Great Circle

III

— Perhaps, after all, I’d better go. I’m afraid you were busy, old man. And I think it’s stopped snowing.

— No — I don’t think it has. What about a drink.

— Well — well—

— It’ll do you good. Release the inhibitions, et cetera. Remove your consciousness from one plane to another, you know.

— Oh, yes?

— Yes.… Here.… Say when.…

— When. Thanks.… Thanks.…

— And come to think of it, why don’t you spend the night. You might talk it all out, between drinks. Plenty of whisky here — some Rhine wine, if you prefer — quiet as the tomb — you can sleep on the couch if you get sleepy — What do you say.

— Well, maybe — if you don’t mind — after all — good God, I feel like crying.

— Why not sit down.

— No, thanks, I’d rather stand — walk — touch things and hold on to things — do you mind if I put my hand flat on that picture of Michelangelo and feel the glass—

— Why should I?

— He, too. I wonder if he ever went as deep. Did he ever talk to a psychoanalyst and weep? Did he ever pace about a room, at midnight, with a glass in his hand, a glass that might have been his heart, and drink his own bitter blood? Christ, what am I chattering about.

— Don’t we all do it, sooner or later?

— Before I came here, half an hour ago, do you know what I was doing? I was walking in the snow, hardly knowing what I was doing. Oh, yes, I did know, too, for God’s sake let’s be honest. I was crying as I walked, and I enjoyed crying — I felt the tears at the corners of my mouth, tears mixed with melting snow, and I deliberately opened my coat and shirt, so that I could feel the snowflakes on my chest and throat. My feet were getting wet, and I didn’t care, I stepped into the puddles and slush, thinking what a good thing it would be if I got pneumonia. Isn’t it amazing how even at such a moment, when one is absolutely broken, dissolved, a mere whirlwind of unhappiness, when one walks without knowing or caring where one is going, nevertheless one still has to dramatize oneself, one sees oneself as a pitiful figure under an arc light in the snow, one lifts a deliberately tormented face to the storm, and despite the profound actuality of one’s grief, there is also something false in it too. Suddenly the snow is paper snow, one almost expects to hear an accompaniment of sob music on nicely ordered violins, or the whole world breaking into applause! Good God. Let’s laugh.

— Ha, ha. I’m laughing.

— Where is honesty then? I don’t believe we’ve got an honest fiber in our souls. We’re all colossal fakes — the more power we have, the more ingeniously and powerfully we fake. Michelangelo — what the hell. Did he ever tell the truth? Or Shakespeare? No, by God, they went lying into their graves, nothing said, their dirty little mouths twisted with deceit, their damned hearts packed full of filthy lies and blasphemies. Their whole lives wasted. One long fake, a pitiful and shameful glozing and glazing of the truth, slime upon slime and prettification on prettification, each new resolve to tell the truth coming to nothing, somehow turning to a neatly turned verse, a fine purple flight of rhetoric, a bloody little tune, an effective action, or a figure of which the very secret of power is artifact. Christ, Christ, what an agony — poor devils, they knew it too, and still they went on surrendering to the lies inherent in language and marble. Why? And why, even when I want to kill myself, do I have to cast myself as little orphan Annie with a rag doll clutched to her shawled bosom? I’m ashamed. No, I’m not either. Yes, I am too. I went into the Waldorf and cried into a cup of pale coffee. I could hardly swallow. I wanted to be dead. That damned dado of college banners made me sick. Old Turgenev, the cashier, was having trouble with a couple of drunks, they started to fight, and I got up with my coffee cup in my hand and went to talk to them — I persuaded them to go out to the sidewalk, and I went with them, holding my coffee cup. One of them, a tough guy from town, got the other down, the other was a mere kid, and when he got up his eye was cut open. I stopped the fight, with plausible words, feeling like a damned little pewter Galahad — Come on, now, I said, that’s enough, the kid’s had enough, leave him alone, what’s the idea, and I smiled a God-damned sickly smile at them both as if I were a paltry little Messiah, and they quit. I think it was the sight of the coffee cup out there in my hand in the snow that did it. One of them went down Holyoke Street and the other into the Yard, and I went back into the Waldorf feeling important and sat down with my coffee cup, and began to remember that I had wanted to cry, to die, to lie down on the mosaic floor with my coffee cup, just to stretch out like a dead Jesus on the dirty floor of this dirty and stinking world. But of course I didn’t do it. I merely thought about it, luxuriated disgustingly in the idea, imagined myself lying there among dead matches and wet sawdust, poor pitiful little Andrew Cather, him that was betrayed by the everlasting Judas tree. What is unhappiness, Bill?

— Defeated pride. A highball without ice. Ignorance.

— Ignorance be damned, and damn your eyes anyway. You and your amateur psychology. What the hell do you know about it, anyway? You sit there and goggle at the world as if you knew something — what the hell do you know? Oh, yes, I know, something hurt you irremediably when you were muscling your infant way into this cold, cold world, and you’ve never recovered, but you’ve fought your way back by superhuman intelligence to that drastic cold bath of a moment — isn’t that it? So now you’re wise and resigned, and smile Shakespearean wisdom on all the maimed host of mankind. You sit there and smile benignly at me, and wish to God I’d go home and leave you alone to sleep, you think I’m a fool, and you despise me because I’ve been betrayed and because I make such a fuss about it. What’s the use. Tea dance today. Novelty dance tonight. There will be charming favors, and saxophones will syncopate your livers. How long is it since you’ve cried, Bill?

— Oh, not since I was five or six, I guess.

— Why don’t you try it. It’s great. I’ve got the habit. I cry all the time. I wake up in the middle of the night crying — I dream I’m crying, and wake up crying. Yesterday morning I cried while I was shaving — it was the funniest thing I ever saw, the tears running down into the lather. I laughed at myself and then cried again. I think I’ll go insane. Deliberately — just think myself into madness. Why not?

— You’re insane now. Manic.

— Manic, hell.

— You’re heading a hell of a good time.

— Yes, indeed. Step up, ladies and gents, and see the trained lunatic, the miching mallecho Michelangelo, the pig with wings. Here lies the winged pig, feared and befriended by many, loved and betrayed by one. Why do I always dream about pigs? Last night I hit one in the snout with a walking stick — I thought he was attacking me, but it turned out I was mistaken. He merely wanted to attract my attention; but by that time I had fallen down in the mud, and my stick was dirty.

— It would be. Ha, ha.

— Don’t make me laugh.

— Anal erotic, what.

— Scatological too. Step up and see the scatological hebephrene, watch him weep pig’s tears into his snout.

— He eats them all.

— The pig with wings was a much smaller pig — a tiny pig, and such a little darling, as clean as clean could be. His wings were transparent and opalescent, lovely, and oh so tender — they were just unfurled, and scarcely dry, and imagine it, Bill, a dirty little bastard of a mongrel dog chose just that moment to attack him, biting at the wings! When I threw stones at him, he turned and attacked me.

— That dog was your best friend.

— My best friend — Christ. I mean Judas.

— You mean yourself.

— My polysyllabic soul, yes, of course I am guilty, I go about projecting my guilt like a magic lantern.

— Do you mind if I open the window a little, and let the smoke out?

— Oh, no, knock out the wall if you like. Einstein is waiting just outside with the fourth dimension on his forehead.

— I’ll ask him in.

— Do.

— Meanwhile, have you called up Bertha today.

— No, I went to see the Dingbats. The Dingbat sisters. I met them in the elevator, and one of them was carrying a bottle of gin, and I was already tight and so were they a little, and what with one thing and another, though I’d never spoken to them before, we smiled at each other and they invited me to come in and have a drink. So I did. The mystery women of Shepard Hall. They’re always getting telephone calls from the Navy Yard, and it amuses me to hear them at the public phone trying to answer indiscreet proposals in discreet words of one syllable. The older one took me into her bedroom to show me photographs of her two kids in Montreal. I hadn’t known she was married, and that put me off a little — I understood then why her breasts were so — ahem — mature and maternal. She leaned one of them against me, Bill, but I didn’t budge or feel a tremor. Not a tremor. Then they gave me six cocktails in rapid succession, in the dining room, a horrible room with red walls and fumed-oak furniture with an umbrella stand in one corner and such jolly colored prints of John Peel singing at the hunt breakfast. Why had I never been to see them, they said. They were always glad to see the people they liked, and if I just rang their bell six times, any time of the day or night, they would know it was me, and get out of bed even, if necessary. Very obliging. I asked them if they ever cried, and they were amused. I told them that I had a peculiar passion for crying, and would be glad to come in from time to time and have a good noisy cry with them while punishing the gin bottle. They laughed their heads off, and thought I was a hell of a wag. Then I said I must be going. The younger one, who is not so pretty, but who has no children, she is tall and has a gentler face, not quite so tough, you know, perhaps a trace of what you fellows call the anima type, she pleaded softly and cajolingly with me at the dining-room door, standing so close to me that I couldn’t get past her without embracing her, and she followed me to the front door and there, what do you think, just round the corner from Alice, we had a ten-minute nonstop kiss, you know the kind. Alice after a few minutes of the silence, said, Hey, there, what are you kids doing out there, and laughed, and then I went back for another cocktail. Oh, it was great fun, you have no idea. And when I finally came away I kissed her again at the door, a long, long kiss, not forgetting the tongue, and so went to the University Theater, where I suddenly and inexplicably felt very drunk. An undergraduate in front of me said, I smell boooooooze, and looked round. I smiled at him, very amiably.

— Well, and what was it all about? Do you understand it?

— Don’t be simple-minded. Of course I do.

— And what about Bertha.

— That’s what it was about, you idiot. That’s what I’m talking about all the time.

— So I see.

— Well, then, don’t interrupt. This was my little attempt at a counterblast.

— Not the first, either.

— What do you know about it?

— Oh, I’ve been here and there myself, and in and out, and up and down, and heard a thing or two, some from your own lips, before this.

— Too true, too true. I’ve always been your best case, Bill, your richest specimen. What on earth would you have done without me. I’m one of those talented fellows who combine all the madnesses in one — paranoia, dementia praecox, manic depressive, hysteria — name another. And so I watched faces on the screen — large weeping faces, eight feet high and five feet wide, with tears the size of cannon balls on the common and teeth like gravestones in the snow. Eyes—! You never saw such eyes. Like glassless windows in a ruined church. I think bats were coming and going out of them and into them. And the hair was like high-tension wires, and I saw a louse the size of a sparrow being electrocuted. It was great. Did I ever tell you of the time I stole a girl’s hat in the University Theater?

— No.

— Then I won’t. Now don’t tell me what Freud thinks a hat means.

— What do you think a hat means.

— If I were a Martian, strayed to earth, long after the death of the last man, I could reconstruct the whole of human civilization from one female hat. Preferably one of those early specimens with a lot of ostrich plumes. But this is a hypothetical question and I won’t go into it. The truth is, I want to cry.

— Go ahead and cry.

— No, I can’t. You’ve become my alter ego for the moment, the skeptical and analytic part of myself, and you disapprove of crying. So do I. Did you every cry at a prize fight? No? Why, Bill, I’m surprised at you. I don’t think you can have been to any prize fights. Everybody cries at a prize fight. The tears of Christ. You can buy them at the soda fountain, if you can get near enough to buy anything, which you seldom can, between bouts. And on Vesuvius once — but that was long ago, far away, and besides it was in the spring.

— You’re a riot. I wish to God I could take this down. But I don’t doubt you’ll remember it.

— Why should I. It’s my business to forget.

— So you think.

— So it is.

— The ostrich puts its head in the sand.

— I’m an ostrich, one of the best. An Arabian sparrow. Hiding my head in the desert of memory.

— I don’t think you’d better drink any more. You’re pretty well advanced.

— Not at all. How easily whisky comes out of a bottle — did you ever notice? Just like that. I think I’ll sit down. I think I’ll lie down. I think I’ll put this nice cold silk cushion on my face. Oh, that’s grand. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. And so I came back from New York, in response to a note from Fred (nice fellow, Fred) and found a hat, a man’s hat, a dirty felt hat, just as he predicted, on the chair in the front hall. What a melodrama. I had foreseen, in the train, every detail — that’s my way, Bill, I always foresee. So the hat wasn’t really a surprise at all. I was so sure it was there that I let myself in very quietly, like a cat, and banged the door behind me, and went up to the hat. It occurred to me to address the hat in Elizabethan style. O thou, most treasonable shape 0’ the human head, cornuting horror … but there were gloves also, and a stick — and what do you think of this — this is the dirtiest touch of all — a pair of humble muddy galoshes. Side by side, so meek and subservient, waiting for their exhausted master.

— For God’s sake, Andy.

— Yes, for God’s sake. You shrink from the horror, the plain physical horror, just as much as I did. Isn’t it wonderful? What a symbol, what a symbol. The hat, the stick, the gloves, the galoshes — a little constellation in the front hall, of which the meaning was plain even to me, who am no astronomer. I saw the whole life which they signified: Thomas Crapo, idealist, scientist, professor of biology, my friend, excellent tennis player, frequenter of wrestling matches, lover of Beethoven, but also the lover of my wife. And the apartment was so quiet, Bill! I could have heard a pin drop — and perhaps I did. A hairpin. Ting! And then silence.

— I’ll shut the window. It’s getting cold.

— I hear a snowplow.

— It’s one o’clock.

— Where?

— Here. One hour past midnight in the human soul.

— Then we’re getting on. If I were a dead leaf I would swallow myself.

— Why wait to be a dead leaf.

— Ah, I see, you’re bored, and quite rightly, with this harangue. Poor fellow, that’s the unfortunate duty of analysts, isn’t it? They only sit. I forget my Milton. But, seriously, have you ever found Christ’s hat in your front hall? And his gloves and stick and galoshes? You wonder what to do. You feel — as you should — like an intruder. How can you most tactfully announce your inconsiderate arrival. It would be tactless to go to the bedroom door — don’t you think — and say, Are you there, darling? Or perhaps darlings. It might be better simply to go to the bathroom and pull the chain, which would give them a cheerful warning that father was come home again. But there is this murderous impulse, too — have you ever killed a fly, or thrown a baby out of a window? I have, from time to time. Oh, my God. Look — I see my pulse on the radial side of my wrist, at the joint. I’m a doomed man, thank heaven. This is that blood that brought me where I am. You can throw the hat out of the window, of course — and perhaps that’s the best solution, though not the easiest. Hat equals schaden-freude. Bilingual pun, Bill, which does you credit. But why not open the bedroom door dramatically, and stand there frozen for a moment, eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves? I don’t like the smell of this cushion — I believe you’ve been entertaining young women here, Bill, and I think I recognize — do I recognize — yes, I’ve certainly come across that before. Now where was it?

— It doesn’t matter — go ahead.

— Yes, go ahead. Forward into the untrodden — but that’s an unfortunate suggestion. Do angels fear to tread? Not by a damned sight. And he was such an angel, such a white man, so gentle, so good, so shy — his little mustache is so neatly clipped with his nail scissors, on Tuesdays and Fridays always, and he always blows his nose before going to bed, and every penny he spends he puts down meticulously in his little notebook. Cup of coffee at Liggett’s — five cents. Carfare to Boston and back — twenty cents. Boston Evening Transcript—three cents. But I’m forgetting about Michelangelo. Do you suppose Michelangelo ever saw the sea?

— The sea?

— Yes, the sea. You know, the ocean, the bounding main. That thing that has waves, and bears ships, and laughs unarithmetically at the moon. Did he ever see it? I wonder. I wonder if he wanted to get back to it. What do you think. Don’t sit there and grin at me!

— Go on, let’s get back to it. A little free association, please! While I have a drink and try to catch up with you.

— Oh, my God, I’m a fool, a bloody, bloody fool. Why am I always in such a damned panic, in such a hurry to make decisions, why do I run round in mad circles like a beheaded hen?

— You know pretty well why.

— For six months I’ve been doing it — I’ve done no work — I’ve drunk like a fish and gone from one wild party to another. An unreasoning terror, a terror that had no particular shape — nightmares one after another too, I’d wake up sweating, my heart beating like hell — dreams of falling, dreams of climbing and falling, desperate efforts to carry monstrous loads up broken and rotten ladders, fantastic scaffoldings which fell away beneath me as I climbed — night after night.

— You saw it all coming. You were already aware of the insecurity of your position — perhaps you even wanted all this to happen. Perhaps you were precipitating it. God knows your way of living can’t have made Bertha like you any better, can it. I’m surprised she hasn’t rebelled or broken out before.

— Now be fair about this, Bill, be fair. I admit it wasn’t too good. But I think you go a little too far when you suggest that I wanted this to happen. Does a man deliberately want to cut himself in two? Jesus. Does he deliberately seek to be abandoned? Jesus. Does he carve out his own heart and throw it to the dogs? Jesus. No, I decline the gambit, thank you. Just because I vaguely foresaw and feared the thing doesn’t mean I wanted it. I know I’ve been a damned fool. Why did I get into that rotten affair with Molly? God knows. But even that might not have done any harm if it hadn’t been for the party in Prescott Street, when we all got drunk and took our clothes off and did a Russian ballet, and so on and so on, and that damned fool little Mary Thurston running all over town telling about it, just because some idiot of a Ph.D. student, a philosopher, thought he was a satyr and tore her shirt off. Those are the damned trifles that ruin our lives. Precarious, precarious. But nothing to the precariousness of the mind. I still believe I shall go insane. All of a sudden, my mind stops — goes blank — I can’t either think or feel. I forget the simplest things, names, events — things I’ve known all my life. I carry my laundry into the Western Union telegraph office. Wild fits of shyness come over me, the kind I used to have when I was a kid, and I stand foolish and speechless, leering like an idiot, forgetting where I am and what I’m there for. The other day at the bank I found I couldn’t write — my hand began to shake — God knows why — and I couldn’t even sign my own name. The cashier looked at me in astonishment. I really thought I’d gone mad. I looked out of the window, trying to think of something, saw the sunlight, saw the window of my old room in Gray’s Hall, with my initials still carved on the window sill after all these fifteen years, and the pen shook in my hand, and then I tried again, pretending for the cashier’s benefit that I’d merely been doing a little calculation. Calculation! Good God, I was calculating for my very life. Then I managed by making a series of separate feverish little tremulous strokes to get a few quivering marks on to the paper, which bore no resemblance to my signature at all. Mr. Howe looked at it in surprise, but made no comment. I suspect he thought I was trying deliberately to disguise my handwriting so that the check wouldn’t be charged to my own account. Now what the hell was that all about. I walked out shaking like the well-known aspen leaf, or a stricken doe, or something, and went straight to Molly’s apartment, without even knowing what I was doing. Her door was unlocked and I walked in. She was taking a bath, and yelled at me in alarm from the tub, not knowing who it was. I opened the door and looked at her. She threw a sponge at me. Then I went back to the sitting room and stared at the cactus on the window sill, which had just given birth to a purple blossom. It was very beautiful. She came in and said she was surprised at me. She was obviously rather pleased. We sat down on the couch, she in her kimono, and she expected me to make love to her. Instead, I cried, and she was the most astonished woman you ever saw in your life. When that was over, she gave me a gin and ginger ale, and I told her my dream about the sea. I’m always dreaming about the sea. We all know what that means, don’t we? I’m going to be born again one of these days. Oh, yes, we rise again. Back to the womb, and forth once more we swim, like the mighty hero of the Kalevala, after nine months in submarine caves. We all crowded to the railing on the port side, where the captain was pointing to the masthead of a sunken ship, a masthead from which a pennant still fluttered. It was a sunken galleon. I knew that, even before the tide went out and revealed it to us all — the tide went out in no time, and there, behold, was a little island, submerged at all but low tide, and on its shore was the little galleon. We got out of the ship and walked up the shingle beach to the galleon, and I climbed up on to its deck and it was very strange, it was a little museum of seashells and pearls and precious stones, the decks were lined with glass cases, and all of them filled with beautiful — indescribably beautiful — cowry shells and razor shells and wentletraps and corals and ambergris and black pearls and God knows what. I was enthralled. And to think — I reflected — that these poor fellows, four hundred years ago, after collecting these rare and lovely things from parts of the world and all the oceans, should at last have been overtaken by fate and their marvelous collection buried here with them and forgotten. I examined great scarlet shells like butterflies, and blue shells like dragon-flies, and red sponges, and flying fishes with wings of opal and gold. Never have I seen such concentrated beauty. It was all my childhood dream of treasure-trove come true. All those dreams of finding nests of buried gold coins, marbles made of moonstone, jackstones of silver — you know what I mean. I climbed down again to the beach and walked round to the stern of the ship — and there, what do you think? was a skeleton standing with his hands folded on a rusted musket, standing upright as if to guard the ship with its treasure, and staring with empty sockets at the name of the ship, which I saw, when I looked up, was Everest. Ever rest. Now what do you make of that, Watson. But I had no time to loiter — the tide was rising swiftly again, the captain called us, and back we went to our own ship, and no sooner were we on the decks once more than the tide had risen, the little galleon, with its melancholy guard, was engulfed, and all that remained was the fluttering pennant. And so we sailed away. I told this dream to Molly — oh, yes, I know what it means, I daresay the old fellow is my father — and before she could comment on it I told her we were going to the Greek’s for lunch, and so I helped her to dress, handing her odds and ends of clothing, and I picked the damned little cactus flower, which made her really furious — she stamped her foot and I thought she was going to have a cry herself — but she recovered and we went to town in a yellow taxi. And that was that. And, oh, yes, we went afterwards to a hockey game at the Garden, and she was bored to death, though I gave her a hot dog and a bag of peanuts to keep her happy. I think she thought I’d gone crazy.

— You wanted her to think so.

— Of course I did. But also I didn’t. Now just how do we dissect that out. But I’d prefer to have a drink. I’ll have a drink. This is to Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Melville, bisexual wonders of the transient world, magicians of the epicene, bastards of heaven and hell. Here’s to you, Mike, old boy. May your shadow never grow less, nor your fifth leg shorter. And so they went to hell all three to learn the fraud of Calvary. Good old Mike — I know all about him. His best friend was a homosexual, a minor artist who is now forgotten, and none of whose works survive, one of the lesser Florentines, a small man with a beard, a courageous coward, an exquisite, with a taste for scarlet in dress and a passion for perfumes and silks. A gentle fellow, he carried himself well, square-shouldered and erect, and his sword he managed with a grace, though he never put it to use. He had red lips and green eyes and a thick Florentine cad’s curl swept away from the fine feminine forehead, and his nose was proud and and of good breeding, and his accent in the reading aloud of poetry was of the very subtlest and finest. He was older than Michelangelo and richer, and his purse was open to his friend, for he could be, though a miser by nature, generous with those he loved. But this fellow betrayed him. Yes, he betrayed him. He left his hat in the hall, and his sword too, and his scarlet-lined cloak. So Michelangelo studied Plato, and modeled the titubant Bacchus, which is commonly considered his most ignoble work. And why was all this? Ah, Bill, you may well ask. Unable to draw Michelangelo to himself as he wanted to do, he took the next best course — viz., to wit, i.e., he took Michelangelo’s mistress. Surely you understand that? And so we have a rare kind of incest, we have — and a sort most painful to the heart. Now if you had a brother, Bill, and you had also a sweetheart, and this brother, behind your back, slept with your sweetheart — would you be unhappy? But I’m tired.

— I’m not surprised. Why don’t you lie down again.

— What about you, Bill? I feel damned guilty about you. Have you got lots to do tomorrow.

— Nothing that counts. This is much better. I’ve got a patient at twelve and nothing before that. So don’t worry.

— Why do I talk such tripe.

— I think there’s method in your madness.

— Madness in my method. It’s all the same. You must forgive me. I’d do the same for you, Bill. I’ve got to talk, and talk frantically. This is what I’ve been unconsciously looking for for a week. Something is broken. What is it. I don’t know. Suddenly I’m becoming, or trying to become, a child again. Now why is that — do I see it? I half see it. But, my God, Bill, how sick it makes me to mix so much that’s fraudulent with all this — at one moment what I say to you is genuine, at the next it’s almost deliberately a fake. I daresay you see through the fake with your fierce analytic eye, and so it’s all the same. A calculated fantasy or lie is as good as a dream, for your purpose.

— Just about. Your fantasies are pretty transparent. Which I perceive you’re quite aware of.

— Oh, am I, b’gosh.

— Anyway, you fit them in pretty well.

— In the pattern, you mean, the preconceived pattern.

— The preconceived role.

— Oh, Christ, yes. Isn’t it disgusting.

— Not at all. I sympathize with you. You’re all right, Andy. Why not get really drunk, and let yourself go. It won’t do you any harm.

— I’ve been drunk too much, and it does me no good.

— It’s all the path to regression. Healthy enough, too. There’s nothing wrong with regression, so long as you don’t stick in it. It’s really, in such a case as yours, a sign of creative growth. You’ll eventually come out of it with something new.

— To be sure. You mean I’ll get rid of that damned little winged pig, that revolting little symbol of disguised sensuality, that little pretence of idealism, that sweet little romance as to the facts of life.

— I didn’t say that. You said it.

— You might just as well have said it. Don’t be so niggardly. What the hell is it, Bill, that gives you such a sedentary kind of composure? I believe at bottom you’re afraid of life, and your calm is the calm of the abnegationist.

— Perhaps.

— Now you choose to be Buddhistic.

— You choose to think me so.

— I believe you’re a coward.

— Thou sayest.

— Now you’re playing at Christ.

— Well, spit on me, and become the wandering Jew.

— I hate you extraordinarily, Bill. You’re simply revolting, when you put on this superior manner, this know-it-all air, as if you were God. You think you can look right through me, don’t you. Oh, yes, you see every little shred of dirt and rot in my festering soul. And you have an unfair advantage in having known me for fifteen years or so. And in having known Bertha, too.

— Why didn’t you call up Bertha today.

— Very simple — I didn’t want to.

— Why not.

— Why the hell should I.

— But why not.

— Oh, for God’s sake, Bill — what do you think I am.

— I don’t know what you are — I merely want to know why you didn’t call up Bertha.

— I didn’t want to hear her voice.

— Oh, yes, you did.

— Well, all right, I did.

— So that’s that.

— Very clever of you. The professor is right every time. He wanted to hear his little wife’s voice, he did, but he didn’t want to either, and so he didn’t call her up. He knew she was there at the other end of any telephone, just waiting, just dying to be called up by her little husband, not daring to leave the apartment for fear he would call up in her absence, and call once only. But it suited him not to call her up. So he didn’t. He enjoyed thinking of her there, pacing restlessly from the bedroom to the hall, from the hall to the stinking, cockroach-ridden kitchenette, crying, with a wet crumpled handkerchief on the chest of drawers, another in her left hand, a third on the mantelpiece by the lacquered candlestick, a fourth on the top of the ice chest, a fifth on the edge of the gas stove, a sixth—

— Go on and be really funny, why don’t you.

— I will. Go on and be really nasty, why don’t you.

— You ought to be spanked.

— Oh, no, papa, please.

— In some respects, you’re behaving like a child — and a damned cruel spoiled one at that. I thought you knew better than to give in blindly and stupidly to a mere primitive possessiveness. It doesn’t seem to occur to you that Bertha is going through a tragic experience too — does it.

— Oh, doesn’t it, Professor. I may be a child, but I wasn’t born yesterday. What does that mean, yesterday? It means tomorrow. I shall be born tomorrow, and this time it’s going to be an immaculate contraception, by God.

— You said a mouthful when you spoke of dramatizing yourself. You’re deliberately trying to frighten Bertha with the idea that you’re going to kill yourself. She’s been ringing up every one in town to find out where you are and what you’re doing.

— Don’t I know it?

— Of course you know it. Why don’t you do something about it. Don’t be so damned selfish. Just because your pride is hurt you haven’t got to be criminally selfish and mean.

— Straight from the shoulder.… Why don’t I do something about it. For God’s sake, Andy, do something about it. Take your heart out and tie it up with baby ribbon and send it to poor little Bertha as a Berthaday present. Pretty hot, that one.… Oh, Christ, Bill. I know you’re right. You know I know all that. But it isn’t so damned easy, and it can’t be done offhand like that — you ought to see that. It isn’t only that I’m dramatizing, either. Some of it, maybe — but much more is a need for time. I want time. Good God, it would be easy enough to rush back there and cry on her perjured breast — where else do I want to go, in God’s name? To Molly? Not by a damned sight. To the Dingbat sisters, or old Mary’s? Well, as a matter of fact, I’ve been to all of them, and last night I slept with old Mary and all her lousy little pomeranians, not because I really wanted to indulge in the flesh, but simply to avoid going to Shepard Hall. Just as the three previous nights I slept in the bombproof at the Harvard Club.… Give me time. Let me suffer in my own way. I’ve got to eat the ashes and bones in my own way. If I want to die, let me want to die. I want to die.

— That’s all right — sure. Go ahead. But in the meantime it isn’t going to hurt you to say a word or two to Bertha.

— What sort of word or two would I say to Bertha.

— Anything to calm her a little. If you propose to go on staying away from her, just tell her everything is O. K., but that you just want a little time by yourself to think things over. Why not.

— I did call at Tom’s last night.

— The hell you did.

— He was out.

— Well, thank God for that.

— Oh, I don’t know.

— What did you want to do.

— I wasn’t going to kill him, or even beat him up. I couldn’t if I wanted to; he’d knock hell out of me. Bertha always did have an eye for athletes — the hairy-ape stuff. Now she’s got her refined caveman, let her keep him. Now she’s made my bed for him, let him lie in it. All I want to do is tell him what I think he is — a merd. That’s all. And I shall smile as I say it to him. Hello, Tom. I just came to tell you that you’re a merd.

— You still believe in magic, don’t you.

— I still believe in the right of the individual to do what suits him, so long as he doesn’t break the God-damned laws of this idiot society. If Bertha chooses to do what she’s done, I choose to absent myself without a word. And Christ knows we had words enough — I’ve got to laugh.

— Laugh.

— I’m laughing. I can’t think of it without laughing. Ha, ha, ha.

— That’s the funniest sounding laugh I ever heard, if you’ll excuse my saying so.

— Step up, ladies and gents, and listen to the laughing embryo. He laughs through his primordial gills, like a lizard. He applauds himself with tiny dorsal fins, and his eyes, now shut with tears, are when opened much too large and all-seeing. He sees bang to the end of the world. The grave has no secrets from him, the tomb no horrors; when he is born tomorrow he will have a bone in his mouth, and this he will present on his birthday to his loving mother, who is none other than our old friend the worm. All his days he will walk attended by an orchestra of Elizabethan worms. The death-watch beetle will precede him in his march to the frontiers of consciousness; and arrived there on the final morning, it is he himself who, by thumbing his nose at God, will give the signal for the trump of doom. Which, in the circumstances, will be a great disappointment.

— You bet it will.

— Old Mary is a brick. You never met old Mary, did you. You ought to meet her — a grand old dame. Getting too fat, you know, and past middle age, too, but she’s a good sport. And it’s a liberal education to spend a night with her. What she doesn’t know about this town you could write on a two-cent stamp. She knows the college inside out — you’d be surprised, Bill, you’d be really surprised. More than one member of the faculty has wept on Mary’s ample scented bosom, and told her the secrets of Cambridge. Good God, did you ever go to Sanders Theater, to a Thursday night symphony, and see the wives of the professors? Of course you have. It’s a joke. If it weren’t for Mary and a few others, those poor fellows would be dead, that’s what. Why, they aren’t female at all. They’re a kind of lichen. Have you ever talked with one at a dinner party, or a Brattle Street tea? Of course you have. Oh, God, they’re so refined and intelligent — what a lot they think they know — and their estimable husbands have to sneak off to old Mary just to be reminded that they’re alive. What a joke, what a joke. Mary knows the names of their children, and how old they are, and where they go to school, and when they have measles, and when they die, or are born, and what Professor X’s bank balance is, and the fact that poor old Y is going to be fobbed off with an associate professorship instead of a full professorship — why she knows as much as old Terry used to know, and that’s saying a lot. And straight as a die, too. She never lets you down. I told her all about Bertha.

— What did she say.

— Just what you say, only better.

— For example.

— Forget it, she said — forget it, kid. You aren’t exactly an angel yourself, are you, to be expecting miracles of yuman nature. She always call it yuman nature. She always calls me kid, too — I suppose because she remembers me when I was twenty-one or two.

— What else did she say.

— Is this the inquisition? Or judgment day? And are you God?

— I am God the Father.

— Then Mary is the Virgin Queen. She said — what did she say. She told me not to be a fool. She gave me some damned good whisky, and massaged my head, and showed me photographs of her one and only love, some time in the last century, and told me not to be a fool. We discussed the ethics of suicide, lying in bed with a pomeranian. She complained of the streetcars in Massachusetts Avenue — they kept her awake at night. She wished she still had her apartment in Day Street — she got fired out of that because one of her visiting girls got drunk too often and was noisy. She was sentimental about the apartment in Day Street, for she had lived there twelve years. Old Foxy Smith — do you remember Foxy Smith, the gentle old dodo who used to teach us history — was one of her regular visitors for years. He used to come there straight from a faculty meeting, wearing rubbers. Can you imagine it, Bill. What an old saint and prig we used to think he was. And Mary was very fond of him, took care of him, sewed on his buttons, darned his socks, gave him advice about his health, knew he was dying of cancer long before any one else did: he told her about it more than a year before he died. When he died, she went to the service in Appleton Chapel, and saw his wife for the first time. Strange, isn’t it? She knew him better than his own wife did. She sent some flowers anonymously, too. My God. Foxy used to talk about suicide with her. He thought of killing himself before his cancer got too bad. She persuaded him not to. When I asked her why, she said, well, she thought we ought to live out our lives as God intended. If death by cancer was indicated, we must die of cancer. To my suggestion that death by suicide might be indicated, she replied with a stubborn no, no, no, no — slapping my hand each time. She appealed to the pomeranian for support, his name is Yale, but Yale was discreetly silent. Now that’s a queer and beautiful business, Bill — I’m having another drink, and one of these crackers. She gave the old fellow what little joy he had. Just the same, his wife wouldn’t have been very grateful, would she, although I don’t doubt she thought she loved him — perhaps she did love him.

— You amuse me. That shoe seems to fit you.

— Not at all.

— Sure it does. Look at it.

— I’m looking. But I never did think the sexes were reversible in this regard. A woman can share a man, but a man can’t share a woman. And that’s all there is to it.

— Oh, for the love of mud.

— Thank you, I’m not very fond of mud.

— Anyway, I’m glad to see you’re calming down.

— Don’t fool yourself.

— Oh, yes, you are.

— Are you trying to annoy me? Don’t bully me. When I want to be calm, I’ll be calm. I’m not calm. I’m quiet, but I’m not calm. I’m so full of hate you could poison New York with me. Is it hate? No, it isn’t hate. Yes, it is, too. I wouldn’t at all mind killing Bertha and Tom. If mere feelings could kill them, they’d be dead. The damned incestuous—

— That’s the keynote, all right.

— What is.

— Incest. Don’t you see what you’re doing?

— Your conversational manners are very insinuating.

— Don’t you?

— Well, tell me, don’t badger me, tell me.

— In every one of your love affairs, you’ve tried to make your sweetheart your mother. That’s why they’ve all been unsuccessful. Why do you want to do it? — that’s the question. It won’t work. That’s why sooner or later you reject or abandon them all, or they abandon you — they have to. You force them to. Bertha is no exception.

— You make me sick. Do you mean to say I’ve abandoned Bertha? Don’t be a fool. Or don’t try to be a fool.

— I don’t mean you left in the sense of moving from Cambridge to Reno — that’s immaterial. Abandonment needn’t be geographical.

— God, that’s funny. Abandonment needn’t be geographical! You’ll be the death of me. Was Casanova geographically abandoned?

— You may not have left her board — but you left her bed. Or so you told me.

— You’re damned unpleasant. Let’s talk about something else.

— You mean the subject is unpleasant. I thought you wanted to talk it out.

— What a hell of a lot of books you have, Bill. How did you ever pick them all up. Aren’t the Japanese a wonderful little people? And the ants too. I once thought what a good satire on man could be written with the ant as the subject. You see? Everything would reduce itself to terms of ant. In short, one would reduce everything to the anthropocentric — pretty good, that. Naturally, from the ant’s point of view, all the characteristics of the ant would be considered virtues. The highest praise of an ant would be that he was, as you would expect, antly. Statues, of heroic size, would be erected to the great ant heroes — warriors, builders, or what not — inscribed with phrases like, “He was the antliest ant of all time.” … And of course there would be an anthropomorphic god.

— Resistance.

— What the hell do you mean.

— All this is just your evasion of what is for you a painful subject — something you don’t dare look in the eye. Yourself.

— Yes, indeed. There are many things I don’t look in the eye, my dear Bill. Why should I. Most, if not all, aspects of existence are disagreeable. The art of living is the art of the exclusion or mitigation of the disagreeable. Why go about deliberately rubbing one’s snout in the mud? Not by a damned sight. What the hell is whisky for? What the hell is music for, or painting, or poetry, or psychoanalysis? All of them escapes. Don’t tell me analysis is an abstract pure science — good God no. It’s an anodyne, both for the analyst and the patient, and they both enjoy it thoroughly. It’s a debauch at one remove. You can’t fool me. No. There you are, in your God-damned Morris chair — I hate that chair — goggling at me and leering and having a hell of a good time ferreting out my secrets — why? Disinterested service to mankind? Not by a hell of a way. You’re a paltry little voyeur. Afraid to live yourself, you take it out by digging into other peoples’ little filths and disasters. Yes, by God. That’s what it is. Vicarious sexperience! What a dirty little thrill you get in reminding me that I stopped sleeping with Bertha! And in suspecting all sort of dirty little reasons for it! I drink to you, Bill, old boy — you have a swell time, don’t you. You wrap yourself in all the dirty sheets of the world. The world is your soiled-clothes basket. What’s them spots on the sheet, Miranda? Oh, them’s the maculate conception, them is.

— Ha, ha. There’s a hell of a lot in what you say.

— Of course there is. Have a drink.

— Why do you hate this chair.

— Oh, pitiful little Bill.

— You’re fond of the word little, and the word dirty, aren’t you.

— Dirty little.

— Equals fecal infantine.

— Look at the snow, Bill — it must be six inches deep.

— No, I think it’s seven.

— We are seven. Against Thebes. Did you ever read the Anabasis? Do you remember the Arabian sparrows?

— You mentioned them before. Why do you mention them again.

— Damned if I know. Rather funny.

— Why don’t you sit down, instead of pacing around the room. That’s the second time you’ve knocked over that ash stand. Give it a rest.

— Perhaps I’d better. Whoooof.

— Do you feel sick.

— No. I’m all right. A little bewildered all of a sudden, that’s all.

— Eat some crackers.

— No, I’m all right. I’m all right. But what a whirl. I thought I was unhappy. What a whirl, what a joke. You know the feeling. Delirious, delicious. Clutching the inevitable. The postage-stamp going for a ride on the back of the ant. What did I say to her? Ma non è vero. Voi credete che si muove — ma non è vero. And she laughed like hell.… Christ, what a breeze.

— Yes, indeed. I suppose you see it.

— Why shouldn’t I — pigs see the wind, and it’s pink. But, my God, how I hurt her feelings. Ma non è vero. She said she saw me in the Piazza, drinking a cup of café nero at one of those iron tables, and that I was thinking. I denied it. I never think. And she laughed like hell.

— What the hell are you talking about.

— From Venice as far as Belmont.

— Why don’t you try to take a nap.

— Good God, man, what am I? Don’t be insulting. Take a nap yourself if you feel like it. Go on, you take it. Take the couch. Wrap your feet in snow, it’s pure. Puzzle record number two is now ready, on sale at the nearest dealer. Contains two tunes. Can you find them. I think I’ll be an advertising man. There’s no money in private tutoring. None. Never. But puzzle record number two is now ready, that’s the think to remember. That ought to interest any analyst. Analist. How do you pronounce the anal? Christ, what a breeze.

— I’m laughing.

— That’s good of you. Presently I’ll laugh too, I’ll join you. Take a seat, madam, and I’ll join you presently.

— What’s this about Venice.

— As far as Belmont. Shakespeare said that. He was always saying things like that. He said everything, the damned bastard, except the truth. But, my God, how I hurt her. I think she was in love with me. She was teaching me Italian at the Berlitz — excuse me — school. And I ran away from her. I paid off and left without even saying good-by to her. She saw me. She came out into the hall just as I was paying the bill, and saw me. And even then, I didn’t say anything to her. I just smiled. What kind of a smile, Bill? There are many kinds of a smile. You know. This was a guilty smile, a Judas smile, a cut-throat smile, a tombstone smile. E divieto il nuoto. Il nuoto è vietato. As if anybody would want to swim in their foul canals anyway. Did you ever see them? Jesus. It’s a lot of liquid garbage. But at the Lido, those German fräuleins, with their one-piece bathing suits and their delirious, upstanding breasts — Christ, what a breeze. And strawberries, too, con panna. She admired Tiepolo. One afternoon we took a gondola and saw them all. Putty cupids. Wings everywhere. Angels ascending and descending and all diaphanous — such pinks and blues, Bill, such pallors of pink and blue. But that was far away. And then there was — hell, I can’t even remember her name. At Interlaken. I ran all the way from Venice to Interlaken, and the hotel was only just opened for the season, and I was the only person there, and the maid who waited on the table — I’ve forgotten her name. Elsa! When I paid my bill after a week, the manageress looked hard at me and said, “Elsa will be sorry you go. She will miss you.” I went back into the dining room and gave Elsa a good tip, I don’t remember how much it was. She was crying. I told her the number of my room, but she never came. I told her I would take her for a walk, on her afternoon off, but I never did. I said she ought to marry and have six children, all of them with blue eyes and golden hair, and she laughed, she giggled, she simpered, she went to the other side of the room and stood up on a chair, pretending to rearrange dishes on a shelf, so that I could have a good look at her legs. My God, I was excited about her. But when I saw she was excited too, I got frightened. I ran away again, this time to Paris. What I really wanted was to get back to the Atlantic Ocean, to salt water, freedom. Something I knew. I wanted to leave behind me my wife, Elsa, and my six blue-eyed golden-haired children, by gum. Elsa, with her lovely teeth, false every one of them. That’s what Alan said. I met him later in London, and told him about her, and he said he would go there, in Interlaken, and give her my love. He did, and she cried again. And he said, on a postcard, I love her false teeth, every one of them. Just the same, she was damned pretty, damned nice. I’m sorry about it. At this very minute I might be living in a Swiss chalet with Elsa and the six children and the cow. And an Alp-horn, Bill!

— What the hell.

— Where else, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard Central Kendal Park, through the subway in the dark. But this was later, much later. And now Alan is dead, and all the others are dead, everybody I loved is dead, whenever I pick up a newspaper somebody is dead. Anyway, Elsa’s skull will have detachable teeth. What a rush there must be on the escalator to hell. Among the lost people. Per me si va nella città dolente. Have your tickets ready, with your passport, please — have your tickets ready, with your passport, please. Brattle Street is, as you might say, one of the main arteries of hell. Cambridge is a flourishing suburb. What swarms of hypocrites there be mounting the slopes of Calvary.

— Why Calvary again.

— Ah, but my dear chap, I’ve changed it this time. That’s my cunning. You thought you’d caught me, didn’t you. Why, here’s some Rhine wine, some echt love-lady milk, as I live and breathe.

— I wouldn’t begin mixing drinks, if I were you.

— But you aren’t me, Bill. Quod erat demonstrandum. Why not hang yourself on the wall like a bat beside that rusty harpoon. Upside down, like Dracula on the turret. Jesus! What a turn that gave me, in Paris, on Christmas Eve! It was snowing, too, just like tonight. Snowbroth.… Oh, sorry, damn that ash stand anyway. Why do you have it. It’s ugly.

— Why don’t you sit down.

— I will. There’s nothing I like better. Whoooof. My God, that went fast. But I saw it going, just the same.

— What.

— I think it was the nasturtium quid.

— What did it look like.

— Excuse me. I’m not really drunk, Bill. I’m not as much of a fool as you think. I can see pretty straight. I am thinking clearly, too. Very clearly. I see you distinctly, there, you with your three eyes, and an extra one in your ear. Oh, I know what you have them for, it’s all right, I understand it perfectly, every man to his taste, as the farmer said when he kissed the pig. There’s the pig again. But this death business. This dying business. These coffins. These funeral parlors. These greasy undertakers, and the ribbons on doors. Do you know what, Bill? We’re dying piecemeal. Every time some one you know dies, you die too, a little piece of you. Now a fingernail, now an eyelash. A hair today, a corpuscle tomorrow. Slowly, slowly. The liver, then the lights. And the worst of it is that what’s dead isn’t buried: it rots in you. There’s Alan, dead in my side. Elsa, dead in my prostate gland. Uncle David, dead in my right hand. My father, dead in my memory of geometry, turned to a putrid phosphorescent rhomboid. I’m a walking graveyard, a meditative dance of death. So are you. A bone orchard. Why if I were to investigate you, Bill — good God, how I widen my eyes at the mere thought! I’d probably know why you’re an amateur analyst. I’d know why you’re afraid to speak out. Why you sit there and wait for your poor fool of a patient to do the speaking for you. Who died on you, Bill? Who lies dead on your heart? Oh, Jesus. I feel sick. But that eye in your ear. What’s that, synesthesia? Dislocation? Per auram wollen sie? Und das hat mit ihrem singen. Per auram. I suppose it was your little sister, who died when you were twelve. I’m sorry — I shouldn’t have said that. Perhaps it was only a cat. But this death business — aren’t you really dead, Bill? And if not, why not? I’m dead. Any further death for me would be merely, as it were, a publication. No essential addition. Just take the bones out, Felix, and spread them on the grass. Burn them, and spread them on the grass. I feel sick.

— I don’t wonder. Why don’t you try the Roman feather.

— Don’t be simple-minded, you idiot. I don’t feel sick in any sense so God-damned easy.

— No?

— No.

— Then where’s your mother.

— Ah, ha! The cloven hoof. I knew I’d get you down to that at last.

— Down to what.

— The mother.

— Speak for yourself, Andy. I’m only trying to help you.

— Yes yes yes yes. So you are. Good old Bill. Top hole. But this death business. This dying, this piecemeal dying. This death that creeps in from the extremities, slowly, slowly — and up from the unconscious, too, darkly — these dreams of death, corruption, rot — it’s all been said, I know, I’m tiresome. But it’s real, just the same. To lie in massed corruption, and to stink. To walk through cold corruption, and to speak. To think through foul abstractions, and to live. You know what I mean. I hate you, but I’ll tell you. Shall I tell you? Yes, I’ll tell you. You don’t deserve it. You understand nothing, you have no perceptions, you’re a fool, a well-meaning fool, a failure, but I’ll tell you. What is it gives you such a power over the subtle, Bill? Your pseudonymous calm? No doubt. Your rare combination of muscle and breadth of brow. Brawn and brains. But the brains, not so hot. Not so hot. Why, with your stupidity and my brains, Bill, we’d rock the world. Let me see — I was going to tell you something. What was it. Oh, yes, it was my dream last night. This will be easy for you, and I make you a present of it, gratis. How did it begin? I was asleep with Bertha, that was it — and she woke me. She said we must go upstairs. So I got up and followed her upstairs, taking my pillow with me. It seemed to be a strange house, and yet somehow familiar. At the top of the stairs we went into a dark bedroom, and there, in a wide double bed, with a single bed beyond, were my mother and father. My father was in the single bed, and Bertha walked around to it. Meanwhile, I myself — tee-hee — crept softly into the wide bed with my mother, who was asleep. Isn’t this a beauty? Could consciousness go further in deliberate self-torture? I lay on my side, facing my sleeping mother, drew up my knees, and by accident touched her flank with one of my hands. I felt very small, my head and hands were small, my hair was close-cropped and thick (you see how young I was) — and also, suddenly, I was filled with horror. I got up hastily, and spoke to Bertha, who was somewhere in the dark. Told her I was going. She answered from the dark: “Do you call this a MARRIAGE?” I ran out into the hall, and darted down the stairs, which were dark, and there I discovered a strange thing — the stairs were strewn with the family silver — forks and knives and spoons were scattered all up and down, some of them still sliding slowly and heavily, as if only just launched downard by the burglar, who, I assumed, must be still in the house — a nameless ghost-like horror came over me, and I woke up. I woke up. Sweating.

— Jupiter and Semele.

— I don’t get you, but we needn’t go into it. Every man to his own interpretation, all of them correct. Oedipus complex, castration complex, anything you like.

— What about that silver.

— My family silver, that’s all.

— You recognized it.

— You bet. Acanthus pattern and everything.

— I suppose you have it?

— Of course I have it. It came down to me from my mother!.. Hot dog.

— Pretty good. I don’t seem to know much about your mother. You’ve never spoken much about her, have you.

— Why should I.

— How did she die.

— She was drowned.

— How old were you.

— Twelve. Anything else? I’d got all my second teeth. I knew how to read and write. My favorite book was Jackanapes. After that, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. As you might expect.

— You said it, Andy! You’re helpless. None so blind as those who see and doubt it. You know all this, but you won’t let it do you any good. Isn’t that it? Think it over.

— Oh, for God’s sake, Bill.

— Anything you like. That’s a swell dream.

— Isn’t it, though? By God, yes. I knew you’d like it. But wait till I tell you the one about the bones.

— Why not go into this one a little more, first.

— Oh, no, what’s the use. It’s all as plain as a codpiece.

— It is to me. I’m not so sure it is to you.

— Take my word for it. I know what you mean — don’t be stupid! Sure, I’ll have a cracker and a drink. Why, hello, Michel, old fellow! Are you still there? My God, if I could only sculp — is that the word? — I’d twist the whole damned college yard into a single group of agonized gods that would send the northstar west. What a chance, what a chance. I’d squeeze Appleton Chapel with one squeeze into such a shape of hypocrisy and cold slow sweat as even Cambridge would recognize … Take it from me, kid, take it from me.

— So you’re resisting again, eh.

— Why not. I believe in resistance. Why acquiesce.

— There’s a lot to be said for acquiescence, Andy — and you know it. Don’t you.

— Oh, have it your own way. You want every one to be a yes-man. A pitiful dirty little yea-sayer. No ironies, no doubts. Everything for the best. God is good, the snail’s on the heart. And all that kind of honeycomb tripe. If you feel sick, why, yes, that’s good, that is, and all the swarm of sick lights in the brain that go with it, now to port and now to starboard. I see them now. Maggots. What the hell. Put your head down. No, I’ll open the window.… Thanks.… That’s better.… How they drift, Bill, how they drift, did you ever notice? In little slow streams, and then hot swarms, and then little slow streams again and then all swooping upward like a lost meal. Woops, my dear. I’ll put my lunch out into Massachusetts Avenue, shall I? A nice warm waffle for some nocturnal policeman to study. If he were really intelligent, he’d know what I’d been thinking, wouldn’t he.

— Go on, try the feather.

— Get the hell out of here.

— Just as you like.

— Of course it is. This is just what I like. A cold band of air on my pituitary body. That intersteller current of the soul. Birdwings, too, and the albatross, and the arctic sponge of nescience.… This is free association.

— So I see.

— See something else for a change. Go fry yourself.

— Go kill yourself. Jump out, why don’t you.

— I would for a nickel.

— Here’s the nickel.

— Let me see it. Why it’s actually a nickel.

— Why not cut out the melodrama for a change and settle down to a little hard thinking?

— You mean hard drinking, Bill. I’ve thought too much.

— You’ve behaved like a spanked child.

— Well, why not, that’s what I am.

— You needn’t be. And you needn’t think only of yourself.

— So you’re going to preach again.

— I’m just telling you the truth.

— Keep the truth for yourself. What I want is darkness. I want to sleep. I want the sea and the moon. Above all, the sea. Did you ever think of it. Did it ever really terrify you and delight you. You know, at midnight, under a brown wild moon, with a warm south wind, and a surf running. So that the surf is all of sinister curled bronze, and the sound fills the whole damned night, and the beach looks like a parchment on which nothing has been written. Nothing. Wide silver. Smooth. I know just where it is, too. North of the Gurnett. Not far from Clark’s Island. The seals are on it, and I rowed there in the dark. I had a tin can to bail with. Did you ever row a dory, Bill. I had one, it was named Doris, and a little four-pronged anchor, which I buried in the beach. I love the feeling of a sea-soaked rope, a salt-water painter. And the slow sluggish slushy grind of the flat bottom as it slides up the sand and pebbles and swings to one side.… What was I saying.

— You were talking about your childhood.

— So I was.

— It made me homesick.

— You don’t mean to say you had a childhood, Bill.

— You’d be astonished.

— Why have you never mentioned it.

— Why should I.

— Well, anyway, it’s still snowing, isn’t it.

— I note the interrogative touch, and congratulate you.

— Yes.… Mum’s the word.… This snow on the wrist feels good. Try it.

— Do you remember—

— What.

— No.

— Christ. I see disasters, and I bring them back. The whole world fills with fecal madness. I am a — I am here, in Cambridge, Mass. You offered me a nickel to jump out of the window. I didn’t jump, because you showed me up. So I’m quite properly ashamed. Evidently I don’t want to die, which is what you wanted to prove, isn’t it? If I want to live; what do I want to live for. What. Rhetorical question. For hot dogs and western sandwiches. The feel of walking, which is a matter of always keeping the left foot going. The sound of the clock. Step up, ladies and gents, and see the fellow who lives with his left eye on the almighty clock. It’s all a matter of keeping the hand going. Har har.

— The right hand.

— Voi credete che si muove, ma non è vero.

— From Venice as far as Belmont.

— Farther, if you like. I’ll ask no questions, and I’ll tell no lies.

— For God’s sake, Andy, settle down. This gets us nowhere.

— Don’t I know it?

— Well, it’s late.

— Where? Lateness is relative.

— For one thing, it’s late in Shepard Hall. I mean, to be brutally frank, it’s late for Bertha.

— Too damned late, if you ask me! But I’m sorry, Bill. You know how it is. How can I say it. I can’t. There’s all this — there’s all that. The heres, the theres, the unders, the overs. The pasts, the futures. The dirty stockings, and the dirty sinks. Peeled potatoes. Beds, here and there. One after another. The clipped fingernails on the floor. Coffee grounds, Brattle Hall dances, lemon peels, the Dramatic Club, muddy galoshes in the front hall, and bills from the cleaner. Just ordinary human dirt and effluvia, you know. One night after another. Sweat under the arms, gouts of pink toothpaste clotted on the toothbrush that hangs on the wall. The little crinkled hairs left in the bathtub, too — so telltale. Intimacy! Why the hell do we want it?… Don’t tell me.

— That’s the question to begin with, perhaps.

— Or end with.… I’ll close the window. The snow seems to be coming in.

— Thanks.

— That’s the question to begin with. It can’t be done. Not permanently. Everything against it. So beautiful, too, so beautiful, so bloody beautiful — but is it possible? No, I don’t think it is.

— Not for you, perhaps. Why not.

— Why not.… The exquisite beginning, in mystery always — the subtleties of the approach — the sunrise wonder — Alpenglow on the Jungfrau — joke, Bill, joke. But when you’ve spent a night on the Jungfrau, that’s another matter, by God. A different kettle of fish, a nightmare of another color. Now don’t open your mouth with that supercilious arch — I know what you’re going to say — you’re going to quote Stekel about Don Juan and Casanova, or something like that. Oh, yes, indeed. Step up, ladies and gents, and see the juvenile don Giovanni. Why, the poor fellow’s lost his mother, he has, and that’s why he smokes and drinks. But old Mary’s as good a mother as you could want. You ought to see her in her bath. Marvelous, the aplomb with which she sponges that enormous pink and white area, and the candor of it, the absence of shame — she’s a good child of nature, and clean as a sea-cloud. Yes. Yale always barks beside the tub, and Mary scatters water at him and laughs. And the equipment of that bathroom, Bill!.. What the hell am I talking about.

— Intimacy, I believe!

— So I was.… Intimacy.… That’s where marriages break down. That’s just where they break down. That’s why Shakespeare left home, and Michelangelo never had one, or Beethoven either. That’s why Melville tried to wring his wife’s neck. Good jumping Jehosaphat, isn’t it plain as day? Do I need to say another word? Why don’t you go to bed.

— I’m wide awake. I may close my eyes, to rest them, but I’ll be awake, you can go on talking.… So you’ve got the horrors.

— The horrors, yes. And don’t misunderstand me. But what the hell do I mean, I wonder. What horrors. Why the horrors. What’s wrong with it. Why can’t it last. There are the obsessions, as when one is gardening. You kill aphids, millions of them, day after day — squashing them against the rose stalks between your thumb and finger, green juices, green pulp, tiny clots, one rosebud after another, and finally you get an obsession — at all times of the day or night you see the swarms of little green insects, feel them thickly under your fingers, you even begin dreaming about them, a foul clotting of them occurs in your dreams, you have them under your fingernails, they fall in solid green coagulations from behind your ears, they are in your hair — that’s the way it is. That’s the way it is with sex, I mean. I must have a small drink. Do you see what I mean. It’s the endless repetition of what should very seldom be repeated. Is that it? I don’t know. I’ve thought about this a lot. It’s very baffling. By god, no matter how much you love a woman, the time comes when you don’t want to sleep with her. For a while, anyway. Or at any rate one wants holidays. But how are you going to manage it. You can’t say to your wife, Darling, I’m fed up with you — I know your body too well — the toes, the knees, the flanks, the moles, the hollows under the clavicles, the median line, the asymmetrical arrangement of your breasts, the pelvis, the pink patch of eczema on your side, your perfumes and undergarments and brushes and combs, your toilet habits, every one, the faint bubble of caught breath with which you fall asleep — but just the same I love you, will always love you. If only you’ll be tactful and not too exacting about this. Don’t ask questions, darling, whatever you do. Don’t say a word. Sing cheerfully as you go about the house, greet me with the happiness of the lark when I come home, be busy, have lots of things to do, put no pressure upon me, don’t betray by so much as the flicker of an eyelash that you’re aware of the fact that I’ve abandoned you (but not geographically) — and who knows, one fine night, or one night when it’s raining cats and dogs, or snowing like this, or we’re both a little tight after a party — who knows, who knows? Everything might suddenly become beautiful and strange once more. You would be a stranger to me, and I to you; we would commit a joyful infidelity with each other; each of us would be new. Hell’s delight, that’s only the beginning of it. The fringe.

— You’ve said it.

— What do you know about it, you’re not married.

— I don’t need to be.

— How many times have you told me that if you hadn’t been analyzed, you couldn’t know anything about analysis. Woops, my dear. I’ve been hit with a hammer. My head’s ringing.

— Go on with this idea — this might be helpful.

— Ask me an easier one, old chap. Would you like to see my spleen? It’s a nice little spleen, never yet broken, either. Bertha never understood that. No. Nor cleanliness either. The strange things she did. I read a short story once about this. Yes. Very good. A husband who had left his wife and his best friend fell in love with her. You see. They were quite amiable about it, they were still good friends, and the other fellow decided to marry her. You see. But he was damned inquisitive about the husband’s reasons, and one night when they’d dined together, he asked him, point blank, why it was. The husband merely said that it was something absolutely unmentionable, that it would be a terrible injustice to his wife to speak of it. Result — can you guess it? The friend went off by himself to Bermuda, and the wife was left high and dry.… Zingoids! I’ve got rings like Saturn. Can you see them.

— Not from here.

— Oh, yes, that lovely story of the idiot. What, from here? Ha, ha, ha.

— But those things can always be managed with a little understanding and patience. No need to get excited about them. And what about the pot and the kettle? Are you so damned immaculate yourself? I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts you sometimes don’t change your socks often enough, or let your toenails grow too long, or forget to shave, or smell of good honest male sweat. What about it. And Bertha probably never said a word of it, did she.

— Of course not. Why the hell should she. Women don’t feel the same way about the physical aspect of a man as he does about the woman. No. No. You know that, what’s the use arguing about it.

— The hell she doesn’t.

— The hell she does. She even likes a little uncouthness — a rough chin, a careless shirt or tie — dirty fingernails — you know damned well she does, Bill, so there’s no use trying to kid me. But Bertha is careless. She is unfeminine. Good Lord, you ought to see some of the underclothes she wears. They look as if they were made of cardboard, or sheet iron or something. Or cut out of circus tents. What the hell. Doesn’t a woman know any better than that?

— I suspect this is just a cover.

— Cover!.. What next. You make me laugh. I don’t say there aren’t other things, too, but that isn’t saying that this business didn’t hit me pretty hard. It would have hit anyone. You wait! Tom will get it. I’ll bet he’s got a surprise already.… Jesus. Jesus! I see disasters and I bring them back. Fecal madness. I didn’t want to think of it. I didn’t want to think of it. It’s like a sword, a red hot sword. When I think of it I go mad — I see it in every detail. What time did he get there. Did they have dinner together. When was the first time. Where. In what order did they go to the bedroom. She first? Both together? Oh, God, Bill. Isn’t it funny how, when a thought is too painful, you give way to definite physical impulses — find yourself actually averting your face, looking out of a window, making a gesture of erasure with your hand, as if at a child’s blackboard — making speeches too to yourself, words that have no sense in them, just to divert the current of your madness. The moon, Andrew, what price the raucous moon. Third alive, third rail alive. Why did you speak to me like that you pimply pimpernel. Or you address a picture on the wall, or a candlestick on the mantel, you pace up and down and fling words at it over your shoulder, madder and madder words, you swear at it, you call it a merd, a pimp, a slut, a whore, you take the candlestick and wring its neck, shouting, then smash it on the floor — and then you turn away from it ashamed, as if it were watching you, for you know that if you don’t turn away you’re going to cry abominably, you already feel the contraction in the throat, a rigidity in your eyes, a stare of blindness that begets tears. No. I won’t look at it. I won’t remember it. I won’t think of their going along the hall together, or to the bathroom. O God, O God, O God. Why did she do it. Why did she do it. Why the hell did she do it, Bill, how could she do it. If she’d come to me and confessed that she was falling in love with him, that would have been bad enough, would almost have killed me, but to wait like this till I was in New York—

— How do you know she did? What makes you think there was anything planned or deliberate in it? My impression, as a matter of fact, is that the whole thing was accident, an impulse.

— Don’t fool yourself. Fred says he’s suspected it for a week, and that Tom’s been going there every night during that time.

— That’s got nothing to do with it. I think it came by accident.

— I don’t believe you.

— You wouldn’t.

— Resistance, I suppose. Oh, damn you amateur analysts and all your pitiful dirty abstract jargon. Why can’t you say what you mean. Why can’t you call a spade a spade. What the hell’s the difference between the soul and the subconscious and the unconscious and the will. Or between castration complex and inferiority complex and Oedipus complex. Words. Evasions. Vanities, on the part of the respective respectable analysts. Nicht wahr. For the love of mud, define any one of them for me, so that I’ll know absolutely what they mean. Or tell me where they reside in the brain. Have you ever looked at a map of the brain? It’s like those imaginary maps of Mars. Full of Arabia Desertas. Canals, seas, mountains, glaciers, extinct volcanoes, or ulcers. The pock-marked moonface of the mind. And all that strange congregation of scars, that record of wounds and fissures, is what speaks and acts. I speak with it, you listen with it. What the hell. What have I got to do with it? Nothing. Something hurts me, and I act. Something else hurts me, and I speak. If I could act, I wouldn’t speak. Voilà. All your bloody psychology in a nutshell. For which reason, Bill, Cambridge, Mass., is the city of free speech. The women talk freely, the men sometimes act, but more often die. Isn’t it funny? The colossal humbug of it. But it’s changing, just the same, it’s changing. And that’s funnier still. All the gentle dodos going down Brattle Street in their rubbers to lecture on Grimm’s law or the finals in syphilis or the abrogation of the electron, and their fiendish hatchetfaced wives going to mothers’ meetings, where they discuss the psychology of the child, without knowing to begin with what the devil a human animal is, and meanwhile their adolescent sons and daughters are dancing naked on Belmont Hill or going on moonlit bathing parties au naturel at Gloucester, or simply getting quietly and lubriciously drunk together in Prescott Street or where have you. And the secret little affairs that go on. Good God! How the old dodos would faint if they knew about it. Just cast your eye over the list of our acquaintances. How many happy married couples? Eh? You could count them on your nostrils. X flirting openly with the wife of Y, while his wife, talking about it frankly everywhere, sets her cap at Z, and tells you at tea about the roses he sent her. If he does it, she said to me, why shouldn’t I? Where do the children come in. Then look at Ann. Did I tell you about my little flurry with Ann. No. It didn’t amount to much, but it was significant. Is that the word.… I feel funny. Rarefied. Is there any oxygen in here.

— Help yourself.

— I thought you’d gone.

— Oh, no. I’m waiting for Ann. Who is Ann. I never heard of her.

— Ah, Ann. Neither had I. That’s part of the joke. A total stranger, but not teetotal.

— Yes, yes.

— Yes. It was when I went once, a month ago, to call on Tom, you know, in Montrose Hall. I was a little tight, as usual. Just a little. Vague. You know, I have a key to Tom’s apartment — I used to use it to work in, or play the piano. Oh, yes, many’s the time I’ve played the “Liebestod” there. But that’s not the point. What’s the point … I feel floooey.

— Ann.

— Ann. Yes. Was I talking about Ann? But I never told you about Ann, did I. No.

— No. Go ahead.

— Well, it was funny about Ann.… Hell, I feel drunk. Wait a minute. I’ll eat some crackers again. Perhaps if I stand up. Can I put some water on the fire. It’s much too hot in here. Much too hot. Can I.

— Sure, go ahead.

— Look at the steam.

— This amuses me.

— What’s this mean. A symbol. Symbolical Bill the sailor.

— All right, it’s out. Don’t pour any more in, it will make a mess.

— Ha, ha, you’re afraid of messes, aren’t you? Why is that?

— Why are you afraid of fires. I’ve seen you do this before.

— The hell you have. You know too much. Anybody’d think you spent your time shadowing me. Good God, Bill, a fire in a steamheated apartment is an affectation anyway. But to go back to the key—

— Yes, the key. You’ve been stalling long enough.

— Oh, go crawl up a gum tree. The key — yes, the key. Let me see. Just how did it happen. I can’t seem to remember. Oh, yes, oh, yes. Now I remember. You see, I was a little tight, just a little vague, you know, and I got out of the elevator at the wrong floor. The floor above. And they all look just alike. And so I went to the door of Tom’s flat and opened it and walked in: and what do you think. It wasn’t Tom’s flat at all. No. It was a different one, or else everything in it had been changed. Very puzzling. I stood there and stared at it, there was a picture of a clipper ship right opposite the door, where it had never been before, and a banjo clock beside it and an umbrella stand with a red umbrella in it. You can imagine my surprise. I stood and goggled at them. Funny — I thought — what the hell has Tom been doing. Then I walked into the sitting room, and the piano was gone, everything else was changed, and where the table ought to be was a terrible green plush sofa, under the window, and on the green plush sofa was Ann. And I stood there with the key in my hand — you see, the key had fitted the lock — and stared at Ann, and Ann stared at me. You can imagine my surprise. And Ann said, “Well, who let you in.” And I said, “My little key let me in. Isn’t it funny? What floor is this, anyway?” And Ann said, the sixth, and began to laugh at me. So I laughed too, just to be agreeable, and we laughed together, and then she said that as I was already in, I might as well stay, so I stayed. In no time at all we were talking about God and life and death and love and marriage and babies and birth control and the morals of the new generation and the difference between the East and the West and the difference between the sexes and whether pure friendship is possible between them and what a young girl should do in a big city if she’s a stranger there and what drinks we liked and whether it was better to marry or not and at what age and if one didn’t marry whether one should remain a virgin (you see, she meant herself) and if you didn’t remain a virgin whether you should tell your husband when you did marry. Just like that. Bang, bang, bang. Everything opened with a zipper. We had some drinks, and then we made some coffee, and she played the phonograph, a lot of jazz, and we had some more drinks, and we told the stories of our lives, every damned detail, and she cried and said she was terribly lonely in Cambridge, where she didn’t know a soul, and she was bored with the art school and hated everybody there, they were all so cold and superior and so unlike the Westerners and she couldn’t make friends of them. It was terribly sad, terribly. You have no idea. I was overcome. I told her I would give her a good time, take her to dances, dinners, shows, prize fights, introduce her to lots of people, and she cried some more and kissed me very, very nicely. About three o’clock, when I suggested that we go to bed, why not, she looked archly at me and said, “Be yourself!” That was her favorite remark: be yourself. She must have learned it from Socrates. So we talked some more, and kissed some more. Now and then she would draw back very coyly and bat her long golden eyelashes at me and tidy her beyootiful curls and say, “Too much kissing spoils a friendship!” Isn’t that wonderful? By gosh, Bill, isn’t it wonderful? Too much kissing spoils a friendship. A whole new philosophy of life, presumably from the Middle West. What a light it sheds. What a light. I gather that in the Middle West, where the heart beats warmer and there aren’t all these God-damned Eastern superiorities and conventions, everybody kisses everybody. I could hear Ann saying it to countless men, old and young, in back seats, at movies, at dances, in canoes, on beaches, at Sunday-school picnics and bean suppers and burgoos and corn-huskings — No, too much kissing spoils a friendship. Be yourself!.. I learned a lot.

— Well, and what was the upshot.

— The voice of the scoptophile. Aren’t you ashamed? You want to know whether I slept with her.

— Of course I do! Don’t be an idiot.

— Well, I did. Innocently.

— Says you?

— Says me. At five o’clock we went to bed, worn out, and slept side by side with our clothes on, like babes in the wood. Pretty as a picture. When I came to, I didn’t know where the hell I was. There was Ann’s little white face, close beside me, one hand under her cheek, with the damp golden curls beside the temple, and her little poached knees drawn up and protruding charmingly from under her dress. The most innocent-looking thing you ever saw in your life. Yes.… But why did I start to tell you this.

— I believe it was supposed to be significant of changing morals.

— Oh, was it? Well, I guess it is.

— Have you seen her since?

— Oh, sure, several times. I like her. She’s a nice kid. Lots of fun. Absolutely direct and honest — no hesitations or ridiculous modesties — if she decided to make an affair of it — which she hasn’t yet done — she’d say so. Very generous, very simple. Absolutely lost here. Why don’t you go and see her. She’d do you good. She has a nice skin, too. When you put your hand under her dress, she smiles and says, “Why, no! That’s my naked skin!” and giggles, and waits for you to take the hand away, which you do.… Was that a pistol shot?

— Backfire.

— Backfire. In this street once, I ran up behind a taxi and put my chin over the back of it, it was an open one, and screamed. The two old ladies in it nearly died. It was after my initiation — Good God.

— What.

— How can you bear to sit there, Bill, and watch my entrails being wound out of me on a winch.

— Oh, it’s lots of fun.

— It would be. Damn all you intellectuals anyway, you cold fellows who — who—

— Who what.

— Live in your brains. I’m sick of it. I want to die.

— Need for punishment.

— Oh, sure. Nirvana principle and everything. I’m all for it. Step up, ladies and gents—

— Why not try a different formula, in dramatizing yourself, for a change.

— Are you trying to be nasty?

— I am nasty.

— So you are. And may you fry in hell for it. A lot of help you are! Why don’t you go to bed.

— I’m seriously thinking of it. You seem to have come to a kind of stop. Unless you really want to get down to something—

— Of course I do, dammit! I’m trying to. I want to. I stand here, perfectly still, don’t I, except that I rock a little — I stand here before you perfectly still — but inside I’m rushing from one end of the world to the other. Speed. I’m everywhere at once. There and back. Torrents of things rushing with me. All the dead men. All the living women. What stopping place is there — where can I rest for a moment and pick up one bright single detail and begin? I’m afraid, precisely because I can’t stop, because there’s no one thing that I want to hold on to more than anything else. Can I hold on to you? No. The truth is, there’s not a damned thing or person or idea in the world you can trust, not one. You’re alone. You run about falling in love with people, with things, with flowers, with surfaces, with weather, with ids and quods and quids, and what the blazes do you get in return? Nothing: or only a fleeting reflection of your own putrid little face flung back at you crookedly from a broken mirror. Isn’t that it? Have I lost my self-love? Has it been devoured by the totem-animal? I think I’ll be a pansexualist, and become a child again.

— You are one now.

— Of course. To be sure. I’m clinging to my mother’s skirts again. I’m crying at the encroachment of the dark. I hear my father going to bed with my mother, hear them talking together tenderly, and in the horror of night I become once more a crawling little inspectionist. I creep to and fro, whimpering. What are they doing. What are they saying. Why have they hidden. Have I a right to know what they are doing or saying? Is it a real need or an imaginary one? But why do I want to know at all? Is it worth knowing? Or would knowing be any less painful than imagining? How can you decide not to know, or not to imagine? It can’t be done. If you don’t know, you imagine; and once you’ve imagined, you want to know. One of the penalties of consciousness.

— Now you’re getting pretty close to home, aren’t you.

— Oh, am I. You think so. I’m discussing general principles, Bill, general principles. Nothing homelike about it. To be aware is to suffer. One of the cornerstones of existence, you can’t dodge it, you know you can’t. It’s all very well to say to the child, crawling there in the dark, listening and spying, don’t whimper, don’t listen, don’t spy — it’s all very well to say to him you don’t need your mother any longer, she doesn’t belong only to you, nothing belongs only to you — or to say the same thing to him when he’s grown up — but the fact remains he can never get over that suffering. Never. All he can do is translate it into other terms, pretend it’s something else, give it a lot of fool names, or comfort himself with the discovery that every one else is suffering in the same way. The right to suffer in our own way — that’s what we demand, by God. And we won’t be deprived of it. No.

— Who the hell is stopping you?

— Not you, anyway, you damned fool!

— Of course. You’re projecting. You set me up in order to knock me down. I grant you your little necessity to suffer — you’re not unique in that. Go ahead and suffer. Howl your head off. And if it will do you any good, abuse me for appearing to stand in your way. It’s all part of the same picture, isn’t it?

— Yes. You’re right. I’m sorry. I seem to have missed my step somewhere. Tell me what to do, Bill. Hit me with an ax and sober me.

— You’ll sober yourself when you’re ready. Meanwhile go on howling. I’ll lie down if you don’t mind.

— You’re tired.

— Kind of. But it doesn’t matter — go ahead — I’m listening.

— Now you make me feel ashamed, selfish.

— Oh, for God’s sake don’t worry about that. You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you? Or I hope so.

— Of course I would, Bill. Of course I would. We’re interchangeable. But where was I.

— You were suffering, I believe.

— So I was. I was demanding the right to suffer in my own way. In my own terms. And not to have some one come along in a purple airplane, a kind of bloody little deus ex machina of psychology, and tell me that my little suffering — which we’ll call x — wasn’t really x at all but y—as if to call it by another name made it any the less suffering. That’s what makes me sore with you fellows — you seem to think that merely by driving us back from one set of phrases to another, by a series of historical substitutions, you’ve settled everything. Childish, by God. Childish. I say sweetheart to you, and you reply, brightly, mother. I say drawers, and you say diapers. I say whisky, and you say breast. All wrong. All completely wrong. Mere jugglery. Granted that the child’s suffering is the exact equivalent of the man’s — for the sake of argument — you’re left just where you started. You’ve still got on your hands the initial quantum of suffering, unanalyzable, the burden which we pick up in the act of birth and carry until we damned well die. Perhaps you’ll argue that my suffering in the present case, my loss of balance, is excessive, and that to force me to revalue it in terms of my childhood experiences will bring me back to my senses. But will it? I wonder.

— Try it and see, why not. Isn’t it at least useful to observe that it’s all relative? And that it’s all determined? If you’ll take the trouble to know a little about the aetiology of behavior, and of emotions and feelings, then you can’t take yourself so damned seriously. You can laugh at yourself.

— I don’t want to laugh at myself — not yet. I want to indulge in a good primitive yell. Good God, Bill, do you mean to say we aren’t to be allowed to know pain? What’s the good of being conscious, then? Of being a man? Hell’s delight, it’s something, isn’t it, to know what crucifixion is, in a complicated modern form, and to make an outcry about it! If we find ourselves here, on the surface of this little planet, and feel like shaking our fists at God, and cursing Him for giving us the thing we call life, is some paltry little society for the prevention of unkindness to gods going to rush up and say No, no, you can’t do that, you aren’t really suffering at all, and even if you were you have no right to say so, you only misunderstand things, everything is for the best, come along now and see the sunrise? I like to think that this existence here is hell. That’s what, hell. We ourselves are the doomed, and our pitiful little ideals and hopes are precisely our torment.

— Very ingenious. Our little pewter Christ is now ready for the great betrayal.

— Gosh, yes. It’s all arranged. Did I arrange it? Months ago? Did I will it? Zingoids. What depths there are in the hell of human nature. What a theme for a play that would be — think of it, Bill. Myself willing my own betrayal: myself my own Galeoto: sowing the seeds of my own dishonor. Did I do it? How can I prove I didn’t. I see them coming together — watch them approaching each other — encourage them subtly to see more and more of each other — to go to concerts, dances, parties — I stay away myself, get drunk night after night, confess my delinquencies with Molly — seize every occasion to discuss the necessity for complete freedom in such matters, so as to accustom them to the idea — and then when the situation is ripe I go away to New York and leave the coast clear for them, thus providing the final temptation. Clear as a nutshell. It isn’t their fault at all, is it? No. Step up, ladies and gents, and see the man who cuckolded himself. See the man who grew his own horn in a window box, watering it with his tears. But if I did it, why did I do it? What does it mean. Could I prove, psychologically, that I didn’t want to do it? Doubtful. You’re asleep. You aren’t listening. Why should you.

— Saint Pandarus.

— Yes, fry, lechery, fry. Isn’t it wonderful. Along the banks of the Styx on the obscenic railway. In that room once, in that bed once. But it’s impossible that I should have willed it, Bill, impossible. Why should I want to do such a thing? Or half want to do it. Am I in love with Bertha? The angels are coming to tell me what love is. I can hear them: they are galloping along Massachusetts Avenue in a fleet of—. What. They are giving tongue. The snowflakes are their voices: innumerable: I hear them calling me. I shall attend the convention of angels in the ballroom of the Statler Hotel, and make an inaugural address on the nature of love. Love is cruelty. Love is hate. Love is a desire to revenge yourself. It’s a bloody great butcher’s cleaver, that’s what it is. It has eyes of a ferocity known only to comets, its hands are red, its feet are claws, its wings are scythes of jealousy. Its will is destruction: it tears out the heart of the beloved, in order that its own heart may break. Love is murder. It’s a suicide pact, and all for what? All for death.

— The little boy has been reading Latin poetry again. Odi et amo. Ah, yes, the cruel ambivalence of life, poor Andy. Where have I heard all this before. Who bit you.

— I bit myself, in the cradle, when I first puked my mother’s milk.

— I thought so. Little Andrew Suck-a-Thumb.

— So this is love: we reach a new conception of love, Bill, and one that does us credit. I see it exactly — exactly. It’s nothing on earth but a domestication of death. Our little domestic death. It’s a ballet. See them go to bed together — listen to them murmuring adoration — hear them whisper and kiss — O God, all that silken sinuosity and hypocrisy and ecstasy — the beautiful painful dance — which twinkles starlike, moves so swift and fine — and all of it a thin masque to cover the raw red tomb-face of primordial hatred. Skull purring at skull, death’s-head kissing death’s-head, the caress a strangle, consummation a swordthrust. It’s killed me: I’m dead. I’ve eaten my father’s skeleton and I’m dead. I shall never love again, any more than I’ll ever be able to stop loving. Christ, what a fix we’re in. Helpless. Burn off our hands. Drink ourselves into permanent unconsciousness. Love — don’t make us laugh. It’s automatic — no virtue in it — might as well praise the grassblade for being a grassblade — the weather vane for turning in the wind — the blood for pouring from a wound. In the spring the young libido lightly turns to thoughts of lust. Pressure of the seminal vesicles, and Tom falls in love with my wife. And meanwhile what am I doing? What indeed: the answer is nothing. I stand still like a whirlwind that hangs in one spot, uncertain where to go. Enormous concentration of energy, aimless, like an undischarged lightning flash. What in the name of God shall I do — where shall I go — tell me.

— Go back to Bertha. And hurry up about it. Try to be civilized. Or pretend to be, if you can’t. Give the poor girl a break, why don’t you. She probably hasn’t slept a wink for a week.

— Doesn’t deserve to, either. No. Plenty of time for sleeping later on. Let her lie awake for a while and think: she’s put it off too long. She ought to have done her thinking beforehand. Now it’s a battle of wits. And do you know what I think I’ll do? Gosh, I’ve got an idea. Yes, I see it all of a sudden, and it’s going to be good. This bottle’s empty. I’ll have to go back to whisky.

— Well, what’s the bright idea.

— I’m going to surround them.

— What do you mean.

— Just exactly that. I’m going to surround them. That’s my one great advantage, don’t you see? I know more about it than they do. I know more about Berty than Tom does, and more about Tom than Berty does. And there I am, and there by God I’ll stay, like a third consciousness, present at every damned thing they think or do. I’ll haunt them like a ghost. I’ll go to bed with them and get up with them. I’ll make them so self-conscious that they’ll go crazy. I’ll be everywhere — they’ll find me in the bathtub, at the piano, on the pillow, in the kitchen sink. My whole history constantly before them. How can they empty their memories of Andrew One-eye Cather, overnight? Can’t be did. All the habits they’ve shared with me for hundreds of years — the jokes, the odds and ends of intimacy each of them has in common with me — how can they escape? They can’t. And here’s the point — they love me. Don’t they? Well, that makes it all the worse. If I just stand aside with meditative irony now — if I just watch them cynically from across the street, as it were — saunter by from time to time — send them a picture postcard from Montreal or Timbuctoo — reappear before them at a Sander’s Theater concert, disguised as one of the bats that circle above the orchestra — speak to them from the forsythia bushes in the spring — eat hot dogs with them at John’s — laugh at them from the comic strips at breakfast — Christ, Bill, it’s going to be good. Don’t you see. I’ll surround them like a cloud. When Bertha kisses Tom, she’ll think — this isn’t Andy. This is Tom. He doesn’t kiss in quite the same way. He doesn’t place his arms in quite the same way. And what’s the result — she’s kissing two people at once. Now I ask you, Bill, can she be happy, doing that? For long? No. Nor Tom either. He’ll be thinking — she has kissed Andy like this. Ten years. Night after night. He has seen her in this hat, this dress, this nightgown, these tarpaulin knickers. He is here now. And is she thinking about him when I slip my arm under her left shoulder — is she wishing, at the bottom of her heart, that it were he. Will they discuss that, I wonder. And what good would it do if they did. None. They would at once begin to tremble on the brink of the unspeakable, the unformulable, the realm of doubts and suspicions, where passionate reassurances drop dead like birds into a volcano. Isn’t it wonderful? Hrrrp. Excuse me.

— You’re insane. I never heard anything so disgusting and cruel in my life. You ought to be ashamed.

— Not at all. All’s fair. Love and war. I think I’ll do it. But come to think of it, I don’t have to do it. It will do itself. I can’t even help it, if I wanted to. Automatic. Guilt. Suppose I decide to be a trumpeting little angel about it, take it all with good grace and magnanimity, tell them to go ahead and make a bright little affair of it for as long as they like, Andy standing meekly and beautifully aside — all right, you fool, suppose I do. What then. It will be all the worse for them. I was just exaggerating, you see. I really have nothing to do with it. Just one of those assumptions of imaginary power. The truth is, I can’t help it. Two rapid falcons in a single snare condemned to do the flittings of the bat.

— Nice. A wonderful vision. But there is something else—

— You’re asleep.

— No. But there is something else—

— Well, all right, all right, go ahead, spit it out. Don’t goggle at the ceiling like a pekingese.

— It’s my business to goggle, you poor prune. The Freudian technique of the colorless and dispassionate auditor.

— Dispassionate hell.

— But just the same, I’ll give you an idea.

— Oh, very kind of you, darling little Bill. How much will I owe you.

— Your life, very likely.

— Keep the change. Do you think we’ll have an early spring? Will the Bruins win the Stanley Cup? Or what have you.

— If you’ll shut up and stand still for a minute, instead of running up and down the room like a—

— Pterodactyl.

— I’ll tell you. That is, if I can get hold of it. Wait. This idea of the surrounding consciousness — there’s something in it. Yes, something in it. But not as you foresee, quite — no — because you want to use it as an instrument of revenge. That wouldn’t do any good — in fact, it would ultimately punish yourself most of all. But suppose you do it with real kindness — I mean, real love — for both of them. You admit you love them. Presumably, therefore, you want their happiness. Don’t you?

— Well, for the love of mud.

— Don’t you?

— I don’t like this turn. You’re disgusting.

— You know you do. That’s why it hurts you so much, of course: that’s simple enough.

— As simple as murder.

— If you love them, then you want to keep them. And you must choose that course of action which is most likely to keep them. And this is where magnanimity of consciousness comes in. Go ahead and be conscious — let them feel that you are constantly there with them — but let them feel that you are there in the role of the person who most loves them. Why not. If anything could be calculated to bring things to a happy issue, that’s it. In this way, you will absorb or digest the whole situation — embrace both Bertha and Tom — and as a result of it, you will grow: you will become the wisest of the three: and the strongest. If there are latent wrongnesses in their position, this will bring it to the surface. If they are weak, or guilty, or not profoundly set on this thing — as I suspect — then this will sooner or later make them horribly aware.… That’s all.

— Well, for the — if somebody was to — and so saying he knocked me down with a fountain pen. Just like that. He drove up in his chariot and blew me over with a whisper, that’s what he did. With bright little words of love and kindness, too, and adjurations to Christlike mercy. You make me sick. You’d better go to sleep, if that’s the best you can do, that’s all I can say. Your complete lack of comprehension simply staggers me — if I weren’t already staggering. Yes yes yes yes yes. I ought to do everything for them. I love them dearly. They’re so kind to me, day and night, aren’t they. So considerate of me. They put me first every time, don’t they. Tom, that God-damned snob — what did he ever do for me. What. Oh yes, he got me into the Institute of 1770 as an honorary. I forgot that. And tried to get me into the Gas House. Helped me get the football managership. Long ago and far away. Wonderfully kind, he was — I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I owe him everything. So now that he presents his bill, of course I’ll pay on the nail. Yes. I’ll help him in every way. I’ll give him five dollars for the Sacco-Vanzetti fund, and make speeches for his parlor Reds at Ford Hall. I’ll run his errands for him. I’ll mix his prussic acid for him. I’ll give him my rum, my Hogarth prints, my first editions of Henry James, and my collection of pressed flowers. From Duxbury, too. Why not. And all as a preliminary to the greatest gift of all, which you foresee already. Little Bertha, the Brattle Street Bovary. Let him have all he can get of her, and all he can keep. With both hands, with auricle and ventricle, with liver and lights, I give her up. And she too. The immaculate. Whom I had to teach, whom I taught, whom I made what she is today. What is she today? She is Andrew Cather, that’s who she is. Saturated solution of A. One-eye Cather. What would her hair have been without me? Her hats? Her music? Her mind? Her body? A few timid Vincent Club jokes, a conversation about maids at the Sewing Circle lunch, a hundred visiting cards left in silver dishes in Brattle Street and Marlborough Street and Scott Street and Highland Avenue. I made her over in my image. Is that why I don’t know whether to hate her or love her? I made her over, gave her one eye in exchange for two — ah, but what an eye, what an eye — myopic but precise — the eye of imagination — taught her the animal pleasures and with them gave her the great gift of horror — and now that she is a Cather, now that she is Andy, Tom wants her. Oh yes. He is moving in on me, closing in on me. It’s the Michelangelo thing. Hello, Mike old boy — are you still there? Keep one eye on me — we’re going on to bigger and better things. Dawn of the artist’s consciousness, which is consciousness awaking with the last beat of the dying heart. The eye that opens in the coffin. Monsieur Valdemar — the mind that blossoms to terrific thought with the energy thrown off by the final catalysis of corruption. Christ, I must get away from here. Not geographically, but on the wings of Father Imago. Did you ever hear of him? My best friend. Myself. The one who was left — who was left — what was I about to say. I’m going too fast. Left high and dry. I must maneuver back to the sea, that’s it. I knew that all along, too, and wanted it before. Yes, I told you about it. The long, blond beach in moonlight, the bronze waves in moonlight, the dory whose name was Doris, named of course after my mother, the dry curled waves of seaweed, the blackened stones left from clambake fires, the Indian arrowheads of white quartz — there it all is, spread out, miles long, worldlong, on the way to the Gurnett. I shall go to the Gurnett. Along that frightful beach. At midnight, in mournful moonlight, alone, or with a whore.

— Take Bertha with you.

— That’s rather witty of you, my boy. I might do worse. I could point out the exact spot where we always had the picnic, the annual picnic, the clambake. On clear days, the mirage of Provincetown, and the smoke of the Provincetown steamer streaked along the horizon. Yes. And the Plymouth boat too, closer in, white and glittering. And all the dead fish on the sand, stinking in the sun. Shall we take off our clothes and bathe? Have we brought our bathing suits? Shall we divellicate? You’re snoring, Bill. Go to bed.

— Sorry. Go ahead. I’ll just put this paper over my eyes.

— It’s funny — I get soberer and soberer, the more I drink. What’s that — tolerance? Clear as a bell. And all the agonies in rows, as separate and distinct as sea shells in a glass case. Were we talking about that before somewhere? Seems to me we were. Where was it. Let me think. Those wet ashes remind me of something — there’s a puddle on the hearth, too — what is it they remind me of. Not Bertha, no. Not that camp in Maine, no. Not Jaffrey, or Jackson Falls, no. But what. Was it the Madison Hut at sunrise — no. But it was Bertha somewhere, yes it was Bertha, much younger, before she’d got such a belly, and begun to shave her legs with pumice. Yes. Did she shave — did you know she shaved her legs with pumice so that the hairs wouldn’t come sparkling through her stockings, Bill. Did you know that. Must be painful, I wonder. Before the bath or in the bath. Did you know there was a barber in Washington Street where women used to go and get shaved all over, or depiled, or whatever the word is. Can’t be depiled, can it. Did you know that. You don’t know anything. You’re snoring again. But this has been a wonderful nonstop talk, hasn’t it, you didn’t know I had it in me, did you. And now as you see, I’m all at peace with myself — like hell I am — with all the little separate agonies in rows like sea shells, the ones I was telling you about.

— Oh, sure.

— Yes. Did you know that.

— Oh, sure.

— If you can’t say anything but Oh, sure, go to sleep. You’re no use to me.

— I think I will if you don’t mind. Here. And when you get tired of addressing yourself you can have my bed.

— Greater love hath no man than this. But I would feel guilty. But you’re already snoring again. But I’m alone again, alone as always, alone as you are in your subterranean world of sleep, you with your middle-aged and far too fat hands crossed on your breathing and automatic belly. Good god what a thing it is — and the snow too — all night a night of snow — covering the college yard so innocently, so that all the sad traces are obliterated — even the President’s footsteps gone, and the little privet bushes mantled, and the neat little vomit by Appleton Chapel covered over, and the little trefoil bird tracks filled in, and the dog-stale and cat-stale gone. How many times have we crossed it? How many times our footsteps lie there, Bill, immortal but invisible, on the way from Heeney’s Palace of Pleasure to Seaver, from the Union to University 4, from the Bursar’s Office to the Coop, from x to y. Do you see them all, sleeping Bill. That network. Do you see them all, Mike old boy. You with your Homeric curls. Shall I tell you a dream while I walk up and down with this drink in my hand. Shall I. Yes I will, thank you. I will start with the simple premise of the actual and delicious dream, that one, the one of the crucified pig, my old friend the bleeding pig, Andrew Pigsnout Cather, the winged pig, whose wings were bitten off in childhood. It was like this, or like that, but you won’t mind if I just change it a little as I go along, will you, and touch it up like a photographer; you know, just to make it brighter. Shall I do that. Oh, Christ. I don’t care. It comes out like a ribbon and lies flat on the brush. Listen Bill, listen you prostrate and sleeping guts — it was like this. I was in the Swiss Navy at the time. I was in Gibraltar, with my Spanish grammar in my hand. I was on my way to my castle in Spain, the ideal, the everlasting, the infinite, the beautiful. Do you hear — all those lovely words, all the evanescent ones, the pale plasma of sublimation. Alloplastic, autoplastic. Have you ever ridden in an autoplastic? Bores me. And it was in the spring, it was when birds fly north, and I too was flying north, and I sent Tom a wire to say that I would meet him and the two other fellows at that little place in the mountains, way off there, at that high altitude, in that remote village, and in that familiar and dearly-beloved little inn, where we knew all the people, and had gone so many times — you know the place. I wired him, and took a train and rode all night. Who were the other fellows. I didn’t know, but one of them was a Spaniard. I rode all night in the train, and got to the mountain village before sunrise. And walked in the twilight up the muddy road, for it had been raining in the night, and I knew my way perfectly to the little inn, with its yellow plaster walls and the purple clematis growing on the trellis, and I went in and turned to the left, into the little breakfast room where I knew they would all be sitting and having their morning tea, and sure enough there they were — Tom, burly and athletic, damn his athletic eyes, in his rough tweed jacket with shapeless pockets full of books and his English pipe stinking the room out, already in possession, and the Spanish fellow, and the other fellow, whose name I never knew — there they all were, their breakfast finished, the tea cold, the dishes dirty, the early gray light coming in on to the soiled red tablecloth, and as soon as I had come in they all got up and said they must be going. Yes, they must be going. They must be in time to see the waterfall, the famous waterfall, which was the show piece of the village, by sunrise: for that, ladies and gentlemen, was the Thing to Do. Oh, yes. You always had to go and see the waterfall in the glen by sunrise. And would they wait for Andrew? No, indeed. Out they went, taking alpenstocks with them, just like God-damned mountaineers, and Tom rang the bell to tell the landlady that Mr. Cather would now have his tea, and they would go ahead, and Mr. Cather having had his tea would follow them to the waterfall. Do you hear me in your sleep, Bill. Do I influence your dreams. Do you hear the waterfall, is it rushing down in a shapeless pour past your subconscious ear. Do you feel in your pancreas the sunrise light that never was on land or sea. Do you feel the cold peaks of the Cantabrigian mountains, the sunrise clouds, towering above you there on your putrid sleep-ridden couch, you with your hands on your belly, which is full of Liebfraumilch. Do I draw you forth into that realm. Are you climbing goatlike among those wet crags of slate and gravel. Are you stumbling or slipping there, your feet wet and cold. Oh, Christ. So I had my tea and followed them, but they were already out of sight, they had gone down into the glen. And as I went down the muddy road to the village I knew that I didn’t quite remember where the path was, the little field path, that led from the road across the fields to the glen. And I stood there by a stone wall and wondered, and a peasant with a bicycle stopped and pointed out the path to me, but said that it was almost impassable with mud, as I could see. We leaned over the wall, and I saw that what he said was true. The mud was knee-deep. It was like soup. But he added that if I walked further down the road to the next farm I would come to a barn, and if I went into the barn, and through it, and out at the back, I would find another and better path which would lead me safely down to the glen, from which I would easily enough find my way to the waterfall. So I did it. I went to the barn, which was on the right hand side of the road. But this was the appalling thing, Bill, you must dream vividly about this. I’m telling you about it. This was the appalling thing, for as I entered the gloom of the barn, in the morning twilight, I heard, from somewhere near me, the most dreadful and heart-rending screams, animal screams, animal agony, and I stopped, terrified, and looked about me to see where the screams came from. And in a dark corner, then, under some cobwebbed stairs, in a sort of pen, so dark that at first I could hardly make it out—

Christ, Bill, it was the pig, the crucified pig. You won’t believe it when I tell you about it. Nor you, Mike, you won’t believe it. It was the huge naked pig — supported upright, with arms outspread, as on a cross, by a devilish machine, an affair of slowly revolving wheels and pullies, with an endless belt which was attached by steel claws to the flesh of the pig. But my God there was practically no flesh left on the pig; none, except on the breast over the heart; the belt had torn the rest away, and as I went a little closer, appalled by the screams of the pig — whose head was flung back in a final ecstasy of anguish, turned to one side, the mouth wide open — as I went a little closer, and watched the endless belt slowly moving down the red breast of the carcass, between the ribs of which I could see the entrails, the steel claws fetched away the last strip of flesh, the pig was automatically released, and with a final scream of pain rushed out of the pen. It was nothing but a skeleton full of guts, but it was alive and sentient. Sentient. It whirled madly about the floor of the barn, driven by such a demon of suffering as compelled it to translate the consciousness of pain into the wildest energy — and this was only last night, are you listening, Bill — and I was frightened of what it might do, and ran out into the street again and climbed with incredible speed up a waterpipe on the wall of the house opposite, and managed to hang there, out of reach. And sure enough the pig came rushing out, as if it were going to destroy the whole world. But at this very minute the miracle happened, Bill. I saw in the road a little scaffold hung with gay cloths, like the ones mountebanks use at country fairs, and on this a monk, in a gray gown, with a rope tied round his middle, stood and rang a brass bell. And he began announcing, as the pig galloped up the stairs and stood upright beside him — Ladies and gentlemen, you will now witness the farewell performance of the dying pig. The pig will first give you an example of his acrobatic prowess, on the parallel bars, the trapeze, and also without the use of any implements whatever.

Before he had finished speaking, the pig began performing at lightning speed — standing somersaults, running and double somersaults. Catherine wheels, handsprings, chinned himself rapidly innumerable times on the trapeze, whirled to and fro over the parallel bars, and finished with a series of giant swings so swift that I could hardly follow them. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, the dying pig will now play the Chinese whole-tone scale on an arrangement of coins, with his hoof. And instantly on a table, where the monk had flung down a haphazard handful of gold and silver coins, the pig tapped out rapidly with his hoof the Chinese whole-tone scale. I could see that the pig was dying. But the monk rang the bell again and said — ladies and gentlemen, the dying pig will now give you a demonstration of the fact that the death-agony can be transmuted into pure genius of consciousness. Without previous knowledge of Sanskrit, Hebrew, or Greek he will translate passages from those languages as I read them aloud. He will first translate a passage from the Sanskrit Upanishads, which, as you know, represent the earliest attempt of the Hindu mind to understand the nature and reality of existence. The monk read aloud, and the pig translated. The bell clanged again, the pig translated a passage from the Hebrew version of the Book of Genesis, at the end of which the monk said that the pig had corrected several inaccuracies in the King James Version. The bell rang again, the pig was about to translate from the Greek, but suddenly—

Are you dreaming about this, Bill. Am I making you suffer. Are you and Michelangelo listening to this. As you should by God. But at this minute I couldn’t stand it any longer. I didn’t want to see the pig die — perhaps not unnaturally, for I know as well as you do — damn you — that the pig was myself. Oh, yes indeed. Step up, ladies and gents — so I slid down from my waterpipe and went hurrying up the road again toward the path that led to the waterfall, leaving that scene behind me to finish itself as it would. I went toward the path, and I thought — Tom is here by this time, he and the others, they have seen the beautiful waterfall in the sunrise. Christ yes — they’ve seen the ideal, which I have missed. While they have been looking at the ideal, I’ve been seeing the real. Shall I go and join them — is it too late — will I be in time to see the ideal. Do I want to see the ideal. Or is it — tell me Bill — is it enough to have seen the real. Is it enough? Can you tell me that, you with your outer eyes shut. You with your two eyes. Can you tell me that. Does it tell you everything or doesn’t it. And don’t feel that you must wake up like Lazarus and explain it to me. Oh, no. You go on sleeping, you go on rotting there in that deep mulch of the underworld, where good and evil meet. While I drink and walk up and down here on this dirty carpet and spit into your dirty fireplace. Yes, you go on. While I unwarrantably despise you merely because I’m more conscious than you are. Or am I. And put my hand on your arm to see if you react. And you don’t do a thing or say a thing, you’re to all intents dead. Christ, what a dream. Did he die, will he die. Performing. Turning his very death into an entertainment. Turning his pain into perception. Christ, what a dream. And where do we go from here. Is this the turning point, do we turn back from the underworld, do we move to the bloody little sunrise now — the little Christmas card sunrise — is that where we’ve got to go. Do we go back to the sea from here, Michelangelo, as we said before — is it there — is what we want there — shall we burrow back to the sea, while Bill sleeps with his hand over his eyes to keep out the light — instinct again — do we feel sorry for Bill — have we been mean to Bill — must we give Bill a present to make it up to him — what shall we give him. A dozen bottles of Liebfraumilch. An Australian wimpus. A fountainpen filler. An old shoe. Shall we cry on the floor beside him, lie down and cry, so quietly that he won’t wake. Shall we walk out into the storm with the glass in our hand, walk all the way to Fresh Pond, meet the ghost of Bertha, salute her among the algae, how-do-you-do, madam, and have you slept well. Or else. What. What else. Fatigue again, the feet are slow and uncertain. The feet are reluctant. They do not miss the legs of chairs or stems of ash trays. No. The feet and hands are detached. But shall we continue to say all this aloud or merely think it. It is becoming — a little — false. Unconvincing. Parepractical. Without a listener, why does one become dramatic. Or so much more dramatic. Alloplastic and autoplastic. And all these books here, these masses of words — must we swallow them only to spit them out. Bill, there is a fly walking on the back of your hand, and you don’t know it. You don’t even hear me tell you about it. He doesn’t know that I am thinking about the Gurnett again, walking along the beach again. Brant Rock. He doesn’t know how heavy the sand is, how it pulls at your feet, as if you were falling asleep. How it seems, as you drag slow footsteps, even to come up over your eyes, over your brain. He doesn’t know that. He doesn’t hear the nymphae singing as we slowly divellicate the waves of sluggish foam. How could he know that. Have we translated the book of nosogenesis, or done our dream work. Can we unravel the perception material on our feet, walking slowly, walking slowly, from one bipolarity to another. Have we devoured the id, or seen the dead ids lying on the beach and stinking in the east wind. Am I going toward the bedroom or first to the bathroom. Bedroom. Put the glass down you fool. Are we inclining toward, swooping toward, the streaming horizontal. Christ, to sleep — to sleep now — and without a single dream — not even those lumps, those clots, those whirls — not even those sickly lights — that fringe of lanterns under the eyelid, that fringe of slatterns — nor the mounting of lattices — textures of bedspread under the hand — the threads, the thralls, the threshes — must the leaning of the chin lead us into the southwest inevitably — into the dull darkness of whiteness with the room in the other light still on — forgot it — or this edge under the cheek — this cold edge of sheet — must we go downward there, leaning downward, and all for a last long slow deluding and terrible curve O God — is it there we go with a last little spinal effort—