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Genry Miller. Tropic of Capricorn
Henry Miller was born in 1891 in Brooklyn, New York. He had a variety of
jobs as a young man, including several years working for the Western Union
Telegraph Company. During this time, encouraged by June Mansfield Smith, the
second of his five wives. Miller began to write. Aside from articles,
stories for pulp magazines and prose poems, Miller worked on his first
novels. Crazy Cock and Moloch, and on the copious notes which would
eventually transmute into the notorious 'Tropics' books.
In 1930, Miller went to live in Paris. For the next ten years he
mingled with impoverished expatriates and bohemian Parisians, including
Brassai, Artaud and Anais Nin, with whom he had a much documented affair.
His first published book. Tropic of Cancer, appeared in 1934 from the
Obelisk Press in Paris. It was followed five years later by its sister
volume. Tropic of Capricorn. Sexually explicit, these books electrified the
European literary avant-garde, received praise from Eliot, Pound, Beckett
and Durrell, but were almost universally banned outside France.
Miller returned to America in 1940, settling in Big Sur, California.
Here, he wrote the 'Rosy Crucifixion' trilogy - Sexus (1949), Plexus (1953)
and Nexus (1959) but, regarded by many as a writer of 'dirty books', he was
unable to get his major works published in America. In 1961, after an epic
legal battle. Tropic of Cancer was finally published in the States (in
England in 1963). Miller became a household name, hailed by the Sixties
counterculture as a prophet of freedom and sexual revolution. With the
subsequent unbanning of the rest of his books, Miller's work was finally
available in his own country.
He died on June 7 1980.
BY ТНE SAME AUTHOR
Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Capricorn
Black Spring
Aller Retour New York
The Cosmological Eye
The Colossus of Maroussi
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
Quiet Days in Clichy
Sexus
Plexus
Nexus
Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch
The Books in my Life
A Devil in Paradise
The Wisdom of the Heart
My Life and Times
The World of Sex
Crazy Cock
Moloch
MODERN CLASSIC
HENRY MILLER
Tropic of Capricorn
With an introduction by Robert Nye
Flamingo
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPuhlishers
Flamingo
An Imprint of HatperCollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
A Flamingo Modem Classic 1993 98765
Previously published in paperback by Grafton 1966 Reprinted 14 times
First published in Great Britain by John Calder (Publishers) Limited
1964
Copyright 0 Henry Miller 1957 Introduction copyright O Robert Nye 1993
ISBN 0 00 654584 X Set in Plantin
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Caledonian International Book
Manufacturing Ltd, Glasgow
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other
than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
by Robert Nye
Henry Miller's first book. Tropic of Cancer, was published in Paris in
1934 and was immediately banned in all English-speaking countries. With its
sequel. Tropic of Capricorn (1939), which actually covers an earlier period
in Miller's life, it makes up a running fictional autobiography remarkable
for its candour, gusto, and completeness. The two books have in common a
plain-spoken truthfulness, a good-hearted comedy, and a quality of joy
discovered somewhere on the far side of despair, things that their author
was seldom to match and never to surpass in later self-unravellings.
When the 'Tropics' were at last made generally available in Britain and
America in the Sixties, they were praised as works of sexual liberation.
Since then they have sometimes been attacked as works of sexual misogyny.
All this seems to me rather to miss the point, as does criticism of the two
books for their verbal extravagance and their lack of art. Probably it is no
accident that nobody was ever indifferent concerning Henry Miller. There are
those who love him and there are those who hate him. His work does not allow
of the mild alternatives of liking or disliking. A case could be made that
this itself constitutes a fault, but I prefer to
find a virtue in such passion, and an important one. The Miller that
emerges from the books is, to my mind, an honest and lovable person,
splendidly undefeated by experience, a man with an unquenchable appetite for
the fundamental realities, and an infinite capacity for being surprised by
his own innocence. If there is any message extractable from his work it is
that of someone who - against all the odds and in spite of most of the
evidence - says 'More' to life. This I find honourable.
Even in the 'Tropics' Miller is, of course, an extraordinarily diffuse
and uneven writer. He repeats, paraphrases, and parodies himself with an
abandon that in a lesser spirit would be suicidal. He is sometimes brutal,
he is often sentimental. But having said that, I have said most of what
might be said against him. The best pages here, as in his one other great
work. The Colossus of Maroussi (1941), are white-hot and inspired, both
funny and terrible, a man's attempt to tell the whole truth about the life
that he has known. Miller is one of the few modern writers who can move a
reader to tears, quite simply, by the pressure of his own feeling. He can
also communicate, and induce in the reader, a delicious delight in the fact
of being alive. I never read Miller on song without feeling better, happier,
more myself and less alone, for having done so.
On the ovarian trolley
Foreword to Historia Calamitatum
(the story of my misfortunes)
Often the hearts of men and women are stirred, as likewise they are
soothed in their sorrows, more by example than by words. And therefore,
because I too have known some consolation from speech had with one who was a
witness thereof, am I now minded to write of the sufferings which have
sprung out of my misfortunes, for the eyes of one who, though absent, is of
himself ever a consoler. This I do so that, in comparing your sorrows with
mine, you may discover that yours are in truth nought, or at the most but of
small account, and so you shall come to bear them more easily.
Peter Abelard
0NCE you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead
certainty, even in the midst of chaos. From the beginning it was never
anything but chaos: it was a fluid which enveloped me, which I breathed in
through the gills. In the sub-strata, where the moon shone steady and
opaque, it was smooth and fecundating; above it was a jangle and a discord.
In everything I quickly saw the opposite, the contradiction, and between the
real and the unreal the irony, the paradox. I was my own worst enemy. There
was nothing I wished to do which I could just as well not do. Even as a
child, when I lacked for nothing, I wanted to die: I wanted to surrender
because I saw no sense in struggling. I felt that nothing would be proved,
substantiated, added or subtracted by continuing an existence which I had
not asked for. Everybody around me was a failure, or if not a failure,
ridiculous. Especially the successful ones. The successful ones bored me to
tears. I was sympathetic to a fault, but it was not sympathy that made me
so. It was a purely negative quality, a weakness which blossomed at the mere
sight of human misery. I never helped any one expecting that it would do any
good; I helped because I was helpless to do otherwise. To want to change the
condition of affairs seemed futile to me; nothing would be altered, I was
convinced, except by a change of heart, and who could change the hearts of
men? Now and then a friend was converted; it was something to make me puke.
I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often
said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.
What was most annoying was that at first blush people usually took me
to be good, to be kind, generous, loyal, faithful. Perhaps I did possess
these virtues but if so it was because I was indifferent: I could afford to
be good, kind, generous, loyal, and so forth, since I was free of envy. Envy
was the one thing I was never a victim of. I have never envied anybody or
anything. On the contrary, I have only felt pity for everybody and
everything.
From the very beginning I must have trained myself not to want anything
too badly. From the very beginning I was independent, in a false way. I had
need of nobody because I wanted to be free, free to do and to give only as
my whims dictated. The moment anything was expected or demanded of me I
balked. That was the form my independence took. I was corrupt, in other
words, corrupt from the start. It's as though my mother fed me a poison, and
though I was weaned young the poison never left my system. Even when she
weaned me it seemed that I was completely indifferent, most children rebel,
or make a pretense of rebelling, but I didn't give a damn, I was a
philosopher when still in swaddling clothes. I was against life, on
principle. What principle? The principle of futility. Everybody around me
was struggling. I myself never made an effort. If I appeared to be making an
effort it was only to please someone else; at bottom I didn't give a rap.
And if you can tell me why this should have been so I will deny it, because
I was born with a cussed streak in me and nothing can eliminate it. I heard
later, when I had grown up, that they had a hell of a time bringing me out
of the womb. I can understand that perfectly. Why budge? Why come out of a
nice warm place, a cosy retreat in which everything is offered you gratis?
The earliest remembrance I have is of the cold, the snow and ice in the
gutter, the frost on the window panes, the chill of the sweaty green walls
in the kitchen. Why do people live in outlandish climates in the temperate
zones, as they are miscalled? Because people are naturally idiots, naturally
sluggards, naturally cowards. Until I was about ten years old I never
realized that there were "warm" countries, places where you didn't have to
sweat for a living, nor shiver and pretend that it was tonic and
exhilarating. Wherever there is cold there are people who work themselves to
the bone and when they produce young they preach to the young the gospel of
work -which is nothing, at bottom, but the doctrine of inertia. My people
were entirely Nordic, which is to say idiots. Every wrong idea which has
ever been expounded was theirs. Among them was the doctrine of cleanliness,
to say nothing of righteousness. They were painfully dean. But inwardly they
stank. Never once had they opened the door which leads to the soul; never
once did they dream of taking a blind leap into the dark. After dinner the
dishes were promptly washed and put in the closet; after the paper was read
it was neatly folded and laid away on a shelf; after the clothes were washed
they were ironed and folded and then tucked away in the drawers. Everything
was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. The present was only a bridge and
on this bridge they are still groaning, as the world groans, and not one
idiot ever thinks of blowing up the bridge.
In my bitterness I often search for reasons to condemn them, the better
to condemn myself. For I am like them too, in many ways. For a long while I
thought I had escaped, but as time goes on I see that I am no better, that I
am even a little worse, because I saw more dearly than they ever did and yet
remained powerless to alter my life. As I look back on my life it seems to
me that I never did anything of my own volition but always through the
pressure of others. People often think of me as an adventurous fellow;
nothing could be farther from the truth. My adventures were always
adventitious, always thrust on me, always endured rather than undertaken. I
am of the very essence of that proud, boastful Nordic people who have never
had the least sense of adventure but who nevertheless have scoured the
earth, turned it upside down, scattering relics and ruins everywhere.
Restless spirits, but not adventurous ones. Agonizing spirits, incapable of
living in the present Disgraceful cowards, all of them, myself included. For
there is only one great adventure and that is inward towards the self, and
for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter.
Once every few years I was on the verge of making this discovery, but
in characteristic fashion I always managed to dodge the issue. If I try to
think of a good excuse I can think only of the environment, of the streets I
knew and the people who inhabited them. I can think of no street in America,
or of people inhabiting such a street, capable of leading one on towards the
discovery of the self. I have walked the streets in many countries of the
world but nowhere have I felt so degraded and humiliated as in America. I
think of all the streets in America combined as forming a huge cesspool, a
cesspool of the spirit in which everything is sucked down and drained away
to everlasting shit. Over this cesspool the spirit of work weaves a magic
wand; palaces and factories spring up side by side, and munition plants and
chemical works and steel mills and sanatoriums and prisons and insane
asylums. The whole continent is a nightmare producing the greatest misery of
the greatest number. I was one, a single entity in the midst of the greatest
jamboree of wealth and happiness (statistical wealth, statistical happiness)
but I never met a man who was truly wealthy or truly happy. At least I knew
that I was unhappy, unwealthy, out of whack and out of step. That was my
only solace, my only joy. But it was hardly enough. It would have been
better for my peace of mind, for my soul if I had expressed my rebellion
openly, if I had gone to jail for it, if I had rotted there and died. It
would have been better if, like the mad Czolgosz, I had shot some good
President McKinley, some gentle, insignificant soul like that who had never
done anyone the least harm. Because in the bottom of my heart there was
murder: I wanted to see America destroyed, razed from top to bottom. I
wanted to see this happen purely out of vengeance, as atonement for the
crimes that were committed against me and against others like me who have
never been able to lift their voices and express their hatred, their
rebellion, their legitimate blood lust.
I was the evil product of an evil soil. If the self were not
imperishable, the "I" I write about would have been destroyed long ago. To
some this may seem like an invention, but whatever I imagine to have
happened did actually happen, at least to me. History may deny it, since I
have played no part in the history of my people, but even if everything I
say is wrong, is prejudiced, spiteful, malevolent, even if I am a liar and a
poisoner, it is nevertheless the truth and it will have to be swallowed. As
to what happened ...
Everything that happens, when it has significance, is in the nature of
a contradiction. Until the one for whom this is written came along I
imagined that somewhere outside, in life, as they say, lay the solutions to
all things. I thought, when I came upon her, that I was seizing hold of
life, seizing hold of something which I could bite into. Instead I lost hold
of life completely. I reached out for something to attach myself to - and I
found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach
myself, left high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not
looked for - myself. I found that what I had desired all my life was not to
live - if what others are doing is called living - but to express myself. I
realized that I had never the least interest in living, but only in this
which I am doing now, something which is parallel to life, of it at the same
time, and beyond it. What is true interests me scarcely at all, nor even
what is real; only that interests me which I imagine to be, that which I had
stifled every day in order to live. Whether I die today or tomorrow is of no
importance to me, never has been, but that today even, after years of
effort, I cannot say what I think and feel - that bothers me, that rankles.
From childhood on I can see myself on the track of this spectre, enjoying
nothing, desiring nothing but this power, this ability. Everything else is a
lie - everything I ever did or said which did not bear upon this. And that
is pretty much the greater part of my life.
I was a contradiction in essence, as they say. People took me to be
serious and high-minded, or to be gay and reckless, or to be sincere and
earnest, or to be negligent and carefree. I was all these things at once -
and beyond that I was something else, something which no one suspected,
least of all myself. As a boy of six or seven I used to sit at my
grandfather's workbench and read to him while he sewed. I remember him
vividly in those moments when, pressing the hot iron against the seam of a
coat, he would stand with one hand over the other and look out of the window
dreamily. I remember the expression on his face, as he stood there dreaming,
better than the contents of the books I read, better than the conversations
we had or the games which I played in the street I used to wonder what he
was dreaming of, what it was that drew him out of himself. I hadn't learned
yet how to dream wideawake. I was always lucid, in the moment, and all of a
piece. His daydreaming fascinated me. I knew that he had no connection with
what he was doing, not the least thought for any of us, that he was alone
and being alone he was free. I was never alone, least of all when I was by
myself. Always, it seems to me, I was accompanied: I was like a little crumb
of a big cheese, which was the world, I suppose, though I never stopped to
think about it. But I know I never existed separately, never thought myself
the big cheese, as it were. So that even when I had reason to be miserable,
to complain, to weep, I had the illusion of participating in a common, a
universal misery. When I wept the whole world was weeping -so I imagined. I
wept very seldom. Mostly I was happy, I was laughing, I was having a good
time. I had a good time because, as I said before, I really didn't give a
fuck about anything. If things were wrong with me they were wrong
everywhere, I was convinced of it. And things were wrong usually only when
one cared too much. That impressed itself on me very early in life. For
example, I remember the case of my young friend Jack Lawson. For a whole
year he lay in bed, suffering the worst agonies. He was my best friend, so
people said at any rate. Well, at first I was probably sorry for him and
perhaps now and then I called at his house to inquire about him; but after a
month or two had elapsed I grew quite callous about his suffering. I said to
myself he ought to die and the sooner he dies the better it will be, and
having thought thus I acted accordingly, that is to say, I promptly forgot
about him, abandoned him to his fate. I was only about twelve years old at
the time and I remember being proud of my decision. I remember the funeral
too - what a disgraceful affair it was. There they were, friends and
relatives all congregated about the bier and all of them bawling like sick
monkeys. The mother especially gave me a pain in the ass. She was such a
rare, spiritual creature, a Christian Scientist, I believe, and though she
didn't believe in disease and didn't believe in death either, she raised
such a stink that Christ himself would have risen from the grave. But not
her beloved Jack! No, Jack lay there cold as ice and rigid and unbeckonable.
He was dead and there were no two ways about it. I knew it and I was glad of
it. I didn't waste any tears over it. I couldn't say that he was better off
because after all the "he" had vanished. He was gone and with him the
sufferings he had endured and the suffering he had unwittingly inflicted on
others. Amen! I said to myself, and with that, being slightly hysterical, I
let a loud fart - right beside the coffin.
This caring too much - I remember that it only developed with me about
the time I first fell in love. And even then I didn't care enough. If I had
really cared I wouldn't be here now writing about it: I'd have died of a
broken heart, or I'd have swung for it. It was a bad experience because it
taught me how to live a lie. It taught me to smile when I didn't want to
smile, to work when I didn't believe in work, to live when I had no reason
to go on living. Even when I had forgotten her I still retained the trick of
doing what I didn't believe in.
I was all chaos from the beginning, as I have said. But sometimes I got
so close to the centre, to the very heart of the confusion, that it's a
wonder things didn't explode around me.
It is customary to blame everything on the war. I say the war had
nothing to do with me, with my life. At a time when others were getting
themselves comfortable berths I was taking one miserable job after another,
and never enough in it to keep body and soul together. Almost as quickly as
I was hired I was fired. I had plenty of intelligence but I inspired
distrust. Whereever I went I fomented discord - not because I was idealistic
but because I was like a searchlight exposing the stupidity and futility of
everything. Besides, I wasn't a good ass-licker. That marked me, no doubt.
People could tell at once when I asked for a job that I really didn't give a
damn whether I got it or not. And of course I generally didn't get it. But
after a time the mere looking for a job became an activity, a pastime, so to
speak. I would go in and ask for most anything. It was a way of killing time
- now worse, as far as I could see, than work itself. I was my own boss and
I had my own hours, but unlike other bosses I entrained only my own ruin, my
own bankruptcy. I was not a corporation or a trust or a state or a
federation or a polity of nations - I was more like God, if anything.
This went on from about the middle of the war until... well, until one
day I was trapped. Finally the day came when I did desperately want a job. I
needed it. Not having another minute to lose, I decided that I would take
the last job on earth, that of messenger boy. I walked into the employment
bureau of the telegraph company - the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company of
North America - towards the dose of the day, prepared to go through with it.
I had just come from the public library and I had under my arm some fat
books on economics and metaphysics. To my great amazement I was refused the
job.
The guy who turned me down was a little runt who ran the switchboard.
He seemed to take me for a college student, though it was dear enough from
my application that I had long left school. I had even honoured myself on
the application with a Ph.D. degree from Columbia University. Apparently
that passed unnoticed, or else was suspiciously regarded by this runt who
had turned me down. I was furious, the more so because for once in my life I
was in earnest. Not only that, but I had swallowed my pride, which in
certain peculiar ways is rather large. My wife of course gave me the usual
leer and sneer. I had done it as a gesture, she said. I went to bed thinking
about it, still smarting, getting angrier and angrier as the night wore on.
The fact that I had a wife and child to support didn't bother me so much,
people didn't offer you jobs because you had a family to support, that much
I understood only too well. No, what rankled was that they had rejected me.
Henry V. Miller, a competent, superior individual who had asked for the
lowest job in the world. That burned me up. I couldn't get over it. In the
morning I was up bright and early, shaved, put on my best clothes and
hot-footed it to the subway. I went immediately to the main offices of the
telegraph company ... up to the 25th floor or wherever it was that the
president and the vice-presidents had their cubicles. I asked to see the
president. Of course the president was either out of town or too busy to see
me, but wouldn't I care to see the vice-president, or his secretary rather.
I saw the vice-president's secretary, an intelligent, considerate sort of
chap, and I gave him an earful. I did it adroitly, without too much heat,
but letting him understand all the while that I wasn't to be put out of the
way so easily.
When he picked up the telephone and demanded the general manager I
thought it was just a gag, that they were going to pass me around like that
from one to the other until I'd get fed up. But the moment I heard him talk
I changed my opinion. When I got to the general manager's office, which was
in another building uptown, they were waiting for me. I sat down in a
comfortable leather chair and accepted one of the big cigars that were
thrust forward. This individual seemed at once to be vitally concerned about
the matter. He wanted me to tell him all about it, down to the last detail,
his big hairy ears cocked to catch the least crumb of information which
would justify something or other which was formulating itself inside his
dome. I realized that by some accident I had really been instrumental in
doing him a service. I let him wheedle it out of me to suit his fancy,
observing all the time which way the wind was blowing. And as the talk
progressed I noticed that be was warming up to me more and more. At last
some one was showing a little confidence in me 1 That was all I required to
get started on one of my favourite lines. For, after years of job hunting I
had naturally become quite adept, I knew not only what not to say, but I
knew also what to imply, what to insinuate. Soon the assistant general
manager was called in and asked to listen to my story. By this time I knew
what the story was. I understood that Hymie - "that little kike", as the
general manager called him - had no business pretending that he was the
employment manager. Hymie had usurped his prerogative, that much was dear.
It was also dear that Hymie was a Jew and that Jews were not in good odour
with the general manager, nor with Mr. Twilliger, the vice-president, who
was a thorn in the general manager's side.
Perhaps it was Hymie, "the dirty little kike" who was responsible for
the high percentage of Jews on the messenger
force. Perhaps Hymie was really the one who was doing the hiring at the
employment office - at Sunset Place, they called it. It was an excellent
opportunity, I gathered, for Mr. Clancy, the general manager, to take down a
certain Mr. Bums who, he informed me, had been the employment manager for
some thirty years now and who was evidently getting lazy on the job.
The conference lasted several hours. Before it was terminated Mr.
Clancy took me aside and informed me that he was going to make me the boss
of the Works. Before putting me into office, however, he was going to ask me
as a special favour, and also as a sort of apprenticeship which would stand
me in good stead, to work as a special messenger. I would receive the salary
of employment manager, but it would be paid me out of a separate account. In
short I was to float from office to office and observe the way affairs were
conducted by all and sundry. I was to make a little report from time to time
as to how things were going. And once in a while, so he suggested, I was to
visit him at his home on the q.t. and have a little chat about the
conditions in the hundred and one branches of the Cosmodemonic Telegraph
Company in New York City. In other words I was to be a spy for a few months
and after that I was to have the run of the joint. Maybe they'd make me a
general manager too one day, or a vice-president. It was a tempting oner,
even if it was wrapped up in a lot of horse shit. I said Yes.
In a few months I was sitting at Sunset Place hiring and firing like a
demon. It was a slaughter-house, so help me God. The thing was senseless
from the bottom up. A waste of men, material and effort A hideous farce
against a backdrop of sweat and misery. But just as I had accepted the
spying so I accepted the hiring and firing and all that went with it. I said
Yes to everything. If the vice-president decreed that no cripples were to be
hired I hired no cripples. If the vice-president said that all messengers
over forty-five were to be fired without notice I fired them without notice.
I did everything they instructed me to do, but in such a way that they had
to pay for it. When there was a strike I folded my arms and waited for it to
blow over. But I first saw to it that it cost them a good penny. The whole
system was so rotten, so inhuman, so lousy, so hopelessly corrupt and
complicated, that it would have taken a genius to put any sense or order
into it, to say nothing of human kindness or consideration. I was up against
the whole rotten system of American labour, which is rotten at both ends. I
was the fifth wheel on the wagon and neither side had any use for me, except
to exploit me. In fact, everybody was being exploited - the president and
his gang by the unseen powers, the employees by the officials, and so on and
around, in and out and through the whole works. From my little perch at
"Sunset Place" I had a bird's eye view of the whole American society. It was
like a page out of the telephone book. Alphabetically, numerically,
statistically, it made sense. But when you looked at it up close, when you
examined the pages separately, or the parts separately, when you examined
one lone individual and what constituted him, examined the air he breathed,
the life he led, the chances he risked, you saw something so foul and
degrading, so low, so miserable, so utterly hopeless and senseless, that it
was worse than looking into a volcano. You could see the whole American life
- economically, politically, morally, spiritually, artistically,
statistically, pathologically. It looked like a grand chancre on a worn-out
cock. It looked worse than that, really, because you couldn't even see
anything resembling a cock any more. Maybe in the past this thing had life,
did produce something, did at least give a moment's pleasure, a moment's
thrill. But looking at it from where I sat it looked rottener than the
wormiest cheese. The wonder was that the stench of it didn't carry'em off...
I'm using the past tense all the time, but of course it's the same now,
maybe even a bit worse. At least now we're getting it full stink.
By the time Valeska arrived on the scene I had hired several army corps
of messengers. My office at Sunset Place was like an open sewer, and it
stank like one. I had dug myself into the first line trench and I was
getting it from all directions at once. To begin with, the man I had ousted
died of a broken heart a few weeks after my arrival. He held out just long
enough to break me in and then he croaked. Things happened so fast that I
didn't have a chance to feel guilty. From the moment I arrived at the office
it was one long uninterrupted pandemon- him. An hour before my arrival -1
was always late - the place was already jammed with applicants. I had to
elbow my way up the stairs and literally force my way in to get there. Hymie
was worse off than I because he was tied to the barricade. Before I could
take my hat off I had to answer a dozen telephone calls. There were three
telephones on my desk and they all rang at once. They were bawling the piss
out of me before I had even sat down to work. There wasn't even time to take
a crap - until five or six in the afternoon. Hymie was worse off than I
because he was tied to the switchboard. He sat there from eight in the
morning, until six, moving waybills around. A waybill was a messenger loaned
by one office to another office for the day or a part of the day. None of
the hundred and one offices ever had a full staff; Hymie had to play chess
with the waybills while I worked like a madman to plug up the gaps. If by a
miracle I succeeded in a day of filling all the vacancies, the next morning
would find the situation exactly the same - or worse. Perhaps twenty per
cent of the force were steady; the rest was driftwood. The steady ones drove
the new ones away. The steady ones earned forty to fifty dollars a week,
sometimes sixty or seventy-five, sometimes as much as a hundred dollars a
week, which is to say that they earned far more than the clerks and often
more than their own managers. As for the new ones, they found it difficult
to earn ten dollars a week. Some of them worked an hour and quit, often
throwing a batch of telegrams in the garbage can or down the sewer. And
whenever they quit they wanted their pay immediately, which was impossible,
because in the complicated bookkeeping which ruled no one could say what a
messenger had earned until at least ten days later. In the beginning I
invited the applicant to sit down beside me and I explained everything to
him in detail. I did that until I lost my voice. Soon I learned to save my
strength for the grilling that was necessary. In the first place, every
other boy was a born liar if not a crook to boot. Many of them had already
been hired and fired a number of times. Some found it an excellent way to
find another job, because their duty brought them to hundreds of offices
which normally they would never have set foot in. Fortunately McGovern, the
old trusty who guarded the door and handed out the application blanks, had a
camera eye. And then there were the big ledgers behind me, in which there
was a record of every applicant who had ever passed through the mill. The
ledgers were very much like a police record; they were full of red ink
marks, signifying this or that delinquency. To judge from the evidence I was
in a tough spot. Every other name involved a theft, fraud, a brawl, or
dementia or perversion or idiocy. "Be careful - so-and-so is an epileptic!"
"Don't hire this man - he's a nigger 1" "Watch out - X has been in Dannemora
- or else in Sing Sing."
If I had been a stickler for etiquette nobody would ever have been
hired. I had to learn quickly, and not from the records or from those about
me, but from experience. There were a thousand and one details by which to
judge an applicant: I had to take them all in at once, and quickly, because
in one short day, even if you are as fast as Jack Robinson, you can only
hire so many and no more. And no matter how many I hired it was never
enough. The next day it would begin all over again. Some I knew would last
only a day, but I had to hire them just the same. The system was wrong from
start to finish, but it was not my place to criticize the system. It was
mine to hire and fire. I was in the centre of a revolving disk which was
whirling so fast that nothing could stay put. What was needed was a
mechanic, but according to the logic of the higher-ups there was nothing
wrong with the mechanism, everything was fine and dandy except that things
were temporarily out of order. And things being temporarily out of order
brought on epilepsy, theft, vandalism, perversion, niggers, Jews, whores and
what-not - sometimes strikes and lockouts. Whereupon, according to this
logic, you took a big broom and you swept the stable dean, or you took clubs
and guns and you beat sense into the poor idiots who were suffering from the
illusion that things were fundamentally wrong. It was good now and then to
talk of God, or to have a little community sing - maybe even a bonus was
justifiable now and then, that is when things were getting too terribly bad
for words. But on the whole, the important thing was to keep hiring and
firing; as long as there were men and ammunition we were to advance, to keep
mopping up the trenches. Meanwhile Hymie kept taking cathartic pills -enough
to blow out his rear end if he had bad a rear end, but he hadn't one any
more, he only imagined he was taking a crap, he only imagined he was
shitting on his can. Actually the poor bugger was in a trance. There were a
hundred and one offices to look after and each one had a staff of messengers
which was mythical, if not hypothetical, and whether the messengers were
real or unreal, tangible or intangible, Hymie had to shuffle them about from
morning to night while I plugged up the holes, which was also imaginary
because who could say when a recruit had been dispatched to an office
whether he would arrive there today or tomorrow or never. Some of them got
lost in the subway or in the labyrinths under the skyscrapers; some rode
around on the elevated line all day because with a uniform it was a free
ride and perhaps they had never enjoyed riding around all day on the
elevated lines. Some of them started for Staten Island and ended up in
Canarsie, or else were brought back in a coma by a cop. Some forgot where
they lived and disappeared completely. Some whom we hired for New York
turned up in Philadelphia a month later as though it were normal and
according to Hoyle. Some would start for their destination and on the way
decide that it was easier to sell newspapers and they would sell them in the
uniform we had given them, until they were picked up. Some went straight to
the observation ward, moved by some strange preservative instinct.
When he arrived in the morning Hymie first sharpened his pencils; he
did this religiously no matter how many calls were coming in, because, as he
explained to me later, if he didn't sharpen the pencils first thing off the
bat they would never get sharpened. The next thing was to take a glance out
the window and see what the weather was like. Then, with a freshly sharpened
pencil he made a little box at the head of the slate which he kept beside
him and in it he gave the weather report. This, he also informed me, often
turned out to be a useful alibi. If the snow were a foot thick or the ground
covered with sleet, even the devil himself might be excused for not
shuffling the waybills around more speedily, and the employment manager
might also be excused for not filling up the holes on such days, no? But why
he didn't take a crap first instead of plugging in on the switchboard soon
as his pencils were sharpened was a mystery to me. That too he explained to
me later. Anyway, the day always broke with confusion, complaints,
constipation and vacancies. It also began with loud smelly farts, with bad
breaths, with ragged nerves, with epilepsy, with meningitis, with low wages,
with back pay that was overdue, with worn-out shoes, with corns and bunions,
with flat feet and broken arches, with pocket books missing and fountain
pens lost or stolen, with telegrams floating in the sewer, with threats from
the vice-president and advice from the managers, with wrangles and disputes,
with cloudbursts and broken telegraph wires, with new methods of efficiency
and old ones that had been discarded, with hope for better times and a
prayer for the bonus which never came. The new messengers were going over
the top and getting machine-gunned; the old ones were digging in deeper and
deeper, like rats in a cheese. Nobody was satisfied, especially not the
public. It took ten minutes to reach San Francisco over the wire, but it
might take a year to get the message to the man whom it was intended for -
or it might never reach him.
The Y.M.C.A., eager to improve the morale of working boys everywhere in
America, were holdings meetings at noon hour and wouldn't I like to send a
few spruce-looking boys to hear William Carnegie Asterbilt Junior give a
five minute talk on service. Mr. Mallory of the Welfare League would like to
know if I could spare a few minutes some time to tell me about the model
prisoners who were on parole and who would be glad to serve in any capacity,
even as messengers. Mrs. Guggenhoffer of the Jewish Charities would be very
grateful if I would aid her in maintaining some broken-down homes which had
broken down because everybody was either infirm, crippled or disabled in the
family. Mr. Haggerty of the Runaway Home for Boys was sure he had just the
right youngsters for me, if only I would give them a chance; all of them had
been mistreated by their stepfathers or stepmothers. The Mayor of New York
would appreciate it if I would give my personal attention to the bearer of
the said letter whom he could vouch for in every way -but why the hell he
didn't give said bearer a job himself was a mystery. Man leaning over my
shoulder hands me a slip of paper on which he has just written - "Me
understand everything but me no hear the voices." Luther Winifred is
standing beside him, his tattered coat fastened together with safety pins.
Luther is two sevenths pure Indian and five sevenths German-American, so he
explains. On the Indian side he is a Crow, one of the Crows from Montana.
His last job was putting up window shades, but there is no ass in his pants
and he is ashamed to climb a ladder in front ofa lady. He got out of the
hospital the other day and so he is still a little weak, but he is not too
weak to carry messages, so he thinks.
And then there is Ferdinand Mish - how could I have forgotten him? He
has been waiting in line all morning to get a word with me. I never answered
the letters he sent me. Was that just? he asks me blandly. Of course not. I
remember vaguely the last letter he sent me from the Cat and Dog Hospital on
the Grand Concourse, where he was an attendant. He said he repented that he
had resigned his post "but it was on account of his father being too strict
over him, not giving him any recreation or outside pleasure". "I'm
twenty-five now," he wrote, "and I don't think I should ought to be sleeping
no more with my father, do you? I know you are said to be a very fine
gentleman and I am now self-dependent, so I hope ..." McGovem, the old
trusty, is standing by Ferdinand's side waiting for me to give him the sign.
He wants to give Ferdinand the bum's rush - he remembers him from five years
ago when Ferdinand lay down on the sidewalk in front of the main office in
full uniform and threw an epileptic fit. No, shit, I can't do it! I'm going
to give him a chance, the poor bastard. Maybe I'll send him to Chinatown
where things are fairly quiet. Meanwhile, while Ferdinand is changing into a
uniform in the back room, I'm getting an earful from an orphan boy who wants
to "help make the company a success". He says that if I give him a chance
he'll pray for me every Sunday when he goes to church, except the Sundays
when he has to report to his parole officer. He didn't do nothing, it
appears. He just pushed the fellow and the fellow fell on his head and got
killed. Next: An ex-consul from Gibraltar. Writes a beautiful hand - too
beauti- fill. I ask him to see me at the end of the day - something fishy
about him. Meanwhile Ferdinand's thrown a fit in the dressing room. Lucky
break! If it had happened in the subway, with a number on his hat and
everything, I'd have been canned. Next:
A guy with one arm and mad as hell because McGovem is showing him the
door. "What the hell! I'm strong and healthy, ain't I?" he shouts, and to
prove it he picks up a chair with his good arm and smashes it to bits. I get
back to the desk and there's a telegram lying there for me. I open it. It's
from George Blasini, ex-messenger No. 2459 of S.W. office. "I am sorry that
I had to quit so soon, but the job was not fitted for my character idleness
and I am a true lover of labour and frugality but many a time we be unable
to control or subdue our personal pride." Shit!
In the beginning I was enthusiastic, despite the damper above and the
clamps below. I had ideas and I executed them, whether it pleased the
vice-president or not. Every ten days or so I was put on the carpet and
lectured for having "too big a heart". I never had any money in my pocket
but I used other people's money freely. As long as I was the boss I had
credit. I gave money away right and left; I gave my clothes away and my
linen, my books, everything that was superfluous. If I had had the power I
would have given the company away to the poor buggers who pestered me. If I
was asked for a dime I gave a half dollar, if I was asked for a dollar I
gave five. I didn't give a fuck how much I gave away, because it was easier
to borrow and give than to refuse the poor devils. I never saw such an
aggregation of misery in my life, and I hope I'll never see it again. Men
are poor everywhere - they always have been and they always will be. And
beneath the terrible poverty there is a flame, usually so low that it is
almost invisible. But it is there and if one has the courage to blow on it
it can become a conflagration. I was constantly urged not to be too lenient,
not to be too sentimental, not to be too charitable. Be firm! Be hard! they
cautioned me. Fuck that! I said to myself, I'll be generous, pliant,
forgiving, tolerant, tender. In the beginning I heard every man to the end;
if I couldn't give him a job I gave him money, and if I had no money I gave
him cigarettes or I gave him courage. But I gave! The effect was dizzying.
Nobody can estimate the results of a good deed, of a kind word. I was
swamped with gratitude, with good wishes, with invitations, with pathetic,
tender little gifts. If I had had real power, instead of being the fifth
wheel on a wagon. God knows what I might have accomplished. I could have
used the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company of North America as a base to bring
all humanity to God; I could have transformed North and South America alike,
and the Dominion of Canada too. I had the secret in my hand: it was to be
generous, to be kind, to be patient. I did the work of five men. I hardly
slept for three years. I didn't own a whole shirt and often I was so ashamed
of borrowing from my wife, or robbing the kid's bank, that to get the car
fare to go to work in the morning I would swindle the blind newspaperman at
the subway station. I owed so much money all around that if I were to work
for twenty years I would not have been able to pay it back. I took from
those who had and I gave to those who needed, and it was the right thing to
do, and I would do it all over again if I were in the same position.
I even accomplished the miracle of stopping the crazy turnover,
something that nobody had dared to hope for. Instead of supporting my
efforts they undermined me. According to the logic of the higher-ups the
turnover had ceased because the wages were too high. So they cut the wages.
It was like kicking the bottom out of a bucket. The whole edifice tumbled,
collapsed on my hands. And, just as though nothing had happened they
insisted that the gaps be plugged up immediately. To soften the blow a bit
they intimated that I might even increase the percentage of Jews, I might
take on a cripple now and then, if he were capable, I might do this and
that, all of which they had informed me previously was against the code. I
was so furious that I took on anything and everything; I would have taken on
broncos and gorillas if I could have imbued them with the modicum of
intelligence which was necessary to deliver messages. A few days previously
there had been only five or six vacancies at dosing time. Now there were
three hundred, four hundred, five hundred - they were running out like sand.
It was marvellous. I sat there and without asking a question I took them on
in carload lots - niggers, Jews, paralytics, cripples, ex-convicts, whores,
maniacs, perverts, idiots, any fucking bastard who could stand on two legs
and hold a telegram in his hand. The managers of the hundred and one offices
were frightened to death. I laughed. I laughed all day long thinking what a
fine stinking mess I was making of it Complaints were pouring in from all
parts of the city. The service was crippled, constipated, strangulated. A
mule could have gotten there faster than some of the idiots I put into
harness.
The best thing about the new day was the introduction of female
messengers. It changed the whole atmosphere of the joint. For Hymie
especially it was a godsend. He moved his switchboard around so that he
could watch me while juggling the waybills back and forth. Despite the added
work he had a permanent erection. He came to work with a smile and he smiled
all day long. He was in heaven. At the end of the day I always had a list of
five or six who were worth trying out. The game was to keep them on the
string, to promise them a job but to get a free fuck first. Usually it was
only necessary to throw a feed into them in order to bring them back to the
office at night and lay them out on the zinc-covered table in the dressing
room. If they had a cosy apartment, as they sometimes did, we took them home
and finished it in bed. If they liked to drink Hymie would bring a bottle
along. If they were any good and really needed some dough Hymie would flash
his roll and peel off a five spot or a ten spot as the case might be. It
makes my mouth water when I think of that roll he carried about with him.
Where he got it from I never knew, because he was the lowest paid man in the
joint. But it was always there, and no matter what I asked for I got. And
once it happened that we did get a bonus and I paid Hymie back to the last
penny - which so amazed him that he took me out that night to Delmonico's
and spent a fortune on me. Not only that, but the next day he insisted on
buying me hat and shirts and gloves. He even insinuated that I might come
home and fuck his wife, if I liked, though he warned me that she was having
a little trouble at present with her ovaries.
In addition to Hymie and McGovem I had as assistants a pair of
beautiful blondes who often accompanied us to dinner in the evening. And
there was O'Mara, an old friend of mine who had just returned from the
Philippines and whom I made my chief assistant. There was also Steve Romero,
a prize bull whom I kept around in case of trouble. And O'Rourke, the
company detective, who reported to me at the dose of day when he began his
work. Finally I added another man to the staff - Kronski, a young medical
student, who was diabolically interested in the pathological cases of which
we had plenty. We were a merry crew, united in our desire to fuck the
company at all costs. And while fucking the company we fucked everything in
sight that we could get hold of, O'Rourke excepted, as he had a certain
dignity to maintain, and besides he had trouble with his prostate and had
lost all interest in fucking. But O'Rourke was a prince of a man, and
generous beyond words. It was O'Rourke who often invited us to dinner in the
evening and it was O'Rourke we went to when we were in trouble.
That was how it stood at Sunset Place after a couple of years had
rolled by. I was saturated with humanity, with experiences of one kind and
another. In my sober moments I made notes which I intended to make use of
later if ever I should have a chance to record my experiences. I was waiting
for a breathing spell. And then by chance one day, when I had been put on
the carpet for some wanton piece of negligence, the vice-president let drop
a phrase which stuck in my crop. He had said that he would like to see some
one write a sort of Horatio Alger book about the messengers; he hinted that
perhaps I might be the one to do such a job. I was furious to think what a
ninny he was and delighted at the same time because secretly I was itching
to get the thing off my chest. I thought to myself- you poor old futzer,
you, just wait until I get it off my chest... I'll give you an Horatio Alger
book .. . just you wait! My head was in a whirl leaving his office. I saw
the army of men, women and children that had passed through my hands, saw
them weeping, begging, beseeching, imploring, cursing, spitting, fuming,
threatening. I saw the tracks they left on the highways, the freight trains
lying on the floor, the parents in rags, the coal box empty, the sink
running over, the walls sweating and between the cold beads of sweat the
cockroaches running like mad; I saw them hobbling along like twisted gnomes
or falling backwards in the epileptic frenzy, the mouth twitching, thesaliva
pouring from the lips, the limbs writhing; I saw the walls giving way and
the pest pouring out like a winged fluid, and the men higher up with their
ironclad logic, waiting for it to blow over, waiting for everything to be
patched up, waiting, waiting contentedly, smugly, with big cigars in their
mouths and their feet on the desk, saying things were temporarily out of
order. I saw the Horatio Alger hero, the dream of a sick American, mounting
higher and -higher, first messenger, then operator, then manager, then
chief, then superintendent, then vice-president, then president, then trust
magnate, then beer baron, then Lord of all the Americas, the money god, the
god of gods, the clay of clay, nullity on high, zero with ninety-seven
thousand decimals fore and aft. You shits, I said to myself, I will give you
the picture of twelve little men, zeros without decimals, ciphers, digits,
the twelve uncrushable worms who are hollowing out the base of your rotten
edifice. I will give you Horatio Alger as he looks the day after the
Apocalypse, when all the stink has cleared away.
From all over the earth they had come to me to be succoured. Except for
the primitives there was scarcely a race which wasn't represented on the
force. Except for the Ainus, the Maoris, the Papuans, the Veddas, the Lapps,
the Zulus, the Patagonians, the Igorotes, the Hottentots, the Touaregs,
except for the lost Tasmanians, the lost Grimaldi men, the lost Atianteans,
I had a representative of almost every species under the sun. I had two
brothers who were still sun-worshippers, two Nestorians from the old
Assyrian world; I had two Maltese twins from Malta and a descendant of the
Mayas from Yucatan; I had a few of our little brown brothers from the
Philippines and some Ethiopians from Abyssinia; I had men from the pampas of
Argentina and stranded cowboys from Montana; I had Greeks, Letts, Poles,
Croats, Slovenes, Ruthenians, Czechs, Spaniards, Welshmen, Finns, Swedes,
Russians, Danes, Mexicans, Porto Ricans, Cubans, Uruguayans, Brazilians,
Australians, Persians, Japs, Chinese, Javanese, Egyptians, Africans from the
Gold Coast and the Ivory Coast, Hindus, Armenians, Turks, Arabs, Germans,
Irish, English, Canadians - and plenty of Italians and plenty of Jews. I had
only one Frenchman that I can recall and he lasted about three hours. I had
a few American Indians, Cherokees mostly, but no Tibetans, and no Eskimos: I
saw names I could never have imagined and handwriting which ranged from
cuneiform to the sophisticated and astoundingly beautiful calligraphy of the
Chinese. I heard men beg for work who had been Egyptologists, botanists,
surgeons, gold-miners, professors of Oriental languages, musicians,
engineers, physicians, astronomers, anthropologists, chemists,
mathematicians, mayors of cities and governors of states, prison warders,
cow-punchers, lumberjacks, sailors, oyster pirates, stevedores, riveters,
dentists, surgeons, painters, sculptors, plumbers, architects, dope
peddlers, abortionists, white slavers, sea divers, steeplejacks, farmers,
cloak and suit salesmen, trappers, lighthouse keepers, pimps, aldermen,
senators, every bloody thing under the sun, and all of them down and out,
begging for work for cigarettes, for carfare, for a chance, Christ Almighty,
just another chance! I saw and got to know men who were saints, if there are
saints in this world; I saw and spoke to savants, crapulous and uncrapulous
ones; I listened to men who had the divine fire in their bowels who could
have convinced God Almighty that they were worthy of another chance, but not
the vice-president of the Cosmococcus Telegraph Company. I sat riveted to my
desk and I travelled around the world at lightning speed, and I learned that
everywhere it is the same -hunger, humiliation, ignorance, vice, greed,
extortion, chicanery, torture, despotism: the inhumanity of man to man: the
fetters, the harness, the halter, the bridle, the whip, the spurs. The finer
the calibre the worse off the man. Men were walking the streets of New York
in that bloody, degrading outfit, the despised, the lowest of the low,
walking around like auks, like penguins, like oxen, like trained seals, like
patient donkeys, like big jackasses, like crazy gorillas, like docile
maniacs nibbling at the dangling bait, like waltzing mice, like
guinea pigs, like squirrels, like rabbits, and many and many a one was fit
to govern the world, to write tile greatest book ever written. When I think
of some of the Persians, the Hindus, the Arabs I knew, when I think of the
character they revealed, their grace, their tenderness, their intelligence,
their holiness, I spit on the white conquerors of the world, the degenerate
British, the pigheaded Germans, the smug self-satisfied French. The earth is
one great sentient being, a planet saturated through and through with man, a
live planet expressing itself falteringly and stutteringly;
it is not the home of the white race or the black race or the yellow
race or the lost blue race, but the home of man and all men are equal before
God and will have their chance, if not now then a million years hence. The
little brown brothers of the Philippines may bloom again, one day and the
murdered Indians of America north and south may also come alive one day to
ride the plains where now the cities stand belching fire and pestilence. Who
has the last say? Man! The earth is his because he is the earth, its fire,
its water, its air, its mineral and vegetable matter, its spirit which is
cosmic, which is imperishable, which is the spirit of all the planets, which
transforms itself through him, through endless signs and symbols, through
endless manifestations. Wait, you cosmococcic telegraphic shits, you demons
on high waiting for the plumbing to be repaired, wait, you dirty white
conquerors who have sullied the earth with your cloven hooves, your
instruments, your weapons, your disease germs, wait, all you who are sitting
in clover and counting your coppers, it is not the end. The last man will
have his say before it is finished. Down to the last sentient molecule
justice must be done - and will be done! Nobody is getting away with
anything, least of all the cosmococdc shits of North America.
When it came time for my vacation -1 hadn't taken one for three years,
I was so eager to make the company a success! -1 took three weeks instead of
two and I wrote the book about the twelve little men. I wrote it straight
off, five, seven, sometimes eight thousand words a day. I thought that a
man, to be a writer, must do at least five thousand words a day. I thought
he must say everything all at once - in one book - and collapse afterwards.
I didn't know a thing about writing. I was scared shitless. But I was
determined to wipe Horatio Alger out of the North American consciousness. I
suppose it was the worst book any man has ever written. It was a colossal
tome and faulty from start to finish. But it was my first book and I was in
love with it. If I had the money, as Gide had, I would have published it at
my own expense. If I had had the courage that Whitman had, I would have
peddled it from door to door. Everybody I showed it to said it was terrible.
I was urged to give up the idea of writing. I had to learn, as Balzac did,
that one must write volumes before signing one's own name. I had to leam, as
I soon did, that one must give up everything and not do anything else but
write, that one must write and write and write, even if everybody in the
world advises you against it, even if nobody believes in you. Perhaps one
does it just because nobody believes; perhaps the real secret lies in making
people believe. That the book was inadequate, faulty, bad, terrible, as they
said, was only natural. I was attempting at the start what a man of genius
would have undertaken only at the end. I wanted to say the last word at the
beginning. It was absurd and pathetic. It was a crushing defeat, but it put
iron in my backbone and sulphur in my blood. I knew at least what it was to
fail. I knew what it was to attempt something big. Today, when I think of
the circumstances under which I wrote that book, when I think of the
overwhelming material which I tried to put into form, when I think of what I
hoped to encompass, I pat myself on the back, I give myself a double A. I am
proud of the fact that I made such a miserable failure of it; had I
succeeded I would have been a monster. Sometimes, when I look over my
notebooks, when I look at the names alone of those whom I thought to write
about, I am seized with vertigo. Each man came to me with a world of his
own; he came to me and unloaded it on my desk; he expected me to pick it up
and put it on my shoulders. I had no time to make a world of my own: I had
to stay fixed like Atlas, my feet on the elephant's back and the elephant on
the tortoise's back. To inquire on what the tortoise stood would be to go
mad. I didn't dare to think of anything then except the "facts".
To get beneath the facts I would have had to be an artist, and one
doesn't become an artist overnight. First you have to be crushed, to have
your conflicting points of view annihilated. You have to be wiped out as a
human being in order to be born again an individual. You have to be
carbonized and mineralized in order to work upwards from the last common
denominator of the self. You have to get beyond pity in order to feel from
the very roots of your being. One can't make a new heaven and earth with
"facts". There are no "facts" - there is only the fact that man, every man
everywhere in the world, is on his way to ordination. Some men take the long
route and some take the short route. Every man is working out his destiny in
his own way and nobody can be of help except by being kind, generous and
patient. In my enthusiasm certain things were then inexplicable to me which
now are dear. I think, for example, of Carnahan, one of the twelve little
men I had chosen to write about. He was what is called a model messenger. He
was a graduate of a prominent university, had a sound intelligence and was
of exemplary character. He worked eighteen and twenty hours a day and earned
more than any messenger on the force. The clients whom he served wrote
letters about him, praising him to the skies; he was offered good positions
which he refused for one reason or another. He lived frugally, sending the
best part of his wages to his wife and children who lived in another city.
He had two vices - drink and the desire to succeed. He could go for a year
without drinking, but if he took one drop he was off. He had deaned up twice
in Wall Street and yet, before coming to me for a job, he had gotten no
further than to be a sexton of a church in some little town. He had been
fired from that job because he had broken into the sacramental wine and rung
the bells all night long. He was truthful, sincere, earnest. I had implicit
confidence in him and my confidence was proven by the record of his service
which was without a blemish. Nevertheless he shot his wife and children in
cold blood and then he shot himself. Fortunatdy none of them died; they all
lay in the hospital together and they all recovered. I went to see his wife,
after they had transferred him to jail, to get her help. She refused
categorically. She said he was the meanest, cruellest son of a bitch that
ever walked on two legs - she wanted to see him hanged. I pleaded with her
for two days, but she was adamant. I went to the jail and talked to him
through the mesh. I found that he had already made himself popular with the
authorities, had already been granted special privileges. He wasn't at all
dejected. On the contrary, he was looking forward to making the best of his
time in prison by "studying up" on salesmanship. He was going to be the best
salesman in America after his release. I might almost say that he seemed
happy. He said not to worry about him, he would get along all right. He said
everybody was swell to him and that he had nothing to complain about. I left
him somewhat in a daze. I went to a nearby beach and decided to take a swim.
I saw everything with new eyes. I almost forgot to return home, so absorbed
had I become in my speculations about this chap. Who could say that
everything that happened to him had not happened for the best? Perhaps he
might leave the prison a full-fledged evangelist instead of a salesman.
Nobody could predict what he might do. And nobody could aid him because he
was working out his destiny in his own private way.
There was another chap, a Hindu named Guptal. He was not only a model
of good behaviour - he was a saint. He had a passion for the flute which he
played all by himself in his miserable little room. One day he was found
naked, his throat slit from ear to ear, and beside him on the bed was his
flute. At the funeral there were a dozen women who wept passionate tears,
including the wife of the janitor who had murdered him. I could write a book
about this young man who was the gentlest and the holiest man I ever met,
who had never offended anybody and never taken anything from anybody, but
who had made the cardinal mistake of coming to America to spread peace and
love.
There was Dave Olinski, another faithftil, industrious messenger who
thought of nothing but work. He had one fatal weakness - he talked too much.
When he came to me he had already been around the globe several times and
what he hadn't done to make a living isn't worth telling about. He knew
about twelve languages and he was rather proud of his linguistic ability. He
was one of those men whose very willingness and enthusiasm is their undoing.
He wanted to help everybody along, show everybody how to succeed. He wanted
more work than we could give him - he was a glutton for work. Perhaps I
should have warned him, when I sent him to his office on the East Side, that
he was going to work in a tough neighbourhood, but he pretended to know so
much and he was so insistent on working in that locality (because of his
linguistic ability) that I said nothing. I thought to myself - you'll find
out quickly enough for yourself. And surely enough, he was only there a
short time when he got into trouble. A tough Jew boy from the neighbourhood
walked in one day and asked for a blank. Dave, the messenger, was behind the
desk. He didn't like the way the man asked for the blank. He told him he
ought to be more polite. For that he got a box in the ears. That made him
wag his tongue some more, whereupon he got such a wallop that his teeth flew
down his throat and his jaw-bone was broken in three places. Still he didn't
know enough to hold his trap. Like the damned fool that he was he goes to
the police station and registers a complaint. A week later, while he's
sitting on a bench snoozing, a gang of roughnecks break into the place and
beat him to a pulp. His head was so battered that his brains looked like an
omelette. For good measure they emptied the safe and turned it upside down.
Dave died on the way to hospital. They found five hundred dollars hidden
away in the toe of his sock. ... Then there was Clausen and his wife Lena.
They came in together when he applied for the job. Lena had a baby in her
arms and he had two little ones by the hand. They were sent to me by some
relief agency. I put him on as a night messenger so that he'd have a fixed
salary. In a few days I had a letter from him, a batty letter in which he
asked me to excuse him for being absent as he had to report to his parole
officer. Then another letter saying that his wife had refused to sleep with
him because she didn't want any more babies and would I please come to see
them and try to persuade her to sleep with him -. I went to his home - a
cellar in the Italian quarter. It looked like a bughouse. Lena was pregnant
again, about seven months under way, and on the verge of idiocy. She had
taken to sleeping on the roof because it was too hot in the cellar, also
because she didn't want him to touch her any more. When I said it wouldn't
make any difference now she just looked at me and grinned. Clausen had been
in the war and maybe the gas had made him a bit goofy - at any rate he was
foaming at the mouth. He said he would brain her if she didn't stay off that
roof. He insinuated that she was sleeping up there in order to carry on with
the coal man who lived in the attic. At this Lena smiled again with that
mirthless batrachian grin. Clausen lost his temper and gave her a swift kick
in the ass. She went out in a huff taking the brats with her. He told her to
stay out for good. Then he opened a drawer and pulled out a big Colt. He was
keeping it in case he needed it some time, he said. He showed me a few
knives too, and a sort of blackjack which he had made himself. Then he began
to weep. He said his wife was making a fool of him. He said he was sick of
working for her because she was sleeping with everybody in the
neighbourhood. The kids weren't his because he couldn't make a kid any more
even if he wanted to. The very next day, while Lena was out marketing, he
took the kids up to the roof and with the blackjack he had shown me he beat
their brains out. Then he jumped off the roof head first. When Lena came
home and saw what happened she went off her nut. They had to put her in a
straight-jacket and call for the ambulance... There was Schuldig the rat who
had spent twenty years in prison for a crime he had never committed. He had
been beaten almost to death before he confessed; then solitary confinement,
starvation, torture, perversion, dope. When they finally released him he was
no longer a human being. He described to me one night his last thirty days
in jail, the agony of waiting to be released. I have never heard anything
like it; I didn't think a human being could survive such anguish. Freed, he
was haunted by the fear that he might be obliged to commit a crime and be
sent back to prison again. He complained of being followed, spied on,
perpetually tracked. He said "they" were tempting him to do things he had no
desire to do. "They" were the dicks who were on his trail, who were paid to
bring him back again. At night, when he was asleep, they whispered in his
ear. He was powerless against them because they mesmerized him first.
Sometimes they placed dope under his pillow, and with it a revolver or a
knife. They wanted him to kill some innocent person so that they would have
a solid case against him this time. He got worse and worse. One night, after
he had walked around for hours with a batch of telegrams in his pocket, he
went up to a cop and asked to be locked up. He couldn't remember his name or
address or even the office he was working for. He had completely lost his
identity. He repeated over and over - "I'm innocent... I'm innocent." Again
they gave him the third degree. Suddenly he jumped up and shouted like a
madman - "I'll confess ... I'll confess" - and with that he began to reel
off one crime after another. He kept it up for three hours. Suddenly in the
midst of a harrowing confession, he stopped short, gave a quick look about,
like a man who has suddenly come to, and then, with the rapidity and the
force which only a madman can summon he made a tremendous leap across the
room and crashed his skull against the stone wall... I relate these
incidents briefly and hurriedly as they flash through my mind; my memory is
packed with thousands of such details, with a myriad faces, gestures, tales,
confessions all entwined and interlaced like the stupendous reeling facade
of some Hindu temple made not of stone but of the experience of human flesh,
a monstrous dream edifice built entirely of reality and yet not reality
itself but merely the vessel in which the mystery of the human being is
contained. My mind wanders to the clinic where in ignorance and good-will I
brought some of the younger ones to be cured. I can think of no more
evocative image to convey the atmosphere of this place than the painting by
Hieronymus Bosch in which the magician, after the manner of a dentist
extracting a live nerve, is represented as the deliverer of insanity. All
the trumpery and quackery of our scientific practitioners came to apotheosis
in the person of the suave sadist who operated this clinic with the full
concurrence and connivance of the law. He was a ringer for Caligari, except
that he was minus the dunce cap. Pretending that he understood the secret
regulations of the glands, invested with the powers of a mediaeval monarch,
oblivious of the pain he inflicted, ignorant of everything but his medical
knowledge, he went to work on the human organism like a plumber sets to work
on the underground drainpipes. In addition to the poisons he threw into the
patient's system he had recourse to his fists or his knees as the case might
be. Anything justified a "reaction". If the victim were lethargic he shouted
at him, slapped him in the face, pinched his arm, cuffed him, kicked him. If
on the contrary the victim were too energetic he employed the same methods,
only with redoubled zest. The feelings of his subject were of no importance
to him; whatever reaction he succeeded in obtaining was merely a
demonstration or manifestation of the laws regulating the operation of the
internal glands of secretion. The purpose of his treatment was to render the
subject fit for society. But no matter how fast he worked, no matter whether
he was successful or not successful, society was turning out more and more
misfits. Some of them were so marvellously maladapted that when, in order to
get proverbial reaction, he slapped them vigorously on the cheek they
responded with an uppercut or a kick in the balls. It's true, most of his
subjects were exactly what he described them to be - incipient criminals.
The whole continent was on the slide - is still on the slide - and not only
the glands need regulating but the ball-bearing, the armature, the skeletal
structure, the cerebrum, the cerebellum, the coccyx, the larynx, the
pancreas, the liver, the upper intestine and the lower intestine, the heart,
the kidneys, the testicles, the womb, the Fallopian tubes, the whole
god-damned works. The whole country is lawless, violent, explosive,
demoniacal. It's in the air, in the climate, in the ultra-grandiose
landscape, in the stone forests that are lying horizontal, in the torrential
rivers that bite through the rocky canyons, in the supra-normal distances,
the supernal arid wastes, the over-lush crops, the monstrous fruits, the
mixture of quixotic bloods, the fatras of cults, sects, beliefs, the
opposition of laws and languages, the contra-dictoriness of temperaments,
principles, needs, requirements. The continent is full of buried violence,
of the bones of antediluvian monsters and of lost races of man, of mysteries
which are wrapped in doom. The atmosphere is at times so electrical that the
soul is summoned out of its body and runs amok. Like the rain everything
comes in bucketsful - or not at all. The whole continent is a huge volcano
whose crater is temporarily concealed by a moving panorama which is partly
dream, partly fear, partly despair. From Alaska to Yucatan it's the same
story. Nature dominates. Nature wins out. Everywhere the same fundamental
urge to slay, to ravage, to plunder. Outwardly they seem like a fine,
upstanding people - healthy, optimistic, courageous. Inwardly they are
filled with worms. A tiny spark and they blow up.
Often it happened, as in Russia, that a man came in with a chip on his
shoulder. He woke up that way, as if struck by a monsoon. Nine times out
often he was a good fellow, a fellow whom everybody liked. But when the rage
came on nothing could stop him. He was like a horse with the blind staggers
and the best thing you could do for him was to shoot him on the spot. It
always happens that way with peaceable people. One day they run amok. In
America they're constantly running amok. What they need is an outlet for
their energy, for their blood lust. Europe is bled regularly by war. America
is pacifistic and cannibalistic. Outwardly it seems to be a beautiful
honeycomb, with all the drones crawling over each other in a frenzy of work;
inwardly it's a slaughterhouse, each man killing off his neighbour and
sucking the juice from his bones. Superficially it looks like a bold,
masculine world; actually it's a whorehouse run by women, with the native
sons acting as pimps and the bloody foreigners selling their flesh. Nobody
knows what it is to sit on his ass and be content. That happens only in the
films where everything is faked, even the fires of hell. The whole continent
is sound asleep and in that sleep a grand nightmare is taking place.
Nobody could have slept more soundly than I in the midst of this
nightmare. The war, when it came along, made only a sort of faint rumble in
my ears. Like my compatriots, I was pacifistic and cannibalistic. The
millions who were put away in the carnage passed away in a cloud, much like
the Aztecs passed away, and the Incas and the red Indians and the buffaloes.
People pretended to be profoundly moved, but they weren't. They were simply
tossing fitfully in their sleep. No one lost his appetite, no one got up and
rang the fire alarm. The day I first realized that there had been a war was
about six months or so after the armistice. It was in a street car on the
14th Street crosstown line. One of our heroes, a Texas lad with a string of
medals across his chest, happened to see an officer passing on the sidewalk.
The sight of the officer enraged him. He was a sergeant himself and he
probably had good reason to be sore. Anyway, the sight of the officer
enraged him so that he got up from his seat and began to bawl the shit out
of the government, the army, the civilians, the passengers in the. car,
everybody and everything. He said if there was ever another war they
couldn't drag him to it with a twenty mule team. He said he'd see every son
of a bitch killed before he'd go again himself; he said he didn't give a
fuck about the medals they had decorated him with and to show that he meant
it he ripped them off and threw them out the window; he said if he was ever
in a trench with an officer again he'd shoot him in the back like a dirty
dog, and that held good for General Pershing or any other general. He said a
lot more, with some fancy cuss words that he'd picked up over there, and
nobody opened his trap to gainsay him. And when he got through I felt for
the first time that there had really been a war and that the man I was
listening to had been in it and that despite his bravery the war had made
him a coward and that if he did any more killing it would be wide-awake and
in cold blood, and nobody would have the guts to send him to the electric
chair because he had performed his duty towards his fellow men, which was to
deny his own sacred instincts and so everything was just and fair because
one crime washes away the other in the name of God, country and humanity,
peace be with you all. And the second time I experienced the reality of war
was when ex-sergeant Griswold, one of our night messengers, flew off the
handle one day and smashed the office to bits at one of the railway
stations. They sent him to me to give him the gate, but I didn't have the
heart to fire him. He had performed such a beautiful piece of destruction
that I felt more like hugging and squeezing him; I was only hoping to Christ
he would go up the 25th floor, or wherever it was that the president and the
vice-presidents had their offices, and mop up the whole bloody gang. But in
the name of discipline, and to uphold the bloody farce it was, I had to do
something to punish him or be punished for it myself, and so not knowing
what less I could do I took him off the commission basis and put him back on
a salary basis. He took it pretty badly, not realizing exactly where I
stood, either for him or against him and so I got a letter from him pronto,
saying that he was going to pay me a visit in a day or two and that I'd
better watch out because he was going to take it out of my hide. He said
he'd come up after office hours and that if I was afraid I'd better have
some strong-arm men around to look after me. I knew he meant every word he
said and I felt pretty damned quaky when I put the letter down. I waited in
for him alone, however, feeling that it would be even more cowardly to ask
for protection. It was a strange experience. He must have realized the
moment he laid eyes on me that if I was a son of a bitch and a lying,
stinking hypocrite, as he had called me in his letter, I was only that
because he was, which wasn't a hell of a lot better. He must have realized
immediately that we were both in the same boat and that the bloody boat was
leaking pretty badly. I could see something like that going on in him as he
strode forward, outwardly still furious, still foaming at the mouth, but
inwardly all spent, all soft and feathery. As for myself, what fear I had
vanished the moment I saw him enter. Just being there quiet and alone, and
being less strong, less capable of defending myself, gave me the drop on
him. Not that I wanted to have the drop on him either. But it had turned out
that way and I took advantage of it, naturally. The moment he sat down he
went soft as putty. He wasn't a man any more, but just a big child. There
must have been millions of them like him, big children with machine guns who
could wipe out whole regiments without batting an eyelash; but back in the
work trenches, without a weapon, without a clear, visible enemy, they were
helpless as ants. Everything revolved about the question of food. The food
and the rent - that was all there was to fight about - but there was no way,
no dear, visible way, to fight for it. It was like seeing an army strong and
well equipped, capable of licking anything in sight, and yet ordered to
retreat every day, to retreat and retreat and retreat because that was the
strategic thing to do, even though it meant losing ground, losing guns,
losing ammunition, losing food, losing sleep, losing courage, losing life
itself finally. Wherever there were men fighting for food and rent there was
this retreat going on, in the fog, in the night, for no earthly reason
except that it was the strategic thing to do. It was eating the heart out of
him. To fight was easy, but to fight for food and rent was like fighting an
army of ghosts. All you could do was to retreat, and while you retreated you
watched your own brothers getting popped on, one after the other, silently,
mysteriously, in the fog, in the dark, and not a thing to do about it. He
was so damned confused, so perplexed, so hopelessly muddled and beaten, that
he put his head in his arms and wept on my desk. And while he's sobbing like
that suddenly the telephone rings and it's the vice-president's office -
never the vice-president himself, but always his office -and they want this
man Griswold fired immediately and I say Yes Sir! and I hang up. I don't say
anything to Griswold about it but I walk home with him and I have dinner
with him and his wife and kids. And when I leave him I say to myself that if
I have to fire that guy somebody's going to pay for it - and anyway I want
to know first where the order comes from and why. And hot and sullen I go
right up to the vice-president's office in the morning and I ask to see the
vice-president himself and did you give the order I ask - and why? And
before he has a chance to deny it, or to explain his reason for it, I give
him a little war stuff straight from the shoulder and where he don't like it
and can't take it - and if you don't like it, Mr. Will Twilldilliger, you
can take the job, my job and his job and you can shove them up your ass -
and like that I walk out on him. I go back to the slaughterhouse and I go
about my work as usual. I expect, of course, that I'll get the sack before
the day's over. But nothing of the kind. No, to my amazement I get a
telephone call from the general manager saying to take it easy, to just calm
down a bit, yes, just go easy, don't do anything hasty, we'll look into it,
etc. I guess they're still looking into it because Griswold went on working
just as always - in fact, they even promoted him to a clerkship, which was a
dirty deal, too, because as a clerk he earned less money than as a
messenger, but it saved his pride and it also took a little more of the
spunk out of him too, no doubt. But that's what happens to a guy when he's
just a hero in his sleep. Unless the nightmare is strong enough to wake you
up you go right on retreating, and either you end up on a bench or you end
up as vice-president. It's all one and the same, a bloody fucking mess, a
farce, a fiasco from start to finish. I know it as I was in it, because I
woke up. And when I woke up I walked out on it. I walked out by the same
door that I had walked in - without as much as a by your leave, sir!
Things take place instantaneously, but there's a long process to be
gone through first. What you get when something happens is only the
explosion, and the second before that the spark. But everything happens
according to law - and with the full consent and collaboration of the whole
cosmos. Before I could get up and explode the bomb had to be properly
prepared, properly primed. After putting things in order for the bastards up
above I had to be taken down from my high horse, had to be kicked around
like a football, had to be stepped on, squelched, humiliated, fettered,
manacled, made impotent as a jellyfish. All my life I have never wanted for
friends, but at this particular period they seemed to spring up around me
like mushrooms. I never had a moment to myself. If I went home of a night,
hoping to take a rest, somebody would be there waiting to see me. Sometimes
a gang of them would be there and it didn't seem to make much difference
whether I came or not. Each set of friends I made despised the other set.
Stanley, for example, despised the whole lot. Ulric too was rather scornful
of the others. He had just come back from Europe after an absence of several
years. We hadn't seen much of each other since boyhood and then one day,
quite by accident, we met on the street. That day was an important day in my
life because it opened up a new world to me, a world I had often dreamed
about but never hoped to see. I remember vividly that we were standing on
the comer of Sixth Avenue and 49th Street towards dusk. I remember it
because it seemed utterly incongruous to be listening to a man talking about
Mt. Aetna and Vesuvius and Capri and Pompeii and Morocco and Paris on the
comer of Sixth Avenue and 49th St., Manhattan. I remember the way he looked
about as he talked, like a man who hadn't quite realized what he was in for
but who vaguely sensed that he had made a horrible mistake in returning. His
eyes seemed to be saying all the time - this has no value, no value
whatever. He didn't say that, however, but just this over and over: "I'm
sure you'd like it! I'm sure it's just the place for you." When he left me I
was in a daze. I couldn't get hold of him again quickly enough. I wanted to
hear it all over again, in minute detail. Nothing that I had read about
Europe seemed to match this glowing account from my friend's own lips. It
seemed all the more miraculous to me in that we had sprung out of the same
environment. He had managed it because he had rich friends - and because he
knew how to save his money. I had never known any one who was rich, who had
travelled, who had money in the bank. All my friends were like myself,
drifting from day to day, and never a thought for the future. O'Mara, yes,
he had travelled a bit, almost all over the world - but as a bum, or eke in
the army, which was even worse than being a bum. My friend Ulric was the
first fellow I had ever met whom I could truly say had travelled. And he
knew how to talk about his experiences.
As a result of that chance encounter on the street we met frequently
thereafter, for a period of several months. He used to call for me in the
evening after dinner and we would stroll through the park which was nearby.
What a thirst I had! Every slightest detail about the other world fascinated
me. Even now, years and years since, even now, when I know Paris like a
book, his picture of Paris is still before my eyes, still vivid, still real.
Sometimes after a rain, riding swiftly through the city in a taxi, I catch
fleeting glimpses of this Paris he described; just momentary snatches, as in
passing the Tuileries, perhaps, or a glimpse of Montmartre, of the Sacre
Coeur, through the Rue Laffite, in the last flush of twilight. Just a
Brooklyn boy! That was an expression he used sometimes when he felt ashamed
of his inability to express himself more adequately. And I was just a
Brooklyn boy, too, which is to say one of the last and the least of men. But
as I wander about, rubbing elbows with the world, seldom it happens that I
meet any one who can describe so lovingly and faithfully what he has seen
and felt. Those nights in Prospect Park with my old friend Ulric are
responsible, more than anything else, for my being here to-day. Most of the
places he described for me I have still to see; some of them I shall perhaps
never see. But they live inside me, warm and vivid, just as he created them
in our rambles through the park.
Interwoven with this talk of the other world was the whole body and
texture of Lawrence's work. Often, when the park had long been emptied, we
were still sitting on a bench discussing the nature of Lawrence's ideas.
Looking back on these discussions now I can see how confused I was, how
pitifully ignorant of the true meaning of Lawrence's words. Had I really
understood, my life could never have taken the course it did. Most of us
live the greater part of our lives submerged. Certainly in my own case I can
say that not until I left America did I emerge above the surface. Perhaps
America had nothing to do with it, but the fact remains that I did not open
my eyes wide and full and dear until I struck Paris. And perhaps that was
only because I had renounced America, renounced my past.
My friend Kronski used to twit me about my "euphorias". It was a sly
way he had of reminding me, when I was extraordinarily gay, that the morrow
would find me depressed. It was true. I had nothing but ups and downs. Long
stretches of gloom and melancholy followed by extravagant bursts of gaiety,
of trancelike inspiration. Never a level in which I was myself. It sounds
strange to say so, yet I was never myself. I was either anonymous or the
person called Henry Miller raised to the nth degree. In the latter mood, for
instance, I could spill out a whole book to Hymie while riding a trolleycar.
Hymie, who never suspected me of being anything but a good employment
manager. I can see his eyes now as he looked at me one night when I was in
one of my states of "euphoria". We had boarded the trolley at the Brooklyn
Bridge to go to some flat in Greenpoint where a couple of trollops were
waiting to receive us. Hymie had started to talk to me in his usual way
about his wife's ovaries. In the first place he didn't know precisely what
ovaries meant and so I was explaining it to him in crude and simple fashion.
In the midst of my explanation it suddenly seemed so profoundly tragic and
ridiculous that Hymie shouldn't know what ovaries were that I became drunk,
as drunk I mean as if I had a quart of whisky under my belt. From the idea
of diseased ovaries there germinated in one lightning-like flash a sort of
tropical growth made up of the most heterogeneous assortment of odds and
ends in the midst of which, securely lodged, tenaciously lodged, I might
say, were Dante and Shakespeare. At the same instant I also suddenly
recalled my whole private train of thought which had begun about the middle
of the Brooklyn Bridge and which suddenly the word "ovaries" had broken. I
realized that everything Hymie had said up till the word "ovaries", had
sieved through me like sand. What I had begun, in the middle of the Brooklyn
Bridge, was what I had begun time and time again in the past, usually when
walking to my father's shop, a performance which was repeated day in and day
out as if in a trance. What I had begun, in brief, was a book of the hours,
of the tedium and monotony of my life in the midst of a ferocious activity.
Not for years had I thought of this book which I used to write every day on
my way from Delancey Street to Murray Hill. But going over the bridge the
sun setting, the skyscrapers gleaming like phosphorescent cadavers, the
remembrance of the past set in ... remembrance of going back and forth over
the bridge, going to a job which was death, returning to a home which was a
morgue, memorizing Faust looking down into the cemetery, spitting into the
cemetery from the elevated train, the same guard on the platform every
morning, an imbecile, the other imbeciles reading their newspapers, new
skyscrapers going up, new tombs to work in and die in, the boats passing
below, the Fall River Line, the Albany Day Line, why am I going to work,
what will I do to-night, the warm cunt beside me and can I work my knuckles
into her groin, run away and become a cowboy, try Alaska, the gold mines,
get off and turn around, don't die yet, wait another day, a stroke of luck,
river, end it, down, down, like a corkscrew, head and shoulders in the mud,
legs free, fish will come and bite, to-morrow a new life, where, anywhere,
why begin again, the same thing everywhere, death, death is the solution,
but don't die yet, wait another day, a stroke of luck, a new face, a new
friend, millions of chances, you're too young yet, you're melancholy, you
don't die yet, wait another day, a stroke of luck, fuck anyway, and so on
over the bridge into the glass shed, everybody glued together, worms, ants,
crawling out of a dead tree and their thoughts crawling out the same way . .
. Maybe, being up high between the two shores, suspended above the traffic,
above life and death, on each side the high tombs, tombs blazing with dying
sunlight, the river flowing heedlessly, flowing on like time itself, maybe
each time I passed up there, something was tugging away at me, urging me to
take it in, to announce myself, anyway each time I passed on high I was
truly alone, and whenever that happened the book commenced to write itself,
screaming the things which I never breathed, the thoughts I never uttered,
the conversations I never held, the hopes, the dreams, the delusions I never
admitted. If this then was the true self it was marvellous, and what's more
it seemed never to change but always to pick up from the last stop to
continue in the same vein, a vein I had struck when I was a child and went
down in the street for the first time alone and there frozen in the dirty
ice of the gutter lay a dead cat, the first time I had looked at death and
grasped it. From that moment I knew what it was to be isolated: every
object, every living thing and every dead thing led its independent
existence. My thoughts too led an independent existence. Suddenly, looking
at Hymie and thinking of that strange word "ovaries", now stranger than any
word in my whole vocabulary, this feeling of icy isolation came over me and
Hymie sitting beside me was a bull-frog, absolutely a bull-frog and nothing
more. I was jumping from the bridge head first, down into the primeval ooze,
the legs dear and waiting for a bite; like that Satan had plunged through
the heavens, through the solid core of the earth, head down and ramming
through to the very hub of the earth, the darkest, densest, hottest pit of
hell. I was walking through the Mojave Desert and the man beside me was
waiting for nightfall in order to fall on me and slay me. I was walking
again in Dreamland and a man was walking above me on a tightrope and above
him a man was sitting in an aeroplane spelling letters of smoke in the sky.
The woman hanging on my arm was pregnant and in six or seven years the thing
she was carrying inside her would be able to read the letters in the sky and
he or she or it would know that it was a cigarette and later would smoke the
cigarette, perhaps a package a day. In the womb nails formed on every
finger, every toe; you could stop right there, at a toe nail, the tiniest
toe nail imaginable and you could break your head over it, trying to figure
it out. On one side of the ledger are the books man has written, containing
such a hodge-podge of wisdom and nonsense, of truth and falsehood, that if
one lived to be as old as Methuselah one couldn't disentangle the mess; on
the other side of the ledger things like toe nails, hair, teeth, blood,
ovaries, if you will, all incalculable and all written in another kind of
ink, in another script, an incomprehensible, undecipherable script. The
bull-frog eyes were trained on me like two collar buttons stuck in cold fat;
they were stuck in the cold sweat of the primeval ooze. Each collar button
was an ovary that had come unglued, an illustration out of the dictionary
without benefit of lucubration; lacklustre in the cold yellow fat of the
eyeball each buttoned ovary produced a subterranean chill, the skating rink
of hell where men stood upside down in the ice, the legs free and waiting
for a bite. Here Dante walked unaccompanied, weighed down by his vision, and
through endless circles gradually moving heavenward to be enthroned in his
work. Here Shakespeare with smooth brow fell into the bottomless reverie of
rage to emerge in elegant quartos and innuendoes. A glaucous frost of
non-comprehension swept dear by gales of laughter. From the hub of the
bull-frog's eye radiated dean white spokes of sheer lucidity not to be
annotated or categorized, not to be numbered or defined, but revolving
sightless in kaleidoscopic change. Hymie the bull-frog was an ovarian spud
generated in the high passage between two shores: for him the skyscrapers
had been built, the wilderness cleared, the Indians massacred, the buffaloes
exterminated; for him the twin dries had been joined by the Brooklyn Bridge,
the caissons sunk, the cables strung from tower to tower; for him men sat
upside down in the sky writing words in fire and smoke; for him the
anaesthetic was invented and the high forceps and the big Bertha which could
destroy what the eye could not see; for him the molecule was broken down and
the atom revealed to be without substance; for him each night the stars were
swept with telescopes and worlds coming to birth photographed in the act of
gestation; for him the barriers of time and space were set at nought and all
movement, be it the flight of birds or the revolution of the planets,
expounded irrefutably and incontestably by the high priests of the
de-possessed cosmos. Then, as in the middle of the bridge, in the middle of
a walk, in the middle always, whether of a book, a conversation, or making
love, it was borne in on me again that I had never done what I wanted and
out of not doing what I wanted to do there grew up inside me this creation
which was nothing but an obsessional plant, a sort of coral growth, which
was expropriating everything, including life itself, until life itself
became this which was denied but which constantly asserted itself, making
life and killing life at the same time. I could see it going on after death,
like hair growing on a corpse, people saying "death" but the hair still
testifying to life, and finally no death but this life of hair and nails,
the body gone, the spirit quenched, but in the death something still alive,
expropriating space, causing time, creating endless movement. Through love
this night happen, or sorrow, or being born with a dub foot; the cause
nothing, the event everything. In the beginning was the Word . .. Whatever
this was, the Word, disease or creation, it was still running rampant; it
would run on and on, outstrip time and space, outlast the angels, unseat
God, unhook the universe. Any word contained all words - for him who had
become detached through love or sorrow or whatever the cause. In every word
the current ran back to the beginning which was lost and which would never
be found again since there was neither beginning nor end but only that which
expressed itself in beginning and end. So, on the ovarian trolley there was
this voyage of man and bull-frog composed of identical stuff, neither better
nor less than Dante but infinitely different, the one not knowing precisely
the meaning of anything, the other knowing too precisely the meaning of
everything, hence both lost and confused through beginnings and endings,
finally to be deposited at Java or India Street, Greenpoint, there to be
carried back into the current of life, so-called, by a couple of sawdust
moils with twitching ovaries of the well-known gastropod variety.
What strikes me now as the most wonderful proof of my fitness, or
unfitness, for the times is the fact that nothing people were writing or
talking about had any real interest for me. Only the object haunted me, the
separate detached, insignificant thing. It might be a part of the human body
or a staircase in a vaudeville house; it might be a smokestack or a button I
had found in the gutter. Whatever it was it enabled me to open up, to
surrender, to attach my signature. To the life about me, to the people who
made up the world I knew, I could not attach my signature. I was as
definitely outside their world as a cannibal is outside the bounds of
civilized society. I was filled with a perverse love of the
thing-in-itself-not a philosophic attachment, but a passionate, desperately
passionate hunger, as if in the discarded, worthless thing which everyone
ignored there was contained the secret of my own regeneration.
Living in the midst of a world where there was a plethora of the new I
attached myself to the old. In every object there was a minute particle
which particularly claimed my attention. I had a microscopic eye for the
blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty
of the object. Whatever set the object apart, or made it unserviceable, or
gave it a date, attracted and endeared it to me. If this was perverse it was
also healthy, considering that I was not destined to belong to this world
which was springing up about me. Soon I too would become like these objects
which I venerated, a thing apart, a non-useful member of society. I was
definitely dated, that was certain. And yet I was able to amuse, to
instruct, to nourish. But never to be accepted, in a genuine way. When I
wished to, when I had the itch, I could single out any man, in any stratum
of society, and make him listen to me. I could hold him spellbound, if I
chose, but, like a magician, or a sorcerer, only as long as the spirit was
in me. At bottom I sensed in others a distrust, an uneasiness, an antagonism
which, because it was instinctive, was irremediable. I should have been a
clown;
it would have afforded me the widest range of expression. But I
underestimated the profession. Had I become a clown, or even a vaudeville
entertainer, I would have been famous. People would have appreciated me
precisely because they would not have understood; but they would have
understood that I was not to be understood. That would have been a relief,
to say the least.
It was always a source of amazement to me how easily people could
become rued just listening to me talk. Perhaps my speech was somewhat
extravagant, though often it happened when I was holding myself in with main
force. The turn of a phrase, the choice of an unfortunate adjective, the
facility with which the words came to my Ups, the allusions to subjects
which were taboo - everything conspired to set me off as an outlaw, as an
enemy to society. No matter how well things began sooner or later they
smelled me out. If I were modest and humble, for example, then I was too
modest, too humble. If I were gay and spontaneous, bold and reckless, then I
was too free, too gay. I could never get myself quite au point with the
individual I happened to be talking to. If it were not a question of life
and death - everything was life and death to me then - if it was merely a
question of passing a pleasant evening at the home of some acquaintance, it
was the same thing. There were vibrations emanating from me, overtones and
undertones, which charged the atmosphere unpleasantly. Perhaps the whole
evening they had been amused by my stories, perhaps I had them in stitches,
as it often happened, and everything seemed to augur well. But sure as fate
something was bound to happen before the evening came to a dose, some
vibration set loose which made the chandelier ring or which reminded some
sensitive soul of the piss-pot under the bed. Even while the laughter was
still drying off the venom was beginning to make itself felt. "Hope to see
you again some time", they would say, but the wet, limp hand which was
extended would belie the words.
Persona mm grata! Jesus, how clear it seems to me now! No pick and
choice possible: I had to take what was to hand and leam to like it. I had
to learn to live with the scum, to swim like a sewer-rat or be drowned. If
you elect to join the herd you are immune. To be accepted and appreciated
you must nullify yourself, make yourself indistinguishable from the herd.
You may dream, if you are dreaming simultaneously. But if you dream
something different you are not in America, of America American, but a
Hottentot in Africa, or a Kalmuck, or a chimpanzee. The moment you have a
"different" thought you cease to be an American. And the moment you become
something different you find yourself in Alaska or Easter Island or Iceland.
Am I saying this with rancour, with envy, with malice? Perhaps. Perhaps
I regret not having been able to become an American. Perhaps. In my zeal
now, which is again American, I am about to give birth to a monstrous
edifice, a skyscraper, which will last undoubtedly long after the other
skyscrapers have vanished, but which will vanish too when that which
produced it disappears. Everything American will disappear one day, more
completely than that which was Greek, or Roman, or Egyptian. This is one of
the ideas which pushed me outside the warm, comfortable bloodstream where,
buffaloes all, we once grazed in peace. An idea that has caused me infinite
sorrow, for not to belong to something enduring is the last agony. But I am
not a buffalo and I have no desire to be one. I am not even a spiritual
buffalo. I have slipped away to rejoin an older stream of consciousness, a
race antecedent to the buffaloes, a race that will survive the buffalo.
All things, all objects animate or inanimate that are different, are
veined with ineradicable traits. What is me is ineradicable, because it is
different. This is a skyscraper, as I said, but it is different from the
usual skyscraper a 1'americaine. In this sky" scraper there are no
elevators, no 73rd story windows to jump from. If you get tired of climbing
you are shit out of luck. There is no slot directory in the main lobby. If
you are search-ing for somebody you will have to search. If you want a drink
you will have to go out and get it; there are no soda fountains in this
building, and no cigar stores, and no telephone booths. All the other
skyscrapers have what you want! this one contains nothing but what I want,
what I like. And somewhere in this skyscraper Valeska has her being, and
we're going to get to her when the spirit moves me. For the time being she's
all right, Valeska, seeing as how she's six feet under and by now perhaps
picked dean by the worms. When she was in the flesh she was picked dean too,
by the human worms who have no respect for anything which has a different
tint, a different odour.
The sad thing about Valeska was the fact that she had nigger blood in
her veins. It was depressing for everybody around her. She made you aware of
it whether you wished to be or not. The nigger blood, as I say, and the fact
that her mother was a trollop. The mother was white of course. Who the
father was nobody knew, not even Valeska herself.
Everything was going along smoothly until the day an officious little
Jew from the vice-president's office happened to espy her. He was horrified,
so he informed me confidentially, to think that I had employed a coloured
person as my secretary. He spoke as though she might contaminate the
messengers. The next day I was put on the carpet. It was exactly as though I
had committed sacrilege. Of course, I pretended that I hadn't observed
anything unusual about her, except that she was extremely intelligent and
extremely capable. Finally the president himself stepped in. There was a
short interview between him and Valeska during which he very diplomatically
proposed to give her a better position in Havana. No talk of the blood
taint. Simply that her services had been altogether remarkable and that they
would like to promote her - to Havana. Valeska came back to the office in a
rage. When she was angry she was magnificent. She said she wouldn't budge.
Steve Romero and Hymie were there at the time and we all went out to dinner
together. During the course of the evening we got a bit tight. Valeska's
tongue was wagging. On the way home she told me that she was going to put up
a fight; she wanted to know if it would endanger my job. I told her quietly
that if she were fired I would quit too. She pretended not to believe it at
first. I said I meant it, that I didn't care what happened. She seemed to be
unduly impressed, she took me by the two hands and she held them very
gently, the tears rolling down her cheeks.
That was the beginning of things. I think it was the very next day that
I slipped her a note saying that I was crazy about her. She read the note
sitting opposite me and when she was through she looked me square in the eye
and said she didn't believe it. But we went to dinner again that night and
we had more to drink and we danced and while we were dancing she pressed
herself against me lasciviously. It was just the time, as luck would have
it, that my wife was getting ready to have another abortion. I was telling
Valeska about it as we danced. On the way home she suddenly said - "why
don't you let me lend you a hundred dollars?" The next night I brought her
home to dinner and I let her hand the wife the hundred dollars. I was amazed
how well the two of them got along. Before the evening was over it was
agreed upon that Valeska would come to the house the day of the abortion and
take care of the kid. The day came and I gave Valeska the afternoon off.
About an hour after she had left I suddenly decided that I would take the
afternoon off also. I started towards the burlesque on Fourteenth Street.
When I was about a block from the theatre I suddenly changed my mind. It was
just the thought that if anything happened - if the wife were to kick-off- I
wouldn't feel so damned good having spent the afternoon at the burlesque. I
walked around a bit, in and out of the penny arcades, and then I started
homeward.
It's strange how things turn out. Trying to amuse the kid I suddenly
remembered a trick my grandfather had shown me when I was a child. You take
the dominoes and you make tall battleships out of them; then you gently pull
the tablecloth on which the battleships are floating until they come to the
edge of the table when suddenly you give a brisk tug and they fall on to the
floor. We tried it over and over again, the three of us, until the kid got
so sleepy that she toddled off to the next room and fell asleep. The
dominoes were lying all over the floor and the tablecloth was on the floor
too. Suddenly Valeska was leaning against the table, her tongue halfway down
my throat, my hand between her legs. As I laid her back on the table she
twined her legs around me. I could feel one of the dominoes under my feet -
part of the fleet that we had destroyed a dozen times or more. I thought of
my grandfather sitting on the bench, the way he had warned my mother one day
that I was too young to be reading so much, the pensive look in his eyes as
he pressed the hot iron against the wet seam of a coat; I thought of the
attack on San Juan Hill which the Rough Riders had made, the picture of:
Teddy .charging at the head of his volunteers in the big book which I used
to read beside the workbench; I thought of the battleship Maine that floated
over my bed in the little room with the iron-barred window, and of Admiral
Dewey and of Schley and Sampson; I thought of the trip to the Navy Yard
which I never made because on the way my father suddenly remembered that we
had to call on the doctor that afternoon and when I left the doctor's office
I didn't have any more tonsils nor any more faith in human beings ... We had
hardly finished when the bell rang and it was my wife coming home from the
slaughter house. I was still buttoning my fly as I went through the hall to
open the gate. She was as white as flour. She looked as though she'd never
be able to go through another one. We put her to bed and then we gathered up
the dominoes and put the tablecloth back on the table. Just the other night
in a bistrot, as I was going to the toilet, I happened to pass two old
fellows playing dominoes. I had to stop a moment and pick up a domino. The
feeling of it immediately brought back the battleships, the clatter they
made when they fell on the floor. And with the battleships my lost tonsils
and my faith in human beings gone. So that every time I walked over the
Brooklyn Bridge and looked down towards the Navy Yard I felt as though my
guts were dropping out. Way up there, suspended between the two shores, I
felt always as though I were hanging over a void; up there everything that
had ever happened to me seemed unreal, and worse than unreal - unnecessary.
Instead of joining me to life, to men, to the activity of men, the bridge
seemed to break all connections. If I walked towards the one shore or the
other it made no difference: either way was hell. Somehow I had managed to
sever my connection with the world that human hands and human minds were
creating. Perhaps my grandfather was right, perhaps I was spoiled in the bud
by the books I read. But it is ages since books have claimed me. For a long
time now I have practically ceased to read. But the taint is still there.
Now people are books to me. I read them from cover to cover and toss them
aside. I devour them, one after the other. And the more I read, the more
insatiable I become. There is no limit to it. There could be no end, and
there was none, until inside me a bridge began to form which united me again
with the current of life from which as a child I had been separated.
A terrible sense of desolation. It hung over me for years. If I were to
believe in the stars I should have to believe that I was completely under
the reign of Saturn. Everything that happened to me happened too late to
mean much to me. It was even so with my birth. Slated for Christmas I was
born a half hour too late. It always seemed to me that I was meant to be the
sort of individual that one is destined to be by virtue of being born on the
25th day of December. Admiral Dewey was born on that day and so was Jesus
Christ . . . perhaps Krishnamurti too, for all I know. Anyway that's the
sort of guy I was intended to be. But due to the fact that my mother had a
clutching womb, that she held me in her grip like an octopus, I came out
under another configuration - with a bad set-up, in other words. They say -
the astrologers, I mean -that it will get better and better for me as I go
on; the future in fact, is supposed to be quite glorious. But what do I care
about the future? It would have been better if my mother had tripped on the
stairs the morning of the 25th of December and broken her neck: that would
have given me a fair start! When I try to think, therefore, of where the
break occurred I keep putting it back further and further, until there is no
other way of accounting for it than by the retarded hour of birth. Even my
mother, with her caustic tongue, seemed to understand it somewhat. "Always
dragging behind, like a cow's tail" - that's how she characterized me. But
is it my fault that she held me locked inside her until the hour had passed?
Destiny had prepared me to be such and such a person; the stars were in the
right conjunction and I was right with the stars and kicking to get out. But
I had no choice about the mother who was to deliver me. Perhaps I was lucky
not to have been born an idiot, considering all the circumstances. One thing
seems clear, however - and this is a hangover from the 25th - that I was
born with a crucifixion complex. That is, to be more precise, I was born a
fanatic. Fanatic! I remember that word being hurled at me from early
childhood on. By my parents especially. What is a fanatic? One who believes
passionately and acts desperately upon what he believes. I was always
believing in something and so getting into trouble. The more my hands were
slapped the more firmly I believed. / believed - and the rest of the world
did not! If it were only a question of enduring punishment one could go on
believing till the end; but the way of the world is more insidious than
that. Instead of being punished you are undermined, hollowed out, the ground
taken from under your feet. It isn't even treachery, what I have in mind.
Treachery is understandable and combatable. No, it is something worse,
something less than treachery. It's a negativism that causes you to
overreach yourself. You are perpetually spending your energy in the act of
balancing yourself. You are seized with a sort of spiritual vertigo, you
totter on the brink, your hair stands on end, you can't believe that beneath
your feet lies an immeasurable abyss. It comes about through excess of
enthusiasm, through a passionate desire to embrace people, to show them your
love. The more you reach out towards the world the more the world retreats.
Nobody wants real love, real hatred. Nobody wants you to put your hand in
his sacred entrails - that's only for the priest in the hour of sacrifice.
While you live, while the blood's still warm, you are to pretend that there
is no such thing as blood and no such things as a skeleton beneath the
covering of flesh. Keep off the grass! That's the motto by which people
live.
If you continue this balancing at the edge of the abyss long enough you
become very very adept: no matter which way you are pushed you always right
yourself. Being in constant trim you develop a ferocious gaiety, an
unnatural gaiety, I might say. There are only two peoples in the world
to-day who understand the meaning of such a statement - the Jews and the
Chinese. If it happens that you are neither of these you find yourself in a
strange predicament. You are always laughing at the wrong moment; you are
considered cruel and heartless when in reality you are only tough and
durable. But if you would laugh when others laugh and weep when they weep
then you must be prepared to die as they die and live as they live. That
means to be right and to get the worst of it at the same time. It means to
be dead while you are alive and alive only when you are dead. In this
company the world always wears a normal aspect, even under the most abnormal
conditions. Nothing is right or wrong but thinking makes it so. You no
longer believe in reality but in thinking. And when you are pushed off the
dead end your thoughts go with you and they are of no use to you.
In a way, in a profound way, I mean, Christ was never pushed off the
dead end. At the moment when he was tottering and swaying as if by a great
recoil, this negative backwash rolled up and stayed his death. The whole
negative impulse of humanity seemed to coil up into a monstrous inert mass
to create the human integer, the figure one, one and indivisible. There was
a resurrection which is inexplicable unless we accept the fact that men have
always been willing and ready to deny their own destiny. The earth rolls on,
the stars roll on, but men:
the great body of men which makes up the world, are caught in the image
of the one and only one.
If one isn't crucified, like Christ, if one manages to survive, to go
on living above and beyond the sense of desperation and futility, then
another curious thing happens. It's as though one had actually died and
actually been resurrected again, one lives a super-normal life, like the
Chinese. That is to say, one is unnaturally gay, unnaturally healthy,
unnaturally indifferent. The tragic sense is gone: one lives on like a
flower, a rock, a tree, one with Nature and against Nature at the same time.
If your best friend dies you don't even bother to go to the funeral; if a
man is run down by a street car right before your eyes you keep on walking
just as though nothing had happened;
if a war breaks out you let your friends go to the front but you
yourself take no interest in the slaughter. And so on and so on. Life
becomes a spectacle and, if you happen to be an artist, you record the
passing show. Loneliness is abolished, because all values, your own
included, are destroyed. Sympathy alone flourishes, but it is not a human
sympathy, a limited sympathy - it is something monstrous and evil. You care
so little that you can afford to sacrifice yourself for anybody or anything.
At the same time your interest, your curiosity, develops at an outrageous
pace. This tool is suspect, since it is capable of attaching you to a collar
button just as well as to a cause. There is no fundamental, unalterable
difference between things: all is flux, all is perishable. The surface of
your being is constantly crumbling; within however you grow hard as a
diamond. And perhaps it is this hard, magnetic core inside you which
attracts others to you willy-nilly. One thing is certain, that when you die
and are resurrected you belong to the earth and whatever is of the earth is
yours inalienably. You become an anomaly of nature, a being without shadow;
you will never die again but only pass away like the phenomena about
you.
Nothing of this which I am now recording was known to me at the time
that I was going through the great change. Everything I endured was in the
nature of a preparation for that moment when, putting on my hat one evening,
I walked out of the office, out of my hitherto private life, and sought the
woman who was to liberate me from a living death. In the light of this I
look back now upon my nocturnal rambles through the streets of New York, the
white nights when I walked in my sleep and saw the city in which I was born
as one sees things in a mirage. Often it was O'Rourke, the company
detective, whom I accompanied through the silent streets. Often the snow was
on the ground and the air chill frost. And O'Rourke talking interminably
about thefts, about murders, about love, about human nature, about the
Golden Age. He had a habit, when he was well launched upon a subject of
stopping suddenly in the middle of the street and planting his heavy foot
between mine so that I couldn't budge. And then, seizing the lapel of my
coat, he would bring his face dose to mine and talk into my eyes, each word
boring in like the turn of a gimlet. I can see again the two of us standing
in the middle of a street at four in the morning, the wind howling, the snow
blowing down, and O'Rourke oblivious of everything but the story he had to
get off his chest. Always as he talked I remember taking in the surroundings
out of the comer of my eye, being aware not of what he was saying but of the
two of us standing in Yorkville or on Alien Street or on Broadway. Always it
seemed a little crazy to me, the earnestness with which he recounted his
banal murder stories in the midst of the greatest muddle of architecture
that man had ever created. While he was talking about finger-prints I might
be taking stock of a coping or a cornice on a little red brick building just
back of his black hat, I would get to thinking of the day the cornice had
been installed, who might be the man who had designed it and why had he made
it so ugly, so like every other lousy, rotten cornice which we passed from
the East Side up to Harlem and beyond Harlem, if we wanted to push on,
beyond New York, beyond the Mississippi, beyond the Grand Canyon, beyond the
Mojave Desert, everywhere in America where there are buildings for man and
woman. It seemed absolutely crazy to me that each day of my life I had to
sit and listen to other people's stories, the banal tragedies of poverty and
distress, of love and death, of yearning and disillusionment. If, as it
happened, there came to me each day at least fifty men, each pouring out his
tale of woe, and with each one I had to be silent and "receive", it was only
natural that at some point along the line I had to close my ears, had to
harden my heart. The tiniest little morsel was sufficient for me, I could
chew on it and digest it for days and weeks. Yet I was obliged to sit there
and be inundated, to get out at night again and receive more, to sleep
listening, to dream listening. They streamed in from all over the world,
from every strata of society, speaking a thousand different tongues,
worshipping different gods, obeying different laws and customs. The tale of
the poorest among them with a huge tome, and yet if each and every one were
written out at length it might all be compressed to the size of the ten
commandments, it might all be recorded on the back of a postage stamp, like
the Lord's Prayer. Each day I was so stretched that my hide seemed to cover
the whole world; and when I was alone, when I was no longer obliged to
listen, I shrank to the size of a pinpoint. The greatest delight, and it was
a rare one, was to walk the streets alone ... to walk the streets at night
when no one was abroad and to reflect on the silence that surrounded me.
Millions lying on their backs, dead to the world, their mouths wide open and
nothing but snores emanating from them. Walking amidst the craziest
architecture ever invented, wondering why and to what end, if every day from
these wretched hovels or magnificent palaces there had to stream forth an
army of men itching to unravel their tale of misery. In a year, reckoning it
modestly, I received twenty-five thousand tales; in two years fifty
thousand; in four years it would be a hundred thousand; in ten years I would
be stark mad. Already I knew enough people to populate a good-sized town.
What a town it would be, if only they could be gathered together! Would they
want skyscrapers? Would they want museums? Would they want libraries? Would
they too build sewers and bridges and tracks and factories? Would they make
the same little cornices of tin, one like another, on, on, ad infinitum,
from Battery Park to the Golden Bay? I doubt it. Only the lash of hunger
could stir them. The empty belly, the wild look in the eye, the fear, the
fear of worse, driving them on. One after the other, all the same, all
goaded to desperation, out of the goad and whip of hunger building the
loftiest skyscrapers, the most redoubtable dreadnoughts, making the finest
steel, the flimsiest lace, the most delicate glassware. Walking with
O'Rourke and hearing nothing but theft, arson, rape, homicide was like
listening to a little motif out of a grand symphony. And just as one can
whistle an air of Bach and be thinking of a woman he wants to sleep with,
so, listening to O'Rourke, I would be thinking of the moment when he would
stop talking and say "what'll you have to eat?" In the midst of the most
gruesome murder I could think of the pork tenderloin which we would be sure
to get at a certain place farther up the line and wonder too what sort of
vegetables they would have on the side to go with it, and whether I would
order pie afterwards or a custard pudding. It was the same when I slept with
my wife now and then; while she was moaning and gibbering I might be
wondering if she had emptied the grounds in the coffee pot, because she had
the bad habit of letting things slide - the important things, I mean. Fresh
coffee was important - and fresh bacon with eggs. If she were knocked up
again that would be bad, serious in a way, but more important than that was
fresh coffee in the morning and the smell of bacon and eggs. I could put up
with heartbreaks and abortions and busted romances, but I had to have
something under my belt to carry on, and I wanted something nourishing,
something appetizing. I felt exactly like Jesus Christ would have felt if he
had been taken down from the cross and not permitted to die in the flesh. I
am sure that the shock of crucifixion would have been so great that he would
have suffered a complete amnesia as regards humanity. I am certain that
after his wounds had healed he wouldn't have given a damn about the
tribulations of mankind but would have fallen with the greatest relish upon
a fresh cup of coffee and a slice of toast, assuming he could have had it.
Whoever, through too great love, which is monstrous after all, dies of
his misery, is born again to know neither love nor hate, but to enjoy. And
this joy of living, because it is unnaturally acquired, is a poison which
eventually vitiates the whole world. Whatever is created beyond the normal
limits of human suffering, acts as a boomerang and brings about destruction.
At night the streets of New York reflect the crucifixion and death of
Christ. When the snow is on the ground and there is the utmost silence there
comes out of the hideous buildings of New York a music of such sullen
despair and bankruptcy as to make the flesh shrivel. No stone was laid upon
another with love or reverence; no street was laid for dance or joy. One
thing has been added to another in a mad scramble to fill the belly, and the
streets smell of empty bellies and full bellies and bellies half full. The
streets smell of a hunger which has nothing to do with love; they smell of
the belly which is insatiable and of the creations of the empty belly which
are null and void.
In this null and void, in this zero whiteness, I learned to enjoy a
sandwich, or a collar button. I could study a cornice or a coping with the
greatest curiosity while pretending to listen to a tale of human woe. I can
remember the dates on certain buildings and the names of the architects who
designed them. I can remember the temperature and the velocity of the wind,
standing at a certain comer; the tale that accompanied it is gone. I can
remember that I was even then remembering something else, and I can tell you
what it was that I was then remembering, but of what use? There was one man
in me which had died and all that was left were his remembrances;
there was another man who was alive, and that man was supposed to be
me, myself, but he was alive only as a tree is alive, or a rock, or a beast
of the field. Just as the city itself had become a huge tomb in which men
struggled to earn a decent death so my own life came to resemble a tomb
which I was constructing out of my own death. I was walking around in a
stone forest the centre of which was chaos; sometimes in the dead centre, in
the very heart of chaos, I danced or drank myself silly, or I made love, or
I befriended some one, or I planned a new life, but it was all chaos, all
stone, and all hopeless and bewildering. Until the time when I would
encounter a force strong enough to whirl me out of this mad stone forest no
life would be possible for me nor could one page be written which would have
meaning. Perhaps in reading this, one has still the impression of chaos but
this is written from a live centre and what is chaotic is merely peripheral,
the tangental shreds, as it were, of a world which no longer concerns me.
Only a few months ago I was standing in the streets of New York looking
about me as years ago I had looked about me;
again I found myself studying the architecture, studying the minute
details which only the dislocated eye takes in. But this time it was like
coming down from Mars. What race of men is this, I asked myself. What does
it mean? And there was no remembrance of suffering or of the life that was
snuffed out in the gutter, only that I was looking upon a strange and
incomprehensible world, a world so removed from me that I had the sensation
of belonging to another planet. From the top of the Empire State Building I
looked down one night upon the city which I knew from below: there they
were, in true perspective, the human ants with whom I had crawled, the human
lice with whom I had struggled. They were moving along at a snail's pace,
each one doubtless fulfilling his micro-cosmic destiny. In their fruitless
desperation they had reared this colossal edifice which was their pride and
boast. And from the topmost ceiling of this colossal edifice they had
suspended a string of cages in which the imprisoned canaries warbled their
senseless warble. At the very summit of their ambition there were these
little spots of beings warbling away for dear life. In a hundred years, I
thought to myself perhaps they would be caging live human beings, gay,
demented ones who would sing about the world to come. Perhaps they would
breed a race of warblers who would warble while the others worked. Perhaps
in every cage there would be a poet or a musician so that life below might
flow on unimpeded, one with the stone, one with the forest, a rippling
creaking chaos of null and void. In a thousand years they might all be
demented, workers and poets alike, and everything fall back to ruin as has
happened again and again. Another thousand years, or five thousand, or ten
thousand, exactly where I am standing now to survey the scene, a little boy
may open a book in a tongue as yet unheard of and about this life now
passing, a life which the man who wrote the book never experienced, a life
with deducted form and rhythm, with beginning and end, and the boy on dosing
the book will think to himself what a great race the Americans were, what a
marvellous life there had once been on this continent which he is now
inhabiting. No race to come, except perhaps the race of blind poets, will
ever be able to imagine the seething chaos out of which this future history
was composed. Chaos! A howling chaos! No need to choose a particular day.
Any day of my life - back there - would suit. Every day of my life, my tiny,
microcosmic life, was a reflection of the outer chaos. Let me think back ...
At seven-thirty the alarm went off. I didn't bounce out of bed. I lay there
till eight-thirty, trying to gain a little more sleep. Sleep - how could I
sleep? In the back of my mind was an image of the office where I was already
due. I could see Hymie arriving at eight sharp, the switchboard already
buzzing with demands for help, the applicants climbing up the wide wooden
stairway, the strong smell of camphor from the dressing room. Why get up and
repeat yesterday's song and dance? As fast as I hired them they dropped out.
Working my balls off and not even a clean shirt to wear. Mondays I got my
allowance from the wife -carfare and lunch money. I was always in debt to
her and she was in debt to the grocer, the butcher, the landlord, and so on.
I couldn't be bothered shaving - there wasn't time enough. I put on the torn
shirt, gobble up the breakfast, and borrow a nickel for the subway. If she
were in a bad mood I would swindle the money from the newsdealer at the
subway. I got to the office out of breath, an hour behind time and a dozen
calls to make before I even talk to an applicant. While I make one call
there are three other calls waiting to be answered. I use two telephones at
once. The switchboard is buzzing. Hymie is sharpening his pencils between
calls. MacGovern the doorman is standing at my elbow to give me a word of
advice about one of the applicants, probably a crook who is trying to sneak
back under a false name. Behind me are the cards and ledgers containing the
name of every applicant who had ever passed through the machine. The bad
ones are starred in red ink;
some of them have six aliases after their names. Meanwhile the room is
crawling like a hive. The room stinks with sweat, dirty feet, old uniforms,
camphor, lysol, bad breaths. Half of them will have to be turned away - not
that we don't need them, but that even under the worst conditions they just
won't do. The man in front of my desk, standing at the rail with palsied
hands and bleary eyes, is an ex-mayor of New York City. He's seventy now and
would be glad to take anything. He has wonderful letters of recommendation,
but we can't take any one over forty-five years of age. Forty-five in New
York is the dead line. The telephone rings and it's a smooth secretary from
the Y.M.C.A. Wouldn't I make an exception for a boy who has just walked into
his office - a boy who was in the reformatory for a year or so. What did he
do? He tried to rape his sister. An Italian, of course. O'Mara, my
assistant, is putting an applicant through the third degree. He suspects him
of being an epileptic. Finally he succeeds and for good measure the boy
throws a fit right there in the office. One of the women faints. A beautiful
looking young woman with a handsome fur around her neck is trying to
persuade me to take her on. She's a whore clean through and I know if I put
her on there'll be hell to pay. She wants to work in a certain building
uptown - because it is near home, she says. Nearing lunch time and a few
cronies are beginning to drop in. They sit around watching me work, as if it
were a vaudeville performance. Kronski, the medical student arrives; he says
one of the boys I've just hired has Parkinson's disease. I've been so busy I
haven't had a chance to go to the toilet. All the telegraph operators, all
the managers, suffer from haemorrhoids, so O'Rourke tells me. He's been
having electrical massages for the last two years, but nothing works. Lunch
time and there are six of us at the table. Some one will have to pay for me,
as usual. We gulp it down and rush back. More calls to make, more applicants
to interview. The vice-president is raising hell because we can't keep the
force up to normal. Every paper in New York and for twenty miles outside New
York carries long ads demanding help. All the schools have been canvassed
for part time messengers. All the charity bureaux and relief societies have
been invoked. They drop out like flies. Some of them don't even last an
hour. It's a human flour mill. And the saddest thing about it is that it's
totally unnecessary. But that's not my concern. Mine is to do or die, as
Kipling says. I plug on, through one victim after another, the telephone
ringing like mad, the place smelling more and more vile, the holes getting
bigger and bigger. Each one is a human being asking for a crust of bread; I
have his height, weight, colour, religion, education, experience, etc. All
the data will go into a ledger to be filed alphabetically and then
chronologically. Names and dates. Fingerprints too, if we had the time for
it. So that what? So that the American people may enjoy the fastest form of
communication known to man, so that they may sell their wares more quickly,
so that the moment you drop dead in the street your next of kin may be
appraised immediately, that is to say within an hour, unless the messenger
to whom the telegram is entrusted decides to throw up the job and throw the
whole batch of telegrams in the garbage can. Twenty million Christmas
blanks, all wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, from the
directors and president and vice-president of the Cosmodemonic Telegraph
Company, and maybe the telegram reads "Mother dying, come at once", but the
clerk is too busy to notice the message and if you sue for damages,
spiritual damages, there is a legal department trained expressly to meet
such emergencies and so you can be sure that your mother will die and you
will have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year just the same. The clerk, of
course, will be fired and after a month or so he will come back for a
messenger's job and he will be taken on and put on the night shift near the
docks where nobody will recognize him, and his wife will come with the brats
to thank the general manager, or perhaps the vice-president himself, for the
kindness and consideration shown. And then one day everybody will be
heartily surprised that said messenger robbed the till and O'Rourke will be
asked to take the night train for Cleveland or Detroit and to track him down
if it cost ten thousand dollars. And then the vice-president will issue an
order that no more Jews are to be hired, but after three or four days he
will let up a bit because there are nothing but Jews coming for the job. And
because it's getting so very tough and the timber so damned scarce I'm on
the point of hiring a midget from the circus and I probably would have hired
him if he hadn't broken down and confessed that he was a she. And to make it
worse Valeska takes "it" under her wing, takes "it" home that night and
under pretense of sympathy gives "it" a thorough examination, including a
vaginal exploration with the index finger of the right hand. And the
nostrils. I longed to be free of it all and yet I was irresistibly
attracted. I was violent and phlegmatic at the same time. I was like the
lighthouse itself - secure in the midst of the most turbulent sea. Beneath
me was solid rock, the same shelf of rock on which the towering skyscrapers
were reared. My foundations went deep into the earth and the armature of my
body was made of steel riveted with hot bolts. Above all I was an eye, a
huge searchlight which scoured far and wide, which revolved ceaselessly,
pitilessly. This eye so wide awake seemed to have made all my other
faculties dormant; all my powers were used up in the effort to see, to take
in the drama of the world.
If I longed for destruction it was merely that this eye might be
extinguished. I longed for an earthquake, for some cataclysm of nature which
would plunge the lighthouse into the sea. I wanted a metamorphosis, a change
to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to
swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried
fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by
candlelight. (I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a change
to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand
years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to
forget. I wanted something of the earth which was not of man's doing,
something absolutely divorced from the human of which I was surfeited. I
wanted something purely terrestrial and absolutely divested of idea. I
wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of
annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and the light out of my system. I
wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or
else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night
which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and
trailing comets. To be of night, so frighteningly silent, so utterly
incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to
listen or to think. To be englobed and encompassed and to encompass and to
englobe at the same time. No more pity, no more tenderness. To be human only
terrestrially, like a plant or a worm or a brook. To be decomposed, divested
of light and stone, variable as the molecule, durable as the atom, heartless
as the earth itself.
It was just about a week before Valeska committed suicide that I ran
into Mara. The week or two preceding that event was a veritable nightmare. A
series of sudden deaths and strange encounters with women. First of all
there was Pauline Janowski, a little Jewess of sixteen or seventeen who was
without a home and without friends or relatives. She came to the office
looking for a job. It was towards dosing time and I didn't have the heart to
turn her down cold. For some reason or other I took it into my head to bring
her home for dinner and if possible try to persuade the wife to put her up
for a while. What attracted me to her was her passion for Balzac. All the
way home she was talking to me about Lost Illusions. The car was packed and
we were jammed so tight together that it didn't make any difference what we
were talking about because we were both thinking of only one thing. My wife
of course was stupefied to see me standing at the door with a beautiful
young girl. She was polite and courteous in her frigid way but I could see
immediately that it was no use asking her to put the girl up. It was about
all she could do to sit through the dinner with us. As soon as we had
finished she excused herself and went to the movies. The girl started to
weep. We were still sitting at the table, the dishes piled up in front of
us. I went over to her and I put my arms around her. I felt genuinely sorry
for her and I was perplexed as to what to do for her. Suddenly she threw her
arms around my neck and she kissed me passionately. We stood there for a
long while embracing each other and then I thought to myself no, it's a
crime, and besides maybe the wife didn't go to the movies at all, maybe
she'll be ducking back any minute. I told the kid to pull herself together,
that we'd take a trolley ride somewhere. I saw the child's bank lying on the
mantelpiece and I took it to the toilet and emptied it silently. There was
only about seventy-five cents in it. We got on a trolley and went to the
beach. Finally we found a deserted spot and we lay down in the sand. She was
hysterically passionate and there was nothing to do but to do it. I thought
she would reproach me afterwards, but she didn't. We lay there a while and
she began talking about Balzac again. It seems she had ambitions to be a
writer herself. I asked her what she was going to do. She said she hadn't
the least idea. When we got up to go she asked me to put her on the highway.
Said she thought she would go to Cleveland or some place. It was after
midnight when I left her standing in front of a gasoline station. She had
about thirty-five cents in her pocket-book. As I started homeward I began
cursing my wife for the mean son of a bitch that she was. I wished to Christ
it was she whom I had left standing on the highway with no place to go to. I
knew that when I got back she wouldn't even mention the girl's name.
I got back and she was waiting up for me. I thought she was going to
give me hell again. But no, she had waited up because there was an important
message from O'Rourke. I was to telephone him soon as I got home. However, I
decided not to telephone. I decided to get undressed and go to bed. Just
when I had gotten comfortably settled the telephone rang. It was O'Rourke.
There was a telegram for me at the office - he wanted to know if he should
open it and read it to me. I said of course. Thetelegram was signed Monica.
It was from Buffalo. Said she was arriving at the Grand Central in the
morning with her mother's body. I thanked him and went back to bed. No
questions from the wife. I lay there wondering what to do. If I were to
comply with the request that would mean starting things all over again. I
had just been thanking my stars that I had gotten rid of Monica. And now she
was coming back with her mother's corpse. Tears and reconciliation. No, I
didn't like the prospect at all. Supposing I didn't show up ? What then ?
There was always somebody around to take care of a corpse. Especially if the
bereaved were an attractive young blonde with sparkling blue eyes. I
wondered if she'd go back to her job in the restaurant. If she hadn't known
Greek and Latin I would never have been mixed up with her. But my curiosity
got the better of me. And then she was so god-damn poor, that too got me.
Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if her hands hadn't smelled greasy. That
was the fly in the ointment - the greasy hands. I remember the first night I
met her and we strolled through the park. She was ravishing to look at, and
she was alert and intelligent. It was just the time when women were wearing
short skirts and she wore them to advantage. I used to go to the restaurant
night after night just to watch her moving around, watch her bending over to
serve or stooping down to pick up a fork. And with the beautiful legs and
the bewitching eyes a marvellous line about Homer, with the pork and
sauerkraut a verse of Sapho's, the Latin conjugations, the Odes of Pindar,
with the dessert perhaps the Rubaiyat or Cynara. But the greasy hands and
the frowsy bed in the boarding house opposite the market place - Whew! I
couldn't stomach it. The more I shunned her the more clinging she became.
Ten page letters about love with footnotes on Thus Spake Zarathustra. And
then suddenly silence and me congratulating myself heartily. No, I couldn't
bring myself to go to the Grand Central Station in the morning. I rolled
over and I fell sound asleep. In the morning I would get the wife to
telephone the office and say I was ill. I hadn't been ill now for over a
week ~ it was coming to me.
At noon I find Kronski waiting for me outside the office. He wants me
to have lunch with him ... there's an Egyptian girl he wants me to meet. The
girl turns out to be a Jewess, but she came from Egypt and she looks like an
Egyptian. She's hot stuff and the two of us are working on her at once. As I
was supposed to be ill I decided not to return to the office but to take a
stroll through the East Side. Kronski was going back to cover me up. We
shook hands with the girl and we each went our separate ways. I headed
towards the river where it was cool, having forgotten about the girl almost
immediately. I sat on the edge of a pier with my legs dangling over the
stringpiece. A scow passed with a load of red bricks. Suddenly Monica came
to my mind. Monica arriving at the Grand Central Station with a corpse. A
corpse f.o.b. New York! It seemed so incongruous and ridiculous that I burst
out laughing. What had she done with it? Had she checked it or had she left
it on a siding? No doubt she was cursing me out roundly. I wondered what she
would really think if she could have imagined me sitting there at the dock
with my legs dangling over the stringpiece. It was warm and sultry despite
the breeze that was blowing off the river. I began to snooze. As I dozed off
Pauline came to my mind. I imagined her walking along the highway with her
hand up. She was a brave kid, no doubt about it. Funny that she didn't seem
to worry about getting knocked up. Maybe she was so desperate she didn't
care. And Balzac! That too was highly incongruous. Why Balzac? Well, that
was her affair. Anyway she'd have enough to eat with, until she met another
guy. But a kid like that thinking about becoming a writer! Well, why not?
Everybody had illusions of one sort or another. Monica too wanted to be a
writer. Everybody was becoming a writer. A writer! Jesus, how futile it
seemed!
I dozed off... When I woke up I had an erection. The sun seemed to be
burning right into my fly. I got up and I washed my face at a drinking
fountain. It was still as hot and sultry as ever. The asphalt was soft as
mush, the flies were biting, the garbage was rotting in the gutter. I walked
about between the pushcarts and looked at things with an empty eye. I had a
sort of lingering hard-on all the while, but no definite object in mind. It
was only when I got back to Second Avenue that I suddenly remembered the
Egyptian Jewess from lunch time. I remembered her saying that she lived over
the Russian Restaurant near Twelfth Street. Still I hadn't any definite idea
of what I was going to do. Just browsing about, killing time. My feet
nevertheless were dragging me northward, towards Fourteenth Street. When I
got abreast of the Russian restaurant I paused a moment and then I ran up
the stairs three at a time. The hall door was open. I climbed up a couple of
flights scanning the names on the doors. She was on the top floor and there
was a man's name under hers. I knocked softly. No answer. I knocked again, a
little harder. This time I heard some one moving about. Then a voice dose to
the door asking who is it and at the same time the knob turning. I pushed
the door open and stumbled into the darkened room. Stumbled right into her
arms and felt her naked under the half-opened kimono. She must have come out
of a sound sleep and only half realized who was holding her in his arms.
When she realized it was me she tried to break away but I had her tight and
I began kissing her passionately and at the same time backing her up towards
the couch near the window. She mumbled something about the door being open
but I wasn't taking any chance on letting her slip out of my arms. So I made
a slight detour and little by little I edged her towards the door and made
her shove it with her ass. I locked it with my one free hand and then I
moved her into the centre of the room and with the free hand I unbuttoned my
fly and got my pecker out and into position. She was so drugged with sleep
that it was almost like working on an automation. I could see too that she
was enjoying the idea of being fucked half asleep. The only thing was that
every time I made a lunge she grew more wide awake. And as she grew more
conscious she became more frightened. It was difficult to know how to put
her to sleep again without losing a good fuck. I managed to tumble her on to
the couch without losing ground and she was hot as hell now, twisting and
squirming like an eel. From the time I had started to maul her I don't think
she had opened her eyes once. I kept saying to myself- "an Egyptian fuck ...
an Egyptian fuck" - and so as not to shoot off immediately I deliberately
began thinking about the corpse that Monica had dragged to the Grand Central
Station and about the thirty-five cents that I had left with Pauline on the
highway. Then bango! a loud knock on the door and with that she opens her
eyes and looks at me in utmost terror. I started to pull away quickly but to
my surprise she held me tight. "Don't move", she whispered in my ear.
"Wait!" There was another loud knock and then I heard Kronski's voice saying
"It's me, Thelma ... it's me Izzy." At that I almost burst out laughing. We
slumped back again into a natural position and as her eyes softly closed I
moved it around inside her, gently so as not to wake her up again. It was
one of the most wonderful fucks I ever had in my life. I thought it was
going to last forever. Whenever I felt in danger of going off I would stop
moving and think - think for example of where I would like to spend my
vacation, if I got one, or think of the shirts lying in the bureau drawer,
or the patch in the bedroom carpet just at the foot of the bed. Kronski was
still standing at the door -1 could hear him changing about from one
position to another. Every time I became aware of him standing there I
jibbed her a little for good measure and in her half sleep she answered
back, humorously, as though she understood what I meant by this put-and-take
language. I didn't dare to think what she might be thinking or I'd have come
immediately. Sometimes I skirted dangerously close to it, but the saving
trick was always Monica and the corpse at the Grand Central Station. The
thought of that, the humorousness of it, I mean, acted like a cold douche.
When it was all over she opened her eyes wide and stared at me, as
though she were taking me in for the first time. I hadn't a word to say to
her; the only thought in my head was to get out as quickly as possible. As
we were washing up I noticed a note on the floor near the door. It was from
Kronski. His wife had just been taken to the hospital - he wanted her to
meet him at the hospital. I felt relieved! it meant that I could break away
without wasting any words.
The next day I had a telephone call from Kronski. His wife had died on
the operating table. That evening I went home for dinner; we were still at
the table when the bell rang. There was Kronski standing at the gate looking
absolutely sunk. It was always difficult for me to oner words of condolence;
with him it was absolutely impossible. I listened to my wife uttering
her trite words of sympathy and I felt more than ever disgusted with her.
"Let's get out of here," I said.
We walked along in absolute silence for a while. At the park we turned
in and headed for the meadows. There was a heavy mist which made it
impossible to see a yard ahead. Suddenly, as we were swimming along, he
began to sob. I stopped and turned my head away. When I thought he had
finished I looked around and there he was staring at me with a strange
smile. "It's funny", he said, "how hard it is to accept death." I smiled too
now and put my hand on his shoulder. "Go on," I said, "talk your head off.
Get it off your chest." We started walking again, up and down over the
meadows, as though we were walking under the sea. The mist had become so
thick that I could barely discern his features. He was talking quietly and
madly. "I knew it would happen," he said. "It was too beautiful to last."
The night before she was taken ill he had had a dream. He dreamt that he had
lost his identity. "I was stumbling around in the dark calling my own name.
I remember coming to a bridge, and looking down into the water I saw myself
drowning. I jumped off the bridge head first and when I came up I saw Yetta
floating under the bridge. She was dead." And then suddenly he added: "You
were there yesterday when I knocked at the door, weren't you? I knew you
were there and I couldn't go away. I knew too that Yetta was dying and I
wanted to be with her, but I was afraid to go alone." I said nothing and he
rambled on. "The first girl I ever loved died in the same way. I was only a
kid and I couldn't get over it. Every night I used to go to the cemetery and
sit by her grave. People thought I was out of my mind. I guess I was out of
my mind. Yesterday; when I was standing at the door, it all came back to me.
I was back in Trenton, at the grave, and the sister of the girl I loved was
sitting beside me. She said it couldn't go on that way much longer, that I
would go mad. I thought to myself that I really was mad and to prove it to
myself I decided to do something mad and so I said to her it isn't her I
love, It's you, and I pulled her over me and we lay there kissing each other
and finally I screwed her, right beside the grave. And I think that cured me
because I never went back there again and I never thought about her any more
-until yesterday when I was standing at the door. If I could have gotten
hold of you yesterday I would have strangled you. I don't know why I felt
that way but it seemed to me that you had opened up a tomb, that you were
violating the dead body of the girl I loved. That's crazy isn't it? And why
did I come to see you to-night? Maybe it's because you're absolutely
indifferent to me ... because you're not a Jew and I can talk to you...
because you don't give a damn, and you're right... Did you ever read The
Revolt of the Angels?"
We had just arrived at the bicycle path which encircles the park. The
lights of the boulevard were swimming in the mist. I took a good look at him
and I saw that he was out of his head. I wondered if I could make him laugh.
I was afraid, too, that if he once got started laughing he would never stop.
So I began to talk at random, about Anatole France at first, and then about
other writers, and finally, when I felt that I was losing him, I suddenly
switched to General Ivolgin, and with that he began to laugh, not a laugh
either, but a cackle, a hideous cackle, like a rooster with its head on the
block. It got him so badly that he had to stop and hold his guts; the tears
were streaming down his eyes and between the cackles he let out the most
terrible, heart-rending sobs. "I knew you would do me good," he blurted out,
as the last outbreak died away. "I always said you were a crazy son of a
bitch... You're a Jew bastard yourself, only you don't know it... Now tell
me, you bastard, how was it yesterday? Did you get your end in? Didn't I
tell you she was a good lay? And do you know who she's living with, Jesus,
you were lucky you didn't get caught. She's living with a Russian poet - you
know the guy, too. I introduced you to him once at the Cafe Royal. Better
not let him get wind of it. He'll beat your brains out... and he'll write a
beautiful poem about it and send it to her with a bunch of roses. Sure I
knew him out in Stelton, in the anarchist colony. His old man was a
Nihilist. The whole family's crazy. By the way, you'd better take care of
yourself. I meant to tell you that the other day, but I didn't think you
would act so quickly. You know she may have syphilis. I'm not trying to
scare you. I'm just telling you for your own good. . . ."
This outburst seemed to really assuage him. He was trying to tell me in
his twisted Jewish way that he liked me. To do so he had to first destroy
everything around me - the wife, the job, my friends, the "nigger wench", as
he called Valeska, and so on. "I think some day you're going to be a great
writer," he said. "But," he added maliciously, "first you'll have to suffer
a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don't know what the word means yet.
You only think you've suffered. You've got to fall in love first. That
nigger wench now... you don't really suppose that you're in love with her,
do you? Did you ever take a good look at her ass ... how it's spreading, I
mean? In five years she'll look like Aunt Jemima. You'll make a swell couple
walking down the avenue with a string of pickaninnies trailing behind you.
Jesus, I'd rather see you marry a Jewish girl. You wouldn't appreciate her,
of course, but she'd be good for you. You need something to steady yourself.
You're scattering your energies. Listen, why do you run around with all
these dumb bastards you pick up? You seem to have a genius for picking up
the wrong people. Why don't you throw yourself into something useful? You
don't belong in that job - you could be a big guy somewhere. Maybe a labour
leader ... I don't know what exactly. But first you've got to get rid of
that hatchet-faced wife of yours. Ugh! when I look at her I could spit in
her face. I don't see how a guy like you could ever have married a bitch
like that. What was it - just a pair of streaming ovaries? Listen, that's
what's the matter with you -you've got nothing but sex on the brain... No, I
don't mean that either. You've got a mind and you've got passion and
enthusiasm ... but you don't seem to give a damn what you do or what happens
to you. If you weren't such a romantic bastard I'd almost swear that you
were a Jew. It's different with me -1 never had anything to look forward to.
But you've got something in you - only you're too damned lazy to bring it
out. Listen, when I hear you talk sometimes I think to myself - if only that
guy would put it down on paper! Why you could write a book that would make a
guy like Dreiser hang his head. You're different from the Americans I know;
somehow you don't belong, and it's a damned good thing you don't. You're a
little cracked, too - I suppose you know that. But in a good way. Listen a
little while ago, if it had been anybody else who talked to me that way I'd
have murdered him. I think I like you better because you didn't try to give
me any sympathy. I know better than to expect sympathy from you. If you had
said one false word to-night I'd have really gone mad. I know it. I was on
the very edge. When you started in about General Ivolgin I thought for a
minute it was all up with me. That's what makes me think you've got
something in you ... that was real cunning! And now let me tell you
something ... if you don't pull yourself together soon you're going to be
screwy. You've got something inside you that's eating you up. I don't know
what it is, but you can't put it over on me. I know you from the bottom up.
I know there's something griping you - and it's not just your wife, nor your
job, nor even that nigger wench whom you think you're in love with.
Sometimes I think you were born in the wrong time. Listen, I don't want you
to think I'm making an idol of you but there's something to what I say... if
you had just a little more confidence in yourself you could be the biggest
man in the world to-day. You wouldn't even have to be a writer. You might
become another Jesus Christ for all I know. Don't laugh -1 mean it. You
haven't the slightest idea of your own possibilities ... you're absolutely
blind to everything except your own desires. You don't know what you want.
You don't know because you never stop to think. You're letting people use
you up. You're a damned fool, an idiot. If I had a tenth of what you've got
I could turn the world upside down. You think that's crazy, eh? Well, listen
to me... I was never more sane in my life. When I came to see you to-night I
thought I was about ready to commit suicide. It doesn't make much difference
whether I do it or not. But anyway, I don't see much point in doing it now.
That won't bring her back to me. I was born unlucky. Wherever I go I seem to
bring disaster. But I don't want to sick off yet... I want to do some good
in the world first. That may sound silly to you, but it's true. I'd like to
do something for others ..."
He stopped abruptly and looked at me again with that strange wan smile.
It was the look of a hopeless Jew in whom, as with all his race, the life
instinct was so strong that, even though there was absolutely nothing to
hope for, he was powerless to kill himself. That hopelessness was something
quite alien to me. I thought to myself - if only we could change skins! Why,
I could kill myself for a bagatelle! And what got me more than anything was
the thought that he wouldn't even enjoy the funeral - his own wife's
funeral! God knows, the funerals we had were sorry enough affairs, but there
was always a bit of food and drink afterwards, and some good obscene jokes
and some hearty belly laughs. Maybe I was too young to appreciate die
sorrowful aspects, though I saw plainly enough how they howled and wept. But
that never meant much to me because after the funeral sitting in the beer
garden next to the cemetery, there was always an atmosphere of good cheer
despite the black garments and the crepes and the wreaths. It seemed to me,
as a kid then, that they were really trying to establish some sort of
communion with the dead person. Something almost Egyptian-like, when I think
back on it. Once upon a time I thought they were just a bunch of hypocrites.
But they weren't. They were just stupid, healthy Germans with a lust for
life. Death was something outside their ken, strange to say, because if you
went only by what they said you would imagine that it occupied a good deal
of their thoughts. But they really didn't grasp it at all - not the way the
Jew does, for example. They talked about the life hereafter but they never
really believed in it. And if any one were so bereaved as to pine away they
looked upon that person suspiciously, as you would look upon an insane
person. There were limits to sorrow as there were limits to joy, that was
the impression they gave me. And at the extreme limits there was always the
stomach which had to be filled - with limburger sandwiches and beer and
Kummel and turkey legs if there were any about. They wept in their beer,
like Children. And the next minute they were laughing, laughing over some
curious quirk in the dead person's character. Even the way they used the
past tense had a curious effect upon me. An hour after he was shovelled
under they were saying of the defunct - "he was always so good-natured" - as
though the person in mind were dead a thousand years, a character of
history, or a personage out of Nibelungen Lied. The thing was that he was
dead, definitely dead for all time, and they, the living, were cut off from
him now and forever, and to-day as well as to-morrow must be lived through,
the clothes washed, the dinner prepared, and when the next one was struck
down there would be a coffin to select and a squabble about the will, but it
would be all in the daily routine and to take time off to grieve and sorrow
was sinful because God, if there was a God, had ordained it that way and we
on earth had nothing to say about it. To go beyond the ordained limits of
joy or grief was wicked. To threaten madness was the high sin. They had a
terrific animal sense of adjustment, marvellous to behold if it had been
truly animal, horrible to witness when you realized that it was nothing more
than dull German torpor, insensirivity. And yet, somehow, I preferred these
animated stomachs to the hydra-headed sorrow of the Jew. At bottom I
couldn't feel sorry for Kronski - I would have to feel sorry for his whole
tribe. The death of his wife was only an item, a trifle, in the history of
his calamities. As he himself had said, he was born unlucky. He was born to
see things go wrong - because for five thousand years things had been going
wrong in the blood of the race. They came into the world with that sunken,
hopeless leer on their faces and they would go out of the world the same
way. They left a bad smell behind them - a poison, a vomit of sorrow. The
stink they were trying to take out of the world was the stink they
themselves had brought into the world. I reflected on all this as I listened
to him. I felt so well and dean inside that when we parted, after I had
turned down a side street, I began to whistle and hum. And then a terrible
thirst came upon me and I says to meself in me best Irish brogue - shure and
it's a bit of a drink ye should be having now, me lad - and saying it I
stumbled into a hole in the wall and I ordered a big foaming stein of beer
and a thick hamburger sandwich with plenty of. onions. I had another mug of
beer and then a drop of brandy and I thought to myself in my callous way -
if the poor bastard hasn't got brains enough to enjoy his own wife's funeral
then I'll enjoy it for him. And the more I thought about it, the happier I
grew, and if there was the least bit of grief or envy it was only for the
fact that I couldn't change places with her, the poor dead Jewish soul,
because death was something absolutely beyond the grip and comprehension of
a bum guy like myself arid it was a pity to waste it on the likes of them as
knew all about it and didn't need it anyway. I got so damned intoxicated
with the idea of dying that in my drunken stupor I was mumbling to the God
above to kill me this night, kill me. God, and let me know what it's all
about. I tried my stinking best to imagine what it was like, giving up the
ghost, but it was no go. The best I could do was to imitate a death rattle,
but on that I nearly choked, and then I got so damned frightened that I
almost shit in my pants. That wasn't death, anyway. That was just choking.
Death was more like what we went through in the park: two people walking
side by side in the mist, rubbing against trees and bushes, and not a word
between them. It was something emptier than the name itself and yet right
and peaceful, dignified, if you like. It was not a continuation of life, but
a leap in the dark and no possibility of ever coming back, not even as a
grain of dust. And that was right and beautiful, I said to myself, because
why would one want to come back. To taste it once is to taste it forever -
life or death. Whichever way the coin flips is right, so long as you hold no
stakes. Sure, it's tough to choke on your own spittle - it's disagreeable
more than anything else. And besides, one doesn't always die choking to
death. Sometimes one goes off in his sleep, peaceful and quiet as a lamb.
The Lord comes and gathers you up into the fold, as they say. Anyway, you
stop breathing. And why the hell should one want to go on breathing forever?
Anything that would have to be done interminably would be torture. The poor
human bastards that we are, we ought to be glad that somebody devised a way
out. We don't quibble about going to sleep. A third of our lives we snore
away like drunken rats. What about that? Is that tragic? Well then, say
three-thirds of drunken rat-like sleep. Jesus, if we had any sense we'd be
dancing with glee at the thought of it! We could all die in bed tomorrow,
without pain, without suffering - if we had the sense to take advantage of
our remedies. We don't want to die, that's the trouble with us. That's why
God and the whole shooting match upstairs in our crazy dustbins. General
Ivolgin! That got a cackle out of him . .. and a few dry sobs. I might as
well have said limburger cheese. But General Ivolgin means something to him
... something crazy. Limburger cheese would be too sober, too banal. It's
all limburger cheese, however, including General Ivolgin, the poor drunken
sap. General Ivolgin was evolved out of Dostoievski's limburger cheese, his
own private brand. That means a certain flavour, a certain label. So people
recognize it when they smell it, taste it. But what made this General
Ivolgin limburger cheese? Why, whatever made limburger cheese, which is x
and therefore unknowable. And so therefore? Therefore nothing... nothing at
all. Full stop - or eke a leap in the dark and no coming back.
As I was taking my pants off I suddenly remembered what the bastard had
told me. I looked at my cock and it looked just as innocent as ever. "Don't
tell me you've got the syph," I said, holding it in my hand and squeezing it
a bit as though I might see a bit of pus squirting out. No, I didn't think
there was much chance of having the syph. I wasn't born under that kind of
star. The clap, yes, that was possible. Everybody had the dap sometime or
other. But not syph! I knew he'd wish it on me if he could, just to make me
realize what suffering was. But I couldn't be bothered obliging him. I was
born a dumb and lucky guy. I yawned. It was all so much god-damned limburger
cheese that syph or no syph, I thought to myself, if she's up to it I'll
tear off another piece and call it a day. But evidently she wasn't up to it.
She was for turning her ass on me. So I just lay there with a stiff prick up
against her ass and I gave it to her by mental telepathy. And by Jesus, she
must have gotten the message sound asleep though she was, because it wasn't
any trouble going in by the stable door and besides I didn't have to look at
her face which was one hell of a relief. I thought to myself, as I gave her
the last hook and whistle - "me lad it's limburger cheese and now you can
turn over and snore ..."
It seemed as if it would go on forever, the sex and death chant. The
very next afternoon at the office I received a telephone call from my wife
saying that her friend Arline had just been taken to the insane asylum. They
were friends from the convent school in Canada where they had both studied
music and the art of masturbation. I had met the whole flock of them little
by little, including Sister Antolina who wore a truss and who apparently was
the high priestess of the cult of Fonanism. They had all had a crush on
Sister Antolina at one time or another. And Arline with the chocolate eclair
mug wasn't the first of the little group to go to the insane asylum. I don't
say it was masturbation that drove them there but certainly the atmosphere
of the convent had something to do with it. They were all spoiled in the
egg.
Before the afternoon was over my old friend MacGregor walked in. He
arrived looking glum as usual and complaining about the advent of old age,
though he was hardly past thirty. When I told him about Arline he seemed to
liven up a bit. He said he always knew there was something wrong with her.
Why? Because when he tried to force her one night she began to weep
hysterically. It wasn't the weeping so much as what she said. She said she
had sinned against the Holy Ghost and for that she would have to lead a life
of continence. Recalling the incident he began to laugh in his mirthless
way. "I said to her -well you don't need to do it if you don't want... just
hold it in your hand. Jesus, when I said that I thought she'd go clean off
her nut. She said I was trying to soil her innocence - that's the way she
put it. And at the same time she took it in her hand and she squeezed it so
hard I damned near fainted. Weeping all the while, too. And still harping on
the Holy Ghost and her 'innocence'. I remembered what you told me once and
so I gave her a sound slap in the jaw. It worked like magic. She quieted
down after a bit, enough to let me slip it in, and then the real fun
commenced. Listen, did you ever fuck a crazy woman? It's something to
experience. From the instant I got it in she started talking a blue streak.
I can't describe it to you exactly, but it was almost as though she didn't
know I was fucking her. Listen, I don't know whether you've ever had a woman
eat an apple while you were doing it... well, you can imagine how that
affects you. This one was a thousand times worse. It got on my nerves so
that I began to think I was a little queer myself . . . And now here's
something you'll hardly believe, but I'm telling you the truth. You know
what she did when we got through? She put her arms around me and she thanked
me ... Wait, that isn't all. Then she got out of bed and she knelt down and
offered up a prayer for my soul. Jesus, I remember that so well. 'Please
make Mac a better Christian,' she said. And me lying there with a limp cock
listening to her. I didn't know whether I was dreaming or what. 'Please make
Mac a better Christian!' Can you beat that?
"What are you doing to-night?" he added cheerfully.
"Nothing special," I said.
"Then come along with me. I've got a gal I want you to meet... Paula, I
picked her up at the Roseland a few nights ago. She's not crazy - she's just
a nymphomaniac. I want to see you dance with her. It'll be a treat... just
to watch you. Listen, if you don't shoot off in your pants when she starts
wiggling, well then I'm a son of a bitch. Come on, close the joint. What's
the use of farting around in this place?"
There was a lot of time to kill before going to the Roseland so we went
to a little hole in the wall over near Seventh Avenue. Before the war it was
a French joint; now it was a speak-easy run by a couple of wops. There was a
tiny bar near the door and in the back a little room with a sawdust floor
and a slot machine for music. The idea was that we were to have a couple of
drinks and then eat. That was the idea. Knowing him as I did, however, I
wasn't at all sure that we would be going to the Roseland together. If a
woman should come along who pleased his fancy - and for that she didn't have
to be either beautiful or sound of wind and limb - I knew he'd leave me in
the lurch and beat it. The only thing that concerned me, when I was with
him, was to make sure in advance that he had enough money to pay for the
drinks we ordered. And, of course, never to let him out of my sight until
the drinks were paid for.
The first drink or two always plunged him into reminiscence.
Reminiscences of cunt to be sure. His reminiscences were reminiscent of a
story he had told me once and which made an indelible impression upon me. It
was about a Scotchman on his deathbed. Just as he was about to pass away his
wife, seeing him struggling to say something bends over him tenderly and
says - "What is it. Jock, what is it ye're trying to say?" And Jock, with a
last effort, raises himself wearily and says:
"Just cunt... cunt... cunt."
That was always the opening theme, and the ending theme, with
MacGregor. It was his way of saying -futility. The leitmotif was disease,
because between fucks, as it were, he worried his head off, or rather he
worried the head off his cock. It was the most natural thing in the world,
at the end of an evening, for him to say - "come on upstairs a minute, I
want to show you my cock." From taking it out and looking at it and washing
it and scrubbing it a dozen times a day naturally his cock was always
swollen and inflamed. Every now and then he went to the doctor and he had it
sounded. Or, just to relieve him, the doctor would give him a little box of
salve and tell him not to drink so much. This would cause no end of debate,
because as he would say to me, "if the salve is any good why do I have to
stop drinking?" Or, "if I stopped drinking altogether do you think I would
need to use the salve?" Of course, whatever I recommended went in one ear
and out the other. He had to worry about something and the penis was
certainly good food for worry. Sometimes he worried about his scalp. He had
dandruff, as most everybody has, and when his cock was in good condition he
forgot about that and he worried about his scalp. Or else his chest. The
moment he thought about his chest he would start to cough. And such
coughing! As though he were in the last stages of consumption. And when he
was running after a woman he was as nervous and irritable as a cat. He
couldn't get her quickly enough. The moment he had her he was worrying about
how to get rid of her. They all had something wrong with them, some trivial
little thing, usually, which took the edge off his appetite.
He was rehearsing all this as we sat in the gloom of the back room.
After a couple of drinks he got up, as usual, to go to the toilet, and on
his way he dropped a coin in the slot machine and the jiggers began to
jiggle and with that he perked up and pointing to the glasses he said:
"Order another round!" He came back from the toilet looking extraordinarily
complacent, whether because he had relieved his bladder or because he had
run into a girl in the hallway, I don't know. Anyhow, as he sat down, he
started in on another tack - very composed now and very serene, almost like
a philosopher. "You know, Henry, we're getting on in years. You and I
oughtn't to be frittering our time away like this. If we're ever going to
amount to anything it's high time we started in..." I had been hearing this
line for years now and I knew what the upshot would be. This was just a
little parenthesis while he calmly glanced about the room and decided which
bimbo was the least sottish-looking. While he discoursed about the miserable
failure of our lives his feet were dancing and his eyes were getting
brighter and brighter. It would happen as it always happened, that just as
he was saying - "Now you take Woodruff, for instance. He'll never get ahead
because he's just a natural mean scrounging son of a bitch..." - just at
such a moment, as I say it would happen that some drunken cow in passing the
table would catch his eye and without the slightest pause he would interrupt
his narrative to say "hello kid, why don't you sit down and have a drink
with us?" And as a drunken bitch like that never travels alone, but always
in pairs, why she'd respond with a "Certainly, can I bring my friend over?"
And MacGregor, as though he were the most gallant chap in the world, would
say "Why sure, why not? What's her name?" And then, tugging at my sleeve,
he'd bend over and whisper:
"Don't you beat it on me, do you hear? We'll give 'em one drink and get
rid of them, see?"
And, as it always happened, one drink led to another and the bill was
getting too high and he couldn't see why he should waste his money on a
couple of bums so you go out first, Henry, and pretend you're buying some
medicine and I'll follow in a few minutes ... but wait for me, you son of a
bitch, don't leave me in the lurch like you did the last time. And like I
always did, when I got outside I walked away as fast as my legs would carry
me, laughing to myself and thanking my lucky stars that I had gotten away
from him as easily as I had. With all those drinks under my belt it didn't
matter much where my feet were dragging me. Broadway lit up just as crazy as
ever and the crowd thick as molasses. Just fling yourself into it like an
ant and let yourself get pushed along. Everybody doing it, some for a good
reason and some for no reason at all. All this push and movement
representing action, success, get ahead. Stop and look at shoes or fancy
shirts, the new fall overcoat, wedding rings at 98 cents a piece. Every
other joint a food emporium.
Every time I hit that runway towards dinner hour a fever of expectancy
seized me. It's only a stretch of a few blocks from Times Square to Fiftieth
Street, and when one says Broadway that's all that's really meant and it's
really nothing, just a chicken run and a lousy one at that, but at seven in
the evening when everybody's rushing for a table there's a sort of electric
crackle in the air and your hair stands on end like an antennae and if
you're receptive you not only get every bash and flicker but you get the
statistical itch, the quid pro quo of the interactive, interstitial,
ectoplasmatic quantum of bodies jostling in space like the stars which
compose the Milky Way, only this is the Gay White Way, the top of the world
with no roof and not even a crack or a hole under your feet to fall through
and say it's a lie. The absolute impersonality of it brings you to a pitch
of warm human delirium which makes you run forward like a blind nag and wag
your delirious ears. Every one is so utterly, confoundedly not himself that
you become automatically the personification of the whole human race,
shaking hands with a thousand human hands, cackling with a thousand
different human tongues, cursing, applauding, whistling, crooning,
soliloquizing, orating, gesticulating, urinating, fecundating, wheedling,
cajoling, whimpering, bartering, pimping, caterwauling, and so on and so
forth. You are all the men who ever lived up to Moses, and beyond that you
are a woman buying a hat, or a bird cage, or just a mouse trap. You can lie
in wait in a show-window, like a fourteen carat gold ring, or you can climb
the side of a building like a human fly, but nothing will stop the
procession, not even umbrellas flying at lightning speed, nor double-decked
walruses marching calmly to the oyster banks. Broadway, such as I see it now
and have seen it for twenty-five years, is a ramp that was conceived by St.
Thomas Aquinas while he was yet in the womb. It was meant originally to be
used only by snakes and lizards, by the homed toad and the red heron, but
when the great Spanish Armada was sunk the human kind wriggled out of the
ketch and slopped over, creating by a sort of foul, ignominious squirm and
wiggle the cunt-like cleft that runs from the Battery south to the golf
links north through the dead and wormy centre of Manhattan Island. From
Times Square to Fiftieth Street all that St. Thomas Aquinas forgot to
include in his magnum opus is here included, which is to say among other
things, hamburger sandwiches, collar buttons, poodle dogs, slot machines,
grey bowlers, typewriter ribbons, oranges sticks, free toilets, sanitary
napkins, mint jujubes, billiard balls, chopped onions, crinkled doylies,
manholes, chewing gum, sidecars and sour-balls, cellophane, cord tyres,
magnetos, horse liniment, cough drops, feenamint, and that feline opacity of
the hysterically endowed eunuch who marches to the soda fountain with a
sawed off shotgun between his legs. The before-dinner atmosphere, the blend
of patchouli, warm pitchblende, iced electricity, sugared sweat and powdered
urine drives one on to a fever of delirious expectancy. Christ will never
more come down to earth nor will there be any law-giver, nor will murder
cease nor theft, nor rape, and yet... and yet one expects something,
something terrifyingly marvellous and absurd, perhaps a cold lobster with
mayonnaise served gratis, perhaps an invention, like the electric light,
like television, only more devastating, more soul rending, an invention
unthinkable that will bring a shattering calm and void, not the calm and
void of death but of life such as the monks dreamed, such as is dreamed
still in the Himalayas, in Tibet, in Lahore, in the Aleutian Islands, in
Polynesia, in Easter Island, the dream of men before the flood, before the
word was written, the dream of cave men and anthropophagists, of those with
double sex and short tails, of those who are said to be crazy and have no
way of defending themselves because they are outnumbered by those who are
not crazy. Cold energy trapped by cunning brutes and then set free like
explosive rockets, wheels, intricately interwheeled to give the illusion of
force and speed some for light, some for power, some for motion, words wired
by maniacs and mounted like fake teeth, perfect, and repulsive as lepers,
ingratiating, soft, slippery, nonsensical movement, vertical, horizontal,
circular, between walls and through walls, for pleasure, for barter, for
crime; for sex;
all light, movement, power impersonally conceived, generated, and
distributed throughout a choked, cunt-like deft intended to dazzle and awe
the savage, the yokel, the alien, but nobody dazzled or awed, this one
hungry, that one lecherous, all one and the same and no different from the
savage, the yokel, the alien, except for odds and ends, bric-a-brac, the
soapsuds of thought, the sawdust of the mind. In the same cunty deft,
trapped and undazzled, millions have walked before me, among them one,
Blaise Cendrars, who afterwards flew to the moon, thence back to earth and
up the Orinoco impersonating a wild man but actually sound as a button,
though no longer vulnerable, no longer mortal, a splendiferous hulk of a
poem dedicated to the archipelago of insomnia. Of those with fever few
hatched, among them myself still unhatched, but pervious and maculate,
knowing with quiet ferocity the ennui of ceaseless drift and movement.
Before dinner the slat and chink of sky light softly percolating through the
boned grey dome, the vagrant hemispheres spored with blue-egged nuclei
coagulating, ramifying, in the one basket lobsters, in the other the
germination of a world antiseptically personal and absolute. Out of the
manholes, grey with the underground life, men of the future world saturated
with shit, the iced electricity biting into them like rats, the day done in
and darkness coming on like the cool, refreshing shadows of the sewers. Like
a soft prick slipping out of an overheated cunt I, the still unhatched,
making a few abortive wriggles, but either not dead and soft enough or else
sperm-free and skating ad astra, for it is still not dinner and a
peristaltic frenzy takes possession of the upper colon, the hypo-gastric
region, the umbilical and the post-pineal lobe. Boiled alive, the lobsters
swim in ice, giving no quarter and asking no quarter, simply motionless and
unmotivated in the ice-watered ennui of death, life drifting by the
show-window muffled in desolation, a sorrowful scurvy eaten away by
ptomaine, the frozen glass of the window cutting like a jack-knife, dean and
no remainder.
Life drifting by the show-window ... I too as much a part of life as
the lobster, the fourteen carat ring, the horse liniment, but very difficult
to establish the fact, the fact being that life is merchandise with a bill
of lading attached, what I choose to eat being more important than I the
eater, each one eating the other and consequently eating, the verb ruler of
the roost. In the act of eating the host is violated and justice defeated
tempor- arily. The plate and what's on it, through the predatory power of
the intestinal apparatus, commands attention and unifies the spirit, first
hypnotizing it, then slowly swallowing it, then masticating it, then
absorbing it. The spiritual part of the being passes off like a scum, leaves
absolutely no evidence or trace of its passage, vanishes, vanishes even more
completely than a point in space after a mathematical discourse. The fever,
which may return tomorrow, bears the same relation to life as the mercury in
a thermometer bears to heat. Fever will not make life heat, which is what
was to have been proved and thus consecrates the meat balls and spaghetti.
To chew while thousands chew, each chew an act of murder, gives the
necessary social cast from which you look out the window and see that even
human kind can be slaughtered justly, or maimed, or starved, or tortured
because, while chewing, the mere advantage of sitting in a chair with
clothes on, wiping the mouth with napkin, enables you to comprehend, what
the wisest men have never been able to comprehend, namely that there is no
other way of life possible, said wise men often, disdaining to use chair,
clothes or napkin. Thus men scurrying through a cunty deft of a street
called Broadway every day at regular hours, in search of this or that, tend
to establish this and that, which is exactly the method of mathematicians,
logicians, physicists, astronomers and such like. The proof is the fact and
the fact has no meaning except what is given to it by those who establish
the facts.
The meat balk devoured, the paper napkin carefully thrown on the floor,
belching a trifle and not knowing why or whither, I step out into the 24
carat sparkle and with the theatre pack. This time I wander through the side
streets following a blind man with an accordion. Now and then I sit on a
stoop and listen to an aria. At the opera, the music makes no sense; here in
the street it has just the right demented touch to give it poignancy. The
woman who accompanies the blind man holds a tin cup in her hands; he is a
part of life too like the tin cup, like the music of Verdi, like the
Metropolitan Opera House. Everybody and everything is a part of life, but
when they have all been added together, still somehow it is not life. When
is it
life, I ask myself, and why not now? The blind man wanders on and I
remain sitting on the stoop. The meat balls were rotten: the coffee was
lousy, the butter was rancid. Everything I look at is rotten, lousy, rancid.
The street is like a bad breath; the next street is the same, and the next
and the next. At the comer the blind man stops again and plays "Home to Our
Mountains". I find a piece of chewing gum in my pocket -1 chew it. I chew
for the sake of chewing. There is absolutely nothing better to do unless it
were to make a decision, which is impossible. The stoop is comfortable and
nobody is bothering me. I am part of the world, of life, as they say, and I
belong and I don't belong.
I sit on the stoop for an hour or so, mooning. I come to the same
conclusions I always come to when I have a minute to think for myself.
Either I must go home immediately and start to write or I must run away and
start a wholly new life. The thought of beginning a book terrifies me: there
is so much to tell that I don't know where or how to begin. The thought of
running away and beginning all over again is equally terrifying: it means
working like a nigger to keep body and soul together. For a man of my
temperament, the world being what it is, there is absolutely no hope, no
solution. Even if I could write the book I want to write nobody would take
it -1 know my compatriots only too well. Even if I could begin again it
would be no use, because fundamentally I have no desire to work and no
desire to become a useful member of society. I sit there staring at the
house across the way. It seems not only ugly and senseless, like all the
other houses on the street, but from staring at it so intently, it has
suddenly become absurd. The idea of constructing a place of shelter in that
particular way strikes me as absolutely insane. The city itself strikes me
as a piece of the highest insanity, everything about it, sewers, elevated
lines, slot machines, newspapers, telephones, cops, doorknobs, flop houses,
screens, toilet paper, everything. Everything could just as well not be and
not only nothing lost by a whole universe gained. I look at the people
brushing by me to see if by chance one of them might agree with me.
Supposing I intercepted one of them and just asked him a simple question.
Supposing I just said to him suddenly: "Why do you go on living the way you
do?" He would probably call a cop. I ask myself - does any one ever talk to
himself the way I do? I ask myself if there isn't something wrong with me.
The only conclusion I can come to is that I am different. And that's a very
grave matter, view it how you will. Henry, I say to myself, rising slowly
from the stoop, stretching myself, brushing my trousers and spitting out the
gum. Henry, I say to myself, you are young yet, you are just a spring
chicken and if you let them get you by the balls you're an idiot because
you're a better man than any of them only you need to get rid of your false
notions about humanity. You have to realize Henry me boy, that you're
dealing with cut-throats, with cannibals, only they're dressed-up, shaved,
perfumed, but that's all they are - cut-throats, cannibals. The best thing
for you to do now. Henry, is to go and get yourself a frosted chocolate and
when you sit at the soda fountain keep your eyes peeled and forget about the
destiny of man because you might still find yourself a nice lay and a good
dean lay will dean your ballbearing out and leave a good taste in your mouth
whereas this only brings on dyspepsia, dandruff, halitosis, encephalitis.
And while I'm soothing myself thus a guy comes up to me to bum a dime and I
hand him a quarter for good measure thinking to myself that if I had had a
little more sense I'd have had a juicy pork chop with that instead of the
lousy meat balls but what the difference now it's all food and food makes
energy and energy is what makes the world go round. Instead of the frosted
chocolate I keep walking and soon I'm exactly where I intended to be all the
time, which is front of the ticket window of the Roseland. And now. Henry,
says I to myself, if you're lucky your old pal MacGregor will be here and
first hell bawl the shit out of you for running away and then he'll lend you
a five-spot, and if you just hold your breath while climbing the stairs
maybe you'll see the nymphomaniac too and you'll get a dry fuck. Enter very
calmly. Henry, and keep your eyes peeled! And I enter as per instructions on
velvet toes, checking my hat and urinating a little as a matter of course,
then slowly redescending the stairs and sizing up the taxi girls all
diaphanously gowned, powdered, perfumed, looking fresh and alert but
probably bored as hell and leg weary. Into each and every one of them, as I
shuffle about, I throw an imaginary fuck. The place is just plastered with
cunt and fuck and that's why I'm reasonably sure to find my old friend
MacGregor here. The way I no longer think about the condition of the world
is marvellous. I mention it because for a moment, just while I was studying
a juicy ass, I had a relapse. I almost went into a trance again. I was
thinking, Christ help me, that maybe I ought to beat it and go home and
begin the book. A terrifying thought! Once I spent a whole evening sitting
in a chair and saw nothing and heard nothing. I must have written a good
sized book before I woke up. Better not to sit down. Better to keep
circulating. Henry, what you ought to do is to come here some time with a
lot of dough and just see how far it'll take you. I mean a hundred or two
hundred bucks, and spend it like water and say yes to everything. The
haughty looking one with the statuesque figure, I bet she'd squirm like an
eel if her palm were well greased. Supposing she said - twenty bucks! and
you could say Sure! Supposing you could say - Listen, I've got a car
downstairs ... let's run down to Atlantic City for a few days. Henry, there
ain't no car and there ain't no twenty bucks. Don't sit down ... keep
moving.
At the rail which fences off the floor I stand and watch them sailing
around. This is no harmless recreation... this is serious business. At each
end of the floor there is a sign reading "No Improper Dancing Allowed". Well
and good. No harm in placing a sign at each end of the floor. In Pompei they
probably hung a phallus up. This is the American way. It means the same
thing. I mustn't think about Pompei or I'll be sitting down and writing a
book again. Keep moving Henry. Keep your mind on the music. I keep
struggling to imagine what a lovely time I would have had if I had the price
of a string of tickets, but the more I struggle the more I slip back.
Finally I'm standing knee-deep in the lava beds and the gas is choking me.
It wasn't the lava that killed the Pompeians, it was the poison gas that
predpitated the eruption. That's how the lava caught them in such queer
poses, with their pants down, as it were. If suddenly all New York were
caught that way - what a museum it would make! My friend MacGregor standing
at the sink scrubbing his cock... the abortionists on the East Side caught
red-handed ... the nuns laying in bed and masturbating one another ... the
auctioneer with an alarm in his hand ... the telephone girls at the
switchboard ... J. P. Morganana sitting on the toilet bowl placidly wiping
his ass ... the dicks with rubber hoses giving the third degree ...
strippers giving the last strip and tease...
Standing knee-deep in the lava beds and my eyes choked with sperm; J.
P. Morganana is placidly wiping his ass while the telephone girls plug the
switchboards, while dicks with rubber hoses practice the third degree, while
my old friend MacGregor scrubs the germs out of his cock and sweetens it and
examines it under the microscope. Everybody is caught with his pants down,
including the strip teasers who wear no pants, no beards, no moustaches,
just a little patch to cover their twinkling little cunts. Sister Antolina
lying in the convent bed, her guts trussed up, her arms akimbo and waiting
for the Resurrection, waiting, waiting for life without hernia, without
intercourse, without sin, without evil, meanwhile nibbling a few animal
crackers, a pimento, some fancy olives, a little head cheese. The Jew-boys
on the East Side, in Harlem, the Bronx, Carnarsie, Bronville, opening and
dosing the trapdoors, pulling out arms and legs, turning the sausage
machine, dogging up the drains, working like fury for cash down and if you
let a peep out of you out you go. With eleven hundred tickets in my pocket
and a Rolls Royce waiting for me downstairs I could have the most
excruciatingly marvellous time, throwing a fuck into each and everyone
respectively regardless of age, sex, race, religion, nationality, birth or
breeding. There is no solution for a man like myself, I being what I am and
the world being what it is. The world is divided into three parts of which
two parts are meat balls and spaghetti and the other part a huge syphilitic
chancre. The haughty one with the statuesque figure is probably a cold
turkey fuck, a sort of con anonyme plastered with gold leaf and tin foil.
Beyond despair and disillusionment there is always the absence of worse
things and the emoluments of ennui. Nothing is lousier and emptier than the
midst of bright gaiety clicked by the mechanical eye of the mechanical
epoch, life maturating in a black box, a negative tickled with add and
yielding a momentaneous simulacrum of nothingness. At the outermost limit of
this momentaneous nothingness my friend MacGregor arrives and is standing by
my side and with him is the one he was talking about, the nymphomaniac
called Paula. She has the loose, jaunty swing and perch of the
double-barrelled sex, all her movements radiating from the groin, always in
equilibrium, always ready to flow, to wind and twist, and clutch, the eyes
going tic-toc, the toes twitching and twinkling, the flesh rippling like a
lake furrowed by a breeze. This is the incarnation of the hallucination of
sex, the sea nymph squirming in the maniac's arms. I watch the two of them
as they move spasmodically inch by inch around the floor; they move like an
octopus working up a rut. Between the dangling tentacles the music shimmers
and flashes, now breaks in a cascade of sperm and rose water, forms again
into an oily spout, a column standing erect without feet, collapses again
like chalk, leaving the upper part of the leg phosphorescent, a zebra
standing in a pool of golden marshmallow, one leg striped, the other molten.
A gold marshmallow octopus with rubber hinges and molten hooves, its sex
undone and twisted into a knot. On the sea floor the oysters are doing the
St. Vitus dance, some with lockjaw, some with double-jointed knees. The
music is sprinkled with rat poison, with the rattlesnake's venom, with the
fetid breath of the gardenia, the spittle of the sacred yak, the bolloxed
sweat of the musk-rat, the leper's sugar-coated nostalgia. The music is a
diarrhoea, a lake of gasolene, stagnant with cockroaches and stale horse
piss. The drooling notes are the foam and dribble of the epileptic, the
night sweat of the fornicating nigger frigged by the Jew. All America is in
the trombone's smear, that frazzled brokendown whinny of the gangrened sea
cows stationed off Point Loma, Pawtucket, Cape Hatteras, Labrador, Camarsie
and intermediate points. The octopus is dancing like a rubber dick - the
rhumba of Spuyten Duyvil inedit. Laura the nympho is doing the rhumba, her
sex exfoliated and twisted like a cow's tail. In the belly of the trombone
lies the American soul farting its contented heart out. Nothing goes to
waste - not the least spit of a fart. In the golden marshmallow dream of
happiness, in the dance of sodden piss and gasolene, the great soul of the
American continent gallops like an octopus, all the sails unfurled, the
hatches down, the engine whirring like a dynamo. The great dynamic soul
caught in the click of the camera's eye, in the heat of rut, bloodless as a
fish, slippery as mucus, the soul of the people miscegenating on the sea
floor, pop-eyed with longing, harrowed with lust. The dance of Saturday
night, of cantaloupes rotting in the garbage pail, of fresh green snot and
slimy unguents for the tender parts. The dance of the slot-machine and the
monsters who invent them. The dance of the gat and the slugs who use them.
The dance of the blackjack and the pricks who batter brains to a polypous
pulp. The dance of the magneto world, the spark that unsparks, the soft purr
of the perfect mechanism, the velocity race on a turntable, the dollar at
par and the forests dead and mutilated. The Saturday night of the soul's
hollow dance, each jumping jigger a functional unit in the St. Vitus' dance
of the ringworm's dream. Laura the nympho brandishing her cunt, her sweet
rose-petal lips toothed with ballbearing clutches, her ass balled and
socketed. Inch by inch, millimetre by .millimetre they shove the copulating
corpse around. And then crash! Like pulling a switch the music suddenly
stops and with the stoppage the dancers come apart, arms and legs intact,
like tea leaves dropping to the bottom of the cup. Now the air is blue with
words, a slow sizzle as of fish on the griddle. The chaff of the empty soul
rising like monkey chatter in the topmost branches of the trees. The air
blue with words passing out through the ventilators, coming back again in
sleep through corrugated funnels and smokestacks, winged like the antelope,
striped like the zebra, now lying quiet as the mollusc, now spitting flame.
Laura the nympho cold as a statue, her parts eaten away, her hair musically
enraptured. On the brink of sleep Laura stands with muted lips, her words
falling like pollen through a fog. The Laura of Petrarque seated in a taxi,
each word ringing through the cash register, then sterilized, then
cauterized. Laura the basilisk made entirely of asbestos, walking to the
fiery stake with a mouth full of gum. Hunkydory is the word on her lips. The
heavy fluted Ups of the sea-shell. Laura's lips, the lips of lost Uranian
love. All floating shadow-ward through the slanting fog. Last murmuring
dregs of shell-like lips slipping off the Labrador coast, oozing eastward
with the mud tides, easing starward in the iodine drift. Lost Laura, last of
the Petrarques, slowly fading on the brink of sleep. Not grey the world, but
lustlack, the light bamboo sleep of spoon-backed innocence.
And tins in the black frenzied nothingness of the hollow of absence
leaves a gloomy feeling of saturated despondency not unlike the topmost tip
of desperation which is only the gay juvenile maggot of death's exquisite
rupture with life. From this inverted cone of ecstasy life will rise again
into prosaic skyscraper eminence, dragging me by the hair and teeth, lousy
with howling empty joy, the animated foetus of the unborn death maggot lying
in wait for rot and putrefaction.
Sunday morning the telephone wakes me up. It's my friend Maxie Schnadig
announcing the death of our friend Luke Ralston. Maxie has assumed a truly
sorrowful tone of voice which rubs me the wrong way. He says Luke was such a
swell guy. That too sounds the wrong note for me because while Luke was all
right, he was only so-so, not precisely what you might call a swell guy.
Luke was an ingrown fairy and finally, when I got to know him intimately, a
big pain in the ass. I told Maxie that over the telephone: I could tell from
the way he answered me that he didn't like it very much. He said Luke had
always been a friend to me. It was true enough, but it wasn't enough. The
truth was that I was really glad Luke had kicked off at the opportune
moment: it meant that I could forget about the hundred and fifty dollars
which I owed him In fact, as I hung up the receiver I really felt joyous. It
was a tremendous relief not to have to pay that debt. As for Luke's demise,
that didn't disturb me in the least. On the contrary, it would enable me to
pay a visit to his sister, Lottie, whom I always wanted to lay but never
could for one reason or another. Now I could see myself going up there in
the middle of the day and offering her my condolences. Her husband would be
at the office and there would be nothing to interfere. I saw myself putting
my arms around her and comforting her; nothing like tackling a woman when
she is in sorrow. I could see her opening her eyes wide -she had beautiful,
large grey eyes - as I moved her towards the couch. She was the sort of
woman who would give you a fuck while pretending to be talking music or some
such thing. She didn't like the naked reality, the bare facts, so to speak.
At the same time she'd have enough presence of mind to slip a towel under
her so as not to stain the couch. I knew her inside out. I knew that the
best time to get her was now, now while she was running up a little fever of
emotion over dear dead Luke -whom she didn't think much of, by the way.
Unfortunately it was Sunday and the husband would be sure to be home. I went
back to bed and I lay there thinking first about Luke and all that he had
done for me and then about her, Lottie. Lottie Somers was her name - it
always seemed a beautiful name to me. It matched her perfectly. Luke was
stiff as a poker, with a sort of skull and bones face, and impeccable and
just beyond words. She was just the opposite - soft, round, spoke with a
drawl, caressed her words, moved languidly, used her eyes effectively. One
would never take them for brother and sister. I got so worked up thinking
about her that I tried to tackle the wife. But that poor bastard, with her
Puritanical complex, pretended to be horrified. She liked Luke. She wouldn't
say that he was a swell guy, because that wasn't like her, but she insisted
that he was genuine, loyal, a true friend, etc. I had so many loyal,
genuine, true friends that that was all horse shit to me. Finally we got
into such an argument over Luke that she got an hysterical attack and began
to weep and sob - in bed, mind you. That made me hungry. The idea of weeping
before breakfast seemed monstrous to me. I went downstairs and I fixed
myself a wonderful breakfast, and as I put it away I was laughing to myself,
about Luke, about the hundred and fifty bucks that his sudden death had
wiped off the slate, about Lottie and the way she would look at me when the
moment came . . . and finally, the most absurd of all, I thought of Maxie,
Maxie Schnadig, the faithful friend of Luke, standing at the grave with a
big wreath and perhaps throwing a handful of earth on the coffin just as
they were lowering it. Somehow that seemed just too stupid for words. I
don't know why it should seem so ridiculous, but it did. Maxie was a
simpleton. I tolerated him only because he was good for a touch now and
then. And then too there was his sister Rita. I used to let him invite me to
his home occasionally, pretending that I was interested in his brother who
was deranged. It was always a good meal and the halfwitted brother was real
entertainment. He looked like a chimpanzee and he talked like one too. Maxie
was too simple to suspect that I was merely enjoying myself; he thought I
took a genuine interest in his brother.
It was a beautiful Sunday and I had as usual about a quarter in my
pocket. I walked along wondering where to go to make a touch. Not that it
was difficult to scrape up a little dough, no, but the thing was to get the
dough and beat it without being bored stiff. I could think of a dozen guys
right in the neighbourhood, guys who would fork it out without a murmur, but
it would mean a long conversation afterwards - about art, religion,
politics. Another thing I could do, which I had done over and over again in
a pinch, was to visit the telegraph offices, pretending to pay a friendly
visit of inspection and then, at the last minute, suggesting that they rifle
the till for a buck or so until the morrow. That would involve time and even
worse conversation. Thinking it over coldly and calculatingly I decided that
the best bet was my little friend Curley up in Harlem. If Curley didn't have
the money he would filch it from his mother's purse. I knew I could rely on
him. He would want to accompany me, of course, but I could always find a way
of ditching him before the evening was over. He was only a kid and I didn't
have to be too delicate with him.
What I liked about Curley was, that although only a kid of seventeen,
he had absolutely no moral sense, no scruples, no shame. He had come to me
as a boy of fourteen looking for a job as messenger. His parents, who were
then in South America, had shipped him to New York in care of an aunt who
seduced him almost immediately. He had never been to school because the
parents were always travelling; they were carnival people who worked "the
griffs and the grinds", as he put it. The father had been in prison several
times. He was not his real father, by the way. Anyway, Curley came to me as
a mere lad who was in need of help, in need of a friend more than anything.
At first I thought I could do something for him. Everybody took a liking to
hira immediately, especially the women. He became the pet of the office.
Before long, however, I realized that he was incomgible, that at the best he
had the makings of a clever criminal. I liked him, however, and I continued
to do things for him, but I never trusted him out of my sight. I think I
liked him particularly because he had absolutely no sense of honour. He
would do anything in the world for me and at the same time betray me. I
couldn't reproach him for it... It was amusing to me. The more so because he
was frank about it. He just couldn't help it. His Aunt Sophie, for instance.
He said she had seduced him. True enough, but the curious thing was that he
let himself be seduced while they were reading the Bible together. Young as
he was he seemed to realize that his Aunt Sophie had need of him in that
way. So he let himself be seduced, as he said, and then, after I had known
him a little while he offered to put me next to his Aunt Sophie. He even
went so far as to blackmail her. When he needed money badly he would go to
the aunt and wheedle it out of her - with sly threats of exposure. With an
innocent face, to be sure. He looked amazingly like an angel, with big
liquid eyes that seemed so frank and sincere. So ready to do things for you
- almost like a faithful dog. And then cunning enough, once he had gained
your favour, to make you humour his little whims. Withal extremely
intelligent. The sly intelligence of a fox and - the utter heartlessness of
a jackal.
It wasn't at all surprising to me, consequently, to learn that
afternoon that he had been tinkering with Valeska. After Valeska he tackled
the cousin who had already been deflowered and who was in need of some male
whom she could rely upon. And from her finally to the midget who had made
herself a pretty little nest at Valeska's. The midget interested him because
she had a perfectly normal cant. He hadn't intended to do anything with her
because, as he said, she was a repulsive little Lesbian, but one day he
happened to walk in on her as she was taking a bath, and that started things
off. It was getting to be too much for him, he confessed, because the three
of them were hot on bis trail. He liked the cousin best because she had some
dough and she wasn't reluctant to part with it. Valeska was too cagey, and
besides she smelled a little too strong. In fact, he was getting sick of
women. He said it was his Aunt Sophie's fault. She gave him a bad start.
While relating this he busies himself going through the bureau drawers. The
father is a mean son of a bitch who ought to be hanged, he says, not finding
anything immediately. He showed me a revolver with a pearl handle... what
would it fetch? A gun was too good to use on the old man ... he'd like to
dynamite him. Trying to find out why he hated the old man so it developed
that the kid was really stuck on his mother. He couldn't bear the thought of
the old man going to bed with her. You don't mean to say that you're jealous
of your old man, I ask. Yes, he's jealous. If I wanted to know the truth
it's that he wouldn't mind sleeping with his mother. Why not? That's why he
had permitted his Aunt Sophie to seduce him... he was thinking of his mother
all the time. But don't you feel bad when you go through her pocketbook, I
asked. He laughed. It's not her money he said, it's his. And what have they
done for me? They were always farming me out. The first thing they taught me
was how to cheat people. That's a hell of a way to raise a kid...
There's not a red cent in the house. Curley's idea of a way out is to
go with me to the office where he works and while I engage the manager in
conversation go through the wardrobe and dean out all the loose change. Or,
if I'm not afraid of taking a chance, he will go through the cash drawer.
They'll never suspect us, he says. Had he ever done that before, I ask. Of
course ... a dozen or more times, right under the manager's nose. And wasn't
there any stink about it? To be sure ... they had fired a few clerks. Why
don't you borrow something from your Aunt Sophie, I suggest. That's easy
enough, only it means a quick diddle and he doesn't want to diddle her any
more. She stinks. Aunt Sophie. What do you mean, she stinks? Just that ...
she doesn't wash herself regularly. Why, what's the matter with her?
Nothing, just religious. And getting fat and greasy at die same time. But
she likes to be diddled just the same? Does
she? She's crazier than ever about it. It's disgusting. It's like going
to bed with a sow. What does your mother think about her? Her? She's as sore
as hell at her. She thinks Sophie's trying to seduce the old man. Well,
maybe she is! No, the old man's got something else. I caught him red-handed
one night, in the movies, mushing it up with a young girl. She's a
manicurist from the Astor Hotel. He's probably trying to squeeze a little
dough out of her. That's the only reason he ever makes a woman. He's a
dirty, mean son of a bitch and I'd like to see him get the chair some day!
You'll get the chair yourself some day if you don't watch out. Who, me ? Not
me ! I'm too clever. You're clever enough but you've got a loose tongue. I'd
be a little more tight-lipped if I were you. You know, I added, to give him
an extra jolt, O'Rourke is wise to you; if you ever fall out with O'Rourke
it's all up with you . . . Well, why doesn't he say something if he's so
wise? I don't believe you.
I explain to him at some length that O'Rourke is one of those people,
and there are damned few in the world, who prefer not to make trouble for
another person if they can help it. O'Rourke, I say, has the detective's
instinct only in that he likes to know what's going on around him: people's
characters are plotted out in his head, and filed there permanently, just as
the enemy's terrain is fixed in the minds of army leaders. People think that
O'Rourke goes around snooping and spying, that he derives a special pleasure
in performing this dirty work for the company. Not so. O'Rourke is a born
student of human nature. He picks things up without effort, due, to be sure,
to his peculiar way of looking at the world. Now about you ... I have no
doubt that he knows everything about you. I never asked him, I admit, but I
imagine so from the questions he poses now and then. Perhaps he's just
giving you plenty of rope. Some night he'll run into you accidentally and
perhaps he'll ask you to stop off somewhere and have a bite to eat with him.
And out of a dear sky he'll suddenly say - you remember, Curley, when you
were working up in SA office, the time that little Jewish clerk was fired
for tapping the till? I think you were working overtime that night, weren't
you? An interesting case, that. You know, they never discovered whether the
clerk stole the money or not. They had to fire him, of course, for
negligence, but we can't say for certain that he really stole the money.
I've been thinking about that little affair now for quite some time. I have
a hunch as to who took that money, but I'm not absolutely sure . . . And
then he'll probably give you a beady eye and abruptly change the
conversation to something else. He'll probably tell you a little story about
a crook he knew who thought he was very smart and getting away with it.
He'll draw that story out for you until you feel as though you were sitting
on hot coals. By that time you'll be wanting to beat it, but just when
you're ready to go he'll suddenly be reminded of another very interesting
little case and he'll ask you to wait just a little longer while he orders
another dessert. And he'll go on like that for three or four hours at a
stretch, never making the least overt insinuation, but studying you closely
all the time, and finally, when you think you're free, just when you're
shaking hands with him and breathing a sigh of relief, he'll step in front
of you and, planting his big square feet between your legs, he'll grab you
by the lapel and, looking straight through you, he'll say in a soft winsome
voice - now look here, my lad, don't you think you had better come clean?
And if you think he's only trying to browbeat you and that you can pretend
innocence and walk away, you're mistaken. Because at that point, when he
asks you to come clean, he means business and nothing on earth is going to
stop him. When it gets to that point I'd recommend you to make a clean sweep
of it, down to the last penny. He won't ask me to fire you and he won't
threaten you with jail - he'll just quietly suggest that you put aside a
little bit each week and turn it over to him. Nobody will be the wiser. He
probably won't even tell me. No, he's very delicate about these things, you
see."
"And supposing," says Curley suddenly, "that I tell him I stole the
money in order to help you out? What then?" He began to laugh hysterically.
"I don't think O'Rourke would believe that," I said calmly. "You can
try it, of course, if you think it will help you to dear your own skirts.
But I rather think it will have a bad effect. O'Rourke knows me ... he knows
I wouldn't let you do a thing like that." "But you did let me do it!"
"I didn't tell you to do it. You did it without my knowledge. That's
quite different. Besides, can you prove that I accepted money from you?
Won't it seem a little ridiculous to accuse me, the one who befriended you,
of putting you up to a job like that? Who's going to believe you? Not
O'Rourke. Besides, he hasn't trapped you yet. Why worry about it in advance?
Maybe you could begin to return the money little by little before he gets
after you. Do it anonymously."
By this time Curley was quite used up. There was a little schnapps in
the cupboard which his old man kept in reserve and I suggested that we take
a little to brace us up. As we were drinking the schnapps it suddenly
occurred to me that Maxie had said he would be at Luke's house to pay his
respects. It was just the moment to get Maxie. He would be full of
slobbering sentiments and I could give him any old kind of cock-and-bull
story. I could say that the reason I had assumed such a hard-boiled air on
the phone was because I was harassed, because I didn't know where to turn
for the ten dollars which I needed so badly. At the same time I might be
able to make a date with Lottie. I began to smile thinking about it. If Luke
could only see what a friend he had in me! The most difficult thing would be
to go up to the bier and take a sorrowful look at Luke. Not to.laugh!
I explained the idea to Curley. He laughed so heartily that the tears
were rolling down his face. Which convinced me, by the way, that it would be
safer to leave Curley downstairs while I made the touch. Anyway, it was
decided on.
They were just sitting down to dinner when I walked in, looking as sad
as I could possibly make myself look. Maxie was there and almost shocked by
my sudden appearance. Lottie had gone already. That helped me to keep up the
sad look. I asked to be alone with Luke a few minutes, but Maxie insisted on
accompanying me. The others were relieved, I imagine, as they had been
conducting the mourners to the bier all afternoon. And like the good Germans
they were they didn't like having their dinner interrupted. As I was looking
at Luke, still with that sorrowful expression I had mustered, I became aware
of Maxie's eyes fixed on me inquisitively. I looked up and smiled at him in
my usual way. He seemed absolutely nonplussed at this. "Listen, Maxie," I
said, "are you sure they won't hear us?" He looked still more puzzled and
grieved, but nodded reassuringly. "It's like this, Maxie... I came up here
purposely to see you ... to borrow a few bucks. I know it seems lousy but
you can imagine how desperate I must be to do a thing like this." He was
shaking his head solemnly as I spit this out, his mouth forming a big 0 as
if he were trying to frighten the spirits away. "Listen, Maxie," I went on
rapidly and trying to keep my voice down sad and low, "this is no time to
give me a sermon. If you want to do something for me lend me ten bucks now,
right away . .. slip it to me right here while I look at Luke. You know, I
really liked Luke. I didn't mean all that over the telephone. You got me at
a bad moment. The wife was tearing her hair out. We're in a mess, Maxie, and
I'm counting on you to do something. Come out with me if you can and I'll
tell you more about it.. .*' Maxie, as I had expected, couldn't come out
with me. He wouldn't think of deserting them at such a moment..." Well, give
it to me now," I said, almost savagely. "I'll explain the whole thing to you
tomorrow. I'll have lunch with you downtown."
"Listen, Henry," says Maxie, fishing around in his pocket, embarrassed
at the idea of being caught with a wad in his hand at that moment, "listen,"
he said, "I don't mind giving you the money, but couldn't you have found
another way of reaching me? It isn't because of Luke... it's..." He began to
hem and haw, not knowing really what he wanted to say.
"For Christ's sake," I muttered, bending over Luke more closely so that
if any one walked in on us they would never suspect what I was up to ...
"for Christ's sake, don't argue about it now... hand it over and be done
with it... I'm desperate, do you hear me?" Maxie was so confused and
flustered that he couldn't disengage a bill without pulling the wad out of
his pocket. Leaning over the coffin reverendy I peeled off the topmost bill
from the wad which was peeping out of his pocket. I couldn't tell whether it
was a single or a ten-spot. I didn't stop to examine it but tucked it away
as rapidly as possible and
I08
straightened myself up. Then I took Maxie by the arm and returned to
the kitchen where the family were eating solemnly but heartily. They wanted
me to stay for a bite, and it was awkward to refuse, but I refused as best I
could and beat it, my face twitching now with hysterical laughter.
At the comer, by the lamp post, Curley was waiting for me. By this time
I couldn't restrain myself any longer. I grabbed Curley by the arm and
rushing him down the street I began to laugh, to laugh as I have seldom
laughed in my life. I thought it would never stop. Every time I opened my
mouth to start explaining the incident I had an attack. Finally I got
frightened. I thought maybe I might laugh myself to death. After I had
managed to quiet down a bit, in the midst of a long silence. Cur-ley
suddenly says: "Did you get it?" That precipitated another attack, even more
violent than before. I had to lean against a rail and hold my guts. I had a
terrific pain in the guts but a pleasurable pain.
What relieved me more than anything was the sight of the bill I had
filched from Maxie's wad. It was a twenty dollar bill! That sobered me up at
once. And at the same time it enraged me a bit. It enraged me to think that
in the pocket of that idiot, Maxie, there were still more bills, probably
more twenties, more tens, more fives. If he had come out with me, as I
suggested, and if I had taken a good look at that wad I would have felt no
remorse in blackjacking him. I don't know why it should have made me feel
so, but it enraged me. The most immediate thought was to get rid of Curley
as quickly as possible - a five-spot would fix him up - and then go on a
little spree. What I particularly wanted was to meet some low-down, filthy
cunt who hadn't a spark of decency in her. Where to meet one like that. . .
just like that? Well, get rid of Curley first. Curley, of course, is hurt.
He had expected to stick with me. He pretends not to want the five bucks,
but when be sees that I'm willing to take it back, he quickly stows it away.
Again the night, the incalculably barren, cold, mechanical night of New
York in which there is no peace, no refuge, no intimacy. The immense, frozen
solitude of the million-footed mob, the cold, waste fire of the electrical
display, the over- whelming meaningless of the perfection of the female who
through perfection has crossed the frontier of sex and gone into the minus
sign, gone into the red, like the electricity, like the neutral energy of
the males, like planets without aspect, like peace programmes, like love
over the radio. To have money in the pocket in the midst of white, neutral
energy, to walk meaningless and unfecundated through the bright glitter of
the calcimined streets, to think aloud in full solitude on the edge of
madness, to be of a city, a great city, to be of the last moment of time in
the greatest city in the world and feel no part of it, is to become oneself
a city, a world of dead stone, of waste light, of unintelligible motion, of
imponderables and incalculables, of the secret perfection of all that is
minus. To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled
by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no
least single object anywhere that is not money, money, money everywhere and
still not enough, and then no money or a little money or less money or more
money, but money, always money, and if you have money or you don't have
money it is the money that counts and money makes money, but what makes
money make money ?
Again the dance hall, the money rhythm, the love that comes over the
radio, the impersonal, wingless touch of the crowd. A despair that reaches
down to the very soles of the boots, an ennui, a desperation. In the midst
of the highest mechanical perfection to dance without joy, to be so
desperately alone, to be almost inhuman because you are human. If there were
life on the moon what more nearly perfect, joyless evidence of it could
there be than this. If to travel away from the sun is to reach the chill
idiocy of the moon, then we have arrived at our goal and life is but the
cold, lunar incandescence of the sun. This is the dance of ice-cold life in
the hollow of an atom, and the more we dance the colder it gets.
So we dance, to an ice-cold frenzied rhythm, to short waves and long
waves, a dance on the inside of the cup of nothingness, each centimetre of
lust running to dollars and cents. We taxi from one perfect female to
another seeking the vulnerable defect, but they are flawless and impermeable
in the impeccable lunar consistency. This is the icy white maidenhead of
love's logic, the web of the ebbed tide, the fringe of absolute vacuity. And
on this fringe of the virginal logic of perfection I am dancing the soul
dance of white desperation, the last white man pulling the trigger on the
last emotion, the gorilla of despair beating his breast with immaculate
gloved paws. I am the gorilla who feels his wings growing, a giddy gorilla
in the centre of a satin-like emptiness; the night too grows like an
electrical plant, shooting white-hot buds into velvet black space. I am the
black space of the night in which the buds break with anguish, a starfish
swimming on the frozen dew of the moon. I am the germ of a new insanity, a
freak dressed in intelligible language, a sob that is buried like a splinter
in the quick of the soul. I am dancing the very sane and lovely dance of the
angelic gorilla. These are my brothers and sisters who are insane and
unangelic. We are dancing in the hollow of the cup of nothingness. We are of
one flesh, but separated like stars.
In the moment all is dear to me, dear that in this logic there is no
redemption, the city itself being the highest form of madness and each and
every part, organic or inorganic, an expression of this same madness. I feel
absurdly and humbly great, not as megalomaniac, but as human spore, as the
dead sponge of life swollen to saturation. I no longer look into the eyes of
the woman I hold in my arms but I swim through, head and arms and legs, and
I see that behind the sockets of the eyes there is a region unexplored, the
world of futurity, and here there is no logic whatever, just the still
germination of events unbroken by night and day, by yesterday and tomorrow.
The eye, accustomed to concentration on points in space, now concentrates on
points in time; the eye sees forward and backward at will. The eye which was
the I of the self no longer exists; this selfless eye neither reveals nor
illuminates. It travels along the line of the horizon, a ceaseless,
uninformed voyager. Trying to retain the lost body I grew in logic as the
city, a point digit in the anatomy of perfection. I grew beyond my own
death, spiritually bright and hard. I was divided into endless yesterdays,
endless tomorrows, resting only on the cusp of the event, a wall with many
windows, but the house gone. I must shatter the walls and windows, the last
shell of the lost body, if I am to rejoin the present. That is why I no
longer look into the eyes or through the eyes, but by the legerdemain of
will swim through the eyes, head and arms and legs to explore the curve of
vision. I see around myself as the mother who bore me once saw round the
comers of time. I have broken the wall created by birth and the line of
voyage is round and unbroken, even as the navel. No form, no image, no
architecture, only concentric flights of sheer madness. I am the arrow of
the dream's substantiality. I verify by flight. I nullify by dropping to
earth.
Thus moments pass, veridic moments of time without space when I know
all, and knowing all I collapse beneath the vault of the selfless dream.
Between these moments, in the interstices of the dream, life vainly
tried to build up, but the scaffold of the city's mad logic is no support.
As an individual, as flesh and blood, I am levelled down each day to make
the fleshless, bloodless dty whose perfection is the sum of all logic and
death to the dream. I am struggling against an oceanic death in which my own
death is but a drop of water evaporating. To raise my own individual life
but a fraction of an inch above this sinking sea of death I must have a
faith greater than Christ's, a wisdom deeper than that of the greatest seer.
I must have the ability and the patience to formulate what is not contained
in the language of our time, for what is now intelligible is meaningless. My
eyes are useless, for they render back only the image of the known. My whole
body must become a constant beam of light, moving with an ever greater
rapidity, never arrested, never looking back, never dwindling. The dty grows
like a cancer; I must grow like a sun. The dty eats deeper and deeper into
the red; it is an insatiable white louse which must die eventually of
inanition. I am going to starve the white louse which is eating me up. I am
going to die as a dty in order to become again a man. Therefore I dose my
ears, my eyes, my mouth.
Before I shall have become quite a man again I shall probably exist as
a park, a sort of natural park in which people come to rest, to while away
the time. What they say or do will be of little matter, for they will bring
only their fatigue, their boredom, their hopelessness. I shall be a buffer
between the white louse and the red corpuscle. I shall be a ventilator for
removing the poisons accumulated through the effort to perfect that which is
imperfecdble. I shall be law and order as it exists in nature as it is
projected in dream. I shall be the wild park in the midst of the nightmare
of perfection, the still, unshakeable dream in the midst of frenzied
activity, the random shot on the white billiard table of logic. I shall know
neither how to weep nor protest, but I shall be there always in absolute
silence to receive and to restore. I shall say nothing until the time comes
again to be a man. I shall make no effort to preserve, no effort to destroy.
I shall make no judgments, no criticisms. Those who have had enough will
come to me for reflection and meditation; those who have not had enough will
die as they lived, in disorder, in desperation, in ignorance of the truth of
redemption. If one says to me, you must be religious, I shall make no
answer. If one says to me, I have no time now, there's a cunt waiting for
me, I shall make no answer. Or even if there be a revolution brewing, I
shall make no answer. There will always be a cunt or a revolution around the
comer, but the mother who bore me turned many a comer and made no answer,
and finally she turned herself inside out and I am the answer.
Out of such a wild mania for perfection naturally no one would have
expected an evolution to a wild park, not even I myself, but it is
infinitely better, while attending death, to live in a state of grace and
natural bewilderment. Infinitely better, as life moves towards a deathly
perfection, to be just a bit of breathing space, a stretch of green, a
little fresh air, a pool of water. Better also to receive men silently and
to enfold them, for there is no answer to make them while they are still
frantically rushing to turn the corner.
I'm thinking now about the rock fight one summer's afternoon long long
ago when I was staying with my Aunt Caroline up near Hell Gate. My Cousin
Gene and I had been corralled by a gang of boys while we were playing in the
park. We didn't know which side we were fighting for but we were fighting in
dead earnest amidst the rock pile by the river bank. We had to show even
more courage than the other boys because we were suspected of being sissies.
That's how it happened that we killed one of the rival gang. Just as they
were charging us my cousin Gene let go at the ringleader and caught him in
the guts with a handsome-sized rock. I let go almost at the same instant and
my rock caught him in the temple and when he went down he lay there for good
and not a peep out of him. A few minutes later the cops came and the boy was
found dead. He was eight or nine years old, about the same age as us. What
they would have done to us if they caught us I don't know. Anyway, so as not
to arouse any suspicion we hurried home: we had cleaned up a bit on the way
and had combed our hair. We walked in looking almost as immaculate as when
we had left the house. Aunt Caroline gave us our usual two big slices of
sour rye with fresh butter and a little sugar over it and we sat there at
the kitchen table listening to her with an angelic smile. It was an
extremely hot day and she thought we had better stay in the house, in the
big front room where the blinds had been pulled down, and play marbles with
our little friend Joey Resselbaum. Joey had the reputation of being a little
backward and ordinarily we would have trimmed him, but that afternoon, by a
sort of mute understanding. Gene and I allowed him to win everything we had.
Joey was so happy that he took us down to his cellar later and made his
sister pull up her dresses and show us what was underneath. Weesie, they
called her, and I remember that she was stuck on me instantly. I came from
another part of the city, so far away it seemed to them that it was almost
like coming from another country. They even seemed to think that I talked
differently from them. Whereas the other urchins used to pay to make Weesie
lift her dress up, for us it was done with love. After a while we persuaded
her not to do it any more for the other boys - we were in love with her and
we wanted her to go straight.
When I left my cousin at the end of the summer I didn't see him again
for twenty years or more. When we did meet what deeply impressed me was the
look of innocence he wore - the same expression as the day of the rock
fight. When I spoke to him about the fight I was still more amazed to
discover that he had forgotten that it was we who had lolled the boy: he
remembered the boy's death but he spoke of it as though neither he nor I had
had any part in it. When I mentioned Weesie's name he had difficulty in
placing her. Don't you remember the cellar next door.. .Joey Kesselbaum ? At
this a faint smile passed over his face. He thought it extraordinary that I
should remember such things. He was already married, a father, and working
in a factory making fancy pipe cases. He considered it extraordinary to
remember events that had happened so far back in the past.
On leaving him that evening I felt terribly despondent. It was as
though he had attempted to eradicate a precious part of my life, and himself
with it He seemed more attached to the tropical fish which he was collecting
than to the wonderful past. As for me I recollect everything, everything
that happened that summer, and particularly the day of the rock fight. There
are times, in fact, when the taste of that big slice of sour rye which his
mother handed me that afternoon is stronger in my mouth than the food I am
actually tasting. And the sight of Weesie's little bud almost stronger than
the actual feel of what is in my hand. The way the boy lay there, after we
downed him, far far more impressive than the history of the World War. The
whole long summer, in fact, seems like an idyll out of the Arthurian
legends. I often wonder what it was about this particular summer which makes
it so vivid in my memory. I have only to close my eyes a moment in order to
relive each day. The death of the boy certainly caused me no anguish - it
was forgotten before a week had elapsed. The sight of Weesie standing in the
gloom of the cellar with her dress lifted up, that too passed easily away.
Strangely enough, the thick slice of rye bread which his mother handed me
each day seems to possess more potency than any other image of that period.
I wonder about it... wonder deeply. Perhaps it is that whenever she handed
me the slice of bread it was with a tenderness and a sympathy that I had
never known before. She was a very homely woman, my Aunt Caroline. Her face
was marked by the pox, but it was a kind, winsome face which no
disfigurement could mar. She was enormously stout and she had a very soft, a
very caressing voice. When she ad- dressed me she seemed to give me even
more attention, more consideration, than her own son. I would like to have
stayed with her always; I would have chosen her for my own mother had I been
permitted. I remember distinctly how when my mother arrived on a visit she
seemed peeved that I was so contented with my new life. She even remarked
that I was ungrateful, a remark I never forgot, because then I realized for
the first time that to be ungrateful was perhaps necessary and good for one.
If I dose my eyes now and I think about it, about the slice of bread, I
think almost at once that in this house I never knew what it was to be
scolded. I think if I had told my Aunt Caroline that I had killed a boy in
the lot, told her just how it happened, she would have put her arm around me
and forgiven me - instantly. That's why perhaps that summer is so precious
to me. It was a summer of tacit and complete absolution. That's why I can't
forget Weesie either. She was full of a natural goodness, a child who was in
love with me and who made no reproaches. She was the first of the other sex
to admire me for being different. After Weesie it was the other way round. I
was loved, but I was hated too for being what I was. Weesie made an effort
to understand. The very fact that I came from a strange country, that I
spoke another language, drew her closer to me. The way her eyes shone when
she presented me to her little friends is something I will never forget. Her
eyes seemed to be bursting with love and admiration. Sometimes the three of
us would walk to the riverside in the evening and sitting on the bank we
would talk as children talk when they are out of sight of their elders. We
talked then, I know it now so well, more sanely and more profoundly than our
parents. To give us that thick slice of bread each day the parents had to
pay a heavy penalty. The worst penalty was that they became estranged from
us. For, with each slice they fed us we became not only more indifferent to
them, but we became more and more superior to them. In our ungratefulness
was our strength and our beauty. Not being devoted we were innocent of all
crime. The boy whom I saw drop dead, who lay there motionless, without
making the slightest sound or whimper, the killing of that boy seems almost
like a clean, healthy performance. The struggle for food, on the other hand,
seems foul and degrading and when we stood in the presence of our parents we
sensed that they had come to us unclean and for that we could never forgive
them. The thick slice of bread in the afternoons, precisely because it was
not earned, tasted delicious to us. Never again will bread taste this way.
Never again will it be given this way. The day of the murder it was even
tastier than ever. It had a slight taste of terror in it which has been
lacking ever since. And it was received with Aunt Caroline's tacit but
complete absolution.
There is something about the rye bread which I am trying to fathom -
something vaguely delicious, terrifying and liberating, something associated
with first discoveries. I am thinking of another slice of sour rye which was
connected with a still earlier period, when my little friend Stanley and I
used to rifle the icebox. That was stolen bread and consequently even more
marvellous to the palate than the bread which was given with love. But it
was in the act of eating the rye bread, the walking around with it and
talking at the same time, that something in the nature of revelation
occurred. It was like a state of grace, a state of complete ignorance, of
self-abnegation. Whatever was imparted to me in these moments I seem to have
retained intact and there is no fear that I shall ever lose the knowledge
that was gained. It was just the fact perhaps that it was no knowledge as we
ordinarily think of it. It was almost like receiving a truth, though truth
is almost too precise a word for it. The important thing about the sour rye
discussions is that they always took place away from home, away from the
eyes of our parents whom we feared but never respected. Left to ourselves
there were no limits to what we might imagine. Facts had little importance
for us: what we demanded of a subject was that it allow us opportunity to
expand. What amazes me, when I look back on it, is how well we understood
one another, how well we penetrated to the essential character of each and
every one, young or old. At seven years of age we knew with dead certainty,
for example, that such a fellow would end up in prison, that another would
be a drudge, and another a good for nothing, and so on. We were absolutely
correct in our diagnoses, much more correct, for example, than our parents,
or our teachers, more correct, indeed, than the so-called psychologists.
Alfie Betcha turned out to be an absolute bum: Johnny Gerhardt went to the
penitentiary: Bob Kunst became a work horse. Infallible predictions. The
learning we received only tended to obscure our vision. From the day we went
to school we learned nothing: on the contrary, we were made obtuse, we were
wrapped in a fog of words and abstractions.
With the sour rye the world was what it is essentially, a primitive
world ruled by magic, a world in which fear played the most important role.
The boy who could inspire the most fear was the leader and he was respected
as long as he could maintain his power. There were other boys who were
rebels, and they were admired, but they never became the leader. The
majority were clay in the hands of the fearless ones: a few could be
depended on, but the most not. The air was full of tension -nothing could be
predicted for the morrow. This loose, primitive nucleus of a society created
sharp appetites, sharp emotions, sharp curiosity. Nothing was taken for
granted: each day demanded a new test of power, a new sense of strength or
of failure. And so, up until the age of nine or ten, we had a real taste of
life - we were on our own. That is, those of us who were fortunate enough
not to have been spoiled by our parents, those of us who were free to roam
the streets at night and to discover things with our own eyes.
What I am thinking of, with a certain amount of regret and longing, is
that this thoroughly restricted life of early boyhood seems like a limitless
universe and the life which followed upon it, the life of the adult, a
constantly diminishing realm. From the moment when one is put in school one
is lost: one has the feeling of having a halter put around his neck. The
taste goes out of the bread as it goes out of life. Getting the bread
becomes more important than the eating of it Everything is calculated and
everything has a price upon it.
My cousin Gene became an absolute nonentity: Stanley became a
first-rate failure. Besides these two boys, for whom I had the greatest
affection, there was another, Joey, who has since become a letter carrier. I
could weep when I think of what life has made them. As boys they were
perfect, Stanley least of all because Stanley was more temperamental.
Stanley went into violent rages now and then and there was no telling how
you stood with him from day to day. But Joey and Gene were the essence of
goodness: they were friends in the old meaning of the word. I think of Joey
often when I go out into the country because he was what is called a country
boy. That meant, for one thing, that he was more loyal, more sincere, more
tender, than the boys we knew. I can see Joey now coming to meet me:
he was always running with arms wide open and ready to embrace me,
always breathless with adventures that he was planning for my participation,
always loaded with gifts which he had saved for my coming. Joey received me
like the monarchs of old received their guests. Everything I looked at was
mine. We had innumerable things to tell each other and nothing was dull or
boring. The difference between our respective worlds was enormous. Though I
was of the city too, still, when I visited my cousin Gene, I became aware of
an even greater city, a city of New York proper in which my sophistication
was negligible. Stanley knew no excursions from his own neighbourhood, but
Stanley had come from a strange land over the sea, Poland, and there was
always between us the mark of the voyage. The fact that he spoke another
tongue also increased our admiration for him. Each one was surrounded by a
distinguishing aura, by a well-defined identity which was preserved
inviolate. With the entrance into life these traits of difference fell away
and we all became more or less alike and, of course, most unlike our own
selves. And it is this loss of the peculiar self, of the perhaps unimportant
individuality, which saddens me and makes the rye bread stand out glowingly.
The wonderful sour rye went into the making of our individual selves: it was
like the communion loaf in which all participate but from which each one
receives only according to his peculiar state of grace. Now we are eating of
the same bread, but without benefit of communion, without grace. We are
eating to fill our bellies and our hearts are cold and empty. We are
separate but not individual. There was another thing about the sour rye and
that was that we often ate a raw onion with it. I remember standing with
Stanley in the late afternoons, a sandwich in hand, in front of the
veterinary's which was just opposite my home. It always seemed to be late
afternoon when Dr. McKinney elected to castrate a stallion, an operation
which was done in public and which always gathered a small crowd. I remember
the smell of the hot iron and the quiver of the horse's legs. Dr. McKinney's
goatee, the taste of the raw onion and the smell of the sewer gas just
behind us where they were laying in a new gas main. It was an olfactory
performance through and through and, as Abelard so well describes it,
practically painless. Not knowing the reason for the operation we used to
hold long discussions afterwards which usually ended in a brawl. Nobody
liked Dr. McKinney either: there was a smell of iodoform about him and of
stale horse piss. Sometimes the gutter in front of his own office was filled
with blood and in the winter time the blood froze into the ice and gave a
strange look to his sidewalk. Now and then the big two-wheeled cart came, an
open cart which smelled like the devil, and they whisked a dead horse into
it. Rather it was hoisted in, the carcass, by a long chain which made a
creaking noise like the dropping of an anchor. The smell of a bloated dead
horse is a foul smell and our street was full of foul smells. On the comer
was Paul Sauer's place where raw hides and trimmed hides were stacked up in
the street: they stank frightfully too. And then the acrid odour coming from
the tin factory behind the house - like the smell of modem progress. The
smell of a dead horse, which is almost unbearable, is still a thousand times
better than the smell of burning chemicals. And the sight of a dead horse
with a bullet hole in the temple, his head lying in a pool of blood and his
asshole bursting with the last spasmic evacuation, is still a better sight
than that of a group of men in blue aprons coming out of the arched doorway
of the tin factory with a hand-truck loaded with bales of fresh-made tin.
Fortunately for us there was a bakery opposite the tin factory and from the
back door of the bakery, which was only a grill, we could watch the bakers
at work and get the sweet, irresistible odour of bread and cake. And if, as
I say, the gas mains were being laid there was another strange medley of
smells - the smell of earth just turned up, of rotted iron pipes, of sewer
gas, and of the onion sandwiches which the Italian labourers ate whilst
reclining against the mounds of upturned earth. There were other smells too,
of course, but less striking: such, for instance, as the smell of
Silverstein's tailor shop where there was always a great deal of pressing
going on. This was a hot, fetid stench which can be best apprehended by
imagining that Silverstein, who was a lean, smelly Jew himself, was cleaning
out the farts which his customers had left behind in their pants. Next door
was the candy and stationery shop owned by two daffy old maids who were
religious: here there was the almost sickeningly sweet smell of taffy, of
Spanish peanuts, of jujubes and Sen-Sen and of Sweet Caporal cigarettes. The
stationery store was like a beautiful cave, always cool, always full of
intriguing objects: where the soda fountain was, which gave off another
distinct odour, ran a thick marble slab which turned sour in the summer time
and yet mingled pleasantly, the sourness, with the slightly ticklish, dry
smell of the carbonated water when it was fizzed into the glass of ice
cream.
With the refinements that come with maturity the smells faded out, to
be replaced by only one other distinctly memorable, distinctly pleasurable
smell - the odour of cunt. More particularly the odour that lingers on the
fingers after playing with a woman, for, if it has not been noticed before,
this smell is even more enjoyable, perhaps because it already carried with
it the perfume of the past tense, than the odour of the cunt itself. But
this odour, which belongs to maturity, is but a faint odour compared with
the odours attaching to childhood. It is an odour which evaporates, almost
as quickly in the mind's imagination, as in reality. One can remember many
things about the woman one has loved but it is hard to remember the smell of
her cunt - with anything like certitude. The smell of wet hair, on the other
hand, a woman's wet hair, is much more powerful and lasting - why, I don't
know. I can remember even now, after almost forty years, the smell of my
Aunt Tillie's hair after she had taken a shampoo. This shampoo was performed
in the kitchen which was always overheated. Usually it was a late Saturday
afternoon, in preparation for a ball which meant again another singular
thing - that there would appear a cavalry sergeant with very beautiful
yellow stripes, a singularly handsome sergeant who even to my eyes was far
too gracious, manly and intelligent for an imbecile such as my Aunt Tulle.
But anyway, there she sat on a little stool by the kitchen table drying her
hair with a towel. Beside her was a little lamp with a smoked chimney and
beside the lamp two curling irons the very sight of which filled me with an
inexplicable loathing. Generally she had a little mirror propped up on the
table: I can see her now making wry faces at herself as she squeezed the
blackheads out of her nose. She was a stringy, ugly, imbecilic creature with
two enormous buck teeth which gave her a horsey look whenever her lips drew
back in a smile. She smelled sweaty, too, even after a bath. But the smell
of her hair - that smell I can never forget, because somehow the smell is
associated with my hatred and contempt for her. This smell, when the hair
was just drying, was like the smell that comes up from the bottom of a
marsh. There were two smells - one of the wet hair and another of the same
hair when she threw it into the stove and it burst into flame. There were
always curled knots of hair which came from her comb, and they were mixed
with dandruff and the sweat of her scalp which was greasy and dirty. I used
to stand by her side and watch her, wondering what the ball would be like
and wondering how she would behave at the ball. When she was all primped up
she would ask me if she didn't look beautiful and if I didn't love her, and
of course I would tell her yes. But in the water closet later, which was in
the hall just next to the kitchen, I would sit in the flickering light of
the burning taper which was placed on the window ledge, and I would say to
myself that she looked crazy. After she was gone I would pick up the curling
irons and smell them and squeeze them. They were revolting and fascinating -
like spiders. Everything about this kitchen was fascinating to me. Familiar
as I was with it I never conquered it. It was at once so public and so
intimate. Here I was given my bath, in the big tin tub, on Saturdays. Here
the three sisters washed themselves and primped themselves. Here my
grandfather stood at the sink and washed him- self to the waist and later
handed me his shoes to be shined. Here I stood at the window in the winter
time and watched the snow fall, watched it dully, vacantly, as if I were in
the womb and listening to the water running while my mother sat on the
toilet. It was in the kitchen where the secret confabulations were held,
frightening, odious sessions from which they always reappeared with long,
grave faces or eyes red with weeping. Why they ran to the kitchen I don't
know. But it was often while they stood thus in secret conference, haggling
about a will or deciding how to dispense with some poor relative, that the
door was suddenly opened and a visitor would arrive, whereupon the
atmosphere immediately changed. Changed violently, I mean, as though they
were relieved that some outside force had intervened to spare them the
horrors of a protracted secret session. I remember now that, seeing that
door open and the face of an unexpected visitor peering in, my heart would
leap with joy. Soon I would be given a big glass pitcher and asked to run to
the comer saloon where I would hand the pitcher in, through the little
window at the family entrance, and wait until it was returned brimming with
foamy suds. This little run to the comer for a pitcher of beer was an
expedition of absolutely incalculable proportions. First of all there was
the barber shop just below us, where Stanley's father practised his
profession. Time and again, just as I was dashing out for something, I would
see the father giving Stanley a drubbing with the razor strop, a sight that
made my blood boil. Stanley was my best friend and his father was nothing
but a drunken Polak. One evening, however, as I was dashing out with the
pitcher, I had the intense pleasure of seeing another Polak go for Stanley's
old man with a razor. I saw his old man coming through the door backwards,
the blood running down his neck, his face white as a sheet He fell on the
sidewalk in front of the shop, twitching and moaning, and I remember looking
at him for a minute or two and walking on feeling absolutely contented and
happy about it. Stanley had sneaked out during the scrimmage and was
accompanying me to the saloon door. He was glad too, though he was a bit
frightened. When we got back the ambulance was there in front of the door
and they were lifting him on the stretcher, his face and neck covered with a
sheet. Sometimes it happened that Father Carroll's pet choir boy strolled by
the house just as I was hitting the air. This was an event of primary
importance. The boy was older than any of us and he was a sissy, a fairy in
the making. His very walk used to enrage us. As soon as he was spotted the
news went out in every direction and before he had reached the corner he was
surrounded by a gang of boys all much smaller than himself who taunted him
and mimicked him until he burst into tears. Then we would pounce on him,
like a pack of wolves, pull him to the ground and tear the clothes off his
back. It was a disgraceful performance but it made us feel good. Nobody knew
yet what a fairy was, but whatever it was we were against it. In the same
way we were against the Chinamen. There was one Chinaman, from the laundry
up the street, who used to pass frequently and, like the sissy from Father
Carroll's church, he too had to run the gauntlet. He looked exactly like the
picture of a coolie which one sees in the school books. He wore a sort of
black alpaca coat with braided button holes, slippers without heels, and a
pig tail. Usually he walked with his hands in his sleeves. It was his walk
which I remember best, a sort of sly, mincing, feminine walk which was
utterly foreign and menacing to us. We were in mortal dread of him and we
hated him because he was absolutely indifferent to our gibes. We thought he
was too ignorant to notice our insults. Then one day when we entered the
laundry he gave us a little surprise. First he handed us the package of
laundry: then he reached down below the counter and gathered a handful of
lichee nuts from the big bag. He was smiling as he came from behind the
counter to open the door. He was still smiling as he caught hold of Alfie
Betcha and pulled his ears: he caught hold of each of us in turn and pulled
our ears, still smiling. Then he made a ferocious grimace and, swift as a
cat, he ran behind the counter and picked up a long, ugly-looking knife
which he brandished at us. We fell over ourselves getting out of the place.
When we got to the comer and looked around we saw him standing in the
doorway with an iron in his hand looking very calm and peaceful. After this
incident nobody would go to the laundry any more: we had to pay little Louis
Pirossa a nickel each week to collect the laundry for us. Louis's father
owned the fruit stand on the comer. He used to hand us the rotten bananas as
a token of his affection. Stanley was especially fond of the rotten bananas
as his aunt used to fry them for him. The fried bananas were considered a
delicacy in Stanley's home. Once, on his birthday, there was a party given
for Stanley and the whole neighbourhood was invited. Everything went
beautifully until it came to the fried bananas. Somehow nobody wanted to
touch the bananas, as this was a dish known only to Polaks like Stanley's
parents. It was considered disgusting to eat fried bananas. In the midst of
the embarrassment some bright youngster suggested that crazy Willie Maine
should be given the fried bananas. Willie Maine was older than any of us but
unable to talk. He said nothing but Bjark I Bjork! He said this to
everything. So when the bananas were passed to him he said Bjork! and he
reached for them with two hands. But his brother George was there and George
felt insulted that they should have palmed off the rotten bananas on his
crazy brother. So George started a fight and Willie, seeing his brother
attacked, began to fight also, screaming Bjork! Bjork I Not only did he
strike out at the other boys but at the girls too, which created a
pandemonium. Finally Stanley's old man, hearing the noise, came up from the
barber shop with a strop in his hand. He took crazy Willie Maine by the
scruff of the neck and began to lambast him. Meanwhile his brother George
had sneaked off to call Mr. Maine senior. The latter, who was also a bit of
a drunkard, arrived in his shirt sleeves and seeing poor Willie being beaten
by the drunken barber, he went for him with two stout fists and beat him
unmercifully. Willie, who had gotten free meanwhile, was on his hands and
knees, gobbling up the fried bananas which had fallen on the floor. He was
stuffing them away like a nannygoat, fast as he could find them. When the
old man saw him there chewing away like a goat he became furious and picking
up the strop he went after Willie with a vengeance. Now Willie began to howl
- Bjork! Bjark I - and suddenly everybody began to laugh. That took the
steam out of Mr. Maine and he relented. Finally he sat down and Stanley's
aunt brought him a glass of wine. Hearing the racket some of the other
neighbours came in and there was more wine and then beer and then schnapps
and soon everybody was happy and singing and whistling and even the kids got
drunk and then crazy Willie got drunk and again he got down on the floor
like a nannygoat and he yelled Bjork! Bjork! and Alfie Betcha, who was very
drunk though only eight years old, bit crazy Willie Maine in the backside
and then Willie bit him and then we all started biting each other and the
parents stood by laughing and screaming with glee and it was very very merry
and there were more fried bananas and everybody ate them this time and then
there were speeches and more bumpers downed and crazy Willie Maine tried to
sing for us but he could only sing Bjork! Bjark! It was a stupendous
success, the birthday party, and for a week or more no one talked of
anything but the party and what good Polaks Stanley's people were. The fried
bananas, too, were a success and for a time it was hard to get any rotten
bananas from Louis Pirossa's old man because they were so much in demand.
And then an event occurred which cast a pall over the entire neighbourhood -
the defeat of Joe Gerhardt at the hands of Joey Silverstein. The latter was
the tailor's son: he was a lad of fifteen or sixteen, rather quiet and
studious looking, who was shunned by the other older boys because he was a
Jew. One day as he was delivering a pair of pants on Fillmore Place he was
accosted by Joe Gerhardt who was about the same age and who considered
himself a rather superior being. There was an exchange of words and then Joe
Gerhardt pulled the pants away from the Silverstein boy and threw them in
the gutter. Nobody had ever imagined that young Silverstein would reply to
such an insult by recourse to his fists and so when he struck out at Joe
Gerhardt and cracked him square in the jaw everybody was taken aback, most
of all Joe Gerhardt himself. There was a fight which lasted about twenty
minutes and at the end Joe Gerhardt lay on the sidewalk unable to get up.
Whereupon the Silverstein boy gathered up the pair of pants and walked
quietly and proudly back to his father's shop. Nobody said a word to him.
The affair was regarded as a calamity. Who had ever heard of a Jew beating
up a Gentile? It was something inconceivable, and yet it had happened, right
before everyone's eyes. Night after night, sitting on the curb as we used
to, the situation was discussed from every angle, but without any solution
until... well until Joe Gerhardt's younger brother, Johnny, became so
wrought up about it that he decided to settle the matter himself. Johnny,
though younger and smaller than his brother, was as tough and invincible as
a young puma. He was typical of the shanty Irish who made up the
neighbourhood. His idea of getting even with young Silverstein was to lie in
wait for him one evening as the latter was stepping out of the store and
trip him up. When he tripped him up that evening he had provided himself in
advance with two little rocks which he concealed in his fists and when poor
Silverstein went down he pounced on him and then with the two handsome
little rocks he pounded poor Silverstein's temples. To his amazement
Silverstein offered no resistance: even when he got up and gave him a chance
to get on his feet Silverstein never so much as budged. Then Johnny got
frightened and ran away. He must have been thoroughly frightened because he
never came back again: the next that was heard of him was that he had been
picked, up out West somewhere and sent to a reformatory. His mother, who was
a slatternly, jolly Irish bitch, said that it served him right and she hoped
to God she'd never lay eyes on him again. When the boy Silverstein recovered
he was not the same any more: people said the beating had affected his
brain, that he was a little daffy. Joe Gerhardt, on the other hand, rose to
prominence again. It seems that he had gone to see the Silverstein boy while
he lay in bed and had made a deep apology to him. This again was something
that had never been heard of before. It was something so strange, so
unusual, that Joe Gerhardt was looked upon almost as a knight errant. Nobody
had approved of the way Johnny behaved, and yet nobody would have thought of
going to young Silverstein and apologizing to him. That was an act of such
delicacy, such elegance, that Joe Gerhardt was looked upon as a real
gentleman - the first and only gentleman in the neighbourhood. It was a word
that had never been used among us and now it was on everybody's lips and it
was considered a distinction to be a gentleman. This sudden transformation
of the defeated Joe Gerhardt into a gentleman I remember made a deep
impression upon me. A few years later, when I moved into another
neighbourhood and encountered Claude de Lorraine, a French boy, I was
prepared to understand and accept "a gentleman". This Claude was a boy such
as I had never laid eyes on before. In the old neighbourhood he would have
been regarded as a sissy: for one thing he spoke too well, too correctly,
too politely, and for another thing he was too considerate, too gentle, too
gallant. And then, while playing with him, to hear him suddenly break into
French as his mother or father came along, provided us with something like a
shock. German we had heard and German was a permissible transgression, but
French! Why to talk French, or even to understand it, was to be thoroughly
alien, thoroughly aristocratic, rotten, distingue. And yet Claude was one of
us, as good as us in every way, even a little bit better, we had to admit
secretly. But there was a blemish - his French! It antagonized us. He had no
right to be living in our neighbourhood, no right to be as capable and manly
as he was. Often, when his mother called him in and we had said good-bye to
him, we got together in the lot and we discussed the Lorraine family
backwards and forwards. We wondered what they ate, for example, because
being French they must have different customs than ours. No one had ever set
foot in Claude de Lorraine's home either - that was another suspicious and
repugnant fact. Why? What were they concealing? Yet when they passed us in
the street they were always very cordial, always smiled, always spoke in
English and a most excellent English it was. They used to make us feel
rather ashamed of ourselves - they were superior, that's what it was. And
there was still another baffling thing - with the other boys a direct
question brought a direct answer, but with Claude de Lorraine there was
never any direct answer. He always smiled very charmingly before replying
and he was very cool, collected, employing an irony and a mockery which was
beyond us. He was a thorn in our side, Claude de Lorraine, and when finally
he moved out of the neighbourhood we all breathed a sigh of relief. As for
myself, it was only maybe ten or fifteen years later that I thought about
this boy and his strange elegant behaviour. And it was then that I felt I
had made a bad blunder. For suddenly one day it occurred to me that Claude
de Lorraine had come up to me on a certain occasion obviously to win my
friendship and I had treated him rather cavalierly. At the time I thought of
this incident it suddenly dawned on me that Claude de Lorraine must have
seen something different in me and that he had meant to honour me by
extending the hand of friendship. But back in those days I bad a code of
honour, such as it was, and that was to run with the herd. Had I become a
bosom friend of Claude de Lorraine I would have been betraying the other
boys. No matter what advantages lay in the wake of such a friendship they
were not for me, I was one of the gang and it was my duty to remain aloof
from such as Claude de Lorraine. I remembered this incident once again, I
must say, after a still greater interval - after I had been in France a few
months and the word "raisomiable" had come to acquire a wholly new
significance for me. Suddenly one day, overhearing, I thought of Claude de
Lorraine's overtures on the street in front of his house. I recalled vividly
that he had used the word reasonable. He had probably asked me to be
reasonable, a word which then would never have crossed my lips as there was
no need for it in my vocabulary. It was a word, like gentleman, which was
rarely brought out and then only with great discretion and circumspection.
It was a word which might cause others to laugh at you. There were lots of
words like that - really, for example. No one I knew had ever used the word
really - until Jack Lawson came along. He used it because his parents were
English and, though we made fun of him, we forgave him for it. Really was a
word which reminded me immediately of little Carl Ragner from the old
neighbourhood. Carl Ragner was the only son of a politician who lived on the
rather distinguished little street called Fillmore Place. He lived near the
end of the street in a little red brick house which was always beautifully
kept. I remember the house because passing it on my way to school I used to
remark how beautifully the brass knobs on the door were polished. In fact,
nobody else had brass knobs on their doors. Anyway, little Carl Ragner was
one of those boys who was not allowed to associate with other boys. He was
rarely seen, as a matter of fact. Usually it was a Sunday that we caught a
glimpse of him walking with his father. Had his father not been a powerful
figure in the neighbourhood Carl would have been stoned to death. He was
really impossible, in his Sunday garb. Not only did he wear long pants and
patent leather shoes, but he sported a derby and a cane. At six years of age
a boy who would allow himself to be dressed up in this fashion must be a
ninny - that was the consensus of opinion. Some said he was sickly, as
though that were an excuse for his eccentric dress. The strange thing is
that I never once heard him speak. He was so elegant, so refined, that
perhaps he had imagined it was bad manners to speak in public. At any rate,
I used to lie in wait for him Sunday mornings just to see him pass with his
old man. I watched him with the same avid curiosity that I would watch the
firemen cleaning the engines in the fire house. Sometimes on the way home he
would be carrying a little box of ice cream, the smallest size they had,
probably just enough for him, for his dessert. Dessert was another word
which had somehow become familiar to us and which we used derogatorily when
referring to the likes of little Carl Ragner and his family. We could spend
hours wondering what these people ate for dessert, our pleasure consisting
principally in bandying about this new-found word, dessert, which had
probably been smuggled out of the Ragner household. It must also have been
about this time that Santos Dumont came into fame. For us there was
something grotesque about the name Santos Dumont. About his exploits we were
not much concerned - just the name. For most of us it smelled of sugar, of
Cuban plantations, of the strange Cuban flag which had a star in the comer
and which was always highly regarded by those who saved the little cards
which were given away with Sweet Caporal cigarettes and on which there were
represented either the flags of the different nations or the leading
soubrettes of the stage or the famous pugilists. Santos Dumont, then, was
something delightfully foreign, in contradistinction to the usual foreign
person or object, such as the Chinese laundry, or Claude de Lorraine's
haughty French family. Santos Dumont was a magical word which suggested a
beautiful flowing moustache, a sombrero, spurs, something airy, delicate,
humorous, quixotic. Sometimes it brought up the aroma of coffee beans and of
straw mats, or, because it was so thoroughly outlandish and quixotic, it
would entail a digression concerning the life of the Hottentots. For there
were among us older boys who were beginning to read and who would entertain
us by the hour with fantastic tales which they had gleaned from books such
as Ayesha or Ouida's Under Two Flags. The real flavour of knowledge is most
definitely associated in my mind with the vacant lot at the comer of the new
neighbourhood where I was transplanted at about the age often. Here, when
the fall days came on and we stood about the bonfire roasting chippies and
raw potatoes in the little cans which we carried, there ensued a new type of
discussion which differed from the old discussions I had known in that the
origins were always bookish. Some one had just read a book of adventure, or
a book of science, and forthwith the whole street became animated by the
introduction of a hitherto unknown subject. It might be that one of
these-boys had just discovered that there was such a thing as the Japanese
current and he would try to explain to us how the Japanese current came into
existence and what the purpose of it was. This was the only way we learned
things - against the fence, as it were, while roasting chippies and raw
potatoes. These bits of knowledge sunk deep - so deep, in fact, that later,
confronted with a more accurate knowledge it was often difficult to dislodge
the older knowledge. In this way it was explained to us one day by an older
boy that the Egyptians had known about the circulation of the blood,
something which seemed so natural to us that it was hard later to swallow
the story of the discovery of the circulation of the blood by an Englishman
named Harvey. Nor does it seem strange to me now that in those days most of
our conversation was about remote places, such as China, Peru, Egypt,
Africa, Iceland, Greenland. We talked about ghosts, about God, about the
transmigration of souls, about Hell, about astronomy, about strange birds
and fish, about the formation of precious stone, about rubber plantations,
about methods of torture, about the Aztecs and the Incas, about marine life,
about volcanoes and earthquakes, about burial rites and wedding ceremonies
in various parts of the earth, about languages, about the origin of the
American Indian, about the buffaloes dying out, about strange diseases,
about cannibalism, about wizardry, about trips to the moon and what it was
like there, about murderers and highwaymen, about the miracles in the Bible,
about the manufacture of pottery, about a thousand and one subjects which
were never mentioned at home or in school and which were vital to us because
we were starved and the world was full of wonder and mystery and it was only
when we stood shivering in the vacant lot that we got to talking seriously
and felt a need for communication which was at once pleasurable and
terrifying.
The wonder and the mystery of life - which is throttled in us as we
become responsible members of society! Until we were pushed out to work the
world was very small and we were living on the fringe of it, on the
frontier, as it were, of the unknown. A small Greek world which was
nevertheless deep enough to provide all manner of variation, all manner of
adventure and speculation. Not so very small either, since it held in
reserve the most boundless potentialities. I have gained nothing by the
enlargement of my world: on the contrary, I have lost. I want to become more
and more childish and to pass beyond childhood in the opposite direction. I
want to go exactly contrary to the normal line of development, pass into a
super-infantile realm of being which will be absolutely crazy and chaotic
but not crazy and chaotic as the world about me. I have been an adult and a
father and a responsible member of society. I have earned my daily bread. I
have adapted myself to a world which never was mine. I want to break through
this enlarged world and stand again on the frontier of an unknown world
which will throw this pale, unilateral world into shadow. I want to pass
beyond the responsibility of fatherhood to the irresponsibility of the
anarchic man who cannot be coerced nor wheedled nor cajoled nor bribed nor
traduced. I want to take as my guide Oberon the night-rider who, under the
spread of his black wings, eliminates both the beauty and the horror of the
past: I want to flee towards a perpetual dawn with a swiftness and
relentlessness that leaves no room for remorse, regret, or repentance. I
want to outstrip the inventive man who is a curse to an earth in order to
stand once again before an impassable deep which not even the strongest
wings will enable me to traverse. Even if I must become a wild and natural
park inhabited only by idle dreamers I must not stop to rest here in the
ordered fatuity of responsible, adult life. I must do this in remembrance of
a life beyond all comparison with the life which was promised me, in
remembrance of the life of a child who was strangled and stifled by the
mutual consent of those who had surrendered. Everything which the fathers
and the mothers created I disown. I am going back to a world even smaller
than the old Hellenic world, going back to a world which I can always touch
with outstretched arms, the world of what I know and see and recognize from
moment to moment. Any other world is meaningless to me, and alien and
hostile. In retraversing the first bright world which I knew as a child I
wish not to rest there but to muscle back to a still brighter world from
which I must have escaped. What this world is like I do not know, nor am I
even sure that I will find it, but it is my world and nothing else intrigues
me.
The first glimpse, the first realization, of the bright new world came
through my meeting Roy Hamilton. I was in my twenty-first year, probably the
worst year of my whole life. I was in such a state of despair that I had
decided to leave home but thought and spoke only of the California where I
had planned to go to start a new life. So violently did I dream of this new
promised land that later, when I had returned from California, I scarcely
remembered the California I had seen but thought and spoke only of the
California, which I had known in my dreams. It was just prior to my
leave-taking that I met Hamilton. He was a dubious half-brother to my old
friend MacGregor: they had only recently made each other's acquaintance, as
Roy, who had lived most of his life in California, had been under the
impression all along that his real father was Mr. Hamilton and not Mr.
MacGregor. As a matter of fact it was in order to disentangle the mystery
surrounding his parentage that he had come East. Living with the MacGregors
had apparently brought him no nearer to a solution of the mystery. Indeed he
seemed to be more perplexed than ever after getting acquainted with the man
whom he had concluded must be his legitimate father. He was perplexed, as he
later admitted to me, because in neither man could he find any resemblance
to the man he considered himself to be. It was probably this harassing
problem of deciding whom to take for a father which had stimulated the
development of his own character. I say this, because immediately upon being
introduced to him, I felt that I was in the presence of a being such as I
had never known before. I had prepared, through MacGregor's description of
him, to meet a rather "strange" individual, "strange" in MacGregor's mouth
meaning slightly cracked. He was indeed strange, but so sharply sane that I
at once felt exalted. For the first time I was talking to a man who got
behind the meaning of words and went to the very essence of things. I felt
that I was talking to a philosopher, not a philosopher such as I had
encountered through books, but a man who philosophized constantly - and who
lived this philosophy which he expounded. That is to say, he had no theory
at all, except to penetrate to the very essence of things and, in the light
of each fresh revelation to so live his life that there would be a minimum
of discord between the truths which were revealed to him and the
exemplification of these truths in action. Naturally his behaviour was
strange to those about him. It had not, however, been strange to those who
knew him out on the Coast where, as he said, he was in his own
element. There apparently he was regarded as a superior being and was
listened to with the utmost respect, even with awe.
I came upon him in the midst of a struggle which I only appreciated
many years later. At the time I couldn't see the importance which he
attached to finding his real father: in fact, I used to joke about it
because the role of the father meant little to me, or the role of the
mother, for that matter. In Roy Hamilton I saw the ironic struggle of a man
who had already emancipated himself and yet was seeking to establish a solid
biological link for which he had absolutely no need. This conflict over the
real father had, paradoxically, made him a superfather. He was a teacher and
an exemplar: he had only to open his mouth for me to realize that I was
listening to a wisdom which was utterly different from anything which I had
heretofore associated with that word. It would be easy to dismiss him as a
mystic, for a mystic he undoubtedly was, but he was the first mystic I had
ever encountered who also knew how to keep his feet on the ground. He was a
mystic who knew how to invent practical things, among them a drill such as
was badly needed for the oil industry and from which he later made a
fortune. Because of his strange metaphysical talk, however, nobody at the
time gave much heed to his very practical invention. It was regarded as
another one of his cracked ideas.
He was continually talking about himself and his relation to the world
about, a quality which created the unfortunate impression that he was simply
a blatant egotist. It was even said, which was true enough as far as it
went, that he seemed more concerned about the truth of Mr. MacGregor's
fatherhood than about Mr. MacGregor, the father. The implication was that he
had no real love for his new-found father but was simply deriving a strong
personal gratification from the truth of the discovery, that he was
exploiting this discovery in his usual self-aggrandizing way. It was deeply
true, of course, because Mr. MacGregor in the flesh was infinitely less than
Mr. MacGregor as symbol of the lost father. But the MacGregors knew nothing
about symbols and would never have understood even had it been explained to
them. They were making a contradictory effort to at once embrace the long
lost son and at the same time reduce him to an understandable level on which
they could seize him not as the "long lost" but simply as the son. Whereas
it was obvious to any one with the least intelligence that his son was not a
son at all but a sort of spiritual father, a sort of Christ, I might say,
who was making a most valiant effort to accept as blood and flesh what he
had already all too clearly freed himself from.
I was surprised and flattered, therefore, that this strange individual
whom I looked upon with the warmest admiration should elect to make me his
confident. By comparison I was very bookish, intellectual, and worldly in a
wrong way. But almost immediately I discarded this side of my nature and
allowed myself to bask in the warm, immediate light which is profound and
natural intuition of things created. To come into his presence gave me the
sensation of being undressed, or rather peeled, for it was much more than
mere nakedness which he demanded of the person he was talking to. In talking
to me he addressed himself to a me whose existence I had only dimly
suspected, the me, for example, which emerged when, suddenly, reading a book
I realized that I had been dreaming. Few books had this faculty of putting
me into a trance, this trance of utter lucidity in which, unknown to
oneself, one makes the deepest resolutions. Roy Hamilton's conversation
partook of this quality. It made me more than ever alert, preternaturally
alert, without at the same time crumbling the fabric of dream. He was
appealing, in other words, to the germ of the self, to the being who would
eventually outgrow the naked personality, the synthetic individuality, and
leave me truly alone and solitary in order to work out my own proper
destiny.
Our talk was like a secret language in the midst of which the others
went to sleep or faded away like ghosts. For my friend MacGregor it was
baffling and irritating: he knew me more intimately than any of the other
fellows but he had never found anything in me to correspond to the character
which I now presented him with. He spoke of Roy Hamilton as a bad influence,
which again was deeply true since this unexpected meeting with his
half-brother served more than anything else to alienate us. Hamilton opened
my eyes and gave me new values, and though later I was to lose the vision
which he had bequeathed me, nevertheless I could never again see the world,
or my friends, as I had seen them prior to his coming. Hamilton altered me
profoundly, as only a rare book, a rare personality, a rare experience, can
alter one. For the first time in my life I understood what it was to
experience a vital friendship and yet not to feel enslaved or attached
because of the experience. Never, after we parted, did I feel the need of
his actual presence: he had given himself completely and I possessed him
without being possessed. It was the first dean, whole experience of
friendship, and it was never duplicated by any other friend. Hamilton was
friendship itself, rather than a friend. He was the symbol personified and
consequently entirely satisfactory hence no longer necessary to me. He
himself understood this thoroughly. Perhaps it was the fact of having no
father that pushed him along the road towards the discovery of the self,
which is the final process of identification with the world and the
realization consequently of the useless-ness of ties. Certainly, as he stood
then, in the full plenitude of self-realization, no one was necessary to
him, least of all the father of flesh and blood whom he vainly sought in Mr.
MacGregor. It must have been in the nature of a last test for him, his
coming East and seeking out his real father, for when he said good-bye, when
he renounced Air. MacGregor and Mr. Hamilton also, he was like a man who had
purified himself of all dross. Never have I seen a man look so single, so
utterly alone and alive and confident of the future as Roy Hamilton looked
when he said good-bye. And never have I seen such confusion and
misunderstanding as he left behind with the MacGregor family. It was as
though he had died in their midst, had been resurrected, and was taking
leave of them as an utterly new, unknown individual. I can see them now
standing in the areaway, their hands sort of foolishly, helplessly empty,
weeping they knew not why, unless it was because they were bereft of
something they had never possessed. I like to think of it in just this way.
They were bewildered and bereft, and vaguely, so very vaguely aware that
somehow a great opportunity had been offered them which they had not the
strength or the imagination to seize. It was this which the foolish, empty
fluttering of the hands indicated to me: it was a gesture more painful to
witness than anything I can imagine. It gave me the feeling of the horrible
inadequacy of the world when brought face to face with truth. It gave me the
feeling of the stupidity of the blood tie and of the love which is not
spiritually imbued. I look back rapidly and I see myself again in
California. I am alone and I am working like a slave in the orange grove at
Chula Vista. Am I coming into my own? I think not. I am a very wretched,
forlorn, miserable person. I seem to have lost everything. In fact I am
hardly a person -1 am more nearly an animal. All day long I am standing or
walking behind the two jackasses which are hitched to my sledge. I have no
thoughts, no dreams, no desires. I am thoroughly healthy and empty. I am a
nonentity. I am so thoroughly alive and healthy that I am like the luscious
deceptive fruit which hangs on the Californian trees. One more ray of sun
and I will be rotten. "Pourri avant d'etre muri!"
Is it really me that is rotting in this bright California sunshine? Is
there nothing left of me, of all that I was up to this moment? Let me think
a bit... There was Arizona. I remember now that it was already night when I
first set foot on Arizona soil. Just light enough to catch the last glimpse
of a fading mesa. I am walking through the main street of a little town
whose name is lost. What am I doing here on this street, in this town? Why,
I am in love with Arizona, an Arizona of the mind which I search for in vain
with my two good eyes. In the train there was still with me the Arizona
which I had brought from New York - even after we had crossed the state
line. Was there not a bridge over a canyon which had startled me out of my
reverie? A bridge such as I had never seen before, a natural bridge created
by a cataclysmic eruption thousands of years ago? And over this bridge I had
seen a man crossing, a man who looked like an Indian, and he was riding a
horse and there was a long saddle-bag hanging beside the stirrup. A natural
millenary bridge which in the dying sun with air so clear looked like the
youngest, newest bridge imaginable. And over that bridge so strong, so
durable, there passed, praise be to God, just a man and a horse, nothing
more. This then was Arizona, and Arizona was not a figment of the
imagination but the imagination itself dressed as a horse and rider. And
this was even more than the imagination itself because there was no aura of
ambiguity but only sharply and dead isolate the thing itself which was the
dream and the dreamer himself seated on horseback. And as the train stops I
put my foot down and my foot has put a deep hole in the dream: I am in the
Arizona town which is listed in the timetable and it is only the
geographical Arizona which anybody can visit who has the money. I am walking
along the main street with a valise and I see hamburger sandwiches and real
estate offices. I feel so terribly deceived and I begin to weep. It is dark
now and I stand at the end of a street, where the desert begins, and I weep
like a fool. Which me is this weeping? Why it is the new little me which had
begun to germinate back in Brooklyn and which is now in the midst of a vast
desert and doomed to perish. Now, Roy Hamilton, I need you! I need you for
one moment, just one little moment, while I am falling apart. I need you
because I was not quite ready to do what I have done. And do I not remember
your telling me that it was unnecessary to make the trip, but to do it if I
must? Why didn't you persuade me not to go? Ah, to persuade was never his
way. And to ask advice was never my way. So here I am, bankrupt in the
desert, and the bridge which was real is behind me and what is unreal is
before me and Christ only knows I am so puzzled and bewildered that if I
could sink into the earth and disappear I would do so.
I look back rapidly and I see another man who was left to perish
quietly in the bosom of his family - my father. I understand better what
happened to him if I go back very, very far and think of such streets as
Maujer, Conselyea, Humboldt... Humboldt particularly. These streets belonged
to a neighbourhood which was not far removed from our neighbourhood but
which was different, more glamorous, more mysterious. I had been on Humboldt
Street only once as a child and I no longer remember the reason for that
excursion unless it was to visit some sick relative languishing in a German
hospital. But the street itself made a most lasting impression upon me: why
I have not the faintest idea. It remains in my memory as the most mysterious
and the most promising street that ever I have seen. Perhaps when we were
making ready to go my mother had, as usual, promised something spectacular
as a reward for accompanying her. I was always being promised things which
never materialized. Perhaps then, when I got to Humboldt Street and looked
upon this new world with astonishment, perhaps I forgot completely what had
been promised me and the street itself became the reward. I remember that it
was very wide and that there were high stoops, such as I had never seen
before, on either side of the street. I remember too that in a dressmaker's
shop on the first floor of one of these strange houses there was a bust in
the window with a tape measure slung around the neck and I know that I was
greatly moved by this sight. There was snow on the ground but the sun was
out strong and I recall vividly how about the bottoms of the ash barrels
which had been frozen into the ice there was then a little pool of water
left by the melting snow. The whole street seemed to be melting in the
radiant winter's sun. On the bannisters of the high stoops the mounds of
snow which had formed such beautiful white pads were now beginning to slide,
to disintegrate, leaving dark patches of the brown stone which was then much
in vogue. The little glass signs of the dentists and physicians, tucked away
in the comers of the windows, gleamed brilliantly in the noonday sun and
gave me the feeling for the first time that these offices were perhaps not
the torture chambers which I knew them to be. I imagined, in my childish
way, that here in this neighbourhood, in this street particularly, people
were more friendly, more expansive, and of course infinitely more wealthy. I
must have expanded greatly myself though only a tot, because for the first
time I was looking upon a street which seemed devoid of terror. It was the
sort of street, ample, luxurious, gleaming, melting which later, when I
began reading Dostoievski, I associated with the thaws of St. Petersburg.
Even the churches here were of a different style of architecture; there was
something semi-Oriental about them, something grandiose and warm at the same
time, which both frightened me and intrigued me. On this broad, spacious
street I saw that the houses were set well back from the sidewalk, reposing
in quiet and dignity, and unmarred by the intercalation of shops and
factories and veterinary stables. I saw a street composed of nothing but
residences and I was filled with awe and admiration. All this I remember and
no doubt it influenced me greatly, yet none of this is sufficient to account
for the strange power and attraction which the very mention of Humboldt
Street still evokes in me. Some years later I went back in the night to look
at this street again, and I was even more stirred than when I had looked
upon it for the first time. The aspect of the street of course had changed,
but it was night and the night is always less cruel than the day. Again I
experienced the strange delight of spadousness of that luxuriousness which
was now somewhat faded but still redolent, still assertive in a patchy way
as once the brown stone bannisters had asserted themselves through the
melting snow. Most distinct of all, however, was the almost voluptuous
sensation of being on the verge of a discovery. Again I was strongly aware
of my mother's presence, of the big puffy sleeves of her fur coat, of the
cruel swiftness with which she had whisked me through the street years ago
and of the stubborn tenacity with which I had feasted my eyes on all that
was new and strange. On the occasion of this second visit I seemed to dimly
recall another character out of my childhood, the old housekeeper whom they
called by the outlandish name of Mrs. Kicking. I could not recall her being
taken ill but I did seem to recall the fact that we were paying her a visit
at the hospital where she was dying and that this hospital must have been
near Humboldt Street which was not dying but which was radiant in the
melting snow of a winter's noon. What then had my mother promised me that I
have never since been able to recall? Capable as she was of promising
anything, perhaps that day, in a fit of abstraction, she had promised
something so preposterous that even I with all my childish credulence could
not quite swallow it. And yet, if she had promised me the moon, though I
knew it was out of the question, I would have struggled to invest her
promise with a crumb of faith. I wanted desperately everything that was
promised me, and if, upon reflection I realized that it was dearly
impossible, I nevertheless tried in my own way to grope for a means of
making these promises realizable. That people could make promises without
ever having the least intention of fulfilling them was something
unimaginable to me. Even when I was most cruelly deceived I still believed;
I found that something extraordinary and quite beyond the other person's
power had intervened to make the promise null and void.
This question of belief, this old promise that was never fulfilled, is
what makes me think of my father who was deserted at the moment of his
greatest need. Up to the time of his illness neither my father nor my mother
had ever shown any religious inclinations. Though always upholding the
church to others, they themselves never set foot in a church from the time
that they were married. Those who attended church too regularly they looked
upon as being a bit daffy. The very way they said -"so and so is religious"
- was enough to convey the scorn and contempt, or else the pity, which they
felt for such individuals. If now and then, because of us children, the
pastor called at the house unexpectedly, he was treated as one to whom they
were obliged to defer out of ordinary politeness but whom they had nothing
in common with, whom they were a little suspicious of, in fact as
representative of a species midway between a fool and a charlatan. To us,
for example, they would say "a lovely man", but when their cronies came
round and the gossip began to fly, then one would hear an entirely different
brand of comment, accompanied usually by peals of scornful laughter and sly
mimicry.
My father fell mortally ill as a result of swearing off too abruptly.
All his life he had been a jolly hail fellow well met: he had put on a
rather becoming paunch, his cheeks were well filled out and red as a beet,
his manners were easy and indolent, and he seemed destined to live on into a
ripe old age, sound and healthy as a nut. But beneath this smooth and jolly
exterior things were not at all well. His affairs were in bad shape, the
debts were piling up, and already some of his older friends were beginning
to drop him. My mother's attitude was what worried him most. She saw things
in a black light and she took no trouble to conceal it. Now and then she
became hysterical and went at him hammer and tongs, swearing at him in the
vilest language and smashing the dishes and threatening to run away for
good. The upshot of it was that he arose one morning determined never to
touch another drop. Nobody believed that he meant it seriously: there had
been others in the family who swore off, who went on the water wagon, as
they used to say, but who quickly tumbled off again. No one in the family,
and they had all tried at different times, had ever become a successful
teetotaler. But my old rnan was different. Where or how he got the strength
to maintain his resolution. God only knows. It seems incredible to me,
because had I been in his boots myself I would have drunk myself to death.
Not the old man, however. This was the first time in his life he had ever
shown any resolution about anything. My mother was so astounded that, idiot
that she was, she began to make fun of him, to quip him about his strength
of will which had heretofore been so lamentably weak. Still he stuck to his
guns. His drinking pals faded away rather quickly. In short, he soon found
himself almost completely isolated. That must have cut him to the quick, for
before very many weeks had passed, he became deathly ill and a consultation
was held. He recovered a bit, enough to get out of bed and walk about, but
still a very sick man. He was supposed to be suffering from ulcers of the
stomach, though nobody was quite sure exactly what ailed him. Everybody
understood, however, that he had made a mistake in swearing off so abruptly.
It was too late, however, to return to a temperate mode of living. His
stomach was so weak that it wouldn't even hold a plate of soup. In a couple
of months he was almost a skeleton. And old. He looked like Lazarus raised
from the grave.
One day my mother took me aside and with tears in her eyes begged me to
go visit the family doctor and learn the truth about my father's condition.
Dr. Rausch had been the family physician for years. He was a typical
"Dutchman" of the old school, rather weary and crochety now after years of
practising and yet unable to tear himself completely away from his patients.
In his stupid Teutonic way he tried to scare the less serious patients away,
tried to argue them into health, as it were. When you walked into his office
he didn't even bother to look up at you, but kept on writing or whatever it
might be that he was doing while firing random questions at you in a
perfunctory and insulting manner. He behaved so rudely, so suspiciously,
that ridiculous as it may sound, it almost appeared as though he expected
his patients to bring with them not only their ailments, but the proof of
their ailments. He made one feel that there was not only something wrong
physically but that there was also something wrong mentally. "You only
imagine it," was his favourite phrase which he flung out with a nasty,
leering gibe. Knowing him as I did, and detesting him heartily, I came
prepared, that is, with the laboratory analysis of my father's stool. I had
also analysis of his urine in my overcoat pocket, should he demand further
proof.
When I was a boy Dr. Rausch had shown some affection for me, but ever
since the day I went to him with a dose of clap he had lost confidence in me
and always showed a sour puss when I stuck my head through the door. Like
father like son was his motto, and I was therefore not at all surprised
when, instead of giving me the information which I demanded, he began to
lecture me and the old man at the same time for our way of living. "You
can't go against Nature," he said with a wry, solemn face, not looking at me
as he uttered the words but making some useless notation in his big ledger.
I walked quietly up to his desk, stood beside him a moment without making a
sound, and then, when he looked up with his usual aggrieved, irritated
expression, I said - "I didn't come here for moral instruction ... I want to
know what's the matter with my father." At this he jumped up and turning to
me with his most severe look, he said, like the stupid, brutal Dutchman that
he was: "Your father hasn't a chance of recovering; he'll be dead in less
than six months." I said "Thank you, that's all I wanted to know," and I
made for the door. Then, as though he felt that he had committed a blunder,
he strode after me heavily and, putting his hand on my shoulder, he tried to
modify the statement by hemming and hawing and saying I don't mean that it
is absolutely certain he will die, etc., which I cut short by opening the
door and yelling at him, at the top of my lungs, so that his patients in the
anteroom would hear it - "I think you're a goddamned old fart and I hope you
croak, good-night!"
When I got home I modified the doctor's report somewhat by saying that
my father's condition was very serious but that if he took good care of
himself he would pull through all right. This seemed to cheer the old man up
considerably. Of his own accord he took to a diet of milk and Zwieback
which, whether it was the best thing or not, certainly did him no
harm. He remained a sort of semi-invalid for about a year, becoming more and
more calm inwardly as time went on and apparently determined to let nothing,
disturb his peace of mind, nothing, no matter if everything went to hell. As
he grew stronger he took to making a daily promenade to the cemetery which
was nearby. There he would sit on a bench in the sun and watch the old
people potter around the graves. The proximity to the grave, instead of
rendering him morbid, seemed to cheer him up. He seemed, if anything, to
have become reconciled to the idea of eventual death, a fact which no doubt
he had heretofore refused to look in the face. Often he came home with
flowers which he had picked in the cemetery, his face beaming with a quiet
serene joy, and seating himself in the armchair he would recount the
conversation which he had had that morning with one of the other
valetudinarians who frequented the cemetery. It was obvious after a time
that he was really enjoying his sequestration, or rather not just enjoying
it, but profiting deeply from the experience in a way that was beyond my
mother's intelligence to fathom. He was getting lazy, was the way she
expressed it. Sometimes she put it even more extremely, tapping her head
with her forefinger as she spoke of him, but not saying anything overfly
because of my sister who was without question a little wrong in the head.
And then one day, through the courtesy of an old widow who used to
visit her son's grave every day and was, as my mother would say, "religious"
he made the acquaintance of a minister belonging to one of the neighbouring
churches. This was a momentous event in the old man's life. Suddenly he
blossomed forth and that little sponge of a soul which had almost atrophied
through lack of nourishment took on such astounding proportions that he was
almost unrecognizable. The man who was responsible for this extraordinary
change in the old man was in no way unusual himself; he was a
Congregationalist minister attached to a modest little parish which adjoined
our neighbour- hood. His one virtue was that he kept his religion in the
background. The old man quickly fell into a sort of boyish idolatry; he
talked of nothing but this minister whom he considered his friend. As he had
never looked at the Bible in his life, nor any other book for that matter,
it was rather startling, to say the least, to hear him say a little prayer
before eating. He performed this little ceremony in a strange way, much the
way one takes a tonic, for example. If he recommended me to read a certain
chapter of the Bible he would add very seriously - "it will do you good." It
was a new medicine which he had discovered, a sort of quack remedy which was
guaranteed to cure all ills and which one might even take if he had no ills,
because in any case it could certainly do no harm. He attended all the
services, all the functions which were held at the church, and between
times, when out for a stroll, for example, he would stop off at the
minister's home and have a little chat with him. If the minister said that
the president was a good soul and should be re-elected the old man would
repeat to every one exactly what the minister had said and urge them to vote
for the president's re-election. Whatever the minister said was right and
just and nobody could gainsay him. There's no doubt that it was an education
for the old man. If the minister had mentioned the pyramids in the course of
his sermon the old man immediately began to inform himself about the
pyramids. He would talk about the pyramids as though every one owed it to
himself to become acquainted with the subject. The minister had said that
the pyramids were one of the crowning glories of man, ergo not to know about
the pyramids was to be disgracefully ignorant, almost sinful. Fortunately
the minister didn't dwell much on the subject of sin: he was of the modem
type of preacher who prevailed on his flock more by arousing their curiosity
than by appealing to their conscience. His sermons were more like a night
school extension course and for such as the old man, therefore, highly
entertaining and stimulating. Every now and then the male members of the
congregation were invited to a little blow-out which was intended to
demonstrate that the good pastor was just an ordinary man like themselves
and could, on occasion, enjoy a hearty meal and even a glass of beer.
Moreover it was observed that he even sang - not religious hymns, but jolly
little songs of the popular variety. Putting two and two together one might
even infer from such jolly behaviour that now and then he enjoyed getting a
little piece of tail - always in moderation, to be sure. That was the word
that was balsam to the old man's lacerated soul - "moderation". It was like
discovering a new sign in the zodiac. And though he was still too ill to
attempt a return to even a moderate way of living, nevertheless it did his
soul good. And so, when Uncle Ned, who was continually going on the
water-waggon and continually falling off it again, came round to the house
one evening the old man delivered him a little lecture on the virtue of
moderation. Uncle Ned was, at that moment, on the water-waggon and so, when
the old man, moved by his own words, suddenly went to the sideboard to fetch
a decanter of wine every one was shocked. No one had ever dared invite Uncle
Ned to drink when he had sworn off; to venture such a thing constituted a
serious breach of loyalty. But the old man did it with such conviction that
no one could take offence, and the result was that Uncle Ned took a small
glass of wine and went home that evening without stopping off at a saloon to
quench his thirst. It was an extraordinary happening and there was much talk
about it for days after. In fact. Uncle Ned began to act a bit queer from
that day on. It seems that he went the next day to the wine store and bought
a bottle of Sherry which he emptied into the decanter. He placed the
decanter on the sideboard, just as he had seen the old man do, and, instead
of polishing it off in one swoop, he contented himself with a glassful at a
time - "just a thimbleful", as he put it. His behaviour was so remarkable
that my aunt, who was unable to quite believe her eyes, came one day to the
house and held a long conversation with the old man. She asked him, among
other things, to invite the minister to the house some evening so that Uncle
Ned might have the opportunity of falling under his beneficient influence.
The long and short of it was +at Ned was soon taken into the fold and, like
the old man, seemed to be thriving under the experience. Things went fine
until the day of the picnic. That day, unfortunately, was an unusually warm
day and, what with the games, the excitement, the hilarity. Uncle Ned
developed an extraordinary thirst. It was not until he was three sheets to
the wind that some one observed the regularity and the frequency with which
he was running to the beer keg. It was then too late. Once in that condition
he was unmanageable. Even the minister could do nothing with him. Ned broke
away from the picnic quietly and went on a little rampage which lasted for
three days and nights. Perhaps it would have lasted longer had he not gotten
into a fist fight down at the waterfront where he was found lying
unconscious by the night watchman. He was taken to the hospital with a
concussion of the brain from which he never recovered. Returning from the
funeral the old man said with a dry eye - "Ned didn't know what it was to be
temperate. It was his own fault. Anyway, he's better off now ..."
And as though to prove to the minister that he was not made of the same
stuff as Uncle Ned he became even more assiduous in his churchly duties. He
had gotten himself promoted to the position of "elder", an office of which
he was extremely proud and by grace of which he was permitted during the
Sunday services to aid in taking up the collection. To think of my old man
marching up the aisle of a Congregationalist church with a collection box in
his hand; to think of him standing reverently before the altar with this
collection box while the minister blessed the offering, seems to me now
something so incredible that I scarcely know what to say of it. I like to
think, by contrast, of the man he was when I was just a kid and I would meet
him at the ferry house of a Saturday noon. Surrounding the entrance to the
ferry house there were then three saloons which of a Saturday noon were
filled with men who had stopped off for a little bite at the free lunch
counter and a schooner of beer. I can see the old man, as he stood in his
thirtieth year, a healthy, genial soul with a smile for every one and a
pleasant quip to pass the time of day, see him with his arm resting on the
bar, his straw hat tipped on the back of his head, his left hand raised to
down the foaming suds. My eye was then on about a level with his heavy gold
chain which was spread cross-wise over his vest; I remember the shepherd
plaid suit which he wore in mid-summer and the distinction it gave him among
the other men at the bar who were not lucky enough to have been born
tailors. I remember the way he would dip his hand into the big glass bowl on
the free lunch counter and hand me a few pretzels, saying at the same time
that I ought to go and have a look at the scoreboard in the window of the
Brooklyn Times nearby. And, perhaps, as I ran out of the saloon to see who
was winning a string of cyclists would pass close to the curb, holding to
the little strip of asphalt which had been laid down expressly for them.
Perhaps the ferry-boat was just coming into the dock and I would stop a
moment to watch the men in uniform as they pulled away at the big wooden
wheels to which the chains were attached. As the gates were thrown open and
the planks laid down a mob would rush through the shed and make for the
saloons which adorned the nearest comers. Those were the days when the old
man knew the meaning of "moderation", when he drank because he was truly
thirsty, and to down a schooner of beer by the ferry house was a man's
prerogative. Then it was as Melville has so well said: "Feed all things with
food convenient for them - that is, if the food be procurable. The food of
thy soul is light and space; feed it then on light and space. But the food
of the body is champagne and oysters; feed it then on champagne and oysters;
and so shall it merit a joyful resurrection, if there is any to be." Yes,
then it seems to me that the old man's soul had not yet shrivelled up, that
it was endlessly bounded by light and space and that his body, heedless of
the resurrection, was feeding on all that was convenient and procurable - if
not champagne and oysters, at least good lager beer and pretzels. Then his
body had not been condemned, nor his way of living, nor his absence of
faith. Nor was he yet surrounded by vultures, but only by good comrades,
ordinary mortals like himself who looked neither high nor low but straight
ahead, the eye always fixed on the horizon and content with the sight
thereof.
And now, as a battered wreck, he has made himself into an elder of the
church and he stands before the altar, grey and bent and withered, while the
minister gives his blessing to the measly collection which will go to make a
new bowling alley. Perhaps it was necessary for him to experience the birth
of the soul, to feed this sponge-like growth with that light and space which
the Congregational church offered. But what a poor substitute for a man who
had known the joys of that food which the body craved and which, without the
pangs of conscience, had flooded even his sponge-like soul with a light and
space that was ungodly but radiant and terrestrial. I think again of his
seemly little "corporation" over which the thick gold chain was strung and I
think that with that death of his paunch there was left to survive only the
sponge of a soul, a sort of appendix to his own bodily death. I think of the
minister who had swallowed him up as a sort of inhuman sponge-eater, the
keeper of a wigwam hung with spiritual scalps. I think of what subsequently
ensued as a kind of tragedy in sponges, for though he promised light and
space, no sooner had he passed out of my father's life than the whole airy
edifice came tumbling down.
It all came about in the most ordinary lifelike way. One evening, after
the customary men's meeting, the old man came home with a sorrowful
countenance. They had been informed that evening that the minister was
taking leave of them. He had been offered a more advantageous position in
the township of New Rochelle and, despite his great reluctance to desert his
flock, he had decided to accept the oner. He had of course accepted it only
after much meditation - as a duty, in other words. It would mean a better
income, to be sure, but that was nothing compared to the grave
responsibilities which he was about to assume. They had need of him in New
Rochelle and he was obeying the voice of his conscience. All this the old
man related with the same unctuousness that the minister had given to his
words. But it was immediately apparent that the old man was hurt. He
couldn't see why New Rochelle could not find another minister. He said it
wasn't fair to tempt the minister with a bigger salary. We need him here, he
said ruefully, with such sadness that I almost felt like weeping. He added,
that he was going to have a heart to heart talk with the minister that if
anybody could persuade him to remain it was he. In the days that followed he
certainly did his best, no doubt much to the minister's discomfiture. It was
distressing to see the blank look in his face when he returned from these
conferences. He had the expression of a man who was trying to grasp at a
straw to keep from drowning. Naturally the minister remained adamant. Even
when the old man broke down and wept before him he could not be moved to
change his mind. That was the turning point. From that moment on the old man
underwent a radical change. He seemed to grow bitter and querulous. He not
only forgot to say grace at the table but he abstained from going to church.
He resumed his old habit of going to the cemetery and basking on a bench. He
became morose, then melancholy, and finally there grew into his face an
expression of permanent sadness, a sadness encrusted with disillusionment,
with despair, with futility. He never again mentioned the man's name, nor
the church, nor any of the elders with whom he had once associated. If he
happened to pass them in the street he bade them the time of day without
stopping to shake hands. He read the newspapers diligently, from back to
front, without comment. Even the ads he read, every one, as though trying to
block up a huge hole which was constantly before his eyes. I never heard him
laugh again. At the most he would give us a sort of weary, hopeless smile, a
smile which faded instantly and left us with the spectacle of a life
extinct. He was dead as a crater, dead beyond all hope of resurrection. And
not even had he been given a new stomach, or a tough new intestinal tract,
would it have been possible to restore him to life again. He had passed
beyond the lure of champagne and oysters, beyond the need of light and
space. He was like the dodo which buries its head in the sand and whistles
out of its ass-hole. When he went to sleep in the Morris-chair his lower jaw
dropped like a hinge that has become unloosened; he had always been a good
snorer but now he snored louder than ever, like a man who was in truth dead
to the world. His snores, in fact, were very much like the death rattle,
except that they were punctuated by an intermittent long-drawn-out whistling
of the peanut stand variety. He seemed, when he snored, to be chopping the
whole universe to bits so that we who succeeded him would have enough
kindling wood to last a lifetime. It was the most horrible and fascinating
snoring that I have ever listened to: it was sterterous and stentorian,
morbid and grotesque; at times it was like an accordion collapsing, at other
times like a frog croaking in the swamps; after a prolonged whistle there
sometimes followed a frightful wheeze as if he were giving up the ghost,
then it would settle back again into a regular rise and fall, a steady
hollow chopping as though he stood stripped to the waist, with axe in hand,
before the accumulated madness of all the bric-a-brac of this world. What
gave these performances a slightly crazy quality was the mummy-like
expression of the face in which the big blubber lips alone came to life;
they were like the gills of a shark snoozing on the surface of the still
ocean. Blissfully he snored away on the bosom of the deep, never disturbed
by a dream or a draught, never fitful, never plagued by an unsatisfied
desire; when he closed his eyes and collapsed, the light of the world went
out and he was alone as before birth, a cosmos gnashing itself to bits. He
sat there in his Morris-chair as Jonah must have sat in the body of the
whale, secure in the last refuge of a black hole, expecting nothing,
desiring nothing, not dead but buried alive, swallowed whole and unscathed,
the big blubber lips gently flapping with the flux and reflux of the white
breath of emptiness. He was in the land of Nod searching for Cain and Abel
but encountering no living soul, no word, no sign. He dove with the whale
and scraped the icy black bottom; he covered furlongs at top speed, guided
only by the fleecy manes of undersea beasts. He was the smoke that curled
out of the chimney-tops, the heavy layers of cloud that obscured the moon,
the thick slime that made the slippery linoleum floor of the ocean depths.
He was deader than dead because alive and empty, beyond all hope of
resurrection in that he had travelled beyond the limits of light and space
and securely nestled himself in the black hole of nothingness. He was more
to be envied than pitied, for his sleep was not a lull or an interval but
sleep itself which is the deep and hence sleeping ever deepening, deeper and
deeper in sleep sleeping, the sleep of the deep in deepest sleep, at the
nethermost depth full slept, the deepest and sleepest sleep of sleep's sweet
sleep. He was asleep. He is asleep. He will be asleep. Sleep. Sleep. Father,
sleep, I beg you, for we who are awake are boiling in horror . . .
With the world fluttering away on the last wings of a hollow snore I
see the door opening to admit Grover Watrous. "Christ be with you!" he says,
dragging his club foot along. He is quite a young man now and he has found
God. There is only one God and Grover Watrous has found Him and so there is
nothing more to say except that everything has to be said over again in
Grover Watrous' new God-language. This bright new language which God
invented especially for Grover Watrous intrigues me enormously, first
because I had always considered Grover to be a hopeless dunce, second
because I notice that there are no longer any tobacco stains on his agile
fingers. When we were boys Grover lived next door to us. He would visit me
from time to time in order to practise a duet with me. Though he was only
fourteen or fifteen he smoked like a trooper. His mother could do nothing
against it because Grover was a genius and a genius had to have a little
liberty, particularly when he was also unfortunate enough to have been born
with a club foot. Grover was the kind of genius who thrives on dirt. He not
only had nicotine stains on his fingers but he had filthy black nails which
would break under hours of practising, imposing upon young Grover the
ravishing obligation of tearing them off with his teeth. Grover used to spit
out broken nails along with bits of tobacco which got caught in his teeth.
It was delightful and stimulating. The cigarettes burned holes into the
piano and, as my mother critically observed, also tarnished the keys. When
Grover took leave the parlour stank like the backroom of an undertaker's
establishment. It stank of dead cigarettes, sweat, dirty linen, Grover's
oaths and the dry heat left by the dying notes of Weber, Berlioz, Liszt and
Co. It stank too of Grover's running ear and of his decaying teeth. It stank
of his mother's pampering and whimpering. His own home was a stable divinely
suited to his genius, but the parlour of our home was like the waiting room
of a mortician's office and Grover was a lout who didn't even know enough to
wipe his feet. In the winter time his nose ran like a sewer and Grover,
being too engrossed in his music to bother wiping his nose, the cold snot
was left to trickle down until it reached his lips where it was sucked in by
a very long white tongue. To the flatulent music of Weber, Berlioz, Liszt
and Co. it added a piquant sauce which made those empty devils palatable.
Every other word from Grover's lips was an oath, his favourite expression
being - "I can't get the fucking thing right!" Sometimes he grew so annoyed
that he would take his fists and pound the piano like a madman. It was his
genius coming out the wrong way. His mother, in fact, used to attach a great
deal of importance to these fits of anger; they convinced her that he had
something in him. Other people simply said that Grover was impossible. Much
was forgiven, however, because of his club foot. Grover was sly enough to
exploit this bad foot; whenever he wanted anything badly he developed pains
in the foot. Only the piano seemed to have no respect for this maimed
member. The piano therefore was an object to be cursed and kicked and
pounded to bits. If he were in good form, on the other hand, Grover would
remain at the piano for hours on end; in fact, you couldn't drag him away.
On such occasions his mother would go stand in the grass plot in front of
the house and waylay the neighbours in order to squeeze a few words of
praise out of them. She would be so carried away by her son's "divine"
playing that she would forget to cook the evening meal. The old man, who
worked in the sewers, usually came home grumpy and famished. Sometimes he
would march directly upstairs to the parlour and yank Grover off the piano
stool. He had a rather foul vocabulary himself and when he let loose on his
genius of a son there wasn't much left for Grover to say. In the old man's
opinion Grover was just a lazy son of a bitch who could make a lot of noise.
Now and then he threatened to chuck the fucking piano out of the window -
and Grover with it. If the mother were rash enough to interfere during these
scenes he would give her a clout and tell her to go piss up the end of a
rope. He had his moments of weakness too, of course, and in such a mood he
might ask Grover what the hell he was rattling away at, and if the latter
said, for example, "why the Sonata Pathetique", the old buzzard would say -
"what the hell does that mean? Why, in Christ's name don't they put it down
in plain English?" The old man's ignorance was even harder for Grover to
bear than his brutality. He was heartily ashamed of his old man and when the
latter was out of sight he would ridicule him unmercifully. When he got a
little older he used to insinuate that he wouldn't have been born with a
club foot if the old man hadn't been such a mean bastard. He said that the
old man must have kicked his mother in the belly when she was pregnant. This
alleged kick in the belly must have affected Grover in diverse ways, for
when he had grown up to be quite a young man, as I was saying, he suddenly
took to God with such a passion that there was no blowing your nose before
him without first asking God's permission.
Grover's conversion followed right upon the old man's deflation, which
is why I am reminded of it. Nobody had seen the Watrouses for a number of
years and then, right in the midst of a bloody snore, you might say, in
pranced Grover scattering benedictions and calling upon God as his witness
as he rolled up his sleeves to deliver us from evil. What I noted first in
him was the change in his personal appearance; he had been washed dean in
the blood of the Lamb. He was so immaculate, indeed, that there was almost a
perfume emanating from him. His speech too had been cleaned up, instead of
wild oaths there were now nothing but blessings and invocations. It was not
a conversation which he held with us but a monologue in which, if there were
any questions, he answered them himself. As he took the chair which was
offered him he said with the nimbleness of a jack-rabbit that God had
given his only beloved Son in order that we might enjoy life everlasting.
Did we really want this life everlasting - or were we simply going to wallow
in the joys of the flesh and die without knowing salvation? The incongruity
of mentioning the "joys of the flesh" to an aged couple, one of whom was
sound asleep and snoring, never struck him, to be sure. He was so alive and
jubilant in the first flush of God's merciful grace that he must have
forgotten that my sister was dippy, for, without even inquiring how she had
been, he began to harangue her in this new-found spiritual palaver to which
she was entirely impervious because, as I say, she was minus so many buttons
that if he had been talking about chopped spinach it would have been just as
meaningful to her. A phrase like "the pleasures of the flesh" meant to her
something like a beautiful day with a red parasol. I could see by the way
she sat on the edge of her chair and bobbed her head that she was only
waiting for him to catch his breath in order to inform him that the pastor -
her pastor, who was an Episcopalian - had just returned from Europe and that
they were going to have a fair in the basement of the church where she would
have a little booth fitted up with doylies from the five-and-ten cent store.
In fact, no sooner had he paused a moment than she let loose - about the
canals of Venice, the snow in the Alps, the dog carts in Brussels, the
beautiful Uverwurst in Munich. She was not only religious, my sister, but
she was clean daffy. Grover had just slipped in something about having seen
a new heaven and a new earth... for the first heaven and the first earth
were passed away, he said, mumbling the words in a sort of hysterical
glissando in order to unburden himself of an oracular message about the New
Jerusalem which God had established on earth and in which he, Grover
Watrous, once foul of speech and marred by a twisted foot, had found the
peace and the calm of the righteous. "There shall be no more death ..." he
started to shout when my sister leaned forward and asked him very innocently
if he liked to bowl because the pastor had just installed a beautiful new
bowling alley in the basement of the church and she knew he would be pleased
to see Grover because he was a lovely man and he was kind to the poor.
Grover said that it was a sin to bowl and that he belonged to no church
because the churches were godless: he had even given up playing the piano
because God needed him for higher things. "He that overcometh shall inherit
all things," he added "and I will be his God, and he shall be my son." He
paused again to blow his nose in a beautiful white handkerchief, whereupon
my sister took the occasion to remind him that in the old days he always had
a running nose but that he never wiped it. Grover listened to her very
solemnly and then remarked that he had been cured of many evil ways. At this
point the old man woke up and, seeing Grover sitting beside him large as
life, he was quite startled and for a moment or two he was not sure, it
seemed, whether Grover was a morbid phenomenon of dream or an hallucination,
but the sight of the clean handkerchief brought him quickly to his wits.
"Oh, it's you!" he exclaimed. "The Watrous boy, what? Well, what in the name
of all that's holy are you doing here?"
"I came in the name of the Holy of Holies," said Grover unabashed. "I
have been purified by the death on Calvary and I am here in Christ's sweet
name that ye maybe redeemed and walk in light and power and glory."
The old man looked dazed. "Well, what's come over you?" he said, giving
Grover a feeble, consolatory smile. My mother had just come in from the
kitchen and had taken a stand behind Grover's chair. By making a wry grimace
with her mouth she was trying to convey to the old man that Grover was
cracked. Even my sister seemed to realize that there was something wrong
with him, especially when he had refused to visit the new bowling alley
which her lovely pastor had expressly installed for young men such as Grover
and his likes.
What was the matter with Grover? Nothing, except that his feet were
solidly planted on the fifth foundation of the great wall of the Holy City
of Jerusalem, the fifth foundation made entirely of sardonyx, whence he
commanded a view of a pure river of water of life issuing from the throne of
God. And the sight of this river of life was to Grover like the bite of a
thousand fleas in his lower colon. Not until he had run at least seven times
around the earth would he be able to sit quietly on his ass and observe the
blindness and the indifference of men with something like equanimity. He was
alive and purged, and though to the eyes of the sluggish, sluttish spirits
who are sane he was "cracked", to me he seemed infinitely better off this
way than before. He was a pest who could do you no harm. If you listened to
him long enough you became somewhat purged yourself, though perhaps
unconvinced. Grover's bright new language always caught me in the midriff
and through inordi- nate laughter cleansed me of the dross accumulated by
the sluggish sanity about me. He was alive as Ponce de Leon had hoped to be
alive; alive as only a few men have ever been. And being unnaturally alive
he didn't mind in the least if you laughed in his face, nor would he have
minded if you had stolen the few possessions which were his. He was alive
and empty, which is so close to Godhood that it is crazy.
With his feet solidly planted on the great wall of the New Jerusalem
Grover knew a joy which is incommensurable. Perhaps if he had not been born
with a club foot he would not have known this incredible joy. Perhaps it was
well that his father had kicked the mother in the belly while Grover was
still in the womb. Perhaps it was that kick in the belly which had sent
Grover soaring, which made him so thoroughly alive and awake that even in
his sleep he was delivering God's messages. The harder he laboured the less
he was fatigued. He had no more worries, no regrets, no clawing memories. He
recognized no duties, no obligations, except to God. And what did God expect
of him? Nothing, nothing ... except to sing His praises. God only asked of
Grover Watrous that he reveal himself alive in the flesh. He only asked of
him to be more and more alive. And when fully alive Grover was a voice and
this voice was a flood which made all dead things into chaos and this chaos
in turn became the mouth of the world in the very centre of which was the
verb to be. In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. So God; was this strange little infinitive which is
all there is - and is it not enough? For Grover it was more than enough: it
was everything. Starting from this Verb what difference did it make which
road he travelled? To leave the Verb was to travel away from the centre, to
erect a Babel. Perhaps God had deliberately maimed Grover Watrous in order
to hold him to the centre, to the Verb. By an invisible cord God held Grover
Watrous to his stake which ran through the heart of the world and Grover
became the fat goose which laid a golden egg every day . . .
Why do I write of Grover Watrous? Because I have met thousands of
people and none of them were alive in the way that Grover was. Most of them
were more intelligent, many of them were brilliant, some of them were even
famous, but none were alive and empty as Grover was. Grover was
inexhaustible. He was like a bit of radium which, even if buried under a
mountain does not lose its power to give off energy. I had seen plenty of
so-called energetic people before - is not America filled with them? - but
never, in the shape of a human being, a reservoir of energy. And what
created this inexhaustible reservoir of energy? An illumination. Yes, it
happened in the twinkling of an eye, which is the only way that anything
important ever does happen. Overnight all Grover's preconceived values were
thrown overboard. Suddenly, just like that, he ceased moving as other people
move. He put the brakes on and he kept the motor running. If once, like
other people, he had thought it was necessary to get somewhere now he knew
that somewhere was anywhere and therefore right here and so why move? Why
not park the car and keep the motor running? Meanwhile the earth itself is
turning and Grover knew it was turning and knew that he was turning with it.
Is the earth getting anywhere? Grover must undoubtedly have asked himself
this question and must undoubtedly have satisfied himself that it was not
getting anywhere. Who, then, had said that we must get somewhere? Grover
would inquire of this one and that where they were heading for and the
strange thing was that although they were all heading for their individual
destinations none of them ever stopped to reflect that the one inevitable
destination for all alike was the grave. This puzzled Grover because nobody
could convince him that death was not a certainty, whereas nobody could
convince anybody else that any other destination was an uncertainty.
Convinced of the dead certainty of death Grover suddenly became tremendously
and overwhelmingly alive. For the first time in his life he began to live,
and at the same time the dub foot dropped completely out of his
consciousness. This is a strange thing, too, when you come to think of it,
because the dub foot, just like death, was another ineluctable fact. Yet the
dub foot dropped out of mind, or, what is more important, all that had been
attached to the club foot. In the same way, having accepted death, death too
dropped out of Grover's mind. Having seized on the single certainty of death
all the uncertain- ties vanished. The rest of the world was now limping
along with dub-footed uncertainties and Grover Watrous alone was free and
unimpeded. Grover Watrous was the personification of certainty. He may have
been wrong, but he was certain. And what good does it do to be right if one
has to limp along with a club foot? Only a few men have ever realized the
truth of this and their names have become very great names. Grover Watrous
will probably never be known, but he is very great just the same. This is
probably the reason why I write about him - just the fact that I had enough
sense to realize that Grover had achieved greatness even though nobody else
will admit it. At the time I simply thought that Grover was a harmless
fanatic, yes, a little "cracked", as my mother insinuated. But every man who
has caught the truth of certitude was a little cracked and it is only these
men who have accomplished anything for the world. Other men, other great
men, have destroyed a little here and there, but these few whom I speak of,
and among whom I include Grover Watrous, were capable of destroying
everything in order that the truth might live. Usually these men were born
with an impediment, with a dub foot, so to speak, and by a strange irony it
is only the club foot which men remember. If a man like Grover becomes
depossessed of his club foot, the world says that he has become "possessed".
This is the logic of incertitude and its fruit is misery. Grover was the
only truly joyous being I ever met in my life and this, therefore, is a
little monument which I am erecting in his memory, in the memory of his
joyous certitude. It is a pity that he had to use Christ for a crutch, but
then what does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces
upon it and lives by it?
AN INTERLUDE
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not
understood. I like to dwell on this period when things were taking shape
because the order, if it were understood, must have been dazzling. In the
first place there was Hymie, Hymie the bull-frog, and there were also his
wife's ovaries which had been rotting away for a considerable time. Hymie
was completely wrapped up in his wife's rotting ovaries. It was the daily
topic of conversation; it took precedence now over the cathartic pills and
the coated tongue. Hymie dealt in "sexual proverbs", as he called them.
Everything he said began from or led up to the ovaries. Despite everything
he was still nicking it off with the wife - prolonged snake-life copulations
in which he would smoke a cigarette or two before un-cunting. He would
endeavour to explain to me how the pus from the rotting ovaries put her in
heat. She had always been a good fuck, but now she was better than ever.
Once the ovaries were ripped out there'd be no telling how she'd take it.
She seemed to realize that too. Ergo, fuck away! Every night, after the
dishes were cleared away, they'd strip down in their little bird-like
apartment and lay together like a couple of snakes. He tried to describe it
to me on a number of occasions - the ways she fucked. It was like an oyster
inside, an oyster with soft teeth that nibbled away at him. Sometimes it
felt as though he were right inside her womb, so soft and fluffy it was, and
those soft teeth biting away at his pecker and making him delirious. They
used to lie scissors-fashion and look up at the ceiling. To keep from coming
he would think about the office, about the little worries which plagued him
and kept his bowels tied up in a knot. In between orgasms he would let his
mind dwell on some one else, so that when she'd start working on him again
he might imagine he was having a brand new fuck with a brand new cunt. He
used to arrange it so that he could look out of the window while it was
going on. He was getting so adept at it that he could undress a woman on the
boulevard there under his window and transport her to the bed; not only
that, but he could actually make her change places with his wife, all
without un-cunting. Sometimes he'd fuck away like that for a couple of hours
and never bother to shoot off. Why waste it! he would say.
Steve Romero, on the other hand, had a hell of a time holding it in.
Steve was built like a bull and he scattered his seed freely. We used to
compare notes sometimes sitting in the Chop Suey joint around the comer from
the office. It was a strange atmosphere. Maybe it was because there was no
wine. Maybe it was the funny little black mushrooms they served us. Anyway
it wasn't difficult to get started on the subject. By the time Steve met us
he would already have had his workout, a shower and a rubdown. He was dean
inside and out. Almost a perfect specimen of a man. Not very bright, to be
sure, but a good egg, a companion. Hymie, on the other hand, was like a
toad. He seemed to come to the table direct from the swamps where he had
passed a mucky day. Filth rolled off his lips like honey. In fact, you
couldn't call it filth, in his case, because there wasn't any other
ingredient with which you might compare it. It was all one fluid, a slimy,
sticky substance made entirely of sex. When he looked at his food he saw it
as potential sperm; if the weather were warm he would say it was good for
the balls; if he took a trolley ride he knew in advance that the rhythmic
movement of the trolley would stimulate his appetite, would give him a slow,
"personal" hard-on, as he put it. Why "personal" I never found out, but that
was his expression. He liked to go out with us because we were always
reasonably sure of picking up something decent. Left to himself he didn't
always fare so well. With us he got a change of meat - Gentile cunt, as he
put it He liked Gentile cunt. Smelled sweeter, he said. Laughed easier
too... Sometimes in the very midst of things. The one thing he couldn't
tolerate was dark meat. It amazed and disgusted him to see me travelling
around with Valeska. Once he asked me if she didn't smell kind of extra
strong like. I told him I liked it that way - strong and smelly, with lots
of gravy around it. He almost blushed at that. Amazing how delicate he could
be about some things. Food, for example. Very finicky about his food.
Perhaps a racial trait. Immaculate about his person, too. Couldn't stand the
sight of a spot on his dean cuffs. Constantly brushing himself off,
constantly taking his pocket mirror out to see if there were any food
between his teeth. If he found a crumb he would hide his face behind the
napkin and extract it with his pearlhandled toothpick. The ovaries of course
he couldn't see. Nor could he smell them either, because his wife too was an
immaculate bitch. Douching herself all day long in preparation for the
evening nuptials. It was tragic, the importance she gave to her ovaries.
l62
Up until the day she was taken to the hospital she was a regular
fucking block. The thought of never being able to fuck again frightened the
wits out of her. Hymie of course told her it wouldn't make any difference to
him one way or the other. Glued to her like a snake, a cigarette in his
mouth, the girls passing below on the boulevard, it was hard for him to
imagine a woman not being able to fuck any more. He was sure the operation
would be successful. Successful! That's to say that she'd fuck even better
than before. He used to tell her that, lying on his back looking up at the
ceiling. "You know I'll always love you," he would say. "Move over just a
little bit, will you ... there, like that... that's it. What was I saying?
Oh yes... why sure, why should you worry about things like that? Of course
I'll be true to you. Listen, pull away just a little bit... yeah, that's
it... that's fine." He used to tell us about it in the Chop Suey joint.
Steve would laugh like hell. Steve couldn't do a thing like that. He was too
honest - especially with women. That's why he never had any luck. Little
Curiey, for example -Steve hated Curiey - would always get what he wanted...
He was a born liar, a born deceiver. Hymie didn't like Curiey much either.
He said he was dishonest, meaning of course dishonest in money matters.
About such things Hymie was scrupulous. What he disliked especially was the
way Curiey talked about his aunt. It was bad enough, in Hymie's opinion,
that he should be screwing the sister of his own mother, but to make her out
to be nothing but a piece of stale cheese, that was too much for Hymie. One
ought to have a bit of respect for a woman, provided she's not a whore. If
she's a whore that's different. Whores are not women. Whores are whores.
That was how Hymie looked at things.
The real reason for his dislike, however, was that whenever they went
out together Curiey always got the best choice. And not only that, but it
was usually with Hymie's money that Curiey managed it. Even the way Curiey
asked for money irritated Hymie - it was like extortion, he said. He thought
it was partly my fault, that I was too lenient with the kid. "He's got no
moral character," Hymie would say. "And what about you, your moral
character?" I would ask. "Oh me I Shit, I'm too old to have any moral
character. But Curley's only a kid." "You're jealous, that's what," Steve
would say. "Me ? Me jealous of him ?" And he'd try to smother the idea with
a scornful little laugh. It made him wince, a jab like that "Listen," he
would say, turning to me, "did I ever act jealous towards you? Didn't I
always turn a girl over to you if you asked me? What about that redhaired
girl in S.U. office... yon remember ... the one with the big teats? Wasn't
that a nice piece of ass to turn over to a friend? But I did it, didn't I? I
did it because you said you liked big teats. But I wouldn't do it for
Curiey. He's a little crook. Let him do his own digging."
As a matter of fact, Curley was digging away very industriously. He
must have had five or six on the string at one time, from what I could
gather. There was Valeska, for example - he had made himself pretty solid
with her. She was so damned pleased to have some one fuck her without
blushing that when it came to sharing him with her cousin and then with the
midget she didn't put up the least objection. What she liked best was to get
in the tub and let him fuck her under water. It was fine until the midget
got wise to it. Then there was a nice rumpus which was finally ironed out on
the parlour floor. To listen to Curiey talk he did everything but climb the
chandeliers. And always plenty of pocket money to boot. Valeska was
generous, but the cousin was a softy. If she came within a foot of a stiff
prick she was like putty. An unbuttoned fly was enough to put her in a
trance. It was almost shameful the things Curiey made her do. He took
pleasure in degrading her. I could scarcely blame him for it, she was such a
prim, priggish bitch in her street clothes. You'd almost swear she didn't
own a cunt, the way she carried herself in the street. Naturally, when he
got her alone he made her pay for her high-falutin' ways. He went at it
cold-bloodedly. "Pish 'it out!" he'd say opening his fly a little. "Fish it
out with your tongue!" (He had it in for the whole bunch because, as he put
it, they were sucking one another off behind his back.) Anyway, once she got
the taste of it in her mouth you could do anything with her. Sometimes he'd
stand her on her hands and push her around the room that way, like a
wheelbarrow. Or else he'd do it dog fashion, and while she groaned and
squirmed he'd nonchalantly light a cigarette and blow the smoke between her
legs. Once he played her a dirty little trick doing it that way. He had
worked her up to such a state that she was beside herself. Anyway, after he
had almost polished the ass off her with his back-scuttling he pulled out
for a second, as though to cool his cock off, and then very slowly and
gently he shoved a big long carrot up her twat. "That, Miss Abercrombie," he
said, "is a sort of Doppelganger to my regular cock," and with that he
unhitches himself and yanks up his pants. Cousin Abercrombie was so
bewildered by it all that she let a tremendous fart and out tumbled the
carrot. At least, that's how Curley related it to me. He was an outrageous
liar, to be sure, and there may not be a grain of truth in the yam, but
there's no denying that he had a flair for such tricks. As for Miss
Abercrombie and her high-tone Narragansett ways, well, with a cunt like that
one can always imagine the worst. By comparison Hymie was a purist. Somehow
Hymie and his fat circumcised dick were two different things. When he got a
personal hard-on, as he said, he really meant that he was irresponsible. He
meant that Nature was asserting itself - through his, Hymie Laubscher's fat,
circumcised dick. It was the same with his wife's cunt. It was something she
wore between her legs, like an ornament. It was a part of Mrs. Laubscher but
it wasn't Mrs. Laubscher personally, if you get what I mean.
Well, all this is simply by way of leading up to the general sexual
confusion which prevailed at this time. It was like taking a flat in the
Land of Fuck. The girl upstairs, for instance... she used to come down now
and then, when the wife was giving a recital, to look after the kid. She was
so obviously a simpleton that I didn't give her any notice at first. But
like all the others she had a cunt too, a sort of impersonal personal cunt
which she was unconsciously conscious of. The oftener she came down the more
conscious she got, in her unconscious way. One night, when she was in the
bathroom, after she had been in there a suspiciously long while, she got me
to thinking of things. I decided to take a peep through the key-hole and see
for myself what was what. Lo and behold, if she isn't standing in front of
the mirror stroking and petting her little pussy. Almost talking to it, she
was. I was so excited I didn't know what to do first. I went back into the
big room, turned out the lights, and lay there on the couch waiting for her
to come out. As I lay there I could still see that bushy cunt others and the
fingers strumming it like. I opened my fly to let my pecker twitch about in
the cool of the dark, I tried to mesmerize her from the couch, or at least I
tried letting my pecker mesmerize her. "Come here, you bitch," I kept saying
to myself, "come here and spread that cunt over me." She must have caught
the message immediately, for in a jiffy she had opened the door and was
groping about in the dark to find the couch. I didn't say a word, I didn't
make a move. I just kept my mind riveted on her cunt moving quietly in the
dark like a crab. Finally she was standing beside the couch. She didn't say
a word either. She just stood there quietly and as I slid my hand up her
legs she moved one foot a little to open her crotch a bit more. I don't
think I ever put my hand into such a juicy crotch in all my life. It was
like paste running down her legs, and if there had been any billboards handy
I could have plastered up a dozen or more. After a few moments, just as
naturally as a cow lowering its head to graze, she bent over and put it in
her mouth. I had my whole four fingers inside her, whipping it up to a
froth. Her mouth was stuffed full and the juice pouring down her legs. Not a
word out of us, as I say. Just a couple of quiet maniacs working away in the
dark like gravediggers. It was a fucking Paradise and I knew it, and I was
ready and willing to fuck my brains away if necessary. She was probably the
best fuck I ever had. She never once opened her trap - not diat night, nor
the next night, nor any night. She'd steal down like diat in the dark, soon
as she smelted me there alone, and plaster her cunt all over me. It was an
enormous cunt, too, when I think back on it. A dark, subterranean labyrinth
fitted up widi divans and cosy comers and rubber teedi and syringeas and
soft nestles and eiderdown and mulberry leaves. I used to nose in like the
solitary worm and bury myself in a little cranny where it was absolutely
silent, and so soft and restful diat I lay like a dolphin on the
oyster-banks. A slight twitch and I'd be in the Pullman reading a newspaper
or else up an impasse where there were mossy round cobblestones
l66
and little wicker gates which opened and shut automatically. Sometimes
it was like riding the shoot-the-shoots, a steep plunge and then a spray of
tingling sea-crabs, the bulrushes swaying feverishly and the gills of tiny
fishes lapping against me like harmonica stops. In the immense black grotto
there was a silk-and-soap organ playing a predaceous black music. When she
pitched herself high, when she turned the juice on full, it made a
violaceous purple, a deep mulberry stain like twilight, a ventiloqual
twilight such as dwarfs and cretins enjoy when they menstruate. It made me
think of cannibals chewing flowers, of Bantus running amok, of wild unicorns
rutting in rhododendron beds. Everything was anonymous and unformulated,
John Doe and his wife Emmy Doe: above us the gas tanks and below the marine
life. Above the belt, as I say, she was batty. Yes, absolutely cuckoo,
though still abroad and afloat. Perhaps that was what made her cunt so
marvellously impersonal. It was one cunt out of a million, a regular Pearl
of the Antilles, such as Dick Osborn discovered when reading Joseph Conrad.
In the broad Pacific of sex she lay, a gleaming silver reef surrounded with
human anemones, human starfish, human madrepores. Only an Osborn could have
discovered her, given the proper latitude and longitude of cunt. Meeting her
in the daytime, watching her slowly going daft, it was like trapping a
weasel when night came on. All I had to do was to lie down in the dark with
my fly open and wait. She was like Ophelia suddenly resurrected among the
Kaffirs. Not a word of any language could she remember, especially not
English. She was a deaf-mute who had lost her memory, and with the loss of
memory she had lost her frigidaire, her curling-irons, her tweezers and
handbag. She was even more naked than a fish, except for the tuft of hair
between her legs. And she was even slippier than a fish because after all a
fish has scales and she had none. It was dubious at times whether I was in
her or she in me. It was open warfare, the new-fangled Pancrace, with each
one biting his own ass. Love among the newts and the cut-out wide open. Love
without gender and without lysol. Incubational love, such as the wolverines
practise above the tree line. On the one side the Arctic Ocean, on the other
the Gulf of Mexico. And though we never referred to it openly there was
always with us King Kong, King Kong asleep in the wrecked hull of the
Titanic among the phosphorescent bones of millionaires and lampreys. No
logic could drive King Kong away. He was the giant truss that supports the
soul's fleeting anguish. He was the wedding cake with hairy legs and arms a
mile long. He was the revolving screen on which the news passes away. He was
the muzzle of the revolver that never went on, the leper armed with
sawed-off gonococci.
It was here in the void of hernia that I did all my quiet thinking via
the penis. There was first of all the binomial theorem, a phrase which had
always puzzled me; I put it under the magnifying glass and studied it from X
to Z, There was Logos, which somehow I had always identified with breath; I
found that on the contrary it was a sort of obsessional stasis, a machine
which went on grinding corn long after the granaries had been filled and the
Jews driven out of Egypt. There was Bucephalus, more fascinating to me
perhaps than any word in my whole vocabulary: I would trot it out whenever I
was in a quandary, and with it of course Alexander and his entire purple
retinue. What a horse! Sired in the Indian Ocean, the last of the line, and
never once mated, except to the Queen of the Amazons during the Mesopotamian
adventure. There was the Scotch Gambit! An amazing expression which had
nothing to do with chess. It came to me always in the shape of a man on
stilts, page 2498 of Punk and Wagnall's Unabridged Dictionary. A gambit was
a sort of leap in the dark with mechanical legs. A leap for no purpose -
hence gambit! Clear as a bell and perfectly simple, once you grasped it.
Then there was Andromeda, and the Gorgon Medusa, and Castor and Pollux of
heavenly origin, mythological twins eternally fixed in the ephemeral
stardust. There was lucubration, a word distinctly sexual and yet suggesting
such cerebral connotations as to make me uneasy. Always "midnight
lucubrations", the midnight being ominously significant. And then arras.
Somebody some time or other had been stabbed "behind the arras". I saw an
altar-cloth made of asbestos and in it was a grievous rent such as Caesar
himself might have made.
l68
It was very quiet thinking, as I say, the kind that the men of the Old
Stone Age must have indulged in. Things were neither absurd nor explicable.
It was a jig-saw puzzle which, when you grew tired of, you could push away
with two feet. Anything could be put aside with ease, even the Himalaya
Mountains. It was just the opposite kind of thinking from Mahomet's. It led
absolutely nowhere and was hence enjoyable. The grand edifice which you
might construct throughout the course of a long fuck could be toppled over
in the twinkling of an eye. It was the fuck that counted and not the
construction work. It was like living in the Ark during the Flood,
everything provided for down to a screw-driver. What need to commit murder,
rape or incest when all that was demanded of you was to kill time? Rain,
rain, rain, but inside the Ark everything dry and toasty, a pair of every
kind and in the larder fine Westphalian hams, fresh eggs, olives, pickled
onions, Worcestershire Sauce and other delicacies. God had chosen me, Noah,
to establish a new heaven and a new earth. He had given me a stout boat with
all seams caulked and properly dried. He had given me also the knowledge to
sail the stormy seas. Maybe when it stopped raining there would be other
kinds of knowledge to acquire, but for the present a nautical knowledge
sufficed. The rest was chess in the Cafe Royal, Second Avenue, except that I
had to imagine a partner, a clever Jewish mind that would make the game last
until the rains ceased. But, as I said before, I had no time to be bored:
there were my old friends. Logos, Bucephalus, arras, lucubration and so on.
Why play chess?
Locked up like that for days and nights on end I began to realize that
thinking, when it is not masturbative, is lenitive, healing, pleasurable.
The thinking that gets you nowhere takes you everywhere: all other thinking
is done on tracks and no matter how long the stretch, in the end there is
always the depot or the round-house. In the end there is always a red
lantern which says STOP! But when the penis gets to thinking there is no
stop and no let: it is a perpetual holiday, the bait fresh and the fish
always nibbling at the line. Which reminds me of another cunt, Veronica
something or other, who always got me thinking the wrong way. With Veronica
it was always a tussle in the vestibule. On the dance floor you'd think she
was going to make you a permanent present of her ovaries, but as soon as she
hit the air she'd start thinking, thinking other hat, of her purse, of her
aunt who was waiting up for her, of the letter she forgot to mail, of the
job she was going to lose - all kinds of crazy, irrelevant thoughts which
had nothing to do with the thing in hand. It was like she had suddenly
switched her brain to her cunt - the most alert and canny cunt imaginable.
It was almost a metaphysical cunt, so to speak. It was a cunt which thought
out problems, and not only that, but a special kind of thinking it was, with
a metronome going. For this species of displaced rhythmic lucubration a
peculiar dim light was essential. It had to be just about dark enough for a
bat and yet light enough to find a button if one happened to come undone and
roll on the floor of the vestibule. You can see what I mean. A vague yet
meticulous precision, a steely awareness that simulated absent-mindedness.
And fluttery and fluky at the same time, so that you could never determine
whether it was fish or fowl. What is this I hold in my hand? Fine or
super-fine? The answer was always duck soup. If you grabbed her by the
boobies she would squawk like a parrot; if you got under her dress she would
wriggle like an eel: if you held her too tight she would bite like a ferret.
She lingered and lingered and lingered. Why? What was she after? Would she
give in after an hour or two? Not a chance in a million. She was like a
pigeon trying to fly with its legs caught in a steel trap. She pretended she
had no legs. But if you made a move to set her free she would threaten to
moult on you.
Because she had such a marvellous ass and because it was also so damned
inaccessible I used to think of her as the Pons Asinorum. Every schoolboy
knows that the Pons Asinorum is not to be crossed except by two white
donkeys led by a blind man. I don't know why it is so, but that's the rule
as it was laid down by old Euclid. He was so full of knowledge, the old
buzzard, that one day -1 suppose purely to amuse himself - he built a bridge
which no living mortal could ever cross. He called it the Pons Asinorum
because he was the owner of a pair of beautiful white donkeys, and so
attached was he to these don- keys that he would let nobody take possession
of them. And so he conjured a dream in which he, the blind man, would one
day lead the donkeys over the bridge and into the happy hunting grounds for
donkeys. Well, Veronica was very much in the same boat. She thought so much
of her beautiful white ass that she wouldn't part with it for anything. She
wanted to take it with her to Paradise when the time came. As for her cunt,
which by the way she never referred to it all - as for her cunt, I say, well
that was just an accessory to be brought along. In the dim light of the
vestibule, without ever referring overtly to her two problems, she somehow
made you uncomfortably aware of them. That is, she made you aware in the
manner of a prestidigitator. You were to take a look or a feel only to be
finally deceived, only to be shown that you had not seen and had not felt.
It was a very subtle sexual algebra, the midnight lucubration which would
earn you an A or a B next day, but nothing more. You passed your
examinations, you got your diploma, and then you were turned loose. In the
meantime you used your ass to sit down and your cunt to make water with.
Between the textbook and the lavatory there was an intermediate zone which
you were never to enter because it was labelled fuck. You might diddle and
piddle, but you must not fuck. The light was never completely shut off, the
sun never streamed in. Always just light or dark enough to distinguish a
bat. And just that little eerie flicker of light was what kept the mind
alert, on the look-out, as it were, for bags, pencils, buttons, keys, et
cetera. You couldn't really think because your mind was already engaged. The
mind was kept in readiness, like a vacant seat at the theatre on which the
owner had left his opera hat.
Veronica, as I say, had a talking cunt, which was bad because its sole
function seemed to be to talk one out of a fuck. Evelyn, on the other hand,
had a laughing cunt. She lived upstairs too, only in another house. She was
always trotting in at meal times to tell us a new joke. A comedienne of the
first water, the only really funny woman I ever met in my life. Everything
was a joke, fuck included. She could even make a stiff prick laugh, which is
saying a good deal. They say a stiff prick has no conscience, but a stiff
prick that laughs too is phenomenal. The only way I can describe it is to
say that when she got hot and bothered, Evelyn, she put on a ventriloqual
act with her cunt. You'd be ready to slip it in when suddenly the dummy
between her legs would let out a guffaw. At the same time it would reach out
for you and give you a playful little tug and squeeze. It could sing too,
this dummy of a cunt. In fact it behaved just like a trained seal.
Nothing is more difficult than to make love in a circus. Putting on the
trained seal act all the time made her more inaccessible than if she had
been trussed up with iron thongs. She could break down the most "personal"
hard-on in the world. Break it down with laughter. At the same time it
wasn't quite as humiliating as one might be inclined to imagine. There was
something sympathetic about this vaginal laughter. The whole world seemed to
unroll like a pornographic film whose tragic theme is impotence. You could
visualize yourself as a dog, or a weasel, or a white rabbit. Love was
something on the side, a dish of caviar, say, or a wax heliotrope. You could
see the ventriloquist in you talking about caviar or heliotropes, but the
real person was always a weasel or a white rabbit. Evelyn was always lying
in the cabbage patch with her legs spread open offering a bright green leaf
to the first-comer. But if you made a move to nibble it the cabbage patch
would explode with laughter, a bright, dewy, vaginal laughter such as Jesus
H. Christ and Immanuel Pussyfoot Kant never dreamed of, because if they had
the world would not be what it is today and besides there would have been no
Kant and no Christ Almighty. The female seldom laughs, but when she does
it's volcanic. When the female laughs the male had better scoot to the
cyclone cellar. Nothing will stand up under that vaginating chortle, not
even ferroconcrete. The female, when her risibility is once aroused, can
laugh down the hyena or the jackal or the wild-cat. Now and then one hears
it at a lynching bee, for example. It means that the lid is off, that
everything goes. It means that she will forage for herself- and watch out
that you don't get your balls cut off! It means that if the pest is coming
SHE is coming first, and with huge spiked thongs that will flay the living
hide off you. It means that she will lay not only with Tom, Dick and Harry,
but with Cholera, Meningitis, Leprosy: it means that she will lay herself
down on the altar like a mare in rut and take on all comers, including the
Holy Ghost. It means that what it took the poor male, with his logarithmic
cunning, five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand years to build, she
will pull it down in a night. She will pull it down and pee on it, and
nobody will stop her once she starts laughing in earnest. And when I said
about Veronica that her laugh would break down the most "personal" hard-on
imaginable I meant it; she would break down the personal erection and hand
you back an impersonal one that was like a red-hot ramrod. You might not get
very far with Veronica herself, but with what she had to give you could
travel far and no mistake about it. Once you came within earshot of her it
was like you had gotten an overdose of Spanish fly. Nothing on earth could
bring it down again, unless you put it under a sledge-hammer.
It was going on this way all the time, even though every word I say is
a lie. It was a personal tour in the impersonal world, a man with a tiny
trowel in his hand digging a tunnel through the earth to get to the other
side. The idea was to tunnel through and find at last the Culebra Cut, the
nec plus ultra, of the honeymoon of flesh. And of course there was no end to
the digging. The best I might hope for was to get stuck in the dead centre
of the earth, where the pressure was strongest and most even all around, and
stay stuck there forever. That would give me the feeling of Ixion on the
wheel, which is one sort of salvation and not entirely to be sneezed at. On
the other hand I was a metaphysician of the instinctivist sort; it was
impossible for me to stay stuck anywhere, even in the dead centre of the
earth. It was most imperative to find and enjoy the metaphysical fuck, and
for that I would be obliged to come out on to a wholly new tableland, a mesa
of sweet alfalfa and polished monoliths, where the eagles and the vultures
flew at random.
Sometimes sitting in a park of an evening, especially a park littered
with papers and bits of food, I would see one pass by, one that seemed to be
going towards Tibet, and I would follow her with the round eye, hoping that
suddenly she would begin to fly, for if she did that, if she would begin to
fly, I knew I would be able to fly also, and that would mean an end to the
digging and the wallowing. Sometimes, probably because of twilight or other
disturbances, it seemed as though she actually did fly on rounding a comer.
That is, she would suddenly be lifted from the ground for the space of a few
feet, like a plane too heavily loaded; but just that sudden involuntary
lift, whether real or imaginary it didn't matter, gave me hope, gave me
courage to keep the still round eye riveted on the spot.
There were megaphones inside which yelled "Go on, keep going, stick it
out," and all that nonsense. But why? To what end? Whither? Whence? I would
set the alarm dock in order to be up and about at a certain hour, but why up
and about? Why get up at all? With that little trowel in my hand I was
working like a galley slave and not the slightest hope of reward involved.
Were I to continue straight on I would dig the deepest hole any man had ever
dug. On the other hand, if I had truly wanted to get to the other side of
the earth, wouldn't it have been much simpler to throw away the trowel and
just board an aeroplane for China? But the body follows after the mind. The
simplest thing for the body is not always easy for the mind. And when it
gels particularly difficult and embarrassing is that moment when the two
start going in opposite directions.
Labouring with the trowel was bliss; it left the mind completely free
and yet there was never the slightest danger of the two being separated. If
the she-animal suddenly began groaning with pleasure, if the she-animal
suddenly began to throw a pleasurable conniption fit, the jaws moving like
old shoe laces, the chest wheezing and the ribs creaking, if the she-bugger
suddenly started to fall apart on the floor, to the collapse of joy and
overexasperation, just at the moment, not a second this side or that, the
promised tableland would hove in sight like a ship coming up out of a fog
and there would be nothing to do but plant the stars and stripes on it and
claim it in the name of Uncle Sam and all that's holy. These misadventures
happened so frequently that it was impossible not to believe in the reality
of a realm which was called Fuck, because that was the only name which might
be given to it, and yet it was more than fuck and by fucking one only began
to approach it Everybody had at one time or another planted the flag in this
territory, and yet nobody was able to lay claim to it permanently. It
disappeared overnight - sometimes in the twinkling of an eye. It was No
Man's Land and it stank with the Utter of invisible deaths. If a truce were
declared you met in this terrain and shook hands or swapped tobacco. But the
truces never lasted very long. The only thing that seemed to have permanency
was the "zone between" idea. Here the bullet flew and the corpses piled up:
then it would rain and finally there would be nothing left but a
stench.
This is all a figurative way of speaking about what is unmentionable.
What is unmentionable is pure fuck and pure cunt; it must be mentioned only
in de luxe editions, otherwise the world will fall apart What holds the
world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual
intercourse. But fuck, the real thing, cunt, the real thing, seems to
contain some unidentified element which is far more dangerous than
nitroglycerine. To get an idea of the real thing you must consult a
Sears-Roebuck catalogue endorsed by the Anglican Church. On page 23 you will
find a picture of Priapus juggling a corkscrew on the end of his weeny; he
is standing in the shadow of the Parthenon by mistake; he is naked except
for a perforated jock-strap which was loaned for the occasion by the Holy
Rollers of Oregon and Saskatchewan. Long distance is on the wire demanding
to know if they should sell short or long. He says go fuck yourself and
hangs up the receiver. In the background Rembrandt is studying the anatomy
of our Lord Jesus Christ who, if you remember, was crucified by the Jews and
then taken to Abysinnia to be pounded with quoits and other objects. The
weather seems to be fair and warmer, as usual, except for a slight mist
rising up out of the Ionian; this is the sweat of Neptune's balls which were
castrated by the early monks, or perhaps it was by the Manicheans in the
time of the Pentecostal plague. Long strips of horse meat are hanging out to
dry and the flies are everywhere, just as Homer describes it in ancient
times. Hard by is a McCormick threshing machine, a reaper and binder with a
thirty-six horse-power engine and no cutout. The harvest is in and the
workers are counting their wages in the distant fields. This is the flush of
dawn on the first day of sexual intercourse in the old Hellenistic world,
now faithfully reproduced for us in colour thanks to the Zeiss Brothers and
other patient zealots of industry. But this is not the way it looked to the
men of Homer's time who were on the spot. Nobody knows how the god Priapus
looked when he was reduced to the ignominy of balancing a corkscrew on the
end of his weeny. Standing that way in the shadow of the Parthenon he
undoubtedly fell a-dreaming of far-off cunt; he must have lost consciousness
of the corkscrew and the threshing and reaping machine; he must have grown
very silent within himself and finally he must have lost even the desire to
dream. It is my idea, and of course I am willing to be corrected if I am
wrong, that standing thus in the rising mist he suddenly heard the Angelus
peal and lo and behold there appeared before his very eyes a gorgeous green
marshland in which the Chocktaws were making merry with the Navajos: in the
air above were the white condors, their ruffs festooned with marigolds. He
saw also a huge slate on which was written the body of Christ, the body of
Absalom and the evil which is lust. He saw the sponge soaked with frogs'
blood, the eyes which Augustine had sewn into his skin, the vest which was
not big enough to cover out iniquities. He saw these things in the whilomst
moment when the Navajos were making merry with the Chocktaws and he was so
taken by surprise that suddenly a voice issued from between his legs, from
the long thinking reed which he had lost in dreaming, and it was the most
inspired, the most shrill and piercing, the most jubilant and ferocious
cacchinating sort of voice that had ever wongled up from the depths. He
began to sing through that long cock of his with such divine grace and
elegance that the white condors came down out of the sky and shat huge
purple eggs all over the green marshland. Our Lord Christ got up from his
stone bed and, marked by the quoit though he was, he danced like a mountain
goat. The fellaheen came out of Egypt in their chains, followed by the
warlike Igorotes and the snail-eating men of Zanzibar.
This is how things stood on the first day of sexual intercourse in the
old Hellenistic world. Since then things have changed a great deal. It is no
longer polite to sing through your weeny, nor is it permitted even to
condors to shit purple eggs all over the place. All this is scatological,
eschatological and ecumenical. It is forbidden. Verboten. And so the Land of
Puck becomes ever more receding; it becomes mythological. Therefore am I
constrained to speak mythologically. I speak with extreme unction, and with
precious unguents too. I put away the clashing cymbals, the tubas, the white
marigolds, the oleanders and the rhododendrons. Up with the thorns and the
manacles! Christ is dead and mangled with quoits. The fellaheen are
bleaching in the sands of Egyptis, their wrists loosely shackled. The
vultures have eaten away every decomposing crumb of flesh. All is quiet, a
million golden mice nibbling at the unseen cheese. The moon is up and the
Nile ruminates on her riparian ravages. The earth belches silently, the
stars twitch and bleat, the rivers slip their banks. It's like this ...
There are cunts which laugh and cunts which talk: there are crazy,
hysterical cunts shaped like ocarinas and there are planturous,
seismographic cunts which register the rise and fall of sap: there are
cannibalistic cunts which open wide like the jaws of the whale and swallow
alive: there are also masochistic cunts which dose up like the oyster and
have hard shells and perhaps a pearl or two inside: there are dithyrambic
cunts which dance at the very approach of the penis and go wet all over in
ecstasy: there are the porcupine cunts which unleash their quills and wave
little flags at Christmas time: there are telegraphic cunts which practise
the Morse code and leave the mind full of dots and dashes; there are the
political cunts which are saturated with ideology and which deny even the
menopause; there are vegetative cunts which make no response unless you pull
them up by the roots; there are the religious cunts which smell like Seventh
Day Adventists and are full of beads, worms, clamshells, sheep droppings and
now and then dried breadcrumbs; there are the mammalian cunts which are
lined with otter skin and hibernate during the long winter: there are
cruising cunts fitted out like yachts, which are good for solitaries and
epileptics; there are glacial cunts in which you can drop shooting stars
without causing a flicker; there are miscellaneous cunts which defy category
or description, which you stumble on once in a lifetime and which leave you
seared and branded;
there are cunts made of pure joy which have neither name nor antecedent
and these are the best of all, but whither have they flown?
And then there is the one cunt which is all, and this we shall call the
super-cunt, since it is not of this land at all but of that bright country
to which we were long ago invited to fly. Here the dew is ever sparkling and
the tall reeds bend with the wind. It is here that great father of
fornication dwells. Father Apis, the mantic bull who gored his way to heaven
and dethroned the gelded deities of right and wrong. From Apis sprang the
race of unicorns, that ridiculous beast of ancient writ whose learned brow
lengthened into a gleaming phallus, and from the unicorn by gradual stages
was derived the late-city man of which Oswald Spengler speaks. And from the
dead cock of this sad specimen arose the giant skyscraper with its express
elevators and observation towers. We are the last decimal point of sexual
calculation; the world turns like a rotten egg in its crate of straw. Now
for the aluminium wings with which to fly to that far-off place, the bright
country where Apis, the father of fornication, dwells. Everything goes
forward like oiled docks; for each minute of the dial there are a million
noiseless docks which tick off the rinds of time. We are travelling faster
than the lightning calculator, faster than starlight, faster than the
magician can think. Each second is a universe of time. And each universe of
time is but a wink of sleep in the cosmogony of speed. When speed comes to
its end we shall be there, punctual as always and blissfully undenominated.
We shall shed our wings, our docks and our mantelpieces to lean on. We will
rise up feathery and jubilant, like a column of blood, and there will be no
memory to drag us down again. This time I call the realm of the super-cunt,
for it defies speed, calculation or imagery. Nor has the penis itself a
known size or weight. There is only the sustained fed of fuck, the fugitive
in full flight, the nightmare smoking his quiet cigar. Little Nemo walks
around with a seven day hard-on and a wonderful pair of blue balls
bequeathed by Lady Bountiful. It is Sunday morning around the corner from
Evergreen Cemetery. It is Sunday morning and I am lying blissfully dead to
the world on my bed of ferro-concrete. Around the comer is the cemetery,
which is to say - the world of sexual intercourse. My balls ache with the
fucking that is going on, but it is all going on beneath my window, on the
boulevard where Hymie keeps his copulating nest. I am thinking of one woman
and the rest is blotto. I say I am thinking of her, but the truth is I am
dying a stellar death. I am lying there like a sick star waiting for the
light to go out. Years ago I lay on this same bed and I waited and waited to
be born. Nothing happened. Except that my mother, in her Lutheran rage,
threw a bucket of water over me. My mother, poor imbecile that she was,
thought I was lazy. She didn't know that I had gotten caught in the stellar
drift, that I was being pulverized to a black extinction out there on the
farthest rim of the universe. She thought it was sheer laziness that kept me
riveted to the bed. She threw the bucket of water over me: I squirmed and
shivered a bit, but I continued to lie there on my ferro-concrete bed. I was
immovable. I was a burned-out meteor adrift somewhere in the neighbourhood
of Vega.
And now I'm on the same bed and the light that's in me refuses to be
extinguished. The world of men and women are making merry in the cemetery
grounds. They are having sexual intercourse. God bless them, and I am alone
in the Land of Fuck. It seems to me that I hear the clanking of a great
machine, the linotype bracelets passing through the wringer of sex. Hymie
and his nymphomaniac of a wife are lying on the same level with me, only
they are across the river. The river is called Death and it has a bitter
taste. I have waded through it many times, up to the hips, but somehow I
have neither been petrified nor immortalized. I am still burning brightly
inside, though outwardly dead as a planet. From this bed I have gotten up to
dance, not once but hundreds, thousands of times. Each time I came away I
had the conviction that I had danced the skeleton dance on a terrain vague.
Perhaps I had wasted too much of my substance on suffering; perhaps I had
the crazy idea that I would be the first metallurgical bloom of the human
species; perhaps I was imbued with the notion that I was both a sub- gorilla
and a super-god. On this bed of ferro-concrete I remember everything and
everything is in rock crystal. There are never any animals, only thousands
and thousands of human beings all talking at once, and for each word they
utter I have an answer immediately, sometimes before the word is out of
their mouths. There is plenty of killing, but no blood. The murders arc
perpetrated with cleanliness, and always in silence. But even if every one
were killed there would still be conversation, and the conversation would be
at once intricate and easy to follow. Because it is I who create it! I know
it, and that is why it never drives me mad. I have conversations which may
take place only twenty years hence, when I meet the right person, the one
whom I shall create, let us say, when the proper time comes. All these talks
take place in a vacant lot which is attached to my bed like a mattress. Once
I gave it a name, this terrain vague: I called it Ubiguchi, but somehow
Ubiguchi never satisfied me, it was too intelligible, too full of meaning.
It would be better to keep it just "terrain vague", which is what I intend
to do. People think that vacuity is nothingness, but it is not so. Vacuity
is a discordant fulness, a crowded ghostly world in which the soul goes
reconnoitering. As a boy I remember standing in the vacant lot as if I were
a very lively soul standing naked in a pair of shoes. The body had been
stolen from me because I had no particular need of it. I could exist with or
without a body then. If I killed a little bird and roasted it over the fire
and ate it, it was not because I was hungry but because I wanted to know
about Timbuctoo or Tierra del Fuego. I had to stand in the vacant lot and
eat dead birds in order to create a desire for that bright land which later
I would inhabit alone and people with nostalgia. I expected ultimate things
of this place, but I was deplorably deceived. I went as far as one could go
in a state of complete deadness, and then by a law, which must be the law of
creation, I suppose, I suddenly flared up and began to live inexhaustibly,
like a star whose light is unquenchable. Here began the real cannibalistic
excursions which have meant so much to me; no more dead chippies picked from
the bonfire, but live human meat, tender, succulent human flesh, secrets
like fresh bloody livers, confidences like swollen tumors that have been
kept on ice. I learned not to wait for my victim to die, but to eat into him
while talking to me. Often when I walked away from an unfinished meal I
discovered that it was nothing more than an old friend minus an arm or a
leg. I sometimes left him standing there - a trunk full of stinking
intestines.
Being of the city, of the only city in the world and no place like
Broadway anywhere, I used to walk up and down staring at the floodlit hams
and other delicacies. I was a schizerino from the sole of my boots to the
tips of my hair. I lived exclusively in the gerundive, which I understood
only in Latin. Long before I had read other in the Black Book I was
cohabiting with Hilda, the giant cauliflower of my dreams. We traversed all
the morganatic diseases together and a few which were ex cathedra. We dwelt
in the carcass of the instincts and were nourished by ganglionic memories.
There was never a universe, but millions and billions of universes, all of
them put together no bigger than a pinhead. It was a vegetal sleep in the
wilderness of the mind. It was the past, which alone comprises eternity.
Amidst the fauna and flora of my dreams I would hear long distance calling.
Messages were dropped on my table by the deformed and the epileptic. Hans
Castorp would call sometimes and together we would commit innocent crimes.
Or, if it were a bright freezing day. I would do a turn in the velodrome
with my Presto bike from Chemnitz, Bohemia.
Best of all was the skeleton dance. I would first wash all my parts at
the sink, change my linen, shave, powder, comb my hair, don my dancing
pumps. Feeling abnormally light inside and out I would wind in and out of
the crowd for a time to get the proper human rhythm, the weight and
substance of flesh. Then I would make a beeline for the dance floor, grab a
hunk of giddy flesh and begin the autumnal pirouette. It was like that I
walked into the hairy Greek's place one night and ran smack into her. She
seemed blue-black, white as chalk, ageless. There was not just the flow to
and from, but the endless chute, the voluptuousness of intrinsic
restlessness. She was mercurial and at the same time of a savoury weight.
She had the marmoreal stare of a faun embedded in lava. The time has come, I
thought, to wander back from the periphery. I made a move towards the
centre, only to find the ground shifting from under my feet. The earth slid
rapidly beneath my bewildered feet. I moved again out of the earth belt and
behold, my hands were full of meteoric flowers. I reached for her with two
flaming hands but she was more elusive than sand. I thought of my favourite
nightmares, but she was unlike anything which had made me sweat and gibber.
In my delirium I began to prance and neigh. I bought frogs and mated them
with toads. I thought of the easiest thing to do, which is to die, but I did
nothing. I stood still and began to petrify at the extremities. That was so
wonderful, so healing, so eminently sensible, that I began to laugh way down
inside the viscera, like a hyena crazed with rut. Maybe I would turn into a
rosetta stone! I just stood still and waited. Spring came and Fall, and then
Winter. I renewed my insurance policy automatically. I ate grass and the
roots of deciduous trees. I sat for days on end looking at the same film.
Now and then I brushed my teeth. If you fired an automatic at me the bullets
glanced off and made a queer tat-a-tat ricocheting against the walls. Once
up a dark street, felled by a thug, I felt a knife go clean through me. It
felt like a spritz bath. Strange to say, the knife left no holes in my skin.
The experience was so novel that I went home and stuck knives into all parts
of my body. More needle baths. I sat down, pulled all the knives out, and
again I marvelled that there was no trace of blood, no holes, no pain. I was
just about to bite into my arm when the telephone rang. It was long distance
calling. I never knew who put in the calls because no one ever came to the
phone. However the skeleton dance ...
Life is drifting by the show-window. I lie there like a flood-lit ham
waiting for the axe to fall. As a matter of fact, there is nothing to fear,
because everything is cut neatly into fine little slices and wrapped in
cellophane. Suddenly all the lights of the city are extinguished and the
sirens sound their warning. The city is enveloped in poison gas, bombs are
bursting, mangled bodies flying through the air. There is electricity
everywhere, and blood and splinters and loud-speakers. The men in the air
are full of glee; those below are screaming and
l82
bellowing. When the gas and the flames have eaten all the flesh away
the skeleton dance begins. I watch from the show-window which is now dark.
It is better than the sack of Rome because there is more to destroy.
Why do the skeletons dance so ecstatically, I wonder. Is it the fall of
the world? Is it the dance of death which has been so often heralded? To see
millions of skeletons dancing in the snow while the city founders is an
awesome sight. Will anything ever grow again? Will babes come out of the
womb? Will there be food and wine? There are the men in the air, to be sure.
They will come down to plunder. There will be cholera and dysentery and
those who were above and triumphant will perish like the rest. I have the
sure feeling that I will be the last man on earth. I will emerge from the
show-window when it is all over and walk calmly amidst the ruins. I will
have the whole earth myself.
Long distance calling! To inform me that I am not utterly alone. Then
the destruction was not complete? It's discouraging. Man is not even able to
destroy himself; he can only destroy others. I am disgusted. What a
malicious cripple! What cruel delusions! So there are more of the species
about and they will tidy up the mess and begin again. God will come down
again in flesh and blood and take up the burden of guilt. They will make
music and build things in stone and write it all down in little books. Pfui!
What blind tenacity, what clumsy ambitions!
I am on the bed again. The old Greek world, the dawn of sexual
intercourse - and Hymie! Hymie Laubscher always on the same level, looking
down on the boulevard across the river. There is a lull in the nuptial feast
and the clam fritters are brought in. Move over just a little, he says.
There, like that, that's it 11 hear frogs croaking in the swamp outside my
window. Big cemetery frogs nourished by the dead. They are all huddled
together in sexual intercourse; they are croaking with sexual glee.
I realize now how Hymie was conceived and brought into being. Hymie the
bullfrog! His mother was at the bottom of the pack and Hymie, then an
embryo, was hidden away in her sac. It was in the early days of sexual
intercourse and there were no Marquis of Queensbury rules to hinder. It was
fuck and be fucked - and the devil take the hindmost. It had been that way
ever since the Greeks - a blind fuck in the mud and then a quick spawn and
then death. People are fucking on different levels but it's always in a
swamp and the litter is always destined for the same end. When the house is
torn down the bed is left standing: the cosmosexual altar.
I was polluting the bed with dreams. Stretched out taut on the
ferro-concrete my soul would leave its body and roam from place to place on
a little trolley such as is used in department stores for making change. I
made ideological changes and excursions; I was a vagabond in the country of
the brain. Everything was absolutely clear to me because done in rock
crystal; at every egress there was written in big letters ANNIHILATION. The
fright of extinction solidified me;
the body became itself a piece of ferro-concrete. It was ornamented by
a permanent erection in the best taste. I had achieved that state of vacuum
so earnestly desired by certain devout members of esoteric cults. I was no
more. I was not even a personal hard-on.
It was about this time, adopting the pseudonym Samson Lackawanna, that
I began my depredations. The criminal instinct in me had gotten the upper
hand. Whereas heretofore I had been only an errant soul, a sort of Gentile
Dybbuk, now I became a flesh-filled ghost. I had taken the name which
pleased me and I had only to act instinctively. In Hong Kong, for instance,
I made my entry as a book-agent. I carried a leather purse filled with
Mexican dollars and I visited religiously all those Chinese who were in need
of further education. At the hotel I rang for women like you would ring for
whiskey and soda. Morning I studied Tibetan in order to prepare for the
journey to Lhasa. I already spoke Jewish fluently, and Hebrew too. I could
count two rows of figures at once. It was so easy to swindle the Chinese
that I went back to Manila in disgust. There I took a Mr. Rico in hand and
taught him the art of selling books with no handling charges. All the profit
came from ocean freight rates, but it was sufficient to keep me in luxury
while it lasted.
The breath had become as much a trick as breathing. Things were not
dual merely, but multiple. I had become a cage of mirrors reflecting
vacuity. But vacuity once stoutly posited I was at home and what is called
creation was merely a job of filling up holes. The trolley conveniently
carried me about from place to place and in each little side pocket of the
great vacuum I dropped a ton of poems to wipe out the idea of annihilation.
I had ever before me boundless vistas. I began to live in the vista, like a
microscopic speck on the lens of a giant telescope. There was no night in
which to rest. It was perpetual starlight on the arid surface of dead
planets. Now and then a lake black as marble in which I saw myself walking
amidst brilliant orbs of lights. So low hung the stars and so dazzling was
the light they shed, that it seemed as if the universe were only about to be
born. What rendered the impression stronger was that I was alone; not only
were there no animals, no trees, no other beings, but there was not even a
blade of grass, not even a dead root. In that violet incandescent light
witihout even the suggestion of a shadow motion itself seemed to be absent.
It was like a blaze of pure consciousness, thought become God. And God, for
the first time in my knowledge, was dean-shaven. I was also clean-shaven,
flawless, deadly accurate. I saw my image in the marble black lakes and it
was diapered with stars. Stars, stars... like a clout between the eyes and
all remembrance fast run out. I was Samson and I was Lackawanna and I was
dying as one being in the ecstasy of full consciousness.
And now here I am, sailing down the river in my little canoe. Anything
you would like to have me do I will do for you - gratis. This is the Land of
Fuck, in which there are no animals, no trees, no stars, no problems. Here
the spermatazoon reigns supreme. Nothing is determined in advance, the
future is absolutely uncertain, the past is non-existent. For every million
born 999,999 are doomed to die and never again be born. But the one that
makes a home run is assured of life eternal. Life is squeezed into a seed,
which is a soul. Everything has soul, including minerals, plants, lakes,
mountains, rocks. Everything is sentient, even at the lowest stage of
consciousness.
Once this fact is grasped there can be no more despair. At the very
bottom of the ladder, chez the spermatozoa, there is the same condition of
bliss as at the top, chez God. God is the summation of all the spermatozoa
come to full consciousness. Between the bottom and the top there is no stop,
no halfway station. The river starts somewhere in the mountains and flows on
into the sea. On this river that leads to God the canoe is as serviceable as
the dreadnought. From the very start the journey is homeward.
Sailing down the river... Slow as the hook-worm, but tiny enough to
make every bend. And slippery as an eel withal. What is your name? shouts
some one. My name? Why just call me God - God the embryo, I go sailing on.
Somebody would like to buy me a hat. What size do you wear, imbecile! he
shouts. What size? Why size X! (And why do they always shout at me? Am I
supposed to be deaf?) The hat is lost at the next cataract. Tant pis - for
the hat. Does God need a hat? God needs only to become God, more and more
God. All this voyaging, all these pitfalls, the time that passes, the
scenery, and against the scenery man, trillions and trillions of things
called man, like mustard seeds. Even in embryo God has no memory. The
backdrop of consciousness is made up of infinitesimally minute ganglia, a
coat of hair soft as wool. The mountain goat stands alone amidst the
Himalayas; he doesn't question how he got to the summit. He grazes quietly
amidst the decor; when the time comes he will travel down again. He keeps
his muzzle to the ground, grubbing for the sparse nourishment which the
mountain peaks afford. In this strange capricornian condition of embryosis
God the he-goat ruminates in stolid bliss among the mountain peaks. The high
altitudes nourish the germ of separation which will one day estrange him
completely from the soul of man, which will make him a desolate, rock-like
father dwelling forever apart in a void which is unthinkable. But first come
the morganatic diseases, of which we must now speak...
There is a condition of misery which is irremediable -
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because its origin is lost in obscurity. Bloomingdale's, for example,
can bring about this condition. All department stores are symbols of
sickness and emptiness, but Bloomingdale's is my special sickness, my
incurable obscure malady. In the chaos of Bloomingdale's there is an order,
but this order is absolutely crazy to me, it is the order which I would find
on the head of a pin if I were to put it under the microscope. It is the
order of an accidental series of accidents accidentally conceived. This
order has, above all, an odour - and it is the odour of Bloomingdale's which
strikes terror into my heart. In Bloomingdale's I fall apart completely: I
dribble on to the floor, a helpless mess of guts and bones and cartilage.
There is the smell, not of decomposition, but of mis-alliance. Man, the
miserable alchemist, has welded together in a million forms and shapes,
substances and essences which have nothing in common. Because in his mind
there is a tumor which is eating him away insatiably; he has left the little
canoe which was taking him blissfully down the river in order to construct a
bigger, safer boat in which there may be room for every one. His labours
take him so far afield that he has lost all remembrance of why he left the
little canoe. The ark is so full of bric-a-brac that it has become a
stationary building above a subway in which the smell of linoleum prevails
and predominates. Gather together all the significance hidden away in the
interstital miscellany of Bloomingdale's and put it on the head of a pin and
you will have left a universe in which the grand constellations move without
the slightest danger of collision. It is this microscopic chaos which brings
on my morganatic ailments. In the street I begin to stab horses at random,
or I lift a skirt here and there looking for a letter-box, or I put a
postage stamp across a mouth, an eye, a vagina. Or I suddenly decide to
climb a tall building, like a fly, and once having reached the roof I do fly
with real wings and I fly and fly and fly, covering towns like Weehawken,
Hoboken, Hackensack, Canarsie, Bergen Beach in the twinkling of an eye. Once
you become a real schizerino flying is the easiest thing in the world; the
trick is to fly with the etheric body, to leave behind in Bloomingdale's
your sack of bones, guts, blood and cartilage; to fly only with your
immutable self which, if you stop a moment to reflect, is always equipped
with wings. Flying this way, in full daylight, has advantages over the
ordinary night-flying which everybody indulges in. You can leave off from
moment to moment, as quick and decisive as stepping on a brake; there is no
difficulty in finding your other self, because the moment you leave off, you
are your other self, which is to say, the so-called whole self. Only, as the
Blooming-dale experience goes to prove, this whole self, about which so much
boasting has been done, falls apart very easily. The smell of linoleum, for
some strange reason, will always make me fall apart and collapse on the
floor. It is the smell of all the unnatural things which were glued together
in me, which were assembled, so to say, by negative consent.
It is only after the third meal that the morning gifts, bequeathed by
the phony alliances of the ancestors, begin to drop away and the true rock
of the self, the happy rock sheers up out of the muck of the soul. With
nightfall the pinhead universe begins to expand. It expands organically,
from an infinitesimal nuclear speck, in the way that minerals or
star-dusters form. It eats into the surrounding chaos like a rat boring
through store cheese. All chaos could be gathered together on a pinhead, but
the self, microscopical at the start, works up to a universe from any point
in space. This is not the self about which books are written, but the
ageless self whith has been fanned out through millenary ages to men with
names and dates, the self which begins and ends as a worm, which is the worm
in the cheese called the world. Just as the slightest breeze can set a vast
forest in motion so, by some unfathomable impulse from within, the rock-like
self can begin to grow, and in this growth nothing can prevail against it.
It's like Jack Frost at work, and the whole world a window-pane. No hint of
labour, no sound, no struggle, no rest;
relentless, remorseless, unremitting, the growth of the self goes on.
Only two items on the bill of fare: the self and the not-self. And an
eternity in which to work it out. In this eternity, which has nothing to do
with time or space, there are interludes in which something like a thaw sets
in. The form
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of the self breaks down, but the self, like climate, remains. In the
night the amorphous matter of the self assumes the most fugitive forms:
error seeps in through the portholes and the wanderer is unlatched from his
door. This door which the body wears, if opened out on to the world, leads
to annihilation. It is the door in every fable out of which the magician
steps; nobody has ever read of him returning home through the selfsame door.
If opened inward there are infinite doors, all resembling trapdoors: no
horizons are visible, no airlines, no rivers, no maps, no tickets. Each
couche is a halt for the night only, be it five minutes or ten thousand
years. The doors have no handles and they never wear out. Most important to
note - there is no end in sight. All these halts for the night, so to speak,
are like abortive explorations of a myth. One can feel his way about, take
bearings, observe passing phenomena; one can even feel at home. But there is
no taking root. Just at the moment when one begins to feel "established" the
whole terrain founders, the soil underfoot is afloat, the constellations are
shaken loose from their moorings, the whole known universe, including the
imperishable self, starts moving silently, ominously, shudderingly serene
and unconcerned, towards an unknown, unseen destination. All the doors seem
to be opening at once; the pressure is so great that an implosion occurs and
in the swift plunge the skeleton bursts asunder. It was some such gigantic
collapse which Dante must have experienced when he situated himself in Hell;
it was not a bottom which he touched, but a core, a dead centre from which
time itself is reckoned. Here the comedy begins, for here it is seen to be
divine.
All this by way of saying that in going through the revolving door of
the Amarillo dance hall one night some twelve or fourteen years ago, the
great event took place. The interlude which I think of as the Land of Fuck,
a realm of time more than of space, is for me the equivalent of that
Purgatory which Dante has described in nice detail. As I put my hand on the
brass rail of the revolving door to leave the Amarillo Dance Hall, all that
I had previously been, was, and about to be, foundered. There was nothing
unreal about it; the very time in which I was born passed away, carried off
by a mightier stream. Just as I had previously been bundled out of the womb,
so now I was shunted back to some timeless vector where the process of
growth is kept in abeyance. I passed into the world of effects. There was no
fear, only a feeling of fatality. My spine was socketed to the node; I was
up against the coccyx of an implacable new world. In the plunge the skeleton
blew apart, leaving the immutable ego as helpless as a squashed louse.
If from this point I do not begin, it is because there is no beginning.
If I do not fly at once to the bright land it is because wings are of no
avail. It is zero hour and the moon is at nadir...
Why I think of Maxie Schnadig I don't know, unless it is because of
Dostoievski. The night I sat down to read Dostoievski for the first time was
a most important event in my life, even more important than my first love.
It was the first deliberate, conscious act which had significance for me; it
changed the whole face of the world. Whether it is true that the clock
stopped that moment when I looked up after the first deep gulp I don't know
any more. But the world stopped dead for a moment, that I know. It was my
first glimpse into the soul of a man, or shall I say simply that Dostoievski
was the first man to reveal his soul to me? Maybe I have been a bit queer
before that, without realizing it, but from the moment that I dipped into
Dostoievski I was definitely, irrevocably, contentedly queer. The ordinary
waking, work-a-day world was finished for me. Any ambition of desire I had
to write was also killed - for a long time to come. I was like those men who
have been too long in the trenches, too long under fire. Ordinary human
suffering, ordinary human jealousy, ordinary human ambitions - it was just
so much shit to me.
I can visualize best my condition when I think of my relations with
Maxie and his sister Rita. At the time Maxie and I were both interested in
sport. We used to go swimming together a great deal, that I remember well.
Often we passed the whole day and night at the beach. I had only met Maxie's
sister once or twice; whenever I brought up her name Maxie would rather
frantically begin to talk about something else. That annoyed me because I
was really bored to death with Maxie's company, tolerating him only because
he loaned me money readily and bought me things which I needed. Every time
we started for the beach I was in hopes his sister would turn up
unexpectedly. But no, he always managed to keep her out of reach. Well, one
day as we were undressing in the bath house and he was showing me what a
fine tight scrotum he had, I said to him right out of the blue - "listen,
Maxie, that's all right about your nuts, they're fine and dandy, and there's
nothing to worry about but where in hell is Rita all the time, why don't you
bring her along some time and let me take a good look at her quim... yes,
quim, you know what I mean." Maxie, being a Jew from Odessa, had never heard
the word quim before. He was deeply shocked by my words and yet at the same
time intrigued by this new word. In a sort of daze he said to me - "Jesus,
Henry, you oughtn't to say a thing like that to me!" "Why not?" I answered.
"She's got a cunt, your sister, hasn't she?" I was about to add something
else when he broke into a terrific fit of laughter. That saved the
situation, for the time being. But Maxie didn't like the idea at all deep
down. All day long it bothered him, though he never referred to our
conversation again. No, he was very silent that day. The only form of
revenge he could think of was to urge me to swim far beyond the safety zone
in the hope of tiring me out and letting me drown. I could see so clearly
what was in his mind that I was possessed with the strength of ten men.
Damned if I would go drown myself just because his sister like all other
women happened to have a cunt.
It was at Far Rockaway where this took place. After we had dressed and
eaten a meal I suddenly decided that I wanted to be alone and so, very
abruptly, at the comer of a street. I shook hands and said good-bye. And
there I was! Almost instantaneously I felt alone in the world, alone as one
feels only in moments of extreme anguish. I think I was picking my teeth
absentmindedly when this wave of loneliness hit me full on, like a tornado.
I stood there on the street comer and sort of felt myself all over to see if
I had been hit by something. It was inexplicable, and at the same time it
was very wonderful, very exhilarating, like a double tonic, I might say.
When I say that I was at Far Rockaway I mean that I was standing at the end
of the earth, at a place called Xanthos, if there be such a place, and
surely there ought to be a word like this to express no place at all. If
Rita had come along then I don't think I would have recognized her. I had
become an absolute stranger standing in the very midst of my own people.
They looked crazy to me, my people, with their newly sunbumed faces and
their flannel trousers and their dock-work stockings. They had been bathing
like myself because it was a pleasant, healthy recreation and now like
myself they were full of sun and food and a little heavy with fatigue. Up
until this loneliness hit me I too was a bit weary, but suddenly, standing
there completely shut off from the world, I woke up with a start I became so
electrified that I didn't dare move for fear I would charge like a bull or
start to climb the wall of a building or else dance and scream. Suddenly I
realized that all this was because I was really a brother to Dostoievski,
that perhaps I was the only man in all America who knew what he meant in
writing those books. Not only that, but I felt all the books I would one day
write myself germinating inside me: they were bursting inside like ripe
cocoons. And since up to this time I had written nothing but fiendishly long
letters about everything and nothing, it was difficult for me to realize
that there must come a time when I should begin, when I should put down the
first word, the first-real word. And this time was now! That was what dawned
on me.
I used the word Xanthos a moment ago. I don't know whether there is a
Xanthos or not, and I really don't care one way or another, but there must
be a place in the world, perhaps in the Grecian islands, where you come to
the end of the known world and you are thoroughly alone and yet you are not
frightened of it but rejoice, because at this dropping off place you can
feel the old ancestral world which is eternally young and new and
fecundating. You stand there, wherever the place is, like a newly hatched
chick beside its eggshell. This place is Xanthos, or as it happened in my
case. Far Rockaway.
There I was! It grew dark, a wind came up, the streets became deserted,
and finally it began to pour cats and dogs. Jesus, that finished me! When
the rain came down, and I got it smack in the face staring at the sky, I
suddenly began to bellow with joy. I laughed and laughed and laughed,
exactly like an insane man. Nor did I know what I was laughing about. I
wasn't thinking of a thing. I was just overwhelmed with joy, just crazy with
delight in finding myself absolutely alone. If then and there a nice juicy
quim had been handed me on a platter, if all the quims in the world had been
afforded me for to make my choice, I wouldn't have batted an eyelash. I had
what no quim could give me. And just about at that point, thoroughly
drenched but still exultant, I thought of the most irrelevant thing in the
world - carfare! Jesus, the bastard Maxie had walked off without leaving me
a sou. There I was with my fine budding antique world and not a penny in my
jeans. Herr Dostoievski Junior had now to begin to walk here and there
peering into friendly and un-friendly faces to see if he could pry loose a
dime. He walked from one end of Far Rockaway to the other but nobody seemed
to give a fuck about handing out carfare in the rain. Walking about in that
heavy animal stupor which comes with begging I got to thinking of Maxie the
window-trimmer and how the first time I spied him he was standing in the
show-window dressing a mannikin. And from that in a few minutes to
Dostoievski, then the world stopped dead, and then, like a great rose bush
opening in the night, his sister Rita's warm, velvety flesh.
Now this what is rather strange ... A few minutes after I thought of
Rita, her private and extraordinary quim, I was in the train bound for New
York and dozing off with a marvellous languid erection. And stranger still,
when I got out of the train, when I had walked but a block or two from the
station, whom should I bump into rounding a comer but Rita herself. And as
though she had been informed telepathically of what was going on in my
brain, Rita too was hot under the whiskers. Soon we were sitting in a chop
suey joint, seated side by side in a little booth, behaving exactly like a
pair of rabbits in rut. On the dance floor we hardly moved. We were wedged
in tight and we stayed that way, letting them jog and jostle us about as
they might. I could have taken her home to my place, as I was alone at the
time, but no, I had a notion to bring her back to her own home, stand her up
in the vestibule and give her a fuck right under Maxie's nose - which I did.
In the midst of it I thought again of the mannikin in the show window and of
the way he had laughed that afternoon when I let drop the word quim. I was
on the point of laughing aloud when suddenly I felt that she was coming, one
of those long drawn-out orgasms such as you get now and then in a Jewish
cunt. I had my hands under her buttocks, the tips of my fingers just inside
her cunt, in the lining, as it were; as she began to shudder I lifted her
from the ground and raised her gently up and down on the end of my cock. I
thought she would go off her nut completely, the way she began to carry on.
She must have had four or five orgasms like that in the air, before I put
her feet down on the ground. I took it out without spilling a drop and made
her lie down in the vestibule. Her hat had rolled off into a corner and her
bag had spilled open and a few coins had tumbled out. I note this because
just before I gave it to her good and proper I made a mental note to pocket
a few coins for my carfare home. Anyway, it was only a few hours since I had
said to Maxie in the bath house that I would like to take a look at his
sister's quim, and here it was now smack, up against me, sopping wet and
throwing out one squirt after another. If she had been fucked before she had
never been fucked properly, that's a cinch. And I myself was never in such a
fine cool collected scientific frame of mind as now lying on the floor of
the vestibule right under Maxie's nose, pumping it into the private, sacred,
and extraordinary quim of his sister Rita. I could have held it in
indefinitely - it was incredible how detached I was and yet thoroughly aware
of every quiver and jolt she made. But somebody had to pay for making me
walk around in the rain grubbing a dime. Somebody had to pay for the ecstasy
produced by the germination of all those unwritten books inside me. Somebody
had to verify the authenticity of this private, concealed cunt which had
been plaguing me for weeks and months. Who better qualified than I? I
thought so hard and fast between orgasms that my cock must have grown
another inch or two. Finally I decided to make an end of it by turning her
over and back-scuttling her. She balked a bit at first, but when she felt
the thing slipping out of her she nearly went crazy. "Oh yes, oh yes, do it,
do it!" she gibbered, and with that I really got excited, I had hardly
slipped it into her when I felt it coming, one of those long agonizing
spurts from the tip of the spinal column. I shoved it in so deep that I felt
as if something had given way. We fell over, exhausted, the both of us, and
panted like dogs. At the same time, however, I had the presence of mind to
feel around for a few coins. Not that it was necessary, because she had
already loaned me a few dollars, but to make up for the carfare which I was
lacking in Far Rockaway. Even then, by Jesus, it Wasn't finished. Soon I
felt her groping about, first with her hands, then with her mouth. I had
still a sort of semi hard-on. She got it into her mouth and she began to
caress it with her tongue. I saw stars. The next thing I knew her feet were
around my neck and my tongue up her twat. And then I had to get over her
again and shove it in, up to the hilt. She squirmed around like an eel, so
help me God. And then she began to come again, long, drawn-out, agonizing
orgasms, with a whimpering and gibbering that was hallucinating. Finally I
had to pull it out and tell her to stop. What a quim! And I had only asked
to take a look at it!
Maxie with his talk of Odessa revived something which I had lost as a
child. Though I had never a very dear picture of Odessa the aura of it was
like the little neighbourhood in Brooklyn which meant so much to me and from
which I had been torn away too soon. I get a very definite feeling of it
every time I see an Italian painting without perspective: if it is a picture
of a funeral procession, for example, it is exactly the sort of experience
which I knew as a child, one of intense immediacy. If it is a picture of the
open street, the women sitting in the windows are sitting on the street and
not above it and away from it. Everything that happens is known immediately
by everybody, just as among primitive people. Murder is in the air, chance
rules.
Just as in the Italian primitives this perspective is lacking, so in
the little old neighbourhood from which I was uprooted as a child there were
these parallel vertical planes on which everything took place and through
which, from layer to layer, everything was communicated, as if by osmosis.
The frontiers were sharp, dearly defined, but they were not impassable. I
lived then, as a boy, dose to the boundary between the north and the south
side. I was just a little bit over on the north side, just a few steps from
a broad thoroughfare called North Second Street, which was for me the real
boundary line between the north and the south side. The actual boundary was
Grand Street, which led to Broadway Ferry, but this street meant nothing to
me, except that it was already beginning to be filled with Jews. No, North
Second Street was the mystery street, the frontier between two worlds. I was
living, therefore, between two boundaries, the one real, the other imaginary
- as I have lived all my life. There was a little street, just a block long
which lay between Grand Street and North Second Street, called Fillmore
Place. This little street was obliquely opposite the house my grandfather
owned and in which we lived. It was the most enchanting street I have ever
seen in all my life. It was the ideal street - for a boy, a lover, a maniac,
a drunkard, a crook, a lecher, a thug, an astronomer, a musician, a poet, a
tailor, a shoemaker, a politician. In fact this was just the sort of street
it was, containing just such representatives of the human race, each one a
world unto himself and all living together harmoniously and inharmoniously,
but together, a solid corporation, a dose-knit human spore which could not
disintegrate unless the street itself disintegrated.
So it seemed, at least. Until the Williamsburg Bridge was opened,
whereupon there followed the invasion of the Jews from Delancey Street, New
York. This brought about the disintegration of our little world, of the
little street called Fillmore Place, which like the name itself was a street
of value, of dignity, of light, of surprises. The Jews came, as I say, and
like moths they began to eat into the fabric of our lives until there was
nothing left by this moth-like presence which they brought with them
everywhere. Soon the street began to smell bad, soon the real people moved
away, soon the houses began to deteriorate and even the stoops fell away,
like the paint. Soon the street looked like a dirty mouth with all the
prominent teeth missing, with ugly charred stumps gaping here and there, the
lips rotting, the palate gone. Soon the garbage was knee deep in the gutter
and the fire escapes filled with bloated bedding, with cockroaches, with
dried blood. Soon the Kosher sign appeared on the shop windows and there was
poultry everywhere and lax and sour pickles and enormous loaves of bread.
Soon there were baby-carriages in every areaway and on the stoops and in the
little yards and before the shop fronts. And with the change the English
language also disappeared; one heard nothing but Yiddish, nothing but this
sputtering, choking, hissing tongue in which God and rotten vegetables sound
alike and mean alike.
We were among the first families to move away, following the invasion.
Two or three times a year I came back to the old neighbourhood, for a
birthday or for Christmas or Thanksgiving. With each visit I marked the loss
of something I had loved and cherished. It was like a bad dream. It got
worse and worse. The house in which my relatives still lived was like an old
fortress going to ruin; they were stranded in one of the wings of the
fortress, maintaining a forlorn, island life, beginning themselves to look
sheepish, hunted, degraded. They even began to make distinctions between
their Jewish neighbours, finding some of them quite human, quite decent,
dean, kind, sympathetic, charitable, etc. etc. To me it was heartrending. I
could have taken a machine gun and mowed the whole neighbourhood down, Jew
and Gentile together.
It was about the time of the invasion that the authorities decided to
change the name of North Second Street to Metropolitan Avenue. This highway,
which to the Gentiles had been the road to the cemeteries, now became what
is called an artery of traffic, a link between two ghettoes. On the New York
side the riverfront was rapidly being transformed owing to the erection of
the skyscrapers. On our side, the Brooklyn side, the warehouses were piling
up and the approaches to the various new bridges created plazas, comfort
stations, pool rooms, stationery shops, ice cream parlours, restaurants,
clothing stores, hock shops, etc. In short everything was becoming
metropolitan, in the odious sense of the word.
As long as we lived in the old neighbourhood we never referred to
Metropolitan Avenue: it was always North Second Street, despite the official
change of name. Perhaps it was eight or ten years later, when I stood one
winter's day at the corner of the street facing the river and noticed for
the first time the great tower of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building,
that I realized that North Second Street was no more. The imaginary boundary
of my world had changed. My lance travelled now far beyond the cemeteries,
far beyond the rivers, far beyond the city of New York or the State of New
York, beyond the whole United States indeed. At Point Loma, California, I
had looked out upon the broad Pacific and I had felt something there which
kept my face permanently screwed in another direction. I came back to the
old neighbourhood, I remember, one night with my old friend Stanley who had
just come out of the army, and we walked the streets sadly and wistfully. A
European can scarcely know what this feeling is like. Even when a town
becomes modernized, in Europe, there are still vestiges of the old. In
America, though there are vestiges, they are effaced, wiped out of the
consciousness, trampled upon, obliterated, nullified by the new. The new is,
from day to day, a moth which eats into the fabric of life, leaving nothing
finally but a great hole. Stanley and I, we were walking through this
terrifying hole. Even a war does not bring this kind of desolation and
destruction. Through war a town may be reduced to ashes and the entire
population wiped out, but what springs up again resembles the old. Death is
fecundating, for the soil as well as for the spirit. In America the
destruction is completely annihilating. There is no rebirth only a cancerous
growth, layer upon layer of new, poisonous tissue, each one uglier than the
previous one.
We were walking through this enormous hole, as I say, and it was a
winter's night, dear, frosty, sparkling, and as we came through the south
side towards the boundary line we saluted all the old relics or the spots
where things had once stood and where there had been once something of
ourselves. And as we approached North Second Street, between Fillmore Place
and North Second Street - a distance of only a few yards and yet such a
rich, full area of the globe - before Mrs. O'Melio's shanty I stopped and
looked up at the house where I had known what it was to really have a being.
Everything had shrunk now to diminutive proportions, including the world
which lay beyond the boundary line, the world which had been so mysterious
to me and so terrifyingly grand, so delimited. Standing there in a trance I
suddenly recalled a dream which I have had over and over, which I still
dream now and then, and which I hope to dream as long as I live. It was the
dream of passing the boundary line. As in all dreams the remarkable thing is
the vividness of the reality, the fad that one is in reality and not
dreaming. Across the line I am unknown and absolutely alone. Even the
language has changed. In fact, I am always regarded as a stranger, a
foreigner. I have unlimited time on my hands and I am absolutely content in
sauntering through the streets. There is only one street, I must say - the
continuation of the street on which I lived. I come finally to an iron
bridge over the railroad yards. It is always nightfall when I reach the
bridge, though it is only a short distance from the boundary line. Here I
look down upon the webbed tracks, the freight stations, the tenders, the
storage sheds, and as I gaze down upon this duster of strange moving
substances a process of metamorphosis takes place, just as in a dream. With
the transformation and deformation I become aware that this is the old dream
which I have dreamed so often. I have a wild fear that I shall wake up, and
indeed I know that I will wake up shortly, just at the moment when in the
midst of a great open space I am about to walk into the house which contains
something of the greatest importance for me. Just as I go towards this house
the lot on which I am standing begins to grow vague at the edges, to
dissolve, to vanish. Space rolls in on me like a carpet and swallows me up,
and with it of course the house which I never succeed in entering.
There is absolutely no transition from this, the most pleasurable dream
I know to the heart of a book called Creative
Evolution. In this book by Henri Bergson, which I came to as naturally
as to the dream of the land beyond the boundary, I am again quite alone,
again a foreigner, again a man of indeterminate age standing on an iron
bridge observing a peculiar metamorphosis without and within. If this book
had not fallen into my hands at the precise moment it did, perhaps I would
have gone mad. It came at a moment when another huge world was crumbling on
my hands. If I had never understood a thing which was written in this book,
if I had preserved only the memory of one word, creative, it is quite
sufficient. This word was my talisman. With it I was able to defy the whole
world, and especially my friends.
There are times when one must break with one's friends in order to
understand the meaning of friendship. It may seem strange to say so, but the
discovery of this book was equivalent to the discovery of a weapon, an
implement, wherewith I might lop off all the friends who surrounded me and
who no longer meant anything to me. This book became my friend because it
taught me that I had no need of friends. It gave me the courage to stand
alone, and it enabled me to appreciate loneliness. I have never understood
the book; at times I thought I was on the point of understanding, but I
never really did understand. It was more important for me not to understand.
With this book in my hands, reading aloud to my friends, questioning them,
explaining to them, I was made clearly to understand that I had no friends,
that I was alone in the world. Because in not understanding the meaning of
the words, neither I nor my friends, one thing became very clear and that
was that there were ways of not understanding and that the difference
between the non-understanding of one individual and the non-understanding of
another created a world of terra firma even more solid than differences of
understanding. Everything which before I thought I had understood crumbled,
and I was left with a dean slate. My friends, on the other hand, entrenched
themselves more solidly in the little ditch of understanding which they had
dug for themselves. They died comfortably in their little bed of
understanding, to become useful citizens of the world. I pitied them, and in
short order. I deserted them one by one, without the slightest regret.
What was there then in this book which could mean so much to me and yet
remain obscure? I come back to the word creative. 1 am sure that the whole
mystery lies in the realization of the meaning of this word. When I think of
the book now, and the way I approached it, I think of a man going through
the rites of initiation. The disorientation and reorientation which comes
with the initiation into any mystery is the most wonderful experience which
it is possible to have. Everything which the brain has laboured for a
lifetime to assimilate, categorize and synthesize has to be taken apart and
reordered. Moving day for the soul! And of course it's not for a day, but
for weeks and months that this goes on. You meet a friend on the street by
chance, one whom you haven't seen for several weeks, and he has become an
absolute stranger to you. You give him a few signals from your new perch and
if he doesn't cotton you pass him up - for good. It's exactly like mopping
up a battlefield: all those who are hopelessly disabled and agonizing you
dispatch with one swift blow of your dub. You move on, to new fields of
battle, to new triumphs or defeats. But you move! And as yon move the world
moves with you, with terrifying exactitude. You seek out new fields of
operation, new specimens of the human race whom you patiently instruct and
equip with the new symbols. You choose sometimes those you would never have
looked at before. You try everybody and everything within range, provided
they are ignorant of the revelation.
It was in this fashion that I found myself sitting in the busheling
room of my father's establishment, reading aloud to the Jews who were
working there. Reading to them from this new Bible in the way that Paul must
have talked to the disciples. With the added disadvantage, to be sure, that
these poor Jew bastards could not read the English language. Primarily I was
directing myself towards Bunchek the cutter, who had a rabbinical mind.
Opening the book I would pick a passage at random and read it to them in a
transposed English almost as primitive as pidgin English. Then I would
attempt to explain, choosing for example and analogy the things they were
familiar with. It was amazing to me how well they understood, how much
better they understood, let me say, than a college professor or a literary
man or any educated man. Naturally what they understood had nothing to do
finally with Bergson's book, as a book, but was not that the purpose of such
a book as this? My understanding of the meaning of a book is that the book
itself disappears from sight, that it is chewed alive, digested and
incorporated into the system as flesh and blood which in turn creates new
spirit and reshapes the world. It was a great communion feast which we
shared in the reading of this book and the outstanding feature of it was the
chapter on Disorder which, having penetrated me through and through, has
endowed me with such a marvellous sense of order that if a comet suddenly
struck the earth and jarred everything out of place, stood everything upside
down, turned everything inside out, I could orient myself to the new order
in the twinkling of an eye. I have no fear or illusions about disorder any
more than I have of death. The labyrinth is my happy hunting ground and the
deeper I burrow into the maze the more oriented I become.
With Creative Evolution under my arm I board the elevated line at the
Brooklyn Bridge after work and I commence the journey homeward towards the
cemetery. Sometimes I get on at Delancey Street, the very heart of the
ghetto, after a long walk through the crowded streets. I enter the elevated
line below the ground, like a worm being pushed through the intestines. I
know each time I take my place in the crowd which mills about the platform
that I am the most unique individual down there. I look upon everything
which is happening about me like a spectator from another planet. My
language, my world, is under my arm. I am the guardian of a great secret; if
I were to open my mouth and talk I would tie up traffic. What I have to say,
and what I am holding in every night of my life on this journey to and from
the office, is absolute dynamite. I am not ready yet to throw my stick of
dynamite. I nibble at it meditatively, ruminatively, cogently. Five more
years, ten more years perhaps, and I will wipe these people out utterly. If
the train in making a curve gives a violent lurch I say to myself fine! jump
the track, annihilate them! I never think of myself as being endangered
should the train jump the track. We're wedged in like sardines and all the
hot flesh pressed against me diverts my thoughts. I become conscious of a
pair of legs wrapped around mine. I look down at the girl sitting in front
of me, I look her right in the eye, and I press my knees still further into
her crotch. She grows uneasy, fidgets about in her seat, and finally she
turns to the girl next to her and complains that I am molesting her. The
people about look at me hostilely. I look out of the window blandly and
pretend I have heard nothing. Even if I wished to I can't remove my legs.
Little by little though, the girl, by a violent pushing and squiggling,
manages to unwrap her legs from mine. I find myself almost in the same
situation with the girl next to her, the one she was addressing her
complaints to. Almost at once I feel a sympathetic touch and then, to my
surprise, I hear her tell the other girl that one can't help these things,
that it is really not the man's fault but the fault of the company for
packing us in like sheep. And again I feel the quiver of her legs against
mine, a warm, human pressure, like squeezing one's hand. With my one free
hand I manage to open my book. My object is twofold: first I want her to see
the kind of book I read, second, I want to be able to carry on the leg
language without attracting attention. It works beautifully. By the time the
train empties a bit I am able to take a seat beside her and converse with
her - about the book, naturally. She's a voluptuous Jewess with enormous
liquid eyes and the frankness which come from sensuality. When it comes time
to get off we walk arm in arm through the streets, towards her home. I am
almost on the confines of the old neighbourhood. Everything is familiar to
me and yet repulsively strange. I have not walked these streets for years
and now I am walking with a Jew girl from the ghetto, a beautiful girl with
a strong Jewish accent. I look incongruous walking beside her. I can sense
that people are staring at us behind our backs. I am the intruder, the Goy
who has come down into the neighbourhood to pick off a nice ripe cunt. She
on the other hand seems to be proud of her conquest; she's showing me off to
her friends. This is what I picked up in the train, an educated Goy, a
refined Goy! I can almost hear her think it. Walking slowly I'm getting the
lay of the land, all the practical details which will decide whether I call
for her after dinner or not. There's no thought of asking her t6 dinner.
It's a question of what time and where to meet and how will we go about it,
because as she lets drop just before we reach the door, she's got a husband
who's a travelling salesman and she's got to be careful. I agree to come
back and to meet her at the comer in front of the candy store at a certain
hour. If I want to bring a friend along she'll bring her girl friend. No, I
decide to see her alone. It's agreed. She squeezes my hand and darts off
into a dirty hallway. I beat it quickly back to the elevated station and
hasten home to gulp down the meal.
It's a Summer's night and everything flung wide open. Riding back to
meet her the whole past rushes up kaleidoscopically. This time I've left the
book at home. It's cunt I'm out for now and no thought of the book is in my
head. I am back again this side of the boundary line, each station whizzing
past making my world grow more diminutive. I am almost a child by the time I
reach the destination. I am a child who is horrified by the metamorphosis
which has taken place. What has happened to me, a man of the 14th Ward, to
be jumping off at this station in search of a Jewish cunt? Supposing I do
give her a fuck, what then? What have I got to say to a girl like that?
What's a fuck when what I want is love? Yes, suddenly it comes over me like
a tornado... Una, the girl I loved, the girl who lived here in this
neighbourhood, Una with big blue eyes and flaxen hair, Una who made me
tremble just to look at her, Una whom I was afraid to kiss or even to touch
her hand. Where is Una? Yes, suddenly, that's the burning question: where is
Una ? In two seconds I am completely unnerved, completely lost, desolate, in
the most horrible anguish and despair. How did I ever let her go? Why? What
happened? When did it happen? I thought of her like a maniac night and day,
year in and year out, and then, without even noticing it, she drops out of
my mind, like that, like a penny falling through a hole in your pocket.
Incredible, monstrous, mad. Why all I had to do was to ask her to marry me,
ask her hand - that's all. If I had done that she would have said yes
immediately. She loved me, she loved me desperately. Why yes, I remember
now, I remember how she looked at me the last time we met. I was saying
good-bye because I was leaving that night for California, leaving everybody
to begin a new life. And I never had any intention of leading a new life. I
intended to ask her to marry me, but the story I had framed like a dope came
out of my lips so naturally that I believed it myself, and so I said
good-bye and I walked off, arid she stood there looking after me and I felt
her eyes pierce me through and through. I heard her howling inside, but like
an automaton I kept on walking and finally I turned the comer and that was
the end of it. Good-bye! Like that. Like in a coma. And I meant to say come
to me! Come to me because I can't live any more without you!
I am so weak, so rocky, that I can scarcely climb down the L steps. Now
I know what's happened - I've crossed the boundary line! This Bible that
I've been carrying around with me is to instruct me, initiate me into a new
way of life. The world I knew is no more, it is dead, finished, cleaned up.
And everything that I was is cleaned up with it. I am a carcass getting an
injection of new life. I am bright and glittery, rabid with new discoveries,
but in the centre it is still leaden, still slag. I begin to weep - right
there on the L stairs. I sob aloud, like a child. Now it dawns on me with
full clarity: you are alone in the world! You are alone . . . alone . . .
alone. It is bitter to be alone . .. bitter, bitter, bitter, bitter. There
is no end to it, it is unfathomable, and it is the lot of every man on
earth, but especially mine . . . especially mine. Again the metamorphosis.
Again everything totters, and careens. I am in the dream again, the painful,
delirious, pleasurable, maddening dream of beyond the boundary. I am
standing in the centre of the vacant lot, but my home I do not see. I have
no home. The dream was a mirage. There never was a house in the midst of the
vacant lot. That's why I was never able to enter it. My home is not in this
world, nor in the next I am a man without a home, without a friend, without
a wife. I am a monster who belongs to a reality which does not exist yet.
Ah, but it does exist, it will exist, I am sure of it. I walk now rapidly,
head down, muttering to myself. I've forgotten about my rendezvous so
completely that I never even noticed whether I walked past her or not.
Probably I did. Probably I looked right at her and didn't recognize her.
Probably she didn't recognize me either. I am mad, mad with pain, mad with
anguish. I am desperate. But I am not lost. No, there is a reality to which
I belong. It's far away, very far away. I may walk from now till doomsday
with head down and never find her. But it is there, I am sure of it. I look
at people murderously. If I could throw a bomb and blow the whole
neighbourhood to smithereens I would do it. I would be happy seeing them fly
in the air, mangled, shrieking, torn apart, annihilated. I want to
annihilate the whole earth. I am not a part of it. It's mad from start to
finish. The whole shooting match. It's a huge piece of stale cheese with
maggots festering inside it. Fuck it! Blow it to hell! Kill, kill, kill:
Kill them all, Jews and Gentiles, young and old, good and bad ...
I grow light, light as a feather, and my pace becomes more steady, more
calm, more even. What a beautiful night it is! The stars shining so
brightly, so serenely, so remotely. Not mocking me precisely, but reminding
me of the futility of it all. Who are you, young man, to be talking of the
earth, of blowing things to smithereens? Young man, we have been hanging
here for millions and billions of years. We have seen it all, everything,
and still we shine peacefully every night, we light the way, we still the
heart. Look around you, young man, see how still and beautiful everything
is. Do you see, even the garbage lying in the gutter looks beautiful in this
light. Pick up the little cabbage leaf, hold it gently in your hand. I bend
down and pick up the cabbage leaf lying in the gutter. It looks absolutely
new to me, a whole universe in itself. I break a little piece off and
examine that. Still a universe. Still unspeakably beautiful and mysterious.
I am almost ashamed to throw it back in the gutter. I bend down and deposit
it gently with the other refuse. I become very thoughtful, very, very calm.
I love everybody in the world. I know that somewhere at this very moment
there is a woman waiting for me and if only I proceed very calmly, very
gently, very slowly, I will come to her. She will be standing on a comer
perhaps and when I come in sight she will recognize me - immediately. I
believe this, so help me God! I believe that everything is just and
ordained. My home? Why it is the world - the whole world! I am at home
everywhere, only I did not know it before. But I know now. There is no
boundary line any more. There never was a boundary line: it was I who made
it. I walk slowly and blissfully through the streets. The beloved streets.
Where everybody walks and everybody suffers without showing it. When I stand
and lean against a lamp post to light my cigarette even the lamp post feels
friendly. It is not a thing of iron - it is a creation of the human mind,
shaped a certain way, twisted and formed by human hands, blown on with human
breath, placed by human hands and feet. I turn round and rub my hand over
the iron surface. It almost seems to speak to me. It is a human lamp post.
It belongs, like the cabbage leaf, like the torn socks, like the mattress,
like the kitchen sink. Everything stands in a certain way in a certain
place, as our mind stands in relation to God. The world, in its visible,
tangible substance, is a map of our love. Not God but life is love. Love,
love, love. And in the midmost midst of it walks this young man, myself, who
is none other than Gotdieb Leberecht Muller.
Gotdieb Leberecht Miiller! This is the name of a man who lost his
identity. Nobody could tell him who he was, where he came from or what had
happened to him. In the movies, where I first made the acquaintance of this
individual it was assumed that he had met with an accident in the war. But
when I recognized myself on the screen, knowing that I had never been to the
war, I realized that the author had invented this little piece of fiction in
order not to expose me. Often I forget which is the real me. Often in my
dreams I take the draught of forgetfulness, as it is called, and I wander
forlorn and desperate, seeking the body and the name which is mine. And
sometimes between the dream and reality there is only the thinnest line.
Sometimes while a person is talking to me I step out of my shoes, and, like
a plant drifting with the current, I begin the voyage, of my rootless self.
In this condition I am quite capable of fulfilling the ordinary demands of
life - of finding a wife, of becoming a father, of supporting the household,
of entertaining friends, of reading books, of paying taxes, of performing
military services, and so on and so forth. In this condition I am capable if
needs be, of killing in cold blood, for the sake of my family or to protect
my country, or whatever it may be. I am the ordinary, routine citizen who
answers to a name and who is given a number in his passport. I am thoroughly
irresponsible for my fate.
Then one day, without the slightest warning, I wake up and looking
about me I understand absolutely nothing of what is going on about me,
neither my own behaviour nor that of my neighbours, nor do I understand why
the governments are at war or at peace, whichever the case may be. At such
moments I am born anew, born and baptized by my right name: Gotdieb
Leberecht Miiller! Everything I do in my right name is looked upon as crazy.
People make furtive signs behind my back, sometimes to my face even. I am
forced to break with friends and family and loved ones. I am obliged to
break camp. And so, just as naturally as in dream, I find myself once again
drifting with the current, usually walking along a highway, my face set
towards the sinking sun. Now all my faculties become alert. I am the most
suave silky, cunning animal - and I am at the same time what might be called
a holy man. I know how to fend for myself. I know how to avoid work, how to
avoid entangling relationships, how to avoid pity, sympathy, bravery, and
all the other pitfalls. I stay in place or widi a person just long enough to
obtain what I need, and then I'm off again. I have no goal: the aimless
wandering is sufficient unto itself. I am free as a bird, sure as an
equilibrist. Manna falls from the sky; I have only to hold out my hands and
receive. And everywhere I leave the most pleasant feeling behind me, as
though, in accepting the gifts that are showered upon me, I am doing a real
favour to others. Even my dirty linen is taken care of by loving hands.
Because everybody loves a right-living man! Gottlieb! What a beautiful name
it is! Gotdieb! I say to myself over and over. Gottlieb Leberecht Muller.
In this condition I have always fallen in with thieves and rogues and
murderers, and how .kind and gentle they have been with me! As though they
were my brothers. And are they not, indeed? Have I not been guilty of every
crime, and suffered for it? And is it not just because of my crimes that I
am united so closely to my fellowman? Always, when I see a light of
recognition in the other person's eyes, I am aware of this secret bond. It
is only the just whose eyes never light up. It is the just who have never
known the secret of human fellowship. It is the just who are committing the
crimes against man, the just who are the real monsters. It is the just who
demand our fingerprints, who prove to us that we have died even when we
stand before them in the flesh. It is the just who impose upon us arbitrary
names, false names, who put false dates in the register and bury us alive. I
prefer the thieves, the rogues, the murderers unless I can find a man of my
own stature, my own quality.
I have never found such a man! I have never found a man as generous as
myself, as forgiving, as tolerant, as carefree, as reckless, as clean at
heart. I forgive myself for every crime I have committed. I do it in the
name of humanity. I know what it means to be human, the weakness and the
strength of it. I suffer from this knowledge and I revel in it also. If I
had the chance to be God I would reject it. If I had the chance to be a star
I would reject it. The most wonderful opportunity which life offers is to be
human. It embraces the whole universe. It includes the knowledge of death,
which not even God enjoys.
At the point from which this book is written I am the man who baptized
himself anew. It is many years since this happened and so much has come in
between that it is difficult to get back to that moment and retrace the
journey of Gottlieb Leberecht Muller. However, perhaps I can give the clue
if I say that the man which I now am was born out of a wound. That wound
went to the heart. By all man-made logic I should have been dead. I was in
fact given up for dead by all who once knew me; I walked about like a ghost
in their midst. They used the past tense in referring to me, they pitied me,
they shovelled me under deeper and deeper. Yet I remembered how I used to
laugh then, as always, how I made love to other women, how I enjoyed my food
and drink, and the soft bed which I dung to like a fiend. Something had
killed me, and yet I was alive. But I was live without a memory, without a
name; I was cut off from hope as well as from remorse or regret. I had no
past and I would probably have no future;
I was buried alive in a void which was the wound that had been dealt
me. I was the wound itself.
I have a friend who talks to me from time to time about the Miracle of
Golgotha of which I understand nothing. But I do know something about the
miraculous wound which I received, the wound which killed me in the eyes of
the world and out of which I was born anew and rebaptized. I know something
of the miracle of this wound which I lived and which healed with my death. I
tell it as of something long past, but it is with me always. Everything is
long past and seemingly invisible, like a constellation which has sunk
forever beneath the horizon.
What fascinates me is that anything so dead and buried as I was could
be resuscitated, and not just once, but innumerable times. And not only
that, but each time I faded out I plunged deeper than ever into the void, so
that with each resuscitation the miracle becomes greater. And never any
stigmata! The man who is reborn is always the same man, more and more
himself with each rebirth. He is only shedding his skin each time, and with
his skin his sins. The man whom God loves is truly a right living man. The
man whom God loves is the onion with a million skins. To shed the first
layer is painful beyond words; the next layer is less painful, the next
still less, until finally the pain becomes pleasurable, more and more
pleasurable, a delight, an ecstasy. And then there is neither pleasure not
pain, but simply darkness yielding before the light. And as the darkness
falls away the wound comes out of its hiding place: the wound which is man,
man's love, is bathed in light. The identity which was lost is recovered.
Man walks forth from his open wound, from the grave which he had carried
about with him so long.
In the tomb which is my memory I see her buried now, the one I loved
better than all else, better than the world, better than God, better than my
own flesh and blood. I see her festering there in that bloody wound of love,
so dose to me that I could not distinguish her from the wound itself. I see
her struggling to free herself, to make herself clean of love pain, and with
each struggle sinking back again into the wound, mired, suffocated, writhing
in blood. I see the terrible look in her eyes, the mute piteous agony, the
look of the beast that is trapped. I see her opening her legs for
deliverance and each orgasm a groan of anguish. I hear the walls falling,
the walls caving in on us and the house going up in flames. I hear them
calling us from the street, the summons to work, the summons to arms, but we
are nailed to the floor and the rats are biting into us. The grave and womb
of love entombing us, the night filling our bowels and the stars shimmering
over the black bottomless lake. I lose the memory of words, of her name even
which I pronounced like a monomaniac. I forgot what she looked like, what
she felt like, what she smelt like, what she fucked like, piercing deeper
and deeper into the night of the fathomless cavern. I followed her to the
deepest hole of her being, to the charnel house of her soul, to the breath
which had not yet expired from her lips. I sought relentlessly for her whose
name was not written anywhere, I penetrated to the very altar and found -
nothing. I wrapped myself around this hollow shell of nothingness like a
serpent with fiery coils; I lay still for six centuries without breathing as
world events sieved through to the bottom forming a slimy bed of mucus. I
saw the constellations wheeling about the huge hole in the ceiling of the
universe: I saw the outer planets and the black star which was to deliver
me. I saw the Dragon shaking itself free of dharma and karma, saw the new
race of man stewing in the yolk of futurity. I saw through to the last sign
and symbol, but I could not read her face. I could see only the eyes shining
through, huge, fleshy-like luminous breasts, as though I were swim- ming
behind them in the electric effluvia of her incandescent vision.
How had she come to expand thus beyond all grip of consciousness? By
what monstrous law had she spread herself thus over the face of the world,
revealing everything and yet concealing herself? She was hidden in the face
of the sun, like the moon in eclipse; she was a mirror which had lost its
quicksilver, the mirror which yields both the image and the horror. Looking
into the backs of her eyes, into the pulpy translucent flesh, I saw the
brain structure of all formations, all relations, all evanescence. I saw the
brain within the brain, the endless machine endlessly turning, the word Hope
revolving on a spit, roasting, dripping with fat, revolving ceaselessly in
the cavity of the third eye. I heard her dreams mumbled in lost tongues, the
stifled screams reverberating in minute crevices, the gasps, the groans, the
pleasurable sighs, the swish of lashing whips. I heard her call my own name
which I had not yet uttered, I heard her curse and shriek with rage. I heard
everything magnified a thousand times, like a homunculus imprisoned in the
belly organ. I caught the muffled breathing of the world, as if fixed in the
very crossroads of sound.
Thus we walked and slept and ate together, the Siamese twins whom Love
had joined and whom Death alone could separate.
We walked upside down, hand in hand, at the neck of the Bottle. She
dressed in black almost exclusively, except for patches of purple now and
then. She wore no underclothes, just a simple sheet of black velvet
saturated with a diabolical perfume. We went to bed at dawn and got up just
as it was darkling. We lived in black holes with drawn curtains, we ate from
black plates, we read from black books. We looked out of the black hole of
our life into the black hole of the world. The sun was permanently blacked
out, as though to aid us in continuous internecine strife. For sun we had
Mars, for moon Saturn: we lived permanently in the zenith of the underworld.
The earth had ceased to revolve and through the hole in the sky above us
there hung the black star which never twinkled. Now and then we had fits of
laughter, crazy, batrachian laughter which made the neighbours shudder. Now
and then we sang, delirious, on-key, full tremolo. We were locked in
throughout the long dark night of the soul, a period of incommensurable time
which began and ended in the manner of an eclipse. We revolved about our own
egos, like phantom satellites. We were drunk with our own image which we saw
when we looked into each other's eyes. How then did we look to others ? As
the beast looks to the plant, as the stars look to the beast. Or as God
would look to man if the devil had given him wings. And with it all, in the
fixed, dose intimacy of a night without end she was radiant, jubilant, an
ultra-black jubilation streaming from her like a steady flow of sperm from
the Mithraic Bull. She was double-barrelled, like a shot-gun, a female bull
with an acetylene torch in her womb. In heat she focussed on the grand
cosmocrator, her eyes rolled back to the whites, her lips a-saliva. In the
blind hole of sex she waltzed like a trained mouse, her jaws unhinged like a
snake's, her skin horripilating in barbed plumes. She had the insatiable
lust of a unicorn, the itch that laid the Egyptians low. Even the hole in
the sky through which the lacklustre star shone down was swallowed up in her
fury.
We lived glued to the ceiling, the hot, rancid fume of the everyday
life steaming up and suffocating us. We lived at marble heat, the ascending
glow of human flesh warming the snake-like coils in which we were locked. We
lived riveted to the nethermost depths, our skins smoked to the colour of a
grey cigar by the fumes of worldly passion. Like two heads carried on the
pikes of our executioners we circled slowly and fixedly over the heads and
shoulders of the world below. What was life on the solid earth to us who
were decapitated and forever joined at the genitals? We were the twin snakes
of Paradise, lucid in heat and cool as chaos itself. Life was a perpetual
black fuck about a fixed pole of insomnia. Life was Scorpio conjunction
Mars, conjunction Mercury, conjunction Venus, conjunction Saturn,
conjunction Pluto, conjunction Uranus, conjunction quicksilver, laudanum,
radium, bismuth. The grand conjunction was every Saturday night, Leo
fornicating with Draco in the house of brother and sister. The great malheur
was a ray of sunlight stealing through the curtains. The great curse was
Jupiter, king of the fishes, that he might flash a benevolent eye.
The reason why it is difficult to tell it is because I remember too
much. I remember everything, but like a dummy sitting on the lap of a
ventriloquist. It seems to me that throughout the long, uninterrupted
connubial solstice I sat on her lap (even when she was standing) and spoke
the lines she had taught me. It seems to me that she must have commanded
God's chief plumber to keep the black star shining through the hole in the
ceiling, must have bid him to rain down perpetual night and with it all the
crawling torments that move noiselessly about in the dark so that the mind
becomes a twirling awl burrowing frantically into black nothingness. Did I
only imagine that she talked incessantly, or had I become such a
marvellously trained dummy that I intercepted the thought before it reached
the lips? The lips were finely parted, smoothed down with a thick paste of
dark blood: I watched them open and dose with the utmost fascination,
whether they hissed a viper's hate or cooed like a turtle dove. They were
always close-up, as in the movie stills, so that I knew every crevice, every
pore, and when the hysterical salivating began I watched the spittle fume
and foam as though I were sitting in a rocking chair under Niagara Falls. I
learned what to do just as though I were a part of her organism; I was
better than a ventriloquist's dummy because I could act without being
violently jerked by strings. Now and then I did things impromptu like, which
sometimes pleased her enormously; she would pretend, of course, not to
notice these interruptions, but I could always tell when she was pleased by
the way she preened herself. She had the gift for transformation; almost as
quick and subtle she was as the devil himself. Next to the panther and the
jaguar she did the bird stuff best: the wild heron, the ibis, the flamingo,
the swan in rut. She had a way of swooping suddenly, as if she had spotted a
ripe carcass, diving right into the bowels, pouncing immediately on the
tidbits - the heart, the liver, or the ovaries -and making off again in the
twinkling of an eye. Did someone spot her, she would lie stone quiet at the
base of a tree, her eyes not quite dosed but immovable in that fixed stare
of the basilisk. Prod her a bit and she would become a rose, a deep black
rose with the most velvety petals and of a fragrance that was overpowering.
It was amazing how marvellously I learned to take my cue; no matter how
swift the metamorphosis I was always there in her lap, bird lap, beast lap,
snake lap, rose lap, what matter: the lap of laps, the lip of lips, tip to
tip, feather to feather, the yolk in the egg, the pearl in the oyster, a
cancer clutch, a tincture of sperm and cantharides. Life was Scorpio
conjunction Mars, conjunction Venus, Saturn, Uranus, et cetera, love was
conjunctivitis of the mandibles, dutch this, dutch that, clutch, clutch, the
mandibular clutch-clutch of the mandala wheel of lust. Come food time I
could already hear her peeling the eggs, and inside the egg cheep-cheep,
blessed omen of the next meal to come. I ate like a monomaniac: the
prolonged dreamlit voracity of the man who is thrice breaking his fast. And
as I ate she purred, the rhythmic predatory wheeze of the succubus devouring
her young. What a blissful night of love! Saliva, sperm, succubation,
sphincteritis all in one: the conjugal orgy in the Black Hole of Calcutta.
Out there where the black star hung, a Pan-Islamic silence, as in the
cavern world where even the wind is stilled. Out there, did I dare to brood
on it, the spectral quietude of insanity, the world of men, lulled,
exhausted by centuries of incessant slaughter. Out there one gory
encompassing membrane within which all activity took place, the hero-world
of lunatics and maniacs who had quenched the light of the heaven with blood.
How peaceful our little dove-and-vulture life in the dark! Flesh to bury in
with teeth or penis, abundant odorous flesh with no mark of knife or
scissors, no scar of exploded shrapnel, no mustard bums, no scalded lungs.
Save for the hallucinating hole in the ceiling, an almost perfect womb life.
But the hole was there - like a fissure in the bladder - and no wadding
could plug it permanently, no urination could pass off with a smile. Piss
large and freely, aye, but how forget the rent in the belfry, the silence
unnatural, the imminence, the terror, the poom of the "other" world? Eat a
bellyful, aye, and tomorrow another bellyful, and tomorrow and tomorrow and
tomorrow - but finally, what then? Finally ? What was finally? A change of
ventriloquist, a change of lap, a shift in the axis, another rift in the
vault... what ? what ? I'll tell you - sitting in her lap, petrified by the
still, pronged beams of the black star, homed, snaffled, hitched and
trepanned by the telepathic acuity of your interacting agitation, I thought
of nothing at all, nothing that was outside the cell we inhabited, not even
the thought of a crumb on a white tablecloth. I thought purely within the
walls of our amoebic life, the pure thought such as Immanuel Pussyfoot Kant
gave us and which only a ventriloquist's dummy could reproduce. I thought
out every theory of science, every theory of art, every grain of truth in
every cock-eyed system of salvation. I calculated everything out to a pin
point with gnostic decimals to boot, like primes which a drunk hands out at
the finish of a six-day-race. But everything was calculated for another life
which somebody else would live some day -perhaps. We were at the very neck
of the bottle, her and I, as they say, but the neck had been broken off and
the bottle was only a fiction.
I remember how the second time I met her she told me that she had never
expected to see me again, and the next time I saw her she said she thought I
was a dope fiend, and the next time she called me a god, and after that she
tried to commit suicide and then I tried and then she tried again, and
nothing worked except to bring us closer together, so close indeed that we
interpenetrated, exchanged personalities, name, identity, religion, father,
mother, brother. Even her body went through a radical change, not once but
several times. At first she was big and velvety, like the jaguar, with that
silky, deceptive strength of the feline species, the crouch, the spring, the
pounce; then she grew emaciated, fragile, delicate almost like a cornflower,
and with each change thereafter she went through the subtlest modulations -
of skin, muscle, colour, posture, odour, gait, gesture, et cetera. She
changed like a chameleon. Nobody could say what she really was like because
with each one she was an entirely different person. After a time she didn't
even know herself what she was like. She had begun this process of
metamorphosis before I met her, as I later dis- covered. Like so many women
who think themselves ugly she had willed to make herself beautiful,
dazzlingly beautiful. To do this she first of all renounced her name, then
her family, her friends, everything which might attach her to the past. With
all her wits and faculties she devoted herself to the cultivation of her
beauty, other charm, which she already possessed to a high degree but which
she had been made to believe were nonexistent. She lived constantly before
the mirror, studying every movement, every gesture, every slightest grimace.
She changed her whole manner of speech, her diction, her intonation, her
accent, her phraseology. She conducted herself so skilfully that it was
impossible even to broach the subject of origins. She was constantly on her
guard, even in her sleep. And, like a good general, she discovered quickly
enough that the best defence is attack. She never left a single position
unoccupied; her outposts, her scouts, her sentinels were stationed
everywhere. Her mind was a revolving searchlight which was never dimmed.
Blind to her own beauty, her own charm, her own personality, to say
nothing of her identity, she launched her full powers towards the
fabrication of a mythical creature, a Helen, a Juno, whose charms neither
man nor woman would be able to resist. Automatically, without the slightest
knowledge of legend, she began to create little by little the ontological
background, the mythic sequence of events preceding the conscious birth. She
had no need to remember her lies, her fictions - she had only to bear in
mind her role. There was no lie too monstrous for her to utter, for in her
adopted role she was absolutely faithful to herself. She did not have to
invent a past: she remembered the past which belonged to her. She was never
outflanked by a direct question since she never presented herself to an
adversary except obliquely. She presented only the angles of the everturning
facets, the blinding prisms of light which she kept constantly revolving.
She was never a being, such as might finally be caught in repose, but the
mechanism itself, relentlessly operating the myriad mirrors which would
reflect the myth she had created. She had no poise what soever; she was
eternally poised above her multiple identities in the vacuum of the self.
She had not intended to make herself a legendary figure, she had merely
wanted her beauty to be recognized. But, in the pursuit of beauty, she soon
forgot her quest entirely, became the victim of her own creation. She became
so stunningly beautiful that at times she was frightening, at times
positively uglier than the ugliest woman in the world. She could inspire
horror and dread, especially when her charm was at its height. It was as
though the will, blind and uncontrollable, shone through the creation,
exposing the monster which it is.
In the dark, locked away in the black hole with no world looking on, no
adversary, no rivals, the blinding dynamism of the will slowed down a bit,
gave her a molten copperish glow, the words coming out of her mouth like
lava, her flesh clutching ravenously for a hold, a perch on something solid
and substantial, something in which to reintegrate and repose for a few
moments. It was like a frantic long distance message, an S.O.S. from a
sinking ship. At first I mistook it for passion, for the ecstasy produced by
flesh rubbing against flesh. I thought I had found a living volcano, a
female Vesuvius. I never thought of a human ship going down in an ocean of
despair, in a Sargasso of impotence. Now I think of that black star gleaming
through the hole in the ceiling, that fixed star which hung above our
conjugal cell, more fixed, more remote than the Absolute, and I know it was
her, emptied of all that was properly herself: a dead black sun without
aspect. I know that we were conjugating the verb love like two maniacs
trying to fuck through an iron grate. I said that in the frantic grappling
in the dark I sometimes forgot her name, what she looked like, who she was.
It's true. I overeached myself in the dark. I slid off the flesh rails into
the endless space of sex, into the channel-orbits established by this one
and that one; Georgiana, for instance, of only a brief afternoon, Telma, the
Egyptian whore, Carlotta, Alannah, Una, Mona, Magda, girls of six or seven;
waifs, will'o'-the-wisps, faces, bodies, thighs, a subway brush, a dream, a
memory, a desire, a longing. I could start with Georgiana of a Sunday
afternoon near the railroad tracks, her dotted Swiss dress, her swaying
haunch, her Southern drawl, her lascivious mouth, her molten breasts, I
could start with Georgiana, the myriad branched candelabra of sex, and work
outwards and upwards through the ramification of cunt into the nth dimension
of sex, world without end. Georgiana was like the membrane of the tiny
little ear of an unfinished monster called sex. She was transparently alive
and breathing in the light of the memory of a brief afternoon on the avenue,
the first tangible odour and substance of the world of fuck which is in
itself a being limitless and undefinable, like our world the world. The
whole world of fuck like unto the ever-increasing membrane of the animal we
call sex, which is like another being growing into our own being and
gradually displacing it, so that in time the human world will be only a dim
memory of this new, all-inclusive, all-procreative being which is giving
birth to itself.
It was precisely this snake-like copulation in the dark, this
double-jointed, double-barrelled hook-up, which put me in the strait-jacket
of doubt, jealousy, fear, loneliness. If I began my hem-stitching with
Georgiana and the myriad-branched candelabra of sex I was certain that she
too was at work building membrane, making ears, eyes, toes, scalp and
what-not of sex. She would begin with the monster who had raped her,
assuming there was truth in the story; in any case she too began somewhere
on a parallel track, working upwards and outwards through this multiform,
uncreated being through whose body we were both striving desperately to
meet. Knowing only a fraction of her life, possessing only a bag of lies, of
inventions, of imaginings, of obsessions and delusions, putting together
tag-ends, coke dreams, reveries, unfinished sentences, jumbled dream talk,
hysterical ravings, ill-disguised fantasies, morbid desires, meeting now and
then a name become flesh, overhearing stray bits of conversation, observing
smuggled glances, half-arrested gestures, I could well credit her with a
pantheon of her own private fucking gods, of only too vivid flesh and blood
creatures, men of perhaps that very afternoon, of perhaps only an hour ago,
her cunt perhaps still choked with the sperm of the last fuck. The more
submissive she was, the more passionately she behaved, the more abandoned
she looked, the more uncertain I became. There was no beginning, no
personal, individual starting point; we met like experienced swordsmen on
the field of honour now crowded with the ghosts of victory and defeat We
were alert and responsible to the least thrust, as only the practiced can
be.
We came together under cover of dark with our armies and from opposite
sides we forced the gates of the citadel. There was no resisting our bloody
work; we asked for no quarter and we gave none. We came together swimming in
blood, a gory, glaucous reunion in the night with all the stars extinguished
save the fixed black star hanging like a scalp above the hole in the
ceiling. If she were properly coked she would vomit it forth like an oracle,
everything that had happened to her during the day, yesterday, the day
before, the year before last, everything, down to the day she was born. And
not a word of it was true, not a single detail. Not a moment did she stop,
for if she had, the vacuum she created in her flight would have brought
about an explosion fit to sunder the world. She was the world's lying
machine in microcosm, geared to the same unending, devastating fear which
enables men to throw all their energies into creation of the death
apparatus. To look at her one would think her fearless, one would think her
the personification of courage and she was, so long as she was not obliged
to turn in her traces. Behind her lay the calm fact of reality, a colossus
which dogged her every step. Every day this colossal reality took on new
proportions, every day it became more terrifying, more paralysing. Every day
she had to grow swifter wings, sharper jaws, more piercing, hypnotic eyes.
It was a race to the outermost limits of the world, a race lost from the
start, and no one to stop it. At the edge of the vacuum stood Truth, ready
in one lightning-like sweep to recover the stolen ground. It was so simple
and obvious that it drove her frantic. Marshal a thousand personalities,
commandeer the biggest guns, deceive the greatest minds, make the longest
detour - still the end would be defeat. In the final meeting everything was
destined to fall apart - the cunning, the skill, the power, everything. She
would be a grain of sand on the shore of the biggest ocean, and, worse than
anything, she would resemble each and every other grain of sand on that
ocean's shore. She would be condemned to recognize her unique self
everywhere until the end of time. What a fate she had chosen for herself!
That her uniqueness should be engulfed in the universal! That her power
should be reduced to the utmost node of passivity! It was maddening,
hallucinating. It could not be! It must not be! Onward! Like the black
legions. Onward! Through every degree of the everwidening circle. Onward and
away from the self, until the last substantial particle of the soul be
stretched to infinity. In her panic-stricken flight she seemed to bear the
whole world in her womb. We were being driven out of the confines of the
universe towards a nebula which no instrument could visualize. We were being
rushed to a pause so still, so prolonged, that death by comparison seems a
mad witches' revel.
In the morning, gazing at the bloodless crater of her face. Not a line
in it, not a wrinkle, not a single blemish! The look of an angel in the arms
of the Creator. Who killed Cock Robin ? Who massacred the Iroquois? Not I,
my lovely angel could say, and by God, who gazing at that pure, blameless
face could deny her? Who could see in that sleep of innocence that one half
of the face belonged to God and the other half to Satan? The mask was smooth
as death, cool, lovely to the touch, waxen, like a petal open to the
faintest breeze. So alluringly still and guileless was it that one could
drown in it, one could go down into it, body and all, like a diver, and
nevermore return. Until the eyes opened upon the world she would lie like
that, thoroughly extinguished and gleaming with a reflected light, like the
moon itself. In her death-like trance of innocence she fascinated even more;
her crimes dissolved, exuded through the pores, she lay coiled like a
sleeping serpent riveted to the earth. The body, strong, lithe, muscular,
seemed possessed of a weight unnatural; she had a more than human gravity,
the gravity, one might almost say, of a warm corpse. She was like one might
imagine the beautiful Nefertiti to have been after the first thousand years
of mummification, a marvel of mortuary perfection, a dream of flesh
preserved from mortal decay. She lay coiled at the base of a hollow pyra-
mid, enshrined in the vacuum of her own creation like a sacred relic of the
past. Even her breathing seemed stopped, so profound was her slumber. She
had dropped below the human sphere, below the animal sphere, below the
vegetative sphere even: she had sunk down to the level of the mineral world
where animation is just a notch above death. She had so mastered the art of
deception that even the dream was powerless to betray her. She had learned
how to not dream: when she coiled up in sleep she automatically switched off
the current. If one could have caught her thus and opened up the skull one
would have found it absolutely void. She kept no disturbing secrets;
everything was killed off which could be humanly killed. She might live on
endlessly, like the moon, like any dead planet, radiating an hypnotic
effulgence, creating tides of passion, engulfing the world in madness,
discolouring all earthly substances with her magnetic, metallic rays. Sowing
her own death she brought everyone about her to fever pitch. In the heinous
stillness of her sleep she renewed her own magnetic death by union with the
cold magma of the lifeless planetary worlds. She was magically intact. Her
gaze fell upon one with a transpiercing fixity: it was the moon gaze through
which the dead dragon of life gave off a cold fire. The one eye was a warm
brown, the colour of an autumn leaf; the other was hazel, the magnetic eye
which flickered a compass needle. Even in sleep this eye continued to nicker
under the shutter of the lid; it was the only apparent sign of life in her.
The moment she opened her eyes she was wide awake. She awoke with a
violent start, as if the sight of the world and its human paraphernalia were
a shock. Instantly she was in full activity, lashing about like a great
python. What annoyed her was the light! She awoke cursing the sun, cursing
the glare of reality. The room had to be darkened, the candles lit, the the
windows tightly shut to prevent the noise of the street from penetrating the
room. She moved about naked with a cigarette dangling from the comer of her
mouth. Her toilet was an affair of great preoccupation; a thousand trifling
details had to be attended to before she could so much as don a bathrobe.
She was like an athlete preparing for the great event of the day. From the
roots of her hair, which she studied with keen attention, to the shape and
length of her toe-nails, every part of her anatomy was thoroughly inspected
before sitting down to breakfast. Like an athlete I said she was, but in
fact she was more like a mechanic overhauling a fast plane for a test
flight. Once she slipped on her dress she was launched for the day, for the
flight which might end perhaps in Irkutsk or Teheran. She would take on
enough fuel at breakfast to last the entire trip. The breakfast was a
prolonged affair: it was the one ceremony of the day over which she dawdled
and lingered. It was exasperatingly prolonged, indeed. One wondered if she
would ever take on, one wondered if she had forgotten the grand mission
which she had sworn to accomplish each day. Perhaps she was dreaming other
itinerary, or perhaps she was not dreaming at all but simply allowing time
for the functional processes of her marvellous machine so that once embarked
there would be no turning back. She was very calm and self-possessed at this
hour of the day; she was like a great bird of the air perched on a mountain
crag, dreamily surveying the terrain below. It was not from the breakfast
table that she would suddenly swoop and dive to pounce upon her prey. No,
from the early morning perch she would take off slowly and majestically,
synchronizing her every movement with the pulse of the motor. All space lay
before her, her direction dictated only by caprice. She was almost the image
of freedom, were it not for the Saturnian weight of her body and the
abnormal span of her wings. However poised she seemed, especially at the
take-on, one sensed the terror which motivated the daily flight. She was at
once obedient to her destiny and at the same time frantically eager to
overcome it. Each morning she soared aloft from her perch, as from some
Himalayan peak; she seemed always to direct her flight towards some
uncharted region into which, if all went well, she would disappear forever.
Each morning she seemed to carry aloft with her this desperate, last-minute
hope; she took leave with calm, grave dignity, like one about to go down
into the grave. Never once did she circle about the flying field; never once
did she cast a glance backward towards those whom she was abandon- ing. Nor
did she leave the slightest crumb of personality behind her; she took to the
air with all her belongings, with every slightest scrap of evidence which
might testify to the fact of her existence. She didn't even leave the breath
of a sigh behind, not even a toe-nail. A clean exit, such as the Devil
himself might make for reasons of his own. One was left with a great void on
his hands. One was deserted, and not only deserted, but betrayed, inhumanly
betrayed. One had no desire to detain her nor to call her back; one was left
with a curse on his lips, with a black hatred which darkened the whole day.
Later, moving about the city, moving slowly in pedestrian fashion, crawling
like the worm, one gathered rumours of her spectacular flight; she had been
seen rounding a certain point, she had dipped here or there for what reason
no one knew, she had done a tailspin elsewhere, she had passed like a comet,
she had written letters of smoke in the sky, and so on and so forth.
Everything she had done was enigmatic and exasperating, done apparently
without purpose. It was like a symbolic and ironic commentary on human life,
on the behaviour of the ant-like creature man, viewed from another
dimension.
Between the time she took off and the time she returned I lived the
life of a full blooded schizerino. It was not an eternity which elapsed,
because somehow eternity has to do with peace and with victory, it is
something man-made, something earned: no, I experienced an entr'acte in
which every hair turns white to the roots, in which every millimetre of skin
itches and burns until the whole body becomes a running sore. I see myself
sitting before a table in the dark, my hands and feet growing enormous, as
though elephantiasis were overtaking me at a gallop. I hear the blood
rushing up to the brain and pounding at the ear-drums like Himalayan devils
with sledge hammers; I hear her flapping her huge wings, even in Irkutsk,
and I know she is pushing on and on, ever further away, ever further beyond
reach. It is so quiet in the room and so frightfully empty that I shriek and
howl just to make a little noise, a little human sound. I try to lift myself
from the table but my feet are too heavy and my hands have become like the
shapeless feet of the rhinoceros. The heavier my body becomes the lighter
the atmosphere of the room; I am going to spread and spread until I fill the
room with one solid mass of stiff jelly. I shall fill up even the cracks in
the wall; I shall grow through the wall like a parasitic plant, spreading
and spreading until the whole house is an indescribable mass of flesh and
hair and nails. I know that this is death, but I am powerless to kill the
knowledge of it, or the knower. Some tiny particle of me is alive, some
speck of consciousness persists, and, as the inert carcass expands, this
flicker of life becomes sharper and sharper and gleams inside me like the
cold fire of a gem. It lights up the whole gluey mass of pulp so that I am
like a diver with a torch in the body of a dead marine monster. By some
slender hidden filament I am still connected with the life above the surface
of the deep, but it is so far away, the upper world, and the weight of the
corpse so great that, even if it were possible, it would take years to reach
the surface. I move around in my own dead body, exploring every nook and
cranny of its huge, shapeless mass. It is an endless exploration, for with
the ceaseless growth the whole topography changes, slipping and drifting
like the hot magma of the earth. Never for a minute is there terra firma,
never for a minute does anything remain still and recognizable: it is a
growth without landmarks, a voyage in which the destination changes with
every least move or shudder. It is this interminable filling of space which
kills all sense of space or time; the more the body expands the tinier
becomes the world, until at last I feel that everything is concentrated on
the head of a pin. Despite the floundering of this enormous dead mass which
I have become, I feel that what sustains it, the world out of which it
grows, is no bigger than a pinhead. In the midst of pollution, in the very
heart and gizzard of death, as it were, I sense the seed, the miraculous,
infinitesimal lever which balances the world. I have overspread the world
like a syrup and the emptiness of it is terrifying, but there is no
dislodging the seed; the seed has become a little knot of cold fire which
roars like a sun in the vast hollow of the dead carcass.
When the great plunder-bird returns exhausted from her flight she will
find me here in the midst of my nothingness, I, the imperishable schizerino,
a blazing seed hidden in the heart of death. Every day she thinks to find
another means of sustenance, but there is no other, only this eternal seed
of light which by dying each day I rediscover for her. Fly, 0 devouring
bird, fly to the limits of the universe! Here is your nourishment glowing in
the sickening emptiness you have created! You will come back to perish once
more in the black hole; you will come back again and again, for you have not
the wings to carry you out of the world. This is the only world you can
inhabit, this tomb of the snake where darkness reigns.
And suddenly for no reason at all, when I think of her returning to her
nest, I remember Sunday mornings in the little old house near the cemetery.
I remember sitting at the piano in my nightshirt, working away at the pedals
with bare feet, and the folks lying in bed toasting themselves in the next
room. The rooms opened one on the other, telescope fashion, as in the good
old American railroad flats. Sunday mornings one lay in bed until one was
ready to screech with well-being. Towards eleven or so the folks used to rap
on the wall of my bedroom for me to come and play for them. I would dance
into the room like the Fratellini Brothers, so full of flame and feathers
that I could hoist myself like a derrick to the topmost limb of the tree of
heaven. I could do anything and everything singlehanded, being
double-jointed at the same time. The old man called me "Sunny Jim", because
I was full of "Force", full of vim and vigour. First I would do a few
handsprings for them on the carpet before the bed; then I would sing
falsetto, trying to imitate a ventriloquist's dummy; then I would dance a
few light fantastic steps to show which way the wind lay, and zoom! Like a
breeze I was on the piano stool and doing a velocity exercise. I always
began with Czemy, in order to limber up for the performance. The old man
hated Czemy, and so did I, but Czemy was the plat du jour on the bill of
fare then, and so Czemy it was until my joints were rubber. In some vague
way Czemy reminds me of the great emptiness which came upon me later. What a
velocity I would work up, riveted to the piano stool! It was like swallowing
a bottle of tonic at one gulp and then having someone strap you to the bed.
After I had played about ninety-eight exercises I was ready to do a little
improvising. I used to take a fist-full of chords and crash the piano from
one end to the other, then sullenly modulate into "The Burning of Rome" or
the "Ben Hur Chariot Race" which everybody liked because it was intelligible
noise. Long before I read Wittgenstein's Tractatvs Logico-Philosophicus I
was composing the music to it, in the key of sassafras. I was learned then
in science and philosophy, in the history of religions, in inductive and
deductive logic, in liver mantic, in the shape and weight of skulls, in
pharmacopeia and metallurgy, in all the useless branches of learning which
gives you indigestion and melancholia before your time. This vomit of
learned truck was stewing in my guts the whole week long, waiting for it to
come Sunday to be set to music. In between "The Midnight Fire Alarm" and
"Marche Militaire" I would get my inspiration, which was to destroy all the
existent forms of harmony and create my own cacophony. Imagine Uranus well
aspected to Mars, to Mercury, to the Moon, to Jupiter, to Venus. It's hard
to imagine because Uranus functions best when it is badly aspected, when it
is "afflicted", so to speak. Yet that music which I gave off Sunday
mornings, a music of well-being and of well-nourished desperation, was born
of an illogically well-aspected Uranus firmly anchored in the 7th House. I
didn't know it then, I didn't know that Uranus existed, and lucky it was
that I was ignorant. But I can see it now, because it was a fluky joy, a
phony well-being, a destructive sort of fiery creation. The greater my
euphoria the more tranquil the folks became. Even my sister who was dippy
became calm and composed. The neighbours used to stand outside the window
and listen, and now and then I would hear a burst of applause, and then
bang, zip! like a rocket I was off again - Velocity Exercise No.
9471/2. If I happened to espy a cockroach crawling up the wall I
was in bliss: that would lead me without the slightest modulation to Opus
Izzi of my sadly corrugated clavichord. One Sunday, just like that, I
composed one of the loveliest scherzos imaginable - to a louse. It was
Spring and we were all getting the sulphur treatment; I had been pouring all
week over Dante's Inferno in English. Sunday came like a thaw, the birds
driven so crazy by the sudden heat that they flew in and out of the window,
immune to the music. One of the German relatives had just arrived from
Hamburg, or Bremen, a maiden aunt who looked like a bull-dyker. Just to be
near her was sufficient to throw roe into a fit of rage. She used to pat me
on the head and tell me I would be another Mozart. I hated Mozart, and I
hate him still, and so to get even with her I would play badly, play all the
sour notes I knew. And then came the little louse, as I was saying, a real
louse which had gotten buried in my winter underwear. I got him out and I
put him tenderly on the tip of a black key. Then I began to do a little
gigue around him with my right hand, the noise had probably deafened him
tenderly on the tip of a black key. Then hypnotized, it seemed, by my nimble
pyrotechnic. This trance-like immobility finally got on my nerves. I decided
to introduce a chromatic scale coming down on him full force with my third
finger. I caught him fair and square, but with such force that he was glued
to my fingertip. That put the St. Vitus' Dance in me. From then on the
scherzo commenced. It was a pot-pourri of forgotten melodies spiced with
aloes and the juice of porcupines, played sometimes in three keys at once
and pivoting always like a waltzing mouse around the immaculate conception.
Later, when I went to hear Prokofief, I understood what was happening to
him; I understood Whitehead and Russell and Jeans and Eddington and Rudolf
Eucken and Frobenius and Link Gillespie; I understood why, if there had
never been a binomial theorem, man would have invented it; I understood why
electricity and compressed air, to say nothing of sprudel baths and fango
packs. I understood very dearly, I must say, that man has a dead louse in
his blood, and that when you're handed a symphony or a fresco or a high
explosive you're really getting an ipecac reaction which was not included in
the predestined bill of fare. I understood too why I had failed to become
the musician I was. All the compositions I had created in my head, all these
private and artistic auditions which were permitted me, thanks to St.
Hildegarde or St. Bridget, or John of the Cross, or God knows whom, were
written for an age to come, an age with less instruments and stronger
antennae, stronger eardrums too. A different kind of suffering has to be
experienced before such music can be appreciated. Beethoven staked out the
new territory - one is aware of its presence when he erupts, when he breaks
down in the very core of his stillness. It is a realm of new vibrations - to
us only a misty nebula, for we have yet to pass beyond our own conception of
suffering. We have yet to ingest this nebulous world, its travail, its
orientation. I was permitted to hear an incredible music lying prone and
indifferent to the Sorrow about me. I heard the gestation of a new world,
the sound of torrential rivers taking their course, the sound of stars
grinding and chafing, of fountains clotted with blazing gems. All music is
still governed by the old astronomy, is the product of the hothouse, a
panacea for Weltschmerz. Music is still the antidote for the nameless, but
this is not yet music. Music is planetary fire, an irreducible which is
all-sufficient; it is the slate-writing of the gods, the abracadabra which
the learned and the ignorant alike muff because the axle has been unhooked.
Look to the bowels, to the unconsolable and ineluctable! Nothing is
determined, nothing is settled or solved. All this that is going on, all
music, all architecture, all law, all government, all invention, all
discovery - all this is velocity exercises in the dark, Czemy with a capital
Zed riding a crazy white horse in a bottle of mucilage.
One of the reasons why I never got anywhere with the bloody music is
that it was always mixed up with sex. As soon as I was able to play a song
the cunts were around me like flies. To begin with, it was largely Lola's
fault. Lola was my first piano teacher. Lola Niessen. It was a ridiculous
name and typical of the neighbourhood we were living in then. It sounded
like a stinking bloater, or a wormy cunt. To tell the truth, Lola was not
exactly a beauty. She looked somewhat like a Kalmuck or a Chinook, with
sallow complexion and bilious-looking eyes. She had a few warts and wens,
not to speak of the moustache. What excited me, however, was her hairiness;
she had wonderful long fine black hair which she arranged in ascending and
descending buns on her Mongolian skull. At the nape of the neck she curled
it up in a serpentine knot. She was always late in coming, being a
conscientious idiot, and by the time she arrived I was always a bit
enervated from masturbating. As soon as she took the stool beside me,
however, I became exdted again, what with the stinking perfume she soused
her armpits with. In the summer she wore loose sleeves and I could see the
tufts'of hair under her arms. The sight of it drove me wild. I imagined her
as having hair all over, even in her navel. And what I wanted to do was to
roll in it, bury my teeth in it. I could have eaten Lola's hair as a
delicacy, if there had been a bit of flesh attached to it. Anyway she was
hairy, that's what I want to say and being hairy as a gorilla she got my
mind off the the music and on to her cunt. I was so damned eager to see that
cunt of hers that finally one day I bribed her little brother to let me have
a peep at her while she was in the bath. It was even more wonderful than I
had imagined: she had a shag that reached from the navel to the crotch, an
enormous thick tuft, a sporran, rich as a hand-woven rug. When she went over
it with the powder puff I thought I would faint. The next time she came for
the lesson I left a couple of buttons open on my fly. She didn't seem to
notice anything amiss. The following time I left my whole fly open. This
time she caught on. She said, "I think you've forgotten something. Henry." I
looked at her, red as a beet, and I asked her blandly what ? She pretended
to look away while pointing to it with her left hand. Her hand came so close
that I couldn't resist grabbing it and pushing it in my fly. She got up.
quickly, looking pale and frightened. By this time my prick was out of my
fly and quivering with delight. I closed in on her and I reached up under
her dress to get at that hand-woven rug I had seen through the keyhole.
Suddenly I got a sound box on the ears, and then another and she took me by
the ear and leading me to a comer of the room she turned my face to the wall
and said, "Now button up your fly, you silly boy!" We went back to the piano
in a few moments - back to Czemy and the velocity exercises. I couldn't see
a sharp from a flat any more, but I continued to play because I was afraid
she might tell my mother about the incident. Fortunately it was not an easy
thing to tell one's mother. The incident, embarrassing as it was, marked a
decided change in our relations. I thought that the next time she came she
would be severe with me, but on the contrary; she seemed to have dolled
herself up, to have sprinkled more perfume over herself, and she was even a
bit gay, which was unusual for Lola because she was a morose, withdrawn
type. I didn't dare to open my fly again, but I would get an erection and
hold it throughout the lesson, which she must have enjoyed because she was
always stealing sidelong glances in that direction. I was only fifteen at
the time, and she was easily twenty-five or twenty-eight. It was difficult
for me to know what to do, unless it was to deliberately knock her down one
day while my mother was out. For a time I actually shadowed her at night,
when she went out alone. She had a habit of going out for long walks alone
in the evening. I used to dog her steps, hoping she would get to some
deserted spot near the cemetery where I might try some rough tactics. I had
a feeling sometimes that she knew I was following her and that she enjoyed
it. I think she was waiting for me to waylay her - I think that was what she
wanted. Anyway, one night I was lying in the grass near the railroad tracks;
it was a sweltering summer's night and people were lying about anywhere and
everywhere, like panting dogs. I wasn't thinking of Lola at all - I was just
mooning there, too hot to think about anything. Suddenly I see a woman
coming along the narrow cinderpath. I'm lying sprawled out on the embankment
and nobody around that I can notice. The woman is coming along slowly, head
down, as though she were dreaming. As she gets close I recognize her.
"Lola!" I call. "Lola!" She seems to be really astonished to see me there.
"Why, what are you doing here?" she says, and with that she sits down beside
me on the embankment. I didn't bother to answer her, I didn't say a word -1
just crawled over her and flattened her. "Not here, please," she begged, but
I paid no attention. I got my hand between her legs, all tangled up in that
thick sporran others, and she was sopping wet, like a horse salivating. It
was my first fuck, be Jesus, and it had to be that a train would come along
and shower hot sparks over us. Lola was terrified. It was her first fuck
too, I guess, and she probably needed it more than I, but when she felt the
sparks she wanted to tear loose. It was like trying to hold down a wild
mare. I couldn't keep her down, no matter how I wrestled with her. She got
up, shook herclothes down, and adjusted the bun at the nape of her neck.
"You must go home," she says. "I'm not going home," I said, and with that I
took her by the arm and started walking. We walked along in dead silence for
quite a distance. Neither of us seemed to be noticing where we were going.
Finally we were out on the highway and up above us were the reservoirs and
near the reservoirs was a pond. Instinctively I headed towards the pond. We
had to pass under some low-hanging trees as we neared the pond. I was
helping Lola to stoop down when suddenly she slipped, dragging me with her.
She made no effort to get up; instead, she caught hold of me and pressed me
to her, and to my complete amazement I also felt her slip her hand in my
fly. She caressed me so wonderfully that in a jiffy I came in her hand. Then
she took my hand and put it between her legs. She lay back completely
relaxed and opened her legs wide. I bent over and kissed every hair on her
cunt; I put my tongue in her navel and licked it clean. Then I lay with my
head between her legs and lapped up the drool that was pouring from her. She
was moaning now and clutching wildly with her hands; her hair had come
completely undone and was lying over her bare abdomen. To make it short, I
got it in again, and I held it a long time, for which she must have been
damned grateful because she came I don't know how many times - it was like a
pack of firecrackers going off, and with it all she sunk her teeth into me,
bruised my lips, clawed me, ripped my shirt and what the hell not. I was
branded like a steer when I got home and took a look at myself in the
mirror.
It was wonderful while it lasted, but it didn't last long. A month
later the Niessens moved to another city, and I never saw Lola again. But I
hung her sporran over the bed and I prayed to it every night. And whenever I
began the Czemy stuff I would get an erection, thinking of Lola lying in the
grass, thinking of her long black hair, the bun at the nape of her neck, the
groans she vented and the juice that poured out of her. Playing the piano
was just one long vicarious fuck for me. I had to wait another two years
before I would get my end in again, as they say, and then it wasn't so good
because I got a beautiful dose with it, and besides it wasn't in the grass
and it wasn't summer, and there was no heat in it but just a cold mechanical
fuck for a buck in a dirty little hotel room, the bastard trying to pretend
she was coming and not coming any more than Christmas was coming. And maybe
it wasn't her that gave me the clap, but her pal in the next room who was
lying up with my friend Simmons. It was like this - I had finished so quick
with my mechanical fuck that I thought I'd go in and see how it was going
with my friend Simmons. Lo and behold, they were still at it, and they were
going strong. She was a Czech, his girl, and a bit sappy; she hadn't been at
it very long, apparently, and she used to forget herself and enjoy the act.
Watching her hand it out, I decided to wait and have a go at her myself. And
so I did. And before the week was out I had a discharge, and after that I
figured it would be blueballs or rocks in the groin.
Another year or so and I was giving lessons myself, and as luck would
have it, the mother of the girl I'm teaching is a slut, a tramp and a
trollop if ever there was one. She was living with a nigger, as I later
found out. Seems she couldn't get a prick big enough to satisfy her. Anyway,
every time I started to go home she'd hold me up at the door and rub it up
against me. I was afraid of starting in with her because rumour had it that
she was full of syph, but what the hell are you going to do when a hot bitch
like that plasters her cunt up against you and slips her tongue halfway down
your throat. I used to fuck her standing up in the vestibule, which wasn't
so difficult because she was light and I could hold her in my hand like a
doll. And like that I'm holding her one night when suddenly I hear a key
being fitted into the lock, and she hears it too and she's frightened stiff.
There's nowhere to go. Fortunately there's a portiere hanging at the doorway
and I hide behind that. Then I heard her black buck kissing her and saying
how are yer, honey ? and she's saying how she had been waiting up for him
and better come right upstairs because she can't wait and so on. And when
the stairs stop squeaking I gently open the door and sally out, and then by
God I have a real fright because if that black buck ever finds out I'll have
my throat slit and no mistake about it. And so I stop giving lessons at that
joint, but soon the daughter is after me - just turning sixteen - and won't
I come and give her lessons at a friend's house? We begin the Czerny
exercises all over again, sparks and everything. It's the first smell of
fresh cunt I've had, and it's wonderful, like new-mown hay. We fuck our way
through one lesson after another and in between lessons we do a little extra
fucking. And then one day it's the sad story - she's knocked up and what to
do about it? I have to get a Jewboy to help me out, and he wants twenty-five
bucks for the job and I've never seen twenty-five bucks in my life. Besides,
she's under age. Besides, she might have blood-poisoning. I give him five
bucks on account and beat it to the Adirondacks for a couple of weeks. In
the Adirondacks I meet a schoolteacher who's dying to take lessons. More
velocity exercises, more condoms and conundrums. Every time I touched the
piano I seemed to shake a cunt loose.
If there was a party I had to bring the fucking music roll along; to me
it was just like wrapping my penis in a handkerchief and slinging it under
my arm. In vacation time, at a farmhouse or an inn, where there was always a
surplus of cunt, the music had an extraordinary effect. Vacation rime was a
period I looked forward to the whole year, not because of the cunts so much
as because it meant no work. Once out of harness I became a down. I was so
chock-full of energy that I wanted to jump out of my skin. I remember one
summer in the Catskills meeting a girl named Francie. She was beautiful and
lascivious, with strong Scotch teats and a row of white even teeth that was
dazzling. It began in the river where we were swimming. We were holding on
to the boat and one of her boobies had slipped out of bounds. I slipped the
other one out for her and then I undid the shoulder straps. She ducked under
the boat coyly and I followed and as she was coming up for air I wriggled
the bloody bathing suit off her and there she was floating like a mermaid
with her big strong teats bobbing up and down like bloated corks. I wriggled
out of my tights and we began playing like dolphins under the side of the
boat. In a little while her girl friend came along in a canoe. She was a
rather hefty girl a sort of strawberry blonde with agate-coloured eyes and
full of freckles. She was rather shocked to find us in the raw, but we soon
tumbled her out of the canoe and stripped her. And then the three of us
began to play tag under the water, but it was hard to get anywhere with them
because they were slippery as eels. After we had had enough of it we ran to
a little bath-house which was standing in the field like an abandoned sentry
box. We had brought our clothes along and we were going to get dressed, the
three of us, in this little box. It was frightfully hot and sultry and the
clouds were gathering for a storm. Agnes - that was Francie's friend - was
in a hurry to get dressed. She was beginning to be ashamed of herself
standing there naked in front of us. Francie, on the other hand seemed to be
perfectly at ease. She was sitting on the bench with her legs crossed and
smoking a cigarette. Anyway, just as Agnes was pulling on her chemise there
came a flash of lightning and a terrifying clap of thunder right on the
heels of it. Agnes screamed and dropped her chemise. There came another
flash in a few seconds and again a peal of thunder, dangerously dose. The
air got blue all around us and the flies began to bite and we felt nervous
and itchy and a bit panicky too. Especially Agnes who was afraid of the
lightning and even more afraid of being found dead and three of us stark
naked. She wanted to get her things on and run for the house, she said. And
just as she got that off her chest the rain came down, in bucketsful. We
thought it would stop in a few minutes and so we stood there naked looking
out at the steaming river through the partly opened door. It seemed to be
raining rocks and the lightning kept playing around us incessantly. We were
all thoroughly frightened now and in a quandary as to what to do. Agnes was
wringing her hands and praying out loud; she looked like a George Grosz
idiot, one of those lopsided bitches with a rosary around the neck and
yellow jaundice to boot. I thought she was going to faint on us or
something. Suddenly I got the bright idea of doing a war-dance in the rain -
to distract them. Just as I jump out to commence my shindig a streak of
lightning flashes and splits open a tree not far off. I'm so damned scared
that I lose my wits. Always when I'm frightened I laugh. So I laughed a
wild, blood-curdling laugh which made the girls scream. When I heard them
scream, I don't know why, but I thought of the velocity exercises and with
that I felt that I was standing in the void and it was blue all around and
the rain was beating a bot-and-cold tattoo on my tender flesh. All my
sensations had gathered on the surface of the skin and underneath the
outermost layer of skin I was empty, light as a feather, lighter than air or
smoke or talcum or magnesium or any goddamned thing you want. Suddenly I was
a Chippewa and it was the key of sassafras again and I didn't give a fuck
whether the girls were screaming or fainting or shitting in their pants,
which they were minus anyway. Looking at crazy Agnes with the rosary around
her neck and her big bread-basket blue with fright I got the notion to do a
sacrilegious dance, with one hand cupping my balls and the other hand
thumbing my nose at the thunder and lightning. The rain was hot and cold and
the grass seemed full of dragonflies. I hopped about like a kangaroo and I
yelled at the top of my lungs - "0 Father, you wormy old son of a bitch,
pull in that fucking lightning or Agnes won't believe in you any more! Do
you hear me, you old prick up there, stop the shenanigans . . . you're
driving Agnes nutty. Hey you, are you deaf, you old futzer?" And with a
continuous rattle of this defiant nonsense on my lips I danced around the
bath-house leaping and bounding like a gazelle and using the most frightful
oaths I could summon. When the lightning cracked I jumped higher and when
the thunder clapped I roared like a lion and then I did a handspring and
then I rolled in the grass like a cub and I chewed the grass and spit it out
for them and I pounded my chest like a gorilla and all the time I could see
the Czerny exercises resting on the piano, the white page full of sharps and
flats, and the fucking idiot, think I to myself, imagining that that's the
way to learn how to manipulate the well-tempered clavichord. And suddenly I
thought that Czemy might be in heaven by now and looking down on me and so I
spat at him high as I could spit and when the thunder rolled again I yelled
with all my might - "You bastard, Czerny, you up there, may the lightning
twist your balls off. .. may you swallow your own crooked tail and strangle
yourself... do you hear me, you crazy prick?"
But in spite of all my good efforts Agnes was getting more delirious.
She was a dumb Irish Catholic and she had never heard God spoken to that way
before. Suddenly, while 1 was dancing about in the rear of the bath-house
she bolted for the river. I heard Francie scream - "Bring her back, she'll
drown herself! Bring her back!" I started after her, the rain still coming
down like pitchforks, and yelling to her to come back, but she ran on
blindly as though possessed of the devil, and when she got to the water's
edge she dove straight in and made for the boat. I swam after her and as we
got to the side of the boat, which I was afraid she would capsize, I got
hold of her round the waist with my one hand and I started to talk to her
calmly and soothingly, as though I were talking to a child. "Go away from
me," she said, "you're an atheist!" Jesus, you could have knocked me over
with a feather, so astonished I was to hear that. So that was it? All that
hysteria because I was insulting the Lord Almighty. I felt like batting her
one in the eye to bring her to her senses. But we were out over our heads
and I had a fear that she would do some mad thing like pulling the boat over
our heads if I didn't handle her right. So I pretended that I was terribly
sorry and I said I didn't mean a word of it, that I had been scared to
death, and so on and so forth, and as I talked to her gently, soothingly, I
slipped my hand down from her waist and I gently stroked her ass. That was
what she wanted all right. She was talking to me blubberingly about what a
good Catholic she was and how she had tried not to sin, and maybe she was so
wrapped up in what she was saying that she didn't know what I was doing, but
just the same when I got my hand in her crotch and said all the beautiful
things I could think of, about God, about love, about going to church and
confessing and all that crap, she must have felt something because I had a
good three fingers inside her and working them around like drunken bobbins.
"Put your arms around me Agnes," I said softly, slipping my band out and
pulling her to me so that I could get my legs between hers... "There, that's
the girl... take it easy now... it'll stop soon." And still talking about
the church, the confessional. God love, and the whole bloody mess I managed
to get it inside her. "You're very good to me," she said, just as though she
didn't know my prick was in her, "and I'm sorry I acted like a fool." "I
know, Agnes," I said, "it's all right... listen, grab me tighter... yeah,
that's it." "I'm afraid the boat's going to tip over," she says, trying her
best to keep her ass in position by paddling with her right hand. "Yes,
let's get back to the shore," I said, and I start to pull away from her. "Oh
don't leave me," she says, clutching me tighter. "Don't leave me, I'll
drown." Just then Francie comes running down to the water. "Hurry," says
Agnes, "hurry ... I'll drown."
Francie was a good sort, I must say. She certainly wasn't a Catholic
and if she had any morals they were of the reptilian order. She was one of
those girls who are born to fuck. She had no aims, no great desires, showed
no jealousy, held no grievances, was constantly cheerful and not at all
unintelligent. At nights when we were sitting on the porch in the dark
talking to the guests she would come over and sit on my lap with nothing on
underneath her dress and I would slip it into her as she laughed and talked
to the others. I think she would have brazened it out before the Pope if she
had been given a chance. Back in the city, when I called on her at her home,
she pulled the same stunt off in front of her mother whose sight,
fortunately, was growing dim. If we went dancing and she got too hot in the
pants she would drag me to a telephone booth and, queer girl that she was,
she'd actually talk to some one, some one like Agnes for example, while
pulling off the trick. She seemed to get a special pleasure out of doing it
under people's noses; she said there was more fun in it if you didn't think
about it too hard. In the crowded subway coming home from the beach, say,
she'd slip her dress around so that the slit was in the middle and take my
hand and put it right on her cunt. If the train was tightly packed and we
were safely wedged in a comer she'd take my cock out of my fly and hold it
in her two hands, as though it were a bird. Sometimes she'd get playful and
hang her bag on it, as though to prove that there wasn't the least danger.
Another thing about her was that she didn't pretend that I was the only guy
she had on the string. Whether she told me everything I don't know, but she
certainly told me plenty. She told me about her affairs laughingly, while
she was climbing over me or when I had it in her, or just when I was about
to come. She would tell me how they went about it, how big they were or how
small, what they said when they got excited and so on and so forth giving me
every possible detail, just as though I were going to write a textbook on
the subject. She didn't seem to have the least feeling of sacredness about
her own body or her feelings or anything connected with herself. "Francie,
you bloody fucker," I used to say, "you've got the morals of a clam." "But
you like me, don't you?" she'd answer. "Men like to fuck, and so do women.
It doesn't harm anybody and it doesn't mean you have to love every one you
fuck does it? I wouldn't want to be in love; it must be terrible to have to
fuck the same man all the time, don't you think? Listen, if you didn't fuck
anybody but me all the time you'd get tired of me quick, wouldn't you?
Sometimes it's nice to be fucked by someone you don't know at all. Yes, I
think that's the best of all," she added - "there's no complications, no
telephone numbers, no love letters, no scraps, what? Listen, do you think
this is very bad? Once I tried to get my brother to fuck me; you know what a
sissy he is - he gives everybody a pain. I don't remember exactly how it was
any more, but anyway we were in the house alone and I was passionate that
day. He came into my bedroom to ask me for something. I was lying there with
my dress up, thinking about it and wanting it terribly, and when he came in
I didn't give a damn about his being my brother, I just thought of him as a
man, and so I lay there with my skirt up and I told him I wasn't feeling
well, that I had a pain in my stomach. He wanted to run right out and get
something for me but I told him no, just to rub my stomach a bit, that would
do it good. I opened my waist and made him rub my bare skin. He was trying
to keep his eyes on the wall, the big idiot, and rubbing me as though I were
a piece of wood. 'It's not there, you chump,' I said, 'it's lower down . . .
what are you afraid of?' And I pretended that I was in agony. Finally he
touched me accidentally. "There! that's it!' I shouted. 'Oh do rub it, it
feels so good!' Do you know, the big sap actually massaged me for five
minutes without realizing that it was all a game? I was so exasperated that
I told him to get the hell out and leave me alone. 'You're a eunuch,' I
said, but he was such a sap I don't think he knew what the word meant." She
laughed, thinking what a ninny her brother was. She said he probably still
had his maiden. What did I think about it - was it so terribly bad? Of
course she knew I wouldn't think anything of the kind. "Listen Francie," I
said, "did you ever tell that story to the cop you're going with?" She
guessed she hadn't. "I guess so too," I said. "He'd beat the piss out of you
if ever he heard that yam." "He's socked me already," she answered promptly.
"What?" I said, "you let him beat you up?" "I don't ask him to," she said,
"but you know how quick-tempered he is. I don't let anybody else sock me but
somehow coming from him I don't mind so much. Sometimes it makes me feel
good inside ... I don't know, maybe a woman ought to get beaten up once in a
while. It doesn't hurt so much, if you really like a guy. And afterwards
he's so damned gentle - I almost feel ashamed of myself..."
It isn't often you get a cunt who'll admit such things - I mean a
regular cunt and not a moron. There was Trix Miranda, for example, and her
sister, Mrs. Costello. A fine pair of birds they were. Trix, who was going
with my friend MacGregor, tried to pretend to her own sister, with whom she
was living, that she had no sexual relations with MacGregor. And the sister
was pretending to all and sundry that she was frigid, that she couldn't have
any relations with a man even if she wanted to, because she was "built too
small". And meanwhile my friend MacGregor was fucking them silly, both of
them, and they both knew about each other but still they lied like that to
each other. Why? I couldn't make it out. The Costello bitch was hysterical;
whenever she felt that she wasn't getting a fair percentage of the lays that
MacGregor was handing out she'd throw a pseudo-epileptic fit. That meant
throwing towels over her, patting her wrists, opening her bosom, chafing her
legs and finally hoisting her upstairs to bed where my friend MacGregor
would look after her as soon as he had put the other one to sleep. Sometimes
the two sisters would lie down together to take a nap of an afternoon; if
MacGregor were around he would go upstairs and lie between them. And he
explained it to me laughingly, the trick was for him to pretend to go to
sleep. He would lie there breathing heavily, opening now one eye, now the
other, to see which one was really dozing off. As soon as he was convinced
that one of them was asleep he'd tackle the other. On such occasions he
seemed to prefer the hysterical sister, Mrs. Costello, whose husband visited
her about once every six months. The more risk he ran, the more thrill he
got out of it, he said. If it were with the other sister, Trix, whom he was
supposed to be courting, he had to pretend that it would be terrible if the
other one were to catch them like that, and at the same time, he admitted to
me, he was always hoping that the other one would wake up and catch them.
But the married sister, the one who was "built too small", as she used to
say, was a wily bitch and besides she felt guilty toward her sister and if
her sister had ever caught her in the act she'd probably have pretended that
she was having a fit and didn't know what she was doing. Nothing on earth
could make her admit that she was actually permitting herself the pleasure
of being fucked by a man.
I knew her quite well because I was giving her lessons for a time, and
I used to do my damnedest to make her admit that she had a normal cunt and
that she'd enjoy a good fuck if she could get it now and then. I used to
tell her wild stories, which were really thinly disguised accounts of her
own doings, and yet she remained adamant. I had even gotten her to the point
one day - and this beats everything - where she let me put my finger inside
her. I thought sure it was settled. It's true she was dry and a bit tight,
but I put that down to her hysteria. But imagine getting that far with a
cunt and then having her say to your face, as she yanks her dress down
violently - "you see, I told you I wasn't built right!" "I don't see
anything of the kind," I said angrily. "What do you expect me to do - use a
microscope on you?"
"I like that," she said, pretending to get on her high horse. "What a
way of talking to me!"
"You know damned well you're lying," I continued. "Why do you lie like
that? Don't you think it's human to have a cunt and to use it once in a
while? Do you want it to dry up on you?"
"Such language!" she said, biting her under lip and reddening like a
beet "I always thought you were a gentleman."
"Well, you're no lady," I retorted, "because even a lady admits to a
fuck now and then, and besides ladies don't ask gentlemen to stick their
fingers up inside them and see how small they're built."
"I never asked you to touch me," she said. "I wouldn't think of asking
you to put your hand on me, on my private parts anyway."
"Maybe you thought I was going to swab your ear for you, is that it?"
"I thought of you like a doctor at that moment, that's all I can say,"
she said stiffly, trying to freeze me out.
"Listen," I said, taking a wild chance, "let's pretend that it was all
a mistake, that nothing happened, nothing at all. I know you too well to
think of insulting you like that. I wouldn't think of doing a thing like
that to you - no, damned if I would. I was just wondering if maybe you
weren't right in what you said, if maybe you aren't built rather small. You
know, it all went so quick I couldn't tell what I felt... I don't think I
even put my finger inside you. I must have just touched the outside - that's
about all. Listen sit down here on the couch ... let's be friends again." I
pulled her down beside me - she was melting visibly - and I put my arm
around her waist, as though to console her more tenderly. "Has it always
been like that?" I asked innocently, and I almost laughed the next moment,
realizing what an idiotic question it was. She hung her head coyly, as
though we were touching on an unmentionable tragedy. "Listen, maybe if you
sat on my lap . . ." and I hoisted her gently on to my lap, at the same time
delicately putting my hand under her dress and resting it lightly on her
knee . . . "maybe if you sat a moment like this, you'd feel better... there,
that's it, just snuggle back in my arms... are you feeling better?" She
didn't answer, but she didn't resist either; she just lay back limply and
closed her eyes. Gradually and very gently and smoothly I moved my hand up
her leg, talking to her in a low, soothing voice all the time. When I got my
fingers into her crotch and parted the little lips she was as moist as a
dish-rag. I massaged it gently, opening it up more and more, and still
handing out a telepathic line about women sometimes being mistaken about
themselves and how sometimes they think they're very small when really
they're quite normal, and the longer I kept it up the juicier she got and
the more she opened up. I had four fingers inside her and there was room
inside for more if I had had more to put in. She had an enormous cunt and it
had been well reamed out, I could feel. I looked at her to see if she was
still keeping her eyes shut. Her mouth was open and she was gasping but her
eyes were tight shut, as though she were pretending to herself that it was
all a dream. I could move her about roughly now - no danger of the slightest
protest. And maliciously perhaps, I jostled her about unnecessarily, just to
see if she would come to. She was as limp as a feather pillow and even when
her head struck the arm of the sofa she showed no sign of irritation. It was
as though she had anaesthetized herself for a gratuitous fuck. I pulled all
her clothes off and threw them on the floor, and after I had given her a bit
of a work-out on the sofa I slipped it out and laid her on the floor, on her
clothes; and then I slipped it in again and she held it tight with that
suction valve she used so skilfully, despite the outward appearance of coma.
It seems strange to me that the music always passed off into sex.
Nights, if I went out for a walk, I was sure to pick up some one - a nurse,
a girl coming out of a dance hall; a sales girl, anything with a skirt on.
If I went out with my friend MacGregor in his car - just a little spin to
the beach, he would say -1 would find myself by midnight sitting in some
strange parlour in some queer neighbourhood with a girl on my lap, usually
one I didn't give a damn about because MacGregor was even less selective
than I. Often, stepping in his car I'd say to him - "listen, no cunts
tonight, what?" And he'd say - "Jesus, no, I'm fed up ... just a little
drive somewhere . . . maybe to Sheepshead Bay, what do you say?" We wouldn't
have gone more than a mile when suddenly he'd pull the car up to the curb
and nudge me. "Get a look at that," he'd say, pointing to a girl strolling
along the sidewalk. "Jesus, what a leg!" Or else - "Listen what do you say
we ask her to come along? Maybe she can dig up a friend." And before I could
say another word he'd be hailing her and handing out his usual patter, which
was the same for every one. And nine times out often the girl came along.
And before we'd gone very far, feeling her up with his free hand, he'd ask
her if she didn't have a friend she could dig up to keep us company. And if
she put up a fuss, if she didn't like being pawed over that way too quickly,
he'd say - "All right, get the hell out then ... we can't waste any time on
the likes of you!" And with that he'd slow up and shove her out. "We can't
be bothered with cunts like that, can we Henry?" he'd say, chuckling softly.
"You wait, I promised you something good before the night's over." And if I
reminded him that we were going to lay off for one night he'd answer; "Well,
just as you like ... I was only thinking it might make it more pleasant for
you." And then suddenly the brakes would pull us up and he'd be saying to
some silky silhouette looming out of the dark: - "hello sister, what yer
doing - taking a little stroll?" And maybe this time it would be something
exciting, a dithery little bitch with nothing else to do but pull up her
skirt and hand it to you. Maybe we wouldn't even have to buy her a drink,
just hail up somewhere on a side road and go at it, one after the other, in
the car. And if she was an emptyheaded bimbo, as they usually were, he
wouldn't even bother to drive her home. "We're not going that way," he'd
say, the bastard that he was. "You'd better jump out here," and with that
he'd open the door and out with her. His next thought was, of course, was
she dean? That would occupy his mind all the way back. "Jesus, we ought to
be more careful," he'd say. "You don't know what you're getting yourself
into picking them up like that. Ever since that last one - you remember, the
one we picked up on the Drive - I've been itchy as hell. Maybe it's just
nervousness ... I think about it too much. Why can't a guy stick to one
cunt, tell me that. Henry. You take Trix, now, she's a good kid, you know
that. And I like her too, in a way, but... shit, what's the use of talking
about it? You know me - I'm a glutton. You know, I'm getting so bad that
sometimes when I'm on my way to a date - mind you, with a girl I want to
fuck, and everything fixed too - as I say, sometimes I'm rolling along and
maybe out of the comer of my eye I catch a flash of a leg crossing the
street and before I know it I've got her in the car and the hell with the
other girl. I must be cunt-struck, I guess ... what do you think? Don't tell
me," he would add quickly. "I know you, you bugger . . . you'll be sure to
tell me the worst." And then, after a pause - "you're a funny guy, do you
know that? I never notice you refusing anything, but somehow you don't seem
to be worrying about it all the time. Sometimes you strike me as though you
didn't give a damn one way or the other. And you're a steady bastard too -
almost a monogamist, I'd say. How you can keep it up so long with one woman
beats me. Don't you get bored with them? Jesus, I know so well what they're
going to say. Sometimes I feel like saying . . . you know, just breeze in on
'em and say; 'listen, kid, don't say a word .. . just fish it out and open
your legs wide.' " He laughed heartily. "Can you imagine the expression on
Trix's face if I pulled a line like that on her? I'll tell you, once I came
pretty near doing it. I kept my hat and coat on. Was she sore! She didn't
mind my keeping the coat on so much, but the hat! I told her I was afraid of
a draught... of course there wasn't any draught. The truth is, I was so
damned impatient to get away that I thought if I kept my hat on I'd be off
quicker. Instead I was there all night with her. She put up such a row that
I couldn't get her quiet. . . But listen, that's nothing. Once I had a
drunken Irish bitch and this one had some queer ideas. In the first place,
she never wanted it in bed . . . always on the table. You know, that's all
right once in a while, but if you do it often it wears you out. So one night
- I was a little tight, I guess - I says to her, no, nothing doing, you
drunken bastard . . . you're gonna go to bed with me to-night. I want a real
fuck - in bed. You know, I had to argue with that son of a bitch for an hour
almost before I could persuade her to go to bed with me, and then only on
the agreement that I was to keep my hat on. Listen, can you picture me
getting over that stupid bitch with my hat on? And stark naked to boot! I
asked her ... 'Why do you want me to keep my hat on?' You know what she
said? She said it seemed more genteel. Can you imagine what a mind that cunt
had? I used to hate myself for going with that bitch. I never went to her
sober, that's one thing. I'd have to be tanked up first and kind of blind
and batty - you know how I get sometimes . . ."
I knew very well what he meant. He was one of my oldest friends and one
of the most cantankerous bastards I ever knew. Stubborn wasn't the word for
it. He was like a mule - a pigheaded Scotchman. And his old man was even
worse. When the two of them got into a rage it was a pretty sight. The old
man used to dance positively dance with rage. If the old lady got between
she'd get a sock in the eye. They used to put him out of the house
regularly. Out he'd go, with all his belongings, including the furniture,
including the piano too. In a month or so he'd be back again - because they
always gave him credit at home. And then he'd come home drunk some night
with a woman he'd picked up somewhere and the rumpus would start all over
again. It seems they didn't mind so much his coming home with a girl and
keeping her all night, but what they did object to was the cheek of him
asking his mother to serve them breakfast in bed. If his mother tried to
bawl him out he'd shut her up by saying - "What are you trying to tell me?
You wouldn't have been married yet if you hadn't been knocked up." The old
lady would wring her hands and say - "What a son! What a son! God help me,
what have I done to deserve this?" To which he'd remark, "Aw forget it!
You're just an old prune!" Often as not his sister would come up to try and
smooth matters out. "Jesus, Wallie," she'd say, "it's none of my business
what you do, but can't you talk to your mother more respectfully?" Whereupon
MacGregor would make his sister sit on the bed and start coaxing her to
bring up the breakfast. Usually he'd have to ask his bed-mate what her name
was in order to present her to his sister. "She's not a bad kid," he'd say,
referring to his sister. "She's the only decent one in the family ... Now
listen, sis, bring up some grub, will yer? Some nice bacon and eggs, eh,
what do you say? Listen, is the old man around? What's his mood to-day? I'd
like to borrow a couple of bucks. You try to worm it out of him, will you?
I'll get you something nice for Christmas." Then, as though everything were
settled, he'd pull back the covers to expose the wench beside him. "Look at
her, sis, ain't she beautiful? Look at that leg! Listen, you ought to get
yourself a man . . . you're too skinny. Patsy here, I bet she doesn't go
begging for it, eh Patsy?" and with that a sound slap on the rump for Patsy.
"Now scram, sis, I want some coffee . . . and don't forget, make the bacon
crisp! Don't get any of that lousy store bacon ... get something extra. And
be quick about it!"
What I liked about him were his weaknesses; like all men who practise
will-power he was absolutely flabby inside. There wasn't a thing he wouldn't
do - out of weakness. He was always very busy and he was never really doing
anything. And always boning up on something, always trying to improve his
mind. For example, he would take the unabridged dictionary and, tearing out
a page each day, would read it through religiously on his way back and forth
from the office. He was full of facts, and the more absurd and incongruous
the facts, the more pleasure he derived from them. He seemed to be bent on
proving to all and sundry that life was a farce, that it wasn't worth the
game, that one thing cancelled out another, and so on. He was brought up on
the North Side, not very far from the neighbourhood in which I had spent my
childhood. He was very much a product of the North Side, too, and that was
one of the reasons why I liked him. The way he talked, out of the comer of
his mouth, for instance, the tough air he put on when talking to a cop, the
way he spat in disgust, the peculiar curse words he used, the
sentimentality, the limited horizon, the passion for playing pool or
shooting crap, the staying up all night swapping yams, the contempt for the
rich, the hobnobbing with politicians, the curiosity about worthless things,
the respect for learning, the fascination of the dance hall, the saloon, the
burlesque, talking about seeing the world and never budging out of the city,
idolizing no matter whom so long as the person showed "spunk", a thousand
and one little traits or peculiarities of this sort endeared him to me
because it was precisely such idiosyncrasies which marked the fellows I had
known as a child. The neighbourhood was composed of nothing, it seemed, but
lovable failures. The grown-ups behaved like children and the children were
incorrigible. Nobody could rise very far above his neighbour or he'd be
lynched. It was amazing that any one ever became a doctor or a lawyer. Even
so, he had to be a good fellow, had to pretend to talk like every one else,
and he had to vote the Democratic ticket. To hear MacGregor talk about Plato
or Nietzsche, for instance, to his buddies was something to remember. In the
first place, to even get permission to talk about such things as Plato or
Nietzsche to his companions, he had to pretend that it was only by accident
that he had run across their names; or perhaps he'd say that he had met an
interesting drunk one night in the back room of a saloon and this drunk had
started talking about these guys Nietzsche and Plato. He would even pretend
he didn't quite know how the names were pronounced. Plato wasn't such a dumb
bastard, he would say apologetically. Plato had an idea or two in his bean,
yes sir, yes siree. He'd like to see one of those dumb politicians at
Washington trying to lock horns with a guy like Plato. And he'd go on, in
this roundabout, matter of fact fashion to explain to his crap-shooting
friends just what kind of a bright bird Plato was in his time and how he
measured up against other men in other times. Of course, he was probably a
eunuch, he would add, by way of throwing a little cold water on all this
erudition. In those days, as he nimbly explained, the big guys, the
philosophers, often had their nuts cut off - a fact! - so as to be out of
all temptation. The other guy, Nietzsche, he was a real case, a case for the
bug-house. He was supposed to be in love with his sister. Hypersensitive
like. Had to live in a special climate - in Nice, he thought it was. As a
rule he didn't care much for the Germans, but this guy Nietzsche was
different. As a matter of fact, he hated the Germans, this Nietzsche. He
claimed he was a Pole or something like that. He had them dead right, too.
He said they were stupid and swinish, and by God, he knew what he was
talking about. Anyway he showed them up. He said they were full of shit, to
make it brief, and by God, wasn't he right though? Did you see the way those
bastards turned tail when they got a dose of their own medicine? "Listen, I
know a guy who cleaned out a nestful of them in the Argonne region - he said
they were so god-damned low he wouldn't shit on them. He said he wouldn't
even waste a bullet on them - he just bashed their brains in with a dub. I
forget this guy's name now, but anyway he told me he saw aplenty in the few
months he was there. He said the best fun he got out of the whole fucking
business was to pop off his own major. Not that he had any special grievance
against him - he just didn't like his mug. He didn't like the way the guy
gave orders. Most of the officers that were killed got it in the back, he
said. Served them right, too, the pricks! He was just a lad from the North
Side. I think he runs a pool room now down near Wallabout Market. A quiet
fellow, minds his own business. But if you start talking to him about the
war he goes off the handle. He says he'd assassinate the President of the
United States if they ever tried to start another war. Yeah, and he'd do it
too, I'm telling you ... But shit, what was that I wanted to tell you about
Plato? Oh yeah . .."
When the others were gone he'd suddenly shift gears. "You don't believe
in talking like that, do you?" he'd begin. I had to admit I didn't. "You're
wrong," he'd continue. "You've got to keep in with people, you don't know
when you may need one of these guys. You act on the assumption that you're
free, independent! You act as though you were superior to these people.
Well, that's where you make a big mistake. How do you know where you'll be
five years from now, or even six months from now? You might be blind, you
might be run over by a truck, you might be put in the bug-house; you can't
tell what's going to happen to you. Nobody can. You might be as helpless as
a baby..."
"So what?" I would say.
"Well, don't you think it would be good to have a friend when you need
one? You might be so god-damned helpless you'd be glad to have some one help
you across the street. You think these guys are worthless; you think I'm
wasting my time with them. Listen, you never know what a man might do for
you some day. Nobody gets anywhere alone..."
He was touchy about my independence, what he called my indifference. If
I was obliged to ask him for a little dough he was delighted. That gave him
a chance to deliver a little sermon on friendship. "So you have to have
money, too?" he'd say, with a big satisfied grin spreading all over his
face. "So the poet has to eat too? Well, well... It's lucky you came to me.
Henry me boy, because I'm easy with you, I know you, you heartless son of a
bitch. Sure, what do you want? I haven't got very much, but I'll split it
with you. That's fair enough, isn't it? Or do you think, you bastard, that
maybe I ought to give you it all and go out and borrow something for myself?
I suppose you want a good meal, eh? Ham and Eggs wouldn't be good enough,
would it? I suppose you'd like me to drive you to the restaurant too, eh?
Listen, get up from that chair a minute - I want to put a cushion under your
ass. Well, well, so you're broke! Jesus, you're always broke -1 never
remember seeing you with money in your pocket. Listen, don't you ever feel
ashamed of yourself? You talk about those bums I hang out with . . . well
listen, mister, those guys never come and bum me for a dime like you do.
They've got more pride - they'd rather steal it than come and grub it off
me. But you, shit, you're full of high-falutin' ideas, you want to reform
the world and all that crap - you don't want to work for money, no, not you
. . . you expect somebody to hand it to you on a silver platter. Huh! Lucky
there's guys like me around that understand you. You need to get wise to
yourself. Henry. You're dreaming. Everybody wants to eat, don't you know
that? Most people are willing to work for it - they don't lie in bed all day
like you and then suddenly pull on their pants and run to the first friend
at hand. Supposing I wasn't here, what would you have done? Don't answer...
I know what you're going to say. But listen, you can't go on all your life
like that. Sure you talk fine - it's a pleasure to listen to you. You're the
only guy I know that I really enjoy talking to, but where's it going to get
you? One of these days they'll lock you up for vagrancy. You're just a bum,
don't you know that? You're not even as good as those other bums you preach
about. Where are you when I'm in a jam? You can't be found. You don't answer
my letters, you don't answer the telephone, you even hide sometimes when I
come to see you. Listen, I know - you don't have to explain to me. I know
you don't want to hear my stories all the time. But shit, sometimes I really
have to talk to you. A fucking lot you care though. So long as you're out of
the rain and putting another meal under your belt you're happy. You don't
think about your friends - until you're desperate. That's no way to behave,
is it ? Say no and I'll give you a buck. God-damn it. Henry, you're the only
real friend I've got but you're a son of a bitch of a mucker if I know what
I'm talking about. You're just a born good for nothing son of a bitch. You'd
rather starve than turn your hand to something useful..."
Naturally I'd laugh and hold my hand out for the buck he had promised
me. That would irritate him afresh. "You're ready to say anything aren't
you, if only I give you the buck I promised you? What a guy! Talk about
morals - Jesus, you've got the ethics of a rattlesnake. No, I'm not giving
it to you yet, by Christ. I'm going to torture you a little more first. I'm
going to make you earn this money, if I can. Listen what about shining my
shoes - do that for me, will you? They'll never get shined if you don't do
it now." I pick up the shoes and ask him for the brush. I don't mind shining
his shoes, not in the least. But that too seems to incense him. "You're
going to shine them, are you? Well by Jesus, that beats all hell. Listen,
where's your pride - didn't you ever have any? And you're the guy that knows
everything. It's amazing. You know so god-damned much that you have to shine
your friend's shoes to worm a meal out of him. A fine pickle! Here, you
bastard, here's the brush! Shine the other pair too while you're at it."
A pause. He's washing himself at the sink and humming a bit. Suddenly,
in a bright, cheerful tone - "How is it out today, Henry? Is it sunny?
Listen, I've got just the place for you. What do you say to scallops and
bacon with a little tartare sauce on the side? It's a little joint down near
the inlet. A day like today is just the day for scallops and bacon, eh what,
Henry? Don't tell me you've got something to do ... if I haul you down there
you've got to spend a little time with me, you know that, don't you? Jesus,
I wish I had your disposition. You just drift along, from minute to minute.
Sometimes I think you're a damned sight better off than any of us, even if
you are a stinking son of a bitch and a traitor and a thief. When I'm with
you the day seems to pass like a dream. Listen, don't you see what I mean
when I say I've got to see you sometimes? I go nuts being all by myself all
the time. Why do I go chasing around after cunt so much? Why do I play cards
all night? Why do I hang out with those bums from the Point? I need to talk
to some one, that's what."
A little later at the bay, sitting out over the water, with a shot of
rye in him and waiting for the sea food to be served up ... "Life's not so
bad if you can do what you want, eh Henry? If I make a little dough I'm
going to take a trip around the world - and you're coming along with me.
Yes, though you don't deserve it, I'm going to spend some real money on you
one day. I want to see how you'd act if I gave you plenty of rope. I'm going
to give you the money, see... I won't pretend to lend it to you. We'll see
what'll happen to your fine ideas when you have some dough in your pocket.
Listen, when I was talking about Plato the other day I meant to ask you
something: I meant to ask you if you ever read that yam of his about
Atlands. Did you? You did? Well, what do you think of it? Do you think it
was just a yam, or do you think there might have been a place like that
once?"
I didn't dare to tell him that I suspected there were hundreds and
thousands of continents whose existence past or future we hadn't even begun
to dream about, so I simply said I thought it quite possible indeed that
such a place as Atlanris might once have been.
"Well, it doesn't matter much one way or the other, I suppose," he went
on, "but I'll tell you what I think. I think there must have been a time
like that once, a time when men were different. I can't believe that they
always were the pigs they are now and have been for the last few thousand
years. I think it's just possible that there was a time when men knew how to
live, when they knew how to take it easy and to enjoy life. Do you know what
drives me crazy? It's looking at my old man. Ever since he's retired he sits
in front of the fire all day long and mopes. To sit there like a broken-down
gorilla, that's what he slaved for all his life. Well shit, if I thought
that was going to happen to me I'd blow my brains out now. Look around you
... look at the people we know ... do you know one that's worth while?
What's all the fuss about, I'd like to know? We've got to live, they say.
Why ? that's what I want to know. They'd all be a damned sight better off
dead. They're all just so much manure. When the war broke out and I saw them
go off to the trenches I said to myself good, maybe they'll come back with a
little sense! A lot of them didn't come back, of course. But the others! -
listen, do you suppose they got more human, more considerate? Not at all!
They're all butchers at heart, and when they're up against it they squeal.
They make me sick, the whole fucking lot of 'em. I see what they're like,
bailing them out every day. I see it from both sides of the fence. On the
other side it stinks even worse. Why, if I told you some of the things I
knew about the judges who condemn these poor bastards you'd want to slug
them. All you have to do is look at their faces. Yes sir. Henry, I'd like to
think there was once a time when things were different. We haven't seen any
real life - and we're not going to see any. This thing is going to last
another few thousand years, if I know anything about it. You think I'm
mercenary. You think I'm cuckoo to want to earn a lot of money, don't you?
Well I'll tell you, I want to earn a little pile so that I can get my feet
out of this muck. I'd go off and live with a nigger wench if I could get
away from this atmosphere. I've worked my balls off trying to get where I
am, which isn't very far. I don't believe in work any more than you do -1
-was trained that way, that's all. If I could put over a deal, if I could
swindle a pile out of one of these dirty bastards I'm dealing with, I'd do
it with a dear conscience. I know a little too much about the law, that's
the trouble. But I'll fool them yet, you'll see. And when I put it over I'll
put it over big..."
Another shot of rye as the sea food's coming along and he starts in
again. "I meant that about taking you on a trip with me. I'm thinking about
it seriously. I suppose you'll tell me you've got a wife and a kid to look
after. Listen when are you going to break off with that battle-axe of yours?
Don't you know that you've got to ditch her?" He begins to laugh softly.
"Ho! Ho! To think that I was the one who picked her out for you! Did I ever
think you'd be chump enough to get hitched up to her? I thought I was
recommending you a nice piece of tail and you, you poor slob, you marry her.
Ho ho! Listen to me. Henry, while you've got a little sense left: don't let
that sour-balled puss muck up your life for you, do you get me? I don't care
what you do or where you go. I'd hate to see you leave town ... I'd miss
you, I'm telling you that frankly, but Jesus, if you have to go to Africa,
beat it, get out of her clutches, she's no good for you. Sometimes when I
get hold of a good cunt I think to myself now there's something nice for
Henry - and I have in mind to introduce her to you, and then of course I
forget. But Jesus, man, there's thousands of cunts in the world you get
along with. To think that you had to pick on a mean bitch like that .. . Do
you want more bacon? You'd better eat what you want now, you know there
won't be any dough later. Have another drink, eh? Listen, if you try to run
away from me to-day I swear I'll never lend you a cent... What was I saying?
Oh yeah, about that screwy bitch you married. Listen, are you going to do it
or not? Every time I see you you tell me you're going to run away, but you
never do it. You don't think you're supporting her, I hope? She don't need
you, you sap, don't you see that? She just wants to torture you. As for the
kid... well, shit, if I were in your boots I'd drown it. That sounds kind of
mean, doesn't it, but you know what I mean. You're not a father. I don't
know what the hell you are... I just know you're too god-damned good a
fellow to be wasting your life on them. Listen, why don't you try to make
something of yourself? You're young yet and you make a good appearance. Go
off somewhere, way the hell on, and start all over again. If you need a
little money I'll raise it for you. It's like throwing it down a sewer, I
know, but I'll do it for you just the same. The truth is. Henry, I like you
a hell of a lot. I've taken more from you than I would from anybody in the
world. I guess we have a lot in common, coming from the old neighbourhood.
Funny I didn't know you in those days. Shit, I'm getting sentimental..."
The day wore on like that, with lots to eat and drink, the sun out
strong, a car to tote us around, cigars in between, dozing a little on the
beach studying the cunts passing by, talking, laughing, singing a bit too -
one of many, many days I spent like that with MacGregor. Days like that
really seemed to make the wheel stop. On the surface it was jolly and happy
go lucky; time passing like a sticky dream. But underneath it was
fatalistic, premonitory, leaving me the next day morbid and restless. I knew
very well I'd have to make a break some day; I knew very well I was pissing
my time away. But I knew also that there was nothing I could do about it -
yet. Something had to happen, something big, something that would sweep me
off my feet. All I needed was a push, but it had to be some force outside my
world that could give me the right push, that I was certain of. I couldn't
eat my heart out, because it wasn't in my nature. All my life things had
worked out all right - in the end. It wasn't in the cards for me to exert
myself. Something had to be left to Providence - in my case a whole lot.
Despite all the outward manifestations of misfortune or mismanagement I knew
that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. And with a double crown
too. The external situation was bad, admitted - but what bothered me more
was the internal situation. I was really afraid of myself, of my appetite,
my curiosity, my flexibility, my permeability, my malleability, my
geniality, my powers of adaptation. No situation in itself could frighten
me: I somehow always saw myself sitting pretty, sitting inside a buttercup,
as it were and sipping the honey. Even if I were flung in jail I had a hunch
I'd enjoy it. It was because I knew how not to resist, I suppose. Other
people wore themselves out tugging and straining and pulling; my strategy
was to float with the tide. What people did to me didn't bother me nearly so
much as what they were doing to others or to themselves. I was really so
damned well off inside that I had to take on the problems of the world. And
that's why I was in a mess all the time. I wasn't synchronized with my own
destiny, so to speak. I was trying to live out the world destiny. If I got
home of an evening, for instance, and there was no food in the house, not
even for the kid, I would turn right around and go looking for the food. But
what I noticed about myself, and that was what puzzled me, was that no
sooner outside and hustling for the grub than I was back at the
Weltanschauung again. I didn't think of food for us exclusively, I thought
of food in general, food in all its stages, everywhere in the world at that
hour, and how it was gotten and how it was prepared and what people did if
they didn't have it and how maybe there was a way to fix it so that
everybody would have it when they wanted it and no more time wasted on such
an idiotically simple problem. I felt sorry for the wife and kid, sure, but
also felt sorry for the Hottentots and the Australian Bushmen, not to
mention the starving Belgians and the Turks and the Armenians. I felt sorry
for the human race, for the stupidity of man and his lack of imagination.
Missing a meal wasn't so terrible - it was the ghastly emptiness of the
street that disturbed me profoundly. All those bloody houses, one like
another, and all so empty and cheerless-looking. Fine paving stones under
foot and asphalt in the middle of the street and
beautifully-hideously-elegant brown-stone stoops to walk up, and yet a guy
could walk about all day and all night on this expensive material and be
looking for a crust of bread. That's what got me. The incongruousness of it.
If one could only dash out with a dinner bell and yell "Listen, listen,
people, I'm a guy what's hungry. Who wants shoes shined? Who wants the
garbage brought out? Who wants the drainpipes cleaned out?" If you could
only go out in the street and put it to them dear like that. But no, you
don't dare to open your trap. If you tell a guy in the street you're hungry
you scare the shit out of him, he runs like hell. That's something I never
understood. I don't understand it yet. The whole thing is so simple - you
just say Yes when some one comes up to you. And if you can't say Yes you can
take him by the arm and ask some other bird to help you out. Why you have to
don a uniform and kill men you don't know, just to get that crust of bread,
is a mystery to me. That's what I think about, more than about whose trap
it's going down or how much it costs. Why should I give a fuck about what
anything costs ? I'm here to live, not to calculate. And that's just what
the bastards don't want you to do - to live! They want you to spend your
whole life adding up figures. That makes sense to them. That's reasonable.
That's intelligent. If I were running the boat things wouldn't be so orderly
perhaps, but it would be gayer, by Jesus! You wouldn't have to shit in your
pants over trifles. Maybe there wouldn't be macadamized roads and
streamlined cars and loudspeakers and gadgets of a million-billion
varieties, maybe there wouldn't even be glass in the windows, maybe you'd
have to sleep on the ground, maybe there wouldn't be French cooking and
Italian cooking and Chinese cooking, maybe people would kill each other when
their patience was exhausted and maybe nobody would stop them because there
wouldn't be any jails or any cops or judges, and there certainly wouldn't be
any cabinet ministers or legislatures because-there wouldn't be any
goddamned laws to obey or disobey, and maybe it would take months and years
to trek from place to place, but you wouldn't need a visa or a passport or a
carte d'identite because you wouldn't be registered anywhere and you
wouldn't bear a number and if you wanted to change your name every week you
could do it because it wouldn't make any difference since you wouldn't own
anything except what you could carry around with you and why would you want
to own anything when everything would be free? During this period when I was
drifting from door to door, job to job, friend to friend, meal to meal, I
did try nevertheless to rope off a little space for myself which might be an
anchorage; it was more like a lifebuoy in the midst of a swift channel. To
get within a mile of me was to hear a huge dolorous bell tolling. Nobody
could see the anchorage - it was buried deep in the bottom of the channel.
One saw me bobbing up and down on the surface, rocking gently sometimes or
else swinging backwards and forwards agitatedly. What held me down safely
was the big pigeon-holed desk which I put in the parlour. This was the desk
which had been in the old man's tailoring establishment for the last fifty
years, which had given birth to many bills and many groans, which had housed
strange souvenirs in its compartments, and which finally I had filched from
him when he was ill and away from the establishment; and now it stood
in the middle of the floor in our lugubrious parlour on the third floor of a
respectable brown-stone house in the dead centre of the most respectable
neighbourhood in Brooklyn. I had to fight a tough battle to install it
there, but I insisted that it be there in the midmost midst of the shebang.
It was like putting a mastodon in the centre of a dentist's office. But
since the wife had no friends to visit her and since my friends didn't give
a fuck if it were suspended from the chandelier, I kept it in the parlour
and I put all the extra chairs we bad around it in a big circle and then I
sat down comfortably and I put my feet up on the desk and dreamed of what I
would write if I could write. I had a spittoon alongside of the desk, a big
brass one from the same establishment, and I would spit in it now and then
to remind myself that it was there. All the pigeon-holes were empty and all
the drawers were empty; there wasn't a thing on the desk or in it except a
sheet of white paper on which I found it impossible to put so much as a
pothook.
When I think of the titanic efforts I made to canalize the hot lava
which was bubbling inside me, the efforts I repeated thousands of times to
bring the funnel into place and capture a word, a phrase, I think inevitably
of the men of the old stone age. A hundred thousand, two hundred thousand
years, three hundred thousand years to arrive at the idea of the paleolith.
A phantom struggle, because they weren't dreaming of such a thing as the
paleolith. It came without effort, born of a second, a miracle you might
say, except that everything which happens is miraculous. Things happen or
they don't happen, that's all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and
struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony
because we've lost the habit of falling asleep. We don't know how to let go.
We're like a Jack-in-the-box perched on top of a spring and the more we
struggle the harder it is to get back in the box.
I think if I had been crazy I couldn't have hit upon a better scheme to
consolidate my anchorage than to install this Neanderthal object in the
middle of the parlour. With my feet on the desk, picking up the current, and
my spinal column snugly socketed in a thick leather cushion, I was in an
ideal relation to the flotsam and jetsam which was whirling about me, and
which, because they were crazy and part of the flux, my friends were trying
to convince me was life. I remember vividly the first contact with reality
that I got through my feet, so to speak. The million words or so which I had
written, mind you, well ordered, well connected, were as nothing to me -
crude ciphers from the old stone age - because the contact was through the
head and the head is a useless appendage unless you're anchored in
mid-channel deep in the mud. Everything I had written before was museum
stuff, and most writing is still museum stuff and that's why it doesn't
catch fire, doesn't inflame the world. I was only a mouthpiece for the
ancestral race which was talking through me; even my dreams were not
authentic, not bona fide Henry Miller dreams. To sit still and think one
thought which would come up out of me, out of the lifebuoy, was a Herculean
task. I didn't lack thoughts nor words nor the power of expression - I
lacked something much more important: the lever which would shut off the
juice. The bloody machine wouldn't stop, that was the difficulty. I was not
only in the middle of the current but the current was running through me and
I had no control over it whatever.
I remember the day I brought the machine to a dead stop and how the
other mechanism, the one that was signed with my own initials and which I
had made with my own hands and my own blood slowly began to function. I had
gone to the theatre nearby to see a vaudeville show; it was the matinee and
I had a ticket for the balcony. Standing on line in the lobby, I already
experienced a strange feeling of consistency. It was as though I were
coagulating, becoming a recognizable consistent mass of jelly. It was like
the ultimate stage in the healing of a wound. I was at the height of
normality, which is a very abnormal condition. Cholera might come and blow
its foul breath in my mouth - it wouldn't matter. I might bend over and kiss
the ulcers of a leprous hand, and no harm could possibly come to me. There
was not just a balance in this constant warfare between health and disease,
which is all that most of us may hope for, but there was a plus integer in
the blood which meant that, for a few moments at least, disease was
completely routed. If one had the wisdom to take root in such a moment, one
would never again be ill or unhappy or even die. But to leap to this
conclusion is to make a jump which would take one back farther than the old
stone age. At that moment I wasn't even dreaming of taking root;
I was experiencing for the first time in my life the meaning of the
miraculous. I was so amazed when I heard my own cogs meshing that I was
willing to die then and there for the privilege of the experience.
What happened was this ... As I passed the doorman holding the torn
stub in my hand the lights were dimmed and the curtains sent up. I stood a
moment slightly dazed by the sudden darkness. As the curtain slowly rose I
had the feeling that throughout the ages man had always been mysteriously
stilled by this brief moment which preludes the spectacle. I could feel the
curtain rising in man. And immediately I also realized that this was a
symbol which was being presented to him endlessly in his sleep and that if
he had been awake the players would never have taken the stage but he, Man,
would have mounted the boards. I didn't think this thought - it was a
realization, as I say, and so simple and overwhelmingly clear was it that
the machine stopped dead instantly and I was standing in my own presence
bathed in a luminous reality. I turned my eyes away from the stage and
beheld the marble staircase which I should take to go to my seat in the
balcony. I saw a man slowly mounting the steps, his hand laid across the
balustrade. The man could have been myself, the old self which had been
sleepwalking ever since I was born. My eye didn't take in the entire
staircase, just the few steps which the man had climbed or was climbing in
the moment that I took it all in. The man never reached the top of the
stairs and his hand was never removed from the marble balustrade. I felt the
curtain descend, and for another few moments I was behind the scenes moving
amidst the sets, like the property man suddenly roused from his sleep and
not sure whether he is still dreaming or looking at a dream which is being
enacted on the stage. It was as fresh and green, as strangely new as the
bread and cheese lands which the Biddenden maidens saw every day of their
long life joined at the hips. I saw only that which was alive! the rest
faded out in a penumbra. And it was in order to keep the world alive that I
rushed home without waiting to see the performance and sat down to describe
the little patch of staircase which is imperishable.
It was just about this time that the Dadaists were in full swing, to be
followed shortly by the Surrealists. I never heard of either group until
some ten years later; I never read a French book and I never had a French
idea. I was perhaps the unique Dadaist in America, and I didn't know it. I
might just as well have been living in the jungles of the Amazon for all the
contact I had with the outside world. Nobody understood what I was writing
about or why I wrote that way. I was so lucid that they said I was daffy. I
was describing the New World - unfortunately a little too soon because it
had not yet been discovered and nobody could be persuaded that it existed.
It was an ovarian world, still hidden away in the Fallopian tubes. Naturally
nothing was dearly formulated: there was only the faint suggestion of a
backbone visible, and certainly no arms or legs, no hair, no nails, no
teeth. Sex was the last thing to be dreamed of; it was the world of Chronos
and his ovicular progeny. It was the world of the iota, each iota being
indispensable, frighteningly logical, and absolutely unpredictable. There
was no such thing as a thing, because the concept "thing" was missing.
I say it was a New World I was describing, but like the New World which
Columbus discovered it turned out to be a far older world than any we have
known. I saw beneath the superficial physiognomy of skin and bone the
indestructible world which man has always carried within him; it was neither
old nor new, really, but the eternally true world which changes from moment
to moment. Everything I looked at was palimpsest and there was no layer of
writing too strange for me to decipher. When my companions left me of an
evening I would often sit down and write to my friends the Australian
Bushmen or to the Mound Builders of the Mississippi Valley or to the
Igorotes in the Philippines. I had to write English, naturally, because it
was the only language I spoke, but between my language and the telegraphic
code employed by my bosom friends there was a world of difference. Any
primitive man would have understood me, any man of archaic epochs would have
understood me: only those about me, that is to say, a continent of a hundred
million people, failed to understand my language. To write intelligibly for
them I would have been obliged first of all to kill something, secondly, to
arrest time. I had just made the realization that life is indestructible and
that there is no such thing as time, only the present. Did they expect me to
deny a truth which it had taken me all my life to catch a glimpse of? They
most certainly did. The one thing they did not want to hear about was that
life is indestructible. Was not their precious new world reared on the
destruction of the innocent, on rape and plunder and torture and
devastation? Both continents had been violated; both continents had been
stripped and plundered of all that was precious - in things. No greater
humiliation, it seems to me, was meted out to any man than to Montezuma; no
race was ever more ruthlessly wiped out than the American Indian; no land
was ever raped in the foul and bloody way that California was raped by the
gold-diggers. I blush to think of our origins - our hands are steeped in
blood and crime. And there is no let-up to the slaughter and the pillage, as
I discovered at first hand travelling throughout the length and breadth of
the land. Down to the closest friend every man is a potential murderer.
Often it wasn't necessary to bring out the gun or the lasso or the branding
iron - they had found subtler and more devilish ways of torturing and
killing their own. For me the most excruciating agony was to have the word
annihilated before it had even left my mouth. I learned, by bitter
experience, to hold my tongue; I learned to sit in silence, and even smile,
when actually I was foaming at the mouth. I learned to shake hands and say
how do you do to all these innocent-looking fiends who were only waiting for
me to sit down in order to suck my blood.
How was it possible, when I sat down in the parlour at my prehistoric
desk, to use this code language of rape and murder? I was alone in this
great hemisphere of violence, but I was not alone as far as the human race
was concerned. I was lonely amidst a world of things lit up by
phosphorescent flashes of cruelty. I was delirious with an energy which
could not be unleashed except in the service of death and futility. I could
not begin with a full statement - it would have meant the strait-jacket or
the electric chair. I was like a man who had been too long incarcerated in a
dungeon - I had to feel my way slowly, falteringly, lest I stumble and be
run over. I had to accustom myself gradually to the penalties which freedom
involves. I had to grow a new epidermis which would protect me from this
burning light in the sky.
The ovarian world is the product of a life rhythm. The moment a child
is born it becomes part of a world in which there is not only the life
rhythm but the death rhythm. The frantic desire to live, to live at any
cost, is not a result of the life rhythm in us, but of the death rhythm.
There is not only no need to keep alive at any price, but, if life is
undesirable, it is absolutely wrong. This keeping oneself alive, out of a
blind urge to defeat death, is in itself a means of sowing death. Every one
who has not fully accepted life, who is not incrementing life, is helping to
fill the world with death. To make the simplest gesture with the hand can
convey the utmost sense of life; a word spoken with the whole being can give
life. Activity in itself means nothing: it is often a sign of death. By
simple external pressure, by force of surroundings and example, by the very
climate which activity engenders, one can become part of a monstrous death
machine, such as America, for example. What does a dynamo know of life, of
peace, of reality? What does any individual American dynamo know of the
wisdom and energy, of the life abundant and eternal possessed by a ragged
beggar sitting under a tree in the act of meditation? What is energy? What
is life? One has only to read the stupid twaddle of the scientific and
philosophic textbooks to realize how less than nothing is the wisdom of
these energetic Americans. Listen, they had me on the run, these crazy
horsepower fiends; in order to break their insane rhythm, their death
rhythm, I had to resort to a wavelength which, until I found the proper
sustenance in my own bowels, would at least nullify the rhythm they had set
up. Certainly I did not need this grotesque, cumbersome, antediluvian desk
which I had installed in the parlour; certainly I didn't need twelve empty
chairs placed around in a semicircle; I needed only elbow room in which to
write and a thirteenth chair which would take me out of the zodiac they were
using and put me in a heaven beyond heaven. But when you drive a man almost
crazy and when, to his own surprise perhaps, he finds that he still has some
resistance, some powers of his own, then you are apt to find such a man
acting very much like a primitive being. Such a man is apt not only to
become stubborn and dogged, but superstitious, a believer in magic and a
practiser of magic. Such a man is beyond religion - it is his religiousness
he is suffering from. Such a man becomes a monomaniac, bent on doing one
thing only and that is to break the evil spell which has been put upon him.
Such a man is beyond throwing bombs, beyond revolt; he wants to stop
reacting, whether inertly or ferociously. This man, of all men on earth,
wants the act to be a manifestation of life. If, in the realization of his
terrible need, he begins to act regressively, to become unsocial, to stammer
and stutter, to prove so utterly unadapted as to be incapable of earning a
living, know that this man has found his way back to the womb and source of
life and that tomorrow, instead of the contemptible object of ridicule which
you have made of him, he will stand forth as a mm in his own right and all
the powers of the world will be of no avail against him.
Out of the crude cipher with which he communicates from his prehistoric
desk with the archaic men of the world a new language builds up which cuts
through the death language of the day like wireless through a storm. There
is no magic in this wavelength any more than there is magic in the womb. Men
are lonely and out of communication with one another because all their
inventions speak only of death. Death is the automaton which rules the world
of activity. Death is silent, because it has no mouth. Death has never
expressed anything. Death is wonderful too - after life. Only one like
myself who has opened his mouth and spoken, only one who has said Yes, Yes,
Yes, and again Yes! can open wide his arms to death and know no fear. Death
as a reward, yes! Death as a result of fulfillment, yes! Death as a crown
and shield, yes! But not death from the roots, isolating men, making them
bitter and fearful and lonely, giving them fruitless energy, filling them
with a will which can only say No! The first word any man writes when he has
found himself, his own rhythm, which is the life rhythm is Yes! Everything
he writes thereafter is Yes, Yes, Yes - Yes in a thousand million ways. No
dynamo, no matter how huge - not even a dynamo of a hundred million dead
souls - can combat one man saying Yes!
The war was on and men were being slaughtered, one million, two
million, five million, ten million, twenty million, finally a hundred
million, then a billion, everybody, man, woman and child, down to the last
one. "No!" they were shouting, "No! they shall not pass!" And yet everybody
passed; everybody got a free pass, whether he shouted Yes or No. In the
midst of this triumphant demonstration of spiritually destructive osmosis I
sat with my feet planted on the big desk trying to communicate with Zeus the
Father of Atlantis and with his lost progeny, ignorant of the fact that
Apollinaire was to die the day before the Armistice in a military hospital,
ignorant of the fact that in his "new writing" he had penned these indelible
lines, "Be forbearing when you compare us
With those who were the perfection of order.
We who everywhere seek adventure,
We are not your enemies.
We would give you vast and strange domains
Where flowering mystery waits for him would pluck it."
Ignorant that in this same poem he had also written:
"Have compassion on us who are always fighting on the frontiers Of the
boundless future,
Compassion for our errors, compassion for our sins." I was ignorant of
the fact that there were men then living who went by the outlandish names of
Blaise Cendrars, Jacques Vache, Louis Aragon, Tristan Tzara, Rene Crevel,
Henri de Montherlant, Andre Breton, Max Ernst, George Grosz; ignorant of the
fact that on July, 14,1916, at the Saal Waag, in Zurich, the first Dada
Manifesto had been proclaimed -"manifesto by monsieur antipyrine" - that in
this strange document it was stated "Dada is life without slippers or
parallel . . . severe necessity without discipline or morality and we spit
on humanity." Ignorant of the fact that the Dada Manifesto of 1918 contained
these lines. "I am writing a manifesto and I want nothing, yet I say certain
things, and I am against manifestoes as a matter of principle, as I am also
against principles ... I write this manifesto to show that one may perform
opposed actions together, in a single fresh respiration, I am against
action; for continual contradiction, for affirmation also, I am neither for
nor against and I do not explain for I hate good sense .. . There is a
literature which does not reach the voracious mass. The work of creators,
sprung from a real necessity on the part of the author, and for himself.
Consciousness of a supreme egotism where the stars waste away . . . Each
page must explode, either with the profoundly serious and heavy, the
whirlwind, dizziness, the new, the eternal, with the overwhelming hoax, with
an enthusiasm for principles or with the mode of typography. On the one hand
a staggering fleeing world, affianced to the jingle-bells of the infernal
gamut, on the other hand: new beings..." Thirty-two years later and I am
still saying Yes! Yes, Monsieur Antipyrine! Yes,Monsieur Tristan Bustanoby
Tzara! Yes, Monsieur Max Ernst Geburt! Yes! Monsieur Rene Crevel, now that
you are dead by suicide, yes, the world is crazy, you were right. Yes,
Monsieur Blaise Cendrars, you were right to kill. Was it the day of the
Armistice that you brought out your little book -J'ai tue? Yes, "keep on my
lads, humanity..." Yes, Jacques Vache, quite right - "Art ought to be
something funny and a trifle boring." Yes, my dear dead Vache, how right you
were and how funny and how boring the touching and tender and true: "It is
of the essence of symbols to be symbolic." Say it again, from the other
world! Have you a megaphone up there? Have you found all the arms and legs
that were blown off during the melee? Can you put them together again? Do
you remember the meeting at Nantes in 1916 with Andre Breton? Did you
celebrate the birth of hysteria together? Had he told you, Breton, that
there was only the marvellous and nothing but the marvellous and that the
marvellous is always marvellous - and isn't it marvellous to hear it again,
even though your ears are stopped? I want to include here, before passing
on, a little portrait of you by Emile Bouvier for the benefit of my Brooklyn
friends who may not have recognized me then but who will now, I am sure...
". . . he was not all crazy, and could explain his conduct when
occasion required. His actions, none the less, were as disconcerting as
Jarry's worst eccentricities. For example, he was barely out of hospital
when he hired himself out as a stevedore, and he thereafter passed his
afternoons in unloading coal on the quays along the Loire. In the evening,
on the other hand he would make the rounds of the cafes and cinemas, dressed
in the height of fashion and with many variations of costume. What was more,
in time of war, he would strut forth sometimes in the uniform of a
lieutenant of Hussars, sometimes in that of an English officer, of an
aviator or of a surgeon. In civil life, he was quite as free and easy,
thinking nothing of introducing Breton under the name of Andre Salmon, while
he took unto himself, but quite without vanity, the most wonderful titles
and adventures. He never said good morning nor good evening nor good-bye,
and never took any notice of letters, except those from his mother, when he
had to ask for money. He did not recognize his best friends from one day to
another..."
Do you recognize me, lads? Just a Brooklyn boy communicating with the
red-haired albinos of the Zuni region. Making ready, with feet on the desk,
to write "strong works, works forever incomprehensible", as my dead comrades
were promising. These "strong works" - would you recognize them if you saw
them? Do you know that of the millions who were killed not one death was
necessary to produce "the strong work"? New beings, yes! We have need of new
beings still. We can do without the telephone, without the automobile,
without the high-class bombers - but we can't do without new beings. If
Atlantis was submerged beneath the sea, if the Sphinx and the Pyramids
remain an eternal riddle, it is because there were no more new beings being
born. Stop the machine a moment! Plash back! Flash back to 1914, to the
Kaiser sitting on his horse. Keep him sitting there a moment with his
withered arm clutching the bridle rein. Look at his moustache! Look at his
haughty air of pride and arrogance! Look at his cannon-fodder lined up in
strictest discipline, all ready to obey the word, to get shot, to get
disembowelled, to be burned in quicklime. Hold it a moment, now, and look at
the other side: the defenders of our great and glorious civilization, the
men who will war to end war. Change their clothes, change uniforms, change
horses, change flags, change terrain. My, is that the Kaiser I see on a
white horse? Are those the terrible Huns? And where is Big Bertha? Oh, I see
-1 thought it was pointing towards Notre Dame? Humanity, me lads, humanity
always marching in the van . . . And the strong works we were speaking of?
Where are the strong works? Call up the Western Union and dispatch a
messenger fleet of foot - not a cripple or an octogenarian, but a young one!
Ask him to find the great work and bring it back. We need it. We have a
brand new museum ready waiting to house it - and cellophane and the Dewey
Decimal system to file it. All we need is the name of the author. Even if he
has no name, even if it is anonymous work, we won't kick. Even if it has a
little mustard gas in it we won't mind. Bring it back dead or alive -
there's a $25,000 reward for the man who fetches it.
And if they tell you that these things had to be, that things could not
have happened otherwise, that France did her best and Germany her best and
that little Liberia and little Ecuador and all the other allies also did
their best, and that since the war everybody has been doing his best to
patch things up or to forget, tell them that their best is not good enough,
that we don't want to hear any more this logic of "doing the best one can",
tell them we don't want the best of a bad bargain, we don't believe in
bargains good or bad, nor in war memorials. We don't want to hear about the
logic of events - or any kind of logic. "Je ne parle pas logique," said
Montherlant, "je parle generosite." I don't think you heard it very well,
since it was in French. I'll repeat it for you, in the Queen's own language;
"I'm not talking logic, I'm talking generosity." That's bad English, as the
Queen herself might speak it, but it's clear. Generosity - do you hear? You
never practise it, any of you, either in peace or in war. You don't know the
meaning of the word. You think to supply guns and ammunition to the winning
side is generosity; you think sending Red Cross nurses to the front, or the
Salvation Army, is generosity. You think a bonus twenty years too late is
generosity; you think a little pension and a wheel chair is generosity; you
think if you give a man his old job back it's generosity. You don't know
what the fucking war means, you bastards! To be generous is to say Yes
before the man even opens his mouth. To say Yes you have to first be a
Surrealist or a Dadaist, because you have understood what it means to say
No. You can even say Yes and No at the same time, provided you do more than
is expected of you. Be a stevedore in the day time and a Beau Brummel in the
night-time. Wear any uniform so long as it's not yours. When you write your
mother ask her to cough up a little dough so that you may have a clean rag
to wipe your ass with. Don't be disturbed if you see your neighbour going
after his wife with a knife: he probably has good reason to go after her,
and if he kills her you may be sure he has the satisfaction of knowing why
he did it. If you're trying to improve your mind, stop it I There's no
improving the mind. Look at your heart and gizzard - the brain is in the
heart.
Ah yes, if I had known then that these birds existed -Cendrars, Vache,
Grosz, Ernst, Apollinaire - if I had known that then, if I had known that in
their own way they were thinking exactly the same things as I was, I think
I'd have blown up. Yes, I think I'd have gone off like a bomb. But I was
ignorant. Ignorant of the fact that almost fifty years previously a crazy
Jew in South America had given birth to such startlingly marvellous phrases
as "doubt's duck with the vermouth lips" or "I have seen a fig eat an
onager" - that about the same time a Frenchman, who was only a boy, was
saying: "Find flowers that are chairs" . . . "my hunger is the black air's
bits" . . . "his heart, amber and spunk". Maybe at the same time, or
thereabouts, while Jarry was saying "in eating the sound of moths", and
Apollinaire repeating after him "near a gentleman swallowing himself", and
Breton murmuring softly "night's pedals move uninterruptedly", perhaps "in
the air beautiful and black" which the lone Jew had found under the Southern
Cross another man, also lonely and exiled and of Spanish origin, was
preparing to put down on paper these memorable words: "I seek, all in all,
to console myself for my exile, for my exile from eternity, for that
unearthing (destierro) which I am fond of referring to as my unheavening ...
At present, I think that the best way of writing this novel is to tell how
it should be written. It is the novel of the novel, the creation of
creation. Or God of God, Deus de Deo." Had I known he was going to add this,
this which follows, I would surely have gone off like a bomb... "By being
crazy is understood losing one's reason. Reason, but not the truth, for
there are madmen who speak truths while others keep silent. . ." Speaking of
these things, speaking of the war and the war dead, I cannot refrain from
mentioning that some twenty years later I ran across this in French by a
Frenchman. 0 miracles of miracles! "Il faut le dire, il y a des cadavres que
je ne respecte qu'a moitie" Yes, yes, and again yes! O, let us do some rash
things - for the sheer pleasure of it! Let us do something live and
magnificent, even if destructive! Said the mad cobbler: "All things are
generated oat of the grand mystery, and proceed out of one degree into
another. Whatever goes forward in its degree, the same receives no
abominate."
Everywhere in all times the same ovarian world announcing itself. Yet
also, parallel with these announcements, these prophecies, the gynecological
manifestoes, parallel and contemporaneous with them new totem poles, new
taboos, new war dances. While into the air so black and beautiful the
brothers of man, the poets, the diggers of the future, were spitting their
magic lines, in this same time, 0 profound and perplexing riddle, other men
were saying: "Won't you please come and take a job in our ammunition
factory. We promise you the highest wages, the most sanitary and hygienic
conditions. The work is so easy that even a child could do it" And if you
had a sister, a wife, a mother, an aunt, as long as she could manipulate her
hands, as long as she could prove that she had no bad habits, you were
invited to bring her or them along to the ammunition works. If you were shy
of soiling your hands they would explain to you very gently and
intelligently just how these delicate mechanisms operated, what they did
when they exploded, and why you must not waste even your garbage because...
et ipso facto e pluribus unum. The thing that impressed me, going the rounds
in search of work, was not so much that they made me vomit every day
(assuming I had been lucky enough to put something into my guts), but that
they always demanded to know if you were of good habits, if you were steady,
if you were sober, if you were industrious, if you had ever worked before
and if not why not. Even the garbage, which I had gotten the job of
collecting for the municipality, was precious to them, the killers. Standing
knee-deep in the muck, the lowest of the low, a coolie, an outcast, still I
was part of the death racket. I tried reading the Inferno at night, but it
was in English and English is no language for a catholic work. "Whatever
enters in itself into its selfhood, viz. into its own lubet.. ." Lubet! If I
had had a word like that to conjure with then, how peacefully I might have
gone about my garbage collecting! How sweet, in the night, when Dante is out
of reach and the hands smell of muck and slime, to take unto oneself this
word which in the Dutch means "lust" and in Latin 'lubitum" or the divine
beneplacitum. Standing knee-deep in the garbage I said one day what Meister
Eckhart is reported to have said long ago: "I truly have need of God, but
God has need of me too." There was a job waiting for me in the
slaughterhouse, a nice little job of sorting entrails, but I couldn't raise
the fare to get to Chicago. I remained in Brooklyn, in my own palace of
entrails, and turned round and round on the plinth of the labyrinth. I
remained at home seeking the "germinal vesicle", "the dragon castle on the
floor of the sea", "the Heavenly Harp", "the field of the square inch", "the
house of the square foot", "the dark pass", "the space of former Heaven". I
remained locked in, a prisoner of Forculus, god of the door, of Cardea, god
of the hinge, and of Limentius, god of the threshold. I spoke only with
their sisters, the three goddesses called Fear, Pallor and Fever. I saw no
"Asian luxury", as had St. Augustine, or as he imagined he had. Nor did I
see "the two twins born, so near together, that the second held the first by
the heel". But I saw a street called Myrtle Avenue, which runs from Borough
Hall to Fresh Pond Road, and down this street no saint ever walked (else it
would have crumbled), down this street no miracle ever passed, nor any poet,
nor any species of human genius, nor did any flower ever grow there, nor did
the sun strike it squarely, nor did the rain ever wash it. For the genuine
Inferno which I had to postpone for twenty years I give you Myrtle Avenue,
one of the innumerable bridlepaths ridden by iron monsters which lead to the
heart of America's emptiness. If you have only seen Essen or Manchester or
Chicago or Levallois-Perret or Glasgow or Hoboken or Canarsie or Bayonne you
have seen nothing of the magnificent emptiness of progress and
enlightenment. Dear reader, you must see Myrtle Avenue before you die, if
only to realize how far into the future Dante saw. You must believe me that
on this street, neither in the houses which line it, nor the cobblestones
which pave it, nor the elevated structure which cuts it atwain, neither in
any creature that bears a name and lives thereon, neither in any animal,
bird or insect passing through it to slaughter or already slaughtered, is
there hope of "lubet", "sublimate" or "abominate". It is a street not of
sorrow, for sorrow would be human and recognizable, but of sheer emptiness:
it is emptier than the most extinct volcano, emptier than a vacuum, emptier
than the word God in the mouth of an unbeliever.
I said I did not know a word of French then, and it is true, but I was
just on the brink of making a great discovery, a discovery which would
compensate for the emptiness of Myrtle Avenue and the whole American
continent. I had almost reached the shore of that great French ocean which
goes by the name of Elie Faure, an ocean which the French themselves had
hardly navigated and which they had mistaken, it seems, for an inland sea.
Reading him even in such a withered language as English has become, I could
see that this man who had described the glory of the human race on his cuff
was Father Zeus of Atlantis, whom I had been searching for. An ocean I
called him, but he was also a world symphony. He was the first musician the
French have produced; he was exalted and controlled, an anomaly, a Gallic
Beethoven, a great physician of the soul, a giant lightning-rod. He was also
a sunflower turning with the sun, always drinking in the light, always
radiant and blazing with vitality. He was neither an optimist nor a
pessimist, any more than one can say that the ocean is beneficient or
malevolent. He was a believer in the human race. He added a cubit to the
race, by giving it back its dignity, its strength, its need of creation. He
saw everything as creation, as solar joy. He didn't record it in orderly
fashion, he recorded it musically. He was indifferent to the fact that the
French have a tin ear - he was orchestrating for the whole world
simultaneously. What was my amazement then, when some years later I arrived
in France, to find that there were no monuments erected to him, no streets
named after him. Worse, during eight whole years I never once beard a
Frenchman mention his name. He had to die in order to be put in the pantheon
of French deities - and how sickly must they look, his deific
contemporaries, in the presence of this radiant sun! If he had not been a
physician, and thus permitted to earn a livelihood, what might not have
happened to him! Perhaps another able hand for the garbage trucks! The man
who made the Egyptian frescoes come alive in all their flaming colours, this
man could just as well have starved to death for all the public cared. But
he was an ocean and the critics drowned in this ocean, and the editors and
the publishers and the public too. It will take aeons for him to dry up, to
evaporate. It will take about as long as for the French to acquire a musical
ear.
If there had been no music I would have gone to the madhouse like
Nijinsky. (It was just about this time that they discovered that Nijinsky
was mad.) He had been found giving his money away to the poor - always a bad
sign! My mind was filled with wonderful treasures, my taste was sharp and
exigent, my muscles were in excellent condition, my appetite was strong, my
wind sound. I had nothing to do except to improve myself, and I was going
crazy with the improvements I made every day. Even if there were a job for
me to fill I couldn't accept it, because what I needed was not work but a
life more abundant. I couldn't waste time being a teacher, a lawyer, a
physician, a politician or anything else that society had to offer. It was
easier to accept menial jobs because it left my mind free. After I was fired
from the garbage trucks I remember taking up with an Evangelist who seemed
to have great confidence in me. I was a sort of usher, collector and private
secretary. He brought to my attention the whole world of Indian philosophy.
Evenings when I was free I would meet with my friends at the home of Ed
Bauries who lived in an aristocratic section of Brooklyn. Ed Bauries was an
eccentric pianist who couldn't read a note. He had a bosom pal called George
Neumiller with whom he often played duets. Of the dozen or so who
congregated at Ed Bauries' home nearly every one of us could play the piano.
We were all between twenty-one and twenty-five at the time; we never brought
any women along and we hardly ever mentioned the subject of women during
these sessions. We had plenty of beer to drink and a whole big house at our
disposal, for it was in the Summer time, when his folks were away, that we
held our gatherings. Though there were a dozen other homes like this which I
could speak of, I mention Ed Bauries' place because it was typical of
something I have never encountered elsewhere in the world. Neither Ed
Bauries himself nor any of his friends suspected the sort of books I was
reading nor the things which were occupying my mind. When I blew in I was
greeted enthusiastically - as a clown. It was expected, of me to start
things going. There were about four pianos scattered throughout the big
house to say nothing of the celesta, the organ, guitars, mandolins, fiddles
and what not. Ed Bauries was a nut, a very affable, sympathetic and generous
one too. The sandwiches were always of the best, the beer plentiful, and if
you wanted to stay the night he could fix you up on a divan just as pretty
as you liked. Coming down the street - a big, wide street, somnolent,
luxurious, a street altogether out of the world - I could hear the tinkle of
the piano in the big parlour on the first floor. The windows were wide open
and as I got into range I could see Al Burger or Connie Grimm sprawling in
their big easy chairs, their feet on the window sill, and big beer mugs in
their hands. Probably George Neumiller was at the piano, improvising, his
shirt peeled off and a big cigar in his mouth. They were talking and
laughing while George fooled around, searching for an opening. Soon as he
hit a theme he would call for Ed and Ed would sit beside him, studying it
out in his unprofessional way, then suddenly pouncing on the keys and giving
tit for tat. Maybe when I'd walk in somebody would be trying to stand on his
hands in the next room - there were three big rooms on the first floor which
opened one on to the other and back of them was a garden, an enormous
garden, with flowers, fruit trees, grape vines, statues, fountains an<f
everything. Sometimes when it was too hot they brought the celesta or the
little organ into the garden (and a keg of beer, naturally) and we'd sit
around in the dark laughing and singing - until the neighbours forced us to
stop. Sometimes the music was going on all through the house at once, on
every floor. It was really crazy then, intoxicating, and if there had been
women around it would have spoiled it. Sometimes it was like watching an
endurance contest - Ed Bauries and George Neumiller at the grand piano, each
trying to wear the other out, changing places without stopping, crossing
hands, sometimes felling away to plain chopsticks, sometimes going like a
Wurlitzer. And always something to laugh about all the time. Nobody asked
what you did, what you thought about, and so forth. When you arrived at Ed
Bauries' place you checked your identification marks. Nobody gave a fuck
what size hat you wore or how much you paid for it. It was entertainment
from the word go - and the sandwiches and the drinks were on the house. And
when things got going, three or four pianos at once, the celesta, the organ,
the mandolins, the guitars, beer running through the halls, the mantelpieces
full of sandwiches and cigars, a breeze coming through from the garden,
George Neumiller stripped to the waist and modulating like a fiend, it was
better than any show I've ever seen put on and it didn't cost a cent. In
fact, with the dressing and undressing that went on, I always came away with
a little extra change and a pocketful of good cigars. I never saw any of
them between time - only Monday nights throughout the Summer, when Ed held
open house.
Standing in the garden listening to the din I could scarcely believe
that it was the same city. And if I had ever opened my trap and exposed my
guts it would have been all over. Not one of these bozos amounted to
anything, as the world reckons. They were just good eggs, children, fellows
who liked music and who liked a good time. They liked it so much that
sometimes we had to call the ambulance. Like the night Al Burger twisted his
knee while showing us one of his stunts. Everybody so happy, so full of
music, so lit up, that it took him an hour to persuade us he was really
hurt. We try to carry him to a hospital but it's too far away and besides,
it's such a good joke, that we drop him now and then and that makes him yell
like a maniac. So finally we telephone for help from a police box, and the
ambulance comes and the patrol wagon too. They take Al to the hospital and
the rest of us to the hoose-gow. And on the way we sing at the top of our
lungs. And after we're bailed out we're still feeling good and the cops are
feeling good too, and so we all adjourn to the basement where there's a
cracked piano and we go on singing and playing. All this is like some period
B.C. in history which ends not because there's a war but because even a
joint like Ed Bauries' is not immune to the poison seeping in from the
periphery. Because every street is becoming Myrtle Avenue, because emptiness
is filling the whole continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Because,
after a certain time, you can't enter a single house throughout the length
and breadth of the land and find a man standing on his hands singing. It
just ain't done any more. And there ain't two pianos going at once anywhere,
nor are there two men anywhere willing to play all night just for the fun of
it. Two men who can play like Ed Bauries and George Neumiller are hired by
the radio or the movies and only a thimbleful of their talent is used and
the rest is thrown into the garbage can. Nobody knows, judging from public
spectacles, what talent is disposable in the great American continent. Later
on, and that's why I used to sit around on doorsteps in Tin Pan Alley, I
would while away the afternoons listening to the professionals mugging it
out. That was good too, but it was different. There was no fun in it, it was
a perpetual rehearsal to bring in dollars and cents. Any man in America who
had an ounce of humour in him was saving it up to put himself across. There
were some wonderful nuts among them too, men I'll never forget, men who left
no name behind them, and they were the best we produced. I remember an
anonymous performer on the Keith circuit who was probably the craziest man
in America, and perhaps he got fifty dollars a week for it. Three times a
day, every day in the week, he came out and held the audience spell-bound.
He didn't have an act - he just improvised. He never repeated his jokes or
his stunts. He gave himself prodigally, and I don't think he was a hot fiend
either. He was one of those guys who are born in the corncrakes and the
energy and the joy in him was so fierce that nothing could contain it. He
could play any instrument and dance any step and he could invent a story on
the spot and string it out till the bell rang. He was not only satisfied to
do his own act but he would help the others out. He would stand in the wings
and wait for the right moment to break into the other guy's act. He was the
whole show and it was a show that contained more therapy than the whole
arsenal of modem science. They ought to have paid a man like this the wages
which the President of the United States receives. They ought to sack the
President of the United States and the whole Supreme Court and set up a man
like this as ruler. This man could cure any disease on the calendar. He was
the kind of guy, moreover, as would do it for nothing, if you asked him to.
This is the type of man which empties the insane asylums. He doesn't propose
a cure - he makes everybody crazy. Between this solution and a perpetual
state of war, which is civilization, there is only one other way out - and
that is the road we will all take eventually because everything else is
doomed to failure. The type that represents this one and only way bears a
head with six faces and eight eyes, the head is a revolving lighthouse, and
instead of a triple crown at the top, as there might well be, there is a
hole which ventilates what few brains there are. There is very little brain,
as I say, because there is very little baggage to carry about, because
living in full consciousness, the grey matter passes off into light. This is
the only type of man one can place above the comedian; he neither laughs nor
weeps, he is beyond suffering. We don't recognize him yet because he
is too dose to us, right under the skin, as a matter of fact. When the
comedian catches us in the guts this man, whose name might be God, I
suppose, if he had to use a name, speaks up. When the whole human race is
rocking with laughter, laughing so hard that it hurts, I mean, everybody
then has his foot on the path. In that moment everybody can just as well be
God as anything else. In that moment you have the annihilation of dual,
triple, quadruple and multiple consciousness, which is what makes the grey
matter coil up in dead folds at the top of the skull. At that moment you can
really feel the hole in the top of the head; you know that you once had an
eye there and that this eye was capable of taking in everything at once. The
eye is gone now, but when you laugh until the tears flow and your belly
aches, you are really opening the skylight andventilating the brains. Nobody
can persuade you at that moment to take a gun and kill your enemy; neither
can anybody persuade you to open a fat tome containing the metaphysical
truths of the world and read it. If you know what freedom means, absolute
freedom and not a relative freedom, then you must recognize that this is the
nearest to it you will ever get. If I am against the condition of the world
it is not because I am a moralist - it is because I want to laugh more. I
don't say that God is one grand laugh: I say that you've got to laugh hard
before you can get anywhere near God. My whole aim in life is to get near to
God, that is, to get nearer to myself. That's why it doesn't matter to me
what road I take. But music is very important. Music is a tonic for the
pineal gland. Music isn't Bach or Beethoven; music is the can-opener of the
soul. It makes you terribly quiet inside, makes you aware that there's a
roof to your being.
The stabbing horror of life is not contained in calamities and
disasters, because these things wake one up and one gets very familiar and
intimate with them and finally they become tame again ... no, it is more
like being in a hotel room in Hoboken let us say, and just enough money in
one's pocket for another meal. You are in a city that you never expect to be
in again and you have only to pass the night in your hotel room, but it
takes all the courage and pluck you possess to stay in that room. There must
be a good reason why certain cities, certain places, inspire such loathing
and dread. There must be some kind of perpetual murder going on in these
places. The people are of the same race as you, they go about their business
as people do anywhere, they build the same sort of house, no better, no
worse, they have the same system of education, the same currency, the same
newspapers - and yet they are absolutely different from the other people you
know, and the whole atmosphere is different, and the rhythm is different and
the tension is different. It's almost like looking at yourself in another
incarnation. You know, with a most disturbing certitude, that what governs
life is not money, not politics, not religion, not training, not race, not
language, not customs, but something else, something you're trying to
throtde all the time and which is really throttling you, because otherwise
you wouldn't be terrified all of a sudden and wonder how you were going to
escape. Some cities you don't even have to pass a night in - just an hour or
two is enough to unnerve you. I think of Bayonne that way. I came on it in
the night with a few addresses that had been given me. I had a briefcase
under my arm with a prospectus of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I was
supposed to go under cover of dark and sell the bloody encyclopaedia to some
poor devils who wanted to improve themselves. If I had been dropped off at
Helsingfors I couldn't have felt more ill at ease than walking the streets
of Bayonne. It wasn't an American city to me. It wasn't a city at all, but a
huge octopus wriggling in the dark. The first door I came to looked so
forbidding I didn't even bother to knock; I went like that to several
addresses before I could summon the courage to knock. The first face I took
a look at frightened the shit out of me. I don't mean timidity or
embarrassment - I mean fear. It was the face of a hod-carrier, an ignorant
mick who would as lief fell you with an axe as spit in your eye. I pretended
I had the wrong name and hurried on to the next address. Each time the door
opened I saw another monster. And then I came at last to a poor simp who
really wanted to improve himself and that broke me down. I felt truly
ashamed of myself, of my country, my race, my epoch. I had a devil of a time
persuading him not to buy the damned encyclopaedia. He asked me innocently
what then had brought me to his home - and without a minute's hesitation I
told him an astounding lie, a lie which was later to prove a great truth. I
told him I was only pretending to sell the encyclopaedia in order to meet
people and write about them. That interested him enormously, even more than
the encyclopaedia. He wanted to know what I would write about him, if I
could say. It's taken me twenty years to answer that question, but here it
is. If you would still like to know, John Doe of the City of Bayonne, this
is it... I owe you a great deal because after that lie I told you I left
your house and I tore up the prospectus furnished me by the Encyclopaedia
Britannica and I threw it in the gutter. I said to myself I will never again
go to people under false pretences even if it is to give them the Holy
Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am
going home now and I will sit down and really write about people. And if
anybody knocks at my door to sell me something
I will invite him in and say "why are you doing this?" And if he says
it is because he has to make a living I will oner him what money I have and
beg him once again to think what he is doing. I want to prevent as many men
as possible from pretending that they have to do this or that because they
must earn a living. It is not true. One can starve to death - it is much
better. Every man who voluntarily starves to death throws another cog into
the automatic process. I would rather see a man take a gun and kill his
neighbour, in order to get the food he needs, than keep up the automatic
process by pretending that he has to cam a living. That's what I want to
say, Mr. John Doe.
I pass on. Not the stabbing horror of disaster and calamity, I say, but
the automatic throwback, the stark panorama of the soul's atavistic
struggle. A bridge in North Carolina, near the Tennessee border. Coming out
of lush tobacco fields, low cabins everywhere and the smell of fresh wood
burning. The day passed in a thick lake of waving green. Hardly a soul in
sight. Then suddenly a clearing and I'm over a big gulch spanned by a
rickety wooden bridge. This is the end of the world! How in God's name I got
here and why I'm here I don't know. How am I going to eat? And if I ate the
biggest meal imaginable I would still be sad, frightfully sad. I don't know
where to go from here. This bridge is the end, the end of me, the end of my
known world. This bridge is insanity; there is no reason why it should stand
there and no reason why people should cross it. I refuse to budge another
step, I balk at crossing that crazy bridge. Nearby is a low wall which I lie
against trying to think what to do and where to go. I realize quietly what a
terribly civilized person I am - the need I have for people, conversation,
books, theatre, music, cafes, drinks, and so forth. It's terrible to be
civilized, because when you come to the end of the world you have nothing to
support the terror of loneliness. To be civilized is to have complicated
needs. And a man, when he is full blown, shouldn't need a thing. All day I
had been moving through tobacco fields, and growing more and more uneasy.
What have I to do with all this tobacco? What am I heading into? People
everywhere are producing crops and goods for other people - and I am like a
ghost sliding between all this unintelligible activity. I want to find some
kind of work, but I don't want to be a part of this thing, this infernal
automatic process. I pass through a town and I look at the newspaper telling
what is happening in that town and its environs. It seems to me that nothing
is happening, that the dock has stopped but that these poor devils are
unaware of it. I have a strong intuition, moreover, that there is murder in
the air. I can smell it. A few days back I passed the imaginary line which
divides the North from the South. I wasn't aware of it until a darkie came
along driving a team; when he gets alongside of me he stands up in his seat
and doffs his hat most respectfully. He had snow-white hair and a face of
great dignity. That made me feel horrible: it made me realize that there are
still slaves. This man had to tip his hat to me -because I was of the white
race. Whereas I should have ripped my hat to him! I should have saluted him
as a survivor of all the vile tortures the white men have inflicted on the
black. I should have tipped my hat first, to let him know that I am not a
part of this system, that I am begging forgiveness for all my white brethren
who are too ignorant and cruel to make an honest overt gesture. To-day I
feel their eyes on me all the time; they watch from behind doors, from
behind trees. All very quiet, very peaceful, seemingly. Nigger never say
nuthin'. Nigger he hum all time- White man think nigger learn his place.
Nigger leam nuthin'. Nigger wait. Nigger watch everything white man do.
Nigger no say nuthin', no sir, no siree. But JUST THE SAME THE nigger IS
KILLING THE WHITE MAN OFF!
Every time the nigger looks at a white man he's putting a dagger
through him. It's not the heat, ifs not the hook worm, it's not the bad
crops that's killing the South off - it's the nigger 1 The nigger is giving
off a poison, whether he means to or not. The South is coked and doped with
nigger poison.
Pass on... Sitting outside a barber shop by the James River. I'll be
here just ten minutes, while I take a load off my feet. There's a hotel and
a few stores opposite me; it all tails off quickly, ends like it began - for
no reason. From the bottom of my soul I pity the poor devils who are born
and die here. There is no earthly reason why this place should exist. There
is no reason why anybody should cross the street and get himself a shave and
haircut, or even a sirloin steak. Men, buy yourselves a gun and kill each
other off! Wipe this street out of my mind for ever - it hasn't an ounce of
meaning in it.
The same day, after nightfall. Still plugging on, digging deeper and
deeper into the South. I'm coming away from a little town by a short road
leading to the highway. Suddenly I hear footsteps behind me and soon a young
man passes me on the trot, breathing heavily and cursing with all his might.
I stand there a moment, wondering what it's all about. I hear another man
coming on the trot; he's an older man and he's carrying a gun. He breathes
fairly easy, and not a word out of his trap. Just as he comes in view the
moon breaks through the clouds and I catch a good look at his face. He's a
man hunter. I stand back as the others come up behind him. I'm trembling
with fear. It's the sheriff, I hear a man say, and he's going to get him.
Horrible. I move on towards the highway waiting to hear the shot that will
end it all. I hear nothing - just this heavy breathing of the young man and
the quick eager steps of the mob following behind the sheriff. Just as I get
near the main road a man steps out of the darkness and comes over to me very
quietly. "Where yer goin', son," he says, quiet like and almost tenderly. I
stammer out something about the next town. "Better stay right here, son," he
says. I didn't say another word. I let him take me back into town and hand
me over like a thief. I lay on the floor with about fifty other blokes. I
had a marvellous sexual dream which ended with the guillotine.
I plug on ... It's just as hard to go back as to go forward. I don't
have the feeling of being an American citizen any more. The part of America
I came from, where I had some rights, where I felt free, is so far behind me
that it's beginning to get fuzzy in my memory. I feel as though some one's
got a gun against my back all the time. Keep moving, is all I seem to hear.
If a man talks to me I try not to seem too intelligent. I try to pretend
that I am vitally interested in the crops, in the weather, in the elections.
If I stand and stop they look at me, whites and blacks - they look me
through and through as though I were juicy and edible. I've got to walk
another thousand miles or so as though I had a deep purpose, as though I
were really going somewhere. I've got to look sort of grateful, too, that
nobody has yet taken a fancy to plug me. It's depressing and exhilarating at
the same time. You're a marked man - and nobody pulls the trigger. They let
you walk unmolested right into the Gulf of Mexico where you can drown
yourself.
Yes sir, I reached the Gulf of Mexico and I walked right into it and
drowned myself. I did it gratis. When they fished the corpse out they found
it was marked F.O.B. Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn; it was returned C.O.D. When I
was asked later why I had killed myself I could only think to say - because
I wanted to electrify the cosmos! I meant by that a very simple thing -The
Delaware, Lackawanna and Western had been electrified, the Seaboard Air Line
had been electrified, but the soul of man was still in the covered wagon
stage. I was born in the midst of civilization and I accepted it very
naturally - what else was there to do? But the joke was that nobody else was
taking it seriously. I was the only man in the community who was truly
civilized. There was no place for me - as yet. And yet the books I read, the
music I heard assured me, that there were other men in the world like
myself. I had to go and drown myself in the Gulf of Mexico in order to have
an excuse for continuing this pseudo-civilized existence. I had to delouse
myself of my spiritual body, as it were.
When I woke up to the fact that as far as the scheme of things goes I
was less than dirt I really became quite happy. I quickly lost all sense of
responsibility. And if it weren't for the fact that my friends got tired of
lending me money I might have gone on indefinitely pissing the time away.
The world was like a museum to me: I saw nothing to do but eat into this
marvellous chocolate layer cake which the men of the past had dumped on our
hands. It annoyed everybody to see the way I enjoyed myself. Their logic was
that art was very beautiful, oh yes, indeed, but you must work for a living
and then you will find that you are too tired to think about art. But it was
when I threatened to add a layer or two on my own account to this marvellous
chocolate layer cake that they blew up on me. That was the finishing touch.
That meant I was definitely crazy. First I was considered to be a useless
member of society; then for a time I was found to be a reckless,
happy-go-lucky corpse with a tremendous appetite; now I had become crazy.
(Listen, you bastard, you find yourself a job... we're through with you!) In
a way it was refreshing this change of front. I could feel the wind blowing
through the corridors. At least "we" were no longer becalmed. It was war,
and as a corpse I was just fresh enough to have a little fight left in me.
War is revivifying. War stirs the blood. It was in the midst of the world
war, which I had forgotten about, that this change of heart took place. I
got myself married overnight, to demonstrate to all and sundry that I didn't
give a fuck one way or the other. Getting married was O.K. in their minds. I
remember that, on the strength of the announcement, I raised five bucks
immediately. My friend MacGregor paid for the licence and even paid for the
shave and haircut which he insisted I go through with in order to get
married. They said you couldn't go without being shaved; I didn't see any
reason why you couldn't get hitched up without a shave and haircut, but
since it didn't cost me anything I submitted to it. It was interesting to
see how everybody was eager to contribute something to our maintenance. All
of a sudden, just because I had shown a bit of sense, they came flocking
around us - and couldn't they do this and couldn't they do that for us? Of
course the assumption was that now I would surely be going to work, now I
would see that life is serious business. It never occurred to them that I
might let my wife work for me. I was really very decent to her in the
beginning. I wasn't a slave driver. All I asked for was carfare -to hunt for
the mythical job - and a little pin money for cigarettes, movies, et cetera.
The important things, such as books, music albums, gramophones, porterhouse
steaks and such like I found we could get on credit, now that we were
married. The instalment plan had been invented expressly for guys like me.
The down payment was easy - the rest I left to Providence. One has to live,
they were always saying. Now, by God, that's what I said to myself - One has
to live I Live first andpay afterwards. If I saw an overcoat I liked I went
in and bought it. I would buy it a little in advance of the season too, to
show that I was a serious-minded chap. Shit, I was a married man and soon I
would probably be a father - I was entitled to a winter overcoat at least,
no? And when I had the overcoat I thought of stout shoes to go with it - a
pair of thick cordevans such as I had wanted all my life but never could
afford. And when it grew bitter cold and I was out looking for the job I
used to get terribly hungry sometimes - it's really healthy going out like
that day after day prowling about the city in rain and snow and wind and
hail - and so now and then I'd drop in to a cosy tavern and order myself a
juicy porterhouse steak with onions and French fried potatoes. I took out
life insurance and accident insurance too - it's important, when you're
married, to do things like that, so they told me. Supposing I should drop
dead one day - what then? I remember the guy telling me that, in order to
clinch his argument. I had already told him I would sign up, but he must
have forgotten it. I had said, yes, immediately, out of force of habit, but
as I say, he had evidently overlooked it - or else it was against the code
to sign a man up until you had delivered the full sales talk. Anyway, I was
just getting ready to ask him how long it would take before you could make a
loan on the policy when he popped the hypothetical question: Supposing you
should drop dead one day - what then? I guess he thought I was a little off
my nut the way I laughed at that. I laughed until the tears rolled down my
face. Finally he said - "I don't see that I said anything so funny." "Well,"
I said, getting serious for a moment, "take a good look at me. Now tell me,
do you think I'm the sort of fellow who gives a fuck what happens once he's
dead?" He was quite taken aback by this, apparently, because the next thing
he said was: "I don't think that's a very ethical attitude. Mr. Miller. I'm
sure you wouldn't want your wife to ..." "Listen," I said, "supposing I told
you I don't give a fuck what happens to my wife when I die - what then?" And
since this seemed to injure his ethical susceptibilities still more I added
for good measure - "As far as I'm concerned you don't have to pay the
insurance when I croak - I'm only doing this to make you feel good. I'm
trying to help the world along, don't you see? You've got to live, haven't
you? Well, I'm just putting a little food in your mouth, that's all. If you
have anything else to sell, trot it out. I buy anything that sounds good.
I'm a buyer not a seller. I like to see people looking happy - that's why I
buy things. Now listen, how much did you say that would come to per week?
Fifty-seven cents? Fine. What's fifty-seven cents? You see that piano - that
comes to about 39 cents a week, I think. Look around you ... everything you
see costs so much a week. You say, if I should die, what then ? Do you
suppose I'm going to die on all these people? That would be a hell of a
joke. No, I'd rather have them come and take the things away - if I can't
pay for them, I mean..." He was fidgeting about and there was a rather
glassy stare in his eye, I thought. "Excuse me," I said, interrupting
myself, "but wouldn't you like to have a little drink - to wet the policy?"
He said he thought not, but I insisted, and besides, I hadn't signed the
papers yet and my urine would have to be examined and approved of and all
sorts of stamps and seals would have to be affixed -1 knew all that crap by
heart - so I thought we might have a little snifter first and in that way
protract the serious business, because honestly, buying insurance or buying
anything was a real pleasure to me and gave me the feeling that I was just
like every other citizen, a man, what! and not a monkey. So I got out a
bottle of sherry (which is all that was allowed me), and I poured out a
generous glassful for him, thinking to myself that it was fine to see the
sherry going because maybe the next time they'd buy something better for me.
"I used to sell insurance too once upon a time," I said, raising the glass
to my lips. "Sure, I can sell anything. The only thing is - I'm lazy. Take a
day like to-day - isn't it nicer to be indoors, reading a book or listening
to the phonograph? Why should I go out and hustle for an insurance company?
If I had been working to-day you wouldn't have caught me in -isn't that so?
No, I think it's better to take it easy and help people out when they come
along... like with you, for instance. It's much nicer to buy things than to
sell them, don't you think? If you have the money, of course! In this house
we don't need much money. As I was saying, the piano comes to about 39 cents
a week, or forty-two maybe, and the ..."
"Excuse me, Mr Miller," he interrupted, "but don't you think we ought
to get down to signing these papers?"
"Why, of course," I said cheerfully. "Did you bring them all with you?
Which one do you think we ought to sign first? By the way, you haven't got a
fountain pen you'd like to sell me, have you?"
"Just sign right here," he said, pretending to ignore my remarks. "And
here, that's it. Now then, Mr. Miller, I think I'll say good day - and
you'll be hearing from the company in a few days."
"Better make it sooner," I remarked, leading him to the door, "because
I might change my mind and commit suicide."
"Why, of course, why yes, Mr. Miller, certainly we will. Good day now,
good day!"
Of course the instalment plan breaks down eventually, even if you're an
assiduous buyer such as I was. I certainly did my best to keep the
manufacturers and the advertising men of America busy, but they were
disappointed in me it seems. Everybody was disappointed in me. .But there
was one man in particular who was more disappointed in me than any one and
that was a man who had really made an effort to befriend me and whom I had
let down. I think of him and the way he took me on as his assistant - so
readily and graciously - because later, when I was hiring and firing like a
42 horse calibre revolver, I was betrayed right and left myself, but by that
time I had become so inoculated that it didn't matter a damn. But this man
had gone out of his way to show me that he believed in me. He was the editor
of a catalogue for a great mail order house. It was an enormous compendium
of horse-shit which was put out once a year and which took the whole year to
make ready. I hadn't the slightest idea what it was all about and why I
dropped into his office that day I don't know, unless it was because I
wanted to get warm, as I had been knocking about the docks all day trying to
get a job as a checker or some damned thing. It was cosy in his office and I
made him a long speech so as to get thawed out. I didn't know what job to
ask for - just a job, I said. He was a sensitive man and very kind- hearted.
He seemed to guess that I was a writer, or wanted to be a writer, because
soon he was asking me what I liked to read and what was my opinion of this
writer and that writer. It just happened that I had a list of books in my
pocket - books I was searching for at the public library - and so I brought
it out and showed it to him. "Great Scott!" he exclaimed, "do you really
read these books?" I modestly shook my head in the affirmative, and then as
often happened to me when I was touched off by some silly remark like that,
I began to talk about Hamsun's Mysteries which I had just been reading. From
then on the man was like putty in my hands. When he asked me if I would like
to be his assistant he apologized for offering me such a lowly position; he
said I could take my time learning the ins-and-outs of the job, he was sure
it would be a cach(?) for me. And then he asked me if he couldn't
lend me some money, out of his own pocket until I got paid. Before I could
say yes or no he had fished out a twenty dollar bill and thrust it in my
hand. Naturally I was touched. I was ready to work like a son of a bitch for
him. Assistant editor - it sounded quite good, especially to the creditors
in the neighbourhood. And for a while I was so happy to be eating roast beef
and chicken and tenderloins of pork that I pretended I liked the job.
Actually it was difficult for me to keep awake. What I had to learn I had
learned in a week's time. And after that? After that I saw myself doing
penal servitude for life. In order to make the best of it I whiled away the
time writing stories and essays and long letters to my friends. Perhaps they
thought I was writing up new ideas for the company, because for quite a
while nobody paid any attention to me. I thought it was a wonderful job. I
had almost the whole day to myself, for my writing, having learned to
dispose of the company's work in about an hour's time. I was so enthusiastic
about my own private work that I gave orders to my underlings not to disturb
me except at stipulated moments. I was sailing along like a breeze, the
company paying me regularly and the slave-drivers doing the work I had
mapped out for them, when one day, just when I am in the midst of an
important essay on The Anti-Christ, a man whom I had never seen before walks
up to my desk, bends over my shoulder, and in a sarcastic tone of voice
begins to read aloud what I had just written. I didn't need to inquire who
he was or what he was up to - the only thought in my head was, and that I
repeated to myself frantically - Will I get an extra week's pay ? When it
came time to bid good-bye to my benefactor I felt a little ashamed of
myself, particularly when he said, right off the bat like - "I tried to get
you an extra week's pay but they wouldn't hear of it. I wish there was
something I could do for you - you're only standing in your own way, you
know. To tell the truth, I still have the greatest faith in you - but I'm
afraid you're going to have a hard time of it, for a while. You don't fit in
anywhere. Some day you'll make a great writer, I feel sure of it. Well,
excuse me," he added, shaking hands with me warmly, "I've got to see the
boss. Good luck to you!"
I felt a bit cut up about the incident. I.wished it had been possible
to prove to him then and there that his faith was justified. I wished I
could have justified myself before the whole world at that moment: I would
have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge if it would have convinced people that I
wasn't a heartless son of a bitch. I had a heart as big as a whale, as I was
soon to prove, but nobody was examining into my heart. Everybody was being
let down hard - not only the instalment companies, but the landlord, the
butcher, the baker, the gas, water and electricity devils, everybody. If
only I could get to believe in this business of work! To save my life I
couldn't see it. I could only see that people were working their balls off
because they didn't know any better. I thought of the speech I had made
which won me the job. In some ways I was very much like Herr Nagel myself.
No telling from minute to minute what I would do. No knowing whether I was a
monster or a saint Like so many wonderful men of our time. Herr Nagel was a
desperate man - and it was this very desperation which made him such a
likeable chap. Hamsun didn't know what to make of this character himself: he
knew he existed, and he knew that there was something more to him than a
mere buffoon and a mysrifier. I think he loved Herr Nagel more than any
other character he created. And why? Because Herr Nagel was the
unacknowledged saint which every artist is - the man who is ridiculed
because his solutions, which are truly profound, seem too simple for the
world. No man wants to be an artist - he is driven to it because the world
refuses to recognize his proper leadership. Work meant nothing to me,
because the real work to be done was being evaded. People regarded me as
lazy and shiftless, but on the contrary I was an exceedingly active
individual. Even if it was just hunting for a piece of tail, that was
something, and well worth while, especially if compared to other forms of
activity -such as making buttons or turning screws, or even removing
appendixes. And why did people listen to me so readily when I applied for a
job? Why did they find me entertaining? For the reason, no doubt, that I had
always spent my time profitably. I brought them gifts - from my hours at the
public library, from my idle ramblings through the streets, from my intimate
experiences with women, from my afternoons at the burlesque, from my visits
to the museum and the art galleries. Had I been a dud, just a poor honest
bugger who wanted to work his balls off for so much a week, they wouldn't
have offered me the jobs they did, nor would they have handed me cigars or
taken me to lunch or loaned me money as they frequently did. I must have had
something to offer which perhaps unknowingly they prized beyond horsepower
or technical ability. I didn't know myself what it was, because I had
neither pride, nor vanity, nor envy. About the big issues I was dear, but
confronted by the petty details of life I was bewildered. I had to witness
this same bewilderment on a colossal scale before I could grasp what it was
all about Ordinary men are often quicker in sizing up the practical
situation: their ego is commensurate with the demands made upon it: the
world is not very different from what they imagine it to be. But a man who
is completely out of step with the rest of the world is either suffering
from a colossal inflation of his ego or else the ego is so submerged as to
be practically non-existent. Herr Nagel had to dive off the deep end in
search of his true ego; his existence was a mystery, to himself and to every
one else. I couldn't afford to leave things hanging in suspense that way -
the mystery was too intriguing. Even if I had to rub myself like a cat
against every human being I encountered, I was going to get to the bottom of
it. Rub long enough and hard enough and the spark will come!
The hibernation of animals, the suspension of life practised by certain
low forms of life, the marvellous vitality of the bedbug which lies in wait
endlessly behind the wallpaper, the trance of the Yogi, the catalepsy of the
pathologic individual, the mystic's union with the cosmos, the immortality
of cellular life, all these things the artist learns in order to awaken the
world at the propitious moment. The artist belongs to the X root race of
man; he is the spiritual microbe, as it were, which carries over from one
root race to another. He is not crushed by misfortune, because he is not a
part of the physical, racial scheme of things. His appearance is always
synchronous with catastrophe and dissolution; he is the cyclical being which
lives in the epicycle. The experience which he acquires is never used for
personal ends; it serves the larger purpose to which he is geared. Nothing
is lost on him, however trifling. If he is interrupted for twenty-five years
in the reading of a book he can go on from the page where he left off as
though nothing had happened in between. Everything that happens in between,
which is "life" to most people, is merely an interruption in his forward
round. The eternality of his work, when he expresses himself, is merely the
reflection of the automatism of life in which he is obliged to lie dormant,
a sleeper on the back of sleep, waiting for the signal which will announce
the moment of birth. This is the big issue, and this was always dear to me,
even when I denied it. The dissatisfaction which drives one on from one word
to another, one creation to another, is simply a protest against the
futility of postponement. The more awake one becomes, an artistic microbe,
the less desire one has to do anything. Fully awake, everything is just and
there is no need to come out of the trance. Action, as expressed in creating
a work of art, is a concession to the automatic principle of death. Drowning
myself in the Gulf of Mexico I was able to partake of an active life which
would permit the real self to hibernate a until I was ripe to be born. I
understood it perfectly, though I acted blindly and confusedly. I swam back
to the stream of human activity until I got to the source of all action and
there muscled in, calling myself personnel director of a telegraph company,
and allowed the tide of humanity to wash over me like great white-capped
breakers. All this active life, preceding the final act of desperation, led
me from doubt to doubt, blinding me more and more to the real self which,
like a continent choked with the evidences of a great and thriving
civilization, had already sunk beneath the surface of the sea. The colossal
ego was submerged, and what people observed moving frantically above the
surface was the periscope of the soul searching for its target. Everything
that came within range had to be destroyed, if I were ever to rise again and
ride the waves. This monster which rose now and then to fix its target with
deadly aim, which dove again and roved and plundered ceaselessly would, when
the time came, rise for the last time to reveal itself as an ark, would
gather unto itself a pair of each kind and at last, when the floods abated,
would settle down on the summit of a lofty mountain peak thence to open wide
its doors and return to the world what had been preserved from the
catastrophe.
If I shudder now and then, when I think of my active life, if I have
nightmares, possibly it is because I think of all the men I robbed and
murdered in my day sleep. I did everything which my nature bade me to do.
Nature is eternally whispering in one's ear - "if you would survive you must
kill!" Being human, you kill not like the animal but automatically, and the
killing is disguised and its ramifications are endless, so that you kill
without even thinking about it, you kill without need. The men who are the
most honoured are the greatest killers. They believe that they are serving
their fellowmen, and they are sincere in believing so, but they are
heartless murderers and at moments, when they come awake, they realize their
crimes and perform frantic, quixotic acts of goodness in order to expiate
their guilt. The goodness of man stinks more than the evil which is in him,
for the goodness is not yet acknowledged, not an affirmation of the
conscious self. Being pushed over the precipice, it is easy at the last
moment to surrender all one's possessions, to turn and extend a last embrace
to all who are left behind. How are we to stop the blind rush? How are we to
stop the automatic process, each one pushing the other over the precipice?
As I sat at my desk, over which I had put up a sign reading "Do not
abandon all hope ye who enter here!" - as I sat there saying Yes, No, Yes,
No, I realized, with a despair that was turning to white frenzy, that I was
a puppet in whose hands society had placed a gatling gun. If I performed a
good deed it was no different, ultimately, than if I had performed a bad
deed. I was like an equals sign through which the algebraic swarm of
humanity was passing. I was a rather important, active equals sign, like a
general in time of war, but no matter how competent I were to become I could
never change into a plus or a minus sign. Nor could any one else, as far as
I could determine. Our whole life was built up on this principle of
equation. The integers had become symbols which were shuffled about in the
interests of death. Pity, despair, passion, hope, courage - these were the
temporal refractions caused by looking at equations from varying angles. To
stop the endless juggling by turning one's back on it, or by facing it
squarely and writing about it, would be no help either. In a hall of mirrors
there is no way to turn your back on yourself. I will not do this... I will
do some other thing I Very good. But can you do nothing at all? Can you stop
thinking about not doing anything? Can you stop dead, and without thinking,
radiate the truth which you know? That was the idea which lodged in the back
of my head and which burned and burned, and perhaps when I was most
expansive most radiant with energy, most sympathetic, most willing, helpful,
sincere, good, it was this fixed idea which was shining through, and
automatically I was saying - "why, don't mention it ... nothing at all, I
assure you ... no, please don't thank me. it's nothing," etc. etc. From
firing the gun so many hundreds of times a day perhaps I didn't even notice
the detonations any more; perhaps I thought I was opening pigeon traps and
filling the sky with milky white fowl. Did you ever see a synthetic monster
on the screen, a Frankenstein realized in flesh and blood? Can you imagine
how he might be trained to pull a trigger and see pigeons flying at the same
time? Frankenstein is not a myth: Frankenstein is a very real creation born
of the personal experience of a sensitive human being. The monster is always
more real when it does not assume the proportions of flesh and blood. The
monster of the screen is nothing compared to the monster of the imagination;
even the existent pathologic monsters who find their way into the police
station are but feeble demonstrations of the monstrous reality which the
pathologist lives with. But to be the monster and the pathologist at the
same time - that is reserved for certain species of men who, disguised as
artists, are supremely aware that sleep is an even greater danger than
insomnia. In order not to fall asleep, in order not to become victims of
that insomnia which is called "living", they resort to the drug of putting
words together endlessly. This is not an automatic process, they say,
because there is always present the illusion that they can stop it at will.
But they cannot stop; they have only succeeded in creating an illusion,
which is perhaps a feeble something, but it is far from being wide awake and
neither active nor inactive. I wanted to be wide awake without talking or
writing about it, in order to accept life absolutely. I mentioned the
archaic men in the remote places of the world with who, I was communicating
frequently. Why did I think these "savages" more capable of understanding me
than the men and women who surrounded me? Was I crazy to believe such a
thing? I don't think so in the least. These "savages" are the degenerate
remnants of earlier races of man who, I believe, must have had a greater
hold on reality. The immortality of the race is constantly before oar eyes
in these specimens of the past who linger on in withered splendour. Whether
the human race is immortal or not is not my concern, but the vitality of the
race does mean something to me, and that it should be active or dormant
means even more. As the vitality of the new race banks down the vitality of
the old races manifests itself to the waking mind with greater and greater
significance. The vitality of the old races lingers on even in death, but
the vitality of the new race which is about to die seems already non-
existent. If a man were taking a swarming hive of bees to the river to drown
them... That was the image I carried about in me. If only I were the man,
and not the bee! In some vague, inexplicable way I knew that I was the man,
that I would not be drowned in the hive, like the others. Always, when we
came forwards in a group I was signalled to stand apart; from birth I was
favoured that way, and, no matter what tribulations I went through, I knew
they were not fatal or lasting. Also, another strange thing took place in me
whenever I was called to stand forth. I knew that I was superior to the man
who was summoning me! The tremendous humility which I practised was not
hypocritical but a condition provoked by the realization of the fateful
character of the situation. The intelligence which I possessed, even as a
stripling, frightened me; it was the intelligence of a "savage", which is
always superior to that of civilized men in that it is more adequate to the
exigencies of circumstance. It is a life intelligence, even though life has
seemingly passed them by. I felt almost as if I had been shot forward into a
round of existence which for the rest of mankind had not yet attained its
full rhythm. I was obliged to mark time if I were to remain with them and
not be shunted off to another sphere of existence. On the other hand, I was
in many ways lower than the human beings about me. It was as though I had
come out of the fires of hell not entirely purged. I had still a tail and a
pair of horns, and when my passions were aroused I breathed a sulphurous
poison which was annihilating. I was always called a "lucky devil". The good
that happened to me was called "luck", and the evil was always regarded as a
result of my shortcomings. Rather, as the fruit of my blindness. Rarely did
any one ever spot the evil in me! I was as adroit, in this respect, as the
devil himself. But that I was frequently blind, everybody could see that.
And at such times I was left alone, shunned, like the devil himself. Then I
left the world, returned to the fires of hell - voluntarily. These comings
and goings are as real to me, more real, in fact, than anything that
happened in between. The friends who think they know me know nothing about
me for the reason that the real me changed hands countless times. Neither
the men who thanked me, nor the men who cursed me, knew with whom they were
dealing. Nobody ever got on to a solid footing with me, because I was
constantly liquidating my personality. I was keeping what is called the
"personality" in abeyance for the moment when, leaving it to coagulate, it
would adopt a proper human rhythm. I was hiding my face until the moment
when I would find myself in step with the world. All this was, of course, a
mistake. Even the role of artist is worth adopting, while marking time.
Action is important, even if it entails futile activity. One should not say
Yes, No, Yes, No, even seated in the highest place. One should not be
drowned in the human tidal wave, even for the sake of becoming a Master. One
must beat with his own rhythm - at any price. I accumulated thousands of
years of experience in a few short years, but the experience was wasted
because I had no need of it. I had already been crucified and marked by the
cross; I had been born free of the need to suffer - and yet I knew no other
way to struggle forward than to repeat the drama. All my intelligence was
against it. Suffering is futile, my intelligence told me over and over, but
I went on suffering voluntarily. Suffering has never taught me a thing; for
others it may still be necessary, but for me it is nothing more than an
algebraic demonstration of spiritual inadaptability. The whole drama which
the man of today is acting out through suffering does not exist for me: it
never did, actually. All my Calvaries were rosy crucifixions,
pseudo-tragedies to keep the fires of hell burning brightly for the real
sinners who are in danger of being forgotten.
Another thing ... the mystery which enveloped my behaviour grew deeper
the nearer I came to the circle of uterine relatives. The mother from whose
loins I sprang was a complete stranger to me. To begin with, after giving
birth to me she gave birth to my sister, whom I usually refer to as my
brother. My sister was a sort of harmless monster, an angel who had been
given the body of an idiot. It gave me a strange feeling, as a boy, to be
growing up and developing side by side with this being who was doomed to
remain all her life a mental dwarf. It was impossible to be a brother to her
because it was impossible to regard this atavistic hulk of a body as a
"sister". She would have functioned perfectly, I imagine, among the
Australian primitives. She might even have been raised to power and eminence
among them, for, as I said, she was the essence of goodness, she knew no
evil. But so far as living the civilized life goes she was helpless; she not
only had no desire to kill but she had no desire to thrive at the expense of
others. She was incapacitated for work, because even if they had been able
to train her to make caps for high explosives, for example, she might
absent-mindedly throw her wages in the river on the way home or she might
give them to a beggar in the street. Often in my presence she was whipped
like a dog for having performed some beautiful act of grace in her
absent-mindedness, as they called it. Nothing was worse, I learned as a
child, than to do a good deed without reason. I had received the same
punishment as my sister, in the beginning, because I too had a habit of
giving things away, especially new things which had just been given me. I
had even received a bearing once, at the age of five, for having advised my
mother to cut a wart off her finger. She had asked me what to do about it
one day and, with my limited knowledge of medicine, I told her to cut it off
with scissors, which she did, like an idiot. A few days later she got blood
poisoning and then she got hold of me and she said - "you told me to cut it
off, didn't you?" and she gave me a sound thrashing. From that day on I knew
that I was born in the wrong household. From that day on I learned like
lightning. Talk about adaptation! By the time I was ten I had lived out the
whole theory of evolution. And there I was, evolving through all the phases
of animal life and yet chained to this creature called my "sister" who was
evidently a primitive being and who would never, even at the age of ninety,
arrive at a comprehension of the alphabet Instead of growing up like a
stalwart tree I began to lean to one side, in complete defiance of the law
of gravity. Instead of shooting out limbs and leaves I grew windows and
turrets. The whole being, as it grew, was turning into stone, and the higher
I shot up the more I defied the law of gravity. I was a phenomenon in the
midst of the landscape, but one which attracted people and elicited praise.
If the mother who bore us had only made another effort perhaps a marvellous
white buffalo might have been born and the three of us might have been
permanently installed in a museum and protected for life. The conversations
which took place between the leaning tower of Pisa, the whipping post, the
snorting machine and the pterodactyl in human flesh were, to say the least,
a bit queer. Anything might be the subject of conversation - a bread crumb
which the "sister" had overlooked in brushing the tablecloth or Joseph's
coat of many colours which, in the old man's tailoring brain, might have
been either double-breasted or cutaway or frock. If I came from the ice
pond, where I had been skating all afternoon, the important thing was not
the ozone which I had breathed free of charge, nor the geometric
convolutions which were strengthening my muscles, but the little spot of
rust under the clamps which, if not rubbed off immediately, might
deteriorate the whole skate and bring about the dissolution of some
pragmatic value which was incomprehensible to my prodigal turn of thought.
This little rust spot, to take a trifling example, might entrain the most
hallucinating results. Perhaps the "sister", in searching for the kerosene
can, might overturn the jar of prunes which were being stewed and thus
endanger all our lives by robbing us of the required calories in the
morrow's meal. A severe beating would have to be given, not in anger,
because that would disturb the digestive apparatus, but silently and
efficiently, as a chemist would beat up the white of an egg in preparation
for a minor analysis. But the "sister", not understanding the prophylactic
nature of the punishment, would give vent to the most bloodcurdling screams
and this would so affect the old man that he would .go out for a walk and
return two or three hours later blind drunk and, what was worse, scratching
a little paint off the rolling doors in his blind staggers. The little piece
of paint that had been chipped off would bring on a battle royal which was
very bad for my dream life, because in my dream life I frequently changed
places with my sister, accepting the tortures inflicted upon her and
nourishing them with my supersensitive brain. It was in these dreams, always
accompanied by the sound of glass breaking, of shrieks, curses, groans and
sobs, that I gathered an unformulated knowledge of the ancient mysteries, of
the rites of initiation, of the transmigration of souls and so on. It might
begin with a scene from real life - the sister standing by the blackboard in
the kitchen, the mother towering over her with a ruler, saying two and two
makes how much? and the sister screaming five. Bang! no, seven. Bang! no,
thirteen, eighteen as twenty! I would be sitting at the table, doing my
lessons, just in real life during these scenes, when by a slight twist or
squirm, perhaps as I saw the ruler come down on the sister's face, suddenly
I would be in another realm where glass was unknown, as it was unknown to
the Kickapoos or the Lenni-Lenapi. The faces of those about me were familiar
- they were my uterine relatives who, for some mysterious reason, failed to
recognize me in this new ambiance. They were garbed in black and the colour
of their skin was ash grey, like that of the Tibetan devils. They were all
fitted out with knives and other instruments of torture; they belonged to
the caste of sacrificial butchers. I seemed to have absolute liberty and the
authority of a god, and yet by some capricious turn of events the end would
be that I'd be lying on the sacrificial block and one of my charming uterine
relatives would be bending over me with a gleaming knife to cut out my
heart. In sweat and terror I would begin to recite "my lessons" in a high,
screaming voice, faster and faster, as I felt the knife searching for my
heart. Two and two is four, five and five is ten, earth, air, fire, water,
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, Meocene, Pleocene,
Eocene, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, Asia, Africa, Europe,
Australia, red, blue, yellow, the sorrel, the persimmon, the pawpaw, the
catalpa .. .faster and faster... Odin, Wotan, Parsifal, King Alfred,
Frederick the Great, the Hanseatic League, the Battle of Hastings,
Thermopylae, 1492,1786, 18l2, Admiral Farragut, Pickett's charge. The Light
Brigade, we are gathered here today, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not,
one and indivisible, no, 16, no, 27, help! murder! police! - and yelling
louder and louder and going faster and faster I go completely off my nut and
there is no more pain, no more terror, even though they are piercing me
everywhere with knives. Suddenly I am absolutely calm and the body which is
lying on the block, which they are still gouging with glee and ecstasy,
feels nothing because I, the owner of it, have escaped. I have become a
tower of stone which leans over the scene and watches with scientific
interest. I have only to succumb to the law of gravity and I will fall on
them and obliterate them. But I do not succumb to the law of gravity because
I am too fascinated by the horror of it all. I am so fascinated, in fact,
that I grow more and more windows. And as the light penetrates the stone
interior of my being I can feel that my roots, which are in the earth, are
alive and that I shall one day be able to remove myself at will from this
trance in which I am fixed.
So much for the dream, in which I am helplessly rooted. But in
actuality, when the dear uterine relatives come, I am as free as a bird and
darting to and fro like a magnetic needle. If they ask me a question I give
them five answers, each of which is better than the other; if they ask me to
play a waltz I play a double-breasted sonata for the left hand; if they ask
me to help myself to another leg of chicken I dean up the plate, dressing
and all; if they urge me to go out and play in the street I go out and in my
enthusiasm I cut my cousin's head open with a tin can: if they threaten to
give me a thrashing I say go to it, I don't mind! If they pat me on the head
for my good progress at school I spit on the floor to show that I have still
something to learn. I do everything they wish me to do plus. If they wish me
to be quiet and say nothing I become as quiet as a rock: I don't hear when
they speak to me, I don't move when I'm touched, I don't cry when I'm
pinched, I don't budge when I'm pushed. If they complain that I'm stubborn I
become as pliant and yielding as rubber. If they wish me to get fatigued so
that I will not display too much energy I let them give me all kinds of work
to do and I do the jobs so thoroughly that I collapse on the floor finally
like a sack of wheat. If they wish me to be reasonable I become
ultra-reasonable, which drives them crazy. If they wish me to obey I obey to
the letter, which causes endless confusion. And all this because the
molecular life of brother-and-sister is incompatible with the atomic weights
which have been allotted us. Because she doesn't grow at all I grow like a
mushroom; because she has no personality I become a colossus; because she is
free of evil I become a thirty-two branched candelabra of evil; because she
demands nothing of any one I demand everything; because she inspires
ridicule everywhere I inspire fear and respect; because she is humiliated
and tortured I wreak vengeance upon every one, friend and foe alike; because
she is helpless I make myself all-powerful. The gigantism from which I
suffered was simply the result of an effort to wipe out the little stain of
rust which had attached itself to the family skate, so to speak. That little
stain of rust under the clamps made me a champion skater. It made me skate
so fast and furiously that even when the ice had melted I was still skating,
skating through the mud, through asphalt, through brooks and rivers and
melon patches and theories of economics and so forth. I could skate through
hell, I was that fast and nimble.
But all this fancy skating was of no use - Father Coxcox, the
pan-American Noah, was always calling me back to the Ark. Every time I
stopped skating there was a cataclysm - the earth opened up and swallowed
me. I was a brother to every man and at the same time a traitor to myself. I
made the most astounding sacrifices, only to find that they were of no
value. Of what use was it to prove that I could be what was expected of me
when I did not want to be any of these things? Every time you come to the
limit of what is demanded of you, you are faced with the same problem - to
be yourself! And with the first step you make in this direction you realize
that there is neither plus nor minus; you throw the skates away and swim.
There is no suffering any more because there is nothing which can threaten
your security. And there is no desire to be of help to others even, because
why rob them of a privilege which must be earned? Life stretches out from
moment to moment in stupendous infinitude. Nothing can be more real than
what you suppose it to be. Whatever you think the cosmos to be it is and it
could not possibly be anything else as long as you are you and I am I. You
live in the fruits of your action and your action is the harvest of your
thought. Thought and action are one, because swimming you are in it and of
it, and it is everything you desire it to be, no more, no less. Every stroke
counts for eternity. The heating and cooling system is one system, and
Cancer is separated from Capricorn only by an imaginary line. You don't
become ecstatic and you are not plunged into violent grief; you don't pray
for rain, neither do you dance a jig. You live like a happy rock in the
midst of the ocean: you are fixed while everything about you is in turbulent
motion. You are fixed in a reality which permits the thought that nothing is
fixed, that even the happiest and mightiest rock will one day be utterly
dissolved and fluid as the ocean from which it was born.
This is the musical life which I was approaching by first skating like
a maniac through all the vestibules and corridors which lead from the outer
to the inner. My struggles never brought me near it, nor did my furious
activity, nor my rubbing elbows with humanity. All that was simply a
movement from vector to vector in a circle which however the perimeter
expanded, remained withal parallel to the realm I speak of. The wheel of
destiny can be transcended at any moment because at every point of its
surface it touches the real world and only a spark of illumination is
necessary to bring about the miraculous, to transform the skater to a
swimmer and the swimmer to a rock. The rock is merely an image of the act
which stops the futile rotation of the wheel and plunges the being into full
consciousness. And full consciousness is indeed like an inexhaustible ocean
which gives itself to sun and moon and also includes the sun and moon.
Everything which is is born out of the limitless ocean of light - even the
night.
Sometimes, in the ceaseless revolutions of the wheel, I caught a
glimpse of the nature of the jump which it was necessary to make. To jump
dear of the clockwork - that was the liberating thought. To be something
more, something different, than the most brilliant maniac of the earth 1 The
story of man on earth bored me. Conquest, even the conquest of evil, bored
me. To radiate goodness is marvellous, because it is tonic, invigorating,
vitalizing. But just to be is still more marvellous, because it is endless
and requires no demonstration. To be is music, which is a profanation of
silence in the interests of silence, and therefore beyond good and evil.
Music is the manifestation of action without activity. It is the pure act of
creation swimming on its own bosom. Music neither goads nor defends, neither
seeks nor explains. Music is the noisdess sound made by the swimmer in the
ocean of consdousness. It is a reward which can only be given by oneself. It
is the gift of the god which one is because he has ceased thinking about
god. It is an augur of the God which every one will become in due time, when
all that is will be beyond imagination.
CODA
Not long ago I was walking the streets of New York. Dear old Broadway.
It was night and the sky was an Oriental blue, as blue as the gold in the
ceiling of the Pagode, rue de Babylone, when the machine starts clicking. I
was passing exactly below the place where we first met. I stood there a
moment looking up at the red lights in the windows. The music sounded as it
always sounded - light, peppery, enchanting. I was alone and there were
millions of people around me. It came over me, as I stood there, that I
wasn't thinking of her any more; I was thinking of this book which I am
writing, and the book had become more important to me than her, than all
that had happened to us. Will this book be the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, so help me God? Plunging into the crowd again I
wrestled with this question of "truth". For years I have been trying to tell
this story and always the question of truth has weighed upon me like a
nightmare. Time and again I have related to others the circumstances of our
life, and I have always told the truth. But the truth can also be a lie. The
truth is not enough. Truth is only the core of a totality which is
inexhaustible.
I remember the first time we were ever separated this idea of totality
seized me by the hair. She pretended, when she left me, or maybe she
believed it herself, that it was necessary for our welfare. I knew in my
heart that she was trying to be free of me, but I was too cowardly to admit
it to myself. But when I realized that she could do without me, even for a
limited time, the truth which I had tried to shut out began to grow with
alarming rapidity. It was more painful than anything I had ever experienced
before, but it was also healing. When I was completely emptied, when the
loneliness had reached such a point that it could not be sharpened any
further, I suddenly felt that, to go on living, this intolerable truth had
to be incorporated into something greater than the frame of personal
misfortune. I felt that I had made an imperceptible switch into another
realm, a realm of tougher, more elastic fibre, which the most horrible truth
was powerless to destroy. I sat down to write her a letter telling her that
I was so miserable over the thought of losing her that I had decided to
begin a book about her, a book which would immortalize her. It would be a
book, I said, such as no one had ever seen before. I rambled on
ecstatically, and in the midst of it I suddenly broke off to ask myself why
I was so happy.
Passing beneath the dance hall, thinking again of this book, I realized
suddenly that our life had come to an end: I realized that the book I was
planning was nothing more than a tomb in which to bury her - and the me
which had belonged to her. That was some time ago, and ever since I have
been trying to write it. Why is it so difficult? Why? Because the idea of an
"end" is intolerable to me.
Truth lies in this knowledge of the end which is ruthless and
remorseless. We can know the truth and accept it, or we can refuse the
knowledge of it and neither die nor be born again. In this manner it is
possible to live forever, a negative life as solid and complete, or as
dispersed and fragmentary, as the atom. And if we pursue this road far
enough, even this atomic eternity can yield to nothingness and the universe
itself fall apart.
For years now I have been trying to tell this story; each time I have
started out I have chosen a different route. I am like an explorer who,
wishing to circumnavigate the globe, deems it unnecessary to carry even a
compass. Moreover, from dreaming over it so long, the story itself has come
to resemble a vast, fortified city, and I who dream it over and over, am
outside the city, a wanderer, arriving before one gate after another too
exhausted to enter. And as with the wanderer, this city in which my story is
situated eludes me perpetually. Always in sight it nevertheless remains
unattainable, a sort of ghostly citadel floating in the clouds. From the
soaring, crenellated battlements flocks of huge white geese swoop down in
steady, wedge-shaped formation. With the tips of their blue-white wings they
brush the dreams that dazzle my vision. My feet move confusedly; no sooner
do I gain a foothold than I am lost again. I wander aimlessly, trying to
gain a solid, unshakeable foothold whence I can command a view of my life,
but behind me there lies only a welter of crisscrossed tracks, a groping,
confused encircling, the spasmodic gambit of the chicken whose head has just
been lopped off.
Whenever I try to explain to myself the peculiar pattern which my life
has taken, when I reach back to the first cause, as it were, I think
inevitably of the girl I first loved. It seems to me that everything dates
from that aborted affair. A strange, masochistic affair it was, ridiculous
and tragic at the same time. Perhaps I had the pleasure of kissing her two
or three times, the sort of kiss one reserves for a goddess. Perhaps I saw
her alone several times. Certainly she could never have dreamed that for
over a year I walked past her home every night hoping to catch a glimpse of
her at the window. Every night after dinner I would get up from the table
and take the long route which led to her home. She was never at the window
when I passed and I never had the courage to stand in front of the house and
wait. Back and forth I passed, back and forth, but never hide nor hair of
her. Why didn't I write her? Why didn't I call her up? Once I remember
summoning enough pluck to invite her to the theatre. I arrived at her home
with a bunch of violets, the first and only time I ever bought flowers for a
woman. As we were leaving the theatre the violets dropped from her corsage,
and in my confusion I stepped on them. I begged her to leave them there, but
she insisted on gathering them up. I was thinking how awkward I was - it was
only long afterwards that I recalled the smile she had given me as she
stooped down to pick up the violets.
It was a complete fiasco. In the end I ran away. Actually I was running
away from another woman, but the day before leaving town I decided to see
her once again. It was midaftemoon and she came out to talk to me in the
street, in the little areaway which was fenced on". She was already engaged
to another man; she pretended to be happy about it but I could see, blind as
I was, that she wasn't as happy as she pretended to be. If I had only said
the word I am sure she would have dropped the other fellow; perhaps she
would even have gone away with me. I preferred to punish myslef. I said
goodbye nonchalantly and I went down the street like a dead man. The next
morning I was bound for the Coast, determined to start a new life.
The new life was also a fiasco. I ended up on a ranch in Chula Vista,
the most miserable man that ever walked the earth. There was this girl I
loved and there was the other woman, for whom I felt only a profound pity. I
had been living with her for two years, this other woman, but it seemed like
a lifetime. I was twenty-one and she admitted to be thirty-six. Every time I
looked at her I said to myself - when I am thirty she will be forty-five,
when I am forty she will be fifty-five, when I am fifty she will be
sixty-five. She had fine wrinkles under the eyes, laughing wrinkles, but
wrinkles just the same. When I kissed her they magnified a dozen times. She
laughed easily, but her eyes were sad, terribly sad. They were Armenian
eyes. Her hair, which had been red once, was now a peroxide blonde.
Otherwise she was adorable - a Venusian body, a Venusian soul, loyal
lovable, grateful, everything a woman should be, except that she was fifteen
years older. The fifteen years difference drove me crazy. When I went out
with her I thought only - how will it be ten years hence? Or else, what age
does she seem to have now? Do I look old enough for her? Once we got back to
the house it was all right. Climbing the stairs I would run my fingers up
her crotch, which used to make her whinny like a horse. If her son, who was
almost my age, were in bed we would dose the doors and lock ourselves in the
kitchen. She'd lie on the narrow kitchen table and I'd slough it into her.
It was marvellous. And what made it more marvellous was that with each
performance I would say to myself - This is the last time ... tomorrow I
will beat it! And then, since she was the janitress, I would go down to the
cellar and roll the ash barrels out for her. In the morning, when the son
had left for work, I would climb up to the roof and air the bedding. Both
she and the son had T.B.... Sometimes there were no table bouts. Sometimes
the hopelessness of it all got me by the throat and I would put on my things
and go for a walk. Now and then I forgot to return. And when I did that I
was more miserable than ever, because I knew that she would be waiting for
me with those large sorrowful eyes. I'd go back to her like a man who had a
sacred duty to perform. I'd lie down on the bed and let her caress me; I'd
study the wrinkles under her eyes and the roots of her hair which were
turning red. Lying there like that, I would often think about the other one,
the one I loved, would wonder if she were lying down for it too, or... Those
long walks I took 365 days of the year! -1 would go over them in my mind
lying beside the other woman. How many times since have I relived these
walks! The dreariest, bleakest, ugliest streets man ever created. In anguish
I relive these walks, these streets, these first smashed hopes. The window
is there, but no Melisande; the garden too is there, but no sheen of gold.
Pass and repass, the window always vacant. The evening star hangs low;
Tristan appears, then Fidelio, and then Oberon. The hydra-headed dog barks
with all his mouths and though there are no swamps I hear the frogs croaking
everywhere. Same houses, same car-lines, same everything. She is hiding
behind the curtain, she is waiting for me to pass, she is doing this or
doing that... but she is not there, never, never, never. Is it a grand opera
or is it a hurdygurdy playing? It is Amato bursting his golden lung; it is
the Rubaiyat, it is Mount Everest, it is a moonless night, it is a sob at
dawn, it is a boy making believe, it is Puss in the Boot, it is Mauna Loa,
it is fox or astrakhan, it is of no stuff and no time, it is endless and it
begins over and over, under the heart, in the back of the throat, in the
soles of the feet, and why not just once, just once, for the love of Christ,
just a shadow or a rustle of the curtain, or a breath on the window-pane,
something once, if only a lie, something to stop the pain, to stop this
walking up and down ... Walking homeward. Same houses, same lamp posts, same
everything. I walk past my own home, past the cemetery, past the gas tanks,
past the car barns, past the reservoir, out into the open country. I sit
beside the road with my head in my hands and sob. Poor bugger that I am, I
can't contract my heart enough to burst the veins. I would like to suffocate
with grief but instead I give birth to a rock.
Meanwhile the other one is waiting. I can see her again as she sat on
the low stoop waiting for. me, her eyes large and dolorous, her face pale
and trembling with eagerness. Pity I always thought it was that brought me
back, but now as I walk towards her and see the look in her eyes I don't
know any more what it is, only that we will go inside and lie together and
she will get up half weeping, half laughing, and she will grow very silent
and watch me, study me as I move about, and never ask me what is torturing
me, never, never, because that is the one thing she fears, the one thing she
dreads to know. I don't love you! Can't she hear me screaming it? I don't
love you! Over and over I yell it, with lips tight, with hatred in my heart,
with despair, with hopeless rage. But the words never leave my lips. I look
at her and I am tongue-tied. I can't do it ... Time, time, endless time on
our hands and nothing to fill it but lies.
Well, I don't want to rehearse the whole of my life leading up to the
fatal moment - it is too long and too painful. Besides, did my life really
lead up to this culminating moment? I doubt it. I think there were
innumerable moments when I had the chance to make a beginning, but I lacked
the strength and the faith. On the night in question I deliberately walked
out on myself: I walked right out of the old life and into the new. There
wasn't the slightest effort involved. I was thirty then. I had a wife and
child and what is called a "responsible" position. These are the facts and
facts mean nothing. The truth is my desire was so great it became a reality.
At such a moment what a man does is of no great importance, it's what he is
that counts. It's at such a moment that a man becomes an angel. That is
precisely what happened to me: I became an angel. It is not the purity of an
angel which is so valuable, as the fact it can fly. An angel can break the
pattern anywhere at any moment and find its heaven; it has the power to
descend into the lowest matter and to extricate itself at will. The night in
question I understood it perfectly. I was pure and inhuman, I was detached,
I had wings. I was depossessed of the past and I had no concern about the
future. I was beyond ecstasy. When I left the office I folded my wings and
hid them beneath my coat.
The dance hall was just opposite the side entrance of the theatre where
I used to sit in the afternoons instead of looking for work. It was a street
of theatres and I used to sit there for hours at a time dreaming the most
violent dreams. The whole theatrical life of New York was concentrated in
that one street, so it seemed. It was Broadway, it was success, fame,
glitter, paint, the asbestos curtain and the hole in the curtain. Sitting on
the steps of the theatre I used to stare at the dance hall opposite, at the
string of red lanterns which even in the summer afternoons were lit up. In
every window there was a spinning ventilator which seemed to waft the music
into the street, where it was broken by the jangled din of traffic. Opposite
the other side of the dance hall was a comfort station and here too I used
to sit now and then, hoping either to make a woman or make a touch. Above
the comfort station, on the street level, was a kiosk with foreign papers
and magazines; the very sight of these papers, of the strange languages in
which they were printed, was sufficient to dislocate me for the day.
Without the slightest premeditation I climbed the stairs to the dance
hall, went directly to the little window of the booth where Nick, the Greek,
sat with a roll of tickets in front of him. Like the urinal below and the
steps of the theatre, this hand of the Greek now seems to me a separate and
detached thing - the enormous, hairy hand of an ogre borrowed from some
horrible Scandinavian fairy-tale. It was the hand which spoke to me always,
the hand which said "Miss Mara will not be here tonight," or "Yes, Miss Mara
is coming late tonight." It was this hand which I dreamt of as a child when
I slept in the bedroom with the barred window. In my fevered sleep suddenly
this window would light up, to reveal the ogre clutching at the bars. Night
after night the hairy monster visited me, clutching at the bars and gnashing
its teeth, I would awake in a cold sweat, the house dark, the room
absolutely silent
Standing at the edge of the dance floor I notice her coming towards me;
she is coming with sails spread, the large full face beautifully balanced on
the long, columnar neck. I see a woman perhaps eighteen, perhaps thirty,
with blue-black hair and a large white face, a full white face in which the
eyes shine brilliantly. She has on a tailored blue suit of duveteen. I
remember distinctly now the fulness other body, and that her hair was fine
and straight, parted on the side, like a man's. I remember the smile she
gave me - knowing, mysterious, fugitive - a smile that sprang up suddenly,
like a puff of wind.
The whole being was concentrated in the face. I could have taken just
the head and walked home with it; I could have put it beside me at night, on
a pillow, and made love to it. The mouth and the eyes, when they opened up,
the whole being glowed from them. There was an illumination which came from
some unknown source, from a centre hidden deep in the earth. I could think
of nothing but the face, the strange, womb-like quality of the smile, the
engulfing immediacy of it. The smile was so painfully swift and fleeting
that it was like the flash of a knife. This smile, this face, was borne
aloft on a long white neck, the sturdy, swan-like neck of the medium -and of
the lost and the damned.
I stand on the comer under the red lights, waiting for her to come
down. It is about two in the morning and she is signing off. I am standing
on Broadway with a flower in my buttonhole, feeling absolutely clean and
alone. Almost the whole evening we have been talking about Strindberg, about
a character of his named Henriette. I listened with such tense alertness
that I fell into a trance. It was as if, with the opening phrase, we had
started on a race - in opposite directions. Henriette! Almost immediately
the name was mentioned she began to talk about herself without ever quite
losing hold of Henriette. Henriette was attached to her by a long, invisible
string which she manipulated imperceptibly with one finger, like the
street-hawker who stands a little removed from the black doth, on the
sidewalk, apparently indifferent to the little mechanism which is jiggling
on the doth, but betraying himself by the spasmodic movement of the little
finger to which the black thread is attached. Henriette is me, my real self,
she seemed to be saying. She wanted me to believe that Henriette was really
the incarnation of evil. She said it so naturally, so innocendy, with an
almost subhuman candour - how was I to believe that she meant it? I could
only smile, as though to show her I was convinced.
Suddenly I fed her coming. I turn my head. Yes, there she is coming
full on, the sails spread, the eyes glowing. For the first time I see now
what a carriage she has. She comes forward like a bird, a human bird wrapped
in a big soft fur. The engine is going full steam: I want to shout, to give
a blast that will make the whole world cock its ears. What a walk! It's not
a walk, it's a glide. Tall, stately, full-bodied, self-possessed, she cuts
the smoke and jazz and red-light glow like the queen mother of all the
slippery Babylonian whores. On the comer of Broadway just opposite the
comfort station, this is happening. Broadway - it's her realm. This is
Broadway, this is New York, this is America. She's America on foot, winged
and sexed. She is the lubet, the abominate and the sublimate - with a dash
of hydrochloric add, nitto-glycerine, laudanum and powdered onyx. Opulence
she has, and magnificence: it's America right or wrong, and the ocean on
other side. For the first time in my life the whole continent hits me full
force, hits me between the eyes. This is America, buffaloes or no buffaloes,
America the emery wheel of hope and disillusionment. Whatever made America
made her, bone, blood, muscle, eyeball, gait, rhythm; poise; confidence;
brass and hollow gut. She's almost on top of me, the full face gleaming like
calcium. The big soft fur is slipping from her shoulder. She doesn't notice
it. She doesn't seem to care if her clothes should drop off. She doesn't
give a fuck about anything. It's America moving like a streak of lightning
towards the glass warehouse of red-blooded hysteria. Amurrica, fur or no
fur, shoes or no shoes. Amurrica C.O.D. And scram, you bastards, before we
plug you! It's got me in the guts, I'm quaking. Something's coming to me and
there's no dodging it. She's coming head on, through the plate-glass window.
If she would only stop a second, if she would only let me be for just one
moment. But no, not a single moment does she grant me. Swift, ruthless,
imperious, like Fate itself she is on me, a sword cutting me through and
through...
She has me by the hand, she holds it tight. I walk beside her without
fear. Inside me the stars are twinkling; inside me a great blue vault where
a moment ago the engines were pounding furiously.
One can wait a whole lifetime for a moment like this. The woman whom
you never hoped to meet now sits before you, and she talks and looks exactly
like the person you dreamed about. But strangest of all is that you never
realized before that you had dreamed about her. Your whole past is like a
long sleep which would have been forgotten had there been no dream. And the
dream too might have been forgotten had there been no memory, but
remembrance is there in the blood and the blood is like an ocean in which
everything is washed away but that which is new and more substantial even
than life: REALITY.
We arc seated in a little booth in the Chinese restaurant across the
way. Out of the comer of my eye I catch the flicker of the illuminated
letters running up and down the sky. She is still talking about Henriette,
or maybe it is about herself. Her little black bonnet, her bag and fur are
lying beside her on the bench. Every few minutes she lights a fresh
cigarette which bums away as she talks. There is no beginning nor end; it
spurts out other like a flame and consumes everything within reach. No
knowing how or where she began. Suddenly she is in the midst of a long
narrative, a fresh one, but it is always the same. Her talk is as formless
as dream: there are no grooves, no walls, no exits, no stops. I have the
feeling of being drowned in a deep mesh of words, of crawling painfully back
to the top of the net, of looking into her eyes and trying to find there
some reflection of the significance of her words - but I can find nothing,
nothing except my own image wavering in a bottomless well. Though she speaks
of nothing but herself I am unable to form the slightest image of her being.
She leans forward, with elbows on the table, and her words inundate me; wave
after wave rolling over me and yet nothing builds up inside me, nothing that
I can seize with my mind.''She's telling me about her father, about the
strange life they led at the edge of Sherwood Forest where she was born, or
at least she was telling me about this, but now it's about Henriette again,
or is it Dostoievski? - I'm not sure - but anyway, suddenly I realize that
she's not talking about any of these any more but about a man who took her
home one night and as they stood on the stoop saying goodnight he suddenly
reached down and pulled up her dress. She pauses a moment as though to
reassure me that this is what she means to talk about. I look at her
bewilderingly. I can't imagine by what route we got to this point. What man?
What had he been saying to her? I let her continue, thinking that she will
probably come back to it, but no, she's ahead of me again and now it seems
the man, this man, is already dead; a suicide, and she is trying to make me
understand that it was an awful blow to her, but what she really seems to
convey is that she is proud of the fact that she drove a man to suicide. I
can't picture the man as dead; I can only think of him as he stood on her
stoop lifting her dress, a man without a name but alive and perpetually
fixed in the act of bending down to lift up her dress. There is another man
who was her father and I see him with a string of race horses, or sometimes
in a little inn just outside Vienna; rather I see him on the roof of the inn
flying kites to while the time away. And between this man who was her father
and the man with whom she was madly in love, I can make no separation. He is
some one in her life about whom she would rather not talk, but just the same
she comes back to him all the time, and though I'm not sure that it was not
the man who lifted up her dress neither am I sure that it wasn't the man who
committed suidde. Per- haps it's the man whom she started to talk about when
we sat down to eat. Just as we were sitting down I remember now that she
began to talk rather hectically about a man whom she had just seen entering
the cafeteria. She even mentioned his name, but I forgot it immediately. But
I remember her saying that she had lived with him and that he had done
something which she didn't like - she didn't say what - and so she had
walked out on him, left him flat, without a word of explanation. And then,
just as we were entering the Chop Suey joint, they ran into each other and
she was still trembling over it as we sat down in the little booth ... For
one long moment I have the most uneasy sensation. Maybe every word she
uttered was a lie! Not an ordinary lie, no, something worse, something
indescribable. Only sometimes the truth comes out like that too, especially
if you think you're never going to see the person again. Sometimes you can
tell a perfect stranger what you would never dare reveal to your most
intimate friend. It's like going to sleep in the midst of a party; you
become so interested in yourself that you go to sleep. And when you're sound
asleep you begin to talk to some one, some one who was in the same room with
you all the time and therefore understands everything even though you begin
in the middle of a sentence. And perhaps this other person goes to sleep
also, or was always asleep, and that's why it was so easy to encounter him,
and if he doesn't say anything to disturb you then you know that what you
are saying is real and true and that you are wide-awake and there is no
other reality except this being wide-awake asleep. Never before have I been
so wide-awake and so sound asleep at the same time. If the ogre in my dreams
had really pushed the bars aside and taken me by the hand I would have been
frightened to death and consequently now dead, that is, forever asleep and
therefore always at large, and nothing would be strange any more, nor
untrue, even if what happened did not happen. What happened must have
happened long ago, in the night undoubtedly. And what is now happening is
also happening long ago, in the night, and this is no more true than the
dream of the ogre and the bars which would not give, except that now the
bars are broken and she whom I feared has me by the hand and there is no
difference between that which I feared and what is, because I was asleep and
now I am wide-awake asleep and there is nothing more to fear, nor to expect,
nor to hope for, but just this which is and which knows no end.
She wants to go. To go... Again her haunch, that slippery glide as when
she came down from the dance hall and moved into me. Again her words ...
"suddenly, for no reason at all, he bent down and lifted up my dress". She's
slipping the fur around her neck; the little black bonnet sets her face off
like a cameo. The round, full face, with Slavic cheek-bones. How could I
dream this, never having seen it? How could I know that she would rise like
this, dose and full, the face full white and blooming like a magnolia? I
tremble as the fullness ot her thigh brushes me. She seems even a little
taller than I, though she is not. It's the way she holds her chin. She
doesn't notice where she's walking. She walks over things, on, on, with eyes
wide open and staring into space. No past, no future. Even the present seems
dubious. The self seems to have left her, and the body rushes forward, the
neck full and taut, white as the face, full like the face. The talk goes on,
in that low, throaty voice. No beginning, no end. I'm aware not of time nor
the passing of time, but of timelessness. She's got the little womb in the
throat hooked up to the big womb in the pelvis. The cab is at the curb and
she is still chewing the cosmological chaff of the outer ego. I pick up the
speaking tube and connect with the double uterus. Hello, hello, are yon
there? Let's go! Let's get on with it - cabs, boats, trains, naptha
launches; beaches, bedbugs, highways, byways, ruins; relics; old world, new
world, pier, jetty; the high forceps; the swinging trapeze, the ditch, the
delta, the alligators, the crocodiles, talk, talk; and more talk, then roads
again and more dust in the eyes, more rainbows, more cloudbursts, more
breakfast foods, more creams, more lotions. And when all the roads have been
traversed and there is left only the dust of our frantic feet there will
still remain the memory of your large full face so white, and the wide mouth
with fresh lips parted, the teeth chalk white and each one perfect, and in
this remembrance nothing can possibly change because this, like your teeth,
is perfect...
It is Sunday, the first Sunday of my new life, and I am wearing the dog
collar you fastened around my neck. A new life stretches before me. It
begins with the day of rest. I lie back on a broad green leaf and I watch
the sun bursting in your womb. What a clabber and clatter it makes! All this
expressly for me, what? If only you had a million suns in you! If only I
could lie here forever enjoying the celestial fireworks!
I lie suspended over the surface of the moon. The world is in a
womb-like trance: the inner and the outer ego are in equilibrium. You
promised me so much that if I never come out of this it will make no
difference. It seems to me that it is exactly 25,960 years since I have been
asleep in the black womb of sex. It seems to me that I slept perhaps 365
years too many. But at any rate I am now in the right house, among the
sixes, and what lies behind me is well and what lies ahead is well. You come
to me disguised as Venus, but you are Lilith, and I know it. My whole life
is in the balance; I will enjoy the luxury of this for one day. Tomorrow I
shall tip the scales. Tomorrow the equilibrium will be finished; if I ever
find it again it will be in the blood and not in the stars. It is well that
you promise me so much. I need to be promised nearly everything, for I have
lived in the shadow of the sun too long. I want light and chastity - and a
solar fire in the guts. I want to be deceived and disillusioned so that I
may complete the upper triangle and not be continually flying off the planet
into space. I believe everything you tell me, but I know also that it will
all turn out differently. I take you as a star and a trap, as a stone to tip
the scales, as a judge that is blindfolded, as a hole to fall into, as a
path to walk, as a cross and an arrow. Up to the present I travelled the
opposite way of the sun; henceforth I travel two ways, as sun and as moon.
Henceforth I take on two sexes, two hemispheres, two skies, two sets of
everything. Henceforth I shall be double-jointed and double-sexed.
Everything that happens will happen twice. I shall be as a visitor to this
earth, partaking of its blessings and carrying off its gifts. I shall
neither serve nor be served. I shall seek the end in myself.
I look out again at the sun - my first full gaze. It is blood-red and
men are walking about on the roof-tops. Everything above the horizon is dear
to me. It is like Easter Sunday. Death is behind me and birth too. I am
going to live now among the life maladies. I am going to live the spiritual
life of the pygmy, the secret life of the little man in the wilderness of
the bush. Inner and outer have changed places. Equilibrium is no longer the
goal - the scales must be destroyed. Let me hear you promise again all those
sunny things you carry inside you. Let me try to believe for one day, while
I rest in the open, that the sun brings good tidings. Let me rot in
splendour while the sun bursts in your womb. I believe all your lies
implicitly. I take you as the personification of evil, as the destroyer of
the soul, as the Maharanee of the night. Tack your womb up on my wall, so
that I may remember you. We must get going. Tomorrow, tomorrow...
September 1938 Villa Seurat, Paris.
MODERN CLASSIC
Henry Miller
Crazy Cock
With a foreword by Erica Jong
In 1930 Henry Miller moved from New York to Paris, leaving behind (at
least temporarily) his tempestuous marriage to June Smith and a novel he
fully expected to be his masterpiece. Begun in 1927, and originally titled
Lovely Lesbians, Crazy Cock sprang from his anguish over June's love affair
with a mysterious woman called Jean Kronski. Purging himself of this pain
through the writing of Crazy Cock helped Miller to discover his true voice a
few years later in Tropic of Cancer.
'It is a shame that Miller is not around to report on the War of the
Hormones. Crazy Cock is a dispatch from the front. His critics will use the
novel's sexual and political incorrectness to disguise the reality that he
understood the ever-present prejudices and confusions of women and men
better than any of the talk-show munchkins. Crazy Cock is full of the sheer
force of Miller's language and the sexual pitch and youthful literary
eagerness which start cafe brawls and outrage high-school librarians.'
London Review of Books
'Miller's account of the writer's misery is vivid and affecting and he
tells his story with feeling. At times it is so raw it hurts, at other times
the rawness manifests itself in an exhilarating spontaneity.' Sunday
Telegraph
MODERN CLASSIC
Henry Miller
Tropic of Cancer
With an introduction by Robert Nye
A penniless and as yet unpublished writer. Henry Miller arrived in
Paris in 1930. Leaving behind a disintegrating marriage and an unhappy
career in America, he threw himself into the low-life of Bohemian Paris with
unwavering gusto. A fictional account of Miller's adventures amongst the
prostitutes and pimps, the penniless painters and writers of Montparnasse,
Tropic of Cancer is an extravagant and rhapsodic hymn to a world of
unrivalled eroticism and freedom.
'A rhapsody deriving from Whitman, Joyce, Lawrence and Celine, Tropic
of Cancer is a ranting, randy book carried along by a deep, sensual
enjoyment of living. ' Sunday Times
'Tropic of Cancer is a great prophetic book, a warning of what deadens
life, an affirmation that it can yet be lived, though with extreme
difficulty, in an age whose sterile non-cultures seek to thwart all
mainsprings of fertility. Miller reveals himself as a battered faun, a
crafty innocent, a lonely, lazy, sometimes fearful, always steadfast,
worshipper of life. ' Colin Maclnnes, Spectator
MODERN CLASSIC
Norman Mailer
The Naked and the Dead
With an introduction by John Pilger
'The best war novel to come out of the United States.' The Times
The Naked and the Dead traces the story of a platoon of young American
soldiers as they pick their way, through treacherous terrain, across the
Japanese-held Pacific island of Anopopei. Caught up in the confusion of
close-armed combat, preyed upon by snipers, the men are pushed to the limit
of human endurance. Held together only by the raw will to survive and barely
sustained dreams of life beyond the maelstrom, each man finds his innermost
hopes and deepest fears laid bare by the unrelenting stress of battle.
In his early twenties Mailer was himself a Second World War combatant
in the Far-Eastern theatre. Published three years after the war ended. The
Naked and the Dead, a shattering masterpiece of nightmarish realism,
catapulted Mailer to instant fame.
'Mailer recorded every foul thought and word of his characters, wrote
about ignorant, savage, primitive men . . . For maturity of viewpoint, for
technical competence, and for stark dramatic power. The Naked and the Dead
is an incredibly finished performance. ' New York Times
'Mailer writes like an angel - a master of small surprises that are
precursors of seismic shocks.' London Review of Books
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