused my suspicions. I would have branded her a skilful liar. This one was not lying. She was embroidering. She was stitching—and now and then she dropped a stitch.
Here a thought flitted through my head which had never formulated itself before. It was one of those larval thoughts which scud through the mind like a thin moon through mutton chops. She has been doing this always! Yes, it had probably occurred to me at the time, but I had dismissed it instantly. The way she leaned over, the weight of her resting on one arm, the hand, the right hand, moving like a needle—yes, at that moment, and again several times later, an image had flashed through my mind, but I had had no time, or rather she had given me no time, to track it down. But now it was clear. Who was it that «had been doing it always»? Fate. There were three of them, and there was something sinister about them. They lived in a twilight and they spun a web: one of them had assumed this posture, had shifted her weight, had looked into the camera with hand poised, then resumed that endless stitching, spinning, weaving, that silent talk which weaves in and out of the spoken web of words.
A shuttle moving back and forth, a bobbin ceaselessly bobbing. Now and then a dropped stitch-Like the man who lifted her dress. He was standing on the stoop saying good-night. Silence. He blows his brains out.... Or the father flying his kites on the roof. He comes flying down out of the sky, like a violet angel of Chagall's. He walks between his race horses, holding one on either side, by the bridle. Silence. The Stradivarius is missing....
We are on the beach and the moon is scudding through the clouds. But before that we were sitting close together in the motorman's box in the elevated train. I had been telling her the story of Tony and Joey. I had just written it—perhaps because of her, because of the effect of certain vaguenesses. She had thrown me hack suddenly on myself, made loneliness seem delectable. She had stirred those grape-like bunches of emotion which were strung like a garland on the skeleton of my ego. She had revived the boy, the boy who ran through the fields to greet his little friends. There was never any actor then! That boy ran alone. That boy ran to throw himself into the arms of Joey and Tony... Why did she look at me so intently when I told her the story of Joey and Tony? There was a terrible brightness in her face, that I can never forget. Now I think I know what it was. I think I had stopped her—stopped that incessant spinning and weaving. There was gratitude in her eyes, as well as love and admiration. I had stopped the machine and she had risen like a vapor, for just a few minutes. That terribly bright look was the nimbus of her liberated self.
Then sexual plunges. Submerging that cloud of vapor. Like trying to hold smoke under water. Peeling off layer after layer of darkness in the dark. Another kind of gratitude. A bit horrible, though. As if I had taught her the prescribed way to commit hari-kiri.... That utterly inexplicable night at Rock-away Beach—in the Doctor Caligari hotel and bathing establishment. Running back and forth to the lavatory. Swooping down on her, scooping it out, piercing her... plunging, plunging, as if I had become a gorilla with knife in hand and were slashing the Sleeping Beauty to life. The next—morning—or was it afternoon? Lying on the beach with our toes in one another's crotch. Like two Surrealist objects demonstrating a hazardous rencontre.
And then Dr. Tao, his poem printed on fire-cracker paper. Encysted in the mind, because she had failed to meet me in the garden as she promised. I was holding it in my hand while talking to her over the telephone. Some of the gold had rubbed off and clung to my fingers. She was still in bed—with that slut Florrie. They had drunk too much the night before. Yes, she had stood on a table—where? somewhere!—and had tried to do the split. And she had hurt herself. But I was too furious to care whether she had hurt herself or not. She was alive, wasn't she, and she had failed to show up. And perhaps Florrie was lying there beside her, as she pretended, and perhaps it wasn't Florrie but that guy Carruthers. Yes, that old fool who was so kind and thoughtful, but who had still enough gumption in him to stick daggers in people's portraits.
A desolating thought suddenly assailed me. The danger from Carruthers was past. Carruthers had helped her. Others had helped her before him no doubt... But this was the thought: if I had not come that night to the dance hall with a wad in my pocket, if I had had just enough for a few dances, what then? And putting aside that first grand occasion, what about that other time in the empty lot? («And now for the dirt..!») Supposing I had failed her then? But I couldn't have failed her, that was just it. She must have realized that or she would never have risked it....
In cold-blooded honesty I was forced nevertheless, to concede that those few miraculous sums I had managed to produce at the right moment had been an important factor. They had helped her to believe that she could rely on me.
I wiped the slate clean. Damn it, if one were to interrogate Fate that way everything could be explained by what you had to eat for breakfast. Providence puts opportunities in your path: they can be translated as money, luck, youth, vitality, a thousand different things. If the attraction isn't there nothing can be made of even the most golden opportunity. It was because I would do anything for her that so many opportunities were afforded me. Money, shit! Money had nothing to do with it. So much anfractuosity, or defectuosity, or impecuniosity! It was like the definition of hysteria in Dr. Onirifick's library: «an undue permeability of the psychical diaphragm.»
No, I wasn't going to get off into these complicated eddies. I closed my eyes to sink back into that other clear stream which ran on and on like a silver thread. In some quiet part of me there was a legend which she had nourished. It was of a tree, just as in the Bible, and beneath it stood the woman called Eve with an apple in her hand. Here it ran like a clear stream, all that really constituted my life. Here there was feeling, from bank to bank.
What was I getting at—here where the subterranean stream, ran clear? Why that image of the Tree of Life? Why was it so exhilarating to retaste the poisonous apple, to kneel in supplication at the feet of a woman in the Bible? Why was the Mona Lisa's smile the most mysterious of all human expressions? And why should I transpose this smile of the Renaissance to the lips of an Eve whom I had known only as an engraving?
There was something which hung on the fringe of memory, some enigmatic smile which expressed serenity, beatitude, beneficence. But there was also a poison, a distillation which exuded from that mystifying smile. And this poison I had quaffed and it had blurred the memory. There had been a day when I had accepted something in exchange for something; on that day a strange bifurcation had taken place.
In vain I ransacked my brain. However, I was able to recall this much. On a certain day in Spring I met her in the Rose Room of a large hotel. She had arranged to meet me there in order to show me a dress she had bought. I had come ahead of time and after a few restless moments I had fallen into a trance. It was her voice which brought me to. She had spoken my name and the voice had passed through me, like smoke through gauze. She was ravishing, appearing suddenly like that before my yes. I was still coming out of the mist. As she sat down I rose slowly, still moving through a fog, and knelt at her feet, mumbling something about the radiance of her beauty. For a full few minutes she made no effort to rouse me. She held my two hands in hers and smiled down at me, that effulgent, luminous smile which spreads like a halo and then vanishes, never to reappear again. It was the seraphic smile of peace and benediction. It was given in a public place wherein we found ourselves alone. It was a sacrament, and the hour, the day, the place were recorded in letters of gold in the book of the legend which lay at the foot of the Tree of Life. Thenceforth we who had united were joined by an invisible being. Never again were we to be alone. Never again would come that hush, that finality— until death perhaps. Something had been given, something received. For a few timeless moments we had stood at the gates of Paradise—then we were driven forth and that starry effulgence was shattered. Like tongues of lightning it vanished in a thousand different directions.
There is a theory that when a planet, like our earth for example, has manifested every form of life, when it has fulfilled itself to the point of exhaustion, it crumbles to bits and is dispersed like star dust throughout the universe. It does not roll on like a dead moon, but explodes, and in the space of a few minutes there is not a trace of it visible in the heavens. In marine life we have a similar effect. It is called implosion. When an amphibian accustomed to the black depths rises above a certain level, when the pressure to which it adapts itself is lifted, the body blows apart, implodes in a million directions. Are we not familiar with this spectacle in the human being also? The Norsemen who went berserk, the Malay who runs amok—are these not examples of implosion and explosion? When the cup is full it runs over. But when the cup and that which it contains are one substance, what then?
There are moments when the elixir of life rises to such over-brimming splendor that the soul spills over. In the seraphic smile of the Madonnas the soul is seen to flood the psyche. The moon of the face becomes full; the equation is perfect. A minute, a half-minute, a second later, the miracle has passed. Something intangible, something inexplicable, was given out—and received. In the life of a human being it may happen that the moon never comes to the full. In the lives of some human beings it would seem, indeed, that the only mysterious phenomenon observable is that of perpetual eclipse. In the case of those afflicted with genius, whatever the form it may take, we are almost frightened to observe that there is nothing but a continuous waxing and waning of the moon. Rarer still are the anomalous ones who, having come to the full, are so terrified by the wonder of it that they spend the rest of their lives endeavoring to stifle that which gave them birth and being. The war of the mind is the story of the soul-split. When the moon was at full there were those who could not accept the dim death of diminution; they tried to hang full-blown in the zenith of their own heaven. They tried to arrest the action of the law which was manifesting itself through them, through their own birth and death, in fulfillment and transfiguration. Caught between the tides they were sundered; the soul departed the body, leaving the simulacrum of a divided self to fight it out in the mind. Blasted by their own radiance they live forever the futile quest of beauty, truth and harmony. Depossessed of their own effulgence they seek to possess the soul and spirit of those to whom they are attracted. They catch every beam of light; they reflect with every facet of their hungry being. Instantly illumined, when the light is directed towards them, they are also as speedily extinguished. The more intense the light which is cast upon them the more dazzling—and blinding—they appear. Especially dangerous are they to the radiant ones; it is always towards these bright and inexhaustible luminaries that they are most passionately drawn....
She lay in an argent light, the lips slightly parted in a mysterious smile. Her body seemed extraordinarily light, as if floating in the distilled vapors of a drug. The glow which always emanated from her flesh was still there, but it was detached, suspended all about her, hovering over her like some rare condensation waiting to be reabsorbed by the flesh.
A strange idea took possession of me, as I lost myself in contemplation. Was it mad to think that in trying to extinguish herself she had discovered that she already was extinct? Had death rolled back on her, refusing to be cheated? Was that strange glow, which was collecting about her like the breath on a mirror, the reflection of another death?
She was always so intensely alive. Supernaturally alive, one might say. She never rested, except in sleep. And her sleep was that of a stone.
«Don't you ever dream?» I had asked her once. She couldn't remember—it was so long ago since she had had a dream.
«But everybody dreams,» I insisted. «You make no effort to remember, that's all.»
Soon thereafter she made known to me in a too obviously casual way that she was beginning to dream again. They were extraordinary dreams. Utterly different from her talk. At first she pretended to be shy about revealing them, but then, when she saw from my queries how remarkable they were, she elaborated at great length.
One day, in recounting one of them to Kronski, giving it to him as my own and pretending that I was perplexed and mystified, I was dumbfounded to hear him say: «There's nothing original about that, Mister Miller! Are you trying to trip me up?»
«Trip you up?» I repeated with genuine astonishment.
«It might sound original to a writer,» he sneered, «but to a psychologist it's phoney. You can't invent dreams like you can stories, you know. Dreams have their mark of authenticity just as stories do.»
I allowed him to demolish the dream and admitted, to shut him up, that I had invented it.
A few days later, browsing through Dr. Onirifick's library, I came across a ponderous tome dealing with depersonalization. Skimming the pages I found an envelope with my own name and address on the back of it. It was just the flap of the envelope, but the hand writing was indubitably my own. There was only one explanation: it had been left there by Mona.
The pages which I raced through like an ant-eater were devoted to the dreams recorded by a psychiatrist. The dreams were the walking dreams of a somnambulist, with a dimorphic personality. I found myself following them with a disturbing sense of familiarity. I recognized them only in spots.
Finally I became so absorbed that I made notes of the recognizable fragments. Where the other elements had come from I would discover in due time. I yanked out a number of books, searching for place-mark, but found none.
The process, however, I had caught on to. She had extracted only the most dramatic elements—and then joined them together. It made no difference to her that one fragment was the dream of a sixteen year old female and another fragment the dream of a male drug addict.
I thought it a good idea to put the piece of torn envelope in another section of the book before returning it to the shelf.
A half hour later I had a still better idea. I took down the book, consulted my notes, and then carefully underlined the fragmentary passages she had plagiarized. I realized, of course, that with her I might never hear the truth of the matter till years later—perhaps never. But I was content to wait.
A depressing thought followed in the wake of this reflection. If she could fake her dream life, what about her waking life? If I were to begin investigating her past... The enormity of that task was in itself enough to dissuade me from any immediate attempt in that direction. However, one could always prick up his ears. That was not a cheerful thought either. One can't go through life with ears cocked. Curiously enough, I had no more than told myself this when I recalled the way she had dismissed a certain subject. It was strange how she had succeeded in making me forget that little item. In disabusing me of the idea that I had caught a glimpse of her mother in the backyard, on my first inspection of her home precincts, she had skillfully buried the suspicion by dwelling with artful sincerity on the traits and qualities of the woman I had imagined to be her mother, the woman she insisted must have been her aunt. It was such a commonplace ruse of the liar that I was annoyed at myself, thinking back on it, to have been taken in so easily. This at least was something I could investigate in the near future. I was so positive that I was right that I almost decided to forego te mechanical task of corroboration. It would be more enjoyable, I thought to myself, not to go there just yet, but to trap her by some clever verbal maneuvering. If I could develop the art of laying traps it would save a lot of useless footwork.
Above all, I concluded, it was imperative never to let her suspect that I was on to her lies. Why was that so imperative? I asked myself almost immediately. To have the pleasure of uncovering more and more untruths? Was that a pleasure? And then another question popped into my head. If you were married to a dipsomaniac, would you pretend that the mania for alcohol was perfectly harmless? Would you keep up the pretence that everything was lovely in order to study the effects of this particular vice upon the person of the one you loved?
If there were any legitimacy in abetting the appetites of curiosity then it were better to get at the root of the thing, to discover why she lied so flagrantly. The effects of this malady were not altogether obvious to me—yet. A little thought and I should have perceived instantly that this first and most disastrous effect is—alienation. The shock of detection, which the discovery of the first lie brings, has almost the same emotional outlines as the shock which accompanies the knowledge that one is confronted by an insane, person. Treachery, the fear of it, has its roots in the universal fear of loss of personality. It must have required aeons of time for humanity to raise truth to such a supreme level, to make it the fulcrum, as it were, of individuality.
The moral aspect was merely a concomitant, a coverall for some deeper, almost forgotten purpose. That histoire should be story, lie and history all in one, was of a significance not to be despised. And that a story, given out as the invention of a creative artist, should be regarded as the most effective material for getting at the truth about its author, was also significant. Lies can only be imbedded in truth. They have no separate existence; they have a symbiotic relationship with truth. A good lie reveals more than the truth can ever reveal. To the one, that is, who seeks truth. To such a person there could never be cause for anger or recrimination when confronted with the lie. Not even pain, because all would be patent, naked and revelatory.
I was quite amazed to discern the lengths to which such philosophic detachment could bring me. I made a note to resume the experiment again. It might bear fruit.
VOLUME FOUR
12
I had just left Clancy's office. Clancy was the general manager of the Cosmodemonic Cocksucking Corporation. He was the Cocksucker in Chief, so to speak. He said «Sir» to his inferiors as well as his superiors.
My respect for Clancy had touched zero. For over six months I had avoided calling on him, though it had been understood between us that I was to drop in once a month or so—to have a little chat. To-day he had summoned me to his office. He had expressed disappointment in me. He had virtually intimated that I had failed him.
The poor cluck! If I hadn't been so disgusted I might have felt sorry for him. He was in a spot, I could see that. But he had angled to put himself in that spot for twenty years or more.
Clancy's model of behavior was the soldier, the man who can take orders and give them, if necessary. Blind obedience was his motto. Clearly I was a poor soldier. I had been an excellent tool so long as I had been given a free hand, but now that the reins were being tightened he was chagrined to learn that I was not responsive to the behests of those to whom he himself, Clancy, the General Manager, had to bow deferentially. He was pained to hear that I had been insulting to one of Mr. Twilliger's henchmen. Twilliger was the vice-president, a man with a heart of cement who had risen from the ranks, just as Clancy himself had.
I had swallowed such a lot of shit in that brief interview with my superior that I was regurgitating. The conversation had terminated on a most unpleasant note, to wit, that I was to learn to cooperate with Mr. Spivak who had now definitely become Mr. Twilliger's go-between.
How can you cooperate with a rat? Especially with a rat whose sole function is to spy on you?
Spivak's entrance upon the scene, I reflected, as I stepped into a bar to have a drink, had only preceded by a few months my resolution to walk out on the old life. His coming had precipitated that event, or conspired to bring it about, I now felt. The turning point in my cosmococcic life had come at the moment of plenitude. Just when I had put everything in order, when the machine was working like a clock, Twilliger had summoned Spivak from another city and installed him as an efficiency expert. And Spivak had taken the pulse of the cosmococcic machine and found that it was beating too slowly.
Since that fatal day they had moved me around like a chess piece. As if to threaten me, they had first changed my quarters to the main office. Twilliger had his sanctum in the same building, about fifteen floors above me. No shenanigans now, as in the old messenger bureau with the dressing booths in the rear and the zinc-covered table, where now and then I had knocked off a fugitive piece of tail. I was in an airless cage now, surrounded by infernal contraptions that buzzed and rang and gleamed every time a client put in a call for a messenger. In a space just big enough for a double desk and a chair on either side (for the applicants), I had to sweat and shout at the top of my lungs to make myself heard. Three times, in the course of a few months, I had lost my voice. Each time I reported to the company doctor upstairs. Each time he shook his head in perplexity.
«Say Ah!»
«Ah!»
«Say E-e-e-e!»
«E-e-e-e e!»
He'd shove a smooth stick, like a suds duster, down my throat.
«Open your mouth wide.»
I'd open it wide as I could. He'd swab it out, spray it if he felt like it.
«Feel better now?»
I'd to say yes but the best I could do was to give him a vocable piece of phlegm. Ooogh!
«There's nothing wrong with your throat that I can see,» he would say. «Come back in a few days and I'll have another look. It may be the weather.»
It never occurred to him to ask what I did with my throat all day long. And of course, once I realized that to lose my voice was to enjoy a few day's vacation, I felt that it was just as well to leave him in ignorance of the cause of my affliction.
Spivak however suspected that I was malingering. I enjoyed talking to him in an almost inaudible whisper long after I had recovered my voice.
«What did you say?» he would rasp.
Choosing the moment when the din was at its height I would repeat some highly unimportant piece of information in the same inaudible whisper.
«Oh that!—» he would say, highly irritated, exasperated that I made not the slightest effort to strain my voice.
«When do you think you'll get your voice back?»
«I don't know,» I would say, looking him straight in the eye and letting my voice die out.
Then he would talk to the call clerk, pump him behind my back to find out if I were putting it on. As soon as he had gone I would resume my natural tone of voice. If the telephone rang, however, I would have my assistant answer it. «Mr. Miller can't use the phone—his voice is gone.» I kept that up in order to foil Spivak. It was just like him to leave my office, go out the front door, step into a booth and ring me up. He would have been jubilant to catch me off guard.
It was all such a lot of shit, though. Child's play. In every big corporation these games go on. It's the only outlet for one's human side. It's like civilization. Everything geared up to function smoothly in order to destroy it with a little bon-fire. Just when your impulses have been given a shine, a manicure and a tailor-made suit, a rifle is stuck in your hand and in six lessons you're expected to learn the art of sticking a bayonet through a sack of wheat. It's bewildering, to say the least. And if there's no panic, no war, no revolution, you go on rising from one cock-sucking vantage point to another until you become the Big Prick himself and blow your brains out.
I swallowed another drink and took a glance at the big clock on the Metropolitan Tower. Funny that that clock had inspired the one and only poem I had ever written. That was shortly after they had moved me uptown from the main office. The tower framed itself in the window from which I looked out on to the street. In front of me sat Valeska. It was because of Valeska that I had written the poem. I recalled the excitement that had come over me the Sunday morning I began the poem. It was unbelievable—a poem. I had to call Valeska on the telephone and tell her the good news. A couple of months later she was dead.
That was one time, however, that Curley had managed to get his end in. I had learned that only recently. Seems he used to take her to the beach. He did it, by God, in the water, standing up. The first time, that is. Afterwards it was just fuck, fuck, fuck—in the car, in the bath room, along the waterfront, on the excursion boat.
In the midst of these pleasant reminiscences I saw a tall figure dressed in uniform passing the window. I ran out and hailed him.
«I don't know whether I ought to come in, Mr. Miller. I'm on duty, you know.»
«That doesn't matter. Come in a minute and have one drink with me. I'm glad to see you.»
It was Colonel Sheridan, the head of the messenger brigade which Spivak had organized. Sheridan was from Arizona. He had come to me in search of work and I had put him on the night force. I liked Sheridan. He was one of the few dozen clean souls I had raked in among all the thousands I had put to work on the messenger force. Everybody liked him, even that piece of animated cement, Twilliger.
Sheridan was absolutely guileless. He had been born in a clean environment, had been given no more education than he needed, which was very little, and had no ambition except to be what he was, which was a plain, simple, ordinary individual accepting life as he found it. He was one in a million, so far as my observation of human nature went.
I inquired how he was getting on as drill-master. He said it was discouraging. He was disappointed— the boys showed no spirit, no interest in military training.
«Mr. Miller,» he exclaimed, «I never met such boys in all my life. They have no sense of honor...»
I burst out laughing. No honor, God!
«Sheridan,» I said, «haven't you learned yet that you're dealing with the scum of the earth? Besides, boys aren't born with a sense of honor. City boys especially. These boys are incipient gangsters. Have you ever been to the Mayor's office? Have you seen the crowd that hangs out there? Those are grownup messenger boys. If you were to put them behind the bars you wouldn't be able to tell the difference ' between them and the real convicts. The whole goddamned city is made up of nothing but crooks and gangsters. That's what a city is—a breeding place for crime.»
Sheridan gave me a puzzled look.
«But you're not like that, Mr. Miller,» he said, grinning sheepishly.
I had to laugh again. «I know, Sheridan. I'm one of the exceptions. I'm just killing time here. Some day I'm going out to Arizona, or some place where it's quiet and empty. I've told you, haven't I, that I went to Arizona years ago? I wish I had had the sense to stay there... Tell me, what was it you did back there... you weren't a sheep-herder, were you?»
It was Sheridan's turn to smile. «No, Mr. Miller, I told you, don't you remember, that I was a barber.»
«A barber!»
«Yes,» said Sheridan, «and a darned good one too.»
«But you know how to ride, don't you? You didn't spend your life in a barber shop, I hope?»
«Oh no,» he answered quickly. «I did a little of everything, I guess. I've earned my own living ever since I was seven.»
«What made you come to New York?»
«I wanted to see what it was like in a big city. I had been to Denver and L.A.—and Chicago too. Everybody kept telling me I had to see New York, so I decided I would. I tell you, Mr. Miller, New York is a fine place—but I don't like the people... I don't understand their ways, I guess.»
«You mean the way they shove you around?» «Yes, and the way they lie and cheat. Even the women here are different. I can't seem to find a girl I like.»
«You're too good, Sheridan. You don't know how to treat them.»
«I know it, Mr. Miller.» He dropped his head. He acted shy as a faun.
You know,» he began falteringly, «I guess there is something wrong with me. They laugh behind my back—everybody does, even the youngsters. Maybe it's the way I talk.»»
«You can't be too gentle with the boys, Sheridan,» I put in. «I warned you—be rough with them! Give 'em a cuffing once in a while. Swear at them. Don't let them think you're soft. If you do, they'll walk all over you.»
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