He looked up softly and held out his hand. «See that? That's where a boy bit me the other day. Can you imagine that?»
«What did you do to him?» Sheridan looked down at his feet again, him home,» he said.
«That's all? You just sent him home? didn't give him a thrashing?»
He was silent. After a few moments he spoke, quietly and with simple dignity.
«I don't believe in punishment, Mr. Miller. If a man hits me I never strike back. I try to talk to him, find out what's wrong with him. You see, I was knocked around a lot as a kid. I didn't have an easy time of it...»
He stopped dead, shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
«I always wanted to tell you something,» he resumed, summoning all his courage. «You're the only man I could tell this to, Mr. Miller. I know I can trust you...»
Again a pause. I waited attentively, wondering what it was he was trying to get off his chest.
«When I came to the telegraph company,» he continued, «I didn't have a dime in my pocket. You remember that, Mr. Miller... you had to help me out. And I appreciate everything you did for me.»
Pause.
«I said a while back that I came to New York to see the big city. That's only half-true. I was running away from something. You see, Mr. Miller, I was very much in love back there. I had a woman who meant everything to me. She understood me, and I understood her. But she was married to my brother. I didn't want to steal her from my brother, but I couldn't live without her...»
«Did your brother know that you were in love with her?»
«Not at first,» said Sheridan. «But after a time he couldn't help but notice it. You see, we all lived together. He owned the barber shop and I helped him. We were doing first-rate too.»
Another awkward pause.
«The trouble all started one day, a Sunday it was, when we went on a picnic. We had been in love all the time, but we hadn't done anything. I didn't want to hurt my brother, as I told you. Anyway, it happened. We were sleeping outdoors and she was lying between us. I woke up all of a sudden and felt her hand on me. She was wide awake, staring at me with big eyes. She bent over and kissed me on the mouth. And right there, with my brother lying beside us, I took her.»
«Have another drink,» I urged.
«I guess I will,» said Sheridan. «Thank you.»
He continued in his slow, hesitant way, very delicate about it all, and obviously genuinely disturbed. I liked the way he talked about his brother. It was almost as if he were talking about himself.
«Well, to make it short, Mr. Miller, one day he went plumb crazy with jealousy—he came after me with the razor. You see that scar?» He turned his head slightly to one side. «That's where I caught it, trying to dodge him. If I hadn't ducked he would have sliced the side of my face off, I guess.»
Sheridan slowly sipped his drink, looking thoughtfully into the soaped mirror before him.
«I calmed him down finally,» he said. «He was frightened of course when he saw the blood running down my neck and my ear almost hanging off. And then, Mr. Miller, a terrible thing happened. He began to cry, just like a boy. He told me he was no good, and I knew that wasn't so. He said he oughtn't to have married Ella—that was her name. He said he would get divorced, go away somewhere, start all over again—and that I should marry Ella. He begged me to say I would. He even tried to lend me some money. He wanted to go away immediately... said he couldn't stand it any longer. Of course I wouldn't hear of it. I begged him not to say anything to Ella. I said I would take a little trip myself, to let things blow over. He wouldn't hear of that... but finally, after I showed him that that was the only sensible thing to do, he agreed to let me go....»
«And that's how you came to New York?»
«Yes, but that's not all. You see, I tried to do the right thing. You would have done the same, if it had been your brother, wouldn't you? I did all I could...»
«Well,» I said, «and what's worrying you now?»
He stared vacant-eyed at the mirror.
«Ella,» he said, after a long pause. «She ran away from him. At first she didn't know where I was. I sent them a postcard now and then, from this place and that, but never gave my address. The other day I got a letter from my brother, saying she had written him—from Texas. Begged him to give her my address. Said if she didn't hear from me soon she would commit suicide.»
«Did you write her?»
«No,» he said, «I haven't written her yet. I don't know quite what to do.»
«But for Christ's sake, you love her, don't you? And she loves you. And your brother—he wouldn't object. What the devil are you waiting for?»
«I don't want to steal my brother's wife. Besides, I know she does love him. She loves the two of us— that's the size of it.»
It was my turn to be astonished again. I gave a low whistle. «So that's it!» I chortled. «Well, that's different.»
«Yes,» said Sheridan rapidly, «she loves the two of us equally well. She didn't run away from him because she hated him or because she wanted me. She wants me, yes. But she ran away to make him do something, make him find me and bring me back.»
«Does he know that?» I asked, having a faint suspicion that Sheridan might have imagined things.
«Yes, he knows it and he's willing to live that way, if that's what she wants. I think he'd feel better, too, if it could be arranged that way.»
«Well?» I said. «What now? What are your plans?»
«I don't know. I can't think. What would you do in my place? I've told you everything, Mr. Miller.»
And then, as if to himself: «A man can't hold out forever. I know it's wrong to live like that... but if I don't do something quick maybe Ella will do away with herself. I wouldn't want that. I'd do anything to prevent that.»
«Look, Sheridan... your brother was jealous before. But he's gotten over that, I imagine. He wants her back just as much as you do. Now... did you ever think whether you'd be jealous of your brother— eventually? It's not easy to share the woman you love with some one else, even your own brother. You know that, don't you?»
Sheridan showed no hesitation in responding to this.
«I've thought all that out, Mr. Miller. I know I wouldn't be the jealous one. And I'm not worried about my brother either. We understand each other. It's Ella. I wonder sometimes if she really knows her own mind. The three of us grew up together, you see. That's why we were able to live together so peacefully.... until.... well, that was only natural, wasn't it? But if I go back now, and we share her openly, she might begin to care for us differently. This thing has broken up the happy family. And soon people will begin to notice things. It's a small world back there, and our people don't do those things. I don't know what would happen after a time...»
He paused again and fiddled with his glass.
«There's another thing I thought of, Mr. Miller... Supposing she has a child. We may never know which of us was the father of it. Oh, I've thought it out from every angle. It's not easy to decide.»
«No,» I agreed, «it isn't. I'm stumped, Sheridan. I'll have to think about it.»
«Thanks, Mr. Miller. I know you'll help me, if you can. I think I ought to run along now. Spivak will be looking for me. Good-bye, Mr. Miller,» and he darted off.
When I got back to the office I was informed that Clancy had telephoned. He had asked for the application of a messenger I had hired recently—a woman.
«What's up?» I inquired. «What did she do?»
Nobody could offer any precise information.
«Well, where was she working?»
I found that we had sent her to one of the mid-town office buildings. Her name was Nina Andrews. Hymie had made a note of all the details. He had already telephoned the manager of the office where the girl worked, but couldn't glean a thing. The manager, a young woman herself, was of the impression that the girl was satisfactory in every way.
I decided I had better call Clancy and get it over with. His voice was gruff and irritable. Mr. Twilliger had evidently raked him over the coals. And now it was my turn.
«But what has she done?» I asked in all innocence.
«What has she done?» Clancy's voice echoed furiously. «Mr. Miller, haven't I warned you time and again that we want only refined young women on our messenger force?»
«Yes sir,» I had to say, cursing him under my breath for the dumb cluck he was .
«Mr. Miller,» and his voice took on a devastating solemnity, «the woman who calls herself Nina Andrews is nothing but a common prostitute. She was reported to us by one of our important clients. He told Mr. Twilliger that she tried to solicit him. Mr. Twilliger is going to make an investigation. He suspects that we may have other undesirable females on our staff. I needn't tell you, Mr. Miller, that this is a very serious matter. A very serious matter. I trust that you will know how to cope with the situation. You will give me a report in a day or two—is that clear?» He hung up.
I sat there trying to recall the young woman in question.
«Where is she now?» I asked.
«She was sent home,» said Hymie.
«Send her a telegram,» I said, «and ask her to give me a ring. I want to talk to her.»
I waited around until seven o'clock hoping she would telephone. O'Rourke had just come in. I had an idea. Maybe I would ask O'Rourke...
The telephone rang. It was Nina Andrews. She had a very pleasant voice, one that aroused my sympathies immediately.
«I'm sorry I couldn't call you sooner,» she said. «I was out all afternoon.»
«Miss Andrews,» I said, «I wonder if you'd do me a favor. I'd like to drop up to your place for a few minutes and have a little chat with you.»
«Oh, I don't want the job back,» she said in a cheery tone. «I've found another one already—a much better one. It was kind of you to...»
«Miss Andrews,» I insisted, «I would like to see you just the same—just for a few minutes. Would you mind?»
«No, no, not at all. Why come up, of course. I merely wanted to spare you the trouble...»
«Well thank you... I'll be there in a few minutes.»
I went over to O'Rourke and explained the case to him in a few brief words. «Maybe you'd like to come along,» I said. «You know, I don't believe that girl is a whore. I'm beginning to remember her now. I think I know...»
We hopped into a cab and drove uptown to Seventy-Second street where she lived. It was a typical old-fashioned rooming house. She lived on the fourth floor back.
She was a little startled to see O'Rourke with me. But not frightened—a point in her favor I thought to myself.
«I didn't know you would bring a friend,» she said, looking at me with frank blue eyes. «You'll have to excuse the appearance of the place.»
«Don't worry about that, Miss Andrews.» It was O'Rourke who spoke. «Nina is the name, isn't it?»
«Yes,» she said. «Why?»
«It's a pretty name,» he said. «One doesn't hear it much any more. You're not of Spanish descent by any chance, are you?»
«Oh no, not Spanish,» she said, very bright and quick, and in an altogether disarming tone. «My mother was Danish, and my father is English. Why, do I look Spanish?»
O'Rourke smiled. «To be honest, Miss Andrews... Miss Nina... may I call you that?... no, you don't look at all Spanish. But Nina is a Spanish name, isn't it?»
«Won't you sit down?» she said, adjusting the pillows on the divan. And then, in a perfectly natural tone of voice: «I suppose you heard that I was fired? Just like that! Not a word of explanation. But they gave me two weeks' pay—and I've just landed a better job. So it isn't so terrible, is it?»
I was glad now that I had brought O'Rourke along. If I had come alone I would have left without more ado. I was absolutely convinced, at this point, that the girl was innocent.
The girl. She had given her age as 25 on the application blank, but it was obvious that she wasn't a day over nineteen. She looked like a girl who had been brought up in the country. A bewitching little creature, and very alert.
O'Rourke had evidently been making a similar appraisal. When he lifted his voice it was apparent that he was thinking only how to spare her unnecessary unpleasantness.
«Miss Nina,» he said, speaking like a father, «Mr. Miller asked me to come along. I'm the night inspector, you know. There's been some misunderstanding with one of our clients, one of the clients served by your office. Perhaps you will recall the name—The Brooks Insurance Agency. Do you remember that name, Miss Nina? Think, because maybe you can help us.»
«Of course I know the name,» she responded with alacrity. «Room 715, Mr. Harcourt. Yes, I know him very well. I know his son too.»
O'Rourke immediately pricked up his ears.
«You know his son?» he repeated.
«Why yes. We were sweethearts. We come from the same town.» She mentioned a little town up State. «You could hardly call it a town, I guess.» She gave a bright little laugh.
«I see,» said O'Rourke, lingering over his words to draw her on.
«Now I understand why I was fired,» she said. «He doesn't think I'm good enough for his son, this Mr. Harcourt. But I didn't think he hated me that much.»
As she rattled on I recalled more and more clearly the circumstances of her first visit to the employment bureau. One detail stood out clearly. She had specifically requested, when filling out the application blank, that she be sent to a certain office building. It was not an unusual request; applicants often gave their preference for certain localities for one reason or another. But I remembered now the smile she had given me when thanking me for the courtesy I had shown her.
«Miss Andrews,?» I said, «didn't you ask me to send you to the Heckscher Building when you applied for the job?»
«Of course I did,» she replied. «I wanted to be near John. I knew his father was trying to keep us apart. That's why I left home.»
«Mr. Harcourt tried to ridicule me at first,» she added. «I mean when I first delivered telegrams to his office. But I didn't care. Neither did John.»
«Well,» said O'Rourke, «so you don't mind too much losing your job? Because, if you'd like to have it back, I think Mr. Miller could arrange if for you.» He glanced in my direction.
«Oh, I don't really want it back,» she said breathlessly. «I've found a much better job—and it's in the same building!»
The three of us burst out laughing. O'Rourke and I rose to go. «You're a musician, aren't you?» asked O'Rourke.
She blushed. «Why yes... why, how did you know? I'm a violinist. That's another reason, of course, why I decided to come to New York. I hope to give a recital here some day—perhaps in Town Hall. It's thrilling to be in a big city like this, isn't it?» She giggled like a school-girl.
«It is wonderful to live in a place like New York,» said O'Rourke, his voice suddenly dropping to a more serious register. «I hope you will have all the success you are looking for...» He paused, a heavy pause, and then taking her two hands in his, he placed himself squarely in front of her and said:
«Let me suggest something to you, may I?» «Why of course!» said Miss Andrews, reddening slightly.
«Well then, when you give your first concert at Town Hall, let us say, I would suggest that you use your real name. Marjorie Blair sounds just as good as Nina Andrews... don't you think? Well,» and without pausing to observe the effect of this retort, he said, grasping my arm and turning towards the door, «I think we should be getting along. Good luck, Miss Blair. Good-bye!»
«I'll be damned,» I said, when we got to the street.
«She's a fine little girl, isn't she?» said O'Rourke, dragging me along. «Clancy called me in this afternoon... showed me the application. I've got all the dope on her. She's absolutely O.K.»
«But the name?» I said. «Why did she change her name?»
«Oh that, that's nothing,» said O'Rourke. «Young people find it exciting to change their name sometimes.... It's lucky she doesn't know what Mr. Harcourt told Mr. Twilliger, eh? We'd have a nice case on our hands, if that ever leaked out.»
«By the way,» he added, as though it were of no importance, «when I make my report to Twilliger, I'll say that she was going on twenty-two. You won't mind that, will you? They suspected, you see, that she was under age. Or course you can't check every one's age. Still, you have to be careful. You understand, of course....»
«Of course,» I said, «and it's damned good of yon to cover me up.»
We walked in silence for a few moments, keeping our eyes open for a restaurant.
«Wasn't Harcourt taking a big risk in giving Twilliger a story like that?»
O'Rourke didn't answer at once.
«It makes me furious,» I said. «Damn him, he almost lost me my job too, do you realize that?»
«Harcourt's case is more complicated,» said O'Rourke slowly. «I'm telling you this in strict confidence, you understand. We're not going to say anything to Mr. Harcourt. In my report I'll inform Mr. Twilliger that the case has been satisfactorily dealt with. I'll explain that Mr. Harcourt was in error as to the girl's character, that she immediately found another position, and recommend that the matter be dropped.... Mr. Harcourt, as I suppose you have already gathered, is a close friend of Twilliger's. Everything the girl said was true, to be sure, and she's a fine little girl too, I like her. But there's one thing she omitted to tell us—naturally. Mr. Harcourt had her dismissed because he's jealous of his son... You wonder how I learned that so quickly? Well, we have our way of learning things. I could tell you a lot more about this Harcourt, if you'd care to hear it.»
I was about to say «Yes, I would,» when he abruptly changed the subject.
«You met a chap named Monahan recently, I understand.»
I felt as if he had given me a jolt.
«Yes, Monahan... of course. Why, did your brother tell you?»
«You know, of course,» O'Rourke continued in his easy, suave way, «what Monahan's job is, don't you? His assignment, I mean?»
I mumbled some answer, pretending that I knew more than I did, and waited impatiently for him to continue.
«Well, it's curious in this racket,» he went on, «how things connect up. Miss Nina Andrews didn't go immediately to the messenger bureau in search of that job, when she got to New York. Like all young girls, she was attracted to the bright lights. She's young, intelligent, and knows how to take care of herself. I don't think she's quite as innocent as she looks, to be candid with you. Knowing Harcourt, that is. But that's none of my business.... Anyway, to make it short, Mr. Miller, her first job was that of a taxi girl in a dance hall. You may know the one...» He looked directly ahead of him as he said this. «Yes, the very place that Monahan has his eye on. It's run by a Greek. Nice chap too. Absolutely on the level, I should say. But there are other individuals hanging around who would bear looking into more closely. Especially when a pretty little thing like Nina Andrews walks in—with those red cheeks and that demure country-like manner.»
I was hoping I would hear more about Monahan when again he switched the subject.
«Funny thing about Harcourt. Shows you how careful you have to be when you begin checking up on things...»
«What do you mean?» said I, wondering what he was going to blurt out next.
«Well, just this,» said O'Rourke, measuring his words. «Harcourt has a whole string of dance halls here in New York, and in other places too. The insurance agency is just a blind. That's why he's breaking his son in. He isn't interested in the insurance game. Harcourt's one passion is young girls— the younger the better. Of course, I don't know this, Mr. Miller, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had already tried to seduce Miss Andrews—or Marjorie Blair, to use her right name. If anything had happened between them Miss Andrews wouldn't be apt to tell any one, would she? Least of all the young man she's in love with. She's only nineteen now, but she probably looked the same at sixteen. She's a country girl, don't forget. They start in early sometimes—you know, red, warm blood.»
He stopped, as if to study the restaurant which, unknown to me, he had been gently and slowly leading me to.
«Not such a bad place, this. Shall we try it? Oh, just a minute, before we go in... About Harcourt.... The girl, of course, doesn't suspect that he has anything to do with dance halls. That was just a coincidence, her walking into that place. You know the one I mean, don't you? Just opposite...»
«Yes, I know it,» I said, a little annoyed with him for practising these sly digs on me. «I have a friend working there,» I added. And you know damned well what I mean, I thought to myself.
I was wondering how much Monahan might have revealed to him. I wondered too, suddenly, if Monahan hadn't known O'Rourke for many a year. How they liked to put on these little acts, these expressions of surprise, of ignorance, of amazement, and so on. I suppose they can't help it. They're like cashiers who say «thank you!» in their sleep.
And then, as I waited for him to continue, another suspicion entered my mind. Maybe those two fifty dollar bills that Monahan had dropped came from O'Rourke's pocket. I was almost certain of it. Unless.... but I dismissed the following flash—it was too far-fetched. Unless, I couldn't help repeating to myself, the money had come from Harcourt's pocket. It was a fat roll of bills he had flashed on me that night. Detectives don't usually walk around with huge sums of money in their pockets. Anyway, if Monahan had shaken Harcourt down (or perhaps the Greek!) O'Rourke wouldn't know about it.
I was routed out of these interior speculations by an even more startling remark of O'Rourke's. We were in the hallway, just about to enter the restaurant, when I distinctly heard him saying:
«In that particular dance hall it's almost impossible for a girl to get a job without sleeping with Harcourt first. A least, that's what Monahan tells me.»
«Of course there's nothing irregular about that,» he continued, allowing a moment's pause for the observation to sink in.
We took seats at a table in the far corner of the restaurant, where we could talk without fear of being overheard. I noticed O'Rourke glancing about with his habitual keen, all-encompassing yet thoroughly unobtrusive gaze. He did it instinctively, just as an interior decorator takes in the furnishings of a room, including the pattern of the wall-paper.
«But the fact that Miss Marjorie Blair had taken the job under another name almost led him to commit an indiscretion.»
«God, yes», I exclaimed. «I never thought of that!»
«It was fortunate for him that he had taken the precaution to ask for her photograph first....»
I couldn't help interrupting him.«I must say that you learned a devil of a lot in a short time.»
«A pure accident,» said O'Rourke modestly. «I bumped into Monahan on my way out of Clancy's office.»
«Yes, but how did you manage to put two and two together so quickly? I persisted. «You didn't know when you met Monahan that the girl had been working in a dance hall. I don't see how the devil you just fell on to that piece of information.»
«I didn't,» said O'Rourke. «I extracted it from Harcourt. You see, while talking to Monahan... he was talking about his assignment—and about you, incidentally... yes, he said he liked you very much-he wants to see you again, by the way... you should get in touch with him... well, anyway, as I was saying, I had a hunch to go and telephone Harcourt. I asked him a few routine questions—among them where had the girl worked before, if he knew. He said she had worked in a dance hall. He said it as if to say: 'She's just a little tart.' When I went back to the table I just took a flier and asked Monahan if he knew a girl named Andrews—at the dance hall. I didn't even know then which dance hall. And then, to my surprise, after I had explained the case, he began telling me about Harcourt. So there you are. It's simple, isn't it? I tell you, everything connects up in this racket. You play your hunch, you throw out a feeler—and sometimes it tumbles right into your lap.»
«I'll be damned,» was all I could say .
O'Rourke was studying the menu. I looked at it distractedly, unable to decide what I wanted to eat. All I could think of was Harcourt. So Harcourt fucked them all! Jesus Christ, I was furious. I wanted more than ever to do something about it. Maybe Monahan was the man; maybe he was already laying his traps.
I ordered something at random and sat looking disconsolately at the diners.
«What's the matter?» said O'Rourke. «You look depressed.»
«I am,» I answered. «It's nothing. It'll pass.»
Throughout the meal I only half listened to O'Rourke's talk. I kept thinking of Mona. I wondered what she would say if I were to mention Harcourt's name. That son of a bitch! Fucking everything in sight 'and then, b'Jesus, almost fucking me out of a job! The gall of him! Well, another clue to work on. Things were happening fast....
It took several hours for me to break away from O'Rourke. When he wanted to hold you he could tell one story after another, gliding from one to another with the most dexterous ingenuity. I was always exhausted after spending an evening with him. It exhausted me just to listen, because with every sentence he let fall I watched like a bird of prey for my opening. Besides, there were always long interruptions in the stories, demanding regressions, recapitulations and all manner of acrobatics. Sometimes he'd keep me waiting a half hour or more in a telegraph office while, with that patience which exasperated me, he laboriously went through the files in search of some trivial detail. And always, before resuming his story, he would make a long, windy detour, as we went from one office to another, concerning the clerk or the manager or the telegrapher in the office we had just left. His memory was prodigious. In the hundred or more branch offices scattered throughout the city he knew all the clerks by name, the record of their progress from one job to another, one office to another, and thousands of intimate details about their family life. Not only did he know the present staff—he knew the ghosts who had occupied their places before them. In addition he knew many of the messengers, both of the night and the day shifts. He was especially devoted to the old fellows, some of whom had served the company almost as many years as O'Rourke himself.
I had learned a great deal from these nocturnal inspections, things which I doubted that Clancy himself knew. More than a few of the clerks, I discovered through the course of these rounds with O'Rourke, had been guilty of embezzlement at one time or another in their seedy, cosmococcic career. O'Rourke had his own way of dealing with these cases. Relying upon the good judgment which his long experience had given him, he often took amazing liberties in dealing with these unfortunate individuals. Half the cases, I am certain, never became known to any one but O'Rourke. Where he had confidence in the man he would allow him to make restitution little by little, making it clear, of course, that the matter was to remain a secret between them. There was at times a twofold purpose in this benevolence. By handling the incident in this irregular way not only was the company certain of retrieving all that had been stolen but, because of his gratitude, the victim could henceforth be relied upon to act as a sort of stool pigeon. He could be made to squeal and squawk when occasion arose. Many a time, in the beginning, when I wondered why O'Rourke was taking such an interest in certain rat-like characters, I discovered that they were of the lost tribe whom O'Rourke had converted to useful instruments. In fact, I learned one thing about O'Rourke which explained everything, so far as his mysterious behavior was concerned: that was that every one to whom he gave the least time or attention had some importance in the scheme of his cosmococcic life.
Though he gave the illusion of running rings around himself, though he often acted like a fool and an ignoramus, though he seemed to be doing nothing more than wasting time, actually everything he said or did had a vital bearing on the work in hand. Moreover, there was never just one case which occupied him exclusively. He had a hundred strings to his lyre. No case was ever too hopeless for him to drop. The company might have scratched it off the record—but not O'Rourke. He had the infinite patience of an artist, and with it the conviction that time was on his side. There didn't seem to be any phase of life with which he had not familiarized himself. Though, speaking of the artist, I must admit that perhaps in that realm he was least sure of himself. He could stand and look at the work of a pompier in a department store window with dewy eyes. His knowledge of literature was almost nil. But if, for example, I should happen to relate the story of Raskolnikov, as Dostoievski unfolded it for us, I could be certain of reaping the most penetrating observations. And what it was indeed that made me cherish his friendship, was the kinship he had, humanly and spiritually, with such writers as Dostoievski. His acquaintance with the underworld had softened and broadened him. He was a detective because of his extraordinary interest in and sympathy with his fellow-man. He never caused a man unnecessary pain. He always gave his man the wide benefit of the doubt. He never held a grudge against any one, no matter what the man had done. He sought to understand, to fathom their motives, even when they were of the basest. Above all, he was to be relied upon absolutely. His word, once given, was adhered to at any cost. Neither could he be bribed. I can't possibly imagine what temptation one could put before him to deflect him from the performance of his duty. A further point in his favor, in my opinion, was that he was totally lacking in ambition. He hadn't the slightest desire to be anything other than he was. He gave himself body and soul to his task, knowing that it was a thankless one, knowing that he was being used and abused by a heartless, soulless organization. But, as he himself had more than once remarked, whatever the attitude of the company might be was none of his concern. Nor did it matter to him that, in the event of retirement, they should undo everything be had labored to build up. Having no illusions, he nevertheless gave his utmost to all who made demands upon him.
He was a unique being, O'Rourke. He disturbed me profoundly sometimes. I don't think I've ever known any one before or since who made me feel quite so transparent as he did. Nor do I ever remember any one who so abstemiously withheld giving advice or criticism. He was the only man I've ever known who made me realize what it means to be tolerant, what it means to respect the other person's liberty. It's curious, now that I reflect on it, how deeply he symbolized the Law. Not the petty spirit of law which man uses for his own ends, but the inscrutable cosmic law which never ceases to work, which is implacable and just, and thus ultimately the most merciful.
As I lay in bed wide awake, I would, after an evening such as this one, often ask myself what O'Rourke would do it he were in my boots. In endeavoring to make the transposition it had occurred to me more than once that I knew nothing about O'Rourke's private life. Absolutely nothing. Not that he was evasive—I couldn't say that. It was just a blank. Somehow the subject never came up.
I don't know why I thought so, but I had the feeling that in some period long past he had suffered a great deception. A frustrated love, perhaps.
Whatever it was, he had not been soured by it. He had foundered and then recovered. But his life had been irreparably altered. Putting all the little pieces together, putting on one side the man I knew, and on the other side the man whom I caught glimpses of now and then (when he was in a reminiscent mood), comparing them one with the other, it was impossible to deny that they were two quite different beings. All those rugged, sterling qualities which O'Rourke possessed were like protective devices, worn not outwardly but inwardly. From the world he had little or nothing to fear. He was in it and of it, totally. But against the decrees of Fate he was powerless.
It was strange, I thought to myself as I closed my eyes, that the man I should owe so much to must remain forever a sealed book. I could only learn from his behavior and example.
A wave of tenderness swept over me. I understood O'Rourke in a bigger way than I had before. I understood everything more clearly. I understood for the first time what it really means to be «delicate».
13
There are days when the return to life is painful and distressing. One leaves the realm of sleep against one's will. Nothing has happened, except an awareness that the deeper and truer reality belongs to the world of the unconscious.
Thus one morning I opened my eyes involuntarily, struggling frantically to fall back into that condition of bliss in which dream had wrapped me. So chagrined was I to find myself awake that I was on the point of tears. I closed my eyes and tried to sink back again into the world from which I had been so cruelly ejected. It was useless. I tried every device I had ever heard of but I could no more accomplish the trick than one can stop a bullet in flight and restore it to the empty chamber of a revolver.
What remained, however, was the avira of the dream: in that I lingered voluptuously. Some deep purpose had been fulfilled, but before I had been given time to read the significance of it the slate had been sponged and I was thrust out, out into a world whose one solution for everything is death. There were only a few tangible shreds left in my hand and, as with those crumbs which the poor are supposed to gather from the tables of the rich, I clung to them greedily. But the crumbs dropped from the table of sleep are like the meagre facts in a crime whose solution must ever remain a mystery. Those dripping images which, in the act of awakening, one spirits across the threshold like a mystic smuggler, have a way of undergoing the most heart-rending transformations on the hither side. They melt like ice cream on a sultry day in August. And yet, as they merge toward the inchoate magma which is the very stuff of the soul, some blurred knot of remembrance keeps alive—forever, it would seem— the dim and velvety outline of a palpable, sentient continuum wherein they move and have, not their being, but reality. Reality! That which embraces, sustains and exalts life. It is in this stream that one craves to return and remain forever immersed. What remained then of that inextinguishable world from which I awakened one morning full of tender wounds that had been so skillfully staunched in the night? The face of the one I had loved and lost! Una Gifford. Not the Una I had known, but a Una whom years of pain and separation had magnified into a frightening loveliness. Her face had become like a heavy flower caught in darkness; it seemed transfixed by its own suffused glow. All those memories of her which I had jealously preserved and which had been lightly tamped down, like fine tobacco under the finger of a pipe smoker, had suddenly brought about a spontaneously combustible beautification. The pallor of her skin was heightened by the marble glow which the smouldering embers of memory awakened. The head turned slowly on the almost indistinguishable stem. The lips were parted in thirst; they were extraordinarily vivid and vulnerable. It seemed like the detached head of a dreamer seeking with eyes sealed to receive the hungry lips of one summoned from some remote place. And, like the convolvolutions of exotic plants which writhe and lash in the night, our lips with endless searching finally met, closed and sealed the wound which until then had bled unceasingly. It was a kiss that drowned the memory of every pain; it staunched and healed the wound. An endless time it lasted, a forgotten period, as between two unremembered dreams. And then, as though the folds of night had gently come between us, we were apart and gazing at each other, penetrating the flowing veils of darkness with a single hypnotic stare. Just as previously the wet lips had been glued together—like fluffy, fragile petals tossed by a storm—so now the eyes were joined, welded by the electric current of long withheld recognition. In neither instance did there seem to be the least operation of the mental faculties: all was mindless and unwilled. It was like the union of two magnets, of their dull gray termini; the ever searching parts had at last come together. In this still, charged coalescence another sensation gradually made itself known: the sound of our ancient voice. A single voice which spoke and answered simultaneously: a two-pronged note which sounded at first like interrogation but which always died away like the pleasurable lapping of a wave. It was difficult to realize at first that this monologue was really the marriage of two distinct voices; it was like the play of two fountains sending and receiving from the same source and with the same gush.
Then everything was suddenly interrupted, a shift as of wet sand slipping from the upper bank, a deep dark substance suddenly scooped out, leaving a thin deceptive crust of gleaming white on which the unwary foot would tread and crash to doom.
An interim of little deaths, all painless, as though the senses were so many organ stops and a hand, invisible and beneficient, had absent-mindedly choked off the air.
Now she is reading aloud—familiar passages from a book which I must have read. She is lying on her stomach, her elbows bent, her head cupped in the two palms. It is the profile of her face which she gives me and the white opacity of the flesh is gloved and fragrant. The lips are like bruised geraniums, two perfectly hinged petals that open and close. The words are melodiously disguised; they issue from a sound box made of duveteen.
It is only when I recognize that they are my own words, words that were never put on paper but written in the head, that I notice she is not reading to me but to a young man lying beside her. He lies on his back and looks up into her face with the attentiveness of a devotee. There are just the two of them, and the world has no existence for them. It is not a matter of space which separates me from them but a world chasm. There is no longer any possibility of communication; they float in space on a lotus leaf. We are cut off. I try desperately to send a message across the void, to let her know at least that the enchanting words are from the embryonic book of my life. But she is out of bounds. The reading continues and her ecstasy mounts. I am lost and forgotten.
Then, for just a flash, she turns her full face towards me, the eyes revealing no sign of recognition. The eyes are turned inward, as though in deep meditation. The fullness of the face is gone; the contours of the skull become pronounced. She is still beautiful, but it is no longer the allure of star and flesh; it is the phantasmal beauty of the smothered soul emerging with crest and dye from the prism of death. A fleeting cloud of remembrance passes over the empty map of her sharp features. She who was alive, incarnate, a tormented flower in the crevice of memory, now vanishes like smoke from the empire of sleep. Whether she had died in sleep, perchance in dream, or whether I myself had died and found her on the other side, asleep and dreaming, I could not tell. For an interminable instant of time our paths had crossed, the union had been consummated, the wound of the past had been healed. Incarnate or discarnate, we were now wheeling off into space, each to his own orbit, each accompanied by his own music. Time, with its endless trail of pain, sorrow and separation, had folded up; we were again in the timeless blue, distant one from another, but no longer separated. We were wheeling like the constellations, wheeling in the obedient meadows of the stars. There was nothing but the soundless chime of starry beams, the bright collisions of floating feathers churning with scintillating brilliance in the fiery sound track of the angelic realms.
I knew then that I had found bliss, and that bliss is the world, or state of the world, where creation reigns. I knew another thing, that if it were merely a. dream it would end, and if it were not a dream...
My eyes were open and I was in a room, the same room in which I had gone to bed the night before.
Others would be content to call it a dream. But what is a dream? Who experienced what? And where and when?
I was drugged by the vanished splendors of the phantasmal voyage. I could neither return nor depart. I lay abed with eyes lightly closed and reviewed the procession of hypnagogic images which passed like ghostly sentinels from station to station along the tenuous frontier of sleep. Recollections of other waking images crowded in, leaving dark stains across the bright track made by the passage of the autochtonous ghosts. There was the Una to whom I had waved goodbye one Summer's day, the Una on whom I had turned my back, the Una whose eyes had followed me down the street, and at the corner when I turned I had felt those eyes piercing through me—and I knew that no matter where I went or how much I would try to forget, those two beseeching eyes would be forever buried between my shoulder blades.
There was another Una who showed me her bedroom —years later when we met by chance on the street in front of her house. A changed Una, who blossomed only in dream. The Una who belonged to another man, the Una surrounded by the spawn of wedlock. A recurrent dream, this pleasant, trivial, comforting. It recurred obsessively in a configuration almost mathematically exact. Guided by my double, George Marshall, I would stand in front of her house and, like a Peeping Tom, I would wait for her to come out of the house with sleeves rolled up and take a breath of air. She was never aware of our presence, though we were there as large as life and only a few feet away from her. That meant that I was privileged to observe her at leisure, even to discuss her points with my companion and guide. She always looked the same—the matron in full bloom. I would have my fill of her and then quietly take my leave. It would be dark and I would make a desperate effort to remember the name of the street which somehow I never could find unaided. But at the corner, looking for the street sign, the darkness would become a thick pall of black. I knew that then George Marshall would take my arm and say, as he always did, «Don't worry, I know where it is... I'll bring you back again some day.» And then George Marshall, my very double, my friend and traitor, would suddenly give me the slip, and I would be left to stumble about in the grimy purlieus of some odious quarter which reeked of crime and vice. From bar to bar I would wander, always looked on askance, always insulted and humiliated, often pummeled and kicked about like a sack of oats. Time after time I would find myself flat on the pavement, the blood trickling from mouth and ears, my hands cut to ribbons, my body one great welter of bruises and contusions. It was a terrible price I always had to pay for the privilege of watching her take a breath of air. But it was worth it! And when in my dreams I saw George Marshall approaching, when I heard the promise which his reassuring words of greeting always contained, my heart would begin to pound furiously and I would hasten my steps to arrive in front of her house at just the right moment. Strange that I could never find my way alone. Strange that George Marshall had to be the one to lead me to her, for George Marshall had never seen in her anything more than a pleasing bundle of flesh. But George Marshall, tied to me by an invisible cord, had been the silent witness of a drama which his unbelieving eyes had repudiated. And so in dream George Marshall could look again with eyes of wonder; he too could find a certain contentment in rediscovering the junction where our ways had parted.
Suddenly now I remembered something I had completely forgotten. I opened wide my eyes as if to stare across the stretch of distant past and capture the angle of an empty vision. I see the back yard, as it was during the long winter, the black boughs of the elm trees laced in ince, the ground hard and barren, the sky splotched with zinc and laudanum. I am the prisoner in the house of misplaced love. I am August Angst growing a melancholy beard. I am a drone whose sole function is to shoot spermatozoa into the cuspidor of anguish. I pull off orgasms with zygomatic fury. I bite the beard which covers her mouth like moss. I chew fat pieces out of my own melancholy and spit them out like roaches.
All through the winter it goes on like this—until the day when I come home and find her lying on the bed in a pool of blood. In the dresser the doctor has left the body of the seven month tooth-ache wrapped in a towel. It is like a homunculus, the skin a dark red, and it has hair and nails. It lies breathless in the drawer of the dresser, a life yanked out of darkness and thrust back into darkness. It has no name, nor has it been loved, nor will it be mourned. It was pulled up by the roots, and if it shrieked no one heard. What life it had was lived and lost in sleep. Its death was only a further, deeper plunge into that sleep from which it never awakened.
I am standing at the window, gazing vacantly across the bleak yard at the window opposite. A form flits vaguely to and fro. Following it with a vacant stare a faint remembrance stirs, flickers, then gutters out. I am left to wallow in the morass of swamp-filled vagaries. I stand sullen and upright, like Rigor Mortis himself. I am the King of Silicon and my realm includes all that is tarnished and corroded.
Carlotta lies cross-wise on the bed, her feet dangling over the edge. She will lie that way until the doctor comes and rouses her back to life. The landlady will come and change the sheets. The body will be disposed of in the usual way. We will be told to move, the room will be fumigated, the crime will be unrecorded. We will find another place with a bed, a stove, a chest of drawers. We will go through the same routine of eating, sleeping, breeding, and burying. August Angst will give way to Tracy le Crevecoeur. He will be an Arabian Knight with a penis of cool jade. He will eat nothing but spices and condiments and he will spill his seed recklessly. He will dismount, fold his penis like a jack-knife, and take his place with the other emptied studs.
That form flitting to and fro—it was Una Gifford. Weeks later, after Carlotta and I had moved to another flat, we met on the street in front of her house. I went upstairs with her and perhaps I stayed a half hour, perhaps longer, but all I can remember of that visit is that she brought me to the bedroom and showed me the bed, their bed in which a child had already been born.
Not long thereafter I managed to escape from Carlotta's devouring clutches. Towards the end I had been carrying on with Maude. When we were married about three months a most unexpected meeting occurred. I had gone to the cinema alone one night. That is, I had bought my ticket and entered the theatre. I had to wait a few moments in the rear of the house until a seat could be found. In the subdued light an usherette approached me carrying a flash light. It was Carlotta. «Harry!» she said, giving a little cry like a wounded doe. She was too overpowered to say much. She kept looking at me, listening with eyes grown large and moist. I quickly withered under this steady, silent accusation. «I'll find you a seat,» she said at last, and as she ushered me to a place she murmured in my ear: «I'll try to join you later.»
I kept my eyes riveted on the screen but my thoughts were travelling like wild-fire. It might have been hours that I sat thus, my brain reeling with recollections. Suddenly I was aware of her sliding into the seat beside me, grasping my arm. Quickly she slid her hand over mine and as she squeezed it I looked at her and saw the tears rolling down her cheeks. «God, Harry, it's been so long,» she whispered, and with that her hand travelled to my leg and grasped it fervently just above the knee. Instantly I did the same, and we sat thus for some time, our lips sealed, our eyes staring blankly at the flickering screen.
Presently a wave of passion swept over us and our hands groped frantically for the burning flesh. We had hardly finished the quest when the picture came to an end and the lights were turned on.
«I'll take you home,» I said, as we stumbled out into the aisle. My voice was thick and hoarse, my throat dry, my lips parched. She put her arm in mine, rolled her thigh against mine. We staggered towards the exit. In the lobby she stopped a moment to powder her face. She had not changed greatly; the eyes had grown larger, more sorrowful. They were brilliant and haunting. A mauve dress of some clinging, film-like material showed her figure to advantage. I looked at her feet and suddenly recalled that they had always been tiny and supple, the nimble feet of one who would never grow old.
In the cab I started to tell her what had happened since I ran away, but she put her hand over my mouth and in a low husky voice she begged me not to tell her until we got home. Then, still holding her hand over my mouth, she said: «You're married, aren't you?» I nodded. «I knew it,» she murmured, and then she withdrew her hand.
The next moment she flung her arms about me. Kissing me wildly, she sobbed the words out—«Harry, Harry, you should never have treated me that way. You could have told me everything... everything. You were terribly cruel, Harry. You killed everything.»
I held her close, pulling her leg up over mine and swiftly running my hand up her leg until it settled in her crotch. The cab stopped suddenly and we disentangled ourselves. I followed her up the stoop tremblingly, knowing not what to expect once we were inside. As the house door closed behind us she whispered in my ear that I was to move silently. «You mustn't let Georgie hear you. He's very ill... he's dying, I'm afraid.»
The hall was in pitch darkness. I had to hold her hand as she let me up the two long winding flights of stairs to the attic where she and her son were finishing their days.
She turned on a dim light and with forefinger to her lips she indicated the couch. Then she stood with her ear to the door of the adjoining room and listened intently to make certain that Georgie was asleep. Finally she tiptoed to my side and sat herself gingerly on the edge of the couch. «Be careful,» she whispered, «it squeaks.»
I was so bewildered that I neither whispered nor moved a muscle. What Georgie would do if he were to find me sitting there I didn't dare to think. So he was dying, at last. A horrible end. And here we were, sitting like guilty mummies in a poverty-stricken garret. And yet, I reflected, it was perhaps fortunate that this little scene could only be played in a muffled key. God knows what terrible words of reproach she might have hurled at me had she been able to speak out.
«Put out the light!» I begged in mute pantomime. As she rose to obey I pointed to the floor, signifying that I would stretch myself out beside the couch. It was some moments before she joined me on the floor. She was standing in a corner stealthily removing her things. I watched her by the faint light which stole through the windows. As she reached for a wrap to throw about her naked figure I quickly unbuttoned my fly.
It was difficult to move without making a sound. She seemed terrified of the thought that Georgie might hear us. I understood that he had conveniently saddled me with the responsibility for his suffering. I understood that she had silently acquiesced and that her terror now was a recoil from the ultimate horror of betrayal.
To move without breathing, to entwine ourselves like two corkscrews, to fuck with a passion such as we had never experienced before and yet not make a sound, required a skill and patience which would have been admirable to dwell on were it not for the fact that something else was going on which affected me profoundly... She was weeping without tears. I could hear it gurgling inside her, like a toilet box which won't stop running. And though she had begged me in a frightened whisper not to come, that she couldn't wash because of the noise, because of Georgie in the next room, though I knew that she was the sort who gets caught just by looking at her, and that if she were caught it would go hard with her, still, and perhaps more because of the silent weeping, more because I wanted to put an end to the gurgling, I came again and again. She too passed from one orgasm to another, knowing each time that I would shoot a wad into her womb, but unable to help herself. Never once did I take my cock out. I would wait quietly for the answering needle bath, jam it tight like a cartridge, and then go off into the electrically moist darkness of a mouth with the soft lips of an artichoke. There was something fiendishly detached about it, almost as if I were a pyromaniac sitting in a comfortable chair in my own house which I had set fire to with my own hand,, knowing that I would not budge until the very chair I sat in would begin to sizzle and roast my ass.
When eventually I go to the landing outside and stood embracing her for the last time, she whispered that she needed money for the rent, begged me to bring it to her on the morrow. And then, as I was about to descend the stairs, she pulled me back, her lips glued to my ear. «He won't last another week!» These words came to me as if through an amplifier. Even to-day, as I repeat them to myself, I can hear the soft whistling rush of air that accompanied the sound of her almost inaudible voice. It was as if my ear were a dandelion and each little thistle an antenna which caught the message and relayed it to the roof of my brain where it exploded with the dull splash of a howitzer. «He won't last another week!» I said it all the way home, a thousand times or more. And every time I commenced this refrain I saw a photogenic image of fright—the head of a woman sawed off by the frame of the picture just below the scalp. I saw it always the same—a face looming out of darkness, the upper part of the head caught as if in a trap door. A face with a calcium glow about it, suspended by its own dream-like effort above an indistinguishable mass of writhing creatures such as infest the swampy regions of the mind's dark fears. And then I saw Georgie being born—just as she had related it to me once. Born on the floor of the outhouse where she had locked herself in to escape the hands of his father who was blind with drink. I saw her lying huddled on the floor and Georgie between her legs. Lying that way until the moon flooded them with mysterious platinum waves. How she loved Georgie! How she clung to him! Nothing was too good for her Georgie. Then north on the night train with her little black sheep. Starving herself to feed Georgie, selling herself in order to put Georgie through school. Everything for Georgie. «You were crying,» I would say, catching her unawares. «What is it—has he been treating you badly again?» There wasn't any good in Georgie: he was full of black pus. «Hum that tune,» he would say sometimes, the three of us sitting in the dark. And they would begin to hum and croon, and after a time Georgie would come over to her, put his arms around her, and weep like a child. «I'm no god-damned good,» he would say, over and over. And then he would cough and the coughing never stopped. Like hers, his eyes were large and black; they peered out from his hollowed face like two burning holes. Then he went away—to a ranch—and I thought maybe he would get well again. A lung was punctured, and when that healed the other one was punctured. And before the doctors had finished their experiments I was like a bundle of malignant tumors, rearing to explode, to break the chains, to kill his mother if necessary, anything, anything, only no more heartaches, no more misery, no more silent suffering. When had I ever truly loved her? When? I couldn't think. I had been searching for a cosy womb and I had been caught in the out-house, had locked myself in, had watched the moon come and go, had seen one bloody pulp after another fall from between her legs. Phoebus! Yes, that was the place! Near the Old Soldiers' Home. And he, the father and seducer, was safely behind the bars in Fortress Monroe. He was. And then, when no one any longer mentioned his name, he was a corpse lying in a coffin a few blocks away and before I ever realized that they had shipped his body north, she had buried him—with military honors! Christ! What all can happen behind one's back—while you're out for a walk or going to the library to look up an important book! One lung, two lungs, an abortion, a still-birth, milk legs, no work, boarders, hauling ash cans, hocking bicycles, sitting on the roof watching pigeons: these phantasmal objects and events fill the screen, then pass like smoke, are forgotten, buried, thrown in the ash can like rotted tumors, until.... two lips pressed against the waxen ear explode with a deafening dandelion roar, whereupon August Angst, Tracy le Crevecoeur and Rigor Mortis sail slantwise through the roof of the brain to hang suspended in a sky shimmering with ultra-violet.
The day after this episode I do not go back to her with the money, nor do I appear ten days later at the funeral. But about three weeks later I feel compelled to unburden myself to Maude. Of course I say nothing about the whispering fuck on the floor that night, but I do confess to escorting her to her rooms. To another woman I might have confessed everything, but not to Maude. As it is, with only a thimbleful spilled out, she's already as stiff as a frightened mare. She's not listening any more—just waiting for me to conclude so that she can say with absolute finality—NO!
To be fair to her, it was a bit mad to expect her to consent to my suggestion. It would be a rare woman who would say yes. What did I want her to do? Why, to invite Carlotta to live with us. Yes, finally I had come to the extraordinary conclusion that the only decent thing to do would be to ask Carlotta to share her life with us. I was trying to make it plain to Maude that I had never loved Carlotta, that I had only pitied her, and that therefore I owed her something. Queer masculine logic! Dingo! Absolutely dingo. But I believed every word I uttered. Carlotta would come and take a room and live her own life. We would treat her graciously, like a fallen queen. It must have sounded terribly hollow and false to Maude. But as I listened to the reverberations of my own voice I had the distinct sensation of hearing those sound waves quell the horrible gurgle of the toilet box. Since Maude had already made up her mind, since no one was listening except myself, since the words bounced back like egg plants ricocheting against a gourd, I continued with my transmission, growing more and more earnest, more and more convinced, more and more determined to have my way. One wave on top of another, one rhythm against another: quell against beat, surge against gush, confession against compulsion, ocean against brook. Beat it down, sink it, drown it, drive it below the earth, set a mountain on top of it! I went on and on, con amore, con furioso, con connecti-busque, con aboulia, con aesthesia, con Silesia... And all the while she listened like a rock, fire-proofing her little camisoled heart, her tin cracker-box, her meat-loafed gizzard, her fumigated womb.
The answer was No! Yesterday, to-day, to-morrow —NO! Positively no! Her whole physical, mental, moral and spiritual development had brought her to that great moment when she could answer triumphantly: NO! Positively No!
If she had only said to me: «Listen, you can't ask me to do a thing like that! It's mad, don't you see? How would we get along, the three of us? I know you'd like to help her—so would I... but....»
If she had spoken that way I would have gone to the mirror, taken a long cool look at myself, laughed like a broken hinge and agreed that it was utterly mad. Not that only, but more... I would have given her credit for really desiring to do something which I knew her meagre spirit was incapable of imagining. Yes, I'd have chalked up a white mark for her and topped it off with a quiet insane fuck a la Huysmans. I'd have taken her on my lap, as her father in heaven used to do, and cooing and billing, and pretending that 986 plus 2 makes minus 69 I'd have delicately lifted her organdy cover-all, and put the fire out with an ethereal fire extinguisher.
However, and instead of which, pissing in vain against a wall of fire-proofed sheet metal, I got so infuriated that I burst out of the house in the middle of the night and started walking to Coney Island. The weather was mild and when I got to the boardwalk I sat down on a ramp and began to laugh. I got to thinking of Stanley, of the night I met him after his release from Fort Oglethorpe, of the open barouche we hired and the beer bottles piled up on the seat opposite. After four years in the cavalry Stanley was a man of iron. He was tough inside and out, as only a Pole can be. He would have bitten my ear off, if I had dared him to, and perhaps spat it in my face. He had a couple of hundred dollars in his pocket and he wanted to spend it all that night. And before the night was over I remember that we had just enough between us to share a room together in some broken-down hotel near Borough Hall. I remember too that he was so stinking drunk that he wouldn't get out of bed to relieve his bladder—just turned over and pissed a steady stream against the wall.
The next day I was still furious. And the following day and the day after. That NO! was eating me up. It would take a thousand Yes-es to bury it. Nothing vital occupied me at the time. I was making a pretense of earning a living by selling a shelf of books which were supposed to contain «the world's best literature». I hadn't yet sunk to the encyclopaedia stage. The rat who had put me on to the game had hypnotized me. I sold everything in a post-hypnotic trance. Sometimes I awoke with bright ideas, that's to say, slightly criminal or definitely hallucinatory. Anyway, still hopping mad, still furious, I awoke one day with that NO! still reverberating in my ears. I was eating breakfast when I suddenly recalled that I had never canvassed cousin Julie. Maude's cousin Julie. Julie was married now, just long enough, I figured, to want a change of rhythm. Julie would be my first call. I'd take it easy, pop in just a little before lunch, sell her a set of books, have a good meal, get my end in and then go to a movie.
Julie lived at the upper end of Manhattan in a wall-papered incubator. Her husband was a dope, as near as I could make out. That's to say he was a perfectly normal specimen who earned an honest living and voted the Republican or Democratic ticket according to mood. Julie was a good-natured slob who never read anything more disturbing than the Saturday Evening Post. She was just a piece of ass, with about enough intelligence to realize that after a fuck you have to take a douche and if that doesn't work then a darning needle. She had done it so often, the darning needle stunt, that she was an adept at it. She could bring on a haemorrhage even if it had been an immaculate conception. Her main idea was to enjoy herself like a drunken weasel and get it out of her system as quick as possible. She wouldn't flinch at using a chisel or a monkey wrench, if she thought either would do the trick.
I was a bit flabbergasted when she came to the door. I hadn't thought of the change a year or so can work in a female, nor had I thought how most females look at eleven in the morning when they are not expecting visitors. To be cruelly exact, she looked like a cold meat loaf that had been spattered with catsup and put back in the ice box. The Julie I had last seen was a dream by comparison. I had to make some rapid transpositions to adjust myself to the situation.
Naturally I was more in the mood to sell than to fuck. Before very long, however, I realized that to sell, I would have to fuck. Julie just couldn't understand what the hell had come over me—to walk in on her and try to dump a load of books on her. I couldn't tell her it would improve her mind because she had no mind, and she knew it and wasn't the least embarrassed to admit it.
She left me alone for a few minutes in order to primp herself up. I began reading the prospectus.
I found it so interesting that I almost sold myself a set of books. I was reading a fragment about Coleridge, what a wonderful mind he had, (and I had always thought him a bag of shit!), when I felt her coining towards me. It was so interesting, the passage, that I excused myself without looking up and continued reading. She knelt behind me, on the couch, and began reading over my shoulder. I felt her sloshy boobs joggling me but I was too intent on pursuing the ramifications of Coleridge's amazing mind to let her vegetable appendages disturb me.
Suddenly the beautifully bound prospectus went flying out of my hand.
«What are you reading that crap for?» she cried, swinging me around and holding me by the elbows. «I don't understand a word of it, and neither do you, I'll bet. What's the matter with you—can't you find yourself a job?»
A witless-shitless sort of grin slowly spread over her face. She looked like a Teutonic angel doing a real think. I got up, recovered the prospectus, and asked what about lunch.
«Jesus, I like your crust,» said she. «What the hell do you think I am any way?»
Here I had to pretend that I was only joking, but after putting my hand down her bosom and twiddling the nipple of her right teat a while, I deftly brought the conversation back to the subject of food.
«Listen, you've changed,» she said. «I don't like the way you talk—or act.» Here she firmly stuck her teat back, as if it were a ball of wet socks going into a laundry bag. «Listen, I'm a married woman, do you realize that? Do you know what Mike would do to you if he caught you acting this way?»
«You're a bit changed yourself,» said I, rising to my feet and sniffing the air in search of provender. All I wanted now was food. I don't know why, but I had made up my mind that she would dish me up a good meal—that was the least she could do for me, lop-sided moron that she was.
The only way to get anything out of her was to handle her. I had to pretend to get passionate mauling the cheeks of her tumorous ass. And yet not too passionate, because that would mean a quick fuck and maybe no lunch. If the meal were good I might do a hit and run job—that's what I was thinking to myself as I foozled around.
«Jesus Christ, all right, I'll get you a meal,» she blurted out, reading my thoughts like a blind bookworm.
«Fine,» I almost shouted. «What have you got?» «Come and see for yourself,» she answered, dragging me to the kitchen and opening the icebox.
I saw ham, potato salad, sardines, cold beets, rice pudding, apple sauce, frankfurters, pickles, celery stalks, cream cheese and a special dish of puke with mayonnaise on it which I knew I didn't want.
«Let's bring it all out,» I suggested. «And have you any beer?»
«Yeah, and I got mustard too,» she snarled. «Any bread?»
She gave me a look of clean disgust. I quickly yanked the things out of the ice-box and set them on the table.
«Better make some coffee too,» I said. «I suppose you'd like some whipped cream with it, wouldn't you? You know, I feel like poisoning you. Jesus, if you're hard up you could ask me to lend you some money... you oughtn't to come here and try to sell me a lot of crap. If you'd been a little nicer I'd have asked you out to lunch. I've got tickets for the theatre. We could have had a good time... I might even have bought the fool books. Mike isn't a bad guy. He'd have bought the books even if we had no intention of reading them. If he thought you needed help.... You walk in and treat me as if I were dirt. What did I ever do to you? I don't get it. Don't laugh! I'm serious. I don't know why I should take this from you. Who the hell do you think you are?»
She slammed a dish down in front of me. Then she turned on her heel and went to the kitchen. I was left there with all the food heaped up in front of me.
«Come, come, don't take it like that!» I said, shoveling a forkful into my mouth. «You know I didn't mean anything personal.» (The word personal struck me as being highly incongruous, but I knew she'd like it.)
«Personal or not, I'm not joining you,» she retorted. «You can eat your fill and get out. I'll make you some coffee. I don't want to ever see you again. You're disgusting.»
I put the knife and fork down and went into the kitchen. The things were cold anyway, so it wouldn't matter if I did spend a few minutes soothing her feelings.
«I'm sorry, Julie,» I said, trying to put my arm around her. She brushed me away angrily. «You see,» and I began to put some feeling into my words, «Maude and I don't get along very well. We had a bad quarrel this morning. I must be out of sorts....»
«Is that any reason to take it out on me?»
«No, it isn't. I don't know, I was desperate this morning. That's why I came to see you. And then, when I started in to work on you... to sell you the books... I felt ashamed of myself. I wouldn't have let you take the books even if you had pretended you wanted them....»
«I know what's the matter with you,» she said. «You were disappointed in my looks. I've changed, that's what's the matter. And you're a bad loser. You want to take it out on me—but it's your own fault. You've got a good-looking wife... why don't you stick to her? Everybody has quarrels—you're not the only two in the world. Do I run off to somebody else's husband when things go wrong? Where the hell would that get us? Mike's no angel to live with... nobody is, I guess. You act like a spoiled child. What do you think life is, a wet dream?»
This speech couldn't be laughed off. I had to beg her to sit down and eat with me, give me a chance to explain myself. Reluctantly she consented.
It was a long drawn-out story I unfolded, as I polished off one plate after another. She seemed so impressed by my sincerity that I began to toy with the idea of re-introducing the world's best literature. I had to skate very delicately because this time it would have to look as if I were doing her a favor. I was trying to jockey myself into the position of letting her help me. At the same time I was wondering if it were worth it, if perhaps it wouldn't be more pleasant to go to the matinee.
She was just getting back to normal, getting friendly and trusting. The coffee was excellent, and I had just finished the second cup when I felt a bowel movement coming on. I excused myself and went to the bathroom. There I enjoyed the luxury of a thorough evacuation. I pulled the chain and sat there a few moments, a bit dreamy and a bit lecherous too, when suddenly I realized that I was getting a sitz bath. I pulled the chain again. The water started to overflow between my legs on to the floor. I jumped up, dried my ass with a towel, buttoned my trousers and looked frantically up at the toilet box. I tried everything I could think of but the water kept rising and flowing over—and with it came one or two healthy turds and a mess of toilet paper.
In a panic I called Julie. Through a crack in the door I begged her to tell me what to do.
«Let me in, I'll fix it,» said she.
«Tell me,» I begged, «I'll do it. You can't come in yet.»
«I can't explain,» said Julie, «you'll have to let me in.»
There was no help for it, I had to open the door. I was never more embarrassed in my life. The floor was one ungodly mess. Julie, however, went to work with dispatch, as though it were an everyday affair. In a jiffy the water had stopped running; it only remained to clean up the mess.
«Listen, you get out now,» I begged. «Let me handle this. Have you got a dust-pan—and a mop?»
«You get out!» said she. «I'll take care of it.» And with that she pushed me out and closed the door.
I waited on pins and needles for her to come out. Then a real funk took hold of me. There was only one thing to do—escape as fast as possible.
I fidgeted a few moments, listening first on one foot, then the other, not daring to make a peep. I knew I'd never be able to face her. I looked around, measured the distance to the door, listened intently for just a second, then grabbed my things and tiptoed out.
It was an elevator apartment, but I didn't wait for the elevator. I skipped down the stairs, three steps at a time, as though the devil himself were pursuing me.
The first thing I did was to go to a restaurant and wash my hands thoroughly. There was a machine which, by inserting a coin, squirted perfume over you. I helped myself to a few squirts and sallied out into the bright sunshine. I walked aimlessly for a while, contrasting the beautiful weather with my uncomfortable state of mind.
Soon I found myself walking near the river. A few yards ahead was a little park, or at least a strip of grass and some benches. I took a seat and began to ruminate. In less than no time my thoughts had reverted to Coleridge. It was a relief to let the mind dwell on problems purely aesthetic.
Absent-mindedly I opened the prospectus and began rereading the fragment which had so absorbed me— prior to the horrible fiasco at Julie's. I skipped from one item to another. At the back of the prospectus there were maps and charts and reproductions of ancient writings found on tablets and monuments in various parts of the world. I came upon «the mysterious writing» of the Uighurs who had once overrun Europe from the over-flowing well of Central Asia. I read of cities which had been lifted heavenward twelve and thirteen thousand feet when the mountain ranges began to form; I read about Solon's discourse with Plato and about the 70,000 year old glyphs found in Tibet which hinted all too clearly of the existence of now unknown continents. I came upon the sources of Pythagoras' conceptions and read with sadness of the destruction of the great library at Alexandria. Certain Mayan tablets reminded me vividly of the canvases of Paul Klee. The writings of the ancients, their symbols, their patterns, their compositions, were strikingly like the things children invent in kindergartens. The insane, on the other hand, produced the most intellectual sort of compositions. I read about Laotse and Albertus Magnus and Cagliostro and Cornelius Agrippa and Iamblichus, each one a universe, each one a link in an invisible chain of now exploded worlds. I came to a chart arranged like parallel strips of banjo frets, telling off laterally the centuries «since the dawn of civilization» and vertically listing the literary figures of the epochs, their names and their works. The Dark Ages stood out like blind windows in the side of a skyscraper; here and there in the great blank wall there was a beam of light shed by the spirit of some intellectual giant who had managed to make his voice heard above the croaking of the submerged and dispirited denizens of the marshes. When it was dark in Europe it had been bright elsewhere: the spirit of man was like a veritable switchboard, revealing itself in signals and flashes, often across oceans of darkness. One thing stood out clearly—on that switchboard certain great spirits were still plugged in, still standing by for a call. When the epoch which had called them forth was drowned out they emerged from the darkness like the towering snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas. And there was reason to believe, it seemed to me, that not until another unspeakable catastrophe occurred would the light they shed be extinguished. As I shut off the current of reverie into which I had fallen a Sphinx-like image registered itself on the fallen curtain: it was the hoary visage of one of Europe's magi: Leonardo da Vinci. The mask which he wore to conceal his identity is one of the most baffling disguises ever assumed by an emissary from the depths. It made me shudder to think what those eyes which stare unflinchingly into the future had perceived....
I looked across the river to the Jersey shore. It looked desolate to me, more desolate even than the boulder bed of a dried-up river. Nothing of any importance to the human race had ever happened here. Nothing would happen for thousands of years perhaps. The Pygmies were vastly more interesting, vastly more illuminating to study, than the inhabitants of New Jersey. I looked up and down the Hudson River, a river I have always detested, even from the time when I first read of Henry Hudson and his bloody Half Moon. I hated both sides of the river equally. I hated the legends woven about its name. The whole valley was like the empty dream of a beer-logged Dutchman. I never did give a fuck about Powhatan or Manhattan. I loathed Father Knickerbocker. I wished that there were ten thousand black powder plants scattered on both sided of the river and that they might all blow up simultaneously....
14
A sudden decision to clear out of Cockroach Hall. Why? Because I had met Rebecca....
Rebecca was the second wife of my old friend Arthur Raymond. The two were now living in an enormous apartment on Riverside Drive; they wanted to let out rooms. It was Kronski who told me about it; he said he was going to take one of the rooms.
Why don't you come up and meet his wife—you'll like her. She could be Mona's sister.» «What's her name?» I asked. «Rebecca. Rebecca Valentine.»
The name Rebecca excited me. I had always wanted to meet a woman called Rebecca—and not Becky.
(Rebecca, Ruth, Roxanne, Rosalind, Frederika, Ursula, Sheila, Norma, Guinevere, Leonora, Sabina, Malvina, Solange, Deirdre. What wonderful names women had! Like flowers, stars, constellations....)
Mona wasn't so keen about the move, but when we got to Arthur Raymond's place and she heard him practising, she changed her tune.
It was Renee, the younger sister of Arthur Raymond, who opened the door. She was about nineteen, a spit-fire with heavy curly locks full of vitality. Her voice was like a nightingale's—no matter what she said you felt like agreeing.
Finally Rebecca presented herself. She was right out of the Old Testament—dark and sunny clean through. Mona warmed to her immediately, as she would to a lost sister. They were both beautiful. Rebecca was more mature, more solid, more integrated. One felt instinctively that she always preferred the truth. I liked her firm hand-clasp, the direct flashing look with which she greeted one. She seemed to have none of the usual female pettinesses.
Soon Arthur joined us. He was short, muscular, with a hard, steely twang to his voice and frequently convulsed by explosive spasms of laughter. He laughed just as heartily over his own quips as over the other fellow's. He was inordinately healthy, vital, jolly, exuberant. He had always been that way and in the old days, when Maude and I first moved into his neighborhood, I was very fond of him. I used to burst in on him all hours of the day and night and give him three and four hour resumes of the books I had just read. I remember spending whole afternoons talking of Smerdiakov and Pavel Pavlovitch, or General Ivolgin, or those angelic sprites which surrounded the Idiot, or of the Filipovna woman. He was married then to Irma, who later became one of my associates in the Cosmodemonic Telefloccus Company. In those early days, when I first knew Arthur Raymond, tremendous things occurred—in the mind, I should add. Our conversations were like passages out of The Magic Mountain, only more virulent, more exalted, more sustained, more provocative, more inflammable, more dangerous, more menacing—and much more, ever so much more, exhausting.
I was making a rapid throw-back as I stood watching him talk. His sister Renee was trying to keep up a waning conversation with Kronski's wife. (The latter always went dead on you, no matter how absorbing the theme might be.) I wondered how we would get along, the lot of us, under one roof. Of the two vacant rooms Kronski had already preempted the larger one. The six of us were now huddled together in the other room which was nothing more than a cubby-hole.
«Oh, it'll do,» Arthur Raymond was saying. «God, you don't need much room—there's the whole house. I want you to come. We're going to have a great time here. God!» He exploded with laughter again.
I knew he was desperate. Too proud, however, to admit that he needed money. Rebecca looked at me expectantly. I read very clearly what was written in her face. Mona spoke up suddenly: «Of course we'll take it.» Kronski rubbed his hands gleefully. «Sure you will! We're going to make a grand stew of it, you'll see.» And then he fell to haggling with them about the price. But Arthur Raymond wouldn't talk about money. «Make your own terms,» he said, wandering off to the big room where the piano stood. I heard him pounding the piano. I tried to listen but Rebecca stood in front of me and kept plying me with questions.
A few days later we were installed. The first thing we noticed about our new domicile was that everybody was trying to use the bathroom at once. You got to know who the last occupant was by the smell he left behind. The sink was always clogged up with long hairs and Arthur Raymond, who never owned a toothbrush, would use the first one that came to hand. There were too many females about, for another thing. The older sister, Jessica, who was an actress, came frequently and often stayed the night. There was Rebecca's mother, too, who was always in and out of the place, always wreathed in sorrow, always dragging herself along like a corpse. And then there were Kronski's friends and Rebecca's friends and Arthur's friends and Renee's friends, to say nothing of the pupils who came at all hours of the day and night. At first it was charming to hear the piano going: snatches of Bach, Ravel, Debussy, Mozart and so on. Then it became exasperating, especially when Arthur Raymond himself was practising. He went over and over a phrase with the tenacity and persistence of a madman. First with one hand, firmly and slowly; then with the other hand, firmly and slowly. Then two hands, very firmly, very slowly; then more and more rapidly, until he reached the normal tempo. Then twenty times, fifty times, a hundred times. He would advance a little—a few more measures. Ditto. Then back again, like a crab, from the very beginning. Then suddenly he'd scrap it, begin something new, something he liked. He'd play it with all his heart, as if he were giving a concert. But maybe a third of the way through he'd stumble. Silence. He'd go back a few measures, break it down, build it up, slow, fast, one hand, two hands, all together, hands, feet, elbows, knuckles, moving forward like a tank corps, sweeping everything before him, mowing down trees, fences, barns, hedges, walls. It was agonizing to follow him. He was not playing for enjoyment—he was playing to perfect his technique. He was wearing his fingers-tips off, rubbing his ass smooth. Always advancing, progressing, attacking, conquering, annihilating, mopping up, realigning his forces, throwing out sentries and sentinels, covering his rear, digging himself in, charging in prisoners» segregating the wounded, reconnoitering, ambushing his men, sending up flares, rockets, exploding ammunition plants, railway centers, inventing new torpedoes, dynamos, flame-throwers, coding and decoding the messages that came in....
A grand teacher, though. A darling teacher. He moved about the room in his khaki shirt, always open at the neck, like a restive panther. He would stand in a corner listening, with his chin in the palm of his hand and the other hand supporting his elbow. He'd walk to the window and look out, humming softy as he followed the pupil's manful attempts to live up to that perfection which Arthur demanded of all his pupils. If it were a very young pupil he could be as tender as a lamb; he would make the child laugh, would pick her up in his arms and lift her off the stool. «You see...?» and he would very slowly, very gently, very carefully, indicate the way it should be done. He had infinite patience with his young pupils—a beautiful thing to watch. He looked after them as if they were flowers. He tried to reach their souls, tried to soothe them or inflame them, as the case might be. With the older ones it was still more thrilling to observe his technique. With these he was all attention, alert as a porcupine, his legs stanced, swaying, balancing himself, raising and lowering himself on the balls of his feet, the muscles of his face moving rapidly as he followed with glittering eagerness the transition from passage to passage. To these he spoke as if they were masters already. He would suggest this or that manipulation, this or that interpretation. Often interrupting the performance for ten or fifteen minutes at a stretch, he would launch into brilliant expositions of commanding techniques, comparing one with another, evaluating them, comparing a score with a book, one writer with another writer, a palette with a texture, a tone with a personal idiom, and so on. He made music live. He heard music in everything. The young women, when they had concluded a seance, swooned through the hall, unconscious of everything but the flames of genius. Yes, he was a life-giver, a sun-god: he sent them reeling into the street.
Arguing with Kronski he was a different person. That mania for perfection, that pedagogic fury which was such a powerful asset to him as a music teacher, reduced him to ridiculous proportions when he launched into the world of ideas. Kronski toyed with him as a cat toys with a mouse. He delighted in tripping his adversary up. He defended nothing, except his own nimble security. Arthur Raymond had something of the Jack Dempsey style, when it came to a heated discussion. He bore in steadily, always with short, swift jabs, like a chopping block fitted with dancing legs. Now and then he made a lunge, a brilliant lunge, only to find that he was grappling with space. Kronski had a trick of vanishing completely just when he seemed to be on the ropes. You would find him a second later hanging from the chandelier. He had no recognizable strategy, unless it was to elude, to jibe and taunt, to infuriate his opponent, and then do the disappearing stunt. Arthur Raymond seemed to be saying all the time: «Put up your dukes! Fight! Fight, you bastard!» But Kronski had no intention of making a punching bag of himself.
I never caught Arthur Raymond reading a book. I don't think he read many books, yet he had an amazing knowledge of many things. Whatever he read he remembered with astonishing vividness and accuracy. Aside from my friend Roy Hamilton, he could extract more from a book than any one I knew. He literally eviscerated the text. Roy Hamilton would proceed millimetre by millimetre, so to speak, lingering over a phrase for days or weeks at a time. It sometimes took him a year or two to finish a small book, but when he was through with it he did seem to have added a cubit to his stature. For him a half dozen good books were sufficient to supply him with spiritual fodder for the rest of his life. Thoughts to him were living things, as they were to Louis Lambert. Having read one book thoroughly he gave the very real impression of knowing all books. He thought and lived his way through a book, emerging from the experience a new and glorified being. He was the very opposite of the scholar whose stature diminishes with each book he reads. Books for him were what Yoga is to the earnest seeker after truth: they helped him unite with God.
Arthur Raymond, on the other hand, gave the illusion of devouring a book's contents. He read with muscular attention. Or so I imagined, observing their effect upon him. He read like a sponge, intent upon absorbing the writer's thoughts. His sole concern was to ingest, to assimilate, to redistribute. He was a vandal. Each new book represented a new conquest. Books fortified his ego. He didn't grow, he became puffed with pride and arrogance. He looked for corroborations in order to sally forth and give battle. He wouldn't permit himself to be made over. He could render tribute to the author he admired but he could never bend the knee. He remained adamant and inflexible; his carapace grew thicker and thicker.
He was the type who, upon finishing a book, can talk of nothing else for weeks to come. No matter what one touched upon, in conversing with him, he related it to the book he had just devoured. The curious thing about these hangovers was that the more he talked about the book the more one felt his unconscious desire to destroy it. At bottom it always seemed to me that he was really ashamed of having permitted another mind to enthrall him. His talk was not of the book but of how thoroughly and penetratingly he, Arthur Raymond, had understood it. To expect him to give a resume of the book was futile. He gave you just enough information about its subject matter to enable you to follow his analyses and elaborations intelligently. Though he kept saying to you—«You must read it, it's marvelous,» what he meant was—«You can take it from me that it's an important work, else I shouldn't be wasting my time discussing it with you.» And what he implied, moreover, was that it was just as well you hadn't read it because you would never by your own efforts be able to unearth the gems which he, Arthur Raymond, had found in it. «When I get through telling you about it,» he seemed to say, «you won't need to read it. I know not only what the author said but what he intended to say and didn't.»
At the time I speak of one of his passions was Sigmund Freud. I don't mean to imply that he knew only Freud. No, he spoke as though he had an acquaintance with the whole swarm, from Krafft-Ebing and Stekel on down. He regarded Freud not only as a thinker but as a poet. Kronski, on the other hand, whose reading was wider and deeper in this field, who had the advantage of clinical experience as well, who was then making a comparative study of psycho-analysis and not merely endeavoring to assimilate one new contribution after the other, irritated Arthur Raymond beyond words by what the latter was pleased to call «his corrosive skepticism».
It was in our cubicle that these discussions, which were not only bitter but interminable, took place. Mona had given up the dance hall and was looking about for work in the theatre. Often we all ate together in the kitchen, attempting towards midnight to disperse and reach our respective quarters. But Arthur Raymond had absolutely no regard for time; when he was interested in a subject he thought nothing of food, sleep or sex. If he went to bed at five in the morning he would get up at eight, if he chose to, or remain in bed for eighteen hours. He left it to Rebecca to rearrange his schedule. Naturally this sort of life created an atmosphere of chaos and postponement. When it got too complicated Arthur Raymond would throw up his hands and walk out on it, sometimes remaining away for days. After these periods of absence strange rumors would come floating back, stories which shed quite a different lustre upon his character. Apparently these excursions were necessary to complete the physical being; the life of a musician couldn't possibly satisfy his robust nature. He had to get away occasionally and mix with his cronies—a most incongruous assortment of characters, incidentally. Some of his escapades were innocent and amusing, others were sordid and ugly. Brought up as a sissy, he had found it imperative to develop the brutal side of his nature. He enjoyed picking a quarrel with some burly, blustering idiot much bigger than himself and cold-bloodedly breaking the man's arm or leg. He had done what so many little fellows always dream of doing— mastered ju-jitsu. He had done it in order to have the pleasure of insulting the menacing giants who make up the world of bullies which the little man dreads. The bigger they were the better Arthur Raymond liked it. He didn't dare to use his fists for fear or injuring his hands, but, rather meanly I thought, he would always pretend to fight and then of course take his adversary by surprise. «I don't admire that in you at all,» I told him once. «If you played me a trick like that I'd break a bottle over your head.» He looked at me in astonishment. He knew that I didn't care to fight or to wrestle. «I wouldn't mind,» I added, «if you resorted to those tricks as a last extremity. But you just want to show off. You're a little bully, and a little bully is even more obnoxious than a big one. Some day you'll tackle the wrong man....»
He laughed. I always interpreted things in a queer way, he said.
«That's why I like you,» he would say. «You're unpredictable. You have no code. Really, Henry» —and he would give a hearty guffaw—«you're essentially treacherous. If we ever make a new world you'll have no place in it. You don't seem to understand what it means to give and take. You're an intellectual hobo.... At times I don't understand you at all. You're always gay and affable, almost sociable, and yet ...well, you have no loyalties. I try to be friends with you... we were friends once, you remember... but you've changed... you're hard inside... you're untouchable. God, you think I'm hard... I'm just cocky, pugnacious, full of spirits. You're the one who's hard. You're a gangster, do you know that?» He chuckled. «Yes, Henry, that's what you are— you're a spiritual gangster. I don't trust you...»
It nettled him to observe the easy rapport which existed between Rebecca and myself. He wasn't jealous, nor had he reason to be, but he was envious of my ability to create such a smooth relationship with his wife. He was always telling me of her intellectual attainments', as though that should be the basis of attraction between us, but in a discussion, if Rebecca were present, he behaved towards her as if her opinions were of negligible importance. Mona he listened to with a gravity that was almost comical. He listened, of course, just long enough to hear her out, saying «Yes, yes, to be sure,» but actually giving no heed whatever to what she was saying.
Alone with Rebecca, watching her ironing or cook a meal, I had those sort of talks which one can only have with a woman if she belongs to another man.
Here there was really that spirit of «give and take» which Arthur Raymond complained of missing in me. Rebecca was earthy and not at all intellectual. She had a sensual nature and she loved to be treated as a woman and not as a mind. We talked of the most simple, homely things some 'times, things which the music master found no interest in whatever.
Talk is only a pretext for other, subtler forms of communication. When the latter are inoperative speech becomes dead. If two people are intent upon communicating with one another it doesn't matter in the least how bewildering the talk becomes. People who insist upon clarity and logic often fail in making themselves understood. They are always-searching for a more perfect transmitter, deluded by the supposition that the mind is the only instrument for the exchange of thought. When one really begin» to talk one delivers himself. Words are thrown about recklessly, not counted like pennies. One doesn't care about grammatical or factual errors, contradictions, lies and so on. One talks. If you are talking to some one who knows how to listen he understands perfectly, even though the words make no sense. When this kind of talk gets under way a marriage takes place, no matter whether you are talking to a man or a woman. Men talking with other men have as much need of this sort of marriage as women talking with women have. Married couples seldom enjoy this kind of talk, for reasons which are only too obvious.
Talk, real talk, it seems to me, is one of the most expressive manifestations of man's hunger for unlimited marriage. Sensitive people, people who feel, want to unite in some deeper, subtler, more durable fashion than is permitted by custom and convention. I mean in ways beyond the dreams of social and political Utopists. The brotherhood of man, should it ever come about, is only the kindergarten stage in the drama of human relationships. When man begins to permit himself full expression, when he can express himself without fear of ridicule, ostracism or persecution, the first thing he will do will be to pour out his love. In the story of human love we are still at the first chapter. Even there, even in the realm of the purely personal, it is a pretty shoddy account. Have we more than a dozen heroes and heroines of love to hold up as examples? I doubt if we have even as many great lovers as we have illustrious saints. We have scholars galore, and kings and emperors, and statesmen and military leaders, and artists in profusion, and inventors, discoverers, explorers—but where are the great lovers? After a moment's reflection one is back to Abelard and Heloise, or to Antony and Cleopatra, or the story of the Taj Mahal. So much of it is fictive, expanded and glorified by the poverty-stricken lovers whose prayers are answered only by myth and legend. Tristan and Isolde—what a powerful spell that legend still casts upon the modern world! In the landscape of romance it stands out like the snow-capped peak of Fujiyama.
There was one observation which I made to myself over and over again as I listened to the interminable wrangles between Arthur Raymond and Kronski. It was to the effect that knowledge divorced from action leads to sterility. Here were two vital young men, each brilliant in his way, and they were arguing passionately night after night about a new approach to the problems of life. An austere individual, leading a sober, modest, disciplined life in the far off city of Vienna, was responsible for these clashes. All over the Occidental world this wrangling was going on. One had to speak passionately about these theories of Sigmund Freud or not at all, so it seemed.
That fact alone is of significance, of far more significance than the theories under discussion. A few thousand people—not hundreds of thousands!— would in the course of the next twenty years submit to the process known as psychoanalysis. The term psychoanalysis would gradually lose its magic and become a by-word. Its therapeutic value would decrease in proportion to the spread of popular understanding. The wisdom underlying Freud's explorations and interpretations would diminish in effectiveness with the increasing desire of the neurotic to become readapted to life.
In the case of my two young friends one of them was later to become dissatisfied with every solution to the problems of the day except that offered by Communism; the other, who would have pronounced me crazy had I then hinted at such an eventuality, was to become my patient. The music master forsook his music in order to right the world and failed. He failed even to make his own life more interesting, more satisfying, more ample. The other abandoned his medical practice and finally put himself into the hands of a quack, yours truly. He did it deliberately, knowing that I had no qualifications other than my sincerity and enthusiasm. He was even pleased at the result, which was nil, and which he had anticipated in advance.
It is now about twenty years since the period I speak of. Only the other day, as I was strolling aimlessly along, I ran into Arthur Raymond on the street. I might have passed him by had he not hailed me. He had altered, had taken on a girth almost commensurable to Kronski's. A middle-aged man now with a row of black, charred teeth. After a few words he began to talk about his son—the oldest boy, who was now in college and a member of the football team. He had transferred all his hopes to the son. I was disgusted. In vain did I try to get some inkling about his own life. No, he preferred to talk about his son. He was going to be somebody! (An athlete, a writer, a musician—God knows what.) I didn't give a fuck about the son. All I could make out of this effusive gush was that he, Arthur Raymond, had given up the ghost. He was living in the son. It was pitiful. I couldn't get away from him fast enough.
«You must come up and see us soon.» (He was trying to hold me.) «Let's have a good old session together. You know how I love talking!» He gave out one of those cachinating snorts as of yore.)
«Where do you live now?» he added, clutching my arm.
I took a piece of paper out of my pocket and wrote clown a false address and telephone number. I thought to myself, the next time we meet it will probably be in limbo.
As I walked away I suddenly realized that he had evinced no interest in what had happened to me all these years. He knew I had been abroad, had written a few books. «I've read some of your stuff, you know,» he had remarked. And then he had laughed confusedly, as if to say: «But I know you, you old rapscallion... you're not taking me in!» For my part I could have replied: «Yes, and I know all about you. I know the deceptions and humiliations you've suffered.»
Had we begun to swap experience we might have had an enjoyable talk. We might have understood one another better than we ever had before. If he had only given me a chance I might have demonstrated that the Arthur who had failed was just as dear to me as the promising young man whom I had once idolized. We were both rebels, in our way. And we had both struggled to make a new world.
«Of course I still believe in it (Communism),» he had said in parting. He said it as though he were sorry to admit that the movement were not big enough to include him with all his idiosyncrasies. In the same way I could imagine him saying to himself that he still believed in mvisic, or in the outdoor life, or in ju-jitsu. I wondered if he realized what he had done by abandoning one road after the other. If he had stopped anywhere along the line and fought his way through, life would have been worth while. Even if he had only become a champion wrestler! I remembered the night he had induced me to accompany him to a bout between Earl Cad-dock and Strangler Lewis. (And another occasion when we had gone together to witness the Dempsey-Carpentier fight.) He was a poet then. He saw two gods in mortal combat. He knew that there was more to it than a tussle to the finish between two brutes. He talked about these great figures of the arena as he would have talked about the great composers or the great dramatists. He was a conscious part of the mob which attends these spectacles. He was like a Greek in the days of Euripides. He was an artist applauding other artists. He was at his very best in the amphitheatre.
I recalled another occasion, when we were waiting on the platform of a railway station. Suddenly, while pacing back and forth, he grabs my arm and says: «By God, Henry, do you know who that is? That's Jack Dempsey!» And like a shot he bolts from my side and runs up to his beloved idol. «Hello Jack!» he says in a loud, ringing voice. «You're looking fine. I want to shake your hand. I want to tell you what a real champ you are.»
I could hear Dempsey's squeaky, piping voice answering the greeting. Dempsey, who overtowered Arthur Raymond, looked at that moment like a child.
It was Arthur Raymond who was bold and aggressive. He didn't seem the least bit awed by Dempsey's presence. I almost expected him to give the champion a pat on the shoulder.
«He's like a fine race horse,» said Arthur Raymond, his voice tense with emotion. «A most sensitive creature.» He was probably thinking of himself, of how he would appear to others should he suddenly become world's champion. «An intelligent chap too. A man couldn't fight in that colorful style unless he possessed a high degree of intelligence. He's a fine fellow really. Just a big boy, you know. He actually blushed, do you know that?» On and on he went, rhapsodizing over his hero.
But it was about Earl Caddock that he said the most wonderful things. Earl Caddock, I think, was even closed to his ideal than Dempsey. «The man of a thousand holds,» that's how Caddock was called. A god-like body, a little too frail, it would seem, for those protracted, gruelling bouts which the ordeal of wrestling demands. I remember vividly how he looked that night beside the burlier, heftier Strangler Lewis. Arthur Raymond was certain that Lewis would win—but his heart was with Earl Caddock. He screamed his lungs out, urging Caddock on. Afterwards, in a Jewish delicatessen over on the East Side, he rehearsed the bout in detail. He had an extraordinary memory when it concerned anything he was passionate about. I think I enjoyed the bout even more, in retrospect, seeing it through his eyes. In fact, he talked about it so marvelously that the next day I sat down and wrote a prose poem about two wrestlers. I brought it with me to the dentist's the following day. He was a wrestling fan also. The dentist thought it was a chef-d'oeuvre. The result was that I never got my tooth filled. I was taken upstairs to meet the family—they were from Odessa—and before I knew what was happening, I had become engrossed in a game of chess which lasted until two in the morning. And then began a friendship which lasted until all my teeth had been treated—fourteen of fifteen months it dragged out. When the bill came I vanished. It was not until five or six years later, I guess, that we met again, and then under rather peculiar circumstances. But of that later....
Freud, Freud.... A lot of things might be laid at his door. There is Dr. Kronski now, some ten years after our semantic life at Riverside Drive. Big as porpoise, puffing like a walrus, emitting talk like a locomotive emits steam. An injury to the head has disregulated his entire system. He has become a glandular anomaly, a study in cross-purposes.
We had not seen each other for some years. We meet again in New York. Hectic confabulations. He learns that I have had more than a speaking acquaintance with psychoanalysis during my absence abroad. I mention certain figures in that world who are well known to him—from their writings. He's amazed that I should know them, have been accepted by them—as a friend. He begins to wonder if he hadn't made a mistake about his old friend Henry Miller. He wants to talk about it, talk and talk and talk. I refuse. That impresses him. He knows that talking is his weakness, his vice.
After a few meetings I realize that he is hatching an idea. He can't just take it for granted that I know something about psycho-analysis— he wants proofs. «What are you doing now... in New York?» he asks. I answer that I am doing nothing, really. «Aren't you writing?»
«No.» A long pause. Then it comes out. An experiment... a grand experiment. I'm the man to do it. He will explain.
The long and short of it is that he would like me to experiment with some of his patients—his ex-patients, I should say, because he has given up his practice. He's certain I can do as good as the next fellow—maybe better. «I won't tell them you're a writer,» he says. «You were a writer, but during your stay in Europe you became an analyst. How's that?»
I smiled. It didn't seem bad at all, at first blush. As a matter of fact, I had long toyed with the very idea. I jumped at it. Settled then. To-morrow, at four o'clock, he would introduce me to one of his patients.
That's how it began. Before very long I had about seven or eight patients. They seemed to be pleased with my efforts. They told Dr. Kronski so. He of course had expected it to turn out thus. He thought he might become an analyst himself. Why not? I had to confess I could see no reason against it. Any one with charm, intelligence and sensitivity might become an analyst. There were healers long before Mary Baker Eddy or Sigmund Freud were heard of. Common sense played its role too.
«To be an analyst, however,» I said, not intending it as a serious remark, «one should first be analyzed himself, you know that.»
«How about yow?» he said.
I pretended I had been analyzed. I told him Otto Rank had done the job.
«You never told me that,» he said, again visibly impressed. He had an unholy respect for Otto Rank.
«How long did it last?» he asked.
«About three months. Rank doesn't believe in prolonged analyses, I suppose you know.»
«That's true,» he said, growing very thoughtful.
A moment later he popped it. «What about analyzing me? No, seriously. I know it's not considered a good risk when you know one another as intimately as we do, but just the same...»
«Yes,» I said slowly, feeling my way along, «per-haps we might even explode that stupid prejudice. After all, Freud had to analyze Rank, didn't he?» (This was a lie, because Rank had never been analyzed, even by Father Freud.)
«To-morrow then, at ten o'clock!»
«Good,» I said, «and be on the dot. I'm going to charge you by the hour. Sixty minutes and no more. If you're not on time it's your loss...»
«You're going to charge me?» he echoed, looking at me as if I had lost my mind.
«Of course I am! You know very well how important it is for the patient to pay for his analysis.»
«But I'm not a patient!» he yelled. «Jesus, I'm doing you a favor.»
«It's up to you,» I said, affecting an air of sangfroid. If you can get some one else to do it for nothing, well and good. I'm going to charge you the regular fee, the fee you yourself suggested for your own patients.»
«Now listen,» he said, «you're getting fantastic. After all, I was the one who launched you in this business, don't forget that.»
«I must forget that,» I insisted. «This is not a matter of sentiment. In the first place I must remind you that you not only need analysis to become an analyst, you need it because you're a neurotic. You couldn't possibly become an analyst if you weren't neurotic. Before you can heal others you have to heal yourself. And if you're not a neurotic I'll make you one before I'm through with you, how do you like that?»
He thought it was a huge joke. But the next morning he came, and he was prompt too. He looked as though he had stayed up all night to be there on time.
«The money,» I said, before he had even removed his coat.
He tried to laugh it off. He settled himself on the couch, as eager to have his bottle as any infant in swaddling clothes.
«You've got to give it to me now,» I insisted, «or I refuse to deal with you.» I enjoyed being firm with him—it was a new role for me also.
«But how do we know that we can go through it?» he said, trying to stall. «I'll tell you... if I like the way you handle me I'll pay you whatever you ask... within reason, of course. But don't make a fuss about it now. Come on, let's get down to brass tacks.»
«Nothing doing,» I said. «No tickee, no shirtee. If I'm no good you can bring suit against me, but if you want my help then you've got to pay—and pay in advance... By the way, you're wasting time, you know. Every minute you sit there haggling about the money you're wasting time that might have been spent more profitably. It's now»—and here I consulted my watch—«it's now twelve minutes after ten. As soon as you're ready we'll begin....»
He was sore as a pup about it but I had him in a corner and there was nothing to do but to shell out.
As he was dishing it out—I charged him ten dollars a session—he looked up, but this time with the air of one who has already confided himself to the doctor's hands. «You mean to say that if I should come here one day without the money, if I should happen to forget or be short a few dollars, you wouldn't take me on?»
«Precisely,» I said. «We understand one another perfectly. Shall we begin.... now?»
He fell back on the couch like a sheep ready for the axe. «Compose yourself,» I said soothingly, sitting behind him and out of his range of vision. «Just get quiet and relax. You're going to tell me everything about yourself... from the very beginning. Don't imagine that you can tell it all in one sitting. We're going to have many sessions like this. It's up to you how long or how short this relationship will be. Remember that it's costing you ten dollars every time. But don't let that get under your skin, because if you think of nothing but how much it's costing you, you'll forget what you intended to tell me. This is a painful procedure, but it's in your own interest. If you learn how to adapt yourself to the role of a patient you will also learn how to adapt yourself to the role of analyst. Be critical with yourself, not with me. I am only an instrument. I am here to help you.... Now collect yourself and relax. I'll be listening whenever you're ready to deliver yourself....»
He had stretched himself out full length, his hands folded over the mountain of flesh which was his stomach. His face was very pasty; it had the blenched look, his skin, of a man who has just returned from the water closet after straining himself to death. The body had the amorphous appearance of the helpless fat man who finds the efforts to raise himself to a sitting posture almost as difficult as it would be for a tortoise to right itself when it has been capsized. Whatever powers he possessed seemed to have deserted him. He flipped about restlessly for a few minutes, a human flounder weighing itself.
My exhortation to talk had paralyzed that faculty of speech which was his prime endowment. To begin with there was no longer any adversary before him to demolish. He was being asked to employ his wits against himself. He was to deliver and reveal —in a word, to create —and that was something he had never in his life attempted. He was to discover «the meaning of meaning» in a new way, and it was obvious that the thought of it terrified him.
After wriggling about, scratching himself, flopping from one side of the couch to the other, rubbing his eyes, coughing, sputtering, yawning, he opened his mouth as if to talk—but nothing came out. After a few grunts he raised himself on his elbow and turned his head in my direction. There was something piteous in the expression of his eyes.
«Can't you ask me a few questions?» he said. «I don't know where to begin.»
«It would be better if I didn't ask you any questions,» I said. «You will find your way if you take your time. Once you begin you'll go on like a cataract. Don't force it.»
He flopped back to a prone position and sighed heavily. It would be wonderful to change places with him, I thought to myself. During the silences, my will in abeyance, I was enjoying the pleasure of making silent confession to some invisible super-analyst. I didn't feel the least bit timid or awkward or inexperienced. Indeed, once having decided to play the role I was thoroughly in it and ready for any eventuality. I realized at once that by the mere act of assuming the role of healer one becomes a healer in fact.
I had a pad in my hand ready for use should he drop anything of importance. As the silence prolonged itself I jotted down a few notes of an extra-therapeutic nature. I remember putting down the names of Chesterton and Herriot, two Gargantuan figures who, like Kronski, were gifted with an extraordinary verbal facility. It occurred to me that I had often remarked this phenomenon chez les gros hommes. They were like the Medusas of the marine world—floating organs who swam in the sound of their own voice. Polyps outwardly, there was an acute, brilliant concentration noticeable in their mental faculties. Fat men were often most dynamic, most engaging, most charming and seductive. Their laziness and slovenliness were deceptive. In the brain they often carried a diamond. And, unlike the thin man, after washing down troughs of food their thoughts sparkled and scintillated. They were often at their best when the gustatory appetites were invoked. The thin man, on the other hand, also a great eater very frequently, tends to become sluggish and sleepy when his digestive apparatus is called into play. He is usually at his best on an empty stomach.
«It doesn't matter where you begin,» I said finally, fearing that he would go to sleep on me. «No matter what you lead off with you will always come back to the sore spot.» I paused a moment. Then in a soothing voice I said very deliberately: «You can take a nap too, if you like. Perhaps that would be good for you.»
In a flash he was wide awake and talking. The idea of paying me to take a nap electrified him. He was spilling over in all directions at once. That wasn't a bad stratagem, I thought to myself.
He began, as I say, with a rush, impelled by the frantic fear that he was wasting time. Then suddenly he appeared to have become so impressed by his own revelations that he wanted to draw me into a discussion of their import. Once again I firmly and gently refused the challenge. «Later,» I said, «when we have something to go on. You've only begun... only scratched the surface.»
«Are you making notes?» he asked, elated with himself.
«Don't worry about me,» I replied, «think about yourself, about your problems. You're to have implicit confidence in me, remember that. Every minute you spend thinking about the effect you're producing is wasted. You're not no try to impress me—your task is to get sincere with yourself. There is no audience here—I am just a receptacle, a big ear. You can fill it with slush and nonsense, or you can drop pearls into it. Your vice is self-consciousness. Here we want only what is real and true and felt....»
He became silent again, fidgeted about for a few moments, then grew quite still. His hands were now folded back of his head. He had propped the pillow up so as not to relapse into sleep.
«I've just been thinking,» he said in a more quiet, contemplative mood, «of a dream I had last night. I think I'll tell it to you. It may give us a clue....»
This little preamble meant only one thing—that he was still worrying about my end of the collaboration. He knew that in analysis one is expected to reveal one's dreams. That much of the technique he was sure of—it was orthodox. It was curious, I reflected, that no matter how much one knows about a subject, to act is another matter. He understood perfectly what went on, in analysis, between patient and analyst, but he had never once confronted himself with the realisation of what it meant. Even now, though he hated to waste his money, he would have been tremendously relieved if, instead of going on with his dream, I had suggested that we discuss the therapeutic nature of these revelations. He would actually have preferred to invent a dream and then hash it to bits with me rather than unload himself quietly and sincerely. I felt that he was cursing himself—and me too, of course—for having suggested a situation wherein he could only, as he imagined, allow himself to be tortured.
However, with much laboring and sweating, he did manage to unfold a coherent account of the dream. He paused, when he had finished, as if expecting me to make some comment, some sign of approval or disapproval. Since I said nothing he began to play with the idea of the significance of the dream. In the midst of these intellectual excursions he suddenly halted himself and, turning his head slightly, he murmured dejectedly: «I suppose I oughtn't to do that... that's your job, isn't it?»
«You can do anything you please,» I said quietly. «If you prefer to analyze yourself—and pay me for it—I have no objection. You realize, I suppose, that one of the things you've come to me for is to acquire confidence and trust in others. Your failure to recognize this is part of your illness.»
Immediately he started to bluster. He just had to defend himself against such imputations. It wasn't true that he lacked confidence and trust. I had said that only to pique him.
«It's also quite useless,» I interrupted, «to draw me into argument. If your only concern is to prove that you know more than I do then you will get nowhere. I credit you with knowing much more than I do—but that too is part of your illness—that you know too much. You will never know everything. If knowledge could save you you wouldn't be lying there.»
«You're right,» he said meekly, accepting my statement as a chastisement that he merited. «Now let's see... where was I? I'm going to get to the bottom of things....»
At this point I casually glanced at my watch and discovered that the hour was up.
«Time's up,» I said, rising to my feet and going over to him.
«Wait a minute, won't you?» he said, looking up at me irritably and as if I had abused him. «It's just coming to me now what I wanted to tell you. Sit down a minute...»
«No,» I said, «we can't do that. You've had your chance—I've given you a full hour. Next time you'll probably do better. It's the only way to learn.» And with that I yanked him to his feet.
He laughed in spite of himself. He held out his hand and shook hands with me warmly. «By God,» he said, «you're all right! You've got the technique down pat. I'd have done exactly the same had I been in your boots.»
I handed him his coat and hat, and started for the door to let him out.
«You're not rushing me off, are you?» he said. «Can't we have a bit of a chat first?»
«You'd like to discuss the situation, is that it?» I said, marching him to the door against his will. «That's out, Dr. Kronski. No discussions. I'll look for you to-morrow at the same hour.»
«But aren't you coming over to the house tonight?»
«NO, that's out too. Until you finish your analysis we will have no relation but that of doctor and patient. It's much better, you'll see.» I took his hand, which was hanging limp, raised it and shook him a vigorous goodbye. He backed out of the door as if dazed.
He came every other day for the first few weeks, then he begged for a stagger schedule, complaining that his money was giving out. I knew of course that it was a drain on him, because since he had given up his practice his only income was from the insurance company. He had probably salted a tidy sum away— before the accident. And his wife, to be sure, was working as a school-teacher—I couldn't overlook that. The problem, however, was to rout him out of his state of dependency, drain him of every penny he owned, and restore the desire to earn a living again. One would hardly have believed it possible that a man of his energies, talents, powers could deliberately castrate himself in order to get the better of an insurance company. Undoubtedly the injuries he had sustained in the automobile accident had impaired his health. For one thing he had become quite a monster. Deep down I was convinced that the accident had merely accelerated the weird metamorphosis. When he popped the idea of becoming an analyst I realized that there was still a spark of hope in him. I accepted the proposition at face value, knowing that his pride would never permit him to confess that he had become «a case». I used the word «illness» deliberately always—to give him a jolt, to make him admit that he needed help. I also knew that, if he gave himself half a chance, he would eventually break down and put himself in my hands completely.
It was taking a big gamble, however, to presume that I could break down his pride. There were layers of pride in him, just as there were layers of fat around his girdle. He was one vast defense system, and his energies were constantly being consumed in repairing the leaks which sprang up everywhere. With pride went suspicion. Above all, the suspicion that he may have misjudged my ability to handle the «case». He had always flattered himself that he knew his friends' weak spots. Undoubtedly he did— it's not such a difficult thing to do. He kept alive the weaknesses of his friends in order to bolster the sense of his own superiority. Any, improvement, any development, on the part of a friend he looked upon as a betrayal. It brought out the envious side of his nature.... In short, it was a vicious treadmill, his whole attitude towards others.
The accident had not essentially changed him. It had merely altered his appearance, exaggerated what was already there latent in his being. The monster which he had always been potentially was now a flesh and blood fact. He could look at himself every day in the mirror and see with his own eyes what he had made of himself. He could see in his wife's eyes the revulsion he created in others. Soon his children would begin to look at him strangely—that would be the last straw.
By attributing everything to the accident he had succeeded in gathering a few crumbs of comfort from the unwary. He also succeeded in concentrating attention upon his physique and not his psyche. But alone with himself he knew that it was a game which would soon peter out. He couldn't go on forever making a smoke screen of his enormous bundle of flesh.
When he lay on the couch unburdening himself it was curious that no matter from what point in the past he started out he always saw himself as strange and monstrous. Doomed was more precisely the way he felt about himself. Doomed from the very beginning. A complete lack of confidence as to his private destiny. Naturally and inevitably he had imparted this feeling to others; in some way or other he would manage to so maneuver that his friend or sweetheart would fail him or betray him. He picked them with the same foreknowledge the Christ displayed in choosing Judas.
What kind of drama do you want to stage?
Kronski wanted a brilliant failure, a failure so brilliant that it would outshine success. He seemed to want to prove to the world that he could know as much and be as much as anybody, and at the same time prove that it was pointless—to be anything or to know anything. He seemed congenitally incapable of realizing that there is an inherent significance in everything. He wasted himself in an effort to prove that there could never be any final proofs, never for a moment conscious of the absurdity of defeating logic with logic. It reminded me, his attitude, of the youthful Celine saying with furious disgust: «She could go right ahead and be even lovelier, a hundred thousand times more luscious, she wouldn't get any change out of me—not a sigh, not a sausage. She could try every trick and wile imaginable, she could striptease for all she was worth to please me, rupture herself, or cut off three fingers of her hand, she could sprinkle her short hairs with stars—but never would I talk, never! Not the smallest whisper. I should say not! That's all there was about it....
The variety of defense works with which the human being hedges himself in is just as astounding as the visible defense mechanisms in the animal and insect worlds. There is a texture and substance even to the psychic fortifications, as you discover when you begin to penetrate the forbidden precincts of the ego. The most difficult ones are not necessarily those who hide behind a plate of armor, be it of iron, steel, tin or zinc. Neither are they so difficult, though they offer greater resistance, who encase themselves in rubber and who, mirabile dictu, appear to have acquired the art of vulcanizing the perforated barriers of the soul. The most difficult ones are what I would call the «Piscean malingerers». These are the fluid, solvent egos who lie still as a fetus in the uterine marshes of their stagnant self. When you puncture the sac, when you think Ah! I've got you at last! you find nothing but clots of mucus in your hand. These are the baffling ones, in my opinion. They are like the «soluble fish» of Surrealist metem-psychology. They grow without a backbone; they dissolve at will. All you can ever lay hold of are the indissoluble, indestructible nuclei—the disease germs, so to say. About such individuals one feels that in body, mind and soul they are nothing but disease. They were born to illustrate the pages of text-books. In the realm of the psyche they are the gynaecological monsters whose only life is that of the pickled specimen which adorns the laboratory shelf.
Their most successful disguise is compassion. How tender they can become! How considerate! How touchingly sympathetic! But if you could ever get a look at them—just one fluorescent glance!—what a pretty egomaniac you would see. They bleed with «very bleeding soul in the universe—but they never fall apart. At the crucifixion they hold your hand and slake your thirst, weep like drunken cows. They are the professional mourners from time immemorial; they were so even in the Golden Age, when there was nothing to weep about. Misery and suffering is their habitat, and at the equinox they bring the whole kaleidoscopic pattern of life to a glaucous glue....
There is something about analysis which reminds one of the operating room. By the time one is ready to be analyzed it is usually too late. Confronted with a battered psyche the only recourse open to the analyst is to do a plastic job. The good analyst prefers to give his psychic cripple artificial limbs rather than crutches, that's about the long and short of it.
But sometimes the analyst is given no choice, as happens now and then to the surgeon on the battlefield. Sometimes the surgeon has to amputate arms and legs, concoct a new face out of an unrecognizable piece of pulp, clip the balls off, devise an ingenious rectum and God only knows what—if he has the time for it. It would be kinder to kill such a wreck off, but that's one of the ironies of the civilized way of life—you try to preserve the remnants. Now and then, in the horrible annals of surgery, you come across astonishing specimens of vitality who are truncated and pared down to an uncouth torso, a sort of human pear which a Brancusi might refine into an objet d'art. You read that this human what-not supports his aged mother and father from the earnings of his incredible craft, a craft in which the only tool is the artificial mouth which the surgeon's knife carved out of a once unrecognizable face.
There are psychical specimens of this order who walk out of the analyst's office to take their place in the ranks of dehumanized labor. They have been pared down to an efficient little bundle of mutilated reflexes. They not only earn their own living, they support their aged relatives. They refuse the niche of fame in the hall of horrors to which they are entitled; they elect to compete with other souls in a quasi-soulful way. They die hard, like knots of wood in a giant oak. They resist the axe, even when it is all up.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that Kronski was of this order, but I must confess that many a time he gave me such an impression. There was many a time when I felt like swinging the axe and finishing him off. Nobody would have missed him; nobody would have mourned his loss. He had got himself born a cripple and a cripple he would die, that's how it struck me. As an analyst I couldn't see of what benefit he would be to others. As an analyst he would only see cripples everywhere, even among the god-like. Other analysts, and I had known some personally who were most successful, had recuperated from their crippledom, so to speak, and were of use to other cripples like themselves, because they had at least learned to use their artificial limbs with ease and perfection. They were good demonstrators.
There was one thought, however, which bored into me like a gimlet during these sessions with Kronski. It was the notion that every one, no matter how far gone he was, could be saved. Yes, if one had infinite time and infinite patience, it could be done. It began to dawn on me that the healing art was not at all what people imagined it to be, that it was something very simple, too simple, in fact, for the ordinary mind to grasp.
To put it in the simple way it came to my mind, I would say that it was like this: everybody becomes a healer the moment he forgets about himself. The sickness which we see everywhere, the bitterness and disgust which life inspires in so many of us, is only the reflection of the sickness which we carry within us. Prophylactics will never secure us against the world disease, because we bear the world within. No matter how marvelous human beings become, the sum total will yield an external world which is painful and imperfect. As long as we live self-consciously we must always fail to cope with the world. It is not necessary to die in order to come at last face to face with reality. Reality is here and now, everywhere, gleaming through every reflection that meets the eye. Prisons and even lunatic asylums are emptied of their inmates when a more vital danger menaces the community. When the enemy approaches, the political exile is recalled to share in the defense of his country. At the last ditch it gets dinned into our thick skulls that we are all part and parcel of the same flesh. When our very lives are threatened we begin to live. Even the psychic invalid throws away his crutches, in such moments. For him the greatest joy is to realize that there is something more important than himself. All his life he has turned on the spit of his own roasted ego. He made the fire with his own hands. He drips in his own juices. He makes himself a tender morsel for the demons he liberated with his own hands. That is the picture of human life on this planet called the Earth. Everybody is a neurotic, down to the last man and woman. The healer, or the analyst, if you like, is only a super-neurotic. He has put the Indian sign on us. To be cured we must rise from our graves and throw off the cerements of the dead. Nobody can do it for another—it is a private affair which is best done collectively. We must die as egos and be born again in the swarm, not separate and self-hypnotized, but individual and related.
As to salvation and all that... The greatest teachers, the true healers, I would say, have always insisted that they can only point the way. The Buddha went so far as to say: «Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.»
The great ones do not set up offices, charge fees, give lectures, or write books. Wisdom is silent, and the most effective propaganda for truth is the force of personal example. The great ones attract disciples, lesser figures whose mission it is to preach and to teach. These are the gospelers who, unequal to the highest task, spend their lives in converting others. The great ones are indifferent, in the profoundest sense. They don't ask you to believe: they electrify you by their behavior. They are the awakeners. What you do with your petty life is of no concern to them. What you do with your life is only of concern to you, they seem to say. In short, their only purpose here on earth is to inspire. And what more can one ask of a human being than that?
To be sick, to be neurotic, if you like, is to ask for guarantees. The neurotic is the flounder that lies on the bed of the river, securely settled in the mud, waiting to be speared. For him death is the only certainty, and the dread of that grim certainty immobilizes him in a living death far more horrible than the one he imagines but knows nothing about.
The way of life is towards fulfillment, however, wherever it may lead. To restore a human being to the current of life means not only to impart self-confidence but also an abiding faith in the processes of life. A man who has confidence in himself must have confidence in others, confidence in the fitness and Tightness of the universe. When a man is thus anchored he ceases to worry about the fitness of things, about the behavior of his fellow-men, about right and wrong and justice and injustice. If his roots are in the current of life he will float on the surface like a lotus and he will blossom and give forth fruit. He will draw his nourishment from above and below; he will send his roots down deeper and deeper, fearing neither the depths nor the heights. The life that's is in him will manifest itself in growth, and growth is an endless, eternal process. He will not be afraid of withering, because decay and death are part of growth. As a seed he began and as a seed he will return. Beginnings and endings are only partial steps in the eternal process. The process is everything... the way... the Tao.
The way of life! A grand expression. Like saying Truth. There is nothing beyond it... it is all.
And so the analyst says «Adapt yourself!» He does not mean, as some wish to think—adapt yourself to this rotten state of affairs! He means: adapt yourself to life! Become an adept! That is the highest adjustment—to make oneself an adept.
The delicate flowers are the first to perish in a storm; the giant is laid low by a sling-shot. For every height that is gained new and more baffling dangers menace us. The coward is often buried beneath the very wall against which he huddled in fear and anguish. The finest coat of mail can be penetrated by a skillful thrust. The greatest armadas are eventually sunk; Maginot lines are always circumvented. The Trojan horse is always waiting to be trotted out. Where then does security lie? What protection can you invent that has not already been thought of? It is hopeless to think of security: there is none. The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.
In the insect world is where we see the defense system par excellence. In the gregarious life of the animal world we see another kind of defense system. By comparison the human being seems a helpless creature. In the sense that he lives a more exposed life he is. But this ability to expose himself to every risk is precisely his strength. A god would have no recognizable defense whatever. He would be one with life, moving in all dimensions freely.
Fear, hydra-headed fear, which is rampant in all of us, is a hang-over from lower forms of life. We are straddling two worlds, the one from which we have emerged and the one towards which we are heading. That is the deepest meaning of the word human, that were are a link, a bridge, a promise. It is in us that the life process is being carried to fulfillment. We have a tremendous responsibility, and it is the gravity of that which awakens our fears. We know that if we do not move forward, if we do not realize our potential being, we shall relapse, sputter out, and drag the world down with us. We carry Heaven and Hell within us; we are the cosmogonic builders. We have choice—and all creation is our range.
For some it a terrifying prospect. It would be better, think they, if Heaven were above and Hell below—anywhere outside, but not within. But that comfort has been knocked from under us. There are no places to go to, either for reward or punishment. The place is always here and now, in your own person and according to your own fancy. The world is exactly what you picture it to be, always, every instant. It is impossible to shift the scenery about and pretend that you will enjoy another, a different act. The setting is permanent, changing with the mind and heart, not according to the dictates of an invisible stage director. You are the author, director and actor all in one: the drama is always going to be your own life, not some one else's. A beautiful, terrible, ineluctable drama, like a suit made of your own skin. Would you want it otherwise? Could you invent a better drama?
Lie down, then, on the soft couch which the analyst provides, and try to think up something different. The analyst has endless time and patience; every minute you detain him means money in his pocket. He is like God, in a sense—the God of your own creation. Whether you whine, howl, beg, weep, implore, cajole, pray or curse—he listens. He is just a big ear minus a sympathetic nervous system. He is impervious to everything but truth. If you think it pays to fool him then fool him. Who will be the loser? If you think he can help you, and not yourself, then stick to him until you rot. He has nothing to lose. But if you realize that he is not a god but a human being like yourself, with worries, defects, ambitions, frailties, that he is not the repository of an all-encompassing wisdom but a wanderer, like yourself, along the path, perhaps you will cease pouring it out like a sewer, however melodious it may sound to your ears, and rise up on your own two legs and sing with your own God-given voice. To confess, to whine, to complain, to commiserate, always demands a toll. To sing it doesn't cost you a penny. Not only does it cost nothing—you actually enrich others. Sing the praises of the Lord, it is enjoined. Aye, sing out! Sing out, O Master-builder! Sing out, glad warrior! But, you quibble, how can I sing when the world is crumbling, when all about me is bathed in blood and tears? Do you realize that the martyrs sang when they were being burned at the stake? They saw nothing crumbling, they heard no shrieks of pain. They sang because they were full of faith. Who can demolish faith? Who can wipe out joy? Men have tried, in every age. But they have not succeeded. Joy and faith are inherent in the universe. In growth there is pain and struggle; in accomplishment there is joy and exuberance; in fulfillment there is peace and serenity. Between the planes and spheres of existence, terrestrial and super-terrestrial, there are ladders and lattices. The one who mounts sings. He is made drunk and exalted by unfolding vistas. He ascends sure-footedly, thinking not of what lies below, should he slip and lose his grasp, but of what lies ahead. Everything lies ahead. The way is endless, and the farther one reaches the more the road opens up. The bogs and quagmires, the marshes and sink-holes, the pits and snares, are all in the mind. They lurk in waiting, ready to swallow one up the moment one ceases to advance. The phantasmal world is the world which has not been fully conquered over. It is the world of the past, never of the future. To move forward clinging to the past is like dragging a ball and chain. The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over. We are all guilty of crime, the great crime of not living life to the full. But we are all potentially free. We can stop thinking of what we have failed to do and do whatever lies within our power. What these powers that are in us may be no one has truly dared to imagine. That they are infinite we will realize the day we admit to ourselves that imagination is everything. Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything God-like about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.
15
Everybody took Mona and Rebecca for sisters. Outwardly they seemed to have everything in common; inwardly there wasn't the slightest link between them. Rebecca, who never denied her Jewish blood, lived completely in the present; she was normal, healthy, intelligent, ate with gusto, laughed heartily, talked easily and, I imagine, fucked well and slept well. She was thoroughly adapted, thoroughly anchored, able to live on any plane and make the best of it. She was everything that a man could desire in a wife. She was a real female. In her presence the average American woman looked like a bundle of defects.
Her special quality was her earthiness. Born in Southern Russia, having been spared the horrors of ghetto life, she reflected the grandeur of the simple Russian people among whom she grew up. Her spirit was large and flexible, robust and supple at the same time. She was a Communist by instinct, because her nature was simple, wholesome and all of a piece.
Though she was the daughter of a rabbi, she had emancipated herself at an early age. From her father she had inherited that acumen and integrity which from time immemorial have given to the pious Jew that distinctive axira of purity and strength. Meekness and hypocrisy were never the attributes of the devout Jew; their weakness, as with the Chinese, has been an undue reverence for the written word. For them, the Word has a significance almost unknown to the Gentile. When they become exalted they glow like letters of fire.
As for Mona, it was impossible to guess what her origins were. For a long time she had maintained that she was born in New Hampshire and that she had been educated in a New England college. She could have passed for a Portuguese, a Basque, a Roumanian gypsy, a Hungarian, a Georgian, anything she chose to make you believe. Her English was impeccable and, to most observers, without the slightest trace of accent. She might have been born anywhere, because the English she spoke was obviously an English she had mastered in order to frustrate all such inquiries as relate to origins and antecedents. In her presence the room vibrated. She had her own wave length: it was short, powerful, disruptive. It served to break down other transmissions, especially those which threatened to effect real communication with her. She played like lightning over a storm-tossed sea.
There was something disturbing to her in the atmosphere created by the coming together of such strong individualities as composed the new menage. She felt a challenge which she was not quite able to meet. Her passport was in order but her luggage excited suspicion. At the end of every encounter she had to reassemble her forces, but it was evident, even to herself, that her forces were becoming frayed and diminished. Alone in our little room—the cubicle—I would nurse her wounds and endeavor to arm her for the next encounter. I had to pretend, of course, that she had acquitted herself admirably. Often I would rehearse some of the statements she had made, altering them subtly or amplifying them in an unexpected way, in order to give her the clue she was searching for. I tried never to humiliate her by forcing her to ask a direct question. I knew just where the ice was thin and I skated about these dangerous zones with the adroitness and agility of a professional. In this way I patiently endeavored to fill in those gaps which were distressingly blatant in one who was supposed to have graduated from such a venerable institution of learning as Wellesley.
It was a strange, awkward and embarrassing game. I was surprised to detect in myself the germination of a new sentiment towards her: pity. It was incomprehensible to me that, forced to show her hand, she should not have taken refuge in frankness. She knew that I knew, but she would insist on keeping up pretences. Why? Why with me? What had she to fear? That I had detected her weakness had in no way diminished my love. On the contrary, it had increased it. Her secret had become mine, and in protecting her I was protecting myself also. Could she not see that in arousing my pity she was only strengthening the bond between us? But perhaps that was not her great concern; perhaps she took for granted that the bond would grow with the years.
To make herself invulnerable—that was her obsessive concern. Detecting that, my pity expanded immeasurably. It was almost as if I had suddenly discovered that she was a cripple. That happens now and then, when two people fall in love. And if it is love which has united two people then a discovery of that sort serves only to intensify the love. One is not only eager to overlook the duplicity of the unfortunate one, one makes a violent and unnatural effort towards identification. «Let me carry the burden of your sweet defect!» That is the cry of the love-sick heart. Only an ingrained egotist can evade the shackles imposed by an unequal match. The one who loves thrills at the thought of greater tests; he begs mutely that he be permitted to put his hand in the flame. And if the adorable cripple insists on playing the game of pretence then the heart already open and enfolding yawns with the aching void of the grave. Then not only the defect, but the body, soul and spirit of the loved one are swallowed up in what is veritably a living tomb.
It was Rebecca who really put Mona on the rack. Better said, she permitted Mona to put herself on the rack. Nothing could induce her to play the game as Mona demanded that it be played. She stood firm as a rock, yielding not an inch one way or the other. She showed neither pity nor cruelty; she was adamant against all those wiles and seductions which Mona knew how to employ with women as well as with men. The fundamental contrast between the two «sisters» became more and more glaring. The antagonism, more often silent than spoken, revealed with dramatic clarity the two poles of the feminine soul. Superficially Mona resembled the type of the eternal feminine. But Rebecca, whose ample nature had no superficies, had the plasticity and fluidity of the real female who, throughout the ages and without abdication of her individuality, has transformed the outlines of her soul in accordance with the changing image which man creates in order to focus the imperfect instrument of his desires.
The creative side of the female operates imperceptibly: its province is the potential man. When its play is unrestricted the level of the race is raised. One can always gauge the level of a period by the status of its womankind. Something more than freedom and opportunity are here involved, because Woman's true nature never expresses itself in demands. Like water, woman always finds her own level. And like water also, she mirrors faithfully all that passes in the soul of man.
What is called «truly feminine» therefore is only the deceptive masquerade which the uncreative male blindly accepts as the real show. It is the flattering substitute which the thwarted female offers in self-defense. It is the homosexual game which Narcissism exacts. It is most flagrantly revealed when the partners are extremely masculine and feminine. It can be mimicked most successfully in the shadow play of the avowed homosexuals. It reaches its blind culmination in the Don Juan. Here the pursuit of the unattainable reaches the burlesk proportions of a Chaplinesque pursuit. The end is always the same: Narcissus drowning in his own image.
A man can only begin to understand the depths of woman's nature when he surrenders his soul unequivocally. It is only then that he begins to grow and truly to fecundate her. There are then no limits to what he may expect of her, because in surrendering he has delimited his own powers. In this sort of union, which is really a marriage of spirit with spirit, a man comes face to face with the meaning of creation. He participates in an experiment which he realizes will always be beyond his feeble comprehension. He senses the drama of the earth-bound and the role which woman plays in it. The very possessivity of woman takes on a new light. It becomes as enchanting and mysterious as the law of gravitation.
A strange four-cornered battle was going on between us, with Kronski acting as referee and goad. While Mona vainly endeavored to traduce and seduce Rebecca, Arthur Raymond was doing his utmost to convert me to his way of thinking. Though neither of us made any outright allusion to the subject, it was evident that he thought me neglectful of Mona and I thought him unappreciative of Rebecca. In all our discussions I was always championing Rebecca or she me, and Mona and he were doing the same, of course. Kronski, in the true spirit of referee, saw to it that we were kept on our toes. His wife, who never had anything to contribute, usually grew sleepy and retired from the scene as quickly as possible. I had the impression that she spent the time in bed lying awake and listening, because as soon as Kronski joined her she would pitch into him and torment him for having neglected her so shamefully. The quarrel would always end with grunts and squeals followed by repeated visits to the sink which we shared in common.
Often after Mona and I had retired, Arthur Raymond would stand outside our door, asking first if we were still awake, and talk to us through the transon. I deliberately kept the door closed because in the beginning I had made the mistake of being polite and inviting him in, a fatal procedure if one had any thought of getting a night's rest. Then I fell into another error, the stupid one of being semi-polite, of answering at intervals in drugged monosyllables—Yes...No...Yes...No. As long as he sensed the faintest stir of consciousness in his listener, Arthur Raymond would carry on remorselessly. Like a Niagara he wore down the rocks and boulders which opposed his torrential flow. He would simply drown out all opposition... There is, however, a way of protecting oneself against these irresistible forces. One can learn the trick by going to Niagara Falls and observing those spectacular figures who stand with their backs against the wall of rock and watch the mighty river shooting over their heads and falling with a deafening roar into the narrow bed of the gorge. The tingle of spray to which they are subjected acts as a stimulant to their swooning senses. Arthur Raymond seemed to be conscious that I had discovered some sort of protection analogous to this descriptive image. His only recourse, therefore, was to wear away the upper bed of the river and rout me out of my precarious place of refuge. There was something ludicrously obstinate about such a blind and stubborn persistence, something monumentally akin to the Gargantuan strategy which Thomas Wolfe was later to employ as a novelist and which he himself must have recognized as the defect of the «perpetuum mobile» machine in giving to his great work the title Of Time and the River.
If Arthur Raymond had been a book I could have tossed him aside. But he was a river incarnate, and the bed through which he pulsed like a dynamo was but a few steps removed from the ledge in which we had carved a sheltering niche. Even in sleep the roar of his voice was present; we emerged from our slumbers with the stunned expression of those who have been deafened in their sleep. This force, which no one had been able to canalize or transform, became an omnipresent menace. Thinking of him in later years, I often likened him in my mind to those turbulent rivers which slip their banks and double back on their tracks, forming mighty loops like the writhings of a serpent, seeking in vain to spend their uncontrollable energies, finishing their agony by catapulting into the sea with a dozen furious mouths.
But the force which was sweeping Arthur Raymond on to nullification was at that time, by very reason of its menacing aspect, lulling and hypnotic. Like mandragores under a glass roof, Mona and I lay rooted in our own bed, which was a strictly human bed, and fertilized the egg of hermaphroditic love. When the tingle of spray ceased to splash against the glass roof of our indifference we would gurgle from the roots with that plaintive chant of the flower which is humanized by the sperm of the dying criminal. The master of the toccata and fugue would have been appalled could he have heard the reverberations which his roar engendered.
It was only a short time after we were installed in the Palace of Time and the River that I discovered one morning, while taking a shower, that the head of my cock was ringed with bleeding sores. It gave me quite a fright, needless to say. Immediately I thought that I had contracted the «syph». And since I had been faithful in my way I could only suppose that Mona had given it to me.
However, it isn't in my nature to run to the doctor at once. With us the doctor has always been looked upon as a mountebank if not a downright criminal. We usually wait for the surgeon who of course is in league with the undertaker. We always pay handsomely for the perpetual care of the grave.
«It will go away of itself», I told myself, taking my prick out twenty or thirty times a day.
It could have been a back-fire from one of those menstrual pea-soup fucks too. Often, in fatuous masculine pride, one mistakes the tomato juice flow of the period for a pre-coital flow. Many a proud dick is sunk in this Scapa Flow...
The simplest thing, of course, was to question Mona, which I promptly proceeded to do.
«Now listen,» I said, still in good humor, «if you've got a dose you'd better tell me. I'm not going to ask you how you came by it... I want the truth, that's all.»
The directness of this made her burst out laughing. She laughed a little too heartily, I thought.
«You could get a dose from sitting on the toilet,» I said.
This made her laugh even more heartily—almost hysterically.
«Or it could be a throw-back from an old dose. I don't care when or where it happened... have you got it, that's what I want to know.»
The answer was No. Emphatically No! She was sobering up now and with the change came a little show of anger. How could I think up such an accusation? What did I take her for—a trollop?
«Well, if that's the case,» said I, putting a good face on it, «there's no need to worry. You don't get a clap out of thin air. I'll forget about it...»
But then it wasn't so easy to forget—just like that. In the first place the fucking was taboo. A week had passed, and a week is a long time when you're used to fucking every night and in between a piece now and then—on the wing, as it were.
Every night it stood up like a pole. I even went to the absurd length of using a condom—just once— because it hurt like hell. The only other thing to do was to play stink-finger or suck her off. I was a little leery about the latter, despite her prophylactic protestations.
Masturbation was the best substitute. In fact, it opened up a new area of exploration. Psychologically, I mean. Lying there, with my arm around her and my fingers up her crotch, she became strangely confidential. It was as though the erogenous zone of her mind were being tickled by my fingers. The juice began to spill out.... «the dirt», as she had once called it.
Interesting how women dish up the truth! Often they begin with a lie, a harmless little lie, which is just a feeler. Just to see how the wind blows, don't you know. Should they sense that you're not too hurt, not too offended, they risk a morsel of truth, a few crumbs cleverly wrapped in a tissue of lies.
That wild automobile ride, for instance, which she's rehearsing under her breath. One wasn't to think for one moment that she enjoyed going out with three strange men—and two dopey fluffs from the dance hall. She had only consented because at the last minute there was no other girl to be found. And then, of course, she may have been hoping, though she didn't know it at the time, that one of the men might be human, might listen to her story and help her out—with a fifty dollar bill perhaps. (She always had her mother to fall back on: mother, the prime cause and motivator of all crime...).
And then, as always happens on automobile rides, they began to get fresh. If the other girls hadn't been along it might have turned out differently; they had their dresses up over their knees before the car had hardly started. They had to drink too—that was the worst of it. Of course she only pretended to drink... swallowed just a few drops... enough to wet her whistle... the others gulped it down. She didn't mind so much kissing the men either—that was nothing—but the way they grabbed her right away... pulling her teats out and running their hands up her legs... the two of them at once. They must have been Italians, she thought. Lecherous brutes.
Then she confessed to something which I knew was a god-damned lie, but it was interesting just the same. One of those «deformations» or «displacements», as in dreams. Yes, you see, oddly enough the other two girls felt sorry for her... sorry that they had got her into such a pickle. They knew she wasn't in the habit of sleeping with every Tom, Dick and Harry. So they stopped the car and changed seats, letting her sit up front with the hairy guy who had seemed decent and quiet thus far. They sat on the men's laps in the back, their dresses raised, facing forward, and while smoking their cigarettes and laughing and drinking, they let the men in the rear have their fill of pleasure.
«And what did the other guy do while this was going on?» I finally felt impelled to ask.
«He didn't do anything,» she said. «I let him hold my hand and I talked to him as fast as I could so as to keep his mind off it.»
«Come on,» I said, «don't tell me that. Now what did he do— out with it!»
Well, anyway, he did hold her hand for a long time, believe it or not. Besides, what could he do— wasn't he driving the car?
«You mean to say he never thought of stopping the car?»
Of course he did. He tried several times, but she talked him out of it... That was the line. She was thinking desperately how to get round to the truth.
«And after a while?» I said, just to ease her over the rough spots.
«Well, all of a sudden he dropped my hand...» She paused.
«Go on!»
«And then he grabbed it again and placed it in his lap. His fly was open and it was standing up... and twitching. It was a tremendous thing. I got terribly frightened. But he wouldn't let me take my hand away. I had to jerk him off. Then he stopped the car and tried to push me out. I begged him not to throw me out. 'Drive on slowly,' I said, 'I'll do it... later. I'm frightened.' He wiped himself with a handkerchief and started going again. Then he began talking the vilest filth...»
«Like what? Just what did he say, do you remember?»
«Oh, I don't want to talk about it... it was disgusting.»
«Since you've told me this much I don't see why you hesitate over words,» I said. «What's the difference... you might as well...»
«All right, if you want it... 'You're just the kind I like to fuck,' he said. 'I've been meaning to fuck you for a long time. I like the turn of your ass. I like your teats. You're no virgin—what the hell are you so delicate about? You've been fucked all over the lot—you're cunt right up to the eyes'—and things like that.»
«You're making me horny,» I said. «Go on, tell me everything.»
I could see now that she was only too delighted to get it off her chest. We didn't have to pretend anything any more—we were both enjoying it.
The men in the rear seat wanted to swap, it seems. That really frightened her. «The only thing I could do was to pretend that I wanted to be fucked by the other one first. He wanted to stop at once and get out. 'Drive slowly,' I coaxed, 'I'll give it to you afterwards... I don't want them all on me at once.' I grabbed his prick and began to massage it. It was stiff in a minute... even bigger than before. Jesus, I tell you, Val, I never felt a tool like that before. He must have been an animal. He made me grab his balls too—they were heavy and swollen. I jerked it fast, hoping to make him come quick...»
«Listen,» I interrupted, getting excited by the tale of the big horse cock, «let's talk straight. You must have wanted a fuck bad, with that thing in your hand...»
«Wait,» she said, her eyes glittering. She was as wet as a goose now from the massaging I was giving her all the while...
«Don't make me come now,» she begged, «or I won't be able to finish the story. Jesus, I never thought you'd want to hear all this.» She closed her legs on my hand, so as not to get too excited. «Listen, kiss me...» and she ran her tongue down my throat. «Oh God, I wish we could fuck now. This is torture. You've got to get that tended to soon... I'll go crazy...»
«Don't get off the track... Now what next? What did he do?»
«He grabbed me by the neck and forced my head down into his lap. 'I'm going to drive slow like you said,' he mumbled, 'and I want you to suck that off. After that I'll be ready to give you a fuck, a good one.' It was so enormous I thought I'd choke. I felt like biting it. Honest, Val, I never saw anything like it. He made me do everything. 'You know what I want,' he said. 'Use your tongue. You've had a prick in your mouth before.' Finally he began to move up and down, to slide it in and out. All the time he held me by the neck. I was nearly crazy. Then he came—ugh! it was filthy! I thought he'd never stop coming. I pulled my head away quickly and he shot a stream of it into my face— like a bull.»
By this time I was on the verge of coming myself. My prick was dancing like a wet candle. «Clap or no clap, I'm going to fuck to-night,» thought I to myself.
She went on with the story after a lull. How he made her huddle in the corner of the car with her legs up and poked around inside of her while driving with one hand, the car zigzagging back and forth across the road. How he made her open her cunt with her two hands and then turned the flashlight on it. How he put his cigarette inside her and made her try to inhale with her cunt. And the two in the rear leaning over and pawing her. How one of them tried to stand up and shove his prick in her mouth, but too drunk to do anything. And the girls—by this time stark naked and singing filthy songs. Not knowing where he was driving or what was coming next. «No,» she said, «I was too scared to be passionate. They were capable of anything. They were thugs. All I could think of was how to escape. I was terrified. And all he kept saying was: 'You wait, you lovely bitch... I'll fuck the ass off you. How old are you? You wait...' And then he'd grab himself and swing it like a club. 'When you get this inside your cute little twat you're going to feel something. I'll make it come out of your mouth. How many times do you think I can do it? Guess!' I had to answer him. 'Twice... three times?' I guess you ain't ever had a real fuck. Feel it!' and he made me hold it again while he jerked back and forth. It was slimy and slippery... he must have been coming all the time. 'How does it feel, sister? I can put another inch or two on that when I ram it up that hole of yours. By the way, how would you like it up the other end? Listen, when I get through with you you won't be able to say fuck for a month.' That's the way he talked...»
«For Christ's sake, don't stop there,» I said. «What next?»
Well, he stopped the car, beside a field. No more shilly-shallying. The girls in the back were trying to put on their clothes, but the men shoved them out without a stitch on. They were screaming. One of them got a clout in the jaw for her pains and fell' like a log beside the road. The other one started to clasp her hands, as if she were praying, but she couldn't make a sound, so paralyzed with fright she was.
«I waited for him to open the door on his side,» said Mona. «Then I jumped out quickly and started running across the field. My shoes came off, my feet were cut by the thick stubble. I ran like mad and him after me. He caught up with me and pulled the dress off me—tore it off with one yank. Then I saw him raise his hand and the next moment I saw stars. There were needles in my back and needles in the sky. He was on top of me and going at it like an animal. It hurt terribly. I wanted to scream but I knew he would only strike me again. I lay there stiff with fright and let him maul me. He bit me all over—my lips and ears, my neck, my shoulders, my breasts—and never once did he stop moving— just fucking away like some crazed animal. I thought everything had broken inside me. When he pulled away I thought he had finished. I began to cry 'Stop that,' he said, 'or I'll kick you in the jaw.' My back felt as though I had been rolling in glass. He lay down flat on his back and told me to suck him off. It was still big and slimy. I think he must have had a perpetual erection. I had to obey. 'Use your tongue,' he said. 'Lick it up!' He lay there breathing heavily, his eyes rolling, his mouth wide open. Then he pulled me on top of him, bouncing me up and down like a feather, turning and twisting me as if I were made of rubber. 'That's better, eh?' he said. 'You work now, you bitch!' and he held me lightly by the waist with his two hands while I fucked with all my might. I swear Val, I didn't have a bit of feeling left—except a burning pain as though a red-hot sword had been thrust inside me. 'That's enough of that,' he said. 'Now get down on all fours—and lift your ass up high.' Then he did everything... taking it out of one place and putting it in the other. He had my head buried in the ground, right in the dirt, and he made me hold his balls with my two hands. 'Squeeze them,' he said, 'but not too hard or I'll lay you cold!' The dirt was getting in my eyes... it stung horribly. Suddenly I felt him push with all his might... he was coming again... it was hot and thick. I couldn't stand it another moment. I sank down flat on my face and I felt the stuff pour over my back. I heard him say 'God damn you!' and then he must have struck me again because I don't remember anything until I woke up shivering with cold and found myself covered with cuts and bruises. The ground was wet and I was alone...»
At this point the story went into another groove. And then another and another. In my eagerness to keep up with her flights I almost overlooked the point of the story, which was that she had contracted a disease. She didn't realize at first what it was, because it had announced itself in the beginning as a bad case of haemorrhoids. Lying on the wet ground had done that, she averred. At least that had been the doctor's opinion. Then came the other thing—but she had gone to the doctor in time and he had cured her.
To me, interesting as this might have been, considering that I was still concerned about the ringworms, another fact had emerged which transcended it in importance. Somehow I hadn't paid such close attention to the details of the aftermath—how she had picked herself up, begged a ride to New York, borrowed some clothes from Florrie, and so on. I remember having interrupted her to ask how long ago it was that the rape had occurred and my impression is that her answer was rather vague. But suddenly, while trying to put two and two together, I realized that she was talking about Carruthers, about living at his place and cooking for him and so on. How had that happened?
«But I just told you,» she said. «I went to his place because I didn't dare to go home looking as I did. He was terribly kind. He treated me as if I were his own daughter. It was his doctor I went to—he took me there himself.»
I supposed from this that living with Carruthers meant that she had been living with him at the place where she had once given me the rendezvous, where Carruthers had walked in on us unexpectedly and where he had made a jealous scene. But I was mistaken.
«It was long before that,» she said. «He was living uptown then,» and she mentioned the name of some famous American humorist with whom Carruthers then shared a flat.
«Why you were almost a child then—unless you're lying about your age.»
I was seventeen. I had run away from home during the war. I went to New Jersey and took a job in a munitions plant. I only stayed a few months. Carruthers made me leave the job and go back to college.»
«So you did finish your studies?» I said, a bit confused by all the contradictions.
«Of course I did! I wish you'd stop insin...»
«And you met Carruthers in the munitions plant?»
«Not in the plant. He was working in a dye factory nearby. He used to take me into New York now and then. He was the vice-president, I think. Anyway, he could do as he pleased. He used to take me to the theatre and to night clubs... He liked to dance.»
«And you weren't living with him then?»
«No, that was later. Even uptown, after the rape, I didn't live with him. I did the cooking and the housework to show him that I was grateful for all he had done. He never asked me to be his mistress. He wanted to marry me... but he didn't have the heart to leave his wife. She was an invalid...»
«You mean sexually?»
«I told you all about her. What difference does it make?»
«I'm all balled up,» I said.
«But I'm telling you the truth. You asked me to tell you everything. Now you don't believe me.» At this moment the horrible suspicion flashed through my mind that the «rape» (and perhaps it hadn't been a rape!) had occurred in a past all too recent. Perhaps the «Italian» with the insatiable prick had been nothing more than an amorous lumberman in the North words. No doubt there had been more than one «rape» pulled off on these midnight automobile rides which hot-blooded young girls indulge in after hitting up the flask. The image of her standing alone and naked in a wet field at dawn, her body covered with cuts and bruises, the uterine wall broken down the rectum mutilated, her shoes gone, her eyes black and blue... well, that was the sort of thing a romantic young lady might cook up to cover a careless lapse that ends with gonorrhea and haemorrhoids, though the haemorrhoids did seem a bit gratuit.
«I think we'd better go to the doctor to-morrow, the both of us, and have a blood test taken,» I said quietly.
«Of course I'll go with you,» she replied.
We embraced one another silently and then we slid into a long fuck.
A disquieting thought now asserted itself. I had a hunch that she would find an excuse for postponing the visit to the doctor a few days. In that time, if it were a disease that I had, I could have communicated it to her. I dismissed the thought as absurd. A doctor could probably tell by examination whether she had given it to me or I to her. And how could I have caught a dose, except through her?
Before we dozed off I learned that she had had her hymen broken at the age of fifteen. That too was her mother's fault. Yes, they had been driving her crazy at home by their talk of money, money, money all the time. So she had taken a job as a cashier in a little cage in front of a movie house. It wasn't long before the proprietor, who owned a string of movie houses throughout the country, had taken notice of her. He had a Rolls Royce car, wore the best clothes, spats lemon-colored gloves, a boutonniere and everything that goes with the part. He was rolling in money. Always peeling off hundred dollar bills from his big wad. Fingers studded with diamond rings. Nails beautifully manicured. A man of undefinable age, probably in his late forties. A highly sexed man of leisure who was always on the prowl. She had accepted his gifts of course—but no monkey business. She knew she could twine him around her finger.
But then there was the pressure at home. No matter what she threw down on the table it was never enough.
So when he asked her one day if she would like to go to Chicago with him and open up a new theatre there she consented. She was certain she could handle him all right. Besides, she was dying to get out of New York, away from her parents, and so on.
He behaved like a perfect gentleman. Everything was going beautifully—he had given her a substantial raise, had bought her clothes, had taken her to the best places, all just as she had imagined it would be. Then, one night after dinner (he had bought tickets for the theatre) he came out with it bluntly. He wanted to know if she was still a virgin. She had been only too eager to tell him yes, thinking that her virginity was her protection. But to her amazement he then began a most frank and brutal confession in which he revealed the fact that his one and only obsession was to deflower young girls. He even confessed that it had cost him a pretty penny and had got him into serious scrapes. Apparently, however, he could do nothing to curb this passion. It was perverse, he confessed, but since he had the means to indulge his vice he had not bothered to cure it. He insinuated that there was nothing brutal about his procedure. He had always treated his victims with kindness and consideration. After all, they might well regard him as a benefactor later on. Sooner or later every young woman has to surrender her maidenhood. He would even go so far as to say that, since it had to be done, it were better to entrust the operation to a professional, a connoisseur, so to speak. Many young husbands were so clumsy and ineffectual that they often caused their wives to become frigid. Many a marital wreck might be traced back to that first night, he insisted smoothly and with undeniable truth.
In short, to hear her relate the incident, he was a most excellent pleader, skilled not only in the art of defloration but in the art of seduction.
«I thought to myself,» said Mona, «that if it was to be just once I could let myself do it. He had told me he would pay me a thousand dollars, and I knew what a thousand dollars meant to my mother and father. I felt that I could trust him.» «So you didn't go to the theatre that night?» «Yes, we did—but I had already promised him that I would go through with it. He said there was no hurry, I wasn't to worry about it. He assured me it wouldn't be too painful. He said he could trust me; he had been observing me for a long time and knew that I would behave sensibly. To prove his sincerity he offered to give me the money first. I wouldn't accept it. He had been very decent to me and I felt that I ought to go through with the bargain before accepting his money. As a matter of fact, Val, I began to take a fancy to him. It was shrewd of him not to push me into it. If he had I might have hated him afterwards. As it is I'm rather grateful to him—though it turned out to be worse than I had imagined it would.»
I was wondering to myself what she meant by this last when to my surprise I heard her saying:
«You see, I had a very tough hymen. Sometimes they have to operate, you know. I didn't know anything about such things then. I thought it would be a little painful and bloody... a few minutes... and then... Anyway, it didn't go like that at all. It took almost a week before he was able to break it. I must say he enjoyed it. And he was gentle! Maybe he was just fibbing about it being so tough. Maybe that was just a gag to prolong the affair. Then too he wasn't so powerfully built. It was short and thick. It seemed to me he got it in all the way, but then I was so jittery that I really couldn't say. He would stay in me a long tune, hardly moving, but hard as a rock and twitching like a jigger. Sometimes he took it out and played around with it on the outside. That felt marvelous. He could do it an ungodly long time without coming. He said I was built perfectly... that once the skin was perforated I would be wonderful to go to bed with. He didn't use foul language— like that other brute. He was a sensualist. He watched me, told me how to move, showed me all sorts of tricks... It might have gone on much longer, God knows, if I hadn't got terribly excited one night. It was driving me crazy, especially when he pulled out and started rubbing it around the lips...»
«You really enjoyed it then?» I said.
«Enjoyed it? I was wild. I know I shocked him to death when finally I couldn't stand it any longer and I grabbed him and pulled him down on me with all my strength. 'Fuck, damn you!' I said, and I pressed against him and bit his lips. He lost his control then and he began to go at it with a vengeance. Even after he had pierced it, though it hurt, I kept on pushing. I must have had four or five orgasms. I wanted to feel it penetrate all the way. Anyway, I had no shame or embarrassment. I wanted to be fucked and I didn't care any more how much it hurt.»
I was wondering if she would tell me truthfully how long this affair had lasted—after the technical side of it was over. I had my answer almost immediately. She was amazingly frank about it. It seemed to me that there was an unusual warmth about her reminiscences. Made me realize how grateful women are when they have been handled with understanding.
«I was his mistress for quite a while,» she continued. «I was always expecting him to get tired of me, because he had emphasized so strongly that he could only get passionate about a virgin. Of course I was still a virgin, in a sense. I was terribly young, though people always took me for eighteen or nineteen. He taught me a lot. I went everywhere with him, all over the country. He was very fond of me and he always treated me with the greatest consideration. One day I noticed that he was jealous. I was surprised because I knew he had had many women—I didn't think he loved me. 'But I do love you,' he said, when I teased him about it. Then I became curious. I wanted to know how long he expected it to go on, this affair. I was always anticipating the moment when he would find another girl whom he would want to deflower. I dreaded meeting a young girl in his presence.»
«'But I'm not thinking about another girl,' he told me. 'I want you... and I'm going to hold on to you.'»
«'But you told me...' I started to say, and then I saw him laugh.... and I realized at once what an idiot I had been. 'So that was how you got me, eh?' I said. And then I felt vengeful. It was foolish of me because he hadn't done anything to hurt me. But I wanted to humiliate him.»
«You know, I really despise myself for what I did,» she went on. «He didn't deserve to be treated that way But I derived a cruel satisfaction in making him suffer. I flirted with every man I met—outrageously. I even went to bed with some of them, and then I told him about it and gloated over it when I saw how much it hurt him. 'You're young,' he used to say. 'You don't understand what you're doing.' It was true enough, but I only understood one thing— that I had the better of him, and that even if I had sold myself to him he was my slave. I delighted in taunting him about his money. 'Go and buy yourself another virgin,' I would say. 'You can probably get them cheaper than a thousand dollars. I would have said yes if you had offered five hundred. You could have had me for nothing if you had been a little cleverer. If I had your money I'd choose a new one every night.' I would go on like that until he couldn't stand it any longer. One night he proposed marriage. He swore he would divorce his wife instantly—if I would only say yes. He said he couldn't live without me. 'But I can live without you,' I answered. He winced. 'You're cruel,' he said. 'You're unjust.' I had no intention of marrying him, no matter how sincere he was. I didn't care about his money. I don't know why I abused him so. Afterwards, after I had left him, I felt thoroughly ashamed of myself. I went back to him once and I begged his forgiveness. He was living with another girl—he told me so at once. 'I would never have been unfaithful to you.' he said. 'I loved you. I wanted to do things for you. I didn't expect you to stay with me forever. But you were too headstrong... you were too proud.' He talked to me the way my father would have talked. I felt like weeping... Then I did something I never dreamt I could do. I begged him to take me to bed. He was trembling with passion. He was so damned decent, however, that he didn't have the heart to take advantage of me. 'You don't want to go to bed with me,' he said, 'you just want to prove to me that you're repentant.' I insisted that I wanted to sleep with him, that I liked him as a lover. He could hardly resist any longer. But he was afraid, I suppose, of what would happen to him. He didn't want to begin craving for me again, that was it. But I was thinking only of paying him back. I didn't know how else to do it. I knew he loved me, my body and everything. I wanted to make him happy, even if it did upset him... It was all very confusing. Anyway, we got in bed, but he couldn't get an erection. I never knew that to happen before. I tried everything. I enjoyed humiliating myself. As I was sucking him off I was smiling to myself, thinking how strange it was that I had to sweat like this over a man I despised... Nothing happened. I said I'd come back next day and try again. He looked at me as if he were appalled at the idea. 'You were patient with me in the beginning, remember?' I said. 'Why shouldn't I be patient now?' It's crazy,' he said. 'You don't love me. You're just giving yourself like a whore.' 'That's what I am now,' I said... 'a whore.' He took me literally. He looked frightened, thoroughly frightened...»
I waited to hear the rest of it. Did you go back?» I asked.
No, she hadn't gone back. She never went near him again.
«He must have lived on tenterhooks,» I said to myself.
The next morning I reminded her of our proposed visit to the doctor. I told her I would phone her later in the day and ask her to meet me at the doctor's office. I would have to consult Kronski about it. She was perfectly amenable. Anything I wanted.
Well, we visited the doctor Kronski had elected, we had blood tests taken, and we even had dinner with the doctor. He was a young man and not overly sure of himself, I thought. He didn't know what to make of my cock. Wanted to know if I had ever had a dose—or the «syph». I told him I had had the clap twice. Had it ever come back? Not that I knew of. And so on. He thought it best to wait a few days before doing anything. In the meantime he'd have analyzed our blood. He thought we both looked healthy, though looks were often deceptive. In short, he talked around and about, as young doctors often do—and old ones too—leaving us none the wiser.
Between the first and second visits I had to visit Maude. I told her all about it. She of course was convinced that Mona was responsible. She had expected as much. It was laughable, really, what an interest she took in my sick dick. As though it were still her private property. I had to take it out and show it to her, b'Jesus. She handled it gingerly at first, but then, her professional interest aroused and the thing growing heavier in her hand all the while, she became less and less cautious. I had to be careful not to get too excited or I might have thrown caution to the winds. At any rate, before permitting me to shove it back in my fly she begged me to let her bathe it gently in a solution. She was sure that could do no harm. So I went to the bathroom with her, my prick stiff as a rod, and I watched her pet it and pamper it.
When we visited the doctor again we learned that the signs were all negative. However, he explained, even that didn't constitute a final proof.
«You know,» he said—evidently he had been thinking it over before our arrival—«I've been thinking that you'd be much better off if you were circumcised. When the foreskin is removed that stuff will come off too. You've got an uncommonly long foreskin— hasn't it bothered you?»
I confessed I had never given it a thought before. One is born with a foreskin and one dies with it. Nobody thinks about his appendix until it's time to have it cut out.
«Yes,» he went on, «you'd be lots better off without that foreskin. You'd have to go to the hospital, of course... it might take about a week or so.»
«And what would that cost?» I inquired, picking up the scent.
He couldn't say exactly—perhaps a hundred dollars. I told him I'd think it over. I wasn't too keen about losing my precious foreskin, even if there were hygienic advantages attached to it. A funny thought then entered my head—that thereafter the head of my cock would be insensitive. I didn't like that idea at all.
However, before I left his office he had persuaded me to make a date with his surgeon for a week hence. «If it should clear up in the meantime you won't need to go through with the operation—if you don't like the idea.»
«But,» he added, «if I were you I'd have it done whether I liked it or not. It's much cleaner.»
In the interval the nightly confessions proceeded apace. Mona had not been working at the dance hall for several weeks now and we had the evenings together. She wasn't sure what she would do next— it was always the money question which disturbed her —but she was certain she would never return to the dance hall. She seemed just as relieved as I to know that her blood test had come out all right.
«But you didn't think there was anything wrong with you, did you?»
«One never knows,» she said. «That was such a horrible place... the girls were filthy.»
«The girls?»
«And the men too... Don't let's talk about it.» After a short silence she laughed and said: «How would you like it if I went on the stage?»
«It would be fine,» I said. «Do you think you can act?»
«I know I can. You wait, Val, I'll show you...»
That evening we came home late and sneaked quietly into bed. Holding on to my cock she began another string of confessions. She had been wanting to tell me something... I wasn't to get angry... I wasn't to interrupt her. I had to promise.
I lay there and listened tensely. The money question again. It was always there, like a bad sore. «You didn't want me to go on staying at the dance hall, did you?» Of course I didn't. What next? I wondered.
Well naturally she had to find some way of raising the necessary funds. Go on! I thought to myself. Get it over with! I gave myself an anaesthetic and listened to her without opening my trap. It was all quite painless, strange to relate. She was talking about old men, nice old men whom she had become acquainted with at the dance hall. What they wanted was to have the company of a beautiful young girl— some one they could eat with and take to the theatre. They didn't really care about dancing—or even going to bed with a girl. They wanted to be seen with young women—it made them feel younger, gayer, more hopeful. They were all successful old bastards —with false teeth and varicose veins and all that sort of thing. They didn't know what to do with their money. One of them, the one she was talking about, owned a big steam laundry. He was over eighty, brittle, blue-veined, glassy-eyed. He was almost a child. Surely I couldn't be jealous of him! All he asked of her was permission to spend his money on her. She didn't say how much he had already forked out, but she inferred it was a tidy sum. And now there was another one—he lived at the Ritz Carlton, A shoes manufacturer. She sometimes ate in his room, because it gave him pleasure. He was a multimillionaire—and a little gaga, to believe her words. At the most he had only courage enough to kiss her hand... Yes, she had been meaning to tell me about these things for weeks, but she had been afraid I might take it badly. «You don't, do you?» she said, bending over me. I didn't answer immediately. I was thinking, wondering, puzzling over it all. «Why don't you say something?» she said, nudging me. «You said you wouldn't be angry. You promised.»
«I'm not angry,» I said. And then I grew silent again.
«But you are! You're hurt.... O Val, you're so foolish. Do you think I would tell you these things if I thought you would be hurt?»
«I don't think anything,» I said. «It's all right, believe me. Do whatever you think best. I'm only sorry that it has to be this way.»
«But it won't always be this way! It's just for a little while... That's why I want to get in the theatre. I hate it just as much as you do.»
«O.K.» I said. «Let's forget about it.»
The morning that I was to report to the hospital I woke up early. As I was taking my shower I looked at my prick and by crikey there wasn't a sign of irritation. I could hardly believe my eyes. I woke Mona and showed it to her. She kissed it. I got in bed again and tore off a quick one—to test it out. Then I went to the telephone and called the doctor.
«It's all better,» I said, «I'm not going to have my foreskin cut off.» I hung up quickly in order to forestall any further persuasions on his part.
As I was leaving the phone booth I suddenly took it into my head to phone Maude.
«I can't believe it,» she said.
«Well, it's a fact,» I said, «and if you don't believe it I'll prove it to you when I come over next week.»
She seemed to want to hang on to the phone. Kept talking about a lot of irrelevant things «I've got to go,» I said, getting annoyed with her.
«Just a moment,» she begged. «I was going to ask you if you couldn't come over sooner, say Sunday, and take us out to the country. We might have a little picnic, the three of us. I'd do up a lunch...»
Her voice sounded very tender.
«All right» I said, «I'll come. I'll come early... about eight o'clock.»
«You're sure you're all right?» she said.
«I'm absolutely sure. I'll show it to you—Sunday.»
She gave a short, dirty little laugh. I hung up before she had closed her trap.
16
ТЕЛЕГРАМКанал с обзорами, анонсами новинок и книжными подборками
Книжный Вестник
Бот для удобного поиска книг (если не нашлось на сайте)
Поиск книг
Свежие любовные романы в удобных форматах
Любовные романы
О психологии, саморазвитии и личностном росте
Саморазвитие
Детективы и триллеры, все новинки
Детективы
Фантастика и фэнтези, все новинки
Фантастика
Отборные классические книги
Классика
ВКОНТАКТЕБиблиотека с любовными романами, которая наверняка придётся по вкусу женской части аудитории
Любовные романы
Библиотека с фантастикой и фэнтези, а также смежных жанров
Фантастика
Самые популярные книги в формате фб2
Топ фб2
книги