Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

  From the bike performance we generally moved into the clown and tumbling act. At this point Walker would be summoned. Walker was a good head taller than I, and when he put them on his shoulders and started trotting and bucking they were in seventh heaven. When Walker had had enough of it, I would get down on the floor and engage them in the snake act. This meant squirming and struggling, with one on top and the other below, until someone got flattened. It had no other purpose than to use up energy quickly. To get a breather, I would suggest we roll dice or shoot marbles. We played dice for pennies, for chips, for buttons and for matches. They were on the way to becoming real good crap-shooters, I must say. When that gig was up, Walker or I would play the clown.

  The act they loved the most was an imitation of Red Skelton advertising some famous brand of beer and getting drunk in the process. Red Skelton had been to the house some months before and he had put on this skit as the crowning touch to a long and most hilarious afternoon. The kids had not forgotten it. Never would. Nor I either…. To do it properly, one has to have a suit of old clothes and a battered slouch hat, preferably a size too big. The reason is simple. Aside from the beer which one has to guzzle, and which must trickle freely over one’s chin, throat and chest, there comes a fall at the end which, taken on a floor slippery with beer and pieces of bread and cheese, plays havoc with one’s clothes. (Oddly enough, what my kids remember most vividly about that afternoon when Skelton came is the fact that he himself, he, the great Red Skelton, had insisted on mopping up the mess he made!) Anyway, as all television fans know, it’s a sloppy, goofy, hiccoughing, sidesplitting performance. Anything goes, so long as you keep on guzzling, spilling the beer, sticking bread into your eyes and ears, and rocking back and forth on your heels. Sometimes I actually felt drunk after giving one of these imitations. The kids would get even drunker. Just watching, I mean. At the end we would all be flopping around like double-jointed crowbars. If I happened now and then to slide under the bed, I would lie there as long as possible, to recuperate.

  Then dinner. Time for a general cleanup. Had a visitor walked in at this hour he would have thought himself in a lunatic asylum. For one thing, we had to work fast. Because, when Walker starts cooking, he cooks like lightning. Every evening he would cook a full course meal, beginning with soup and salad and including meat, potatoes, gravy, vegetables, biscuits and pie or custard pudding.

  Of course everyone was famished by dinnertime. What objects we had failed to allocate during the cleaning up period we left on the floor—for later. Later meant after the kids had retired for the night, when, so to speak, there was nothing more to do. It was only a half-hour’s work, this mopping up. A pleasant fillip to a gruelling day. Bending, stooping, sorting, wiping, disentangling, arranging and rearranging—child’s play, you might say. I used to think how lucky I was that we had no pets to take care of, no livestock in the house, no bird cages to clean out.

  A word about the meals. … To me they were delicious. Every day I blessed Walker for being the excellent cook he was. Not the kids, however! Hungry though they were, it was not the sort of cooking they had been used to. One didn’t like gravy, the other didn’t like fat. “I hate Brussels sprouts,” Tony would say. “I can’t eat macaroni any more, it makes me vomit.” This from Val. It took days to discover, by the trial and error system, what they did like, what they would eat. Even pie and puddings were no longer to their taste. They wanted jello.

  Walker was not only at his wit’s end but plumb disgusted. From a chef he had been reduced to a short-order cook. I did nothing but apologize for their behavior throughout the meal. Often I was driven to assume the ridiculous role of the anxious parent who feels that his only recourse is to plead with the child, beg it to try this, taste that—just a weeny, teeny little bit! Spearing a piece of juicy roast pork with a succulent rim of fat around it, spearing it from Tony’s plate, I would hold it a few inches from my mouth a moment, admire it, examine it, make clucking sounds with tongue and palate, dribble a bit into the bargain, then, just before gobbling it, say: “Ooooooh! How delicious! Ooooooh! you don’t know what you’re missing!” All to no effect, naturally.

  “It stinks!” he would say. Or, “It makes me puke!”

  And then with a sigh, the sigh of a weary grande dame, Val would push her plate aside and in a languid, bored tone inquire what the nature of the dessert might be this evening.

  “Jello, my dear!” I would say, putting all the venom and sarcasm into my voice that I could command.

  “Jello? I’m sick of that stuff.”

  “O.K. How about frogs’ nests then? Or a bowl of rusty nails with sliced cucumbers on the side? Listen, kid, tomorrow we’re having pea soup with finnan haddie and smoked oysters. And you’re going to like it!”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yes, and don’t throw that crust of bread to the birds either! We’re serving it up for breakfast tomorrow morning, sprinkled with honey, mustard and garlic sauce. I know you love mustard. Did I ever tell you, my finicky little sweetheart, that when bread gets old enough, moldy enough, it breeds worms? And out of little worms come tapeworms. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” (Brief pause, to observe effect.) “Do you remember that restaurant I once told you about … on the rue de la Gaîeté … where I used to go for snails? It was a smelly old place but everything tasted good there. If you didn’t like the food, they threw you out on your….”

  “Oh, Daddy, cut it out! We don’t want to listen to that stuff.”

  From Tony: “Daddy, you’re not talking right. You don’t mean it, do you?”

  “I do too mean it, Tony me boy. I’m just working into it. You kids talk puke and vomit; I talk snails and turtle soup. Get me?”

  Val, sort of haughtily: “We don’t like that kind of talk, Daddy. Mommy never talks that way….”

  “That’s what’s the matter. …” I check myself just in time. (Ahoy, mate! Up with the jib!) “What was I saying now? Oh yeah, about the mock turtle. There are three kinds of turtle, you know: the mock, the hard shell, and the Ojibway….”

  “Daddy, you’re drunk!”

  “I am not drunk neither!” (I sure would like to have been.) “No, I’m just feeling feisty. That’s a new one for you. Wrap it up, it’s yours for the asking.”

  “Aw, shit!” says Tony.

  (Now where in the world could he have picked up a word like that?)

  “You mean caca, don’t you, son? Or manure?”

  “I said shit,” says Tony.

  “And I say caca-pipi head!”

  “And I say you’re goofy,” says Val.

  “Good, now we can start all over again. But how about a piece of pie first … with some nice Yogurt smeared over it? I say now, did you ever have a go at limburger? No? Well, you’ve got a treat in store for you…. Walker, why don’t you bring us home some limburger next time you go to town? Or Liederkranz … the soft, runny kind…. Now if you’ll all join me in a piece of pie I’ll have another cut of salami and a swig of Haig and Haig. How’s that?”

  (Delivering this little spiel, a most bizarre thought entered my head. What if, when the divorce proceedings came up, I were to hand the judge a stenographic copy of these post-prandial divertissements? Wouldn’t that be a stunner?)

  A lull. I’m holding my head in my hands, doing my damndest to keep my eyes open. Walker’s already washing the dishes, scraping the pans. I ought to make an effort to toss the garbage, but I’m glued to the chair. I look at the kids. They have that groggy look of a pug trying to fall into a clinch after a swift one in the guts.

  “You gotta read us a story, Daddy.”

  “The hell I do.”

  “You promised.”

  “I did not neither.”

  “If you don’t read us a story we won’t go to sleep.”

  “Ich gebibble.”

  To jerk them out of it I make a reference to the frying pan. “How would you like me to conk you with that?”

  A few more pippa passes an
d I’ve got them as far as the bathroom. I’ve cajoled them into washing their faces, but not into brushing their teeth.

  What an ordeal that was—getting them to brush their teeth! I’d sooner drink a pint of Sloan’s Liniment than go through that routine again. And, despite all the bloody fussing and fuming at the wash basin, today they’ve got cavities galore. The wonder is that I, the taskmaster, haven’t got chronic laryngitis, what with all the coaxing, pleading, wheedling and threatening I indulged in.

  One fine day Walker lost his temper. The incident made a deep impression on me. I had never believed it possible for Walker to say so much as a cross word. He was always calm, amiable, yielding, and as for patience, well, he had the patience of a saint. With dangerous psychopaths Walker could hold his own. As an attendant in lunatic asylums he had kept things under control without ever resorting to strap, club or truncheon.

  But the kids had found his Achilles heel.

  It was in the middle of a long, exasperating morning when he exploded. I was indoors puttering around when he called me out. “You’ve got to do something,” he yelled, his face red as a beet. “These kids are completely out of hand.”

  I didn’t even ask what they had done. I knew that he had taken more than his share right from the start. I didn’t even try to apologize. I felt thoroughly humiliated, and absolutely desperate. To see Walker in such a state was the last straw.

  That evening, after the kids were out of the way, he talked to me quietly and soberly. He made it clear that I was not only punishing myself but the kids as well. He talked not only as a friend but also as an analyst might talk to a patient. In the course of his talk he opened my eyes to a twist in the situation which I had been blind to. He said that I should endeavor to find out—for my own good—whether my desire to keep the children was based on love for them and concern for their welfare or on a hidden desire to punish my wife.

  “You’re not getting anywhere this way,” he said. He spoke so gently and reasonably. “I came here to help you. If you insist on going through with it, I won’t desert you. But how long can you hold out? You’re a bundle of nerves now. Frankly, Henry, you’re licked—but you won’t admit it to yourself.”

  Walker’s words had their effect. I slept on it, thought it over another twenty-four hours, then announced the decision.

  “Walker,” I said, “I’m throwing in the sponge. You’re right. I’ll send her a wire to come and fetch them.”

  She came immediately. Relieved as I was, I was nevertheless heartbroken. And with the dull ache came exhaustion and loss of spirits. The place now seemed like a morgue to me. A dozen times a night I would wake with a start, thinking that they were calling me. There is no emptiness like the emptiness of a home which your children have flown. It was worse than death. And yet it had to be.

  Did it, though? Did I really try hard enough? Couldn’t I have been more flexible, more ingenious, more inventive, more this, more that? I made myself the most bitter accusations. I was a fool to have listened to Walker, wise and well meaning though he had been. He had caught me in a moment of weakness. Another day and I would have had the courage and the will to resist his suggestion. Though I couldn’t deny the truth of his words, I would nevertheless say to myself: “But he’s not a father! He doesn’t know what it means to be a father.”

  Wherever I strayed I stumbled over something that they had dropped and forgotten. There were toys everywhere, despite all that my wife had carted with her. And tops and marbles. And spoons and dishes. Each little object brought the tears to my eyes. With each passing hour I wondered aloud what they were doing. Did they like their new school? (Tony was being put in a nursery school.) Had they found new playmates? Did they fight as much as ever, or were they too despondent now to think of fighting? Every day I had the impulse to go down the road and telephone them, but I resisted the urge for fear of upsetting them. I tried to resume the writing, but I had no thoughts except for them. If I took a walk, hoping to shake off my black thoughts, I was reminded at every turn of some little incident, some escapade, we had shared together.

  Yes, I missed them. I missed them like sin. I missed them the more for all the difficulties we had gone through together. Now there was only Walker. And what good was I to Walker, or he to me? I wanted to be alone with my grief, my bereavement. I wanted to go up into the hills and bellow like a wounded bull. I had been a husband, I had been a father, I had been a mother—and a governess and a playmate and a fool and an idiot. Now I was nothing, not even a clown. As for being a writer, I wanted no more of it. What could I possibly say that would be of interest or of value to anyone? The mainspring was broken, the clock had stopped. If only a miracle would happen! But I couldn’t think of any solution that would have the remedial virtues of a miracle. I would have to learn to live again as if nothing had happened. But if you love your children you can’t learn to live that way. You wouldn’t want to live that way.

  Life, however, says: “You must!”

  I went back to the bathroom, as I had the morning they left, and I wept like a madman. I wept and sobbed and screamed and cursed. I carried on like that until there wasn’t another drop of anguish left in me. Until I was like a crumpled, empty sack.

  11.

  Ephraim Doner is the father of that little genius, Tasha. I have been wanting to say something about him ever since I began this potpourri.

  This is a testimonial, long-deferred, in the key of Ut-mineur. I began it, to be truthful, many months ago, while sitting for a portrait he did of me on rising from my bed of sorrow.

  Some believe that the man and the artist are one; others hold a different view. No doubt it depends on who you are as to whom you meet and what you find of perfection or imperfection in the one you meet.

  And, let me ask before we start—can you put together what has been torn asunder?

  There are times, I must say, when I see in Doner only the father, or only the friend. There are times when I see in him the artist and nothing but the artist. Usually I see all the ninety-eight elements of which he is composed, and I see them combined to a degree which is not only exciting but inspiring. For when he is at par, this incredible Ephraim, he is the apotheosis of the one and only: man in the image of the Creator. When I see him thus I feel like weeping. And I do weep occasionally—a tender, affectionate weep, dans les coulisses, so to speak.

  What is it about the man that moves me so at times? The fact, or the realization of the fact, that he neglects absolutely nothing. Or, to put it positively, that he shows concern, genuine concern, for everybody and everything.

  Every time I take leave of him the word ritual comes to my mind. For there is something about this loving concern which he manifests, something of awareness in it, perhaps, which lends to all his actions the flavor of ritual observance. As soon as I think in this wise I perceive why it is I am always so happy in his company. I know then that every act of Doner’s is a demonstration of the truth, as Eric Gutkind puts it, that the supreme gift which life offers us is the chance to know eternal life. To put it more mundanely, when Doner adds a little seasoning to the food he serves he is putting another touch of God in it, nothing less.

  Ephraim Doner has had a hard life, and a gay one. Only the gay dog knows how to be tough, how to butter his bread with caviar, so to say, when there’s nothing but mustard to be had. Concerning his struggle to live the life of an artist, Doner has a thousand and one stories up his sleeve. The best one is the one about sleeping with the donkey—in Cagnes-sur-Mer. All his stories are variations on a single theme, to wit, that to become an artist one must first be an artist. No one is born an artist. One elects for it! And when you elect to be the first and last among men you find nothing strange about sleeping with a donkey, putting your paws in the garbage pail, or swallowing reproaches and insults from all the near and dear ones who regard your way of life as a grave mistake.

  I believe it was Santayana who wrote at length about “the good life.” What he said I am still ignoran
t of, because I am congenitally incapable of reading Santayana. I do know, however, what is meant by the good life, and why the artist’s life is a preparation for the good life. The reason, in a word, is this: the good life is the holy life. (Wholly living, wholly dying.) It is the kind of life in which you do your utmost every day, not for art, not for country, not for family, not for yourself even, but because it’s the only thing to do. Life is being, which includes doing and not doing. Art is making. To be a poet of life, though artists seldom realize it, is the summum. To breathe out more than one breathes in. To walk two miles when asked to walk one. Thus to honor, obey and worship the Creator. “The full Name over the full world,” as Gutkind says. This the poet of life heralds every day of his life.

  To divagate…. When I ask Maître Ephraim, as I fondly call him, whether I should learn to do precipitations (in the water-color medium) by the technical route or by the intuitive-experimental method, he answers: “Use more parsley!” Now there is good reason why parsley—“more parsley”—constitutes a full and just answer. Parsley, as everyone knows, is an herb. The herb, like the ritual, has been sadly neglected in our progressive, work-a-day world. Though the herbs belong to the vegetable kingdom, they are nearer to the mineral than the animal kingdom. Which is to say that, as an enclave, they also form a hegemony. They are autonomous and autochthonous. Wholly aside from these attributes, they possess an elixir which is a source of health and vitality. A sprig of parsley, consequently, has the same inspirational quality for the devout water-colorist as does the shamrock for the Irish bard.