GC-108 The Rosy Crucifixion Nexus Book II
by Henry Miller


“Goodbye, Good-Bye!” I kept saying, as I marched along. “Goodbye to all 
this!” And not a soul responding, not even a pigeon. “Are you deaf, you 
slumbering maniacs?”

I am walking down the middle of civilization, and this is how it is. On 
the one side, culture running like an open sewer; on the other, the 
abattoirs where everything hangs on the hooks, split open, gory, swarming 
with flies and maggots. The boulevard of life in the twentieth century. One
Arc de Triomphe after another. Robots advancing with the Bible in one hand 
and a rifle in the other. Lemmings rushing to the sea. Onward, Christian 
soldiers, marching as to war…

Down the middle of the road. Stepping gingerly amidst the piles of horse 
manure…

And poor Jesus had to carry his own cross!


CHAPTER TEN

It was obvious, even to a deluded fool like myself, that the three of us 
would never arrive in Paris together. When, therefore, I received a letter 
from Tony Marella saying that I should report for work in a few days I took
the opportunity to set them straight about my end of it. In a 
heart-to-heart talk such as we hadn’t enjoyed for some time, I suggested 
that it might be wiser for them to make the jump as soon as funds permitted
and let me follow later. Now that the job had materialized I could go and 
live with the folks and thereby put aside money for my own passage. Or, if 
the necessity arose, I could send them a little dough. In my own mind I 
didn’t visualize any of us leaving for Europe within the next few months. 
Maybe never.

It didn’t take a mind reader to see how relieved they were that I wasn’t 
to accompany them. Mona of course tried to urge me not to go live with my 
parents. If I had to go anywhere she thought I ought to camp out on Ulric. 
I pretended that I would think about it.

Anyway, our little heart-to-heart talk seemed to give them a new lease on
life. Every night now they brought back nothing but good reports. All their
friends, as well as the suckers, had promised to chip in to raise the 
passage money. Stasia had purchased a little book of conversational French;
I was the willing dummy on whom she practiced her idiotic expressions. 
“Madame, avez-vous une chambre A louer? A quel prix, s’il vous plait? Y 
a-t-il de l’eau courante? Et du chauffage central? Oui? C’est chic. Merci 
bien, madame!” And so on. Or she would ask me if I knew the difference 
between une facture and I’addition. L’oeil was singular for eye, les yeux 
plural. Queer, what! And if the adjective sacre came before the noun it had
quite another meaning than if it came after the noun. What do you know 
about that? Very interesting indeed, wasn’t it? But I didn’t give a shit 
about these subtleties. I’d learn when the time came, and in my own way.

In the back of the street directory which she had bought was a map of the
Metro lines. This fascinated me. She showed me where Montmartre was and 
Montparnasse. They would probably go to Montparnasse first, because that’s 
where most of the Americans congregated. She also pointed out the Eiffel 
Tower, the Jardin du Luxembourg, the flea market, the abattoirs and the 
Louvre.

“Where’s the Moulin Rouge?” I asked.

She had to look it up in the index.

“And the guillotine—where do they keep that?”

She couldn’t answer that one.

I couldn’t help observing how many streets were named after writers. 
Alone, I would spread out the map and trace the streets named after the 
famous ones: Rabelais, Dante, Balzac, Cervantes, Victor Hugo, Villon, 
Verlaine, Heine… Then the philosophers, the historians, the scientists, the
painters, the musicians—and finally the great warriors. No end to the 
historical names. What an education, I thought to myself, merely to take a 
stroll in such a city! Imagine coming upon a street, or place or impasse, 
was it? named after Vercingetroix! (In America I had never happened on a 
street named after Daniel Boone, though maybe one existed in a place like 
South Dakota.) There was one street Stasia had pointed out which stuck in 
my crop; it was the street on which the Beaux Arts was located. (She hoped 
to study there one day, she said.) The name of this street was Bonaparte. 
(Little did I realize then that this would be the first street I would 
inhabit on arriving in Paris.) On a side street just off it—the Rue 
Visconti—Balzac once had a publishing house, a venture which ruined him for
years to come. On another side street, also leading off the Rue Bonaparte, 
Oscar Wilde had once lived.

*

The day came to report for work. It was a long, long ride to the office 
of the Park Department. Tony was waiting for me with open arms.

“You don’t have to kill yourself,” he said, meaning in my capacity as 
grave digger. “Just make a stab at it. Nobody’s going to keep tabs on you.”
He gave me a hearty slap on the back. “You’re strong enough to handle a 
shovel, aren’t you? Or wheel a load of dirt?”

“Sure,” said I. “Sure I am.”

He introduced me to the foreman, told him not to work me too hard, and 
ambled back to the office. In a week, he said, I would be working beside 
him, in the Commissioner’s own office.

The men were kind to me, probably because of my soft hands. They gave me 
only the lightest sort of work to do. A boy could have done the job as 
well.

That first day I enjoyed immensely. Manual work, how good it was! And the
fresh air, the smell of dirt, the birds caroling away. A new approach to 
death. How must it feel to dig one’s own grave? A pity, I thought, that we 
weren’t all obliged to do just that at some point or other in our lives. 
One might feel more comfortable in a grave dug with one’s own hands.

What an appetite I had when I got home from work that evening! Not that I
had ever been deficient in this respect. Strange to come home from work, 
like any Tom, Dick or Harry, and find a good meal waiting to be devoured. 
There were flowers on the table as well as a bottle of most excellent 
French wine. Few were the grave diggers who came home to such a spread. A 
grave digger emeritus, that’s what I was. A Shakespearean digger. Prosit!

Naturally it was the first and last meal of its kind. Still, it was a 
good gesture. After all, I deserved no signal respect or attention for the 
honorable work I was performing.

Each day the work grew a little tougher. The great moment came when I 
stood at the bottom of the hole swinging shovelfuls of dirt over my 
shoulder. A beautiful piece of work. A hole in the ground? There are holes 
and holes. This was a consecrated hole. A special, from Adam Cadmus to Adam
Omega.

I was all in, the day I got to the bottom. I had been the digger and the 
dug. Yes, it was at the bottom of the grave, shovel in hand, that I 
realized there was something symbolic about my efforts. Though another 
man’s body would occupy this hole, nevertheless I felt as if it were my own
funeral. (J’aurai un bel enterrement.) It was a droll book, this “I’ll have
a fine funeral.” But it wasn’t droll standing in the bottomless pit seized 
by a sense of foreboding. Maybe I was digging my own grave, symbolically 
speaking. Well, another day or two and my initiation would be finished. I 
could stand it. Besides, soon I would be touching my first pay. What an 
event! Not that it represented a great sum. No, but I had earned it “by the
sweat of the brow.”

It was now Thursday. Then Friday. Then payday.

Thursday, this day of foreboding, the atmosphere at home seemed permeated
with a new element. I couldn’t say what it was precisely that disturbed me 
so. Certainly not because they were preternaturally gay. They often had 
such streaks. They were over-expectant, that’s the only way I can put it. 
But of what? And the way they smiled upon me—the sort of smile one gives a 
child who is impatient to know. Smiles which said—“Just wait, you’ll find 
out soon enough!” The most disturbing thing was that nothing I said 
irritated them. They were unshakably complacent.

The next evening, Friday, they came home with berets. “What’s coming over
them?” I said to myself. “Do they think they’re in Paris already?” They 
lingered inordinately over their ablutions. And they were singing again, 
singing like mad—one in the tub, the other under the shower. “Let me call 
you sweetheart, I’m in love… 000—00—00.” Followed by “Tipperary.” Right 
jolly it was. How they laughed and giggled! Brimming over with happiness, 
bless their little hearts!

I couldn’t resist taking a peek at them. There was Stasia standing up in 
the tub scrubbing her pussy. She didn’t scream or even say Oh! As for Mona,
she had just emerged from the shower, with a towel flung about her middle.

“I’ll rub you down,” I said, grabbing the towel.

While I rubbed and patted and stroked her she kept purring like a cat. 
Finally I doused her all over with cologne water. She enjoyed that too.

“You’re so wonderful,” she said. “I do love you, Val. I really do.” She 
embraced me warmly.

“Tomorrow you get paid, don’t you?” she said. “I wish you would buy me a 
brassiere and a pair of stockings. I need them bad.”

“Of course,” I replied. “Isn’t there anything else you would like?”

“No, that’s all, Val dear.”

“Sure? I can get you anything you need—tomorrow.”

She gave me a coy look.

“All right then, just one thing more.”

“What’s that?”

“A bunch of violets.”

We rounded off this scene of connubial bliss with a royal fuck which was 
twice interrupted by Stasia, who pretended to be searching for something or
other and who continued to pace up and down the hall even after we had 
quieted down.

Then something really weird occurred. Just as I was dozing off, who 
should come to the bedside, bend over me tenderly and kiss me on the 
forehead, but Stasia. “Good night,” she said. “Pleasant dreams!”

I was too exhausted to bother my head with interpretations of this 
strange gesture. “Lonely, that’s what!” was all I could think at the 
moment.

In the morning they were up and about before I had rubbed the sand out of
my eyes. Still cheerful, still eager to give me pleasure. Could it be the 
salary I was bringing home that had gone to their heads? And why 
strawberries for breakfast? Strawberries smothered in heavy cream. Whew!

Then another unusual thing occurred. As I was leaving, Mona insisted on 
escorting me to the street.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Why this?”

“I want to see you off, that’s all.” She threw me one of those smiles—the
indulgent mother kind.

She remained standing at the railing, in her light kimono, as I trotted 
off. Halfway down the block I turned to see if she was still there. She 
was. She waved good-bye. I waved back.

In the train I settled down for a brief snooze. What a beautiful way to 
begin the day! (And no more graves to be dug.) Strawberries for breakfast. 
Mona waving me off. Everything so ducky, so as it should be. Superlatively 
so. At last I had hit the groove…

Saturdays we worked only a half day. I collected my wages, had lunch with
Tony, during which he explained what my new duties would be, then we took a
spin through the park, and finally I set out for home. On the way I bought 
two pairs of stockings, a brassiere, a bouquet of violets—and a German 
cheese cake. (The cheese cake was a treat for myself.) It was dark by the 
time I arrived in front of the house. There were no lights on inside. 
Funny, I thought. Were they playing hide and seek with me? I walked in, lit
a couple of candles, and threw a quick look around. Something was amiss. 
For a sec I thought we had been visited by burglars. A glance at Stasia’s 
room only heightened my apprehension. Her trunk and valise were gone. In 
fact, the room was stripped of all her belongings. Had she fled the coop? 
Was that why the good night kiss? I inspected the other rooms. Some of the 
bureau drawers were open, discarded clothing scattered all about. The state
of disorder indicated that the evacuation had been wild and sudden-like. 
That sinking feeling that I had experienced standing at the bottom of the 
grave came over me.

At the desk near the window I thought I saw a piece of paper—a note 
perhaps. Sure enough, under a paperweight was a note scrawled in pencil. It
was in Mona’s hand.

“Dear Val,” it ran. “We sailed this morning on the Rochambeau. Didn’t 
have the heart to tell you. Write care of American Express, Paris. Love.”

I read it again. One always does when it’s a fateful message. Then I sank
onto the chair at the desk. At first the tears came slowly, drop by drop, 
as it were. Then they gushed forth. Soon I was sobbing. Terrible sobs that 
ripped me from stem to stern. How could she do this to me? I knew they were
going without me—but not like this. Running off like two naughty children. 
And that last-minute act—“Bring me a bunch of violets!” Why? To throw me 
off the track? Was that necessary? Had I become as a child? Only a child is
treated thus.

In spite of the sobs my anger rose. I raised my fist and cursed them for 
a pair of double-crossing bitches; I prayed that the ship would sink; I 
swore that I’d never send them a penny, never, even if they were starving 
to death. Then, to relieve the anguish, I rose to my feet and hurled the 
paperweight at the photo above the desk. Grabbing a book, I smashed another
picture. From room to room I moved, smashing everything in sight. Suddenly 
I noticed a heap of discarded clothing in a corner. It was Mona’s. I picked
up each article—panties, brassiere, blouse—and automatically sniffed them. 
They still reeked of the perfume she used. I gathered them up and stuffed 
them under my pillow. Then I began to yell. I yelled and yelled and yelled.
And when I had finished yelling I started singing—“Let me call you 
sweetheart… I’m in love with you-ou-ou… ” The cheese cake was staring me in
the face. “Fuck you!” I shouted, and raising it above my head I splattered 
it against the wall.

It was at this point that the door softly opened and there, with hands 
clasped over her bosom, stood one of the Dutch sisters from upstairs.

“My poor man, my poor, dear man,” said she, coming close and making as if
to throw her arms around me. “Please, please don’t take it so hard! I know 
how you feel… yes, it’s terrible. But they will come back.”

This tender little speech started the tears flowing again. She put her 
arms around me, kissed me on both cheeks. I made no objection. Then she led
me to the bed and sat down, pulling me beside her.

In spite of my grief I couldn’t help noting her slovenly appearance. Over
her frayed pajamas—she wore them all day, apparently—she had thrown a 
stained kimono. Her stockings hung loosely about her ankles; hairpins were 
dangling from her mop of tousled hair. She was a frump, no mistake about 
it. Frump or no frump, however, she was genuinely distressed, genuinely 
concerned for me.

With one arm around my shoulder she told me gently but tactfully that she
had been aware for some time of all that was going on. “But I had to hold 
my tongue,” she said. She paused now and then to permit me to give way to 
my grief. Finally she assured me that Mona loved me. “Yes,” she said, “she 
loves you dearly.”

I was about to protest these words when again the door opened softly and 
there stood the other sister. This one was better attired and more 
attractive looking. She came over and after a few soft words sat down on 
the other side of me. The two of them now held my hands in theirs. What a 
picture it must have been!

Such solicitude! Did they imagine that I was ready to blow my brains out?
Over and over they assured me that everything was for the best. Patience, 
patience! In the end everything would work out well. It was inevitable, 
they said. Why? Because I was such a good person. God was testing me, that 
was all.

“Often,” said one, “we wanted to come down and console you, but we didn’t
dare to intrude. We knew how you felt. We could tell when you paced back 
and forth, back and forth. It was heart-rending, but what could we do?”

It was getting too much for me, all this sympathizing. I got up and lit a
cigarette. The frumpy one now excused herself and ran upstairs.

“She’ll be back in a minute,” said the other. She began telling me about 
their life in Holland. Something she said, or the way she said it, caused 
me to laugh. She clapped her hands with delight. “See, it’s not so bad 
after all, is it? You can still laugh.”

With this I began to laugh harder, much harder. It was impossible to say 
whether I was laughing or weeping. I couldn’t stop.

“There now, there now,” she said, pressing me to her and cooing. “Put 
your head on my shoulder. That’s it. My, but you have a tender heart!”

Ridiculous as it was, it felt good to give way on her shoulder. I even 
felt a slight stirring of sex, locked in her motherly embrace.

Her sister now reappeared bearing a tray on which there was a decanter, 
three glasses and some biscuits.

“This will make you feel better,” she said, pouring me a portion of 
schnapps.

We clinked glasses, as if it were a happy event we were celebrating, and 
swallowed. It was pure firewater.

“Have another,” said the other sister, and refilled the glasses. “There, 
doesn’t that feel good? It bums, eh? But it gives you spirit.”

We had two or three more in rapid-fire succession. Each time they 
said—“There, don’t you feel better now?”

Better or worse, I couldn’t say. All I knew was that my guts were on 
fire. And then the room began to spin.

“Lie down,” they urged, and grasping me by the arms they lowered me onto 
the bed. I stretched out full length, helpless as a babe. They removed my 
coat, then my shirt, then my pants and shoes. I made no protest. They 
rolled me over and tucked me away.

“Sleep a while,” they said, “we’ll call for you later. We’ll have dinner 
for you when you wake up.”

I closed my eyes. The room spun round even faster now.

“We’ll look after you,” said the one.

“We’ll take good care of you,” said the other.

They tiptoed out of the room.

*

It was in the wee hours of the morning that I awoke. I thought the church
bells were ringing. (Exactly what my mother said when trying to recall the 
hour of my birth.) I got up and read the note again. By now they were well 
out on the high seas. I was hungry. I found a piece of the cheese cake on 
the floor and gulped it down. I was even thirstier than I was hungry. I 
drank several glasses of water one after the other. My head ached a bit. 
Then I crept back to bed. But there was no more sleep in me. Toward 
daybreak I rose, dressed, and sallied out. Better to walk than to lie there
thinking. I’ll walk and walk, thought I, until I drop.

It didn’t work the way I thought. Fresh or fatigued, the thinking never 
stops. Round and round one goes, always over the same ground, always 
returning to the dead center: the unacceptable now.

How I passed the rest of the day is a complete blank. All I remember is 
that the heartache grew steadily worse. Nothing could assuage it. It wasn’t
something inside me, it was me. I was the ache. A walking, talking ache. If
only I could drag myself to the slaughterhouse and have them fell me like 
an ox—it would have been an act of mercy. Just one swift blow—between the 
eyes. That, and only that, could kill the ache.

*

Monday morning I reported for work as usual. I had to wait a good hour 
before Tony showed up. When he did he took one look at me and said—“What’s 
happened?”

I told him briefly. All kindness, he said: “Let’s go and have a drink. 
There’s nothing very pressing. His nibs won’t be in today, so there’s 
nothing to worry about.”

We had a couple of drinks and then lunch. A good lunch followed by a good
cigar. Never a word of reproach for Mona.

Only as we were walking back to the office did he permit himself a 
harmless observation. “It beats me, Henry. I have plenty of troubles but 
never that kind.”

At the office he outlined my duties once again. “I’ll introduce you to 
the boys tomorrow,” he said. (When you have a grip on yourself, is what he 
meant.) He added that I would find them easy to get along with.

Thus that day passed, and the next.

I became acquainted with the other members of the office, all 
time-servers, all waiting for that pension at the foot of the rainbow. 
Nearly all of them were from Brooklyn, all ordinary blokes, all speaking 
that dreary-bleary Brooklynese. But all of them eager to be of assistance.

There was one chap, a bookkeeper, to whom I took a fancy immediately. 
Paddy Mahoney was his name. He was an Irish Catholic, narrow as they make 
‘em, argumentative, pugnacious, all the things I dislike, but because I 
hailed from the 14th Ward—he had been born and raised in Greenpoint—we got 
on famously. As soon as Tony and the Commissioner were gone he was at my 
desk ready to chew the rag the rest of the day.

Wednesday morning I found a radiogram on my desk. “Must have fifty 
dollars before landing. Please cable immediately.”

I showed the message to Tony when he appeared. “What are you going to 
do?” he said.

“That’s what I want to know,” I said.

“You’re not going to send them money, are you… after what they did to 
you?”

I looked at him helplessly. “I’m afraid I’ll have to,” I replied.

“Don’t be a chump,” he said. “They made their bed, let them lie in it.”

I had hoped that he would tell me I could borrow in advance on my salary.
Crestfallen, I went back to my work. While working I kept wondering how and
where I could raise such a sum. Tony was my only hope. But I didn’t have 
the heart to press him. I couldn’t—he had already done more for me than I 
deserved.

After lunch, which he usually shared with his political cronies at a bar 
in the Village nearby, he blew in with a big cigar in his mouth and 
smelling rather heavily of drink. He had a big smile on his face, the sort 
he used to wear at school when he was up to some devilment.

“How’s it going?” he said. “Getting the hang of it, are you? Not such a 
bad place to work in, is it?”

He tossed his hat over his shoulder, sank deep into his swivel chair and 
put his feet on the desk. Taking a good long pull on his cigar and turning 
slightly in my direction, he said: “I guess I don’t understand women much, 
Henry. I’m a confirmed bachelor. You’re different. You don’t mind 
complications, I guess. Anyway, when you told me about the cable this 
morning I thought you were a fool. Right now I don’t think that way. You 
need help, and I’m the only one who can help you, I guess. Look, let me 
lend you what you need. I can’t get you an advance on your salary… you’re 
too new here for that. Besides, it would raise a lot of unnecessary 
questions.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad. “You can pay 
me back five bucks a week, if you like. But don’t let them bleed you for 
more! Be tough!”

A few more words and he made ready to leave. “Guess I’ll be off now. My 
work is finished for the day. If you run into a snag, call me.”

“Where?” I said.

“Ask Paddy, he’ll tell you.”

As the days passed the pain eased up. Tony kept me busy, purposely, no 
doubt. He also saw to it that I became acquainted with the head gardener. I
would have to write a booklet one day about the plants, shrubs and trees in
the park, he said. The gardener would wise me up.

Every day I expected another cablegram. I knew a letter wouldn’t reach me
for days. Already in the hole, and hating to return each day to the scene 
of my distress, I decided to ask the folks to take me in. They agreed 
readily enough, though they were mystified by Mona’s behavior. I explained,
of course, that it had been planned this way, that I was to follow later, 
and so on. They knew better, but refrained from humiliating me further.

So I moved in. The Street of Early Sorrows. The same desk to write at 
which I had as a boy. (And which I never used.) Everything I owned was in 
my valise. I didn’t bring a single book with me.

It cost me another few dollars to cable Mona regarding the change of 
address and to warn her to write or wire me at the office.

As Tony had surmised, it wasn’t long before another cable arrived. This 
time they needed money for food and lodging. No jobs in sight as yet. On 
the heels of it came a letter, a brief one, telling me that they were 
happy, that Paris was just marvelous, and that I must find a way to join 
them soon. No hint of how they were managing.

“Are they having a good time over there?” Tony asked one day. “Not asking
for more dough, are they?”

I hadn’t told him about the second cablegram. It was my uncle, the ticket
speculator, who coughed up for that sum.

“Sometimes,” said Tony, “I feel as if I’d like to see Paris myself. We 
might have a good time there together, eh?”

*

Mixed in with the office routine were all sorts of odd jobs. There were 
the speeches, for example, which the Commissioner had to prepare for this 
or that occasion, and which he never had time to do himself. It was Tony’s 
job to write these speeches for him. When Tony had done his best I would 
add a few touches.

Dull work, these speeches. I much preferred my talks with the gardener. I
had already begun making notes for the “arboricultural” booklet, as I 
called it.

After a time the work slackened. Sometimes Tony didn’t show up at the 
office at all. As soon as the Commissioner had gone all work ceased. With 
the place to ourselves—there were only about seven of us—we passed the time
playing cards, shooting crap, singing, telling dirty stories, sometimes 
playing hide and seek. To me these periods were worse than being suffocated
with work. It was impossible to hold an intelligent conversation with any 
of them except Paddy Mahoney. He was the only one with whom I enjoyed 
holding speech. Not that we ever talked about anything edifying. Mostly it 
was about life in the 14th Ward, where he went to shoot pool with the boys,
to drink and to gamble. Maujer, Teneyck, Conselyea, Devoe, Humboldt 
streets… we named them all, lived them all, played again the games we had 
played as youngsters in the broiling sun, in cool cellars, under the soft 
glow of gas lights, on the docks by the swift flowing river…

What inspired Paddy’s friendship and devotion more than anything was my 
scribbler’s talent. When I was at the machine, even if it were only a 
letter I was typing, he would stand at the doorway and watch me as if I 
were a phenomenon.

“Whatcha doin? Battin’ it out?” he’d say. Meaning another story.

Sometimes he’d stand there, wait a while, then say: “Are you very busy?”

If I said “No, why?” he’d answer: “I was just thinkin’… You remember the 
saloon on the corner of Wythe Avenue and Grand?”

“Sure I do. What of it?”

“Well, there was a guy used to hang out there… a writer, like you. He 
wrote serials. But first he had to get tanked up.”

A remark such as this was only an opener. He wanted to talk.

‘That old guy who lives on your block… what’s his name again? Martin. 
Yeah, that’s the guy. He always had a couple of ferrets in his coat 
pockets, remember? Made himself lots of dough, that bugger, with his bloody
ferrets. He worked for all the best hotels in New York at one time, driving
the rats away. What a racket, eh? I’m scared of those things… could bite 
your nuts off—know what I mean? He was a weirdie all right. And what a 
booze artist! I can still see him staggering down the street… and those 
bloody ferrets peeping out of his pockets. You say he never touches the 
stuff now? It’s more than I can believe. He used to throw his money away 
like a fool—in that saloon I was just telling you about.” From this he 
might switch to Father Flanagan or Callaghan, I forget what it was now. The
priest who got soused to the ears every Saturday night. One had to watch 
out when he was in his cups. Liked to bugger the choir boys. Could have had
any woman he laid eyes on, that handsome he was, and taking in his ways.

“I used to near shit in my pants when I went to confession,” said Paddy. 
“Yeah, he knew all the sins in the calendar, that bastard.” He crossed 
himself as he said this. “You’d have to tell him everything… even how many 
times a week you jerked off. The worst was, he had a way of farting in your
face. But if you were in trouble he was the one to go to. Never said No. 
Yeah, there were a lot of good eggs in that neighborhood. Some of them are 
serving time now, poor buggers… “

*

A month had passed and all I had had from Mona were two brief letters. 
They were living on the Rue Princesse in a charming little hotel, very 
clean, very cheap. The Hotel Princesse. If only I could see it, how I would
love it! They had become acquainted, meanwhile, with a number of Americans,
most of them artists and very poor. Soon they hoped to get out of Paris and
see a bit of the provinces. Stasia was crazy to visit the Midi. That was 
the south of France, where there were vineyards and olive groves and 
bullfights and so on. Oh yes, there was a writer, a crazy Austrian, who had
taken a great fancy to Stasia. Thought she was a genius.

“How are they making out?” the folks would ask from time to time.

“Just fine,” I would say.

One day I announced that Stasia had been admitted to the Beaux Arts on a 
scholarship. That was to keep them quiet for a little while.

Meanwhile I cultivated the gardener. How refreshing it was to be in his 
company! His world was free of human strife and struggle; he had only to 
deal with weather, soil, bugs and genes. Whatever he put his hand to 
thrived. He moved in a realm of beauty and harmony where peace and order 
reigned. I envied him. How rewarding to devote all one’s time and energy to
plants and trees! No jealousy, no rivalry, no pushing and shoving, no 
cheating, no lying. The pansy received the same attention as the 
rhododendron; the lilac was no better than the rose. Some plants were weak 
from birth, some flourished under any conditions. It was all fascinating to
me, his observations on the nature of soil, the variety of fertilizers, the
art of grafting. Indeed, the subject was an endless one. The role of the 
insect, for example, or the miracle of pollenization, the unceasing labors 
of the worm, the use and abuse of water, the varying lengths of growth, the
sports, the nature of weeds and other pests, the struggle for survival, the
invasions of locusts and grasshoppers, the divine service of the bees…

What a contrast, this man’s realm, to the one Tony moved in! Flowers 
versus politicians; beauty versus cunning and deceit. Poor Tony, he was 
trying so hard to keep his hands clean. Always kidding himself, or selling 
himself, on the idea that a public servant is a benefactor to his country. 
By nature loyal, just, honest, tolerant, he was disgusted with the tactics 
employed by his cronies. Once a senator, governor or whatever it was he 
dreamed of being, he would change things. He believed this so sincerely 
that I could no longer laugh at him. But it was tough sledding. Though he 
himself did nothing which pricked his conscience, he nevertheless had to 
close his eyes to deeds and practices which filled him with revolt. He had 
to spend money like water, too. Yet, in spite of the fact that he was 
heavily in debt, he had managed to make his parents a gift of the house 
they occupied. In addition he was putting his two younger brothers through 
college. As he said one day—“Henry, even if I wanted to get married I 
couldn’t. I can’t afford a wife.”

One day, as he was telling me of his tribulations, he said: “My best days
were when I was president of that athletic club. You remember? No politics 
then. Say, do you remember when I ran the Marathon and had to be taken to 
the hospital? I was tops then.” He looked down at his navel and rubbed his 
paunch. “That’s from sitting up nights with the boys. Do you wonder 
sometimes why I’m late every day? I never get to bed till three or four in 
the morning. Fighting hangovers all the time. Gad, if my folks knew what I 
was doing to make a name for myself they’d disown me. That’s what comes 
from being an immigrant’s son. Being a dirty wop, I had to prove myself. 
Lucky you don’t suffer from ambition. All you want of life is to be a 
writer, eh? Don’t have to wade through a lot of shit to become a writer, do
you?

“Henry, me lad, sometimes it all looks hopeless to me. So I become 
President one day… so what? Think I could really change things? I don’t 
even believe it myself, to be honest with you. You have no idea what a 
complicated racket this is. You’re beholden to every one, like it or not. 
Even Lincoln had to make compromises. And I’m no Lincoln. No, I’m just a 
Sicilian boy who, if the gods are kind, may get to Congress one day. Still,
I have my dreams. That’s all you can have in this racket—dreams.

“Yeah, that athletic club… people thought the world of me then. I was the
shining light of the neighborhood. The shoemaker’s son who had risen from 
the bottom. When I got up to make a speech they were spellbound before I 
opened my mouth.”

He paused to relight his cigar. He took a puff, made a grimace of 
disgust, and threw it away.

“It’s all different now. Now I’m part of the machine. A yes-man, for the 
most part. Biding my time and getting deeper in the hole each day. Man, if 
you had my problems you’d have gray hair by now. You don’t know what it is 
to keep the little integrity you have in the midst of all the temptation 
that surrounds you. One little misstep and you’re tabbed. Everyone is 
trying to get something on the other fellow. That’s what holds them 
together, I guess. Such petty bastards, they are! I’m glad I never became a
judge—because if I had to pass sentence on these pricks I’d be unmerciful. 
It beats me how a country can thrive on intrigue and corruption. There must
be higher powers watching over this Republic of ours… ” He stopped short. 
“Forget it!” he said. “I’m just letting off steam. But maybe you can see 
now that I’m not sitting so pretty.”

He rose and reached for his hat. “By the way, how are you fixed? Need any
more dough? Don’t be afraid to ask, if you do. Even if it’s for that wife 
of yours. How is she, by the way? Still in gay Paree?” I gave him a broad 
smile.

“You’re lucky, Henry me boy. Lucky she’s there, not here. Gives you a 
breathing spell. She’ll be back, never fear. Maybe sooner than you think… 
Oh, by the way, I meant to tell you before… the Commissioner thinks you’re 
pretty good. So do I. Ta ta now!”

*

Evenings after dinner I would usually take a walk–either in the direction
of the Chinese Cemetery or the other way, the way that used to lead me past
Una Gifford’s home. On the corner, posted like a sentinel, old man Martin 
took his stand every night, winter or summer. Hard to pass him without 
exchanging a word or two, usually about the evils of drink, tobacco and so 
on.

Sometimes I merely walked around the block, too dispirited to bother 
stretching my legs. Before retiring I might read a passage from the Bible. 
It was the only book in the house. A great sleepytime story book it is, 
too. Only the Jews could have written it. A Goy gets lost in it, what with 
all the genealogical bitters, the incest, the mayhem, the numerology, the 
fratricide and parricide, the plagues, the abundance of food, wives, wars, 
assassinations, dreams, prophecies… No consecutivity. Only a divinity 
student can take it straight. It doesn’t add up. The Bible is the Old 
Testament plus the Apocrypha. The New Testament is a puzzle book—“for 
Christians only.”

Anyway, what I mean to say is that I had taken a fancy to the Book of 
Job. “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if
thou hast understanding.” That was a sentence I liked; it suited my 
bitterness, my anguish. I particularly liked the rider—“Declare, if thou 
hast understanding.” No one has that kind of understanding. Jehovah wasn’t 
content to saddle Job with boils and other afflictions, he had to give him 
riddles too. Time and again, after a hassle and a snaffle with Kings, 
Judges, Numbers and other soporific sections dealing with cosmogony, 
circumcision and the woes of the damned, I would turn to Job and take 
comfort that I was not one of the chosen ones. In the end, if you remember,
Job is squared off. My worries were trifling; they were hardly bigger than 
a piss pot.

A few days later, as they say, sometime in the afternoon I think it was, 
came the news that Lindbergh had safely flown the Atlantic. The whole force
had poured out on to the lawn to shout and cheer and whistle and 
congratulate one another. All over the land there was this hysterical 
rejoicing. It was an Homeric feat and it had taken millions of years for an
ordinary mortal to accomplish it.

My own enthusiasm was more contained. It had been slightly dampened by 
the receipt of a letter that very morning, a letter in which I was 
notified, so to speak, that she was on her way to Vienna with some friends.
Dear Stasia, I learned, was somewhere in North Africa; she had gone off 
with that crazy Austrian who thought her so wonderful. The way she sounded 
one might believe that she had run off to Vienna to spite some one. No 
explanation, naturally, as to how she was accomplishing this miracle. I 
could easier understand Lindbergh’s conquest of the air than her journey to
Vienna.

Twice I read the letter through in an effort to discover who her 
companions were. The solution of the mystery was simple: take the ‘s’ away 
and read companion. I hadn’t the slightest doubt but that it was a rich, 
idle, young and handsome American who was acting as her escort. What 
irritated me the more was that she had failed to give an address in Vienna 
to which I might write her. I would simply have to wait. Wait and champ the
bit.

Lindbergh’s magnificent victory over the elements only served to set my 
own wretched frustration in relief. Here I was cooped up in an office, 
performing nonsensical labors, deprived even of pocket money, receiving 
only meager replies to my long, heart rending letters, and she, she was 
gallivanting about, winging it from city to city like a bird of paradise. 
What sense was there in trying to get to Europe? How would I find a job 
there when I had such difficulties in my own country? And why pretend that 
she would be overjoyed to see me arrive?

The more I thought about the situation the more morose I grew. About five
that afternoon, in a mood of utter despair, I sat down at the typewriter to
outline the book I told myself I must write one day. My Domesday Book. It 
was like writing my own epitaph.

I wrote rapidly, in telegraphic style, commencing with the evening I 
first met her. For some inexplicable reason I found myself recording 
chronologically, and without effort, the long chain of events which filled 
the interval between that fateful evening and the present. Page after page 
I turned out, and always there was more to put down.

Hungry, I knocked off to walk to the Village and get a bite to eat. When 
I returned to the office I again sat down to the machine. As I wrote I 
laughed and wept. Though I was only making notes, it seemed as if I were 
actually writing the book there and then; I relived the whole tragedy over 
again step by step, day by day.

It was long after midnight when I finished. Thoroughly exhausted, I lay 
down on the floor and went to sleep. I awoke early, walked to the Village 
again for a little nourishment, then strolled leisurely back to resume work
for the day.

Later that day I read what I had written during the night. There were 
only a few insertions to be made. How did I ever remember so accurately the
thousand and one details I had recorded? And, if these telegraphic notes 
were to be expanded into a book, would it not require several volumes to do
justice to the subject? The very thought of the immensity of this task 
staggered me. When would I ever have the courage to tackle a work of such 
dimensions?

Musing thus, an appalling thought suddenly struck me. It was this—our 
love is ended. That could be the only meaning for planning such a work. I 
refused, however, to accept this conclusion. I told myself that my true 
purpose was merely to relate—“merely”!—the story of my misfortunes. But is 
it possible to write of one’s sufferings while one is still suffering? 
Abelard had done it, to be sure. A sentimental thought now intruded. I 
would write the book for her—to her—and in reading it she would understand,
her eyes would be opened, she would help me bury the past, we would begin a
new life, a life together… true togetherness.

How naive! As if a woman’s heart, once closed, can ever be opened again!

I squelched these inner voices, these inner promptings which only the 
Devil could inspire. I was more hungry than ever for her love, more 
desperate far than ever I had been. There came then the remembrance of a 
night years before when seated at the kitchen table (my wife upstairs in 
bed), I had poured my heart out to her in a desperate, suicidal appeal. And
the letter had had its effect. I had reached her. Why then would a book not
have an even greater effect? Especially a book in which the heart was laid 
bare? I thought of that letter which one of Hamsun’s characters had written
to his Victoria, the one he penned with “God looking over his shoulder.” I 
thought of the letters which had passed between Abelard and Heloise and how
time could never dim them. Oh, the power of the written word!

That evening, while the folks sat reading the papers, I wrote her a 
letter such as would have moved the heart of a vulture. (I wrote it at that
little desk which had been given me as a boy.) I told her the plan of the 
book and how I had outlined it all in one uninterrupted session. I told her
that the book was for her, that it was her. I told her that I would wait 
for her if it took a thousand years.

It was a colossal letter, and when I had finished I realized that I could
not dispatch it—because she had forgotten to give me her address. A fury 
seized me. It was as if she had cut out my tongue. How could she have 
played such a scurvy trick on me? Whereever she was, in whomever’s arms, 
couldn’t she sense that I was struggling to reach her? In spite of the 
maledictions I heaped upon her my heart was saying “I love you, I love you,
I love you… ” And as I crept into bed, repeating this idiotic phrase, I 
groaned. I groaned like a wounded grenadier.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The following day, while rummaging through the waste basket in search of 
a missing letter, I ran across a crumpled letter which the Commissioner had
obviously tossed there in disgust. The handwriting was thin and shaky, as 
if written by an old man, but legible despite the elaborate curlicues he 
delighted in employing. I took one glance at it, then slipped it into my 
pocket to read at leisure.

It was this letter, ridiculous and pathetic in its way, which saved me 
from eating my heart out. If the Commissioner had thrown it there then it 
must have been at the bidding of my guardian angel.

“Honourable Sir… ” it began, and with the very next words a weight was 
lifted from me. I found not only that I could laugh as of old, I found that
I could laugh at myself, which was vastly more important.

“Honourable Sir: I hope that you are well and enjoying good health during
this very changeable weather that we are now having. I am quite well myself
at the present time and I am glad to say so.”

Then, without further ado, the author of this curious document launched 
into his arborico-solipsistic harangue. Here are his words…

“I wish that you would do me a very kindhearted and a very special favor 
and kindly have the men of the Park Department go around now and start by 
the Borough Lines of Queens and King’s Counties and work outward easterly 
and back westerly and likewise northerly and southerly and remove the 
numerous dead and dying trees, trees all open at the base part and in the 
trunk part and trees bending and leaning over and ready to fall down and do
damage to human life, limb and property, and to give all the good trees 
both large and small sizes an extra good, thorough, proper, systematic and 
symmetrical pruning, trimming and paring off from the base to the very top 
parts and all through.

“I wish that you would do me a very kindhearted and very special favor 
and kindly have the men of the Park Department greatly reduce all the 
top-heavy and overgrown trees in height to a height of about 25 feet high 
and to have all the long boughs and branches shortened considerably in the 
length and all parts of the trees greatly thinned out from the base to the 
very top parts and thereby give a great deal more light, more natural 
light, more air, more beauty, and very much more safety to the pedestrians,
the general thoroughfares and to the surroundings along by the streets, 
avenues, places, roadways, roads, highways, boulevards, terraces, parkways,
(streets called courts, lanes, etc.) and by the parks inside and outside.

“I would greatly, kindly and very urgently request that the boughs and 
branches be pruned, trimmed and pared off at a distance of from twelve to 
fifteen feet from the front, side and rear walls of all houses and other 
buildings of every description and not allow them to come in contact with 
them as a great many of them are very much marred by them coming in contact
with them, and thereby give a great deal more light, more natural light, 
more air, more beauty and very much more safety.

“I wish that you would kindly have the men of the Park Department prune, 
trim and pare off the boughs and branches at a distance of from twelve to 
sixteen feet above the sidewalks, flaggings, grounds, curbs, etc. and not 
allow them to keep drooping away down low as a great many of them are now 
doing and thereby give plenty of height to walk beneath the same… ” It went
on and on in this vein, always detailed and explicit, the style never 
varying. One more paragraph.

“I wish that you would kindly have the boughs and branches pruned, 
trimmed and pared off and down considerably below the roofs of the houses 
and other buildings and not allow them to protrude over, lap over, lay 
over, cross over or come in contact with the houses and other buildings and
to have the boughs and branches greatly separated between each and every 
tree and not allow the boughs and branches to lap over, lay over, cross 
over, entwine, hug, cluster or come in contact with the adjoining trees and
thereby give a great deal more light, more natural light, more air, more 
beauty and very much more safety to the pedestrians, the thoroughfares and 
to the general surroundings around by all parts of Queens County, New York…
“

*

As I say, upon finishing the letter I felt thoroughly relaxed, at ease 
with the world, and extremely indulgent toward my own precious self. It was
as if some of that light—that “more natural light”—had invaded my being. I 
was no longer enveloped in a fog of despair. There was more air, more 
light, more beauty to all the surroundings: my inner surroundings.

Come Saturday noon therefore, I made straight for Manhattan Isle; at 
Times Square I rose to the surface, snatched a quick bite at the Automat, 
then swung my prow round in the direction of the nearest all-out dance 
hall. It didn’t occur to me that I was repeating a pattern which had 
brought me to my present low state. Only when I pushed my way through the 
immense portals of the Itchigumi Dance Palace on the ground floor of a 
demented looking building this side of the Cafe Mozambique did it come over
me that it was in a mood similar to the one which now claimed me that I had
staggered up the steep rickety stairs of another Broadway dance hall and 
there found the beloved. Since those days my mind was utterly free of these
pay-as-you-go joints and the angels of mercy who soberly fleece their 
sex-starved patrons. All I thought of now was a few hours of escape from 
boredom, a few hours of forgetfulness—and to get it as cheaply as possible.
There was no fear in me of falling in love again or even of getting a lay, 
though that I needed badly. I merely craved to become like any ordinary 
mortal, a jellyfish, if you like, in the ocean of drift. I asked for 
nothing more than to be swished and sloshed about in an eddying pool of 
fragrant flesh under a subaqueous rainbow of subdued and intoxicating 
lights.

Entering the place I felt like a farmer come to town. Immediately I was 
dazzled, dazzled by the sea of faces, by the fetid warmth radiating from 
hundreds of overexcited bodies, by the blare of the orchestra, by the 
kaleidoscopic whirl of lights. Every one was keyed to fever pitch, it 
seemed. Every one looked intent and alert, intensely intent, intensely 
alert. The air crackled with this electric desire, this all-consuming 
concentration. A thousand different perfumes clashed with one another, with
the heat of the hall, with the sweat and perspiration, the fever, the lust 
of the inmates, for they were very definitely, it seemed to me, inmates of 
one kind or another. Inmates perhaps of the vaginal vestibule of love. Icky
inmates, advancing upon one another with lips parted, with dry, hot lips, 
hungry lips, lips that trembled, that begged, that whimpered, that 
beseeched, that chewed and macerated other lips. Sober, too, all of them. 
Stone sober. Too sober, indeed. Sober as criminals about to pull off a job.
All converging upon one another in a huge, swirling cake mold, the colored 
lights playing over their faces, their busts, their haunches, cutting them 
to ribbons in which they became entangled and enmeshed, yet always 
skilfully extricating themselves as they whirled about, body to body, cheek
to cheek, lip to lip.

I had forgotten what it was like, this dance mania. Too much alone, too 
close to my grief, too ravaged by thought. Here was abandon with its 
nameless face and prune-whipped dreams. Here was the land of twinkling 
toes, of satiny buttocks, of let your hair down, Miss Victoria-Nyanza, for 
Egypt is no more, nor Babylon, nor Gehenna. Here the baboons in full rut 
swim the belly of the Nile seeking the end of all things; here are the 
ancient maenads, reborn to the wail of sax and muted horn; here the mummies
of the skyscrapers take out their inflamed ovaries and air them, while the 
incessant play of music poisons the pores, drugs the mind, opens the sluice
gates. With the sweat and perspiration, with the sickening, overpowering 
reek of perfumes and deodorants all discreetly sucked up by the 
ventilators, the electric odor of lust hung like a halo suspended in space.

Walking up and down beside the Hershey Almond bars stacked one upon 
another like precious ingots, I rub against the pack. A thousand smiles are
raining from every direction; I lift my face as if to catch the shimmering 
dewdrops dispersed by a gentle breeze. Smiles, smiles. As if it weren’t 
life and death, a race to the womb and back again. Flutter and froufrou, 
camphor and fish balls, Omega oil… wings spread full preen, limbs bare to 
the touch, palms moist, foreheads glistening, lips parched, tongues hanging
out, teeth gleaming like the advertisements, eyes bright, roving, stripping
one bare… piercing, penetrating eyes, some searching for gold, some for 
fuck, some to kill, but all bright, shamelessly, innocently bright like the
lion’s red maw, and pretending, yes, pretending, that it’s a Saturday 
afternoon, a floor like any other floor, a cunt’s a cunt, no tickee no 
fuckee, buy me, take me, squeeze me, all’s well in Itchigumi, don’t step on
me, isn’t it warm, yes, I love it, I do love it, bite me again, harder, 
harder…

Weaving in and out, sizing them up—height, weight, texture—rubbing flanks
together, measuring bosoms, bottoms, waists, studying hairdos, noses, 
stances, devouring mouths half open, closing others… weaving, sidling, 
pushing, rubbing, and everywhere a sea of faces, a sea of flesh carved by 
scimitar strokes of light, the whole pack glued together in one vast 
terpsichorean stew. And over this hot conglomerate flesh whirling in the 
cake bowl the smear of brasses, the wail of trombones, the coagulating 
saxophones, the piercing trumpets, all like liquid fire going straight to 
the glands. On the sidelines, standing like thirsty sentinels, huge 
upturned jugs of orangeade, lemonade, sarsaparilla, Coca-Cola, root beer, 
the milk of she-asses and the pulp of wilted anemones. Above it all the 
almost inaudible hum of the ventilators sucking up the sour rancid odor of 
flesh and perfume, passing it out over the heads of the passing throngs in 
the street.

Find some one! That was all I could think. But whom? I milled around and 
milled around, but nothing suited me. Some were wonderful, ravishing—as 
ass, so to say. I wanted something more. It was a bazaar, a bazaar of 
flesh—why not pick and choose? Most of them had the empty look of the empty
souls they were. And why not, handling nothing but goods, money, labels, 
buttons, dishes, bills of lading, day in and day out? Should they have 
personality too? Some, like rapacious birds of the air, had that 
nondescript look of wrack tossed in by a storm—neither sluts, whores, shop 
girls nor Griseldas. Some stood like wilted flowers or like canes draped in
wet towels. Some, pure as chickweed, looked as though they were hoping to 
be raped but not seriously damaged. The good live bait was on the floor, 
wiggling, wriggling, their eloquent haunches gleaming like moire.

In a corner beside the ticket booth the hostesses were collected. Bright 
and fresh they were, as if they had just stepped out of the tub. All 
beautifully coiffed, frocked. Waiting to be bought and, if luck would have 
it, wined and dined. Waiting for the right guy to come along, that jaded 
millionaire who in a moment of forgetfulness might propose marriage.

Standing at the rail I surveyed them coolly. If it were the Yoshiwara 
now… If when you glanced their way they would undress, make a few obscene 
gestures, call to you in a raucous voice. But the Itchigumi follows a 
different program. It suggests that you very kindly and sincerely pick the 
flower of your choice, lead her to the center of the floor, bill and coo, 
nibble and gobble, wiggle and woggle, buy more tickets, take girl have 
drink, speak correctly, come again next week, choose ‘nother pretty flower,
thank you kindly, good night.

*

The music stops for a few moments and the dancers melt like snowflakes. A
girl in a pale yellow dress is gliding back to the slave booth. She looks 
Cuban. Rather short, well built, and with a mouth that’s insatiable.

I wait a moment to give her a chance to dry off, as it were, then 
approach. She looks eighteen and fresh from the jungle. Ebony and ivory. 
Her greeting is warm and natural—no ready-made smile, no cash register 
business. She’s new at the game, I find, and she is a Cuban. (How 
wonderful!) In short, she doesn’t mind too much being pawed over, chewed to
bits, et cetera; she’s still mixing pleasure with business.

Pushed to the center of the floor, wedged in, we remain there moving like
caterpillars, the censor fast asleep, the lights very low, the music 
creeping like a paid whore from chromosome to chromosome. The orgasm 
arrives and she pulls away for fear her dress will be stained.

Back at the barricade I’m trembling like a leaf. All I can smell now is 
cunt, cunt, cunt. No use dancing any more this afternoon. Must come again 
next Saturday. Why not?

And that’s exactly what I do do. On the third Saturday I run into a 
newcomer at the slave booth. She has a marvelous body, and her face, 
chipped here and there like an ancient statue, excites me. She has a trifle
more intelligence than the others, which is no detriment, and she’s not 
hungry for money. That is simply extraordinary.

When she’s not working I take her to a movie or to a cheap dance hall in 
some other neighborhood. Makes no difference to her where we go. Just bring
a little booze along, that’s all. Not that she wants to go blotto, no… it 
makes things smoother, she thinks. She’s a country girl from up-State.

Never any tension in her presence. Laughs easily, enjoys everything. When
I take her home—she lives in a boarding house—we have to stand in the 
hallway and make as best we can. A nerve-racking business, what with the 
boarders coming and going all night long.

Sometimes, on leaving her, I ask myself how come I never hitched up with 
this sort, the easy-going type, instead of the difficult ones? This gal 
hasn’t an ounce of ambition; nothing bothers her, nothing worries her. She 
doesn’t even worry about “getting caught,” as the saying goes. Probably 
skillful with the darning needle.) It doesn’t take much thinking to realize
that the reason I’m immune is because I’d be bored stiff in no time. 
Anyway, there’s little danger of my linking up with her in solid fashion. 
I’m a boarder myself, one not above pilfering change from the landlady’s 
purse.

I said she had a marvelous physique, this fly-by-night. It’s true. She 
was full and supple, limber, smooth as a seal. When I ran my hands over her
buttocks it was enough to make me forget all my problems. Nietzsche, 
Stimer, Bakunin as well. As for her mug, if it wasn’t exactly beautiful, it
was attractive and arresting. Perhaps her nose was a trifle long, a trifle 
thick, but it suited her personality, suited that laughing cunt of hers, is
what I mean. But the moment I began to make comparison between her body and
Mona’s I knew it was useless to go into it. Whatever flesh and blood 
qualities she had, this one, they remained flesh and blood. There was 
nothing more to her than what you could see and touch, hear and smell. With
Mona it was another story entirely. Any portion of her body served to 
inflame me. Her personality was as much in her left teat, so to speak, as 
in her little right toe. The flesh spoke from every quarter, every angle. 
Strangely, hers was not a perfect body either. But it was melodious and 
provocative. Her body echoed her moods. She had no need to flaunt it or 
fling it about; she had only to inhabit it, to be it.

There was also this about Mona’s body—it was constantly changing. How 
well I remember those days when we lived with the doctor and his family in 
the Bronx, when we always took a shower together, soaped one another, 
hugged one another, fucked as best we could—under the shower—while the 
cockroaches streamed up and down the walls like armies in full rout. Her 
body then, though I loved it, was out of line. The flesh drooped from her 
waist like folds, the breasts hung loose, the buttocks were too flat, too 
boyish. Yet that same body, draped in a stiff, polka-dot Swiss dress, had 
all the charm and allure of a soubrette’s. The neck was full, a columnar 
neck, I always called it, and it suited the rich, dark, vibrant voice which
issued from it. As the months and years went by this body went through all 
manner of changes. At times it grew taut, slender, drum-like. Almost too 
taut, too slender. And then it would change again, each change registering 
her inner transformation, her fluctuations, her moods, longings and 
frustrations. But always it remained provocative—fully alive, responsive, 
tingling, pulsing with love, tenderness, passion. Each day it seemed to 
speak a new language.

What power then could the body of another exert? At the most only a 
feeble transitory one. I had found the body, no other was necessary. No 
other would ever fully satisfy me. No, the laughing kind was not for me. 
One penetrated that sort of body like a knife going through cardboard. What
I craved was the elusive. (The elusive basilisk, is how I put it to 
myself.) The elusive and the insatiable at the same time. A body like 
Mona’s own, which, the more one possessed it, the more one became 
possessed. A body which could bring with it all the woes of Egypt—and its 
wonders, its marvels.

I tried another dance hall. Everything was perfect—music, lights, girls, 
even the ventilators. But never did I feel more loneliness, more 
desolation. In desperation I danced with one after another, all responsive,
yielding, ductile, malleable, all gracious, lovely, satiny and dusky, but a
despair had come over me, a weight which crushed me. As the afternoon wore 
on a feeling of nausea seized me. The music particularly revolted me. How 
many thousand times had I heard these pale, feeble, utterly idiotic tunes 
with their sickening words of endearment! The offspring of pimps and narks 
who had never known the pangs of love. “Embryonic,” I kept repeating to 
myself. The music of embryos made for embryos. The sloth calling to its 
mate in five feet of sewer water; the weasel weeping for his lost one and 
drowning in his own pipi. Romance, of the copulation of the violet and the 
stinkwort. I love you! Written on fine, silky toilet paper stroked by a 
thousand super-fine combs. Rhymes invented by mangy pederasts; lyrics by 
Albumen and his mates. Pfui!

Fleeing the place, I thought of the African records I once owned, thought
of the blood beat, steady and incessant, which animated their music. Only 
the steady, recurring, pounding rhythm of sex—but how refreshing, how pure,
how innocent!

I was in such a state that I felt like pulling out my cock, right in the 
middle of Broadway, and jerking off. Imagine a sex maniac pulling out his 
prick—on a Saturday afternoon!—in full view of the Automat!

Fuming and raging, I strolled over to Central Park and flung myself on 
the grass. Money gone, what was there to do? The dance mania… I was still 
thinkin’ on it. Still climbing that steep flight of steps to the ticket 
booth where the hairy Greek sat and grabbed the money. (“Yes, she’ll be 
here soon; why don’t you dance with one of the other girls?”) Often she 
didn’t show up at all. In a corner, on a dais, the colored musicians 
working like fury, sweating, panting, wheezing; grinding it out hour after 
hour with scarcely a letup. No fun in it for them, nor for the girls 
either, even though they did wet their pants occasionally. One had to be 
screwy to patronize such a dive.

Giving way to a feeling of delicious drowsiness, I was on the point of 
closing my eyes when out of nowhere a ravishing young woman appeared and 
seated herself on a knoll just above me. Perhaps she was unaware that, in 
the position she had assumed, her private parts were fully exposed to view.
Perhaps she didn’t care. Perhaps it was her way of smiling at me, or 
winking. There was nothing brazen or vulgar about her; she was like some 
great soft creature of the air who had come to rest from her flight.

She was so utterly oblivious of my presence, so still, so wrapped in 
reverie, that incredible as it may seem, I closed my eyes and dozed off. 
The next thing I knew I was no longer on this earth. Just as it takes time 
to grow accustomed to the after-world, so it was in my dream. The strangest
thing to get used to was the fact that nothing I wished to do required the 
least effort. If I wished to run, whether slow or fast, I did so without 
losing breath. If I wanted to jump a lake or skip over a hill, I simply 
jumped. If I wanted to fly, I flew. There was nothing more to it than that,
whatever I attempted.

After a time I realized that I was not alone. Some one was at my side, 
like a shadow, moving with the same ease and assurance as myself. My 
guardian angel, most likely. Though I encountered nothing resembling 
earthly creatures, I found myself conversing, effortlessly again, with 
whatever crossed my path. If it was an animal, I spoke to it in its own 
tongue; if it was a tree, I spoke in the language of the tree; if a rock, I
spoke as a rock. I attributed this gift of tongues to the presence of the 
being which accompanied me.

But to what realm was I being escorted? And for what end?

*

Slowly I became aware that I was bleeding, that indeed I was a mass of 
wounds, from head to foot. It was then that, seized with fright, I swooned 
away. When at last I opened my eyes I saw to my astonishment that the Being
who had accompanied me was tenderly bathing my wounds, anointing my body 
with oil. Was I at the point of death? Was it the Angel of Mercy whose 
figure was solicitously bent over me? Or had I already crossed the Great 
Divide?

Imploringly I gazed into the eyes of my Comforter. The ineffable look of 
compassion which illumined her features reassured me. I was no longer 
concerned to know whether I was still of this world or not. A feeling of 
peace invaded my being, and again I closed my eyes. Slowly and steadily a 
new vigor poured into my limbs; except for a strange feeling of emptiness 
in the region of the heart I felt completely restored.

It was after I had opened my eyes and found that I was alone, though not 
deserted, not abandoned, that instinctively I raised a hand and placed it 
over my heart. To my horror there was a deep hole where the heart should 
have been. A hole from which no blood flowed. “Then I am dead,” I murmured.
Yet I believed it not.

At this strange moment, dead but not dead, the doors of memory swung open
and down through the corridors of time I beheld that which no man should be
permitted to see until he is ready to give up the ghost: I saw in every 
phase and moment of his pitiful weakness the utter wretch I had been, the 
blackguard, nothing less, who had striven so vainly and ignominiously to 
protect his miserable little heart. I saw that it never had been broken, as
I imagined, but that, paralyzed by fear, it had shrunk almost to 
nothingness. I saw that the grievous wounds which had brought me low had 
all been received in a senseless effort to prevent this shriveled heart 
from breaking. The heart itself had never been touched; it had dwindled 
from disuse.

It was gone now, this heart, taken from me, no doubt by the Angel of 
Mercy. I had been healed and restored so that I might live on in death as I
had never lived in life. Vulnerable no longer, what need was there for a 
heart?

Lying there prone, with all my strength and vigor returned, the enormity 
of my fate smote me like a rock. The sense of the utter emptiness of 
existence overwhelmed me. I had achieved invulnerability, it was mine 
forever, but life—if this was life—had lost all meaning. My lips moved as 
if in prayer but the feeling to express anguish failed me. Heartless, I had
lost the power to communicate, even with my Creator.

Now, once again, the Angel appeared before me. In her hands, cupped like 
a chalice, she held the poor, shrunken semblance of a heart which was mine.
Bestowing upon me a look of the utmost compassion, she blew upon this dead 
looking ember until it swelled and filled with blood, until it palpitated 
between her fingers like a live, human heart.

Restoring it to its place, her lips moved as if pronouncing the 
benediction, but no sound issued forth. My transgressions had been 
forgiven; I was free to sin again, free to burn with the flame of the 
spirit. But in that moment I knew, and would never, never more forget, that
it is the heart which rules, the heart which binds and protects. Nor would 
it ever die, this heart, for its keeping was in greater hands.

What joy now possessed me! What complete and absolute trust!

Rising to my feet, a new being entire, I put forth my arms to embrace the
world. Nothing had changed; it was the world I had always known. But I saw 
it now with other eyes. I no longer sought to escape it, to shun its ills, 
or alter it in any least way. I was fully of it and one with it. I had come
through the valley of the shadow of death; I was no longer ashamed to be 
human, all-too-human.

I had found my place. I belonged. My place was in the world, in the midst
of death and corruption. For companions I had the sun, the moon, the stars.
My heart, cleansed of its inquities, had lost all fear; it ached now to 
offer itself to the first comer. Indeed, I had the impression that I was 
all heart, a heart which could never be broken, nor even wounded, since it 
was forever inseparable from that which had given it birth.

And so, as I walked forward and onward into the thick of the world, there
where full havoc had been wreaked and panic alone reigned, I cried out with
all the fervor which my soul possessed—“Take heart, O brothers and sisters!
Take heart!”

CHAPTER TWELVE

On arriving at the office Monday morning I found a cablegram lying on my 
desk. In black and white it said that her boat was arriving Thursday, I 
should meet her at the pier.

I said nothing to Tony, he’d only view it as a calamity. I kept repeating
the message to myself over and over; it seemed almost unbelievable.

It took hours for me to collect myself. As I was leaving the office that 
evening I looked at the message once again to be certain I had not misread 
it. No, she was arriving Thursday, no mistake about it. Yes, this coming 
Thursday, not the next Thursday nor the last. This Thursday. It was 
incredible.

The first thing to do was to find a place to live. A cozy little room 
somewhere, and not too expensive. It meant I would have to borrow again. 
From whom? Certainly not from Tony.

The folks weren’t exactly overjoyed to hear the news. My mother’s sole 
comment was—“I hope you won’t give up your job now that she’s returning.”

Thursday came and I was at the pier, an hour ahead of time. It was one of
the fast German liners she had taken. The boat arrived, a little late, the 
passengers disembarked, the luggage melted from sight, but no sign of Mona 
or Stasia. Panicky, I rushed to the office where the passenger list was 
held. Her name was not on the list, nor Stasia’s either.

I returned to the little room I had rented, my heart heavy as lead. 
Surely she could have sent me a message. It was cruel, utterly cruel of 
her.

Next morning, shortly after arriving at the office, I received a phone 
call from the telegraph office. They had a cablegram for me. “Read it!” I 
yelled. (The dopes, what were they waiting for?) Message: “Arriving 
Saturday on Berengaria. Love.”

This time it was the real McCoy. I watched her coming down the gangplank.
Her, her. And more ravishing than ever. In addition to a small tin trunk 
she had a valise and a hat bag crammed with stuff. But where was Stasia?

Stasia was still in Paris. Couldn’t say when she’d return.

Wonderful! thought I to myself. No need to make further inquiries.

In the taxi, when I told her about the room I had taken, she seemed 
delighted. “We’ll find a better place later,” she remarked. (“Christ, no!” 
said I to myself. “Why a better place?”) There were a thousand questions I 
was dying to put to her but I checked myself. I didn’t even ask why she had
changed boats. What did it matter what had happened yesterday, a month ago,
five years ago? She was back—that was enough.

There was no need to ask questions—she was bursting to tell me things. I 
had to beg her to slow down, not let it all out at once. “Save some for 
later,” I said.

While she was rummaging through the trunk—she had brought back all manner
of gifts, including paintings, carvings, art albums—I couldn’t resist 
making love to her. We went at it on the floor amidst the papers, books, 
paintings, clothing, shoes and what not. But even this interruption 
couldn’t check the flow of talk. There was so much to tell, so many names 
to reel off. It sounded to my ears like a mad jumble.

“Tell me one thing,” said I, stopping her abruptly. “Are you sure I would
like it over there?”

Her face took on an absolutely ecstatic expression. “Like it? Val, it’s 
what you’ve dreamed of all your life. You belong there. Even more than I. 
It has everything you are searching for and never will find here. 
Everything She launched into it again—the streets, how they looked, the 
crooked winding ones, the alleys, the impasses, the charming little places,
the great avenues, such as those radiating from the Etoile; then the 
markets, the butcher shops, the book stalls, the bridges, the bicycle cops,
the cafes, the cabarets, the public gardens, the fountains, even the 
urinals. On and on, like a Cook’s tour. All I could do was roll my eyes, 
shake my head, clap my hands. “If it’s only half as good,” thought I to 
myself, “it will be marvelous.”

There was one sour note: the French women. They were decidedly not 
beautiful, she wanted me to know. Attractive, yes. But not beauties, like 
our American women. The men, on the other hand, were interesting and alive,
though hard to get rid of. She thought I would like the men, though she 
hoped I wouldn’t acquire their habits, where women were concerned. They had
a “medieval” conception of women, she thought. A man had the right to beat 
a woman up in public. “It’s horrible to see,” she exclaimed. “No one dares 
to interfere. Even the cops look the other way.” I took this with a grain 
of salt, the customary one. A woman’s view. As for the American beauty 
business, America could keep her beauties. They had never had any 
attraction for me.

“We’ve got to go back,” she said, forgetting that “we” had not gone there
together. “It’s the only life for you, Val. You’ll write there, I promise 
you. Even if we starve. No one seems to have money there. Yet they get 
by—how, I can’t say. Anyway, being broke there is not the same as being 
broke here. Here it’s ugly. There it’s… well, romantic, I guess you’d say. 
But we’re not going to be broke when we go back. We’ve got to work hard 
now, save our money, so that we can have at least two or three years of it 
when we do go.”

It was good to hear her talk so earnestly about “work.” The next day, 
Sunday, we spent walking, talking. Nothing but plans for the future. To 
economize, she decided to look for a place where we could cook. Something 
more homelike than the hall bedroom I had rented. “A place where you can 
work,” was how she put it.

The pattern was all too familiar. Let her do as she likes, I thought. She
will anyway.

“It must be terribly boring, that job,” she remarked. “It’s not too bad.”
I knew what the next line would be.

“You’re not going to keep it forever, I hope?”

“No, dear. Soon I’ll get down to writing again.”

“Over there,” she said, “people seem to manage better than here. And on 
much less. If a man is a painter he paints; if he’s a writer he writes. No 
putting things off until all’s rosy.” She paused, thinking no doubt that I 
would show skepticism. “I know, Val,” she continued, with a change of 
voice, “I know that you hate to see me do the things I do to make ends 
meet. I don’t like it myself. But you can’t work and write, that’s clear. 
If some one has to make a sacrifice, let it be me. Frankly, it’s no 
sacrifice, what I do. All I live for is to see you do what you want to do. 
You should trust me, trust me to do what’s best for you. Once we get to 
Europe things will work out differently. You’ll blossom there, I know it. 
This is such a meager, paltry life we lead here. Do you realize, Val, that 
you’ve hardly got a friend any more whom you care to see? Doesn’t that tell
you something? There you have only to take a seat in a cafe and you make 
friends instantly. Besides, they talk the things you like to talk. Ulric’s 
the only friend you ever talk to that way. With the rest you’re just a 
buffoon. Now that’s true, isn’t it?”

I had to admit it was only too true. Talking this way, heart-to-heart, 
made me feel that perhaps she did know better than I what was good for me 
and what wasn’t. Never was I more eager to find a happy solution to our 
problems. Especially the problem of working in harness. The problem of 
seeing eye to eye.

She had returned with just a few cents in her purse. It was the lack of 
money which had to do with the last-minute change of boats, so she said. 
There was more to it than this, of course, and she did make further 
explanations, elaborate ones, but it was all so hurried and jumbled that I 
couldn’t keep up with it. What did surprise me was that in no time at all 
she had found new quarters for us to move to—on one of the most beautiful 
streets in all Brooklyn. She had found exactly the right place, had paid a 
month’s rent in advance, rented me a typewriter, filled the larder, and God
knows what all. I was curious to know how she came by the dough.

“Don’t ask me,” she said. “There’ll be more when we need it.”

I thought of my lame efforts to scrounge a few measly dollars. And of the
debt I still owed Tony.

“You know,” she said, “every one’s so happy to see me back they can’t 
refuse me anything.”

“Every one.” I translated that to mean “some one.”

I knew the next thing would be—“Do quit that horrid job!”

Tony knew it too. “I know you won’t be staying with us much longer,” he 
said one day. “In a way I envy you. When you do leave see that we don’t 
lose track of one another. I’ll miss you, you bastard.”

I tried to tell him how much I had appreciated all he had done for me, 
but he brushed it off. “You’d do the same,” he said, “if you were in my 
place. Seriously though, are you going to settle down and write now? I hope
so. We can get grave-diggers any day, but not a writer. Eh, what?”

Hardly a week elapsed before I said good-bye to Tony. It was the last I 
ever saw of him. I did pay him off, eventually, but in driblets. Others to 
whom I was indebted only got theirs fifteen or twenty years later. A few 
had died before I got around to them. Such is life—“the university of 
life,” as Gorky called it.

The new quarters were divine. Rear half of a second floor in an old 
brownstone house. Every convenience, including soft rugs, thick woolen 
blankets, refrigerator, bath and shower, huge pantry, electric stove, and 
so on. As for the landlady, she was absolutely taken with us. A Jewess with
liberal ideas and passionately fond of art. To have a writer and an 
actress—Mona had given that as her profession–was a double triumph for her.
Up until her husband’s sudden death she had been a school teacher—with 
leanings toward authorship. The insurance she had collected on her 
husband’s death had enabled her to give up teaching. She hoped that soon 
she would get started with her writing. Maybe I could give her some 
valuable hints—when I had time, that is.

From every angle the situation was ducky. How long would it last? That 
was ever the question in my mind. More than anything it did me good to see 
Mona arrive each afternoon with her shopping bag full. So good to see her 
change, don an apron, cook the dinner. The picture of a happy wedded wife. 
And while the meal was cooking a new phonograph record to listen to—always 
something exotic, something I could never afford to buy myself. After 
dinner an excellent liqueur, with coffee. Now and then a movie to round it 
off. If not, a walk through the aristocratic neighborhood surrounding us. 
Indian Summer, in every sense of the word.

And so, when in a burst of confidence one day she informed me that there 
was a rich old geezer who had taken a fancy to her, who believed in her—as 
a writer!—I listened patiently and without the least show of disturbance or
irritation.

. The reason for this burst of confidence was soon revealed. If she could
prove to this admirer—wonderful how she could vary the substantive!—that 
she could write a book, a novel, for example, he would see to it that it 
got published. What’s more, he offered to pay a rather handsome weekly 
stipend while the writing of it was in process. He expected, of course, to 
be shown a few pages a week. Only fair, what?

“And that’s not all, Val. But the rest I’ll tell you later, when you’ve 
gotten on with the book. It’s hard not to tell you, believe me, but you 
must trust me. What have you to say?”

I was too surprised to know what to think.

“Can you do it? Will you do it?”

“I can try. But wouldn’t he be able to tell straight off that it’s a 
man’s writing and not a woman’s?”

“No, Val, he wouldn’t!” came the prompt reply. “How do you know? How can 
you be so sure?”

“Because I’ve already put him to the test. He’s read some of your work—I 
passed it off as mine, of course—and he never suspected a thing.”

“So-o-o. Hmmm. You don’t miss a trick, do you?”

“If you’d like to know, he was extremely interested. Said there was no 
doubt I had talent. He was going to show the pages to a publisher friend of
his. Does that satisfy you?”

“But a novel… do you honestly think I can write a novel?”

“Why not? You can do anything you put your mind to. It doesn’t have to be
a conventional novel. All he’s concerned about is to discover if I have 
stick-to-itiveness. He says I’m erratic, unstable, capricious.”

“By the way,” I put in, “does he know where we… I mean yow… live?”

“Of course not! Do you think I’m crazy? I told him I’m living with my 
mother and that she’s an invalid.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“He’s in the fur business, I think.” As she was giving me this answer I 
was thinking how interesting it would be to know how she became acquainted 
with him and even more, how she had managed to progress so far in such a 
short time. But to such queries I would only receive the moon is made of 
green cheese replies.

“He also plays the stock market,” she added. “He probably has a number of
irons in the fire.”

“So he thinks you’re a single woman living with an invalid mother?”

“I told him I had been married and divorced. I gave him my stage name.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all sewed up. Well, at least you won’t have to
be running around nights, will you?”

To which she replied: “He’s like you, he hates the Village and all that 
bohemian nonsense. Seriously, Val, he’s a person of some culture. He’s 
passionate about music, for one thing. He once played the violin, I 
believe.”

“Yeah? And what do you call him, this old geezer?”

“Pop.”

“Pop?”

“Yes, just Pop.”

“How old is he… about T”

“Oh, fiftyish, I suppose.”

“That’s not so very old, is it?”

“No-o-o. But he’s settled in his ways. He seems older.”

“Well,” I said, by way of closing the subject, “it’s all highly 
interesting. Who knows, maybe it will lead to something. Let’s go for a 
walk, what do you say?”

“Certainly,” she said. “Anything you like.” Anything you like. That was 
an expression I hadn’t heard from her lips in many a moon. Had the trip to 
Europe worked a magical change? Or was there something cooking that she 
wasn’t ready to tell about just yet? I wasn’t eager to cultivate doubts. 
But there was the past with all its tell-tale scars. This proposition of 
Pop’s now—it all seemed aboveboard, genuine. And obviously entered into for
my sake, not hers. What if it did give her a thrill to be taken for a 
writer instead of an actress? She was doing it to get me started. It was 
her way of solving my problem.

There was one aspect of the situation which intrigued me vastly. I got 
hep to it later, on hearing her report certain conversations which she had 
had with Pop. Conversations dealing with “her work.” Pop was not altogether
a fool, apparently. He would ask questions. Difficult ones, sometimes. And 
she, not being a writer, could hardly be expected to know that, faced with 
a direct question—“Why did you say this?”—the answer might well be: “I 
don’t know.” Thinking that she should know, she would give the most amazing
explanations, explanations which a writer might be proud of had he the wits
to think that fast. Pop relished these responses. After all, he was no 
writer either. “Tell me more!” I would say.

And she would, though much of it was probably fictive. I would sit back 
and roar with laughter. Once I was so delighted that I remarked—“How do you
know you might not also be a writer?”

“Oh no, Val, not me. I’ll never be a writer. I’m an actress, nothing 
more.”

“You mean you’re a fake?”

“I mean I have no real talent for anything.”

“You didn’t always think that way,” I said, somewhat pained to have 
forced such an admission from her.

“I did too!” she flashed. “I became an actress… or rather I went on the 
stage… only to prove to my parents that I was more than they thought me to 
be. I didn’t really love the theater. I was terrified every time I accepted
a role. I felt like a cheat. When I say I’m an actress I mean that I’m 
always making believe. I’m not a real actress, you know that. Don’t you 
always see through me? You see through everything that’s false or 
pretentious. I wonder sometimes how you can bear to live with me. Honestly 
I do… ” Strange talk, from her lips. Even now, in being so honest, so 
sincere, she was acting. She was making believe now that she was only a 
make-believer. Like so many women with histrionic talent, when her real 
self was in question she either belittled herself or magnified herself. She
could only be natural when she wished to make an impression on some one. It
was her way of disarming the adversary.

What I wouldn’t have given to overhear some of these conversations with 
Pop! Particularly when they discussed writing. Her writing. Who knows? 
Maybe the old geezer, as she reluctantly called him, did see through her. 
Maybe he only pretended to be testing her (with this writing chore) in 
order to make it easier for her to accept the money he showered on her. 
Possibly he thought that by permitting her to think she was earning this 
money he would save himself embarrassment. From what I gathered, he was 
scarcely the type to openly suggest that she become his mistress. She never
said so squarely but she insinuated that physically he was somewhat 
repulsive. (How else would a woman put it?) But to continue the thought… By
flattering her ego—and what could be more flattering to a woman of her type
than to be taken seriously as an artist?—perhaps she would assume the role 
of mistress without being asked. Out of sheer gratitude. A woman, when 
truly grateful for the attentions she receives, nearly always offers her 
body.

The chances were, of course, that she was giving value for value, and had
been from the very beginning.

Speculations of this order in no way disturbed the smooth relationship we
had established. When things are going right it’s amazing how far the mind 
can travel without doing damage to the spirit.

I enjoyed our walks after dinner. It was a new thing in our life, these 
walks. We talked freely, more spontaneously. The fact that we had money in 
our pockets also helped; it enabled us to think and talk about other things
than our usual predicament. The streets roundabout were wide, elegant, 
expansive. The old mansions, gracefully going to seed, slept in the dust of
time. There was still an air of grandeur about them. Fronting some of them 
were iron Negroes, the hitching posts of former days. The driveways were 
shaded by arbors, the old trees rich in foliage; the lawns, always neat and
trim, sparkled with an electric green. Above all, a serene stillness 
enveloped the streets; one could hear footsteps a block away.

It was an atmosphere which was conducive to writing. From the back 
windows of our quarters I looked out upon a beautiful garden in which there
were two enormous shade trees. Through the open window there often floated 
up the strains of good music. Now and then there came to my ears the voice 
of a cantor—Sirota or Rosenblatt usually—for the landlady had discovered 
that I adored synagogue music. Sometimes she would knock at the door to 
offer me a piece of homemade pie or a strudel she had baked. She would take
a lingering look at my work table, always strewn with books and papers, and
rush away, grateful, it seemed, for the privilege of having had a peek into
a writer’s den.

It was on one of our evening walks that we stopped off at the corner 
stationery store, where they served ice cream and sodas, to get cigarettes.
It was an old-time establishment run by a Jewish family. Immediately I 
entered I took a fancy to the place; it had that faded, somnolescent air of
the little shops I used to patronize as a boy when looking for a chocolate 
cream drop or a bag of Spanish peanuts. The owner of the place was seated 
at a table in a dim corner of the store, playing chess with a friend. The 
way they were hunched over the board reminded me of celebrated paintings. 
Cezanne’s card players particularly. The heavy man with gray hair and a 
huge cap pulled down over his eyes continued to study the board while the 
owner waited on us.

We got our cigarettes, then decided to have some ice cream.

“Don’t let me keep you from your game,” said I, when we had been served. 
“I know what it is to be interrupted in a chess game.”

“So you play?”

“Yes, but poorly. I’ve wasted many a night at it.” Then, though I had no 
intention of detaining him, I threw out a few remarks about Second Avenue, 
of the chess clubs I once haunted there, of the Cafe Royal, and so on.

The man with the big cap now got up and approached us. It was the way he 
greeted us which made me realize that he had taken us for Jews. It gave me 
a warm feeling.

“So you play chess?” he said. “That’s fine. Why don’t you join us?”

“Not tonight,” I replied. “We’re out for a breath of air.”

“Are you living in the neighborhood?”

“Right up the street,” I replied. I gave him the address. “Why that’s 
Mrs. Skolsky’s house,” he said. “I know her well. I’ve got a gent’s 
furnishing shop a block or so away… on Myrtle Avenue. Why don’t you drop in
some time?”

With this he extended his hand and said: “Essen’s the name. Sid Essen.” 
He then shook hands with Mona.

We gave our names and again he shook hands with us. He seemed strangely 
delighted. “You’re not a Jew, then?” he said.

“No,” said I, “but I often pass for one.”

“But your wife, she’s Jewish, isn’t she?” He looked at Mona intently.

“No,” I said, “she’s part Gypsy, part Roumanian. From Bukovina.”

“Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Abe, where are those cigars? Pass the box to 
Mr. Miller, will you?” He turned to Mona. “And what about some pastry for 
the Missus?”

“Your chess game… ” I said.

“Drat it,” he said. “We were only killing time. It’s a pleasure to talk 
to some one like you—and your charming wife. She’s an actress, isn’t she?”

I nodded.

“I could tell at a glance,” he said.

It was thus the conversation began. We must have gone on talking for an 
hour or more. What intrigued him, evidently, was my fondness for things 
Jewish. I had to promise that I would look him up at his store soon. We 
would have a game of chess there, if I felt like it. He explained that the 
place had become like a morgue. He didn’t know why he held on to the 
place—there was only a handful of customers left. Then, as we shook hands 
again, he said he hoped we would do him the honor of meeting his family. We
were almost next door neighbors, he said.

“We’ve got a new friend,” I remarked as we sauntered down the street.

“He adores you, I can see that,” said Mona.

“He was like a dog that wants to be stroked and patted, wasn’t he?”

“A very lonely man, no doubt.”

“Didn’t he say he played the violin?”

“Yes,” said Mona. “Don’t you remember, he mentioned that the string 
quartet met at his home once a week… or used to.”

“That’s right. God, how the Jews love the violin!”

“I suspect he thinks you have a drop of Jewish blood in you, Val.”

“Maybe I have. I certainly wouldn’t be ashamed of it if I did.”

An awkward silence ensued.

“I didn’t mean it the way you took it,” I finally said. “I know,” she 
replied. “It’s all right.”

“They all know how to play chess, too.” I was half talking to myself. 
“And they love to make gifts, have you ever noticed?”

“Can’t we talk about something else?”

“Of course! Of course we can! I’m sorry. They excite me, that’s all. 
Whenever I bump into a real Jew I feel I’m back home. I don’t know why.”

“It’s because they’re warm and generous—like yourself,” she said.

“It’s because they’re an old people, that’s what I think.”

“You were made for some other world, not America, Val. You get on 
famously with any people except your own. You’re an outcast.”

“And what about you? You don’t belong here either.”

“I know,” she said. “Well, get the novel written and we’ll clear out. I 
don’t care where you take me, but you must see Paris first.”

“Righto! But I’d like to see other places too… Rome, Budapest, Madrid, 
Vienna, Constantinople. I’d like to visit your Bukovina, too, some day. And
Russia—Moscow, Petersburg, Nijny-Novgorod… Ah, to walk down the Nevsky 
Prospekt… in Dostoievsky’s footsteps! What a dream!”

“It could be done, Val. There’s no reason why we can’t go anywhere we 
want… anywhere in the world.”

“You really think so?”

“I know so.” Then, impulsively, she blurted out—“I wonder where Stasia is
now?”

“You don’t know?”

“Of course I don’t. I haven’t had a word from her since I got back. I 
have a feeling I may never hear from her again.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, “you’ll hear from her all right. She’ll turn up 
one day—just like that!”

“She was a different person over there.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know exactly. Different, that’s all. More normal, perhaps. 
Certain types of men seemed to attract her. Like that Austrian I told you 
about. She thought he was so gentle, so considerate, so full of 
understanding.”

“Do you suppose there was anything between them?”

“Who knows? They were together constantly, as if they were madly in love 
with each other.”

“As if, you say. What does that mean?”

She hesitated, then heatedly, as if still smarting: “No woman could fall 
for a creature like that! He fawned on her, he ate from her hand. And she 
adored it. Maybe it made her feel feminine.”

“It doesn’t sound like Stasia,” I said. “You don’t think she really 
changed, do you?”

“I don’t know what to think, Val. I feel sad, that’s all. I feel I’ve 
lost a great friend.”

“Nonsense!” I said. “One doesn’t lose a friend as easily as that.”

“She said I was too possessive, too… “

“Maybe you were—with her.”

“No one understood her better than I. All I wanted was to see her happy. 
Happy and free.”

“That’s what every one says who’s in love.”

“It was more than love, Val. Much more.”

“How can there be anything more than love? Love is all, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps with women there’s something else. Men are not subtle enough to 
grasp it.”

Fearing that the discussion would degenerate into argument, I changed the
subject as skillfully as I could. Finally I pretended that I was famished. 
To my surprise, she said—“So am I.”

We returned to our quarters. After we had had a good snack—pate de foie 
gras, cold turkey, cole slaw, washed down with a delicious Moselle—I felt 
as if I could go to the machine and really write. Perhaps it was the talk, 
the mention of travel, of strange cities… of a new life. Or that I had 
successfully prevented our talk from degenerating into a quarrel. (It was 
such a delicate subject, Stasia.) Or perhaps it was the Jew, Sid Essen, and
the stir of racial memories. Or perhaps nothing more than the rightness of 
our quarters, the feeling of snugness, coziness, at-homeness.

Anyway, as she was clearing the table I said: “If only one could write as
one talks… write like Gorky, Gogol, or Knut Humsun!”

She gave me a look such as a mother sometimes directs at a child she is 
holding in her arms.

“Why write like them?” she said. “Write like you are, that’s so much 
better.”

“I wish I thought so. Christ! Do you know what’s the matter with me? I’m 
a chameleon. Every author I fall in love with I want to imitate. If only I 
could imitate myself!”

“When are you going to show me some pages?” she said. “I’m dying to see 
what you’ve done so far.”

“Soon,” I said.

“Is it about us?”

“I suppose so. What else could I write about?”

“You could write about anything, Val.”

“That’s what you think. You never seem to realize my limitations. You 
don’t know what a struggle I go through. Sometimes I feel thoroughly 
licked. Sometimes I wonder what ever gave me the notion that I could write.
A few minutes ago, though, I was writing like a madman. In my head, again. 
But the moment I sit down to the machine, I become a clod. It gets me. It 
gets me down.

“Did you know,” I said, “that toward the end of his life Gogol went to 
Palestine? A strange fellow, Gogol. Imagine a crazy Russian like that dying
in Rome! I wonder where I’ll die.”

“What’s the matter with you, Val? What are you talking about? You’ve got 
eighty more years to live. Write’. Don’t talk about dying.”

I felt I owed it to her to tell her a little about the novel. “Guess what
I call myself in the book!” I said. She couldn’t. “I took your uncle’s 
name, the one who lives in Vienna. You told me he was in the Hussars, I 
think. Somehow I can’t picture him as the colonel of a death’s head 
regiment. And a Jew. But I like everything you told me about him. That’s 
why I took his name… ” Pause.

“What I’d like to do with this bloody novel—only Pop might not feel the 
same way—is to charge through it like a drunken Cossack. Russia, Russia, 
where are you heading? On, on, like the whirlwind! The only way I can be 
myself is to smash things. I’ll never write a book to suit the publishers. 
I’ve written too many books. Sleepwalking books. You know what I mean. 
Millions and millions of words—all in the head. They’re banging around up 
there, like gold pieces. I’m tired of making gold pieces. I’m sick of these
cavalry charges… in the dark. Every word I put down now must be an arrow 
that goes straight to the mark. A poisoned arrow. I want to kill off books,
writers, publishers, readers. To write’ for the public doesn’t mean a thing
to me. What I’d like is to write for madmen—or for the angels.”

I paused, and a curious smile came over my face at the thought which had 
entered my head.

“That landlady of ours, I wonder what she’d think if she heard me talking
this way? She’s too good to us, don’t you think? She doesn’t know us. She’d
never believe what a walking pogrom I am. Nor has she any idea why I’m so 
crazy about Sirota and that bloody synagogue music.” I pulled up short. 
“What the hell has Sirota got to do with it anyway?”

“Yes, Val, you’re excited. Put it in the book. Don’t waste yourself in 
talk!”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sometimes I would sit at the machine for hours without writing a line. 
Fired by an idea, often an irrelevant one, my thoughts would come too fast 
to be transcribed. I would be dragged along at a gallop, like a stricken 
warrior tied to his chariot.

On the wall at my right there were all sorts of memoranda tacked up: a 
long list of words, words that bewitched me and which I intended to drag in
by the scalp if necessary; reproductions of paintings, by Uccello, della 
Francesca, Breughel, Giotto, Memling; titles of books from which I meant to
deftly lift passages; phrases filched from my favorite authors, not to 
quote but to remind me how to twist things occasionally; for ex: “The worm 
that would gnaw her bladder” or “the pulp which had deglutinized behind his
forehead.” In the Bible were slips of paper to indicate where gems were to 
be found. The Bible was a veritable diamond mine. Every time I looked up a 
passage I became intoxicated. In the dictionary were place marks for lists 
of one kind or another: flowers, birds, trees, reptiles, gems, poisons, and
so on. In short, I had fortified myself with a complete arsenal.

But what was the result? Pondering over a word like praxis, for example, 
or pleroma, my mind would wander like a drunken wasp. I might end up in a 
desperate struggle to recall the name of that Russian composer, the mystic,
or Theosophist, who had left unfinished his greatest work. The one of whom 
some one had written—“He, the Messiah in his own imagination, who had 
dreamed of leading mankind toward ‘the last festival,’ who had imagined 
himself God, and everything, including himself, his own creation, who had 
dreamed by the force of his tones to overthrow the universe, died of a 
pimple.” Scriabin, that’s who it was. Yes, Scriabin could derail me for 
days. Every time his name popped into my head I was back on Second Avenue, 
in the rear of some cafe, surrounded by Russians (white ones, usually) and 
Russian Jews, listening to some unknown genius reel off the sonatas, 
preludes and etudes of the divine Scriabin. From Scriabin to Prokofiev, to 
the night I first heard him, Carnegie Hall, probably, high up in the 
gallery, and so excited that when I stood up to applaud or yell—we all 
yelled like madmen in those days—I nearly tumbled out of the gallery. A 
tall, gaunt figure he was, in a frock coat, like something out of the Drei 
Groschen Oper, like Monsieur les Pompes Funebres. From Prokofiev to Luke 
Ralston, now departed, an ascetic also, with a face like the death mask of 
Monsieur Arouet. A good friend, Luke Ralston, who, after visiting the 
merchant tailors up and down Fifth Avenue with his samples of imported 
woolens, would go home and practice German Lieder while his dear old 
mother, who had ruined him with her love, would make him pigs’ knuckles and
sauerkraut and tell him for the ten thousandth time what a dear, good son 
he was. His thin, cultivated voice was too weak, unfortunately, to cope 
with the fright-laden melodies of his beloved Hugo Wolf with which he 
always larded his programs. At thirty-three he died—of pneumonia, they 
said, but it was probably a broken heart… And in between come memories of 
other forgotten figures—minnesingers, flutists, cellists, pianists in 
skirts, like the homely one who always included Schubert’s Carnival on her 
program. (Reminded me so much of Maude: the nun become virtuoso.) There 
were others too, short-haired and long-haired, all perfectos, like Havana 
cigars. Some, with chests like bulls, could shatter the chandeliers with 
their Wagnerian shrieks. Some were like lovely Jessicas, their hair parted 
in the middle and pasted down: benign madonnas (Jewish, mostly) who had not
yet taken to rifling the icebox at all hours of the night. And then the 
fiddlers, in skirts, left-handed sometimes, often with red hair or dirty 
orange, and bosoms which got in the way of the bow…

Just looking at a word, as I say. Or a painting, or a book. The title 
alone, sometimes. Like Heart of Darkness or Under the Autumn Star. How did 
it begin again, that wonderful tale? Have a look-see. Read a few pages, 
then throw the book down. Inimitable. And how had I begun? I read it over 
once again, my imaginary Paul Morphy opening. Weak, wretchedly weak. 
Something falls off the table. I get down to search for it. There, on hands
and knees, a crack in the floor intrigues me. It reminds me of something. 
What? I stay like that, as if waiting to be “served”, like a ewe. Thoughts 
whirl through my bean and out through the vent at the top of my skull. I 
reach for a pad and jot down a few words. More thoughts, plaguey thoughts. 
(What dropped from the table was a matchbox.) How to fit these thoughts 
into the novel. Always the same dilemma. And then I think of Twelve Men. If
only somewhere I could do one little section which would have the warmth, 
the tenderness, the pathos of that chapter on Paul Dressier. But I’m not a 
Dreiser. And I have no brother Paul. It’s far away, the banks of the 
Wabash. Farther, much farther, than Moscow or Kronstadt, or the warm, 
utterly romantic Crimea. Why?

Russia, where are you leading us? Forward! Ech konee, konee!

I think of Gorky, the baker’s helper, his face white with flour, and the 
big fat peasant (in his nightshirt) rolling in the mud with his beloved 
sows. The University of Life. Gorky: mother, father, comrade. Gorky, the 
beloved vagabond, who whether tramping, weeping, pissing, praying or 
cursing, writes. Gorky: who wrote in blood. A writer true as the sundial…

Just looking at a title, as I say.

Thus, like a piano concerto for the left hand, the day would slip by. 
Lucky if there were a page or two to show for all the torture and the 
inspiration. Writing! It was like pulling up poison oak by the roots. Or 
searching for mangolds.

When now and then she asked: “How is it coming, dear Val?” I wanted to 
bury my head in my hands and sob.

“Don’t push yourself, Val!”

But I have pushed. I’ve pushed and pushed till there’s not a drop of caca
in me. Often it’s just when she says—“Dinner’s ready!” that the flow 
begins. What the hell! Maybe after dinner. Maybe after she’s gone to sleep.
Manana.

At table I talk about the work as if I were another Alexandre Dumas or a 
Balzac. Always what I intend to do, never what I have done. I have a genius
for the impalpable, for the inchoate, for the not yet born.

“And your day?” I say sometimes. “What was your day like?” (More to get 
relief from the devils who plagued me than to hear the trivia which I 
already knew by heart.) Listening with one ear I could see Pop waiting like
a faithful hound for the bone he was to receive. Would there be enough fat 
on it? Would it splinter in his mouth? And I would remind myself that it 
wasn’t really the book pages he was waiting for but a more juicy 
morsel—her. He would be patient; he would be content—for a while at 
least—with literary discussions.

As long as she kept herself looking lovely, as long as she continued to 
wear the delightful gowns which he urged her to select for herself, as long
as she accepted with good grace all the little favors he heaped upon her. 
As long, in other words, as she treated him like a human being. As long as 
she wasn’t ashamed to be seen with him. (Did she really think, as she 
averred, that he looked like a toad?) With eyes half closed I could see him
waiting, waiting on a street corner, or in the lobby of a semi-fashionable 
hotel, or in some outlandish cafe (in another incarnation), a cafe such as 
“Zum Hiddigeigei.” I always saw him dressed like a gentleman, with or 
without spats and. cane. A sort of inconspicuous millionaire, fur trader or
stock broker, not the predatory type but, as the paunch indicated, the kind
who prefers the good things of life to the almighty dollar. A man who once 
played the violin. A man of taste, indisputably. In brief, no dummox. 
Average, perhaps, but not ordinary. Conspicuous by his inconspicuousness. 
Probably full of watermelon seeds and other pips. And saddled with an 
invalid wife, one he wouldn’t dream of hurting. (“Look, darling, see what 
I’ve brought you! Some Maatjes herring, some lachs, and a jar of pickled 
antlers from the reindeer land.”)

And when he reads the opening pages, this pipsqueaking millionaire, will 
he exclaim: “Aha! I smell a rat!” Or, putting his wiry brains to sleep, 
will he simply murmur to himself: “A lovely piece of tripe, a romance out 
of the Dark Ages.”

And our landlady, the good Mrs. Skolsky, what would she think if she had 
a squint at these pages? Would she wet her panties with excitement? Or 
would she hear music where there were only seismographic disturbances? (I 
could see her running to the synagogue looking for rams’ horns.) One day 
she and I have got to have it out, about the writing business. Either more 
strudels, more Sirota, or—the garotte. If only I knew a little Yiddish!

“Call me Reb!” Those were Sid Essen’s parting words.

Such exquisite torture, this writing humbuggery! Bughouse reveries mixed 
with choking fits and what the Swedes call mardommen. Squat images roped 
with diamond tiaras. Baroque architecture. Cabalistic logarithms. Mezuzahs 
and prayer wheels. Portentous phrases. (“Let no one,” said the auk, “look 
upon this man with favor!”) Skies of blue-green copper, filagreed with lacy
striata; umbrella ribs, obscene graffiti. Balaam the ass licking his hind 
parts. Weasels spouting nonsense. A sow menstruating…

All because, as she once put it, I had “the chance of a lifetime.”

Sometimes I sailed into it with huge black wings. Then everything came 
out pell-mell and arsey-versy. Pages and pages. Reams of it. None of it 
belonged in the novel. Nor even in The Book of Perennial Gloom. Reading 
them over I had the impression of examining an old print: a room in a 
medieval dwelling, the old woman sitting on the pot, the doctor standing 
with red-hot tongs, a mouse creeping toward a piece of cheese in the corner
near the crucifix. A ground-floor view, so to speak. A chapter from the 
history of everlasting misery. Depravity, insomnia, gluttony, posing as the
three graces. All described in quicksilver, benzine and potassium 
permanganate.

Another day my hands might wander over the keys with the felicity of a 
Borgia’s murderous paw. Choosing the staccato technique, I would ape the 
quibblers and quipsters of the Ghibellines. Or put it on, like a 
saltimbanque performing for a feeble-minded monarch.

The next day a quadruped: everything in hoof beats, clots of phlegm, 
snorts and farts. A stallion (ech!) racing over a frozen lake with 
torpedoes in his bowels.

All bravura, so to say.

And then, as when the hurricane abates, it would flow like a 
song—quietly, evenly, with the steady luster of magnesium. As if hymning 
the Bhagavad Gita. A monk in a saffron robe extolling the work of the 
Omniscient One. No longer a writer. A saint! A saint from the Sanhedrin 
sent. God bless the author! (Have we a David here?) What a joy it was to 
write like an organ in the middle of a lake!

Bite me, you bed lice. Bite while I have the strength!

*

I didn’t call him Reb immediately. I couldn’t. I always said Mr. Essen. 
And he always called me Mister Miller. But if one had overheard us talking 
one would think we had known each other a lifetime.

I was trying to explain it to Mona one evening while lying on the couch. 
It was a warm evening and we were taking it nice and easy. With a cool 
drink beside me and Mona moving about in her short Chinese shift, I was in 
the mood to expand. (I had written a few excellent pages that day, 
moreover.) The monologue had begun, not about Sid Essen and his morgue of a
shop which I had visited the day before, but about a certain devastating 
mood which used to take possession of me every time the elevated train 
swung round a certain curve. The urge to talk about it must have come over 
me because that black mood contrasted so strongly with the present one, 
which was unusually serene. Pulling round that curve I could look right 
into the window of the flat where I first called on the widow… when I was 
“paying court” to her. Every week a pleasant sort of chap, a Jew not unlike
Sid Essen, used to call to collect a dollar or a dollar and thirty-five 
cents for the furniture she was buying on the installment plan. If she 
didn’t have it he would say, “All right, next week then.” The poverty, the 
cleanliness, the sterility of that life was more depressing to me than a 
life in the gutter. (It was here that I made my first attempt to write. 
With a stump of a pencil, I remember well. I didn’t write more than a dozen
lines—enough to convince me that I was absolutely devoid of talent.) Every 
day going to and from work I took that same elevated train, rode past those
same wooden houses, experienced the same annihilating black mood. I wanted 
to kill myself, but I lacked the guts. Nor could I walk out on her. I had 
tried, but with no success. The more I struggled to free myself the more I 
was bound. Even years later, when I had freed myself of her, it would come 
over me rounding that curve.

“How do you explain it?” I asked. “It was almost as . if I had left a 
part of me in the walls of that house. Some part of me never freed itself.”

She was seated on the floor, propped against a leg of the table. She 
looked cool and relaxed. She was in a mood to listen. Now and then she put 
me a question—about the widow—which women usually avoid asking. I had only 
to lean over a bit and I could put my hand on her cunt.

It was one of those outstanding evenings when everything conspires to 
promote harmony and understanding, when one talks easily and naturally, 
even to a wife, about intimate things. No hurry to get anywhere, not even 
to have a good fuck, though the thought of it was constantly there, 
hovering above the conversation.

I was looking back now on that Lexington Avenue elevated ride as from 
some future incarnation. It not only seemed remote, it’ seemed unthinkable.
Never again would that particular kind of gloom and despair attack me, that
I was certain of.

“Sometimes I think it was because I was so innocent.

It was impossible for me to believe that I could be trapped that way. I 
suppose I would have been better off, would have suffered less, if I had 
married her, as I wanted to do. Who knows? We might have been happy for a 
few years.”

“You always say, Val, that it was pity which held you, but I think it was
love. I think you really loved her. After all, you never quarreled.”

“I couldn’t. Not with her. That’s what had me at a disadvantage. I can 
still recall how I felt when I would stop, as I did every day, to gaze at 
her photograph—in a shop window. There was such a look of sorrow in her 
eyes, it made me wince. Day after day I went back to look into her eyes, to
study that sad expression, to wonder at the cause of it. And then, after we
had known each other some time, I would see that look come back into her 
eyes… usually after I had hurt her in some foolish, thoughtless way. That 
look was far more accusing, far more devastating, than any words… ” Neither
of us spoke for a while. The warm, fragrant breeze rustled the curtains. 
Downstairs the phonograph was playing. “And I shall offer up unto thee, O 
Israel… ” As I listened I stretched out my hand and gently ran my fingers 
across her cunt.

“I didn’t mean to go into all this,” I resumed. “It was about Sid Essen I
wanted to speak. I paid him a visit yesterday, at his shop. The most 
forlorn, lugubrious place you ever laid eyes on. And huge. There he sits 
all day long, reading; or if a friend happens by, he will play a game of 
chess. He tried to load me with gifts—shirts, socks, neckties, anything I 
wished. It was difficult to refuse him. As you said, he’s a lonely soul. 
It’ll be a job to keep out of his clutches… Oh, but I almost forgot what I 
started to tell you. What do you suppose I found him reading?”

“Dostoievsky!”

“No, guess again.”

“Knut Hamsun.”

“No. Lady Murasaki—The Tale of Genji. I can’t get over it. Apparently he 
reads everything. The Russians he reads in Russian, the Germans in German. 
He can read Polish, too, and Yiddish of course.”

“Pop reads Proust.”

“He does? Well, anyway, do you know what he’s itching to do? Teach me how
to drive a car. He has a big eight-cylindered Buick he’d like to lend us 
just as soon as I know how to drive. Says he can teach me in three 
lessons.”

“But why do you want to drive?”

“I don’t, that’s it. But he thinks it would be nice if I took you for a 
spin occasionally.”

“Don’t do it, Val. You’re not meant to drive a car.”

“That’s just what I told him. It would be different if he had offered me 
a bike. You know, it would be fun to get a bike again.”

She said nothing.

“You don’t seem enthusiastic about it,” I said.

“I know you, Val. If you get a bike you won’t work any more.”

“Maybe you’re right. Anyway, it was a pleasant thought. Besides, I’m 
getting too old to ride a bike.”

“Too old?” She burst out laughing. “You, too old? I can see you burning 
up the cinders at eighty. You’re another Bernard Shaw. You’ll never be too 
old for anything.”

“I will if I have to write more novels. Writing takes it out of one, do 
you realize that? Tell Pop that some time. Does he think you work at it 
eight hours a day, I wonder?”

“He doesn’t think about such things, Val.”

“Maybe not, but he must wonder about you. It’s rare indeed for a 
beautiful woman to be a writer too.”

She laughed. “Pop’s no fool. He knows I’m not a born writer. All he wants
me to prove is that I can finish what I’ve begun. He wants me to discipline
myself.”

“Strange,” I said.

“Not so very. He knows that I bum myself up, that I’m going in all 
directions at once.”

“But he hardly knows you. He must be damned intuitive.”

“He’s in love with me, doesn’t that explain it? He doesn’t dare to say 
so, of course. He thinks he’s unappealing to women.”

“Is he really that ugly?”

She smiled. “You don’t believe me, do you? Well, no one would call him 
handsome. He looks exactly what he is—a businessman. And he’s ashamed of 
it. He’s an unhappy person. And his sadness doesn’t add to his 
attractiveness.”

“You almost make me feel sorry for him, poor bugger.”

“Please don’t talk that way about him, Val. He doesn’t deserve it.”

Silence for a while.

“Do you remember when we were living with that doctor’s family up in the 
Bronx how you used to urge me to take a snooze after dinner so that I could
meet you outside the dance hall at two in the morning? You thought I should
be able to do that little thing for you and wake up fresh as a daisy, ready
to report for work at eight A.M. Remember? And I did do it—several 
times—though it nearly killed me. You thought a man should be able to do a 
thing like that if he really loved a woman, didn’t you?”

“I was very young then. Besides, I never wanted you to remain at that 
job. Maybe I hoped to make you give it up by wearing you out.”

“You succeeded, all right, and I can never thank you enough for it. Left 
to myself, I’d probably still be there, hiring and firing… ” Pause.

“And then, just when everything was going on roller skates, things went 
haywire. You gave me a rough time, do you know it? Or maybe I gave you a 
rough time.”

“Let’s not go into all that, Val, please.”

“Okay. I don’t know why I mentioned it. Forget it.”

“You know, Val, it’s never going to be smooth sailing for you. If it 
isn’t me who makes you miserable it will be some one else. You look for 
trouble. Now don’t be offended. Maybe you need to suffer. Suffering will 
never kill you, I can tell you. No matter what happens, you’ll come 
through, always. You’re like a cork. Push you to the bottom and you rise 
again. Sometimes it frightens me, the depths to which you can sink. I’m not
that way. My buoyancy is physical, yours is… I was going to say spiritual, 
but that isn’t quite it. It’s animalistic. You do have a strong spiritual 
make-up, but there’s also more of the animal in you than in most men. You 
want to live… live at any cost… whether as a man, a beast, an insect, or a 
germ… “

“Maybe you’ve got something there,” said I. “By the way, I never told 
you, did I, about the weird experience I had one night while you were away?
With a fairy. It was ludicrous, really, but at the time it didn’t seem 
funny to me.”

She was looking at me with eyes wide open, a startled expression.

“Yes, it was after you were gone a while. I so desperately wanted to join
you that I didn’t care what I had to do to accomplish it. I tried getting a
job on a boat, but it was no go. Then one night, at the Italian restaurant 
uptown… you know the one… I ran into a chap I had met there before… an 
interior decorator, I think he was. Anyway, a quite decent sort. While we 
were talking… it was about The Sun Also Rises… I got the notion to ask him 
for the passage money. I had a feeling he would do it if I could move him 
sufficiently. Talking about you and how desperate I was to join you, the 
tears came to my eyes. I could see him melting. Finally I pulled out my 
wallet and showed him your photograph, that one I’m so crazy about. He was 
impressed. ‘She is a beauty!’ he exclaimed. ‘Really extraordinary. What 
passion, what sensuality! “You see what I mean,’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I
can see why anybody would be hungry for a woman like that.’ He laid the 
photo on the table, as if to study it, and ordered drinks. For some reason 
he suddenly switched to the Hemingway book. Said he knew Paris, had been 
there several times. And so on.”

I paused to see how she was taking it. She looked at me with a curious 
smile. “Go on,” she said. “I’m all ears.”

“Well, finally I let him know that I was about ready to do anything to 
raise the necessary passage money. He said—‘Anything?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, 
‘anything short of murder.’ It was then I realized what I was up against. 
However, instead of pinning me down he diverted the conversation to other 
topics—bullfighting, archaeology, all irrelevant subjects. I began to 
despair; he was slipping out of my hands.

“I listened as long as I could, then called the waiter and asked for the 
bill. ‘Won’t you have another drink?’ he said. I told him I was tired, 
wanted to get home. Suddenly he changed front. ‘About that trip to Paris,’ 
he said, ‘why not stop at my place a few minutes and talk it over? Maybe I 
can help you.’ I knew what was on his mind, of course, and my heart sank. I
got cold feet. But then I thought—What the hell. He can’t do anything 
unless I want him to. I’ll talk him out of it… the money, I mean.’ “I was 
wrong, of course. The moment he trotted out his collection of obscene 
photos I knew the game was up. They were something, I must say… Japanese. 
Anyway, as he was showing them to me he rested a hand on my knee. Now and 
then he’d stop and look at one intently, saying—‘What do you think of that 
one?’ Then he’d look at me with a melting expression, try to slide his hand
up my leg. Finally I brushed him off. ‘I’m going,’ I said. With this his 
manner changed. He looked grieved. ‘Why go all the way to Brooklyn?’ he 
said. ‘You can stay the night here just as well. You don’t have to sleep 
with me, if that’s what bothers you. There’s a cot in the other room.’ He 
went to the dresser and pulled out a pair of pajamas for me.

“I didn’t know what to think, whether he was playing it straight or… I 
hesitated. ‘At the worst,’ I said to myself, ‘it will be a sleepless 
night.’ “‘You don’t have to get to Paris tomorrow, do you?’ he said. ‘I 
wouldn’t lose heart so quickly, if I were you.’ A double-edged remark, 
which I ignored. ‘Where’s the cot?’ I said. “We’!! talk about that some 
other time.’ “I turned in, keeping one eye open in case he should try his 
funny business. But he didn’t. Obviously he was disgusted with me—or 
perhaps he thought a bit of patience would turn the trick. Anyway, I didn’t
sleep a wink. I tossed about till dawn, then got up, very quietly, and 
dressed. As I was slipping into my trousers I spied a copy of Ulysses. I 
grabbed it and, taking a seat by the front window, I read Molly Bloom’s 
soliloquy. I was almost tempted to walk off with the copy. Instead, a 
better idea occurred to me. I tiptoed to the hallway, where the clothes 
closet was, opened it gently and went through his pockets, wallet and all. 
All I could find was about seven dollars and some change. I took it and 
scrammed… “

“And you never saw him again?”

“No, I never went back to the restaurant.”

“Suppose, Val, that he had offered you the passage money, if… “

“It’s hard to answer that. I’ve often thought about it since. I know I 
could never go through with it, not even for you. It’s easier to be a 
woman, in such circumstances.”

She began to laugh. She laughed and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I said.

“You!” she cried. “Just like a man!”

“How so? Would you rather I had given in?”

“I’m not saying, Val. All I say is that you reacted in typical male 
fashion.”

Suddenly I thought of Stasia and her wild exhibitions.

“You never told me,” I said, “what happened to Stasia. Was it because of 
her that you missed the boat?”

“What ever put that thought into your head? I told you how I happened to 
miss the boat, don’t you remember?”

“That’s right, you did. But I wasn’t listening very well. Anyway, it’s 
strange you’ve had no word from her all this time. Where do you suppose she
is?”

“In Africa, probably.”

“Africa?”

“Yes, the last I heard from her she was in Algiers.”

“Hmmm.”

“Yes, Val, to get back to you I had to promise Roland, the man who took 
me to Vienna, that I would sail with him. I agreed on condition that he 
would wire Stasia the money to leave Africa. He didn’t do it. I only 
discovered that he hadn’t at the last moment. I didn’t have the money then 
to cable you about the delay. Anyway, I didn’t sail with Roland. I sent him
back to Paris. I made him swear that he would find Stasia and bring her 
home safely. That’s the story.”

“He didn’t do it, of course?”

“No. He’s a weak, spoiled creature, concerned only with himself. He had 
deserted Stasia and her Austrian friend in the desert, when the going got 
too rough. He left them without a penny. I could have murdered him when I 
found it out… “

“So that’s all you know?”

“Yes. For all I know, she may be dead by now.”

I got up to look for a cigarette. I found the pack on the open book I had
been reading earlier in the day. “Listen to this,” I said, reading the 
passage I had marked: ‘“The purpose of literature is to help man to know 
himself, to fortify his belief in himself and support his striving after 
truth… “

“Lie down,” she begged. “I want to hear you talk, not read.”

“Hurrah for the Karamazovs!”

“Stop it, Val! Let’s talk some more, please.”

All right, then. What about Vienna? Did you visit your uncle while there?
You’ve hardly told me a thing about Vienna, do you realize that? I know 
it’s a touchy subject… Roland and all that. Still… ” She explained that 
they hadn’t spent much time in Vienna. Besides, she wouldn’t dream of 
visiting her relatives without giving them money. Roland wasn’t the sort to
dole out money to poor relatives. She did, however, make him spend money 
freely whenever they ran into a needy artist.

“Good!” I said. “And did you ever run into any of the celebrities in the 
world of art? Picasso, for instance, or Matisse?”

“The first person I got to know,” she replied, “was Zadkine, the 
sculptor.”

“No, really?” I said.

“And then there was Edgar Varese.”

“Who’s he?”

“A composer. A wonderful person, Val. You’d adore him.”

“Any one else?”

“Marcel Duchamp. You know who he is, of course?”

“I should say I do. What was he like—as a person?”

“The most civilized man I ever met,” was her prompt reply.

“That’s saying a great deal.”

“I know it, Val, but it’s the truth.” She went on to tell me of others 
she had met, artists I had never heard off… Hans Reichel, Tihanyi, 
Michonze, all painters. As she talked I was making a mental note of that 
hotel she had stopped at in Vienna—Hotel Muller, am Graben. If I ever got 
to Vienna I’d have a look at the hotel register some day and see what name 
she had registered under.

“You never visited Napoleon’s Tomb, I suppose?”

“No, but we did get to Malmaison. And I almost saw an execution.”

“You didn’t miss very much, I guess, did you?”

What a pity, I thought as she rambled on, that talks like this happened 
so rarely. What I relished especially was the broken, kaleidoscopic nature 
of such talks. Often, in the pauses between remarks, I would make mental 
answers wholly at variance with the words on my lips. An additional spice, 
of course, was contributed by the atmosphere of the room, the books lying 
about, the droning of a fly, the position of her body, the comfortable feel
of the couch. There was nothing to be established, posited or maintained. 
If a wall crumbled, it crumbled. Thoughts were tossed out like twigs into a
babbling brook. Russia, is the road still smoking under your wheels? Do the
bridges thunder as you cross them? Answers? What need for answers? Ah, you 
horses! What horses! What sense in foaming at the mouth?

Getting ready to hit the sack I suddenly recalled that I had seen 
MacGregor that morning. I made mention of it as she was climbing over me to
slide between the sheets.

“I hope you didn’t give him our address,” she said.

“We had no words. He didn’t see me.”

“That’s good,” she said, laying hold of my prick. “What’s good?”

“That he didn’t see you.”

“I thought you meant something else.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Often when I stepped out for a breath of fresh air I would drop in on Sid
Essen to have a chat with him. Only once did I see a customer enter the 
place. Winter or summer it was dark inside and cool—just the right 
temperature for preserving stiffs. The two show windows were crammed with 
shirts faded by the sun and covered with flyspecks.

He was usually in the rear of the store, reading under a dim electric 
bulb suspended from the ceiling by a long cord from which dangled sheets of
tanglefoot flypaper. He had made himself a comfortable seat by mounting a 
car seat on two packing boxes. Beside the boxes was a spittoon which he 
made use of when he chewed his baccy. Usually it was a filthy pipe he had 
between his teeth, sometimes an Owl cigar. The big heavy cap, he removed 
only when he went to bed. His coat collar was always white with dandruff 
and, when he blew his nose, which he did frequently—like an elephant 
trumpeting—he made use of a blue bandanna kerchief a yard wide.

On the counter nearby were piles of books, magazines and newspapers. He 
switched from one to the other in accordance with his mood. Beside this 
reading matter there was always a box of peanut brittle which he dove into 
when he got excited. It was obvious, from his girth, that he was a hearty 
eater. His wife, he told me several times, was a divine cook.

It was her most attractive side, from all I gathered. Though he always 
supplemented this by saying how well-read she was.

No matter what time of the day I dropped in, he always brought out a 
bottle. “Just a snifter,” he would say, flourishing a flask of schnapps or 
a bottle of vodka. I’d take a drink to please him. If I made a face he’d 
say—“Don’t like it much, do you? Why don’t you try a drop of rye?”

One morning, over a tumbler of rye, he repeated his desire to teach me to
drive. “Three lessons is all you’ll need,” he said. “There’s no sense in 
letting the car stand idle. Once you get the hang of it you’ll be crazy 
about it. Look, why not go for a spin with me Saturday afternoon? I’ll get 
some one to mind the store.”

He was so eager, so insistent, that I couldn’t refuse.

Come Saturday I met him at the garage. The big four-door sedan was parked
at the curb. One look at it and I knew it was too much for me. However, I 
had to go through with it. I took my place at the wheel, manipulated the 
gears, got acquainted with the gas pedal and the brakes. A brief lesson. 
More instruction was to follow once we were out of town.

At the wheel Reb became another person. King, now. Wherever it was we 
were heading for, it was at top speed. My thighs were aching before we were
halfway there, from braking.

“You see,” he said, taking both hands off the wheel to gesticulate, 
“there’s nothing to it. She runs by herself.” He took his foot off the gas 
pedal and demonstrated the use of the hand throttle. Just like running a 
locomotive.

On the outskirts of the city we stopped here and there to collect rent 
money. He owned a number of houses here, and elsewhere farther out. All in 
run-down neighborhoods. All occupied by Negro families. One had to collect 
every week, he explained. Colored people didn’t know how to handle money.

In a vacant lot near one of these shacks he gave me further instruction. 
This time how to turn around, how to stop suddenly, how to park. And how to
back up. Very important, backing up, he said.

The strain of it had me sweating in no time. “Okay,” he said, “let’s get 
going. We’ll hit the speedway soon, then I’ll let her out. She goes like 
the wind—you’ll see… Oh, by the way, if ever you get panicky and don’t know
what to do, just shut off the motor and slam on the brakes.”

We came to the speedway, his face beaming now. He pulled his cap down 
over his eyes. “Hang on!” he said, and phttt! we were off. It seemed to me 
that we were hardly touching the ground. I glanced at the speedometer: 
eighty-five. He gave her more gas. “She can do a hundred without feeling 
it. Don’t worry, I’ve got her in hand.”

I said nothing, just braced myself and half closed my eyes. When we 
turned off the speedway I suggested that he stop a few minutes and let me 
stretch my legs.

“Fun, wasn’t it?” he shouted.

“You betcha.”

“Some Sunday,” he said, “after we collect the rents, I’ll take you to a 
restaurant I know, where they make delicious duckling. Or we could go down 
on the East Side, to a Polish place. Or how about some Jewish cooking? 
Anything you say. It’s so good to have your company.”

In Long Island City we made a detour to buy some provisions: herring, 
smoked whitefish, bagels, lachs, sour pickles, com bread, sweet butter, 
honey, pecans, walnuts and niggertoes, huge red onions, garlic, kasha, and 
so on.

“If we don’t do anything else, we eat well,” he said. “Good food, good 
music, good talk—what else does one need?”

“A good wile, maybe,” I said rather thoughtlessly.

“I’ve got a good wife, only we’re temperamentally unsuited to one 
another. I’m too common for her. Too much of a roustabout.”

“You don’t strike me that way,” said I.

“I’m pulling in my horns… getting old, I guess. Once I was pretty handy 
with my dukes. That got me into heaps of trouble. I used to gamble a lot, 
too. Bad, if you have a wife like mine. By the way, do you ever play the 
horses? I still place a few bets now and then. I can’t promise to make you 
a millionaire but I can always double your money for you. Let me know any 
time; your money’s safe with me, remember that.”

We were pulling into Greenpoint. The sight of the gas tanks provoked a 
sentimental twinge. Now and then a church right out of Russia. The street 
names became more and more familiar.

“Would you mind stopping in front of 181 Devoe Street?” I asked.

“Sure, why not? Know some one there?”

“Used to. My first sweetheart. I’d like to have one look at the house, 
that’s all.”

Automatically he came down hard on the gas pedal. A stop sign stared us 
in the face. He went right through. “Signs mean nothing to me,” he said, 
“but don’t follow my example.”

At 181 I got out, took my hat off (as if visiting a grave) and approached
the railing in front of the grass plot. I looked up at the parlor floor 
windows; the shades were down, as always. My heart began to go clip-clop 
the same as years ago when, looking up at the windows, I hoped and prayed 
to catch sight of her shadow moving about. Only for a brief moment or two 
would I stand there, then off again. Sometimes I’d walk around the block 
three or four times—just in case. (“You poor bugger,” I said to myself, 
“you’re still walking around that block.”) As I turned back to the car the 
gate in the basement clicked. An elderly woman stuck her head out. I went 
up to her and, almost tremblingly, I asked if any of the Giffords still 
lived in the neighborhood.

She looked at me intently—as if she had seen an apparition, it seemed to 
me—then replied: “Heavens no! They moved away years ago.”

That froze me.

“Why,” she said, “did you know them?”

“One of them, yes, but I don’t suppose she’d remember me. Una was her 
name. Do you know what’s become of her?”

“They went to Florida.” (They, she said. Not she.) “Thanks. Thank you 
very much!” I doffed my hat, as if to a Sister of Mercy.

As I put my hand on the car door she called out: “Mister! Mister, if 
you’d like to know more about Una there’s a lady down the block could tell 
you… “

“Never mind,” I said. “It’s not important.”

Tears were welling up, stupid though it was. “What’s the matter?” said 
Reb.

“Nothing, nothing. Memories, that’s all.”

He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a flask. I took a swig of 
the remedy for everything: it was pure fire water. I gasped.

“It never fails,” he said. “Feel better now?”

“You bet.” And the next moment I found myself saying—“Christ! To think 
one can still feel these things. It beats me. What would have happened if 
she had appeared—with her child? It hurts. It still hurts. Don’t ask me 
why. She belonged to me, that’s all I can tell you.”

“Must have been quite an affair.” The word affair rubbed me the wrong 
way.

“No,” I said, “it was a pure abortion. An assassination. I might as well 
have been in love with Queen Guinevere. I let myself down, do you 
understand? It was bad. I’ll never get over it, I guess. Shit! Why talk 
about it?”

He kept quiet, the good Reb. Looked straight ahead and gave her more gas.

After a time he said very simply—“You should write about it some time.” 
To which I replied—“Never! I could never find words for it.”

At the corner, where the stationery store was, I got out.

“Let’s do it again soon, eh?” said Reb, extending his big hairy mitt. 
“Next time I’ll introduce you to my colored friends.”

I walked up the street, past the iron hitching posts, the wide lawns, the
big verandas. Still thinking of Una Gifford. If only it were possible to 
see her once again… owe look, no more. Then close the book—forever.

I walked on, past the house, past more iron Negroes with pink watermelon 
mouths and striped blouses, past more stately mansions, more ivy-covered 
porches and verandas. Florida, no less. Why not Cornwall, or Avalon, or the
Castle of Carbonek? I began to chant to myself… “There was never knight in 
all this world so noble, so unselfish… ” And then a dreadful thought took 
hold of me. Marco! Dangling from the ceiling of my brain was Marco, who had
hanged himself. A thousand times he had told her, Mona, of his love; a 
thousand times he had played the fool; a thousand times he had warned her 
he would kill himself if he could not find favor in her eyes. And she had 
laughed at him, ridiculed him, scorned him, humiliated him. No matter what 
she said or did he continued to abase himself, continued to lavish gifts 
upon her; the very sight of her, the sound of her mocking laugh, made him 
cringe and fawn. Yet nothing could kill his love, his adoration. When she 
dismissed him he would return to his garret to write jokes. (He made his 
living, poor devil, selling jokes to magazines.) And every penny he earned 
he turned over to her, and she took it without so much as a thank you. (“Go
now, dog!”) One morning he was found hanging from a rafter in his miserable
garret. No message. Just a body swinging in the gloom and the dust. His 
last joke.

And when she broke the news to me I said—“Marco t What’s Marco to met” 
She wept bitter, bitter tears. All I could say by way of comforting her 
was: “He would have done it anyway, sooner or later. He was the type.”

And she had replied: “You’re cruel, you have no heart.”

It was true, I was heartless. But there were others whom she was treating
equally abominably. In my cruel, heartless way I had reminded her of them, 
saying—“Who next?” She ran out of the room with hands over her ears. 
Horrible. Too horrible.

Inhaling the fragrance of the syringeas, the bougainvillaeas, the heavy 
red roses, I thought to myself—“Maybe that poor devil Marco loved her as I 
once loved Una Gifford. Maybe he believed that by a miracle her scorn and 
disdain would one day be converted into love, that she would see him for 
what he was, a great bleeding heart bursting with tenderness and 
forgiveness. Perhaps each night, when he returned to his room, he had gone 
down on his knees and prayed. (But no answer.) Did I not groan too, each 
night on climbing into bed? Did I not also pray? And how! It was 
disgraceful, such praying, such begging, such whimpering! If only a Voice 
had said: “It is hopeless, you are not the man for her.” I might have given
up, I might have made way for some one else. Or at least cursed the God who
had dealt me such a fate.

Poor Marco! Begging not to be loved but to be permitted to love. And 
condemned to make jokes! Only now do I realize what you suffered, what you 
endured, dear Marco. Now you can enjoy her—from above. You can watch over 
her day and night. If in life she never saw you as you were, you at least 
may see her now for what she is. You had too much heart for that frail 
body. Guinevere herself was unworthy of the great love she inspired. But 
then a queen steps so lightly, even when crushing a louse…

The table was set, dinner waiting for me when I walked in. She was in an 
unusually good mood, Mona.

“How was it? Did you enjoy yourself?” she cried, throwing her arms around
me.

I noticed the flowers standing in the vase and the bottle of wine beside 
my plate. “Napoleon’s favorite wine, which he drank even at St. Helena.”

“What does it mean?” I asked.

She was bubbling over with joy. “It means that Pop thinks the first fifty
pages are wonderful. He was all enthusiasm.”

“He was, eh? Tell me about it. What did he say, exactly?”

She was so stunned herself that she couldn’t remember much now. We sat 
down to eat. “Eat a bit,” I said, “it will come back.”

“Oh yes,” she ‘exclaimed, “I do remember this… He said it reminded him a 
little of the early Melville… and of Dreiser, too.”

I gulped.

“Yes, and of Lafcadio Hearn.”

“What? Pop’s read him, too?”

“I told you, Val, that he was a great reader.”

“You don’t think he was spoofing, do you?”

“Not at all. He was dead serious. He’s really intrigued, I tell you.”

I poured the wine. “Did Pop buy this?”

“No, I did.”

“How did you know it was Napoleon’s favorite wine?”

“The man who sold it to me told me so.”

I took a good sip.

“Well?”

“Never tasted anything better. And Napoleon drank this every day? Lucky 
devil!”

“Val,” she said, “you’ve got to coach me a bit if I’m to answer some of 
the questions Pop puts to me.”

“I thought you knew all the answers.”

“Today he was talking grammar and rhetoric. I don’t know a thing about 
grammar and rhetoric.”

“Neither do I, to be honest. You went to school, didn’t you? A graduate 
of Wellesley should know something… “

“You know I never went to college.”

“You said you did.”

“Maybe I did when I first met you. I didn’t want you to think me 
ignorant.”

“Hell,” I said, “it wouldn’t have mattered to me if you hadn’t finished 
grammar school. I have no respect for learning. It’s sheer crap, this 
business of grammar and rhetoric. The less you know about such things the 
better. Especially if you’re a writer.” “But suppose he points out errors. 
What then?”

“Say—‘Maybe you’re right. I’ll think about it.’ Or better yet, say–‘How 
would you phrase it?’ Then you’ve got him on the defensive, see?”

“I wish you were in my place sometimes.”

“So do I. Then I’d know if the bugger was sincere or not.”

“Today,” she said, ignoring the remark, “he was talking about Europe. It 
was as if he were reading my thoughts. He was talking about American 
writers who had lived and studied abroad. Said it was important to live in 
such an atmosphere, that it nourished the soul.”

“What else did he say?”

She hesitated a moment before coming out with it. “He said that if I 
completed the book he would give me the money to stay in Europe for a year 
or two.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “But what about your invalid mother? Me, in other 
words.”

She had thought of that too. “I’ll probably have to kill her off.” She 
added that whatever he forked up would surely be enough to see both of us 
through. Pop was generous.

“You see,” she said, “I wasn’t wrong about Pop. Val, I don’t want to push
you, but… “

“You wish I would hurry and finish the book, eh?”

“Yes. How long do you think it will take?”

I said I hadn’t the slightest idea.

“Three months?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it all clear, what you have to do?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Of course. But what can I do? I’m forging ahead as best I know how.”

“You won’t go off the trolley?”

“If I do I’ll get back on again. I hope so, anyway.”

“You do want to go to Europe, don’t you?”

I gave her a long look before answering.

“Do I want to go to Europe? Woman, I want to go everywhere… Asia, Africa,
Australia, Peru, Mexico, Siam, Arabia, Java, Borneo… Tibet, too, and China.
Once we take off I want to stay away for good. I want to forget that I was 
ever born here. I want to keep moving, wandering, roaming the world. I want
to go to the end of every road… “

“And when will you write?”

“As I go along.”

“Val, you’re a dreamer.”

“Sure I am. But I’m an active dreamer. There’s a difference.”

Then I added: “We’re all dreamers, only some of us wake up in time to put
down a few words. Certainly I want to write. But I don’t think it’s the 
end-all and be-all. How shall I put it? Writing is like the caca that you 
make in your sleep. Delicious caca, to be sure, but first comes life, then 
the caca. Life is change, movement, quest… a going forward to meet the 
unknown, the unexpected. Only a very few men can say of themselves—‘I have 
lived!’ That’s why we have books—so that men may live vicariously. But when
the author also lives vicariously—!”

She broke in. “When I listen to you sometimes, Val, I feel that you want 
to live a thousand lives in one. You’re eternally dissatisfied—with life as
it is, with yourself, with just about everything. You’re a Mongol. You 
belong on the steppes of Central Asia.”

“You know,” I said, getting worked up now, “one of the reasons why I feel
so disjointed is that there’s a little of everything in me. I can put 
myself in any period and feel at home in it. When I read about the 
Renaissance I feel like a man of the Renaissance; when I read about one of 
the Chinese dynasties I feel exactly like a Chinese of that epoch. Whatever
the race, the period, the people, Egyptian, Aztec, Hindu or Chaldean, I’m 
thoroughly in it, and it’s always a rich, tapestried world whose wonders 
are inexhaustible. That’s what I crave—a humanly created world, a world 
responsive to man’s thoughts, man’s dreams, man’s desires. What gets me 
about this life of ours, this American life, is that we kill everything we 
touch. Talk of the Mongols and the Huns—they were cavaliers compared to us.
This is a hideous, empty, desolate land. I see my compatriots through the 
eyes of my ancestors. I see clean through them—and they’re hollow, 
worm-eaten… ” I took the bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin and refilled the 
glasses. There was enough for one good swallow.

“To Napoleon!” I said. “A man who lived life to the fullest.”

“Val, you frighten me sometimes, the way you speak about America. Do you 
really hate it that much?”

“Maybe it’s love,” I said. “Inverted love. I don’t know.”

“I hope you’re not going to work any of that off in the novel.”

“Don’t worry. The novel will be about as unreal as the land it comes 
from. I won’t have to say—‘All the characters in this book are fictitious’ 
or whatever it is they put in the front of books. Nobody will recognize 
anybody, the author least of all. A good thing it will be in your name. 
What a joke if it turned out to be a best seller! If reporters came 
knocking at the door to interview you!”

The thought of this terrified her. She didn’t think it funny at all.

“Oh,” I said, “you called me a dreamer a moment ago. Let me read you a 
passage—it’s short—from The Hill of Dreams. You should read the book some 
time; it’s a dream of a book.”

I went to the book shelf and opened to the passage I had in mind.

“He’s just been telling about Milton’s Lycidas, why it was probably the 
most perfect piece of pure literature in existence. Then says Machen: 
‘Literature is the sensuous art of causing exquisite impressions by means 
of words.’ But here’s the passage… it follows right after that: ‘And yet 
there was something more; besides the logical thought, which was often a 
hindrance, a troublesome though inseparable accident, besides the 
sensation, always a pleasure and a delight, besides these there were the 
indefinable, inexpressible images which all fine literature summons to the 
mind. As the chemist in his experiments is sometimes astonished to find 
unknown, unexpected elements in the crucible or the receiver, as the world 
of material things is considered by some a thin veil of the immaterial 
universe, so he who reads wonderful prose or verse is conscious of 
suggestions that cannot be put into words, which do not rise from the 
logical sense, which are rather parallel to than connected with the 
sensuous delight. The world so disclosed is rather the world of dreams, 
rather than the world in which children sometimes live, instantly 
appearing, and instantly vanishing away, a world beyond all expression or 
analysis, neither of the intellect nor of the senses… “

“It is beautiful,” she said, as I put the book down. “But don’t you try 
to write like that. Let Arthur Machen write that way, if he wishes. You 
write your own way.”

I sat down at the table again. A bottle of Chartreuse was standing beside
my coffee. As I poured a thimbleful of the fiery green liqueur into my 
glass, I said: “There’s only one thing missing now: a harem.”

“Pop supplied the Chartreuse,” she said. “He was so delighted with those 
pages.”

“Let’s hope he’ll like the next fifty pages as much.”

“You’re not writing the book for him, Val. You’re writing it for MS.”

“That’s true,” I said. “I forget that sometimes.”

It occurred to me then that I hadn’t told her anything yet about the 
outline of the real book. “There’s something I have to tell you,” I began. 
“Or should I? Maybe I ought to keep it to myself a while longer.”

She begged me not to tease.

“All right, I’ll tell you. It’s about the book I intend to write one day.
I’ve got the notes on it all written out. I wrote you a long letter about 
it, when you were in Vienna or God-knows-where. I couldn’t send the letter 
because you gave me no address. Yes, this will really be a book… a huge 
one. About you and me.”

“Didn’t you keep the letter?”

“No. I tore it up. Your fault! But I’ve got the notes. Only I won’t show 
them to you yet.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want any comments. Besides, if we talk about it I may 
never write the book. Also, there are some things I wouldn’t want you to 
know about until I had written them out.”

“You can trust me,” she said. She began to plead with me.

“No use,” I said, “you’ll have to wait.”

“But suppose the notes got lost?”

“I could write them all over again. That doesn’t worry me in the least.”

She was getting miffed now. After all, if the book was about her as well 
as myself… And so on. But I remained adamant.

Knowing very well that she would turn the place upside down in order to 
lay hands on the notes, I gave her to understand that I had left them at my
parents’ home. “I put them where they’ll never find them,” I said. I could 
tell from the look she gave me that she wasn’t taken in by this. Whatever 
her motive was, she pretended to be resigned, to think no more of it.

To sweeten the atmosphere I told her that if the book ever got written, 
if it ever saw the light of day, she would find herself immortalized. And 
since that sounded a bit grandiloquent I added—“You may not always 
recognize yourself but I promise you this, when I get through with your 
portrait you’ll never be forgotten.”

She seemed moved by this. “You sound awfully sure of yourself,” she said.

“I have reason to. This book I’ve lived. I can begin anywhere and find my
way around. It’s like a lawn with a thousand sprinklers: all I need do is 
turn on the faucet.” I tapped my head. “It’s all there, in invisible… I 
mean indelible… ink.”

“Are you going to tell the truth—about us?”

“I certainly am. About every one, not just us.”

“And you think there’ll be a publisher for such a book?”

“I haven’t thought about that,” I replied. “First I’ve got to write it.”

“You’ll finish the novel first, I hope?”

“Absolutely. Maybe the play, too.”

“The play? Oh, Val, that would be wonderful.”

That ended the conversation.

Once again the disturbing thought arose: how long will this peace and 
quiet last? It was almost too good, the way things were going. I thought of
Hokusai, his ups and downs, his 947 changes of address, his perseverance, 
his incredible production. What a life! And I, I was only on the threshold.
Only if I lived to be ninety or a hundred would I have something to show 
for my labors.

Another almost equally disturbing thought entered my head. Would I ever 
write anything acceptable T The answer which came at once to my lips was: 
“Fuck a duck!”

Still another thought now came to mind. Why was I so obsessed about truth
f And the answer to that also came clear and clean. Because there is only 
the truth and nothing but the truth.

But a wee small voice objected, saying: “Literature is something else 
again.”

Then to hell with literature! The book of life, that’s what I would 
write.

And whose name will you sign to it?

The Creator’s.

That seemed to settle the matter.

*

The thought of one day tackling such a book—the book of life—kept me 
tossing all night. It was there before my closed eyes, like the Fata 
Morgana of legend. Now that I had vowed to make it a reality, it loomed far
bigger, far more difficult of accomplishment than when I had spoken about 
it. It seemed overwhelming, indeed. Nevertheless, I was certain of one 
thing—it would flow once I began it. It wouldn’t be a matter of squeezing 
out drops and trickles. I thought of that first book I had written, about 
the twelve messengers. What a miscarriage! I had made a little progress 
since then, even if no one but myself knew it. But what a waste of material
that was! My theme should have been the whole eighty or a hundred thousand 
whom I had hired and fired during those sizzling cosmococcic years. No 
wonder I was constantly losing my voice. Merely to talk to that many people
was a feat. But it wasn’t the talk alone, it was their faces, the 
expressions they wore—grief, anger, deceit, cunning, malice, treachery, 
gratitude, envy, and so on—as if, instead of human beings, I were dealing 
with totemistic creatures: the fox, the lynx, the jackal, the crow, the 
lemming, the magpie, the dove, the musk ox, the snake, the crocodile, the 
hyena, the mongoose, the good and the bad, the crooks and the liars, the 
cripples, the maniacs, the tramps, the gamblers, the leeches, the perverts,
the saints, the martyrs, all of them, the ordinary ones and the 
extraordinary ones. Even down to a certain lieutenant of the Horse Guard 
whose face had been so mutilated—by the Reds or the Blacks—that when he 
laughed he wept and when he wept he jubilated. Whenever he addressed 
me—usually to make a complaint—he stood at attention, as if he were the 
horse, not the guard. And the Greek with the long, equine face, a scholar 
unquestionably, who wanted to read from Prometheus Bound—or was it Unbound?
Why was it, much as I liked him, that he always roused my scorn and 
ridicule? How much more interesting and more lovable was that wall-eyed 
Egyptian with sex on the brain! Always in hot water, especially if he 
failed to jerk off once or twice a day. And that Lesbian, Iliad, she called
herself—why Iliad?

—so lovely, so demure, so coy… an excellent musician, too. I know because
she brought her fiddle to the office one evening and played for me. And 
after she had rendered her Bach, her Mozart, her Paganini repertoire, she 
has the gall to inform me that she’s tired of being a Lesbian, wants to be 
a whore, and wouldn’t I please find her a better office building to work 
in, one where she could drum up a little business.

They were all there parading before me as of yore—with their tics, their 
grimaces, their supplications, their sly little tricks. Every day they were
dumped on my desk out of a huge flour sack, it seemed—they, their troubles,
their problems, their aches and pains. Maybe when I was selected for this 
odious job some one had tipped off the big Scrabblebuster and said: “Keep 
this man good and busy! Put his feet in the mud of reality, make his hair 
stand on end, feed him bird lime, destroy his every last illusion!” And 
whether he had been tipped off or not, that old Scrabblebuster had done 
just that. That and a little more. He made me acquainted with grief and 
sorrow.

However… among the thousands who came and went, who begged, whistled and 
wept before me, naked, bereft, making their last call, as it were, before 
turning themselves in at the slaughterhouse, there appeared now and then a 
jewel of a guy, usually from some far-off place, a Turk, perhaps, or a 
Persian. And like that, there happened along one day this Ali 
something-or-other, a Mohammedan, who had acquired a divine calligraphy 
somewhere in the desert, and after he gets to know me, know that I am a man
with big ears, he writes me a letter, a letter thirty-two pages long, with 
never a mistake, never a comma or a semicolon missing, and in it he 
explains (as if it were important for me to know) that the miracles of 
Christ—he went into them one by one—were not miracles at all, that they had
all been performed before, even the Resurrection, by unknown men, men who 
understood the laws of nature, laws which, he insisted, our scientists knew
nothing about, but which were eternal laws and could be demonstrated to 
produce so-called miracles whenever the right man came along… and he, Ali, 
was in possession of the secret, but I was not to make it known because he,
Ali, had chosen to be a messenger and “wear the badge of servitude” for a 
reason known only to him and to Allah, bless his name, but when the time 
came, I had only to say the word and so forth and so on…

How had I managed to leave out all of these divine behemoths and the 
ruckus they were constantly creating, me up on the carpet every few days to
explain this and explain that, as if I had instigated their peculiar, 
inexplicably screwy behavior? Yeah, what a job trying to convince the big 
shot (with the brain of a midget) that the flower of America was seeded 
from the loins of these crackpots, these monsters, these hare-brained 
idiots who, whatever the mischief, were possessed of strange talents such 
as the ability to read the Cabala backwards, multiply ten columns of 
figures at a time, or sit on a cake of ice and manifest signs of fever. 
None of these explanations, of course, could alleviate the horrendous fact 
that an elderly woman had been raped the night before by a swarthy devil 
delivering a death message.

It was tough. I never could make things clear to him. Any more than I 
could present the case for Tobachnikov, the Talmudic student, who was the 
nearest replica of the living Christ that ever walked the streets of New 
York with Happy Easter messages in his hand. How could I say to him, this 
owl of a boss: “This devil needs help. His mother is dying of cancer, his 
father peddles shoelaces all day, the pigeons are crippled. (The ones that 
used to make the synagogue their home.) He needs a raise. He needs food in 
his belly.”

To astonish him or intrigue him, I would sometimes relate little 
anecdotes about my messengers, always using the past tense as if about some
one who, had once been in the service (though he was there all the time, 
right up my sleeve, securely hidden away in PX or FU office.) Yes, I’d say,
he was the accompanist of Johanna Gadski, when they were on a tour in the 
Black Forest. Yes (about another), he once worked with Pasteur at the 
famous Institute in Paris. Yes (still another), he went back to India to 
finish his History of the World in four languages. Yes (a parting shot), he
was one of the greatest jockeys that ever lived; made a fortune after he 
left us, then fell down an elevator shaft and smashed his skull.

And what was the invariable response? “Very interesting, indeed. Keep up 
the good work. Remember, hire nothing but nice clean boys from good 
families. No Jews, no cripples, no ex-convicts. We want to be proud of our 
messenger force.”

“Yes, sir!”

And I would go back to my perch, do a little shuffling, scramble them up 
a bit, but never fire a soul, not even if he were as black as the ace of 
spades.

How did I ever manage to leave them out of the messenger book, all these 
lovely dementia praecox cases, these star rovers, these diamond-backed 
logicians, these battle-scarred epileptics, thieves, pimps, whores, 
defrocked priests and students of the Talmud, the Cabala and the Sacred 
Rooks of the East? Novels! As if one could write about such matters, such 
specimens, in a novel. Where, in such a work, would one place the heart, 
the liver, the optic nerve, the pancreas or the gall bladder? They were not
fictitious, they were alive, every one of them, and besides being riddled 
with disease, they ate and drank every day, they made water, they 
defecated, fornicated, robbed, murdered, gave false testimony, betrayed 
their fellow men, put their children out to work, their sisters to whoring,
their mothers to begging, their fathers to peddle shoelaces or collar 
buttons and to bring home cigarette butts, old newspapers and a few coppers
from the blind man’s tin cup. What place is there in a novel for such 
goings on?

Yes, it was beautiful coming away from Town Hall of a snowy night, after 
hearing the Little Symphony perform. So civilized in there, such discreet 
applause, such knowing comments. And now the light touch of snow, cabs 
pulling up and darting away, the lights sparkling, splintering like 
icicles, and Monsieur Barrfire and his little group sneaking out the back 
entrance to give a private recital at the home of some wealthy denizen of 
Park Avenue. A thousand paths leading away from the concert hall and in 
each one a tragic figure silently pursues his destiny. Paths crisscrossing 
everywhere: the low and the mighty, the meek and the tyrannical, the haves 
and the have-nots.

Yes, many’s the night I attended a recital in one of these hallowed 
musical morgues, and each time I walked out I thought not of the music I 
had heard but of one of my foundlings, one of the bleeding cosmococcic crew
I had hired or fired that day and the memory of whom neither Haydn, Bach, 
Scarlatti, Beethoven, Beelzebub, Schubert, Paganini or any of the wind, 
string, horn or cymbal clan of musikers could dispel. I could see him, poor
devil, leaving his office with his messenger suit wrapped in a brown 
parcel, heading for the elevated line at the Brooklyn Bridge, where he 
would board a train for Freshpond Road or Pitkin Avenue, or maybe Kosciusko
Street, there to descend into the swarm, grab a sour pickle, dodge a kick 
in the ass, peel the potatoes, clean the lice out of the bedding and say a 
prayer for his great grandfather who had died at the hand of a drunken Pole
because the sight of a beard floating in the wind was anathema to him. I 
could also see myself walking along Pitkin Avenue, or Kosciusko Street, 
searching for a certain hovel, or was it a kennel, and thinking to myself 
how lucky to be born a Gentile and speak English so well. (Is this still 
Brooklyn? Where am I?) Sometimes I could smell the clams in the bay, or 
perhaps it was the sewer water. And wherever I went, searching for the lost
and the damned, there were always fire escapes loaded with bedding, and 
from the bedding there fell like wounded cherubim an assortment of lice, 
bedbugs, brown beetles, cockroaches and the scaly rinds of yesterday’s 
salami. Now and then I would treat myself to a succulent sour pickle or a 
smoked herring wrapped in newspaper. Those big fat pretzels, how good they 
were! The women all had red hands and blue fingers—from the cold, from 
scrubbing and washing and rinsing. (But the son, a genius already, would 
have long, tapering fingers with calloused tips. Soon he would be playing 
in Carnegie Hall.) Nowhere in the upholstered Gentile world I hailed from 
had I ever run into a genius, or even a near-genius. Even a book shop was 
hard to find. Calendars, yes, oodles of them, supplied by the butcher or 
grocer. Never a Holbein, a Carpaccio, a Hiroshige, a Giotto, nor even a 
Rembrandt. Whistler, possibly, but only his mother, that placid-looking 
creature all in black, with hands folded in her lap, so resigned, so 
eminently respectable. No, never anything among us dreary Christians that 
smelled of art. But luscious pork stores with tripe and gizzards of every 
variety. And of course linoleums, brooms, flower pots. Everything from the 
animal and vegetable kingdom, plus hardware, German cheese cake, knackwurst
and sauerkraut. A church on every block, a sad-looking affair, such as only
Lutherans and Presbyterians can bring forth from the depths of the 
sterilized faith. And Christ was a carpenter! He had built a church, but 
not of sticks and stones.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Things continued to move along on greased cogs. It was almost like those 
early days of the Japanese love nest. If I went for a walk even the dead 
trees inspired me; if I visited Reb at his store I came back loaded with 
ideas as well as shirts, ties, gloves and handkerchiefs. When I ran into 
the landlady I no longer had to worry about back rent. We were paid up 
everywhere now and had we wanted credit we could have had it galore. Even 
the Jewish holidays passed pleasantly, with a feast at this house and 
another at that. We were deep into the fall, but it no longer oppressed me 
as it used to. The only thing I missed, perhaps, was a bike.

I had now had a few more lessons at the wheel and could apply for a 
driver’s licence any time. When I had that, I would take Mona for a spin, 
as Reb had urged. Meanwhile I had made the acquaintance of the Negro 
tenants. Good people, as Reb had said. Every time we collected the rents we
came home pie-eyed and slap-happy. One of the tenants, who worked as a 
Customs inspector, offered to lend me books. He had an amazing library of 
erotica, all filched at the docks in the course of duty. Never had I seen 
so many filthy books, so many dirty photographs. It made me wonder what the
famous Vatican Library contained in the way of forbidden fruit.

Now and then we went to the theater, usually to see a foreign play—Georg 
Kaiser, Ernst Toller, Wedekind, Werfel, Sudermann, Chekov, Andreyev… The 
Irish players had arrived, bringing with them Juno and the Paycock and The 
Plough and the Stars. What a playwright, Sean O’Casey! Nothing like him 
since Ibsen.

On a sunny day I’d sit in Fort Greene Park and read a book—Idle Days in 
Patagonia; Haunch, Paunch and Jowl, or The Tragic Sense of Life (Unamuno). 
If there was a record I wanted to hear which we didn’t have, I could borrow
from Reb’s collection or from the landlady’s. When we felt like doing 
nothing we played chess, Mona and I. She wasn’t much of a player, but then 
neither was I. It was more exciting, I found, to study the games given in 
chess books—Paul Morphy’s above all. Or even to read about the evolution of
the game, or the interest in it displayed by the Icelanders or the 
Malayans.

Not even the thought of seeing the folks—for Thanksgiving—could get me 
down. Now I could tell them—it would be only half a lie—that I had been 
commissioned to write a book. That I was getting paid for my labors. How 
that would tickle them! I was full of nothing but kind thoughts now. All 
the good things that had happened to me were coming to the surface. I felt 
like sitting down to write this one and that, thanking him or her for all 
that had been done for me. Why not? And there were places, too, I would 
have to render thanks to—for yielding me blissful moments. I was that silly
about it all that I made a special trip one day to Madison Square Garden 
and offered up silent thanks to the walls for the glorious moments I had 
experienced in the past, watching Buffalo Bill and his Pawnee Indians 
whooping it up, for the privilege of watching Jim Londos, the little 
Hercules, toss a giant of a Pole over his head, for the six-day bike races 
and the unbelievable feats of endurance which I had witnessed.

In these breezy moods, all open to the sky as I was, was it any wonder 
that, bumping into Mrs. Skolsky on my way in or out, she would stop to look
at me with great, round eyes as I paused to pass the time of day? A pause 
of half or three-quarters of an hour sometimes, during which I unloaded 
titles of books, outlandish streets, dreams, homing pigeons, tugboats, 
anything at all, whatever came to mind, and it all came at once, it seemed,
because I was happy, relaxed, carefree and in the best of health. Though I 
never made a false move, I knew and she knew that what I ought to do was 
put my arms around her, kiss her, hug her, make her feel like a woman, not 
a landlady. “Yes,” she would say, but with her breasts. “Yes,” with her 
soft, warm belly. “Yes.” Always yes. If I had said—“Lift your skirt and 
show me your pussy!” it would have been yes too. But I had the sense to 
avoid such nonsense. I was content to remain what I appeared to be—a 
polite, talkative, and somewhat unusual (for a Goy) lodger. She could have 
appeared naked before me, with a platter of Kartoffelklose smothered in 
black gravy, and I wouldn’t have laid a paw on her.

No, I was far too happy, far too content, to be thinking about chance 
fucks. As I say, the only thing I truly missed was the bike. Reb’s car, 
which he wanted me to consider as my own, meant nothing. Any more than 
would a limousine with a chauffeur to tote me around. Not even a passage to
Europe meant much to me now. For the moment I had no need of Europe. Nice 
to dream about it, talk about, wonder about it. But it was good right where
I was. To sit down each day and tap out a few pages, to read the books I 
wanted to read, hear the music I craved, take a walk, see a show, smoke a 
cigar if I wanted to—what more could I ask for? There were no longer any 
squabbles over Stasia, no more peeking and spying, no more sitting up 
nights and waiting. Everything was running true to form, including Mona. 
Soon I might even look forward to hearing her talk about her childhood, 
that mysterious no man’s land which lay between us. To see her marching 
home with arms loaded, her cheeks rosy, her eyes sparkling—what did it 
matter where she was coming from or how she had spent the day? She was 
happy, I was happy. Even the birds in the garden were happy. All day long 
they sang, and when evening came they pointed their beaks at us and in 
their cheep-cheep language they said to one another—“See, there’s a happy 
couple! Let’s sing for them before we go to sleep.”

Finally the day came when I was to take Mona for an outing. I was now 
qualified to drive alone, in Reb’s opinion. It’s one thing, however, to 
pass a test, and quite another to have your wife put her life in your 
hands. Backing out of the garage made me nervous as a cat. The damned thing
was too huge, too lumbering; it had too much power. I was in a sweat lest 
it run away with us. Every few miles I brought it to a halt—always where 
there was room to make a clean start!—in order to calm down. I chose the 
side roads whenever possible, but they always led back to the main highway.
By the time we were twenty miles out, I was soaked with perspiration. I had
hoped to go to Bluepoint, where I had passed such marvelous vacations as a 
boy, but we never made it. It was just as well, too, for when I did visit 
it later I was heartbroken; it had changed beyond all recognition.

Stretched out on the side of the road, watching the other idiots drive 
by, I vowed I would never drive again. Mona was delighted by my 
discomfiture. “You’re not cut out for it,” she said.

I agreed. “I wouldn’t even know what to do if we had a blowout,” I said.

“What would you do?” she asked.

“Get out and walk,” I replied.

“Just like you,” she said.

“Don’t tell Reb how I feel about it,” I begged. “He thinks he’s doing us 
a great favor. I wouldn’t want to let him down.”

“Must we go there for dinner this evening?”

“Of course.”

“Let’s leave early then.”

“Easier said than done,” I replied.

On the way back we had car trouble. Fortunately, a truck driver came to 
the rescue. Then I smashed into the rear end of a beaten-up jalopy, but the
driver didn’t seem to mind. Then the garage—how was I to snook her into 
that narrow passageway? I got halfway in, changed my mind, and in backing 
out narrowly missed colliding with a moving van. I left it standing half on
the sidewalk, half in the gutter. “Fuck you!” I muttered. “Make it on your 
own!”

We had only a block or two to walk. With each step away from the monster 
I felt more and more relieved. Happy to be trotting along all in one piece,
I thanked God for having made me a mechanical dope, and perhaps a dope in 
other respects as well. There were the hewers of wood and the drawers of 
water, and there were the wizards of the mechanical age. I belonged to the 
age of roller skates and velocipedes. How lucky to have good arms and legs,
nimble feet, a sharp appetite! I could walk to California and back, on my 
own two feet. As for traveling at seventy-five miles an hour, I could go 
faster than that—in a dream. I could go to Mars and back in the wink of an 
eye, and no blowouts…

*

It was our first meal with the Essens. We had never met Mrs. Essen 
before, nor Reb’s son and daughter. They were waiting for us, the table 
spread, the candles lit, the fire going, and a wonderful aroma coming from 
the kitchen.

“Have a drink!” said Reb first thing, holding out two glasses of heavy 
port. “How was it? Did you get nervous?”

“Not a bit,” said I. “We went all the way to Bluepoint.”

“Next time it’ll be Montauk Point.”

Mrs. Essen now engaged us in talk. She was a good soul, as Reb had said. 
Perhaps a trifle too refined. A dead area somewhere. Probably in the 
behind.

I noticed that she hardly ever addressed her husband. Now and then she 
reproved him for his rudeness or for his bad language. One could see at a 
glance that there was nothing between them any more.

Mona had made an impression on the two youngsters, who were in their 
teens. (Evidently they had never come across a type like her before.) The 
daughter was overweight, plain-looking and endowed with extraordinary piano
legs which she did her best to hide every time she sat down. She blushed a 
great deal. As for the son, he was one of those precocious kids who talk 
too much, know too much, laugh too much, and always say the wrong thing. 
Full of excess energy, excitable, he was forever knocking things over or 
stepping on some one’s toes. A genuine pipperoo, with a mind that jumped 
like a kangaroo.

When I asked if he still went to synagogue he made a wry face, pinched 
his nostrils with two fingers, and made as if pulling the chain. His mother
quickly explained that they had switched to Ethical Culture. It pleased her
to learn that in the past I too had frequented the meetings of this 
society.

“Let’s have some more to drink,” said Reb, obviously fed up with talk of 
Ethical Culture, New Thought, Baha’i and such folderol.

We had some more of his tawny port. It was good, but too heavy.

“After dinner,” he said, “we’ll play for you.” He meant himself and the 
boy. (It’ll be horrible, I thought to myself.) I asked if he was far 
advanced, the boy. “He’s not a Mischa Elman yet, that’s for sure.” He 
turned to his wife. “Isn’t dinner soon ready?”

She rose in stately fashion, smoothed her hair back from her brow, and 
headed straight for the kitchen. Almost like a somnambulist.

“Let’s pull up to the table,” said Reb. “You people must be famished.”

She was a good cook, Mrs. Essen, but too lavish. There was enough food on
the table for twice as many as we were. The wine was lousy. Jews seldom had
a taste for good wine, I observed to myself. With the coffee and dessert 
came Kiimmel and Benedictine. Mona’s spirits rose. She loved liqueurs. Mrs.
Essen, I noticed, drank nothing but water. Reb, on the other hand, had been
helping himself liberally. He was slightly inebriated, I would say. His 
talk was thick, his gestures loose and floppy. It was good to see him thus;
he was himself, at least. Mrs. Essen, of course, pretended not to be aware 
of his condition. But the son was delighted; he enjoyed seeing his old man 
make a fool of himself.

It was a rather strange, rather eerie ambiance. Now and again Mrs. Essen 
tried to lift the conversation to a higher level. She even brought up Henry
James—her idea of a controversial subject, no doubt—but it was no go. Reb 
had the upper hand. He swore freely now, and called the rabbi a dope. No 
talky-talk for him. Fisticuffs and wrastling, as he called it, was his line
now. He was giving us the lowdown on Benny Leonard, his idol, and 
excoriating Strangler Lewis, whom he loathed.

To needle him, I said: “And what about Redcap Wilson?” (He had worked for
me once as a night messenger. A deaf mute, if I remember right.) He brushed
him off with—“A third-rater, a punk.”

“Like Battling Nelson,” I said.

Mrs. Essen intervened at this point to suggest that we withdraw to the 
other room, the parlor. “You can talk more comfortably there,” she said.

With this, Sid Essen slammed his fist down hard. “Why move?” he shouted. 
“Aren’t we doing all right here? You want us to change the conversation, 
that’s what.” He reached for the Kiimmel. “Here, let’s have a little more, 
everybody. It’s good, what?”

Mrs. Essen and her daughter rose to clear the table. They did it silently
and efficiently, as my mother and sister would have, leaving only the 
bottles and glasses on the table.

Reb nudged me to confide in what he thought was a whisper—“Soon as she 
sees me enjoying myself she clamps down on me. That’s women for you.”

“Come on, Dad,” said the boy, “let’s get the fiddles out.”

“Get ‘em out, who’s stopping you?” shouted Reb. “But don’t play off key, 
it drives me nuts.”

We adjourned to the parlor, where we spread ourselves about on sofas and 
easy chairs. I didn’t care what they played or how. I was a bit swacked 
myself, from all the cheap wine and liqueurs.

While the musicians tuned up, fruit cake was passed around, then walnuts 
and shelled pecans.

It was a duet from Haydn which they had chosen as a starter. With the 
opening bar they were off base. But they stuck to their guns, hoping, I 
suppose, that eventually they would get in step. It was horripilating, the 
way the hacked and. sawed away. Along toward the middle, the old man broke 
down. “Damn it!” he yelled, flinging his fiddle onto a chair, “it sounds 
god-awful. We’re not in form, I guess. As for you,” he turned on his son, 
“you’d better practice some more before you play for anybody.”

He looked around as if searching for the bottle, but catching a grim look
from his wife he slunk into an easy chair. Nobody said anything. He yawned 
loudly. “Why not a game of chess?” he said wearily.

Mrs. Essen spoke up. “Please, not tonight!”

He dragged himself to his feet. “It’s stuffy in here,” he said. “I’m 
taking a walk. Don’t run away! I’ll be back soon.”

When he had gone Mrs. Essen tried to account for his unseemly conduct. 
“He’s lost interest in everything; he’s alone too much.” She spoke almost 
as if he were already deceased.

Said the son: “He ought to take a vacation.”

“Yes,” said the daughter, “we’re trying to get him to visit Palestine.”

“Why not send him to Paris?” said Mona. “That would liven him up.”

The boy began to laugh hysterically.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

He laughed even harder. Then he said: “If he ever got to Paris we’d never
see him again.”

“Now, now!” said the mother.

“You know Dad, he’d go plumb crazy, what with all the girls, the cafes, 
the… “

“What a way to talk!” said Mrs. Essen.

“You don’t know him,” the boy retorted. “I do. He wants to live. So do 
I.”

“Why not send the two of them abroad?” said Mona. “The father would look 
after the son and the son after the father.”

At this point the doorbell rang. It was a neighbor who had heard that we 
were visiting the Essens and had come to make our acquaintance.

“This is Mr. Elfenbein,” said Mrs. Essen. She didn’t seem too delighted 
to see him.

With elbows bent and hands clasped Mr. Elfenbein came forward to greet 
us. His face was radiant, the perspiration was dripping from his brow.

“What a privilege!” he exclaimed, making a little bow, then clasping our 
hands and wringing them vigorously. “I have heard so much about you, I hope
you will pardon the invasion. Do you speak Yiddish, perhaps—or Russe?” He 
hunched his shoulders and moved his head from side to side, the eyes 
following like compass needles. He fixed me with a grin. “Mrs. Skolsky 
tells me you are fond of Cantor Sirota… ” I felt like a bird released from 
it’s cage. I went up to Mr. Elfenbein and gave him a good hug.

“From Minsk or Pinsk?” I said.

“From the land of the Moabites,” he replied.

He gave me a beamish look and stroked his beard. The boy put a glass of 
Kummel in his hand. There was a stray lock of hair on the crown of Mr. 
Elfenbein’s baldish head; it stood up like a corkscrew. He drained the 
glass of Kummel and accepted a piece of fruit cake. Again he clasped his 
hands over his breast.

“Such a pleasure,” he said, “to make the acquaintance of an intelligent 
Goy. A Goy who writes, books and talks to the birds. Who reads the Russians
and observes Yom Kippur. And has the sense to marry a girl from Bukovina… a
Tzigane, no less. And an actress! Where is that loafer, Sid? Is he drunk 
again?” He looked around like a wise old owl about to hoot. “Nun, if a man 
studies all his life and then discovers that he is an idiot, is he right? 
The answer is Yes and No. We say in our village that a man must cultivate 
his own nonsense, not somebody else’s. And in the Cabala it says… But we 
mustn’t split hairs right away. From Minsk came the mink coats and from 
Pinsk nothing but misery. A Jew from the Corridor is a Jew whom the devil 
never touches. Moishe Echt was such a Jew. My cousin, in other words. 
Always in trouble with the rabbi. When winter came he locked himself in the
granary. He was a harness maker… ” He stopped abruptly and gave me a 
Satanic smile.

“In the Book of Job,” I began.

“Make it Revelations,” he said. “It’s more ectoplasmic.”

Mona began to giggle. Mrs. Essen discreetly withdrew. Only the boy 
remained. He was making signs behind Mr. Elfenbein’s back, as if ringing a 
telephone attached to his temple.

“When you begin a new opus,” Mr. Elfenbein was saying, “in what language 
do you pray first?”

“In the language of our fathers,” I replied instantly. “Abraham, Isaac, 
Ezekiel, Nehemiah… “

“And David and Solomon, and Ruth and Esther,” he chimed in.

The boy now refilled Mr. Elfenbein’s glass and again he drained it in one
gulp.

“A fine young gangster he will grow up to be,” said Mr. Elfenbein, 
smacking his lips. “Already he knows nothing from nothing. A malamed he 
should be—if he had his wits. Do you remember in Tried and Punished…?”

“You mean Crime and Punishment,” said young Essen.

“In Russian it is The Crime and its Punishment. Now take a back seat and 
don’t make faces behind my back. I know my meshuggah, but this gentleman 
doesn’t. Let him find out for himself. Isn’t that so, Mr. Gentleman?” He 
made a mock bow.

“When a Jew turns from his religion,” he went on, thinking of Mrs. Essen,
no doubt, “it’s like fat turning to water. Better to become a Christian 
than one of these milk and water—” He cut himself short, mindful of the 
proprieties. “A Christian is a Jew with a crucifix in his hand. He can’t 
forget that we killed him, Jesus, who was a Jew like any other Jew, only 
more fanatical. To read Tolstoy you don’t have to be a Christian; a Jew 
understands him just as well. What was good about Tolstoy was that he 
finally got the courage to run away from his wife… and to give his money 
away. The lunatic is blessed; he doesn’t care about money. Christians are 
only make-believe lunatics; they carry life insurance as well as beads and 
prayer books. A Jew doesn’t walk about with the Psalms; he knows them by 
heart. Even when he’s selling shoelaces he’s humming a verse to himself. 
When the Gentile sings a hymn it sounds like he’s making war. Onward 
Christian Soldiers! How does it go—? Marching as to war. Why as to? They’re
always making war—with a saber in one hand and a crucifix in the other.”

Mona now rose to draw closer. Mr. Elfenbein extended his hands, as if to 
a dancing partner. He sized her up from head to toe, like an auctioneer. 
Then he said: “And what did you play in last, my rose of Sharon?”

“The Green Cockatoo,” she replied (Tic-tac-toe.) “And before that?”

“The Goat Song, Liliom… Saint Joan.”

“Stop!” He put up his hand. “The Dybbuk is better suited to your 
temperament. More gynecological. Now, what was that play of Sudermann’s? No
matter. Ah yes… Magda. You’re a Magda, not a Monna Vanna. I ask you, how 
would I look in The God of Vengeance?’ Am I a Schildkraut or a Ben Ami? 
Give me Siberia to play, not The Servant in the House!” He chucked her 
under the chin. “You remind me a little of Elissa Landi. Yes, with a touch 
of Nazimova, perhaps. If you had more weight, you could be another 
Modjeska. Hedda Gabler, that’s for you. My favorite is The Wild Duck. After
that The Playboy of the Western World. But not in Yiddish, God forbid!”

The theater was his pet subject, evidently. He had been an actor years 
ago, first in Rummeldumvitza or some hole like that, then at the Thalia on 
the Bowery. It was there he met Ben Ami. And somewhere else, Blanche Yurka.
He had also known Vesta Tilly, odd thing. And David Warfield. He thought 
Androcles and the Lion was a gem, but didn’t care much for Shaw’s other 
plays. He was very fond of Ben Jonson and Marlowe, and of Hasenclever and 
von Hoffmansthal.

“Beautiful women rarely make good actresses,” he was saying. “There 
should always be a defect of some kind—a longish nose or the eyes a little 
misfocused. The best is to have an unusual voice. People always remember 
the voice. Pauline Lord’s for example.” He turned to Mona. “You have a good
voice, too. It has brown sugar in it and cloves and nutmeg. The worst is 
the American voice—no soul in it. Jacob Ben Ami had a marvelous voice… like
good soup… never turned rancid. But he dragged it around like a tortoise. A
woman should cultivate the voice above everything. She should also think 
more, about what the play means… not about her exquisite postillion… I mean
posterior. Jewish actresses have too much flesh, usually; when they walk 
across the stage they shake like jelly. But they have sorrow in their 
voices… Sorge. They don’t have to imagine that a devil is pulling a breast 
off with hot pincers. Yes, sin and sorrow are the best ingredients. And a 
bit of phantasmus. Like in Webster or Marlowe. A shoemaker who talks to the
Devil every time he goes to the water closet. Or falls in love with a 
beanstalk, as In Moldavia. The Irish plays are full of lunatics and 
drunkards, and the nonsense they talk is holy nonsense. The Irish are poets
always, especially when they know nothing. They have been tortured too, 
maybe not as much as the Jews, but enough. No one likes to eat potatoes 
three times a day, or use a pitchfork for a toothpick. Great actors, the 
Irish. Born chimpanzees. The British are too refined, too mentalized. A 
masculine race, but castrated… ” A commotion was going on at the door. It 
was Sid Essen returning from his walk with a couple of mangy looking cats 
he had rescued. His wife was trying to shoo them out.

“Elfenbein!” he shouted, waiving his cap. “Greetings! How did you get 
here?”

“How should I get here? By my two feet, no?” He took a step forward. “Let
me smell your breath!”

“Go way, go way! When have you seen me drunk?”

“When you are too happy—or not so happy.”

“A great pal, Elfenbein,” said Reb, slinging an arm around his shoulder 
affectionately. “The Yiddish King Lear, that’s what he is… What’s the 
matter, the glasses are empty.”

“Like your mind,” said Elfenbein. “Drink of the spirit. Like Moses. From 
the rock gushes water, from the bottle only foolishness. Shame on you, son 
of Zweifel, to be so thirsty.”

The conversation became scattered. Mrs. Essen had got rid of the cats, 
cleaned up the mess they had made in the hallway, and was once again 
smoothing her hair back from her brow. A lady, every inch of her. No 
rancor, no recriminations. Gelid, in that super-refined, ethical-culturish 
way. She took a seat by the window, hoping, no doubt, that the conversation
would take a more rational turn. She was fond of Mr. Elfenbein, but he 
distressed her with his Old World talk, his crazy grimaces, his stale 
jokes.

The Yiddish King Lear was now beyond all bridling. He had launched into a
lengthy monologue on the Zend Avestas, with occasional sideswipes at the 
Book of Etiquette—Jewish, presumably—though from the references he made to 
it, it might as well have been Chinese. He had just finished saying that, 
according to Zoroaster, man had been chosen to continue the work of 
creation. Then he added: “Man is nothing unless he is a collaborator. God 
is not kept alive by prayers and injections. The Jew has forgotten all of 
this—and the Gentile is a spiritual cripple.”

A confused discussion followed these statements, much to Elfenbein’s 
amusement. In the midst of it he began singing at the top of his 
lungs—“Rumeinie, Rumeinie, Rumeinie… a mameligele… a pastramele… a 
karnatsele… un a gleizele wine, Aha!”

“You see,” he said, when the hubbub had subsided, “even in a liberal 
household it’s dangerous to introduce ideas. Time was when such talk was 
music to one’s ears. The rabbi would take a hair, and with a knife like a 
razor he would split it into a thousand hairs. Nobody had to agree with 
him; it was an exercise. It sharpened the mind and made us forget the 
terror. If the music played, you needed no partner; you danced with Zov, 
Toft, Giml. Now when we argue we put bandages over our eyes. We go to see 
Tomashevsky and we weep like pigs. We don’t know any more who is Pechorin 
or Aksakov. If on the stage a Jew visits a bordel—perhaps he lost his 
way!—every one blushes for the author. But a good Jew can sit in the 
slaughterhouse and think only of Jehovah.

Once in Bucuresti I saw a holy man finish a bottle of vodka all by 
himself, and then he talked for three hours without stopping. He talked of 
Satan. He made him so repulsive that I could smell him. When I left the 
cafe everything looked Satanic to me. I had to go to a public house, excuse
me, to get rid of the sulphur. It glowed like a furnace in there; the women
looked like pink angels. Even the madam, who was really a vulture. Such a 
time I had that night! All because the Tzaddik had taken too much vodka.

“Yes, it’s good to sin once in a while, but not to make a pig of 
yourself. Sin with eyes open. Drown yourself in the pleasures of the flesh,
but hang on by a hair. The Bible is full of patriarchs who indulged the 
flesh but never lost sight of the one God. Our forefathers were men of 
spirit, but they had meat on their bones. One could take a concubine and 
still have respect for one’s wife. After all, it was at the door of the 
temple that the harlot learned her trade. Yes, sin was real then, and Satan
too. Now we have ethics, and our children become garment manufacturers, 
gangsters, concert performers. Soon they will be making trapeze artists of 
them, and hockey players… “

“Yes,” said Reb, from the depths of his arm-chair, “now we are less than 
nothing. Once we had pride… ” Elfenbein cut in. “Now we have the Jew who 
talks like the Gentile, who says nothing matters but success. The Jew sends
his boy to a military academy so that he can learn how to kill his fellow 
Jew. The daughter, he sends to Hollywood, to make a name for herself, as a 
Hungarian or Roumanian, by showing her nakedness. Instead of great rabbis 
we have heavyweight prize fighters. We even have homosexuals now, weh is 
mir. Soon we will have Jewish Cossacks.”

Like a refrain, Reb sighed: “The God of Abraham is no more.”

“Let them show their nakedness,” said Elfenbein, “but not pretend that 
they are heathen. Let them remember their fathers, who were peddlers and 
scholars and who fell like chaff under the heels of the hooligans.”

On and on he went, leaping from subject to subject like a chamois in thin
air. Names like Mordecai and Ahasueras dropped from his lips, together with
Lady Windermere’s Fan and Sodom and Gomorrah. In one breath he expatiated 
on The Shoemaker’s Holiday and the lost tribes of Israel. And always, like 
a summer complaint, he came back to the sickness of the Gentiles, which he 
likened unto eine Arschkrankheit. Egypt all over again, but without 
grandeur, without miracles. And this sickness was now in the brain. Maggots
and poppy seed. Even the Jews were looking forward to the day of 
resurrection. For them, he said, it would be like war without dum-dum 
bullets.

He was swept along by his own words now. And drinking only Seltzer water.
The word bliss, which he had let fall, seemed to cause an explosion in his 
head. What was bliss? A long sleep in the Fallopian tubes. Or—Huns without 
Schrecklichkeit. The Danube always blue, as in a Strauss waltz. Yes, he 
admitted, in the Pentateuch there was much nonsense written, but it had a 
logic. The Book of Numbers was not all horseradish. It had teleological 
excitement. As for circumcision, one might just as well talk about chopped 
spinach, for all the importance it had. The synagogues smelled of chemicals
and roach powder. The Amalekites were the spiritual cockroaches of their 
time, like the Anabaptists of today. “No wonder,” he exclaimed, giving us a
frightened wink, “that everything is in a state of ‘chassos’. How true were
the words of the Tzaddik who said: ‘Apart from Him there is nothing that is
really clear.’ ” Oof! He was getting winded, but there was more to come. He
made a phosphorescent leap now from the depths of his trampoline. There 
were a few great souls whose names he had to mention: they belonged to 
another order. Barbusse, Tagore, Romain Rolland, Peguy, for example. The 
friends of humanity. Heroic souls, all of them. Even America was capable of
producing a humanitarian soul, witness Eugene V. Debs. There are mice, he 
said, who wear the uniforms of field marshals, and gods who move in our 
midst like beggars. The Bible swarmed with moral and spiritual giants. Who 
could compare to King David? Who was so magnificent, yet so wise, as 
Solomon? The lion of Judah was still alive and snorting. No anesthetic 
could put this lion permanently to sleep. “We are coming,” said he, “to a 
time when even the heaviest artillery will be caught with spiders’ webs and
armies will melt like snow. Ideas are crumbling, like old walls. The world 
shrinks, like the skin of a lichee nut, and men press together like wet 
sacks mildewed with fear. When the prophets give out, the stones must 
speak. The patriarchs needed no megaphones. They stood still and waited for
the Lord to appear unto them. Now we hop about like frogs, from one 
cesspool to another, and talk gibberish. Satan has stretched his net over 
the world and we leap out like fish ready for the frying pan. Man was set 
down in the midst of a garden, naked and dreamless. To each creature was 
given his place, his condition. Know thy place! was the commandment. Not 
“Know thyself!” The worm becomes a butterfly only when it becomes 
intoxicated with the splendor and magnificence of life.

“We have surrendered to despair. Ecstasy has given way to drunkenness. A 
man who is intoxicated with life sees visions, not snakes. He has no 
hangovers. Nowadays we have a bluebird in every home—corked and bottled. 
Sometimes it’s called Old Kentucky, sometimes it’s a license number—Vat 69.
All poisonous, even when diluted.”

He paused to squirt some Seltzer water in his glass. Reb was sound 
asleep. He wore a look of absolute bliss, as if he had seen Mt. Sinai.

“There, now,” said Elfenbein, raising his glass, “let us drink to the 
wonders of the Western World. May they soon be no more! It’s getting late 
and I have monopolized the floor. Next time we will discuss more ecumenical
subjects. Maybe I will tell you about my Carmen Sylva days. I mean the 
cafe, not the Queen. Though I can say that I once slept in her palace… in 
the stable, that is. Remind me to tell you more about Jacob Ben Ami. He was
much more than a voice.

As we were taking leave he asked if he could see us to our door. “With 
pleasure,” I said.

Walking down the street he stopped to give vent to an inspiration. “May I
suggest,” he said, “that if you have not yet fixed on a title for your book
that you call it This Gentile World f It would be most appropriate, even if
it makes no sense. Use a nom de plume like Boguslavsky—that will confuse 
the reader still more.”

“I am not always so voluble,” he added, “but you, the two of you, are the
Grenze type, and for a derelict from Transylvania that is like an aperitif.
I always wanted to write novels, foolish ones, like Dickens. The Mr. 
Pickwick kind. Instead, I became a playboy. Well, I will say good night 
now. Elfenbein is my pseudonym; the real name would astonish you. Look up 
Deuteronomy, Chapter 13. ‘If there arise among you a—” He was seized with a
violent fit of sneezing. “The Seltzer water!” he exclaimed. “Maybe I should
go to a Turkish Bath. It’s time for another influenza epidemic. Good night 
now! Onward as to war! Don’t forget the lion of Judah! You can see him in 
the movies, when the music starts up.” He imitated the growl. “That,” he 
said, “is to show that he is still awake.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Why should we always go out of our way to describe the wretchedness and 
the imperfections of our life, and to unearth characters from wild and 
remote corners of our country?”

Thus Gogol begins Part Two of his unfinished novel.

I was now well into the novel—my own—but still I had no clear idea where 
it was leading me, nor did it matter since Pop was pleased with all that 
had been shown him thus far, the money was always forthcoming, we ate and 
drank well, the birds were scarcer now but still they sang, Thanksgiving 
had come and gone, and my chess game had improved somewhat. Moreover, no 
one had discovered our whereabouts, none of our pestilential cronies, I 
mean. Thus I was able to explore the streets at will, which I did with a 
vengeance, because the air was sharp and biting, the wind whistled, and my 
brain ever in a whirl drove me on face forward, forced me to ferret out 
streets, memories, buildings, odors (of rotting vegetables), abandoned 
ferry slips, storekeepers long dead, saloons converted into dime stores, 
cemeteries still redolent with the punk of mourners.

The wild and remote corners of the earth were all about me, only a 
stone’s throw from the boundary which marked off our aristocratic precinct.
I had only to cross the line, the Grenze, and I was in the familiar world 
of childhood, the land of the poor and happily demented, the junk yard 
where all that was dilapidated, useless and germ ridden was salvaged by the
rats who refused to desert the ship.

As I roamed about gazing into shop windows, peering into alleyways, and 
never seeing anything but dreary desolation, I thought of the Negroes whom 
we visited regularly and of how uncontaminated they appeared to be. The 
sickness of the Gentiles had not destroyed their laughter, their gift of 
speech, their easy-going ways. They had all our diseases to combat and our 
prejudices as well, yet they remained impervious.

The one who owned the collection of erotica had grown very fond of me; I 
had to be on guard lest he drive me into a corner and pinch my ass. Never 
did I dream that one day he would be seizing my books, too, and adding them
to his astounding collection. He was a wonderful pianist, I should add. He 
had that dry-pedal technique I relished so much in Count Basie and Fats 
Waller. They could all play some instrument, these lovable souls. And if 
there were no instrument they made music with fingers and palms—on 
table-tops, barrels or anything at hand.

I had introduced no “unearthed characters” as yet in the novel. I was 
still timid, more in love with words than with psychopathic devaginations. 
I could spend hours at a stretch with Walter Pater, or even Henry James, in
the hope of lifting a beautifully turned phrase. Or I might sit and gaze at
a Japanese print, say “The Fickle Type” of Utamaro, in the effort to force 
a bridge between a vague, dreamy fugue of an image and a living, colored 
wood-block. I was ever frantically climbing ladders to pluck a ripe fig 
from some exotic overhanging garden of the past. The illustrated pages of a
magazine like the Geographic could hold me spellbound for hours. How work 
in a cryptic reference to some remote region of Asia Minor, some 
little-known site, for example, where a Hittite monster of a monarch had 
left colossal statues to commemorate his flea-blown ego? Or I might dig up 
an old history book—one of Mommsen’s, let us say—in order to fetch up with 
a brilliant analogy between the skyscrapered canyons of Wall Street and the
congested districts of Rome under the Emperors. Or I might become 
interested in sewers, the great sewers of Paris, or some other metropolis, 
whereupon it would occur to me that Hugo or some other French writer had 
made use of such a theme, and I would take up the life of this novelist 
merely to find out what had impelled him to take such an interest in 
sewers.

Meanwhile, as I say, “the wild and remote corners of our country” were 
right at hand. I had only to stop and buy a bunch of radishes to unearth a 
weird character. Did an Italian funeral parlor look intriguing? I would 
step inside and inquire the price of a coffin. Everything that was beyond 
the Grenze excited me. Some of my most cherished cosmococcic miscreants, I 
discovered, inhabited this land of desolation. Patrick Garstin, the 
Egyptologist, was one. (He had come to look more like a gold-digger than an
archaeologist.) Donato lived here, too. Donato, the Sicilian lad, who in 
taking an axe to his old man had luckily chopped off only one arm. What 
aspirations he had, this budding parricide! At seventeen he was dreaming of
getting a job in the Vatican. In order, he said, to become better 
acquainted with St. Francis!

Making the rounds from one alkali bed to another, I brought my geography,
ethnology, folklore and gunnery up to date. The architecture teemed with 
atavistic anomalies. There were dwellings seemingly transplanted from the 
shores of the Caspian, huts out of Andersen’s fairy tales, shops from the 
cool labyrinths of Fez, spare cart-wheels and sulkies without shafts, bird 
cages galore and always empty, chamber pots, often of majolica and 
decorated with pansies or sun flowers, corsets, crutches and the handles 
and ribs of umbrellas… an endless array of bric-a-brac all marked 
“manufactured in Hagia Triada.” And what midgets! One, who pretended to 
speak only Bulgarian—he was really a Moldavian—lived in a dog kennel in the
rear of his shack. He ate with the dog—out of the same tin plate. When he 
smiled he showed only two teeth, huge ones, like a canine’s. He could bark,
too, or sniff and growl like a cur.

None of this did I dare put into the novel. No, the novel I kept like a 
boudoir. No dreck. Not that all the characters were respectable or 
impeccable. Ah no! Some whom I had dragged in for color were plain 
Schmucke. (Prepucelos.) The hero, who was also the narrator and to whom I 
bore a slight resemblance, had the air of a trapezoid cerebralist. It was 
his function to keep the merry-go-round turning. Now and then he treated 
himself to a free ride.

What element there was of the bizarre and the outlandish intrigued Pop no
end. He had wondered—openly—how a young woman, the author, in other words, 
came by such thoughts, such images. It had never occurred to Mona to say: 
“From another incarnation!” Frankly, I would hardly have known what to say 
myself. Some of the goofiest images had been stolen from almanacs, others 
were born of wet dreams. What Pop truly enjoyed, it seemed, was the 
occasional introduction of a dog or a cat. (He couldn’t know, of course, 
that I was mortally afraid of dogs, nor that I loathed cats.) But I could 
make a dog talk. And it was doggy talk, no mistake about it. My true reason
for inserting these creatures of a lower order was to show contempt for 
certain characters in the book who had gotten out of hand. A dog, properly 
inspired, can make an ass of a queen. Besides, if I wished to ridicule a 
current idea which was anathema to me, all I had to do was to impersonate a
mutt, lift my hind leg and piss on it.

Despite all the foolery, all the shenanigans, I nevertheless managed to 
create a sort of antique glaze. My purpose was to impart such a finish, 
such a patina, that every page would gleam like stardust. This was the 
business of authorship, as I then conceived it. Make mud puddles, if 
necessary, but see to it that they reflect the galactic varnish. When 
giving an idiot voice, mix the jabberwocky with high-flown allusions to 
such subjects as paleontology, quadratics, hyperboreanism. A line from one 
of the mad Caesars was always pertinent. Or a curse from the lips of a 
scrofulous dwarf. Or just a sly Hamsunesque quip, like—“Going for a walk, 
Froken? The cowslips are dying of thirst.” Sly, I say, because the 
allusion, though far-fetched, was to Froken’s habit of spreading her legs, 
when she thought she was well out of sight, and making water.

These rambles, taken to relax or to obtain fresh inspiration—often only 
to aerate the testicles—had a disturbing effect upon the work in progress. 
Rounding a corner at a sixty degree angle, it could happen that a 
conversation (with a locomotive engineer or a jobless hod-carrier) ended 
only a few minutes previously would suddenly blossom into a dialogue of 
such length, such extravagance, that I would find it impossible, on 
returning to my desk, to resume the thread of my narrative. For every 
thought that entered my head, the hod-carrier or whoever would have some 
comment to make. No matter what answer I made, the conversation continued. 
It was as if these corky nobodies had made up their minds to derail me.

Occasionally this same sort of bitchery would start up with statues, 
particularly chipped and dismantled ones. I might be loitering in some back
yard, gazing absent-mindedly at a marble head with one ear missing, and 
presto! it would be talking to me… talking in the language of a pro-Consul.
Some crazy urge would seize me to caress the battered features, whereupon, 
as if the touch of my hand had restored it to life, it would smile at me. A
smile of gratitude, needless to say. Then an even stranger thing might 
happen. An hour later, say, passing the plate glass window of an empty 
shop, who would greet me from the murky depth’s but the same pro-Consul! 
Terror-stricken, I would press my nose against the show window and stare. 
There he was—an ear missing, the nose bitten off. And his lips moving! “A 
retinal hemorrhage,” I would murmur, and move on. “God help me if he visits
me in my sleep!”

Thus, not so strangely, I developed a kind of painter’s eye. Often I made
it my business to return to a certain spot in order to review a “still 
life” which I had passed too hurriedly the day before or three days before.
The still life, as I term it, might be an artless arrangement of objects 
which no one in his senses would have bothered to look at twice. For 
example—a few playing cards lying face up on the sidewalk, and next to them
a toy pistol or the head of a missing chicken. Or an open parasol, tom to 
shreds, sticking out of a lumberjack’s boot, and beside the boot a tattered
copy of The Golden Ass, pierced with a rusty jackknife. Wondering what so 
fascinated me in these chance arrangements, it would suddenly dawn on me 
that I had detected similar configurations in the painter’s world. Then it 
would be an all-night task to recall which painting, which painter, and 
where I had first stumbled upon it. Extraordinary, when one takes up the 
pursuit of such chimeras, to discover what amazing trivia, what sheer 
insanity, infests some of the great masterpieces of art.

*

But the most distinctive feature associated with these jaunts, rambles, 
forays and reconnoiterings was the realm, panoramic in recollection, of 
gesture. Human gestures. All borrowed from the animal and insect worlds. 
Even those of “refined” individuals, or pseudo-refined, such as morticians,
lackeys, ministers of the gospel, major-domos. The way a certain nobody, 
when taken by surprise, threw back his head and whinnied, would stick in my
crop long after I had ceased to remember his words and deeds. There were 
novelists, I discovered, who made a specialty of exploiting such 
idiosyncrasies, who thought nothing of resorting to a little trick like the
whinnying of a horse when they wished to remind the reader of a character 
mentioned sixty pages back. Craftsmen, the critics called them. Crafty, 
certainly.

Yes, in my stumbling, bumbling way I was making all manner of 
discoveries. One of them was that one cannot hide his identity under cover 
of the . third person, nor establish his identity solely through the use of
the first person singular. Another was—not to think before a blank page. Ce
n’est pas moi, le roi, c’est l’autonome. Not I, but the Father within me, 
in other words.

Quite a discipline, to get words to trickle without fanning them with a 
feather or stirring them with a silver spoon. To learn to wait, wait 
patiently, like a bird of prey, even though the flies were biting like mad 
and the birds chirping Insanely. Before Abraham was… Yes, before the 
Olympian Goethe, before the great Shakespeare, before the divine Dante or 
the immortal Homer, there was the Voice, and the Voice was with every man. 
Man has never lacked for words. The difficulty arose only when man forced 
the words to do his bidding. Be still, and wait the coming of the Lord! 
Erase all thought, observe the still movement of the heavens! All is flow 
and movement, light and shadow. What is more still than a mirror, the 
frozen glassiness of glass—yet what frenzy, what fury, its still surface 
can yield!

“I wish that you would kindly have the men of the Park Department prune, 
trim and pare off all the dead wood, twigs, sprigs, stumps, stickers, 
shooters, sucker-pieces, dirty and shaggy pieces, low, extra low and 
overhanging boughs and branches from the good trees and to prune them extra
close to the bark and to have all the good trees thoroughly and properly 
sprayed from the base to the very top parts and all through along by all 
parts of each street, avenue, place, court, lane, boulevard and so on… and 
thereby give a great deal more light, more natural light, more air, more 
beauty to all the surrounding areas.”

That was the sort of message I should like to have dispatched at 
intervals to the god of the literary realm, so that I might be delivered 
from confusion, rescued from chaos, freed of obsessive admiration for 
authors living and dead whose words, phrases, images, barricaded my way.

And what was it prevented my own unique thoughts from breaking out and 
flooding the page? For many a year now I had been scurrying to and fro like
a pack-rat, borrowing this and that from the beloved masters, hiding them 
away, my treasures, forgetting where I had stored them, and always 
searching for more, more, more. In some deep, forgotten pit were buried all
the thoughts and experiences which I might properly call my own, and which 
were certainly unique, but which I lacked the courage to resuscitate. Had 
some one cast a spell over me, that I should labor with arthritic stumps 
instead of two bold fists? Had some one stood over me in my sleep and 
whispered: “You will never do it, never do it!” (Not Stanley, certainly, 
for he would disdain to whisper. Could he not hiss like a snake?) Who then?
Or was it that I was still in the cocoon stage, a worm not yet sufficiently
intoxicated with the splendor and magnificence of life?

How does one know that one day he will take wing, that like a hummingbird
he will quiver in mid-air and dazzle with iridescent sheen? One doesn’t. 
One hopes and prays and bashes his head against the wall. But “it” knows. 
It can bide its time. It knows that all the errors, all the detours, all 
the failures and frustrations will be turned to account. To be born an 
eagle one must get accustomed to high places; to be born a writer one must 
learn to like privation, suffering, humiliation. Above all, one must learn 
to live apart. Like the sloth, the writer clings to his limb, while beneath
him life surges by, steady, persistent, tumultuous. When ready, plop! he 
falls into the stream and battles for life. Is it not something like that? 
Or is there a fair, smiling land where at an early age the budding writer 
is taken aside, instructed in his art, guided by loving masters and, 
instead of falling thwack into mid-stream, he glides like an eel through 
sludge, mire and ooze?

I had time unending for such vagaries in the course of my daily routine; 
like poplars they sprang up beside me as I labored in thought, as I walked 
the streets for inspiration, or as I put my head on the pillow to drown 
myself in sleep. What a wonderful life, the literary life! I would 
sometimes say to myself. Meaning this in-between realm, crowded with 
interlacing, intertwining boughs, branches, leaves, stickers, suckers and 
whatnot. The mild activity associated with my “work” not only failed to 
drain my energy but stimulated it. I was forever buzzing, buzzing. If now 
and then I complained of exhaustion it was from not being able to write, 
never from writing too much. Did I fear, unconsciously, that if I succeeded
in letting myself go I would be speaking with my own voice? Did I fear 
that, once I found that buried treasure which I had hidden away, I would 
never again know peace, never know surcease from toil?

The very thought of creation—how absolutely unapproachable it is! Or its 
opposite, chaos. Impossible ever to posit such a thing as the un-created. 
The more deeply we gaze, the more we discover of order in disorder, the 
more of law in lawlessness, the more of light in darkness. Negation—the 
absence of things—is unthinkable; it is the ghost of a thought. Everything 
is humming, pushing, waxing, waning, changing—has been so since eternity. 
And all according to inscrutable urges, forces, which, when we recognize 
them, we call laws. Chaos! We know nothing of chaos. Silence! Only the dead
know it. Nothingness! Blow as hard as you like, something always remains.

When and where does creation cease? And what can a mere writer create 
that has not already been created? Nothing. The writer rearranges the gray 
matter in his noodle. He makes a beginning’ and an end—the very opposite of
creation—and in between, where he shuffles around, or more properly, is 
shuffled around, there is born the imitation of reality: a book. Some books
have altered the face of the world. Rearrangement, nothing more. The 
problems of life remain. A face may be lifted, but one’s age is indelible. 
Books have no effect. Authors have no effect. The effect was given in the 
first cause. Where wert thou when I created the world T Answer that and you
have solved the riddle of creation!

We write, knowing we are licked before we start. Every day we beg for 
fresh torment. The more we itch and scratch the better we feel. And when 
our readers also begin to itch and scratch we feel sublime. Let no one die 
of inanition! The air must ever swarm with arrows of thought delivered by 
les hommes de lettres. Letters, mind you. How well put! Letters strung 
together with invisible wires charged with imponderable magnetic currents. 
All this travail forced upon a brain that was intended to work like a 
charm, to work without working. Is it a person coming toward you or a mind?
A mind divided into books, pages, sentences, replete with commas, periods, 
semicolons, dashes and asterisks. One author receives a prize or a seat in 
the Academy for his efforts, another a worm-eaten bone. The names of some 
are lent to streets and boulevards, of others to gallows and almshouses. 
And when all these “creations” have been finally read and digested, men 
will still be buggering one another. No author, not even the greatest, has 
been able to get round that hard, cold fact.

A grand life just the same. The literary life, I mean. Who wants to alter
the world? (Let it rot, let it die, let it fade away!) Tetrazzini 
practicing her trills, Caruso shattering the chandeliers, Cortot waltzing 
like a blind mouse, the great Vladimir horrorizing the keyboard—was it of 
creation or salvation they were thinking? Perhaps not even of constipation…
The road smokes under your horses’ hooves, the bridges rumble, the heavens 
fall backward. What is the meaning of it all? The air, tom to shreds, 
rushes by. Everything is flying by, bells, collar buttons, mustachios, 
pomegranates, hand grenades. We draw aside to make way for you, you fiery 
steeds. And for you, dear Jascha Heifetz, dear Joseph Szigeti, dear Yehudi 
Menuhin. We draw aside, humbly—do you hear? No answer. Only the sound of 
their collar bells.

Nights when everything is going whish whoosh! when all the unearthed 
characters slink out of their hiding places to perform on the roof-top of 
my brain, arguing, screaming, yodeling, cart-wheeling, whinnying too—what 
horses!—I know that this is the only life, this life of the writer, and the
world may stay put, get worse, sicken and die, all one, because I no longer
belong to the world, a world that sickens and dies, that stabs itself over 
and over, that wobbles like an amputated crab… I have my own world, a 
Graben of a world, cluttered with Vespasiennes, Miros and Heideggers, 
bidets, a lone Yeshiva Bocher, cantors who sing like clarinets, divas who 
swim in their own fat, bugle busters and troikas that rush like the wind… 
Napoleon has no place here, nor Goethe, nor even those gentle souls with 
power over birds, such as St. Francis, Milosz the Lithuanian, and 
Wittgenstein. Even lying on my back, pinned down by dwarves and gremlins, 
my power is vast and unyielding. My minions obey me; they pop like corn on 
the griddle, they whirl into line to form sentences, paragraphs, pages. And
in some far-off place, in some heavenly day to come, others geared to the 
music of words will respond to the message and storm heaven itself to 
spread unbounded delirium. Who knows why these things should be, or why 
cantatas and oratorios? We know only that their magic is law, and that by 
observing them, heeding them, reverencing them, we add joy to joy, misery 
to misery, death to death.

Nothing is so creative as creation itself. Abel begat Bogul, and Bogul 
begat Mogul, and Mogul begat Zobel. Catheter, blatherer, shatterer. One 
letter added to another makes for a word; one word added to another makes 
for a phrase; phrase upon phrase, sentence upon sentence, paragraph upon 
paragraph; chapter after chapter, book after book, epic after epic: a tower
of Babel stretching almost, but not quite, to the lips of the Great I Am. 
“Humility is the word!” Or, as my dear, beloved Master explains: “We must 
remember our close connection with things like insects, pterodactyls, 
saurians, glow-worms, moles, skunks, and those little flying squirrels 
called polatouches.” But let us also not forget, when creation drags us by 
the hair, that every atom, every molecule, every single element of the 
universe is in league with us, egging us on and trimming us down, all to 
remind us that we must never think of dirt as dirt or God as God, but ever 
all combined, making us to race like comets after our own tails, and 
thereby giving the lie to motion, matter, energy and all the other 
conceptual flubdub clinging to the asshole of creation like bleeding piles.

(“My straw hat mingles with the straw hats of the rice planters.”)

It is unnecessary, in this beamish realm, to feast on human dung or 
copulate with the dead, after the manner of certain disciplined souls, nor 
is it necessary to abstain from food, alcohol, sex and drugs, after the 
manner of anchorites. Neither is it incumbent upon any one to practice hour
after hour the major and minor scales, the arpeggios, pizzicati, or 
cadenzas, as did the progeny of Liszt, Czerny and other pyrotechnical 
virtuosi. Nor should one slave to make words explode like firecrackers, in 
conformance to the ballistic regulations of inebriated semanticists. It is 
enough and more to stretch, yawn, wheeze, fart and whinny. Rules are for 
barbarians, technique for the troglodytes. Away with the Minnesingers, even
those of Cappadocia!

Thus, whilst sedulously and slavishly imitating the ways of the 
masters—tools and technique, in other words—my instincts were rising up in 
revolt. If I craved magical powers it was not to rear new structures, not 
to add to the Tower of Babel, but to destroy, to undermine. The novel I had
to write. Point d’honneur. But after that… ? After that, vengeance! Ravage,
lay waste the land: make of Culture an open sewer, so that the stench of it
would remain forever in the nostrils of memory. All my idols—and I 
possessed a veritable pantheon—I would offer up as sacrifices. What powers 
of utterance they had given me I would use to curse and blaspheme. Had not 
the prophets of old promised destruction? Had they ever hesitated to befoul
their speech, in order to awaken the dead? If for companions I had never 
aught but derelicts and wastrels, was there not a purpose in it? Were not 
my idols also derelicts and wastrels—in a profound sense? Did they not 
float on the tide of culture, were they not tossed hither and thither like 
the unlettered wretches of the workaday world? Were their daemons not as 
heartless and ruthless as any slave driver? Did not everything conspire—the
grand, the noble, the perfect works, as well as the low, the sordid, the 
mean—to render life more unlivable each day? Of what use the poems of 
death, the maxims and counsels of the sage ones, the codes and tablets of 
the law-givers, of what use leaders, thinkers, men of art, if the very 
elements that made up the fabric of life were incapable of being 
transformed?

Only to one who has not yet found his way is it permitted to ask all the 
wrong questions, to tread all the wrong paths, to hope and pray for the 
destruction of all existent modes and forms. Puzzled and perplexed, yanked 
this way and that, muddled and befuddled, striving and cursing, sneering 
and jeering, small wonder that in the midst of a thought, a perfect jewel 
of a thought, I sometimes caught myself staring straight ahead, mind blank,
like a chimpanzee in the act of mounting another chimpanzee. It was in this
wise that Abel begat Bogul and Bogul begat Mogul. I was the last of the 
line, a dog of a Zobel with a bone between my jaws which I could neither 
chew nor grind, which I teased and worried, and spat on and shat on. Soon I
would piss on it and bury it. And the name of the bone was Babel.

A grand life, the literary life. Never would I have it better. Such 
tools! Such technique! How could any one, unless he hugged me like a 
shadow, know the myriads of waste places I frequented in my search for ore?
Or the varieties of birds that sang for me as I dug my pits and shafts? Or 
the cackling, chortling gnomes and elves who waited on me as I labored, who
faithfully tickled my balls, rehearsed my lines, or revealed to me the 
mysteries hidden in pebbles, twigs, fleas, lice and pollen? Who could 
possibly know the confidences revealed by my idols, who were ever sending 
me night messages, or the secret codes imparted to me whereby I learned to 
read between the lines, to correct false biographical data and make light 
of gnostic commentaries? Never was there a more solid terra firma beneath 
my feet than when grappling with this shifting, floating world created by 
the vandals of culture on whom I finally learned to turn my ass.

And who, I ask, who but a “master of reality” could imagine that the 
first step into the world of creation must be accompanied with a loud, 
evil-smelling fart, as if experiencing for the first time the significance 
of shell-fire? Advance always! The generals of literature sleep soundly in 
their cozy bunks. We, the hairy ones, do the fighting. From that trench 
which must be taken there is no returning. Get thee behind us, ye laureates
of Satan! If it be cleavers we must fight with, let us use them to full 
advantage. Faugh a balla! Get those greasy ducks! Avanti, quanta The battle
is endless. It had no beginning, nor will it know an end. We who babble and
froth at the mouth have been at it since eternity. Spare us further 
instruction! Are we to make green lawns as we advance from trench to 
trench? Are we landscape artists as well as butchers?”

‘Must we storm to victory perfumed like whores? For whom are we mopping 
up?

How fortunate that I had only one reader! Such an indulgent one, too. 
Every time I sat down to write a page for him I readjusted my skirt, 
primped my hairdo and powdered my nose. If only he could see me at work, 
dear Pop! If only he knew the pains I took to give his novel the proper 
literary cast. What a Marius he had in me! What an Epicurean!

Somewhere Paul Valery has said: ‘What is of value to us alone (meaning 
the poets of literature) has no value. This is the law of literature.” Iss 
dot so now? Tsch, tsch! True, our Valery was discussing the art of poetry, 
discussing the poet’s task and purpose, his raison d’etre. Myself, I have 
never understood poetry as poetry. For me the mark of the poet is 
everywhere, in everything. To distil thought until it hangs in the alembic 
of a poem, revealing not a speck, not a shadow, not a vaporous breath of 
the “impurities” from which it was decocted, that for me is a meaningless, 
worthless pursuit, even though it be the sworn and solemn function of those
midwives who toil in the name of Beauty, Form, Intelligence, and so on.

I speak of the poet because I was then, in my blissful embryonic state, 
more nearly that than ever since. I never thought, as did Diderot, that “my
ideas are my whores.” Why would I want whores? No, my ideas were a garden 
of delights. An absent-minded gardener I was, who, though tender and 
observing, did not attach too much importance to the presence of weeds, 
thorns, nettles, but craved only the joy of frequenting this place apart, 
this intimate domain peopled with shrubs, blossoms, flowers, bees, birds, 
bugs of every variety. I never walked the garden as a pimp, nor even in a 
fornicating frame of mind. Neither did I invest it as a botanist, an 
entomologist or a horticulturist. I studied nothing, not even my own 
wonder. Nor did I christen any blessed thing. The look of a flower was 
enough, or its perfume. How did the flower come to be? How did anything 
come to be? If I questioned, it was to ask—“Are you there, little friend? 
Are the dewdrops still clinging to your petals?”

What could be more considerate—better manners!—than to treat thoughts, 
ideas, inspirational flashes, as flowers of delight? What better work 
habits than to greet them with a smile each day or walk among them musing 
on their evanescent glory? True, now and then I might make so bold as to 
pluck one for my buttonhole. But to exploit it, to send it out to work like
a whore or a stockbroker—unthinkable. For me it was enough to have been 
inspired, not to be perpetually inspired. I was neither a poet nor a 
drudge. I was simply out of step. Heimatlos.

My only reader… Later I will exchange him for the ideal reader, that 
intimate rascal, that beloved scamp, to whom I may speak as if nothing had 
any value but to him—and to me. Why add—to met Can he be any other, this 
ideal reader, than my alter ego? Why create a world of one’s own if it must
also make sense to every Tom, Dick and Harry? Have not the others this 
world of the everyday, which they profess to despise yet cling to like 
drowning rats? Is it not strange how they who refuse, or are too lazy, to 
create a world of their own insist on invading ours? Who is it tramples the
flower beds at night? Who is it leaves cigarette stubs in the bird bath? 
Who is it pees on the blushing violets and wilts their bloom? We know how 
you ravage the pages of literature in search of what pleases you. We 
discover the footprints of your blundering spirit everywhere. It is you who
kill genius, you who cripple the giants. You, you, whether through love and
adoration or through envy, spite and hatred. Who writes for you writes his 
own death warrant.

Little sparrow,

Mind, mind out of the way,

Mr. Horse is coming.

Issa-San wrote that. Tell me its value!

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was about ten A.M. of a Saturday, just a few minutes after Mona had 
taken off for the city, when Mrs. Skolsky knocked on the door. I had just 
taken my seat at the machine and was in a mood to write.

“Come in!” I said. She entered hesitantly, paused respectfully, then 
said: “There’s a gentleman downstairs wants to see you. Says he’s a friend 
of yours.”

“What’s his name?”

“He wouldn’t give his name. Said not to bother you if you were busy.”

(Who the hell could it be? I had given no one our address.)

“Tell him I’ll be down in a minute,” I said.

When I got to the head of the stairs there he was looking up at me, with 
a broad grin on his face. MacGregor, no less. The last man on earth I 
wanted to see.

“I’ll bet you’re glad to see me,” he piped. “Hiding away as usual, I see.
How are you, you old bastard?”

“Come on up!”

“You’re sure you’re not too busy?” This with full sarcasm.

“I can always spare ten minutes for an old friend,” I replied.

He bounded up the steps. “Nice place,” he said as he walked in. “How long
are you here? Hell, never mind telling me.” He sat down on the divan and 
threw his hat on the table.

Nodding toward the machine he said: “Still at it, eh?” I thought you had 
given that up long ago. Boy, you’re a glutton for punishment.”

“How did you find this place?” I asked.

“Easy as pie,” he said. “I phoned your parents. They wouldn’t give me 
your address but they did give me the phone number. The rest was easy.”

“I’ll be damned!”

“What’s the matter, aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Sure, sure.”

“You don’t need to worry, I won’t tell anybody. By the way, is 
what’s-her-name still with you?”

“You mean Mona?”

“Yeah, Mona. I couldn’t remember her name.”

“Sure, she’s with me. Why shouldn’t she be?”

“I never thought she’d last this long, that’s all. Well, it’s good to 
know you’re happy. I’m not! I’m in a jam. One hell of a jam. That’s why I 
came to see you. I need you.”

“No, don’t say that! How the hell can I help you? You know I’m… “

“All I want you to do is listen. Don’t get panicky. I’m in love, that’s 
what.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “What’s wrong with that?”

“She won’t have me.”

I burst out laughing. “Is that all? Is that what’s worrying you? You poor
sap!”

“You don’t understand. It’s different this time. This is love. Let me 
tell you about her… ” He paused a full moment. “Unless you’re too busy 
right now.” He directed his gaze at the work table, observed the blank 
sheet in the machine, then added: “What is it this time—a novel? Or a 
philosophical treatise?”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “Nothing important.”

“Sounds strange,” he said. “Once upon a time everything you did was 
important, very important. Come on, what are you holding back for? I know I
disturbed you, but that’s no reason to clam up on me.”

“If you really want to know, I’m working on a novel.”

“A novel? Jesus, Hen, don’t try that… you’ll never write a novel.”

“Why? What makes you so sure?”

“Because I know you, that’s why. You haven’t any feeling for plot.”

“Does a novel always have to have a plot?”

‘ “Look,” he countered, “I don’t want to gum up the works, but… “

“But what?”

“Why don’t you stick to your guns? You can write anything, but a novel.”

“What makes you think I can write at all?”

He hung his head, as if thinking up an answer. “You never thought much of
me as a writer,” said I. “Nobody does.”

“You’re a writer all right,” he said. “Maybe you haven’t produced 
anything worth looking at yet, but you’ve got time. The trouble with you is
you’re obstinate.”

“Obstinate?”

“Obstinate, yeah! Stubborn, mule-headed. You want to enter by the front 
door. You want to be different but you don’t want to pay the price. Look, 
why couldn’t you take a job as a reporter, work your way up, become a 
correspondent, then tackle the great work? Answer that!”

“Because it’s a waste of time, that’s why.”

“Other men have done it. Bigger men than you, some of them. What about 
Bernard Shaw?”

“That was O.K. for him,” I replied. “I have my own way.”

Silence for a few moments. I reminded him of an evening in his office 
long ago, an evening when he had flung a new review at me and told me to 
read a story by John Dos Passos, then a young writer.

“You know what you told me then? You said: ‘Hen, why don’t you try your 
hand at it? You can write as good as him any day. Read it and see!”

“J said that?”

“Yes. Don’t remember, eh? Well, those words you dropped so carelessly 
that night stuck in my crop. Whether I’ll ever be as good as John Dos 
Passos is neither here nor there. What’s important is that once you seemed 
to think I could write.”

“Have I ever said any different, Hen?”

“No, but you act different. You act as if you were going along with me in
some crazy escapade. As if it were all hopeless. You want me to do like 
every one else does, do it their way, repeat their errors.”

“Jesus, but you’re sensitive! Go on, write your bloody novel! Write your 
fool head off, if you like! I was just trying to give you a little friendly
advice… Anyway, that’s not what I came for, to talk writing. I’m in a jam. 
I need help. And you’re the one who’s going to help me.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. But let me tell you a bit first, then you’ll understand 
better. You can spare a half-hour, can’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“Well then, it’s like this… You remember that joint we used to go to in 
the Village Saturday afternoons? The place George always haunted? It was 
about two months ago, I guess, when I dropped in to look things over. It 
hadn’t changed much… still the same sort of gals hanging out there. But I 
was bored. I had a couple of drinks all by myself—nobody gave me a tumble, 
by the way—I guess I was feeling a little sorry for myself, getting 
old-like and all that, when suddenly I spied a girl two tables away, alone 
like myself.”

“A raving beauty, I suppose?”

“No, Hen. No, I wouldn’t say that. But different Anyway, I caught her 
eye, asked her for a dance, and when the dance was over she came and sat 
with me. We didn’t dance again. Just sat and talked. Until closing time. I 
wanted to take her home but she refused to let me. I asked for her phone 
number and she refused that too. ‘Maybe I’ll see you next Saturday?’ I 
said. ‘Maybe,’ she replied. And that was that… You haven’t got a drink 
around here, have you?”

. “Sure I have.” I went to the closet and got out a bottle.

“What’s this?” he said, grabbing the bottle of Vermouth.

“That’s a hair tonic,” I said. “I suppose you want Scotch?”

“If you have it, yes. If not, I’ve got some in my car.” I got out a 
bottle of Scotch and poured him a stiff drink.

“How about yourself?”

“Never touch it. Besides, it’s too early in the day.”

“That’s right. You’ve got to write that novel, don’t you?”

“Just as soon as you leave,” I said.

“I’ll make it brief, Hen. I know you’re bored. But I don’t give a damn. 
You’ve got to hear me out… Where was I now? Yeah, the dance hall. Well, 
next Saturday I was back waiting for her, but no sign of her. I sat there 
the whole afternoon. Didn’t have a single dance. No Guelda.”

“What? Guelda? Is that her name?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong?”

“A funny name, that’s all. What is she… what nationality?”

“Scotch-Irish, I imagine. What difference does that make?”

“None, none at all. Just curious.”

“She’s no Gypsy, if that’s what’s on your mind. But there’s something 
about her that gets me. I can’t stop thinking about her. I’m in love, 
that’s what. And I don’t think I’ve ever been in love before. Not this way,
certainly.”

“It sure is funny to hear you say that.”

“I know it, Hen. It’s more than funny. It’s tragic.” I burst out 
laughing.

“Yes, tragic,” he repeated. “For the first time in my life I’ve met some 
one who doesn’t give a shit about me.”

“How do you know?” I said. “Did you ever meet her again?”

“Meet her again? Man, I’ve been dogging her steps ever since that day. 
Sure, I’ve seen her again. I tracked her home one night. She was getting 
off a bus at Borough Hall. Didn’t see me, of course. Next day I rang her 
up. She was furious. What did I mean telephoning her? How did I get her 
number? And so on. Well, a few weeks latter she was at the dance hall 
again. This time I had to literally get down on my knees to wangle a dance 
out of her. She told me not to bother her, that I didn’t interest her, that
I was uncouth… oh, all sorts of things. I couldn’t get her to sit with me 
either. A few days later I sent her a bouquet of roses. No results. I tried
phoning her again, but as soon as she heard my voice she hung up.”

“She’s probably mad about you,” I said.

“I’m poison to her, that’s what.”

“Have you found out what she does for a living?”

“Yes. She’s a school teacher.”

“A school teacher? That beats everything. YOM running after a school 
teacher! Now I see her better—kind of big, awkward creature, very plain but
not homely, hardly ever smiles, wears her hair… “

“You’re close, Hen, but you’re off too. Yes, she is sort of big and 
large, but in a good way. About her looks I can’t say. I only see her 
eyes—they’re china blue and they twinkle… “

“Like stars.”

“Violets,” he said. “Just like violets. The rest of the face doesn’t 
count. To be honest with you, I think she has a receding chin.”

“How about the legs?”

“Not too good. A bit on the plump side. But they’re not piano legs!”

“And her ass, does it wobble, when she walks?” .He jumped to his feet. 
“Hen,” he said, putting an arm around me, “it’s her ass that gets me. If I 
could just rub my hand over it—once—I’d be happy.”

“She’s prudish, in other words.”

“Untouchable.”

“Have you kissed her yet?”

“Are you crazy? Kiss her? She’d die first.”

“Listen,” I said, “don’t you think that perhaps the reason you’re so 
crazy about her is simply because she won’t have anything to do with you? 
You’ve had better girls than her, from what I gather about her looks. 
Forget her, that’s the best thing. It won’t break your heart. You haven’t 
got a heart. You’re a born Don Juan.”

“Not any more, Hen. I can’t look at another girl. I’m hooked.”

“How did you think I could help you then?”

“I don’t know. I was wondering if… if maybe you would try to see her for 
me, talk to her, tell her how serious I am… Something like that.”

“But how would I ever get to her—as an emissary of yours? She’d throw me 
out quick as look at me, wouldn’t she?”

“That’s true. But maybe we could find a way to have you meet without her 
knowing that you’re my friend. Work your way into her good graces and then…
“

“Then spring it on her, eh?”

“What’s wrong with that? It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Everything’s possible. Only… “

“Only what?”

“Well, did you ever think that maybe I’d fall for her myself?” (I had no 
such fear of course, I merely wanted his reaction.) It made him chuckle, 
this absurd notion. “She’s not your type, Hen, don’t worry. You’re looking 
for the exotic. She’s Scotch-Irish, I told you. You haven’t a thing in 
common. But you can talk, damn it! When you want to, that is. You could 
have made a good lawyer, I’ve told you that before. Try to picture yourself
pleading a cause… my cause. You could come down from your pedestal and do a
little thing like that for an old friend, couldn’t you?”

“It might take a little money,” I said.

“Money? For what?”

“Spending money. Flowers, taxis, theater, cabarets… “

“Come off it!” he said. “Flowers, maybe. But don’t think of it in terms 
of a long-winded campaign. Just get acquainted and start talking. I don’t 
have to tell you how to go about it. Melt her, that’s the thing. Weep, if 
you have to. Christ, if I could only get into her home, see her alone, I’d 
prostrate myself at her feet, lick her toes, let her step on me. I’m 
serious, Hen. I wouldn’t have looked you up if I wasn’t desperate.”

“All right,” I said, “I’ll think it over. Give me a little time.”

“You’re not putting me off? You promise?”

“I promise nothing,” I said. “It needs thinking about. I’ll do my best, 
that’s all I can say.”

“Shake on it!” he said, and put out his hand.

“You don’t know how good it makes me feel to hear you say that, Hen. I 
had thought of asking George, but you know George. He’d treat it as a joke.
It’s anything but a joke, you know that, don’t you? Hell, I remember when 
you were talking of blowing your brains out—over your what’s-her-name… “

“Mona,” I said.

“Yeah, Mona. You just had to have her, didn’t you? You’re happy now, I 
hope. Hen, I don’t even ask that—to be happy with her. All I want is to 
look at her, idolize her, worship her. Sounds juvenile, doesn’t it? But I 
mean it. I’m licked. If I don’t get her I’ll go nuts.”

I poured him another drink.

“I used to laugh at you, remember? Always falling in love. Remember how 
that widow of yours hated me? She had good reason to. By the way, what ever
became of her?”

I shook my head.

“You were nuts about her, weren’t you? Now that I look back on it, she 
wasn’t such a bad sort. A little too old, maybe, a little sad looking, but 
attractive. Didn’t she have a son about your age?”

“Yes,” I said. “He died a few years ago.”

“You never thought you’d get out of that entanglement, did you? Seems 
like a thousand years ago… And what about Una? Guess you never did get over
that, eh?”

“Guess not,” I said.

“You know what, Hen? You’re lucky. God comes to your rescue every time. 
Look, I’m not going to keep you from your work any longer. I’ll give you a 
ring in a few days and see what’s cooking. Don’t let me down, that’s all I 
beg of you.”

He picked up his hat and walked to the door. “By the way,” he said, 
grinning, and nodding toward the machine—“What’s the title of the novel 
going to be?”

“The Iron Horses of Vladivostok,” I replied.

“No kidding.”

“Or maybe—This Gentile World.”

“That’s sure to make it a best seller,” he said. “Give my best to Guelda,
when you phone her again!”

“Think up something good now, you bastard! And give my love to… “

“Mona!”

“Yeah, Mona. Ta ta!”

*

Later that day there came another knock at the door. This time it was Sid
Essen. He seemed excited and disturbed. Apologized profusely for intruding.

“I just had to see you,” he began. “I do hope you’ll forgive me. Chase me
away, if you’re in the midst of something… “

“Sit down, sit down,” I said. “I’m never too busy to see you. Are you in 
trouble?”

“No, no trouble. Lonely, maybe… and disgusted with myself. Sitting there 
in the dark I was getting glummer and glummer. Almost suicidal. Suddenly I 
thought of you. I said ‘Why not see Miller? He’ll cheer you up.’ And like 
that I up and left. The boy is taking care of the shop… Really, I’m ashamed
of myself, but I couldn’t stand another minute.”

He rose from the divan and walked over to a print hanging on the wall 
beside my table. It was one of Hiroshige’s, from: “The Fifty-three Stages 
of the Tokaido.” He looked at it intently, then turned to gaze at the 
others. Meanwhile his expression had changed from one of anxiety and gloom 
to sheer joy. When he finally turned his face to me he had tears in his 
eyes.

“Miller, Miller, what a place you have! What an atmosphere! Just to stand
here in your presence, surrounded by all this beauty, makes me feel like a 
new man. How I wish I could change places with you! I’m a roughneck, as you
know, but I do love art, every form of art. And I’m particularly fond of 
Oriental art. I think the Japanese are a wonderful people. Everything they 
do is artistic… Yes, yes, it’s good to work in a room like this. You sit 
there with your thoughts, and you’re king of the world. Such a pure life! 
You know, Miller, sometimes you remind me of a Hebrew scholar. There’s 
something of the saint in you, too. That’s why I came to see you. You give 
me hope and courage. Even when you don’t say anything. You don’t mind my 
running on like this? I have got to get it off my chest.” He paused, as if 
to summon courage. “I’m a failure, there’s no getting round that. I know it
and I’m reconciled to it. But what hurts is to think that my boy may think 
so too. I don’t want him to pity me. Despise me, yes. But not pity me.”

“Reb,” I said, “I’ve never looked upon you as a failure. You’re almost 
like an older brother. What’s more, you’re kind and tender, and generous to
a fault.”

“I wish my wife could hear you say that.”

“Never mind what she thinks. Wives are always hard on those they love.”

“Love. There hasn’t been any love, not for years. She has her own world; 
I have mine.”

There was an awkward pause.

“Do you think it would do any good if I dropped out of sight?”

“I doubt it, Reb. What would you do? Where would you go?”

“Anywhere. As for making a living, to tell the truth I’d be happy shining
shoes. Money means nothing to me. I like people; I like to do things for 
them.”

He looked up at the wall again. He pointed to a drawing of Hokusai’s—from
“Life in the Eastern Capital.”

“You see all those figures,” he said. “Ordinary people doing ordinary 
everyday things. That’s what I’d like—to be one of them, to be doing 
something ordinary. A barrel-maker or a tinsmith—what difference? To be 
part of the procession, that’s the thing. Not sit in an empty store all day
killing time. Damn it, I’m still good for something. What would you do in 
my place?”

“Reb,” I said, “I was in exactly your position once upon a time. Yes, I 
used to sit all day in my father’s shop, doing nothing. I thought I’d go 
crazy. I loathed the place. But I didn’t know how to break loose.”

“How did you, then?”

“Fate pushed me out, I guess. But I must tell you this… while I was 
eating my heart out I was praying, too. Every day I prayed that some 
one—God perhaps—would show me the way. I was also thinking of writing, even
that far back. But it was more a dream than a possibility. It took me 
years, even after I had left the tailor shop, to write a line. One should 
never despair… “

“But you were only a kid then. I’m getting to be an old man.”

“Even so. The years that are left you are yours. If there’s something you
really want to do, there’s still time.”

“Miller,” he said, almost woefully, “there’s no creative urge in me. All 
I ask is to get out of the trap. I want to live again. I want to get back 
into the current. That’s all.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“Don’t say that! Please don’t say that! What’s stopping met Everything. 
My wife, my kids, my obligations. Myself, most of all. I’ve got too poor an
opinion of myself.”

I couldn’t help smiling. Then, as if to myself, I replied: “Only we 
humans seem to have a low opinion of ourselves. Take a worm for example—do 
you suppose a worm looks down on itself?”

“It’s terrible to feel guilty,” he said. “And for what? What have I 
done?”

“It’s what you haven’t done, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“Do you know what’s more important than doing something?”

“No,” said Reb.

“Being yourself.”

“But if you’re nothing?”

“Then be nothing. But be it absolutely.”

“That sounds crazy.”

“It is. That’s why it’s so sound.”

“Go on,” he said, “you make me feel good.”

“In wisdom is death, you’ve heard that, haven’t you? Isn’t it better to 
be a little meshuggaht Who worries about you? Only you. When you can’t sit 
in the store any more, why don’t you get up and take a walk? Or go to the 
movies? Close the shop, lock the door. A customer more or less won’t make 
any difference in your life, will it? Enjoy yourself! Go fishing once in a 
while, even if you don’t know how to fish. Or take your car and drive out 
into the country. Anywhere. Listen to the birds, bring home some flowers, 
or some fresh oysters.”

He was leaning forward, all ears, a broad smile stretched across his 
face.

“Tell me more,” he said. “It sounds wonderful.”

“Well, remember this… the store won’t run away from you. Business won’t 
get any better. Nobody asks you to lock yourself in all day. You’re a free 
man. If by becoming more careless and negligent you grow happier, who will 
blame you? I’ll make a further suggestion. Instead of going off by 
yourself, take one of your Negro tenants with you. Show him a good time. 
Give him some clothing from your store. Ask him if you cam lend him some 
money. Buy his wife a little gift for him to take home. See what I mean?”

He began to laugh. “Do I see? It sounds great. That’s just what I’m going
to do.”

“Don’t make too big a splurge all at once,” I cautioned. “Take it slow 
and easy. Follow your instincts. For instance, maybe one day you’ll feel 
like getting yourself a piece of tail. Don’t have a bad conscience about 
it. Try a piece of dark meat now and then. It’s tastier, and it costs less.
Anything to make you relax, remember that. Always treat yourself well. If 
you feel like a worm, grovel; if you feel like a bird, fly. Don’t worry 
about what the neighbors may think. Don’t worry about your kids, they’ll 
take care of themselves. As for your wife, maybe when she sees you happy 
she’ll change her tune. She’s a good woman, your wife. Too conscientious, 
that’s all. Needs to laugh once in a while. Did you ever try a limerick on 
her? Here’s one for you…

There was a young girl from Peru,

Who dreamt she was raped by a Jew.

She awoke in the night,

With a scream of delight,

To find it axis perfectly true!

“Good, good!” he exclaimed. “Do you know any more?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I’ve got to get back to work now. Feel better now, 
don’t you? Tomorrow we visit the darkies, eh? Maybe some day next week I’ll
ride out to Bluepoint with you. How’s that?”

“Would you? Oh, that would be dandy, just dandy. By the way, how is the 
book coming along? Are you nearly finished with it? I’m dying to read it, 
you know. So is Mrs. Essen.”

“Reb, you won’t like the book at all. I must tell you that straight off.”

“How can you say that?” He was fairly shouting.

“Because it’s no good.”

He looked at me as if I were out of my mind. For a moment he didn’t know 
what to say. Then he blurted out—“Miller, you’re crazy! You couldn’t write 
a bad book. It’s impossible. I know you too well.”

“You only know a part of me,” I said. “You’ve never seen the other side 
of the moon, have you? That’s me. Terra incognita. Take it from me, I’m 
just a novice. Maybe ten years from now I’ll have something to show you.”

“But you’ve been writing for years.”

“Practicing, you mean. Practicing the scales.”

“You’re joking,” he said. “You’re over-modest.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken,” I said. “I’m anything but modest. I’m a 
rank egotist, that’s what I am. But I’m also a realist, at least with 
myself.”

“You underrate yourself,” said Reb. “I’m going to hand you back your own 
words—don’t look down on yourself!”

“O.K. You win.”

He was heading for the door. Suddenly I had an impulse to unburden 
myself.

“Wait a moment,” I said. “There’s something I want to tell you.

He trotted back to the table and stood there, like a messenger boy. All 
attention. Respectful attention. I wondered what he thought I was about to 
tell him.

“When you came in a few minutes ago,” I began, “I was in the middle of a 
sentence in the middle of a long paragraph. Would you like to hear it?” I 
leaned over the machine and reeled it off for him. It was one of those 
crazy passages which I myself couldn’t make head or tail of. I wanted a 
reaction, and not from Pop or Mona.

I got it, too, immediately.

“Miller!” he shouted. “Miller, that’s just marvelous! You sound like a 
Russian. I don’t know what it means, but it makes music.”

“You think so? Honestly?”

“Of course I do. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“That’s fine. Then I’ll go ahead. I’ll finish the paragraph.”

“Is the whole book like that?”

“No, damn it! That’s the trouble. The parts I like, nobody else will 
like. At least, not the publishers.”

“To hell with them!” said Reb. “If they won’t take it, I’ll publish it 
for you, with my own money.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” I replied. “Remember, you’re not to throw 
your money away all at once.”

“Miller, if it took my last cent, I’d do it. I’d do it because I believe 
in you.”

“Don’t give it another thought,” I said. “I can think of better ways to 
spend your money.”

“Not me! I’d feel proud and happy to launch you. So would my wife and 
children. They think very highly of you. You’re like one of the family to 
them.”

“That’s good to hear, Reb. I hope I merit such confidence. Tomorrow, 
then, eh? Let’s bring something good for the darkies, what?”

*

When he had gone I began pacing up and down, quietly, containedly, 
pausing now and then to gaze at a wood-block, or a colored reproduction 
(Giotto, della Francesca, Uccello, Bosch, Breughel, Carpaccio), then pacing
again, becoming more and more pregnant, standing still, staring into space,
letting my mind go, letting it rest where it willed, becoming more and more
serene, more and more charged with the gravid beauty of the past, pleased 
with myself to be part of this past (and of the future too), felicitating 
myself on living this womb or tomb sort of existence… Yes, it was indeed a 
lovely room, a lovely place, and everything in it, everything we had 
contributed to make it habitable, reflected the inner loveliness of life, 
the life of the soul.

“You sit there with your thoughts and you’re king of the world.” This 
innocent remark of Reb’s had lodged in my brain, given me such equanimity 
that for a spell I felt I actually knew what it meant—to be king of the 
world. King! That is, one capable of rendering homage to high and low; one 
so sentient, so perceptive, so illumined with love that nothing escaped his
attention nor his understanding. The poetic intercessor, in short. Not 
ruling the world but worshiping it with every breath.

Standing again before the everyday world of Hokusai… Why had this great 
master of the brush taken the pains to reproduce the all-too-common 
elements of his world? To reveal his skill? Nonsense. To express his love, 
to indicate that it extended far and wide, that it included the staves of a
barrel, a blade of grass, the rippling muscles of a wrestler, the slant of 
rain in a wind, the teeth of a wave, the backbone of a fish… In short, 
everything. An almost impossible task, were it not for the joy involved.

Fond of Oriental art, he had said. As I repeated Reb’s words to myself, 
suddenly the whole continent of India rose up before me. There, amidst that
swarming beehive of humanity, were the palpitating relics of a world which 
was, and will ever remain, truly stupefying. Reb had taken no notice, or 
had said nothing if he did, of the colored pages tom from art books which 
also adorned the walls: reproductions of temples and stupas from the 
Deccan, of sculptured caves and grottoes, of wall paintings and frescoes 
depicting the overwhelming myths and legends of a people drunk with form 
and movement, with passion and growth, with idea, with consciousness 
itself. A mere glance at a cluster of ancient temples rising from the heat 
and vegetation of the Indian soil always gave me the sensation of gazing at
thought itself, thought straggling to free itself, thought becoming 
plastic, concrete, more suggestive and evocative, more awe-inspiring, thus 
deployed in brick or stone, than ever words could be.

As often as I had read his words, I was never able to commit them to 
memory. I was hungry now for that flood of torrential images, those great, 
swollen phrases, sentences, paragraphs—the words of the man who had opened 
my eyes to this stupefying creation of India: Elie Faure. I reached for the
volume I had thumbed through so often—Vol. II of the History of Art—and I 
turned to the passage beginning—“For the Indians, all nature is divine… 
What does not die, in India, is faith… ” Then followed the lines which, 
when I first encountered them, made my brain reel.

“In India there came to pass this thing: that, driven forth by an 
invasion, a famine, or a migration of wild beasts, thousands of human 
beings moved to the north or to the south. There at the shore of the sea, 
at the base of a mountain, they encountered a great wall of granite. Then 
they all entered the granite; in its shadows they lived, loved, worked, 
died, were born, and, three or four centuries afterward, they came out 
again, leagues away, having traversed the mountain. Behind them they left 
the emptied rock, its galleries hollowed out in every direction, its 
sculptured, chiseled walls, its natural or artificial pillars turned into a
deep lacework with ten thousand horrible or charming figures, gods without 
number and without name, men, women, beasts—a tide of animal life moving in
the gloom. Sometimes when they found no clearing in their path, they 
hollowed out an abyss in the center of the mass of rock to shelter a little
black stone.

“It is in these monolithic temples, on their dark walls, or on their 
sunburnt facades, that the true genius of India expends all its terrific 
force. Here the confused speech of confused multitudes makes itself heard. 
Here man confesses unresistingly his strength and his nothingness… ” I read
on, intoxicated as always. The words were no longer words but living 
images, images fresh from the mold, shimmering, palpitating, undulating, 
choking me by their very excrescence.

“… the elements themselves will not mingle all these lives with the 
confusion of the earth more successfully than the sculptor has done. 
Sometimes, in India, one finds mushrooms of stone in the depths of the 
forests, shining in the green shadow like poisonous plants. Sometimes one 
finds heavy elephants, quite alone, as mossy and as rough-skinned as if 
alive; they mingle with the tangled vines, the grasses reach their bellies,
flowers and leaves cover them, and even when their debris shall have 
returned to the earth they will be no more completely absorbed by the 
intoxication of the forest.”

What a thought, this last! Even when they have returned to the earth…

Ah, now the passage…

“… Man is no longer at the center of life. He is no longer that flower of
the whole world, which has slowly set itself to form and mature him. He is 
mingled with all things, he is on the same plane with all things, he is a 
particle of the infinite, neither more nor less important than the other 
particles of the infinite. The earth passes into the trees, the trees into 
the fruits, the fruits into man or the animal, man and the animal into the 
earth; the circulation of life sweeps along and propagates a confused 
universe wherein forms arise for a second, only to be engulfed and then to 
reappear, overlapping one another, palpitating, penetrating one another as 
they surge like the waves. Man does not know whether yesterday he was not 
the very tool with which he himself will force matter to release the form 
that he may have tomorrow. Everything is merely an appearance, and under 
the diversity of appearances, Brahma, the spirit of the world, is a unity… 
Lost as he is in the ocean of mingled forms and energies, does he know 
whether he is still a form or a spirit? Is that thing before us a thinking 
being, a living being even, a planet, or a being cut in stone? Germination 
and putrefaction are engendered unceasingly. Everything has its heavy 
movement, expanded matter beats like a heart. Does not wisdom consist in 
submerging oneself in it, in order to taste the intoxication of the 
unconscious as one gains possession of the force that stirs in matter?”

To love Oriental art. Who does not? But which Orient, the near or the 
far? I loved them all. Maybe I loved this art so very different from our 
own because, in the words of Elie Faure, “man is no longer at the center of
life.” Perhaps it was this leveling (and raising of man, this promiscuity 
with all life, this infinitely small and infinitely great at one and the 
same time, which produced such exaltation when confronted with their work. 
Or, to put it another way, because Nature was (with them) something other, 
something more, than a mere backdrop. Because man, though divine, was no 
more divine than that from which he sprang. Also, perhaps, because they did
not confound the welter and tumult of life with the welter and tumult of 
the intellect. Because mind—or spirit or soul—shone through everything, 
creating a divine irradiation. Thus, though humbled and chastened, man was 
never flattened, nullified, obliterated or degraded. Never made to’ cringe 
before the sublime, but incorporated in it. If there was a key to the 
mysteries which enveloped him, pervaded him, and sustained him, it was a 
simple key, available to all. There was nothing arcane about it.

Yes, I loved this immense, staggering world of the Indian which, who 
knows, I might one day see with my own eyes. I loved it not because it was 
alien and remote, for it was really closer to me than the art of the West; 
I loved the love from which it was born, a love which was shared by the 
multitude, a love which could never have come to expression had it not been
of, by and for the multitude. I loved the anonymous aspect of their 
staggering creations. How comforting and sustaining to be a humble, unknown
worker—an artisan and not a genius!—one among thousands, sharing in the 
creation of that which belonged to all. To have been nothing more than a 
water carrier—that had more meaning for me than to become a Picasso, a 
Rodin, a Michelangelo or a da Vinci. Surveying the panorama of European 
art, it is the name of the artist which always sticks out like a sore 
thumb. And usually, associated with the great names, goes a story of woe, 
of affliction, of cruel misunderstanding. With us of the West, the word 
genius has something of the monstrous about it. Genius, or the one who does
not adapt; genius, he who gets slapped; genius, he who is persecuted and 
tormented; genius, he who dies in the gutter, or in exile, or at the stake.

It is true, I had a way of infuriating my bosom friends when extolling 
the virtues of other peoples. They asserted that I did it for effect, that 
I only pretended to appreciate and esteem the works of alien artists, that 
it was my way of castigating our own people, our own creators. They were 
never convinced that I could take to the alien, the exotic, or the 
outlandish in art immediately, that it demanded no preparation, no 
initiation, no knowledge of their history or their evolution. “What does it
mean? What are they trying to say?” Thus they jeered and mocked. As if 
explanations meant anything. As if I cared what “they” meant.

Above all, it was the loneliness and the futility of being an artist 
which most disturbed me. Thus far in my life I had met only two writers 
whom I could call artists: John Cowper Powys and Frank Harris. The former I
knew through attending his lectures; the latter I knew in my role of 
merchant tailor, the lad, in other words, who delivered his clothes, who 
helped him on with his trousers. Was it my fault, perhaps, that I had 
remained outside the circle? How was I to meet another writer, or painter 
or sculptor? Push my way into his studio, tell him that I too yearned to 
write, paint, sculpt, dance… or what? Where did artists congregate in our 
vast metropolis? In Greenwich Village, they said. I had lived in the 
Village, walked its streets at all hours, visited its coffee shops and tea 
rooms, its galleries and studios, its bookstores, its bars, its dives and 
speakeasies. Yes, I had rubbed elbows, in some dingy bar, with figures like
Maxwell Bodenheim, Sadakichi Hartman, Guido Bruno, but I had never run into
a Dos Passos, a Sherwood Anderson, a Waldo Franck, an E. E. Cummings, a 
Theodore Dreiser or a Ben Hecht. Nor even the ghost of an O’Henry. Where 
did they keep themselves? Some were already abroad, leading the happy life 
of the exile or the renegade. They were not in search of other artists, 
certainly not raw novices like myself. How wonderful it would have been if,
in those days when it meant so much to me, I could have met and talked with
Theodore Dreiser, or Sherwood Anderson, whom I adored! Perhaps we would 
have had something to say to one another, raw as I then was. Perhaps I 
would have derived the courage to start sooner—or to run away, seek 
adventure in foreign lands.

Was it shyness, timidity, lack of self-esteem which kept me apart and 
alone throughout these barren years? A rather ludicrous incident leaps to 
mind. Of a time when, cruising about with O’Mara, searching desperately for
novelty and excitement, anything for a lark, we went one night to a lecture
at the Rand School. It was one of those literary nights when members of the
audience are asked to voice their opinions about this author and that. 
Perhaps, that evening, we had listened to a lecture on some contemporary 
and supposedly “revolutionary” writer. It seems to me that we had, for 
suddenly, when I found myself on my feet and talking, I realized that what 
I was saying had nothing to do with what had gone before. Though I was 
dazed—it was the first time I had ever risen to speak in public, even in an
informal atmosphere such as this—I was conscious, or half-conscious, that 
my audience was hypnotized. I could feel, rather than see, their upturned 
faces strained to catch my words. My eyes were focused straight ahead, at 
the figure behind the lectern who was slumped in his seat, gazing at the 
floor. As I say, I was utterly dazed; I knew not what I was saying nor 
where it was leading me. I spouted, as one does in a trance. And what was I
talking about? About a scene from one of Hamsun’s novels, something 
concerning a peeping Tom. I remember this because at the mention of the 
subject, and I probably went into the scene in detail, there was a slight 
titter in the audience, followed immediately by a hush which signified rapt
attention. When I had finished there was a burst of applause and then the 
master of ceremonies made a flattering speech about the good fortune they 
had had in hearing this uninvited guest, a writer no doubt, though he was 
regretfully ignorant of my name, and so on. As the group dispersed he 
jumped down from the platform and rushed up to me to congratulate me anew, 
to ask who I was, what I had written, where did I live, and so forth and so
on. My reply, of course, was vague and non-committal. I was in a panic by 
this time and my one thought was to escape. But he clutched me by the 
sleeve, as I turned to go, and in utter seriousness said—and what a shock 
it was!—“Why don’t you take over these meetings? You’re much better 
equipped for it than I am. We need some one like you, some one who can 
create fire and enthusiasm.”

I stammered something in reply, perhaps a lame promise, and edged my way 
to the exit. Outside I turned to O’Mara and asked—“What did I say, do you 
remember?”

He looked at me strangely, wondering no doubt if I were fishing for a 
compliment.

“I don’t remember a thing,” said I. “From the moment I rose to my feet I 
was out. I only vaguely know that I was talking about Hamsun.”

“Christ!” he said. “What a pity! You were marvelous; you never hesitated 
a moment; the words just rolled out of your mouth.”

“Did it make sense, that’s what I’d like to know.”

“Make sense? Man, you were almost as good as Powys.”

“Come, come, don’t give me that!”

“I mean it, Henry,” he said, and there were tears in his eyes as he 
spoke. “You could be a great lecturer. You had them spellbound. They were 
shocked, too. Didn’t know what to make of you, I guess.”

“It was really that good, eh?” I was only slowly realizing what had 
happened.

“You said a lot before you launched into that Hamsun business.”

“I did? Like what, for instance?”

“Jesus, don’t ask me to repeat it. I couldn’t. You touched on everything,
it seemed. You even talked about God for a few minutes.”

“No! That’s all a blank to me. A complete blank.”

“What’s the difference?” he said. “I wish I could go blank and talk that 
way.”

*

There it was. A terrifying incident, yet revelatory. Nothing ever came of
it Never again did I attempt, or even dream, of opening my mouth in public.
If I attended a lecture, and I attended many in this period, I sat with 
eyes, mouth and ears open, entranced, subjugated, as impressionable and 
waxen a figure as all the others about me. It would never occur to me to 
stand up and ask a question, much less offer a criticism. I came to be 
instructed, to be opened up. I never said to myself—“You too could stand up
and deliver a speech. You too could sway the audience with your powers of 
eloquence. You too could choose an author and expound his merits in 
dazzling fashion.” No, never any such thoughts. Reading a book, yes, I 
might lift my eyes from the page upon the conclusion of a brilliant 
passage, and say to myself: “You could do that too. You have done it, as a 
matter of fact. Only you don’t do it often enough.” And I would read on, 
the submissive victim, the all-too-willing disciple. Such a good disciple 
that, when the occasion presented itself, when the mood was on me, I could 
explain, analyze and criticize the book I had just read almost as if I had 
been the author of it, employing not his own words but a simulacrum which 
carried weight and inspired respect. And of course always, on these 
occasions, the question would be hurled at me—“Why don’t you write a book 
yourself?” Whereupon I would close up like a clam, or become a 
clown—anything to throw dust in their eyes. It was always a writer-to-be 
that I cultivated in the presence of friends and admirers, or even 
believers, for it was always easy for me to create these “believers”.

But alone, reviewing my words or deeds soberly, the sense of being cut 
off always took possession of me. “They don’t know me,” I would say to 
myself. And by this I meant that they knew me neither for myself nor for 
what I might become. They were impressed by the mask. I didn’t call it 
that, but that is how I thought of my ability to impress others. It was not
me doing it, but a persona which I knew how to put on. It was something, 
indeed, which any one with a little intelligence and a flair for acting 
could learn to do. Monkey tricks, in other words. Yet, though I regarded 
these performances in this light, I myself at times would wonder if perhaps
it was not me, after all, who was behind these antics.

Such was the penalty of living alone, working alone, never meeting a 
kindred spirit, never touching the fringe of that secret inner circle 
wherein all those doubts and conflicts which ravaged me could be brought 
out into the open, shared, discussed, analyzed and, if not resolved, at 
least aired.

Those strange figures out of the world of art—painters, sculptors, 
particularly painters—was it not natural that I should feel at home with 
them? Their work spoke to me in mysterious fashion. Had they used words, I 
might have been baffled. However remote their world from ours, the 
ingredients were the same: rocks, trees, mountains, water, theater, work, 
play, costumes, worship, youth and old age, harlotry, coquetry, mimicry, 
war, famine, torture, intrigue, vice, lust, joy, sorrow. A Tibetan scroll, 
with its mandalas, its gods and devils, its strange symbols, its prescribed
colors, was as familiar to me, some part of me, as the nymphs and sprites, 
the streams and forests, of a European painter.

But what was closer to me than anything in Chinese, Japanese or Tibetan 
art was this art of India, born of the mountain itself. (As if the 
mountains became pregnant with dreams and gave birth to their dreams, using
the poor human mortals who hollowed them out as tools.) It was the 
monstrous nature, if we may speak of the grandiose as such, yes, the 
monstrous nature of these creations which so appealed to me, which answered
to some unspoken hunger in my own being. Moving amidst my own people, I was
never impressed by any of their accomplishments; I never felt the presence 
of any deep religious urge, nor any great aesthetic impulse: there was no 
sublime architecture, no sacred dances, no ritual of any kind. We moved in 
a swarm, intent on accomplishing one thing—to make life easy. The great 
bridges, the great dams, the great skyscrapers left me cold. Only Nature 
could instill a sense of awe. And we were defacing Nature at every turn. As
many times as I struck out to scour the land, I always came back 
empty-handed. Nothing new, nothing bizarre, nothing exotic. Worse, nothing 
to bow down before, nothing to reverence. Alone in a land where every one 
was hopping about like mad, what I craved was to worship and adore. What I 
needed were companions who felt the same way. But there was nothing to 
worship or adore, there were no companions of like spirit. There was only a
wilderness of steel and iron, of stocks and bonds, of crops and produce, of
factories, mills and lumber yards, a wilderness of boredom, of useless 
utilities, of loveless love…

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A few days later. A telephone call from MacGregor.

“You know what, Hen?”

“No, what?”

“She’s coming round. All on her own, too. Don’t know what’s come over 
her. You didn’t go to see her, did you?”

“No. In fact I’ve hardly had a chance to think about her.”

“You bastard! But you brought me luck, just the same. Or rather your 
pictures did. Yeah, those Japanese prints you had on your wall. I went and 
bought a couple, beautifully framed, and sent them to her. Next day I got a
telephone call. She was all excited. Said they were just what she always 
longed for. I told her that it was from you I got the inspiration. She 
pricked up her ears. Surprised, I guess, that I had a friend who cared 
anything about art. Now she wants to meet you. I said you were a busy man, 
but I’d call you and see if we could come to your place some evening. A 
queer girl, what? Anyway, this is your chance to fix things for me. Throw a
lot of books around, will you? You know, the kind I never read. She’s a 
school teacher, remember. Books mean something to her… Well, what do you 
say? Aren’t you happy? Say something!”

“I think it’s marvelous. Watch out, or you’ll be marrying again.”

“Nothing would make me happier. But I have to go easy. You can’t rush 
her. Not her! It’s like moving a stone wall.” Silence for a moment. 
Then—“Are you there, Hen?”

“Sure, I’m listening.”

“I’d like to get a little dope from you before I see you… before I bring 
Guelda, I mean. Just a few facts about painters and paintings. You know me,
I never bothered to brush up on that stuff. For instance, Hen, what about 
Breughel—was he one of the very great? Seems to me I’ve seen his stuff 
before—in frame stores and book shops. That one you have, with the peasant 
ploughing the field… he’s up on a cliff, I seem to remember, and there’s 
something falling from the sky… a man maybe… heading straight for the 
ocean. You know the one. What’s it called?”

“The Flight of Icarus, I think.”

“Of whom?”

“Icarus. The guy who tried to fly to the sun but his wings melted, 
remember?”

“Sure, sure. So that’s it? I think I’d better drop around some day and 
have another look at those pictures. You can wise me up. I don’t want to 
look like a jackass when she starts talking art.”

“O.K.,” I said. “Any time. But remember, don’t keep me long.”

“Before you hang up, Hen, give me the name of a book I could make her a 
present of. Something clean—and poetic. Can you think of one quick?”

“Yes, just the thing for her: Green Mansions. By W. H. Hudson. She’ll 
love it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. Read it yourself first.”

“I’d like to, Hen, but I haven’t the time. By the way, remember that book
list you gave me… about seven years ago? Well, I’ve read three so far. You 
see what I mean.”

“You’re hopeless,” I replied.

“One more thing, Hen. You know, vacation time is coming soon. I’ve got a 
notion to take her to Europe with me. That is, if I don’t cross her up in 
the meantime. What do you think?”

“A wonderful idea. Make it a honeymoon trip.”

*

“That was MacGregor, I’ll bet,” said Mona. “Right. Now he’s threatening 
to bring his Guelda some evening.”

“What a pest! Why don’t you tell the landlady to say you’re out next time
there’s a call?”

“Wouldn’t do much good. He’d come around to find out if she were lying. 
He knows me. No, we’re trapped.” She was getting ready to leave—an 
appointment with Pop. The novel was almost completed now. Pop still thought
highly of it.

“Pop’s going to Miami soon for a brief vacation.”

“That’s good.”

“I’ve been thinking, Val… I’ve been thinking that maybe we could take a 
vacation too, while he’s away.”

“Like where?” I said.

“Oh, anywhere. Maybe to Montreal or Quebec.”

“It’ll be freezing Up there, won’t it?”

“I don’t know. Since we’re going to France, I thought you might like a 
taste of French life. Spring is almost here, it can’t be so very cold 
there.”

We said nothing more about the trip for a day or two. Meanwhile Mona had 
been investigating. She had all the dope on Quebec, which she thought I’d 
like better than Montreal. More French, she said. The small hotels weren’t 
too expensive.

A few days later it was decided. She would take the train to Montreal and
I would hitch-hike. I would meet her at the railway station in Montreal.

It was strange to be on the road again. Spring had come but it was still 
cold. With money in my pocket I didn’t worry about lifts. If it was no go I
could always hop a bus or a train. So I stood there, on the highway outside
Paterson, N.J., determined to take the first car heading north, no matter 
if it went straight or zigzag.

It took almost an hour before I got the first lift. This advanced me 
about twenty miles. The next car advanced me fifty miles. The countryside 
looked cold and bleak. I was getting nothing but short hauls. However, I 
had oodles of time. Now and then I walked a stretch, to limber up. I had no
luggage to speak of—toothbrush, razor, change of linen. The cold, crisp air
was invigorating. It felt good to walk and let the cars pass by.

I soon got tired of walking. There was nothing to see but farms. Burial 
grounds, they looked like. I got to thinking of MacGregor and his Guelda. 
The name suited her, I thought. I wondered if he’d ever break her down. 
What a cheerless conquest!

A car pulled up and I hopped in, without questioning the destination. The
guy was a nut, a religious nut. Never stopped talking. Finally I asked 
where he was heading. “For the White Mountains,” he replied. He had a cabin
in the mountains. He was the local preacher.

“Is there a hotel anywhere near you?” I asked.

No, they had no hotels, nor inns, nor nothing. But he would be happy to 
put me up. He had a wife and four children. All God-loving, he assured me.

I thanked him. But I hadn’t the least intention of spending the night 
with him and his family. The first town we’d come to I’d hop out. I 
couldn’t see myself on my knees praying with this fool.

“Mister,” he said, after an awkward silence, “I don’t think you’re much 
of a God-fearing man, are you? What is your religion?”

“Ain’t got any,” I replied.

“I thought so. You’re not a drinking man, are you?”

“Summat,” I replied. “Beer, wine, brandy… “

“God has compassion on the sinner, friend. No one escapes His eye.” He 
went off into a long spiel about the right path, the wages of sin, the 
glory of the righteous, and so on. He was pleased to have found a sinner 
like myself; it gave him something to work on.

“Mister,” I said, after one of his harangues, “you’re wasting your time. 
“I’m an incurable sinner, an absolute derelict.” This provided him with 
more food.

“No one is beneath God’s grace,” he said. I kept mum and listened. 
Suddenly it began to snow. The whole countryside was blotted out. Now I’m 
at his mercy, I thought.

“Is it far to the next town?” I asked.

“A few more miles,” he said.

“Good,” I said. “I’ve got to take a leak bad.”

“You can do it here, friend. I’ll wait.”

“I’ve got to do the other thing, too,” I said.

With this he stepped on the gas. “We’ll be there in a few minutes now, 
mister. God will take care of everything.”

“Even my bowels?”

“Even your bowels,” he replied gravely. “God overlooks nothing.”

“Suppose your gas gave out. Could God make the car go just the same?”

“Friend, God could make a car go without gas—nothing is impossible for 
Him—but that isn’t God’s way. God never violates Nature’s laws; He works 
with them and through them. But, this is what God would do, if we ran out 
of gas and it was important for me to move on: He would find a way to get 
me where I wanted to go. He might help you to get there, too. But being 
blind to His goodness and mercy, you would never suspect that God had aided
you.” He paused to let this sink in, then continued. “Once I was caught 
like you, in the middle of nowhere, and I had to do a poop quick. I went 
behind a clump of bushes and emptied my bowels. Then, just as I was 
hitching up my pants, I spied a ten dollar bill lying on the ground right 
in front of me. God put that money there for me, no one else. That was His 
way of directing me to it, by making me go poop. I didn’t know why he had 
shown me this favor, but I got down on my knees and thanked Him. When I got
home I found my wife in bed and two of the children with her. Fever. That 
money bought me medicine and other things that were sorely needed… Here’s 
your town, mister. Maybe God will have something to show you when you empty
your bowels and your bladder. I’ll wait for you at the corner there, after 
I do my shopping… ” I ran into the gas station, did a little pee, but no 
poop. There was no evidence of God’s presence in the lavatory. Just a sign 
reading: “Please help us keep this place clean.” I made a detour to avoid 
meeting my savior and headed for the nearest hotel. It was getting dark and
the cold was penetrating. Spring was far behind, here.

“Where am I?” I asked the clerk as I signed the register. “I mean, what 
town is this?”

“Pittsfield,” he said.

“Pittsfield what?”

“Pittsfield, Massachusetts,” he replied, surveying me coldly and with a 
tinge of contempt.

The next morning I was up bright and early. Good thing, too, because cars
were fewer and farther between, and no one seemed eager to take an extra 
passenger. By nine o’clock, what with the miles I had clicked off on my own
two feet, I was famished. Fortunately—perhaps God had put him in my 
path—the man next to me in the coffee shop was going almost to the Canadian
border. He said he would be happy to take me along. He was a professor of 
literature, I discovered after we had traveled a way together. A gentleman,
too. It was a pleasure to listen to him. He talked as if he had read about 
everything of value in the English language. He spoke at length of Blake, 
John Donne, Traherne, Laurence Sterne. He talked of Browning, too, and of 
Henry Adams. And of Milton’s Areopagitica. All caviar, in other words.

“I suppose you’ve written a number of books yourself,” I said.

“No, just two,” he said. (Textbooks, they were.) “I teach literature,” he
added, “I don’t make it.”

Near the border he deposited me at a gas station owned by a friend of 
his. He was branching off to some hamlet near by.

“My friend will see to it that you get a lift tomorrow morning. Get 
acquainted with him, he’s an interesting chap.”

We had arrived at this point just a half-hour before closing time. His 
friend was a poet, I soon found out. I had dinner with him at a friendly 
little inn and then he escorted me to a hostelry for the night.

At noon next day I was in Montreal. I had to wait a few hours for the 
train to pull in. It was bitter cold. Almost like Russia, I thought. And 
rather a gloomy looking city, all in all. I looked up a hotel, warmed 
myself in the lobby, then started back to the station.

“How do you like it?” said Mona, as we drove off in a cab.

“Not too much. It’s the cold; it goes right to the marrow.”

“Let’s go to Quebec tomorrow, then.”

We had dinner in an English restaurant. Frightful. The food was like 
mildewed cadavers slightly warmed.

“It’ll be better in Quebec,” said Mona. “We’ll stay in a French hotel.”

In Quebec the snow was piled high and frozen stiff. Walking the streets 
was like walking between icebergs. Everywhere we went we seemed to bump 
into flocks of nuns or priests. Lugubrious-looking creatures with ice in 
their veins. I didn’t think much of Quebec, either. We might as well have 
gone to the North Pole. What an atmosphere in which to relax!

However, the hotel was cozy and cheerful. And what meals! Was it like 
this in Paris? I asked. Meaning the food. Better than Paris, she said. 
Unless one ate in swell restaurants.

How well I remember that first meal. What delicious soup! What excellent 
veal! And the cheeses! But best of all were the wines.

I remember the waiter handing me the carte des vins, and how I scanned 
it, utterly bewildered by the choice presented. When it came time to order 
I was speechless. I looked up at him and I said: “Select one for us, won’t 
you? I know nothing about wine.”

He took the wine list and studied it, looking now at me, now at Mona, 
then back at the list. He seemed to be giving it his utmost attention and 
consideration. Like a man studying the racing chart.

“I think,” he said, “that what you should have is a Medoc. It’s a light, 
dry Bordeaux, which will delight your palate. If you like it, tomorrow we 
will try another vintage.” He whisked off, beaming like a cherub.

At lunch he suggested another wine—an Anjou. A heavenly wine, I thought. 
Followed next lunchtime by a Vouvray. For dinner, unless we had seafood, we
drank red wines—Pommard, Nuits Saint-Georges, Clos Vougeot, Macon, 
MoulinA-Vent, Fleurie, and so on. Now and then he slipped in a velvety, 
fruity Bordeaux, a chateau vintage. It was an education. (Mentally I was 
doling out a stupendous tip for him.) Sometimes he would take a sip 
himself, to make certain it was up to par. And with the wines, of course, 
he made the most wonderful suggestions as to what to eat. We tried 
everything. Everything was delicious.

After dinner we usually took a seat on the balcony (indoors) and, over an
exquisite liqueur or brandy, played chess. Sometimes the bellhop joined us,
and then we would sit back and listen to him tell about la doulce France. 
Now and then we hired a cab, horse-drawn, and drove around in the dark, 
smothered in furs and blankets. We even attended mass one night, to please 
the bellhop.

All in all, it was the laziest, peacefulest vacation I ever spent. I was 
surprised that Mona took it so well. “I’d go mad if I had to spend the rest
of my days here,” I said one day.

“This isn’t like France,” she replied. “Except for the cooking.”

“It isn’t America, either,” I said. “It’s a no man’s land. The Eskimos 
should take it over.”

Toward the end—we were there ten days—I was itching to get back to the 
novel.

“Will you finish it quickly now, Val?” she asked.

“Like lightning.” I replied.

“Good! Then we can leave for Europe.”

“The sooner the better,” said I.

*

When we got back to Brooklyn the trees were all in bloom. It must have 
been twenty degrees warmer than in Quebec.

Mrs. Skolsky greeted us warmly. “I missed you,” she said. She followed us
up to our rooms. “Oh,” she said, “I forgot. That friend of yours—MacGregor 
is it?—was here one evening with his lady friend. He didn’t seem to believe
me at first, when I told him you had gone to Canada. ‘Impossible,’ he 
exclaimed. Then he asked if he could visit your study. I hardly knew what 
to say. He behaved as if it were very important to show your room to his 
friend. ‘You can trust us,’ he said. ‘I know Henry since he was a boy.’ I 
gave in, but I stayed with them ail the time they were up here. He showed 
her the pictures on the wall—and your books. He acted as if he were trying 
to impress her. Once he sat down in your chair and he said to her: ‘Here’s 
where he writes his books, doesn’t he, Mrs. Skolsky?’ Then he went on about
you, what a great writer you were, what a loyal friend, and so on. I didn’t
know what to make of the performance. Finally I invited them downstairs to 
have some tea with me. They stayed for about two hours, I guess. He was 
very interesting, too… “

“What did he talk about?” I asked.

“Many things,” she said. “But mostly about love. He seemed infatuated 
with the young lady.”

“Did she say much?”

“No, hardly a word. She was rather strange, I thought. Hardly the type 
for a man like him.”

“Was she good-looking?”

“That depends,” said Mrs. Skolsky. “To be honest, I thought she was very 
plain, almost homely. Rather lifeless, too. It puzzles me. What can he see 
in a girl like that? Is he blind?”

“He’s an utter fool!” said Mona.

“He sounds quite intelligent,” said Mrs. Skolsky.

“Please, Mrs. Skolsky,” said Mona, “when he calls up, or even if he comes
to the door, will you do us the favor of saying that we’re out? Say 
anything, only don’t let him in. He’s a pest, a bore. An absolutely 
worthless individual.”

Mrs. Skolsky looked at me inquiringly.

“Yes,” I said, “she’s right. He’s worse than that, to tell the truth. 
He’s one of those people whose intelligence serves no purpose. He’s 
intelligent enough to be a lawyer, but in every other respect he’s an 
imbecile.”

Mrs. Skolsky looked nonplused. She was not accustomed to hearing people 
talk that way about their “friends”.

“But he spoke of you so warmly,” she said.

“It makes no difference,” I replied. “He’s impervious, obtuse… 
thick-skinned, that’s the word.”

“Very well… if you say so, Mr. Miller.” She backed away.

“I have no friends any more,” I said. “I’ve killed them all off.”

She gave a little gasp.

“He doesn’t mean it quite that way,” said Mona.

“I’m sure he can’t,” said Mrs. Skolsky. “It sounds dreadful.”

“It’s the truth, like it or not. I’m a thoroughly unsocial Individual, 
Mrs. Skolsky.”

“I don’t believe you,” she replied. “Nor would Mr. Essen.”

“He’ll find out one day. Not that I dislike him, you understand.”

“No, I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Skolsky.

“Neither do I,” said I, and I began to laugh.

“There’s a bit of the devil in you,” said Mrs. Skolsky. “Isn’t that so, 
Mrs. Miller?”

“Maybe,” said Mona. “He’s not always easy to understand.”

“I think I understand him,” said Mrs. Skolsky. “I think he’s ashamed of 
himself for being so good, so honest, so sincere—and so loyal to his 
friends.” She turned to me. “Really, Mr. Miller, you’re the friendliest 
human being I ever knew. I don’t care what you say about yourself—I’ll 
think what I please… When you’ve unpacked come down and have dinner with 
me, won’t you, the two of you?”

“You see,” I said, when she had retreated, “how difficult it is to make 
people accept the truth.”

“You like to shock people, Val. There’s always truth in what you say, but
you have to make it unpalatable.”

“Well, I don’t think she’ll let MacGregor bother us any more, that’s one 
good thing.”

“He’ll follow you to your grave,” said Mona.

“Wouldn’t it be queer if we were to run into him in Paris?”

“Don’t say that, Val! The thought of it is enough to spoil our trip.”

“If that guy ever gets her to Paris he’ll rape her. Right now he can’t 
even lay a hand on her backside… “

“Let’s forget about them, will you, Val? It gives me the creeps to think 
of them.”

But it was impossible to forget them. All through the dinner we talked 
about them. And that night I had a dream about them, about meeting them in 
Paris. In the dream Guelda looked and behaved like a cocotte, spoke French 
like a native, and was making poor MacGregor’s life unbearable with her 
lascivious ways. “I wanted a wife,” he lamented, “not a whore! Reform her, 
will you, Hen?” he pleaded. I took her to a priest, to be shrived, but as 
things turned out we found ourselves in a whorehouse and Guelda, the number
one girl, was in such demand that we couldn’t get a squeak out of her. 
Finally she took the priest upstairs with her, whereupon the madam of the 
whorehouse threw her out, stark naked, with a towel in one hand and a bar 
of soap in the other.

*

Only a few weeks now and the novel would be finished. Pop already had a 
publisher in mind for it, a friend of his whom he had known in the old 
country. He was determined to find a legitimate publisher for it or do it 
himself, according to Mona. The bugger was feeling good these days; he was 
making money hand over fist on the stock market. He was even threatening to
go to Europe himself. With Mona, presumably. (“Don’t worry, Val, I’ll give 
him the slip when the time comes.”

“Yes, but what about that money you were to put in the bank?”

“I’ll square that too, don’t worry!”) She never had any doubts or fears 
where Pop was concerned. It was useless to attempt to guide her, or even 
make suggestions: she knew far better than I what she could do and what she
couldn’t. All I knew of the man was what she told me. I always pictured him
as well-dressed, excessively polite, and carrying a wallet bulging with 
greenbacks. (Menelik the Bountiful.) I never felt sorry for him, either. He
was enjoying himself, that was clear. What I did wonder about sometimes 
was—how could she continue to keep her address secret? To live with an 
invalid mother is one thing; to keep the whereabouts of this manage a 
secret, quite another. Perhaps Pop suspected the truth—that she was living 
with a man. What difference could it make to him whether it was an invalid 
mother or a lover or a husband—as long as she kept her appointments? 
Perhaps he was tactful enough to help her save face? He was no dope, that 
was certain… But why would he encourage her to leave for Europe, stay away 
for months or longer? Here, of course, I had only to do a bit of 
transposing. When she said “Pop would like to see me go to Europe for a 
while,” I had only to turn it around and I could hear her saying—to Pop: “I
want so much to see Europe again, even if only for a little while!” As for 
publishing the novel, perhaps Pop hadn’t the slightest intention of doing 
anything, either through his friend the publisher (if there were such a 
one) or on his own. Perhaps he fell in with her there to satisfy the lover 
or husband—or the poor invalid mother. Perhaps he was a better actor than 
either of us!

Maybe—this was a random thought—maybe there had never passed a word 
between them about Europe. Maybe she was just determined to get there 
again, no matter how.

Suddenly Stasia’s image floated before me. Strange, that not a word had 
ever been received from her! Surely she couldn’t still be wandering about 
in North Africa. Was she in Paris—waiting? Why not? It was simple enough to
have a box at the post office, and another box somewhere else, in which to 
hide the letters which Stasia may have written. Worse than meeting 
MacGregor and his Guelda in Paris would be to run into Stasia. How stupid 
of me never to have thought of a clandestine correspondence! No wonder 
everything was running smoothly.

There was only one other possibility: Stasia could have committed 
suicide. But it would be hard to keep that a secret. A weird creature like 
Stasia couldn’t do herself in without the story leaking out. Unless, and 
this was far-fetched, they had wandered far into the desert, got lost, and 
were now nothing but a heap of bones.

No, she was alive, I was certain of it. And if alive, here was another 
angle. Perhaps she had found some one else in the meantime. A man, this 
time. Maybe she was already a good housewife. Such things happen now and 
then.

No, I ruled that out too. Too unlike our Stasia.

“Fuck it all!” I said to myself. “Why worry about such things? To Europe,
that’s the thing!” So saying, I thought of the chestnut trees (all in bloom
now, no doubt) and of those little tables (les gueridons) on the crowded 
terraces of the cafes, and of bicycle cops wheeling by in pairs. I thought 
of the Vespasiennes, too. How charming to take a leak outdoors, right on 
the sidewalk, while peering at all the beautiful dames strolling by… Ought 
to be studying French… (Ou sont les lavdbosf) If we were to get all that 
Mona said we would, why not go places… Vienna, Budapest, Prague, 
Copenhagen, Rome, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Sofia, Bucharest? Why not Algeria, 
Tunisia, Morocco? I thought of my old Dutch friend who had slipped out of 
his messenger uniform one evening to go abroad with his American boss… 
writing me from Sofia, no less, and from the waiting room of the Queen of 
Roumania, somewhere high up in the Carpathians.

And O’Mara, what had become of him, I wondered? There was one fellow I 
would dearly love to see again. A friend, what! What a lark to take him to 
Europe with us, Mona willing. (Impossible, of course.) My mind was 
circling, circling. Always, when I was keyed up, when I knew I could do it,
could say it, my mind would start wandering in all directions at once. 
Instead of sitting down to the machine and letting go, I would sit at the 
desk and think up projects, dream dreams, or just dwell on those I loved, 
the good times we had had, the things we said and did. (Ho ho! Haw haw!) Or
trump up a bit of research which would suddenly assume momentous 
importance, which must be attended to immediately. Or I would conceive a 
brilliant chess maneuver and, to. make certain I wouldn’t forget, I would 
set up the pieces, shuffle them around, make ready the trap that I planned 
to set for the first comer. Then, at last ready to tickle the keys, it 
would suddenly dawn on me that on page so-and-so I had made a grievous 
error, and turning to the page I would discover that whole sentences were 
out of kilter, made no sense, or said exactly the opposite of what I meant.
In correcting them, the need to elaborate would force me to write pages 
which later I realized might just as well have been omitted.

Anything to stave off the event. Was it that? Or was it that, in order to
write smoothly and steadily, I had to first blow off steam, reduce the 
power, cool the motor? It always seemed to go better, the writing, when I 
had reached a lower, less exalted level; to stay on the surface, where it 
was all foam and whitecaps, was something only the Ancient Mariner could 
do.

Once I got under wing, once I hit my stride, it was like eating peanuts: 
one thought induced another. And as my fingers flew, pleasant but utterly 
extraneous ideas would intrude—without damaging the flow. Such as: “This 
passage is for you, Ulric; I can hear you chuckling in advance.” Or, “How 
O’Mara will gobble this up!” They accompanied my thoughts, like playful 
dolphins. I was like a man at the tiller, dodging the fish that flew over 
his head. Sailing along with full sails, the ship precariously tilted but 
steady on her course, I would salute imaginary passing vessels, wave my 
shirt in the air, call to the birds, hail the rugged cliffs, praise God for
his “savin’ and keepin’ power,” and so on. Gogol had his troika, I had my 
trim cutter. King of the waterways—while the spell lasted.

Ramming the last pages home, I was already ashore, walking the boulevards
of the luminous city, doffing my hat to this one and that, practicing my 
“S’il vous plait, monsieur.” “A votre service, madame.” “Quelle belle 
journee, n’est-ce pas?” “C’est moi qui avais tort.” “A quoi bon se 
plaindre, la vie est belle!’ Et cetera, et cetera. (All in an imaginary 
suave francais.)

I even indulged myself to the extent of carrying on an imaginary 
conversation with a Parisian who understood English well enough to follow 
me. One of those delightful Frenchmen( encountered only in books) who is 
always interested in a foreigner’s observations, trivial though they may 
be. We had discovered a mutual interest in Anatole France. (How simple, 
these liaisons, in the world of reverie!) And I, the pompous idiot, had 
seized the opening to make mention of a curious Englishman who had also 
loved France—the country, not the author. Charmed by my reference to a 
celebrated boulevardier of that delightful epoch, la fin de siecle, my 
companion insisted on escorting me to the Place Pigalle, in order to point 
out a rendezvous of the literary lights of that epoch—Le Rat Mort. “But 
monsieur,” I am saying, “you are too kind.”

“Mais non, monsieur, c’est un privilege.” And so on. All this flubdub, 
this flattery and flenerie under a metallic green sky, the ground strewn 
with autumn leaves, siphons gleaming on every table—and not a single horse 
with his tail docked. In short, the perfect Paris, the perfect Frenchman, 
the perfect day for a postprandial ambulatory conversation.

“Europe,” I concluded to myself, “my dear, my beloved Europe, deceive me 
not! Even though you be not all that I now imagine, long for, and 
desperately need, grant me at least the illusion of enjoying this 
contentment which the mention of your name invites. Let your citizens hold 
me in contempt, let them despise me, if they will, but give me to hear them
converse as I have ever imagined them to. Let me drink to these keen, 
roving minds which disport only in the universal, intellects trained (from 
the cradle) to mingle poetry with fact and deed, spirits which kindle at 
the mention of a nuance, and soar and soar, encompassing the most sublime 
flights, yet touching everything with wit, with malice, with erudition, 
with the salt and the spice of the worldly. Do not, O faithful Europe, do 
not, I beg you, show me the polished surface of a continent devoted to 
progress. I want to see your ancient, time-worn visage, with its furrows 
carved by age-long combat in the arena of thought. I want to see with my 
own eyes the eagles you have trained to eat from your hand. I come as a 
pilgrim, a devout pilgrim, who not only believes but knows that the 
invisible face of the moon is glorious, glorious beyond all imagining. I 
have seen only the spectral, pitted face of the world which whirls us 
about. Too well do I know this array of extinct volcanoes, of arid mountain
ranges, of airless deserts whose huge cracks distribute themselves like 
varicose veins over the heartbreaking, heartless void. Accept me, O ancient
ones, accept me as a penitent, one not wholly lost but deeply erring, a 
wanderer who from birth was made to stray from the sight of his brothers 
and sisters, his guides, his mentors, his comforters.”

There stood Ulric, at the end of my prayer, exactly as he looked that day
I met him on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fifty-second Street; the man 
who had been to Europe, and to Africa, too, and in whose eyes the wonder 
and the magic of it still glowed. He was giving me a blood transfusion, 
pouring faith and courage into my veins. Hodie mihi, eras tibi! It was 
there, Europe, waiting for me. It would always be the same, come war, 
revolution, famine, frost or what Always a Europe for the soul that 
hungered. Listening to his words, sucking them in in big draughts, asking 
myself if it were possible (attainable) for one like me, “always dragging 
behind like a cow’s tail,” intoxicated, groping for it like a blind man 
without his stick, the magnetic force of his words (the Alps, the 
Apennines, Ravenna, Fiesole, the plains of Hungary, the lie Saint-Louis, 
Chartres, the Touraine, le Perigord… ) caused a pain to settle in the pit 
of my stomach, a pain which slowly spelled itself out as a kind of Heimweh,
a longing for “the kingdom of the other side of time and appearances.” 
(“Ah, Harry, we have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we 
reach home.”) Yes, Ulric, that day you planted the seed in me. You walked 
back to your studio to make more bananas and pineapples for the Saturday 
Evening Post and you left me to wander off with a vision. Europe was in my 
grasp. What matter two years, five years, ten years? It was you who handed 
me my passport. It was you who awakened the sleeping guide: Heimveh.

Hodie tibi, eras mihi.

*

And as I walked about that afternoon, up one street and down another, I 
was already saying good-bye to the familiar scenes of horror and ennui, of 
morbid monotony, of sanitary sterility and loveless love. Passing down 
Fifth Avenue, cutting through the shoppers and drifters like a wire eel, my
contempt and loathing for all that met my eye almost suffocated me. Pray 
God, I would not have long to endure the sight of these snuffed-out 
jack-o’-lanterns, these decrepit New World buildings, these hideous, 
mournful churches, these parks dotted with pigeons and derelicts. From the 
street of the tailor shop on down to the Bowery (the course of my ancient 
walk), I lived again the days of my apprenticeship, and they were like a 
thousand years of misery, of mishap, of misfortune. A thousand years of 
alienation. Approaching Cooper Union, ever the low-water mark of my sagging
spirits, passages of those books I once wrote in my head came back, like 
the curled edges of a dream which refuse to flatten out. They would always 
be flapping there, those curled edges… flapping from the cornices of those 
dingy shit-brown shanties, those slat-faced saloons, those foul rescue and 
shelter places where the bleary-eyed, codfish-faced bums hung about like 
lazy flies, and Oh, God, how miserable, they looked, how wasted, how 
blenched, how withered and hollowed out! Yet it was here in this bombed-out
world that John Cowper Powys had lectured, had set forth into the 
soot-laden, stench-filled air his tidings of the eternal world of the 
spirit—the spirit of Europe, his Europe, our Europe, the Europe of 
Sophocles, Aristotle, Plato, Spinoza, Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus, Dante,
Goethe, Ibsen. In this same area other fiery zealots had appeared and 
addressed the mob, invoking other great names: Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Bakunin,
Kropotkin, Engels, Shelley, Blake. The streets looked the same as ever, 
worse indeed, breathing less hope, less justice, less beauty, less harmony.
Small chance now for a Thoreau to appear, or a Whitman, or a John Brown—or 
a Robert E. Lee. The man of the masses was coming into his own; a sad, 
weird-looking creature animated by a central switchboard, capable of saying
neither Yes nor No, recognizing neither right nor wrong, but always in 
step, the lockstep, always chanting the Dead March.

“Goodbye, good-bye!” I kept saying as I marched along. “Goodbye to all 
this!” And not a soul responding, not even a pigeon. “Are you deaf, you 
slumbering maniacs?”

I am walking down the middle of civilization, and this is how it is. On 
the one side culture running like an open sewer; on the other the abattoirs
where everything hangs on the hooks, split open, gory, swarming with flies 
and maggots. The boulevard of life in the twentieth century. One Arc de 
Triomphe after another. Robots advancing with the Bible in one hand and a 
rifle in the other. Lemmings rushing to the sea. Onward, Christian 
soldiers, marching as to war… Hurrah for the Karamazovs! What gay wisdom! 
Encore un petit effort, si vous voulez etre republicains!

Down the middle of the road. Stepping gingerly amidst the piles of horse 
manure. What dirt and humbug we have to stumble through! Ah, Harry, Harry! 
Harry Haller, Harry Heller, Harry Smith, Harry Miller, Harry Harried. 
Coming, Asmodeus, coming! On two sticks, like a crippled Satan. But laden 
with medals. Such medals! The Iron Cross, the Victoria Cross, the Croix de 
Guerre… in gold, in silver, in bronze, in iron, in zinc, in wood, in tin… 
Take your pick!

And poor Jesus had to carry his own cross!

The air grows more pungent. Chatham Square. Good old Chinatown. Below the
pavement a honeycomb of booths. Opium dens. Lotus land. Nirvana. Rest in 
peace, the workers of the world are working. We are all working—to usher in
eternity.

Now the Brooklyn Bridge, swinging like a lyre between the skyscrapers and
Brooklyn Heights. Once again the weary pedestrian wends his way homeward, 
pockets empty, stomach empty, heart empty. Gorgonzola hobbling along on two
burned stumps. The river below, the sea gulls above. And above the gulls, 
the stars invisible. What a glorious day! A walk such as Pomander himself 
might have enjoyed. Or Anaxagoras. Or that arbiter of perverted taste: 
Petronius.

The winter of life, as some one should have said, begins at birth. The 
hardest years are from one to ninety. After that, smooth sailing.

Homeward the swallows fly. Each one carrying in his bill a crumb, a dead 
twig, a spark of hope. E pluribus unum.

The orchestra pit is rising, all sixty-four players donned in spotless 
white. Above, the stars are beginning to show through the midnight blue of 
the domed ceiling. The greatest show on earth is about to be ushered in, 
complete with trained seals, ventriloquists and aerial acrobats. The master
of ceremonies is Uncle Sam himself, that long, lean striped-like-a-zebra 
humorist who straddles the world with his Baron Munchausen legs and, come 
wind, hail, snow, frost or dry rot, is ever ready to cry Cock-a-doodle-doo!

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Sailing out one bright and lovely morning to take my constitutional, I 
find MacGregor waiting for me at the doorstep.

“Hi there!” he says, switching on his electric grin. “So it’s you, in the
flesh? Trapped you at last, eh?” He puts out his hand. “Hen, why do I have 
to lie in wait for you like this? Can’t you spare five minutes occasionally
for an old friend? What are you running away from? How are you, anyway? 
How’s the book coming along? Mind if I walk a way with you?”

“I suppose the landlady told you I was out?”

“How did you guess it?”

I started walking; he fell in step with me, as if we were on parade.

“Hen, you’ll never change, I guess.” (Sounded frighteningly like my 
mother.) “Once upon a time I could call you any hour of the day or night 
and you’d come. Now you’re a writer… an important man… no time for old 
friends.”

“Come on,” I replied, “cut it. You know that’s not it.”

“What is it then?”

“This… I’m done wasting time. These problems of yours—I can’t solve them.
No one can, except yourself. You’re not the first man who’s been jilted.”

“What about yourself? Have you forgotten how you used to keep me up all 
night bending my ear about Una Gifford?”

“We were twenty-one then.”

“One’s never too old to fall in love. At this age it’s even worse. I 
can’t afford to lose her.”

“What do you mean—can’t afford?”

“Too hard on the ego. One doesn’t fall in love as often now, or as 
easily. I don’t want to fall out of love, it would be disastrous. I don’t 
say that she has to marry me, but I’ve got to know that she’s there… 
reachable. I can love her from a distance, if necessary.”

I smiled. “Funny, you saying a thing like that. I was touching on that 
very theme the other day, in the novel. Do you know what I concluded?”

“Better to become a celibate, I suppose.”

“No, I came to the same conclusion that every jackass does… that nothing 
matters except to keep on loving. Even if she were to marry some one else, 
you could keep on loving her. What do you make of that?”

“Easier said than done, Hen.”

“Precisely. It’s your opportunity. Most men give up. Suppose she decided 
to live in Hong Kong? What has distance to do with it?”

“You’re talking Christian Science, man. I’m not in love with a Virgin 
Mary. Why should I stand still and watch her drift away? You don’t make 
sense.”

“That’s what I’m trying to convince you of. That’s why it’s useless to 
bring me your problem, don’t you see? We don’t see eye to eye any more. 
We’re old friends who haven’t a thing in common.”

“Do you really think that, Hen?” His tone was wistful rather than 
reproachful.

“Listen,” I said, “once we were as close as peas in a pod, you, George 
Marshall and me. We were like brothers. That was a long, long time ago. 
Things happened. Somewhere the link snapped. George settled down, like a 
reformed crook. His wife won out… “

“And me?”

“You buried yourself in your law work, which you despise. One day you’ll 
be a judge, mark my words. But it won’t change your way of life. You’ve 
given up the ghost. Nothing interests you any more—unless it’s a game of 
poker. And you think my way of life is cockeyed. It is, I’ll admit that. 
But not in the way you think.”

His reply surprised me somewhat. ‘“You’re not so far off the track, Hen. 
We have made a mess of it, George and myself. The others too, for that 
matter. (He was referring to the members of the Xerxes Society.) None of us
has amounted to a damn. But what’s all that got to do with friendship? Must
we become important figures in the world to remain friends? Sounds like 
snobbery to me. We never pretended, George or I, that we were going to bum 
up the world. We’re what we are. Isn’t that good enough for you?”

“Look,” I replied, “it wouldn’t matter to me if you were nothing but a 
bum; you could still be my friend and I yours. You could make fun of 
everything I believed in, if you believed in something yourself. But you 
don’t. You believe in nothing. To my way of thinking, one’s got to believe 
in what he’s doing, else all’s a farce. I’d be all for you if you wanted to
be a bum and become a bum with all your heart and soul. But what are you? 
You’re one of those meaningless souls who filled us with contempt when we 
were younger… when we sat up the whole night long discussing such thinkers 
as Nietzsche, Shaw, Ibsen. Just names to you now. You weren’t going to be 
like your old man, no sir! They weren’t going to lasso you, tame you. But 
they did. Or you did. You put yourself in the strait jacket. You took the 
easiest way. You surrendered before you had even begun to fight.”

“And you!” he exclaimed, holding a hand aloft as if to say “Hear, hear!”

“Yeah, you, what have you accomplished that’s so remarkable? Going on 
forty and nothing published yet. What’s so great about that?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “It’s deplorable, that’s what.”

“And that entitles you to lecture me? Ho ho!”

I had to hedge a bit. “I wasn’t lecturing you, I was explaining that we 
had nothing in common any more.”

“From the looks of it we’re both failures. That’s what we have in common,
if you’ll face it squarely.”

“I never said I was a failure. Except to myself, perhaps. How can one be 
a failure if he’s still struggling, still fighting? Maybe I won’t make the 
grade. Maybe I’ll end up being a trombone player. But whatever I do, 
whatever I take up, it’ll be because I believe in it. I won’t float with 
the tide. I’d rather go down fighting… a failure, as you say. I loathe 
doing like every one else, falling in line, saying Yes when you mean No.”

He started to say something but I waved him down. “I don’t mean senseless
struggle, senseless resistance. One should make an effort to reach clear, 
still waters. One has to struggle to stop struggling. One has to find 
himself, that’s what I mean.”

“Hen,” he said, “you talk well and you mean well, but you’re all mixed 
up. You read too much, that’s your trouble.”

“And you never stop to think,” I rejoined. “Nor will you accept your 
share of suffering. You think there’s an answer to everything. It never 
occurs to you that maybe there isn’t, that maybe the only answer is you 
yourself, how you regard your problems. You don’t want to wrestle with 
problems, you want them eliminated for you. The easy way out, that’s you. 
Take this girl of yours… this life and death problem… doesn’t it mean 
something to you that she sees nothing in you? You ignore that, don’t you? 
I want her! I’ve got to have her! That’s all you’ve got to answer. Sure, 
you’d change your ways, you’d make something of yourself… if some one were 
kind enough to stand over you with a sledge hammer. You like to say—‘Hen, 
I’m an ornery sort of bastard,’ but you won’t raise a finger to make 
yourself a wee bit different. You want to be taken as you are, and if one 
doesn’t like you the way you are, fuck him! Isn’t that it?”

He cocked his head to one side, like a judge weighing the testimony 
presented, then said: “Maybe. Maybe you’re right.”

For a few moments we walked on in silence. Like a bird with a burr in his
craw, he was digesting the evidence. Then, his lips spreading into an 
impish grin, he said: “Sometimes you remind me of that bastard, 
Challacombe. God, how that guy could rile me! Always talking down from his 
pedestal. And you fell for all that crap of his. You believed in him… in 
that theosophical shit… “

“I certainly did!” I answered with heat. “If he had never mentioned 
anything more than the name Swami Vivekananda I would have felt indebted to
him the rest of my life. Crap, you say. To me it was the breath of life. I 
know he wasn’t your idea of a friend. A little too lofty, too detached, for
your taste. He was a teacher, and you couldn’t see him as a teacher. Where 
did he get his credentials and all that? He had no schooling, no training, 
no nothing. But he knew what he was talking about. At least, I thought so. 
He made you wallow in your own vomit, and you didn’t like that. You wanted 
to lean on his shoulder and puke all over him—then he would have been a 
friend. And so you searched for flaws in his character, you found his 
weaknesses, you reduced him to your own level. You do that with every one 
who’s difficult to understand. When you can jeer at the other fellow as you
do at yourself, you’re happy… then everything comes out even… Look, try to 
understand this. Everything’s wrong with the world. Everywhere there’s 
ignorance, superstition, bigotry, injustice, intolerance. It’s been so 
since the world began, most likely. It will be so tomorrow and the day 
after. So what? Is that a reason to feel defeated, to go sour on the world?
Do you know what Swami Vivekananda said once? He said: ‘There is only one 
sin. That is weakness… Do not add one lunacy to another. Do not add your 
weakness to the evil that is going to come… Be strong!’ ” I paused, waiting
for him to make mincemeat of this. Instead he said: “Go on, Hen, give us 
some more! It sounds good.”

“It is good,” I replied. “It will always be good. And people will go on 
doing the very opposite. The very ones who applauded his words betrayed him
the instant he stopped speaking. That goes for Vivekananda, Socrates, 
Jesus, Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Krishnamurti… name them yourself! But what am 
I telling you all this for, anyway? You won’t change. You refuse to grow. 
You want to get by with the least effort, the least trouble, the least 
pain. Every one does. It’s wonderful to hear tell about the masters, but as
for becoming a master, shit! Listen, I was reading a book the other day… to
be honest, I’ve been reading it for a year or more. Don’t ask me the title,
because I’m not giving it to you. But here’s what I read, and no master 
could have put it better. ‘The sole meaning, purpose, intention, and secret
of Christ, my dears, is not to understand Life, or mold it, or change it, 
or even to love it, but to drink of its undying essence.’ “

“Say it again, will you, Hen?”

I did.

“To drink of its undying essence,” he mumbled. “Damned good. And you 
won’t tell me who wrote it?”

“No.”

“Okay, Hen. Go on! What else have you got up your sleeve this morning?”

“This… How are you making out with your Guelda?”

“Forget it! This is much better.”

“You’re not giving her up, I hope?”

. “She’s giving me up. For good, this time.”

“And you’re reconciled to it?”

“Don’t you ever listen to me? Of course not! That’s why I was lying in 
wait for you. But, as you say, each one has to follow his own path. Don’t 
you think I know that? Maybe we haven’t anything in common any more. Maybe 
we never did, have you ever thought that? Maybe it was something more than 
that which held us together. I can’t help liking you, Hen, even when you 
rake me over the coals. You’re a heartless son-of-a-bitch sometimes. If any
one’s ornery it’s you, not me. But you’ve got something, if you can only 
bring it out. Something for the world, I mean, not for me. You shouldn’t be
writing a novel, Hen. Any one can do that. You’ve got more important things
to do. I’m serious. I’d rather see you lecture on Vivekananda—or Mahatma 
Gandhi.”

“Or Pico della Mirandola.”

“Never heard of him.”

“So she won’t have anything more to do with you?”

“That’s what she said. A woman can always change her mind, of course.”

“She will, don’t worry.”

“The last time I saw her she was still talking of taking a vacation—in 
Paris.”

“Why don’t you follow her?”

“Better than that, Hen, I’ve got it all figured out. Soon as I learn what
boat she’s taking I’ll go to the steamship office and, even if I have to 
bribe the clerk, I’ll get a stateroom next to hers. When she comes out that
first morning, I’ll be there to greet her. ‘Hi there, sweetheart! Beautiful
day today, what?’ “

“She’ll love that.”

“She won’t jump overboard, that’s for sure.”

“But she might tell the captain that you’re annoying her.”

“Fuck the captain! I can handle him… Three days at sea and, whether she 
likes it or not, I’ll break her down.”

“I wish you luck!” I grasped his hand and shook it. “Here’s where I take 
leave of you.”

“Have a coffee with me! Come on!”

“Nope. Back to work. As Krishna said to Arjuna: ‘If I stopped work for a 
moment, the whole universe would… “

“Would what?”

” ‘Fall apart,’ I think he said.”

“Okay, Hen.” He wheeled around and, without another word, went off in the
opposite direction.

I had only gone a few steps when I heard him shouting.

“Hey, Hen!”

“What?”

“Til see you in Paris, if not before. So long!”

“See you in Hell,” I thought to myself. But as I resumed my walk I felt a
twinge of remorse. “You shouldn’t treat any one like that, not even your 
best friend,” I said to myself.

All the way home I kept carrying on a monologue. It went something like 
this…

“So what if he is a pain in the ass? Sure, every one has to solve his own
problems, but—is that a reason to turn a man down? You’re not a 
Vivekananda. Besides, would Vivekananda have acted that way? You don’t snub
a man who’s in distress. Nor do you have to let him puke over you either. 
Suppose he is acting like a child, what of it? Is your behavior always that
of an adult? And wasn’t that a lot of shit, about not having anything in 
common any more? He should have walked away from you then and there. What 
you have in common, my fine Swami, is plain ordinary human weakness. Maybe 
he did stop growing long ago. Is that a crime? No matter at what point 
along the road he is, he’s still a human being. Move on, if you like… keep 
your eyes straight ahead… but don’t refuse a laggard a helping hand. Where 
would you be if you had had to go it alone? Are you standing on your own 
two feet? What about all those nobodies, those nincompoops, who emptied 
their pockets for you when you were in need? Are they worthless, now that 
you no longer have need of them?”

“No, but… “

“So you have no answer! You’re pretending to be something which you’re 
not. You’re afraid of falling back into your old ways. You flatter yourself
that you’re different, but the fact is you’re only too much like the others
whom you glibly condemn. That crazy elevator runner was onto you. He saw 
right through you, didn’t he? Frankly, what have you accomplished with your
own two hands, or with that intellect you seem so proud of? At twenty-one, 
Alexander started out to conquer the world, and at thirty he had the world 
in his two hands. I know you’re not aiming to conquer the world—but you’d 
like to make a dent in it, wouldn’t you? You want to be recognized as a 
writer. Well, who’s stopping you? Not poor MacGregor, certainly. Yes, there
is only one sin, as Vivekananda said. And that is weakness. Take it to 
heart, old man… take it to heart! Come down off your high horse! Come out 
of your ivory tower and join the ranks! Maybe there’s something more to 
life than writing books. And what have you got to say that’s so very 
important? Are you another Nietzsche? You’re not even you yet, do you 
realize that?”

By the time I reached the corner of our street I had beaten myself to a 
pulp. I had about as much spunk left in me as a stoat. To make it worse, 
Sid Essen was waiting for me at the foot of the steps. He was wreathed in 
smiles.

“Miller,” he said, “I’m not going to take up your valuable time. I 
couldn’t keep this in my pocket another minute.”

He pulled out an envelope and handed it to me.

“What’s this?” I said.

“A little token from your friends. Those darkies think the world of you. 
You’re to buy something with it for the Missus. It’s a little collection 
they made among themselves.”

In my crestfallen state I was on the verge of tears.

“Miller, Miller,” said Reb, throwing his arms around me, “what are we 
ever going to do without you?”

“It’ll only be a few months,” I said, blushing like a fool.

“I know, I know, but we’re going to miss you. Have a coffee with me, 
won’t you? I won’t keep you. There’s something I’ve got to tell you.”

I walked back to the corner with him, to the candy and stationery shop 
where we had first met.

You know,” he said, as we took a seat at the counter, “I’ve almost a mind
to join you. Only I know that I’d be in the way.”

Somewhat embarrassed, I replied: “Guess most everybody would love to go 
to Paris for a vacation. They will, too, one day… “

“I meant, Miller, that I’d love to see it through your eyes.” He gave me 
a look that melted me.

“Yes,” I said, disregarding his words, “one day it won’t be necessary to 
take a boat or a plane to get to Europe. All we need to learn now is how to
overcome the force of gravitation. Just stay put and let the earth spin 
around under your feet. It travels fast, this old earth.” I went on in this
vein, trying to overcome my embarrassment. Engines, turbines, motors… 
Leonardo da Vinci. “And we’re moving like snails,” I said. “We haven’t even
begun to use the magnetic forces which envelop us. We’re cave men still, 
with motors up our bungholes… ” Poor Reb didn’t know what to make of it. He
was itching to say something, but he didn’t want to be impolite and head me
off. So I rattled on.

“Simplification, that’s what we need. Look at the stars—they have no 
motors. Have you ever thought what keeps this earth of ours spinning like a
ball? Nikola Tesla gave a lot of thought to it, and Marconi, too. No one 
has yet come up with the final answer.”

He looked at me in utter perplexity. I knew that whatever it was that was
on his mind, it wasn’t electro-magnetism.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You wanted to tell me something, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he said, “but I don’t want to… “

“I was only thinking out loud.”

“Well, then… ” He cleared his throat. “All I wanted to tell you was this…
if you should get stranded over there, don’t hesitate to cable me. Or if 
you want to prolong your stay. You know where to reach me.” He blushed and 
turned his head away.

“Reb,” I said, nudging him with my elbow, “you’re just too damned good to
me. And you hardly know me. I mean, you’ve known me only a short time. None
of my so-called friends would do as much, that’s a bet.” To this he 
replied—“You don’t know what your friends are capable of doing for you, I’m
afraid. You’ve never given them a chance.”

I fairly exploded. “I haven’t, eh? Man, I’ve given them so many chances 
they don’t even want to hear my name.”

“Aren’t you a bit hard on them? Maybe they didn’t have anything to give.”

“That’s exactly what they said, all of them. But it’s not true. If you 
don’t have, you can borrow—for a friend. Right? Abraham offered up his son,
didn’t he?”

“That was to Jehovah.”

“I wasn’t asking them to make sacrifices. All I asked for was chicken 
feed—cigarettes, a meal, old clothes. Wait a minute, I want to modify what 
I said. There were exceptions. There was one lad I remember, one of my 
messengers… this was after I had quit the telegraph company… when he 
learned that I was up against it he went and stole for me. He’d bring us a 
chicken or a few vegetables… sometimes only a candy bar, if that was all he
could lay hands on. There were others, too, poor like him, or nuts. They 
didn’t turn their pockets inside out to show me they had nothing. The guys 
I traveled with had no right to refuse me. None of them had ever starved. 
We weren’t poor white trash. We all came from decent, comfortable homes. 
No, maybe it’s the Jew in you that makes you so kind and thoughtful, pardon
the way I put it. When a Jew sees a man in distress, hungry, abused, 
despised, he sees himself. He identifies immediately with the other fellow.
Not us. We haven’t tasted enough poverty, misfortune, disgrace, 
humiliation. We’ve never been pariahs. We’re sitting pretty, we are, 
lording it over the rest of the world.”

“Miller,” he said, “you must have taken a lot of punishment. No matter 
.what I may think of my own people—they’ve got their faults too, you know–I
could never talk about them the way you do about yours. It makes me all the
more happy to think you’re going to enjoy yourself for a while. It’s coming
to you. But you’ve got to bury the past!”

“I’ve got to stop feeling sorry for myself, you mean.” I threw him a 
tender smile. “You know, Reb, I really don’t feel this way all the time. 
Deep down it still rankles, but on the surface I take people pretty much as
they come. What I can’t get over, I guess, is that I had to worm it out of 
them, everything I got. And what did I get? Crumbs. I exaggerate, of 
course. Not every one turned me down cold. And those who did probably had a
right to act as they did. It was like the pitcher you bring once too often 
to the” well. I sure knew how to make a nuisance of myself. And for a man 
who’s willing to eat humble pie, I was too arrogant. I had a way of rubbing
people the wrong way. Especially when asking for help. You see, I’m one of 
those fools who think that people, friends, anyway, ought to divine the 
fact that one is in need. When you come across a poor, filthy beggar, does 
he have to make your heart bleed before you toss him a coin? Not if you’re 
a decent, sensitive being. When you see him with head down, searching the 
gutter for a discarded butt or a piece of yesterday’s sandwich, you lift up
his head, you put your arms around him, especially if he’s crawling with 
lice, and you say: ‘What is it, friend? Can I be of any help?’ You don’t 
pass him up with one eye fastened on a bird sitting on a telegraph wire. 
You don’t make him run after you with hands outstretched. That’s my point. 
No wonder so many people refuse a beggar when he accosts them. It’s 
humiliating to be approached that way: it makes you feel guilty. We’re all 
generous, in our way. But the moment some one begs something of us, our 
hearts close up.”

“Miller,” said Reb, visibly moved by this outburst, “you’re what I’d call
a good Jew.”

“Another Jesus, eh?”

“Yeah, why not? Jesus was a good Jew, even though we’ve had to suffer for
two thousand years because of him.”

“The moral is—don’t work too hard at it! Don’t try to be too good.”

“One can never do too much,” said Reb heatedly.

“Oh, yes he can. Do what needs doing, that’s good enough.

“Isn’t it the same thing?”

“Almost. The point is that God looks after the world. We should look 
after one another. If the good Lord had needed help to run this world, He 
would have given us bigger hearts. Hearts, not brains.”

“Jesus,” said Reb, “but you do talk like a Jew. You remind me of certain 
scholars I listened to when I was a kid and they were expounding the law. 
They could jump from one side of the fence to the other, like goats. When 
you were cold they blew hot, and vice versa. You never knew where you stood
with them. Here’s what I mean… Passionate as they were, they always 
preached moderation. The prophets were the wild men; they were in a class 
apart. The holy men didn’t rant and rave. They were pure, that’s why. And 
you’re pure, too. I know you are.”

What was there to answer? He was simple, Reb, and in need of a friend. No
matter what I said, no matter how I treated him, he acted as if I had 
enriched him. I was his friend. And he would remain my friend, no matter 
what.

Walking back to the house, I resumed the inner monologue. “You see, it’s 
as simple as that, friendship. What’s the old adage? To have a friend you 
must be a friend.”

It was hard to see, though, in what way I had been a friend to Reb—or to 
anybody, for that matter. All I could see was that I was my own best 
friend—and my own worst enemy.

Pushing the door open, I had to remark to myself—“If you know that much, 
old fella, you know a lot.”

I took my accustomed place before the machine. “Now,” said I to myself, 
“you’re back in your own little kingdom. Now you can play God again.”

The drollery of addressing myself thus stopped me. God! As if it were 
only yesterday that I had left off communing with Him, I found myself 
conversing with Him as of yore. “For God so loved the world that He gave 
his only begotten Son… ” And how little we had given in return. What can we
offer thee, O ‘Heavenly Father, in return for thy blessings? My heart spoke
out, as if, veriest nothing that I was, I had an inkling of the problems 
which confronted the Creator of the universe. Nor was I ashamed to be thus 
intimate with my Maker. Was I not part of that immense all which He had 
made manifest expressly, perhaps, to realize the unlimited bounds of his 
Being?

It was ages since I had addressed Him in this intimate fashion. What a 
difference between those prayers wrung out of sheer despair, when I called 
on Him for mercy—mercy, not grace!—and the easy duos born of humble 
understanding! Strange, is it, this mention of earthly-heavenly discourse? 
It would occur most often when my spirits ran high… when there was little 
reason, mark this, to show any sign of spirit. Incongruous as it may sound,
it was often when the cruel nature of man’s fate smote me between the eyes 
that my spirit soared. When, like a worm eating his way through the slime, 
there came the thought, crazy perhaps, that the lowest was linked to the 
highest. Did they not tell us, when we were young, that God noted the 
sparrow’s fall? Even if I never quite believed it, I was, nevertheless, 
impressed. (“Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh—is there anything 
too hard for me?”) Total awareness! Plausible or Implausible, it was a 
great reach of thought. Sometimes, as a kid, when something truly 
extraordinary occurred, I would exclaim: “Did you see that, God?” How 
wonderful to think that He was there, within calling distance! He was a 
presence then, not a metaphysical abstraction. His spirit pervaded 
everything; He was of it all and above it all, at one and the same time. 
And then—thinking about it, I assumed an almost seraphic smile—then would 
come times when, in order not to go stark, raving mad, one simply had to 
look upon it (upon the absurd, monstrous nature of things) with eyes of the
Creator, He who is responsible for it all and understands it.

Tapping away—I was on the gallop now—the thought of creation, of the 
all-seeing eye, the all-embracing compassion, the nearness and farness of 
God, hung over me like a veil. What a joke to be writing a novel about 
“imaginary” characters, “imaginary” situations! Hadn’t the Lord of the 
Universe imagined everything? What a farce to lord it over this fictitious 
realm! Was it for this I had beseeched the Almighty to grant me the gift of
words?

The utter ridiculousness of my position brought me to a halt. Why hurry 
to bring the book to a close? In my mind it was already finished. I had 
thought out the imaginary drama to its imaginary end. I could rest a 
moment, suspended above my ant-like being, and let a few more hairs whiten.

I fell back into the vacuum (where God is all) with the most delicious 
sense of relief. I could see it all clearly—my earthly evolution, from the 
larval stage to the present, and even beyond the present. What was the 
struggle for or toward? Toward union? Perhaps. What else could it mean, 
this desire to communicate? To reach every one, high and low, and get an 
answer back—a devastating thought! To vibrate eternally, like the world 
lyre. Rather frightening, if pushed to its furthest implications.

Perhaps I didn’t mean quite that. Enough, perhaps, to establish 
communication with one’s peers, one’s kindred spirits. But who were they? 
Where were they? One could only know by letting fly the arrow.

A picture now obtruded. A picture of the world as a web of magnetic 
forces. Studding this web like nuclei were the burning spirits of the 
earth, about whom the various orders of humanity spun like constellations. 
Due to the hierarchical distribution of powers and aptitudes, a sublime 
harmony reigned. No discord was possible. All the conflict, all the 
disturbance, all the confusion and disorder to which man vainly endeavored 
to adjust was meaningless. The intelligence which invested the universe 
recognized it not. The murderous, the suicidal, the maniacal activity of 
earthly beings, yea, even their benevolent, their worshipful, their 
all-too-humane activities, were illusory. In the magnetic web, motion 
itself was nil. Nothing to go toward, nothing to retreat from, nothing to 
reach up to. The vast, unending field of force was like a suspended 
thought, a suspended note. Aeons from now—and what was now?—another thought
might replace it.

Brrrr! Chilling though it was, I wanted to lie there on the floor of 
nothingness and forever contemplate the picture of Creation.

It came to me presently that the element of creation, where writing was 
concerned, had little to do with thought. “A tree does not search for its 
fruits, it grows them.” To write, I concluded, was to garner the fruits of 
the imagination, to grow into the life of the mind like a tree putting 
forth leaves.

Profound or not, it was a comforting thought. At one bound I was sitting 
in the lap of the gods. I heard laughter all about me. No need to play God.
No need to astound any one. Take the lyre and pluck a silvery note. Above 
all the commotion, even above the sound of laughter, there was music. 
Perpetual music. That was the meaning of the supreme intelligence which 
invested creation.

I came sliding down the ladder in a hurry. And this was the lovely, 
lovely thought which had me by the hair… You there, pretending to be dead 
and crucified, you there, with your terrible historia de calamitatis, why 
not re-enact it in the spirit of play? Why not tell it over to yourself and
extract a little music from it? Are they real, your wounds? Are they still 
alive, still fresh? Or are they so much literary nail polish?

Come the cadenza…

“Kiss me, kiss me, again!” We were eighteen or nineteen then, MacGregor 
and I, and the girl he had brought to the party was studying to become an 
opera singer. She was sensitive, attractive, the best he had found so far, 
or ever would find, for that matter. She loved him passionately. She loved 
him though she knew he was frivolous and faithless. When he said in his 
easy, thoughtless way—“I’m crazy about you!”—she swooned. There was this 
song between them which he never tired of hearing. “Sing it again, won’t 
you? No one can sing it like you.” And she would sing it, again and again. 
“Kiss me, kiss me, again.” It always gave me a pang to hear her sing it, 
but this night I thought my heart would break. For this night, seated in a 
far corner of the room, seemingly as far from me as she could get, sat the 
divine, the unattainable Una Gifford, a thousand times more beautiful than 
MacGregor’s prima donna, a thousand times more mysterious, and a thousand, 
thousand times beyond any reach of mine. “Kiss me, kiss me, again!” How the
words pierced me! And not a soul in that boisterous, merry-making group was
aware of my agony. The fiddler approaches, blithe, debonair, his cheek 
glued to the instrument, and drawing out each phrase on muted strings, he 
plays it softly in my ear. Kiss me… kiss me… a… again.

Not another note can I take. Pushing him aside, I bolt. Down the street I
run, the tears streaming down my cheeks. At the corner I come upon a horse 
wandering in the middle of the street. The most forlorn, broken-down nag 
ever a man laid eyes on. I try to speak to this lost quadruped—it’s not a 
horse any more, not even an animal. For a moment I thought it understood. 
For one long moment it looked me full in the face. Then, terrified, it let 
out a blood-curdling neigh and took to its heels. Desolate, I made a noise 
like a rusty sleighbell, and slumped to the ground. Sounds of revelry 
filled the empty street. They fell on my ears like the din from a barracks 
full of drunken soldiers. It was for me they were giving the party. And she
was there, my beloved, snow-blonde, starry-eyed, forever unattainable. 
Queen of the Arctic.

No one else regarded her thus. Only me.

A long-ago wound, this one. Not too much blood connected with it. Worse 
to follow. Much, much worse. Isn’t it funny how the faster they come, the 
more one expects them—yes, expects them!—to be bigger, bloodier, more 
painful, more devastating. And they always are.

I closed the book of memory. Yes, there was music to be extracted from 
those old wounds. But the time was not yet. Let them fester awhile in the 
dark. Once we reached Europe I would grow a new body and a new soul. What 
were the sufferings of a Brooklyn boy to the inheritors of the Black 
Plague, the Hundred Years War, the extermination of the Albigensians, the 
Crusades, the Inquisition, the slaughter of the Huguenots, the French 
Revolution, the never-ending persecution of the Jews, the invasion of the 
Huns, the coming of the Turks, the rains of frogs and locusts, the 
unspeakable doings of the Vatican, the irruption of regicides and 
sex-bedeviled queens, of feeble-minded monarchs, of Robespierres and Saint 
Justs, of Hohenstauffens and Hohenzollerns, of rat chasers and bone 
crushers? What could a few soulful hemorrhoids of American vintage mean to 
the Raskolnikovs and Karamazovs of old Europe?

I saw myself standing on a table-top, an insignificant pouter pigeon 
dropping his little white pellets of pigeon shit. A table-top named Europe,
around which the monarchs of the soul were gathered, oblivious of the aches
and pains of the New World. What could I possibly say to them in this white
pouter pigeon language? What could any one reared in an atmosphere of 
peace, abundance and security say to the sons and daughters of martyrs? 
True, we had the same forbears, the identical nameless ancestors who had 
been tom on the rack, burned at the stake, driven from pillar to post, 
but—the memory of their fate no longer burned in us; we had turned our 
backs upon this harrowing past, we had grown new shoots from the charred 
stump of the parental tree. Nurtured by the waters of Lethe, we had become 
a thankless race of ingrates, devoid of an umbilical cord, slap-happy after
the fashion of syntheticos.

Soon, dear men of Europe, we will be with you in the flesh. We are 
coming—with our handsome valises, our gilt-edged passports, our 
hundred-dollar bills, our travelers’ insurance policies, our guide books, 
our humdrum opinions, our petty prejudices, our half-baked judgments, our 
rosy spectacles which lead us to believe that all is well, that everything 
comes out right in the end, that God is Love, and Mind is all. When you see
us as we are, when you hear us chatter like magpies, you will know that you
have lost nothing by remaining where you are. You will have no cause to 
envy our fresh new bodies, our rich red blood. Have pity on us who are so 
raw, so brittle, so vulnerable, so blisteringly new and untarnished! We 
wither fast…

CHAPTER TWENTY

As the time for our departure drew close, my head full of streets, 
battlefields, monuments, cathedrals, spring waxing like a Dravidian moon, 
heart beating wilder, dreams more proliferous, every cell in my body was 
shouting Hosanna. Mornings when, intoxicated by the fragrance of spring, 
Mrs. Skolsky threw open her windows, Sirota’s piercing voice (Reizei, 
reizei!) was already summoning me. It was no longer the old familiar Sirota
but a delirious muezzin sending forth canticles to the sun. I no longer 
cared about the meaning of his words, whether a curse or a lament; I made 
up my own. “Accept our thanks, O nameless Being divine…!” Following him 
like one of the devout, my lips moving mutely to the rhythm of his words, I
swayed to and fro, rocked on my heels, fluttered my eyelashes, splattered 
myself with ashes, scattered gems and diadems in all directions, 
genuflected, and with the last eerie notes, rose on tiptoe to fling them 
heavenward. Then, right arm raised, tip of forefinger lightly touching the 
crown of my head, I would slowly revolve about the axis of bliss, my lips 
making the sound of the jew’s harp. As from a tree shaking off its wintry 
slumber, the butterflies swarmed from my noggin crying Hosanna, Hosanna to 
the Highest! Jacob I blessed and Ezekiel, and in turn Rachel, Sarah, Ruth 
and Esther. Oh how warming, how truly heartening, was that music drifting 
through the open windows! Thank you, dear landlady, I shall remember you in
my dreams! Thank you, robin red breast, for flaming past this morning! 
Thank you, brother darkies, your day is coming! Thank you, dear Reb, I 
shall pray for you in some ruined synagogue! Thank you, early morning 
blossoms, that you should honor me with your delicate perfume! Zov, Toft, 
Giml, Biml… hear, hear, he is singing, the cantor of cantors! Praise be to 
the Lord! Glory to King David! And to Solomon resplendent in his wisdom! 
The sea opens before us, the eagles point the way. Yet another note, 
beloved cantor… a high and piercing one! Let it shatter the breastplate of 
the High Priest! Let it drown the screams of the damned!

And he did it, my wonderful, wonderful cantor cantatibus. Bless you, O 
son of Israel! Bless you!

*

“Aren’t you slightly mad this morning?”

“Yes, yes, that I am. But I could be madder. Why not? When a prisoner is 
released from his cell should he not go mad? I’ve served six lifetimes plus
thirty-five and a half years and thirteen days. Now they release me. Pray’ 
God, it is not too late!

I took her by the two hands and made a low bow, as if to begin the 
minuet.

“It was you, you who brought me the pardon. Pee on me, won’t you? It 
would be like a benediction. Oh, what a sleepwalker I have been!”

I leaned out the window and inhaled a deep draught of spring. (It was 
such a morning as Shelley would have chosen for a poem.) “Anything special 
for breakfast this morning?” I turned around to face her. “Just think—no 
more slaving, no more begging, no more cheating, no more pleading and 
coaxing. Free to walk, free to talk, free to think, free to dream. Free, 
free, free!”

“But Val dear,” came her gentle voice, “we’re not staying there forever, 
you know.”

“A day there will be like an eternity here. And how do you know how long 
or short our stay will be? Maybe war will break out; maybe we won’t be able
to return. Who knows the lot of man on earth?”

“Val, you’re making too much of it. It’s going to be a vacation, nothing 
more.”

“Not for me. For me it’s a breakthrough. I refuse to stay on parole. I’ve
served my time, I’m through here.”

I dragged her to the window. “Look! Look out there! Take a good look! 
That’s America. See those trees? See those fences? See those houses? And 
those fools hanging out the window yonder? Think I’ll miss them? Never!” I 
began to gesticulate like a half-wit. I thumbed my nose at them. “Miss you,
you dopes, you ninnies? Not this fella. Nev-err!”

“Come, Val, come sit down. Have a bit of breakfast.” She led me to the 
table.

“Okay then, breakfast! This morning I’d like a slice of watermelon, the 
left wing of a turkey, a bit of possum and some good old-fashioned com 
pone. Father Abraham’s done ‘mancipated me. Ise nevah goin’ back to 
Carolina. Father Abraham done freed us all. Hallelujah!”

“What’s more,” I said, resuming my own natural white trash voice, “I’m 
done writing novels. I’m a member elect of the wild duck family. I’m going 
to chronicle my hard-earned misery and play it off-tune—in the upper 
partials. How do you like that?”

She deposited two soft-boiled eggs in front of me, a piece of toast and 
some jam. “Coffee in a minute, dear. Keep talking!”

“You call it talk, eh? Listen, do we still have that Poeme d’Extase? Put 
it on, if you can find it. Put it on loud. His music sounds like I 
think—sometimes. Has that far-off cosmic itch. Divinely fouled up. All fire
and air. The first time I heard it I played it over and over. Couldn’t shut
It off. It was like a bath of ice, cocaine and rainbows. For weeks I went 
about in a trance. Something had happened to me. Now this sounds crazy, but
it’s true. Every time a thought seized me a little door would open inside 
my chest, and there, in his comfy little nest, sat a bird, the sweetest, 
gentlest bird imaginable. Think it out!’ he would chirp. Think it out to 
the end!’ And I would, by God. Never any effort involved. Like an etude 
gliding off a glacier… ” As I was sopping up the soft-boiled eggs a 
peculiar smile hovered about my lips.

“What is it?” she said. “What now, my crazy one?”

“Horses. That’s what I’m thinking. I wish we were going to Russia first. 
You remember Gogol and the troika? You don’t suppose he could have written 
that passage if Russia was motorized, do you? He was talking horses. 
Stallions, that’s what they were. A horse travels like wind. A horse flies.
A spirited horse, anyway. How would Homer have rushed the gods back and 
forth without those fiery steeds he made use of? Can you imagine him 
maneuvering those quarrelsome divinities in a Rolls Royce? To whip up 
ecstasy… and that brings me back to Scriabin… you didn’t find it, eh?… 
you’ve got to make use of cosmic ingredients. Besides arms, legs, hooves, 
claws, fangs, marrow and grit you’ve got to throw in the equinoctial 
precessions, the ebb and flow of tide, the conjunctions of sun, moon and 
planets, and the ravings of the insane. Besides rainbows, comets and the 
Northern lights you’ve got to have eclipses, sun spots, plagues, miracles… 
all sorts of things, including fools, magicians, witches, leprechauns, Jack
the Rippers, lecherous priests, jaded monarchs, saintly saints… but not 
motor cars, not refrigerators, not washing machines, not tanks, not 
telegraph poles.”

Such a beautiful spring morning. Did I mention Shelley? Too good for his 
likes. Or for Keats or Wordsworth. A Jacob Boehme morning, nothing less. No
flies yet, no mosquitoes. Not even a cockroach in sight. Splendid. Just 
splendid. (If only she would find that Scriabin record!) Must have been a 
morning like this that Joan of Arc passed through Chinon on her way to the 
king. Rabelais, unfortunately, was not yet born, else he might have 
glimpsed her from his cradle near the window. Ah, that heavenly view which 
his window commanded! Yes, even if MacGregor were to suddenly appear I 
could not fall from grace. I would sit him down and tell him of Masaccio or
of the Vita Nuova. I might even read from Shakespeare, on a frangipanic 
morning like this. From the sonnets, not the plays.

A vacation, she called it. The word bothered me. She might as well have 
said coitus interruptus.

(Must remember to get the addresses of her relatives in Vienna and 
Roumania.)

*

There was nothing to keep me chained indoors any longer. The novel was 
finished, the money was in the bank, the trunk was packed, the passports 
were in order, the Angel of Mercy was guarding the tomb. And the wild 
stallions of Gogol were still racing like the wind.

Lead on, O kindly light!

“Why don’t you take in a show?” she said, as I was making for the door.

“Maybe I will,” I replied. “Don’t hatch any eggs till I get back.”

On the impulse, I decided to say hello to Reb. It might be the last time 
I’d ever set foot in that ghastly place of his. (It was, too.) Passing the 
newsstand at the corner I bought a paper and left a fifty cent piece in the
tin cup. That was to make up for the nickels and dimes I had swiped from 
the blind newsie at Borough Hall. It felt good, even though I had deposited
it in the wrong man’s cup. I gave myself a sock in the kishkas for good 
measure.

Reb was in the back of the store, sweeping up. “Well, well, look who’s 
here!” he shouted.

“What a morning, eh? Doesn’t it make you feel like breaking out?”

“What are you up to?” he said, putting the broom aside. “Haven’t the 
faintest idea, Reb. Just wanted to say hello to you.”

“You wouldn’t want to go for a spin, would you?”

“I would, if you had a tandem. Or a pair of fast horses. No, not today. 
It’s a day for walking, not riding.” I pulled my elbows in, arched my neck,
and trotted to the door and back. “See-, they’ll carry me far, these legs. 
No need to do ninety or a hundred.”

“You seem to be in a good mood,” he said. “Soon you’ll be walking the 
streets of Paris.”

“Paris, Vienna, Prague, Budapest… maybe Warsaw, Moscow, Odessa. Who 
knows?”

“Miller, I envy you.”

Brief pause.

“I say, why don’t you visit Maxim Gorky while you’re over there?”

“Is Gorky still alive?”

“Sure he is. And I’ll tell you another man you ought to look up, though 
he may be dead by now.”

“Who’s that?”

“Henri Barbusse.”

“I’d sure like to, Reb, but you know me… I’m timid. Besides, what excuse 
would I have for busting in on them?”

“Excuse?” he shouted. “Why they’d be delighted to know you.”

“Reb, you have an exalted opinion of me.”

“Nonsense! They’d greet you with open arms.”

“Okay, I’ll keep it in the back of my noodle. I’m toddling along now. 
Paying my last respects to the dead. So long!”

A few doors distant a radio was blaring away. It was a commercial 
advertising “Last Supper” tablecloths, only two dollars a pair.

My way lay along Myrtle Avenue. Dreary, weary, flea-bitten Myrtle Avenue 
striped down the middle with a rusty Elevated line. Through the ties and 
the iron girders the sun was pouring shafts of golden light. No longer a 
prisoner, the street assumed another aspect. I was a tourist now, with time
on my hands and a curious eye for everything. Gone the atrabilious fiend 
listing to starboard with the weight of his ennui. In front of the bakery 
where O’Mara and I once lapped up egg drop soup I paused a moment to 
inspect the show window, protected by the same old wrapping paper. It was a
German bakery, of course. (Tante Melia always spoke affectionately of the 
Kondittorei she visited in Bremen and Hamburg. Affectionately, I say, 
because she made little distinction between pastry and other kindhearted 
beings.) No, it wasn’t such a god-awful street after all. Not if you were a
visitor from that far-off planet, Pluto.

Moving along, I thought of the Buddenbrooks family and then of Tonio 
Kruger. Dear old Thomas Mann. Such a marvelous craftsman. (I should have 
bought a piece of Streuselkuchen!) Yes, in the photos I’d seen of him he 
looked a bit like a storekeeper. I could visualize him writing his Novellen
in the back of a delicatessen store, with a yard of linked sausages wrapped
around his neck. What he would have made of Myrtle Avenue! Call on Gorky 
while you’re at it. Wasn’t that fantastic? Easier far to obtain an audience
with the King of Bulgaria. If there were any calls to be made I had the man
already picked: Elie Faure. How would he take it, I wonder, if I asked to 
kiss his hand?

A streetcar rattled by. I caught a glimpse of the motorman’s flowing 
mustache as it rushed by. Presto! The name leaped to mind like a flash. 
Knut Hamsun.

Think of it, the novelist who finally earns the Nobel Prize operating a 
streetcar in this God-forsaken land! Where was it again—Chicago? Yeah, 
Chicago. And then he returns to Norway and writes Hunger. Or was it Hunger 
first and then the motorman’s job? Anyway, he never produced a dud.

I noticed a bench at the curb. (Most unusual thing.) Like the angel 
Gabriel, I lowered my ass. Ouf! What was the sense in walking one’s legs 
off? I leaned back and opened my mouth wide to drink in the solar rays. How
are you f I said, meaning America, the whole bloody works. Strange country,
isn’t it? Notice the birds? They look seedy, droopy, eh what?

I closed my eyes, not to snooze but to summon the image of the ancestral 
home carved out of the Middle Ages. How charming, how delightful it looked,
this forgotten village! A labyrinth of walled streets with canals running 
serpent-wise; statues (of musicians only), malls, fountains, squares and 
triangles; every lane led to the hub where the quaint house of worship with
its delicate spires stood. Everything moving at a snail’s pace. Swans 
floating on the still surface of the lake; pigeons cooing in the belfry of 
the church; awnings striped like pantaloons, shading the tesselated 
terraces. So utterly peaceful, so idyllic, so dreamlike!

I rubbed my eyes. Now where on earth had I dug that up? Was it Buxtehude,
perhaps? (The way my grandfather pronounced the word I always took it for a
place, not a man.) “Don’t let him read too much, it’s bad for his eyes.”

Seated at the edge of his work bench, where he sat with legs doubled up, 
making coats for Isaac Walker’s menagerie of fine gentlemen, I read aloud 
to him from Hans Christian Andersen.

“Put the book away now,” he says gently. “Go out and play.”

I go down to the back yard and, having nothing more interesting to do, I 
peek between the slats of the wooden fence which separated our property 
from the smoke house. Rows and rows of stiff, blackened fish greet my eyes.
The pungent, acrid odor is almost overpowering. They’re hanging by the 
gills, these rigid, frightened fish; their popping eyes gleam in the dark 
like wet jewels.

Returning to my grandfather’s bench, I ask him why dead things are always
so stiff. And he answers: “Because there’s no joy in them any more.”

“Why did you leave Germany?” I ask.

“Because I didn’t want to be a soldier.”

“I would like to be a soldier,” I said.

“Wait,” he said, “wait till the bullets fly.”

He hums a little tune while he sews. “Shoo fly, don’t bother me!”

“What are you going to be when you grow up? A tailor, like your father?”

“I want to be a sailor,” I reply promptly. “I want to see the world.”

“Then don’t read so much. You’ll need good eyes if you’re going to be a 
sailor.”

“Yes, Grosspapa!” (That’s how we called him.) “Goodbye, Grosspapa.”

I remember the way he eyed me as I walked to the door. A quizzical look, 
it was. What was he thinking? That I’d never make a sailor man?

Further retrospection was broken by the approach of a most seedy-looking 
bum with hand outstretched. Could I spare a dime, he wanted to know.

“Sure,” I said. “I can spare a lot more, if you need it.”

He took a seat beside me. He was shaking as if he had the palsy. I 
offered him a cigarette and lit it for him.

“Wouldn’t a dollar be better than a dime?” I said.

He gave me a weird look, like a horse about to shy. “What is it?” he 
said. “What’s the deal?”

I lit myself a cigarette, stretched my legs full length, and slowly, as 
if deciphering a bill of lading, I replied: “When a man is about to make a 
journey to foreign lands, there to eat and drink his fill, to wander as he 
pleases and to wonder, what’s a dollar more or less? Another shot of rye is
what you want, I take it. As for me, what I would like is to be able to 
speak French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, possibly a little Arabic, too. If 
I had my choice, I’d sail this minute. But that’s not for you to worry 
about. Look, I can offer you a dollar, two dollars, five dollars. Five’s 
the maximum—unless the banshees are after you. What say? You don’t have to 
sing any hymns, either… ” He acted jumpy-like. Edged away from me 
instinctively, as if I were bad medicine.

“Mister,” he said, “all I need is a quarter… two bits. That’ll do. And 
I’ll thank you kindly.”

Half rising to his feet, he held out his palm.

“Don’t be in a hurry,” I begged. “A quarter, you say. What good is a 
quarter? What can you buy for that? Why do things halfway? It’s not 
American. Why not get yourself a flask of rotgut? And a shave and haircut, 
too? Anything but a Rolls Royce. I told you, five’s the maximum. Just say 
the word.”

“Honest, mister, I don’t need that much.”

“You do too. How can you talk that way? You need lots and lots of 
things—food, sleep, soap and water, more booze… “

“Two bits, that’s all I want, mister.”

I fished out a quarter and placed it in his palm. “Okay,” I said, “if 
that’s the way you want it.”

He was trembling so that the coin slipped out of his hand and rolled into
the gutter. As he bent over to pick it up I pulled him back.

“Let it stay there,” I said. “Some one may come along and find it. Good 
luck, you know. Here, here’s another. Hold on to it now!”

He got up, his eyes riveted to the coin in the gutter. “Can I have that 
one too, mister?”

“Of course you can. But then, what about the other fellow?”

“What other fellow?”

“Any old fellow. What’s the difference?”

I held him by the sleeve. “Hold on a minute, I’ve got a better idea. 
Leave that quarter where it is and I’ll give you a bill instead. You don’t 
mind taking a dollar, do you?” I pulled a roll out of my trousers pocket 
and extracted a dollar bill. “Before you convert this into more poison,” I 
said, closing his fist over it, “listen to this, it’s a real good thought. 
Imagine, if you can, that it’s tomorrow and that you’re passing this same 
spot, wondering who’ll give you a dime. I won’t be here, you see. I’ll be 
on the lie de France. Now then, your throat’s parched and all that, and who
comes along but a well-dressed guy with nothing to do—like me—and he flops 
down… right here on this same bench. Now what do you do? You go up to him, 
same as always, and you say—‘Spare a dime, mister?’ And he’ll shake his 
head. No! Now then, here’s the surprise, here’s the thought I had for you. 
Don’t run away with your tail between your legs. Stand firm and smile… a 
kindly smile. Then say: ‘Mister, I was only joking. I don’t need no dime. 
Here’s a buck for you, and may God protect you always!’ See? Won’t that be 
jolly?”

In a panic he clutched the bill which I held in my fingers and struggled 
free of my grip.

“Mister,” he said, backing away, “you’re nuts. Plain nuts.”

He turned and hurried off. A few yards away he stopped, faced about. 
Waving his fist at me and grimacing like a loon, he shouted at the top of 
his lungs: “You crazy bugger! You dirty cocksucker! Piss on you, you goon!”
He waved the bill in the air, made a few dirty faces, stuck his tongue out,
then took to his heels.

“There you are,” I said to myself. “Couldn’t take a little joke. Had I 
offered him six bits and said ‘Now try to imitate a stench trap in a soil 
pipe,’ he would have been grateful.” I reached down and salvaged the 
quarter that was in the gutter. “Now he’ll really get a surprise,” I 
murmured, placing the coin on the bench.

I opened the newspaper, turned to the theater section, and scanned the 
bill of fare. Nothing to rave about at the Palace. The movies? Same old 
chili con carne. The burlesque? Closed for repairs.

What a city! There were the museums and the art galleries, of course. And
the Aquarium. If I were a bum, now, and some one handed me a thousand 
dollar bill by mistake, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

Such a wonderful day, too. The sun was eating into me like a million moth
balls. A millionaire in a world where money was worthless.

I tried to summon a pleasant thought. I tried to think of America as a 
place I had only heard about.

“Open, in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!”

And it opened like the door of a hidden vault. There it was, America: the
Garden of the Gods, the Grand Canyon of Arizona, the Great Smokies, the 
Painted Desert, Mesa Verde, the Mojave Desert, the Klondike, the Great 
Divide, the Wabash far away, the great Serpent Mound, the Valley of the 
Moon, the Great Salt Lake, the Monongahela, the Ozarks, the Mother Lode 
country, the blue grass of Kentucky, the bayous of Louisiana, the Bad Lands
of Dakota, Sing Sing, Walla Walla, Ponce de Leon, Oraibi, Jesse James, the 
Alamo, the Everglades, the Okefinokee, the Pony Express, Gettysburg, Mt. 
Shasta, the Tehachipis, Fort Ticonderoga.

It’s the day after tomorrow and I’m standing at the taffrail aboard the 
S. S. Buford… I mean the He de France. (I forgot, I’m not being deported, 
I’m going to have a holiday abroad.) For a moment I thought I was that 
beloved anarchist, Emma Goldman, who, as she was approaching the land of 
exile, is reported to have said: “I long for the land (America) that has 
made me suffer. Have I not also known love and joy there…?” She too had 
come in search of freedom, like many another. Had it not been opened, this 
blessed land of freedom, for every one to enjoy? (With the exception, to be
sure, of the redskins, the blackskins, the yellowbellies of Asia.) It was 
in this spirit my Grosspapas and my Grossmamas had come. The long voyage 
home. .Windjammers. Ninety days at sea, with dysentery, beri-beri, crabs, 
lice, rabies, yellow jaundice, malaria, katzenjammer, and other ocean-going
delights. They had found life good here in America, my forbears, though in 
the struggle to keep the body and soul together they had fallen apart 
before their time. (Still, their graves are in good condition.) They had 
come decades after Ethan Allen had forced Ticonderoga open in the name of 
the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress. To be exact, they had come 
just in time to witness the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Other 
assassinations were to follow—but of lesser figures. And we have survived, 
we crap shooters.

The boat will be pulling out soon. Time to say good-bye. Will I too miss 
this land that has made me suffer so? I answered that question before. 
Nevertheless, I do want to say good-bye to those who once meant something 
to me. What am I saying? Who still mean something! Step forward, won’t you,
and let me shake you by the hand. Come comrades, a last handshake!

Up comes William F. Cody, the first in line. Dear Buffalo Bill, what an 
ignominious end we reserved for you! Goodbye, Mr. Cody, and Godspeed! And 
is this Jesse James? Goodbye, Jesse James, you were tops! Goodbye you 
Tuscaroras, you Navajos and Apaches! Goodbye, you valiant, peace-loving 
Hopis! And this distinguished, olive-skinned gentleman with the goatee, can
it be W. E. Burghardt Dubios, the very soul of black folk? Goodbye, dear, 
honored Sir, what a noble champion you have been! And you there, Al 
Jennings, once of the Ohio Penitentiary, greetings! and may you walk 
through the shadows with some greater soul than O’Henry! Goodbye, John 
Brown, and bless you for your rare, high courage! Goodbye, dear old Walt! 
There will never be another singer like you in all the land. Goodbye, 
Martin Eden, good-bye, Uncas, good-bye, David Copperfield! Goodbye John 
Barleycorn, and say hello to Jack! Goodbye, you six-day bike riders… I’ll 
be pacing you in hell! Goodbye Jim Londos, you staunch little Hercules! 
Goodbye, dear Oscar Hammerstein, Goodbye, Gatti-Cassazza! And you too, 
Rudolf Friml! Goodbye now, you. members of the Xerxes Society! Fratres 
Semper! Goodbye, Elsie Janis! Goodbye, John L. and Gentleman Jim! Goodbye, 
old Kentucky! Goodbye, old Shamrock! Goodbye, Montezuma, last great 
sovereign of the old New World! Goodbye, Sherlock Holmes! Goodbye, Houdini!
Goodbye, you wobblies and all saboteurs of progress! Goodbye, Mr. Sacco, 
good-bye, Mr. Vanzetti! Forgive us our sins! Goodbye, Minnehaha, good-bye, 
Hiawatha! Goodbye, dear Pocahontas! Goodbye, you trail blazers, good-bye to
Wells Fargo and all that! Goodbye, Walden Pond! Goodbye, you Cherokees and 
Seminoles! Goodbye, you Mississippi steamboats! Goodbye, Tomashevsky! 
Goodbye, P. T. Barnum! Goodbye, Herald Square! Goodbye, Oh Fountain of 
Youth! Goodbye, Daniel Boone! Goodbye, Grosspapa! Goodbye, Street of Early 
Sorrows, and may I never set eyes on you again! Goodbye, everybody… 
good-bye now! Keep the aspidistra flying!


THE END
