Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

  “Step outside a moment, won’t you?” I begged. I spoke quietly, gently, soothingly. “Look out there … look at that ocean! Look at the sky!” I pointed to the flowers which were in bloom. A hummingbird had just made as if to alight on the rose bush in front of us. All its motors were whirring. “Regardez-moi ça!” I exclaimed. I allowed a due pause. Then, in a very even tone of voice I said: “When a man has all this, can he not write just as well on toilet paper if he has to?”

  It registered.

  “Mon vieux,” he began, “I hope you don’t think I am exigent….”

  “I do indeed,” said I.

  “You must forgive me. I’m sorry. Nobody could be more grateful than I for all you have done.”

  “My dear Moricand, I am not asking for gratitude. I’m asking for a little common sense.” (I wanted to say “horse sense” but couldn’t think of the equivalent in French immediately.) “Even if we had no paper at all I would expect you to be happy. You’re a free man now, do you realize that? Why, god-damn it, you’re better off than I am! Look, let’s not spoil all this”—I gestured loosely toward the sky, the ocean, the birds of the air, the green hills—“let’s not spoil all this with talk of paper, cigarettes, talcum powder and such nonsense. What we should be talking about is—God.”

  He was crestfallen. I felt like apologizing then and there, but I didn’t. Instead I strode off in the direction of the forest. In the cool depths I sat down beside a pool and proceeded to give myself what the French call an examen de conscience. I tried to reverse the picture, put myself in his boots, look at myself through his eyes. I didn’t get very far, I must confess. Somehow, I just could not put myself in his boots.

  “Had my name been Moricand,” said I softly to myself, “I would have killed myself long ago.”

  In one respect he was an ideal house guest—he kept to himself most of the day. Apart from meal times, he remained in his room almost the entire day, reading, writing, perhaps meditating too. I worked in the studio-garage just above him. At first the sound of my typewriter going full blast bothered him. It was like the rat-a-tat-tat of a machine gun in his ears. But gradually he got used to it, even found it stimulating, he said. At lunch and dinner he relaxed. Being so much on his own, he seized these occasions to engage us in conversation. He was the kind of talker it is difficult to disengage once he has sunk his hooks into you. Lunch times I would often pull myself away abruptly, leaving him to work it out as best he could with my wife. Time is the one thing I regard as precious. If I had to waste time, I preferred to waste it in taking a nap rather than in listening to my friend Moricand.

  Dinner was another matter. It was hard to find an excuse for terminating these sessions at my own time. It would have been a pleasure to glance at a book after dinner, since there was never any time for reading during the day, but I never got the chance. Once we were seated for the evening meal we were in for it till he had exhausted himself. Naturally, our conversations were all in French. Moricand had intended to learn a little English but after a few attempts gave it up. It was not a “sympathetic” language to him. It was even worse than German, he thought. Fortunately, my wife spoke some French and understood a lot more, but not enough to follow a man with Moricand’s gift of speech. I couldn’t always follow him myself. Every now and then I would have to halt the flow, ask him to repeat what he had just said in simpler language, then translate it for my wife. Now and then I would forget myself and give him a spate of English, soon arrested of course by his blank look. To translate these bursts was like sweating out a cold. If, as frequently happened, I had to explain something to my wife in English, he would pretend that he understood. She would do the same when he conveyed something confidential to me in French. Thus it happened that often the three of us were talking three different subjects, nodding, agreeing with one another, saying Yes when we meant No, and so on, until the confusion became so great that we all threw up our hands simultaneously. Then we would begin all over, sentence by sentence, thought by thought, as if struggling to cement a piece of string.

  Nevertheless, and despite all frustration, we managed to understand one another exceedingly well. Usually it was only in the long, overembroidered monologue that we lost him. Even then, astray in the complicated web of a long-drawn-out story or a windy explanation of some hermeneutic point, it was a pleasure to listen to him. Sometimes I would deliberately let go my attention, facilitate the process of getting lost, in order to better enjoy the music of his words. At his best he was a one man orchestra.

  It made no difference, when he was in the groove, what he chose to talk about—food, costume, ritual, pyramids, Trismegistus or Eleusinian mysteries. Any theme served as a means to exploit his virtuosity. In love with all that is subtle and intricate, he was always lucid and convincing. He had a feminine flair for preciosities, could always produce the exact timbre, shade, nuance, odor, taste. He had the suavity, velleity and mellifluousness of an enchanter. And he could put into his voice a resonance comparable in effect to the sound of a gong reverberating in the deathlike silence of a vast desert. If he spoke of Odilon Redon, for example, his language reeked of fragrant colors, of exquisite and mysterious harmonies, of alchemical vapors and imaginings, of pensive broodings and spiritual distillations too impalpable to be fixed in words but which words could evoke or suggest when marshaled in sensorial patterns. There was something of the harmonium in the use he made of his voice. It was suggestive of some intermediate region, the confluence, say, of divine and mundane streams where form and spirit interpenetrated, and which could only be conveyed musically. The gestures accompanying this music were limited and stereotyped, mostly facial movements—sinister, vulgarly accurate, diabolical when restricted to the mouth and lips, poignant, pathetic, harrowing, when concentrated in the eyes. Shudderingly effective when he moved his whole scalp. The rest of him, his body, one might say, was usually immobile, except for a slight tapping or drumming with the fingers now and then. Even his intelligence seemed to be centered in the sound box, the harmonium which was situated neither in the larynx nor in the chest but in a middle region which corresponded to the locus empyrean whence he drew his imagery.

  Staring at him abstractly in one of those fugitive moments when I caught myself wandering among the reeds and bulrushes of my own vagaries, I would find myself studying him as if through a reflector, his image changing, shifting like swift-moving cloud formations: now the sorrowful sage, now the sybil, now the grand cosmocrator, now the alchemist, now the stargazer, now the mage. Sometimes he looked Egyptian, sometimes Mongolian, sometimes Iroquois or Mohican, sometimes Chaldean, sometimes Etruscan. Often very definite figures out of the past leaped to mind, figures he either seemed to incarnate momentarily or figures he had affinities with. To wit: Montezuma, Herod, Nebuchadnezzar, Ptolemy, Balthasar, Justinian, Solon. Revelatory names, in a way. However conglomerate, in essence they served to coalesce certain elements of his nature which ordinarily defied association. He was an alloy, and a very strange one at that. Not bronze, not brass, not electrum. Rather some nameless colloidal sort of alloy such as we associate with the body when it becomes a prey to some rare disease.

  There was one image he bore deep within him, one he had created in youth and which he was never to shake off: “Gloomy Gus.” The day he showed me a photograph of himself at the age of fifteen or sixteen I was profoundly disturbed. It was almost an exact replica of my boyhood friend, Gus Schmelzer, whom I used to tease and plague beyond endurance because of his somber, morose, eternally somber and morose mien. Even at that age-perhaps earlier, who knows?—there were engraved in Moricand’s psyche all the modalities which such terms as lunar, saturnian and sepulchral evoke. One could already sense the mummy which the flesh would become. One could see the bird of ill omen perched on his left shoulder. One could feel the moonlight altering his blood, sensitizing his retina, dyeing his skin with the pallor of the prisoner, the drug addict, the dweller on forbidden planets. Knowing him, one might even visualize th
ose delicate antennae of which he was altogether too proud and on which he placed a reliance which overtaxed his intuitive muscles, so to speak. I might go further—why not?—and say that, looking deep into his sorrowful eyes, somber, simian eyes, I could see skull within skull, an endless, cavernous Golgotha illumined by the dry, cold, murderous light of a universe beyond the imaginative bounds of even the hardiest scientific dreamer.

  In the art of resuscitation he was a master. Touching anything that smacked of death, he came alive. Everything filtered through to him from the tomb in which it was buried. He had only to wave his wand to create the semblance of life. But, as with all sorcery, even the most poetic, the end was always dust and ashes. For Moricand the past was rarely a living past; it was a morgue which at best could be made to resemble a museum. Even his description of the living was but a cataloguing of museum pieces. There was no distinction in his enthusiasms between that which is and that which was. Time was his medium. A deathless medium which had no relation to life.

  It is said that Capricorns get on well together, presumably because they have so much in common. It is my own belief that there are more divergences among these earth-bound creatures, that they have more difficulty understanding one another, than is the case with other types. Mutual understanding between Capricorns is more a surface agreement, a truce, so to speak, than anything else. At home in the depths or on the heights, seldom inhabiting any region for long, they have more kinship with the roc and the leviathan than with one another. What they do understand, perhaps, is that their differences are altitudinal, due primarily to shifts of position. Capable of running the whole gamut, it is easy for them to identify as you or me. This is their bond and explains their ability to forgive but never to forget. They forget nothing, ever. Their memory is phantasmagorical. They remember not only their personal, human tribulations, but their prehuman and subhuman ones as well. They can slither back into the protoplasmic slime with the ease of eels slipping through mud. They also carry remembrances of higher spheres, of seraphic states, as if they had known long periods of liberation from earthly thralls, as if the very language of the seraphim were familiar to them. Indeed, one might almost say of them that it is earthly existence to which they, the earth-bound, are of all types least suited. To them the earth is not only a prison, a purgatory, a place of expiation but it is also a cocoon from which they will eventually escape equipped with indestructible wings. Hence their mediumship, their ability and desire to practice acceptance, their extraordinary readiness for conversion. They enter the world like visitors destined for another planet, another sphere. Their attitude is one of having a last look around, of perpetually bidding good-bye to all that is terrestrial. They imbibe the very essence of the earth, and in doing so prepare the new body, the new form, in which they will take leave of earth forever. They die innumerable deaths whereas others die but once. Hence their immunity to life or death. Their true locus is the heart of mystery. There all is clear to them. There they live apart, spin their dreams, and are “at home.”

  He was hardly with us more than a week when he called me to his cell one day for a “consultation.” It was about the uses of codeine. Beginning with a long preamble about his sufferings and privations since the year one, he ended with a brief account of the nightmare he had lived through during his recent sojourn in Switzerland. Though he was a Swiss citizen, Switzerland was not his country, not his climate, not his bowl of soup. After all the humiliations he had suffered during the war (the second one) came even worse ones which the unfeeling Swiss had imposed. All this by way of leading up to the seven-year itch. He paused to roll up his trousers. I was horrified. His legs were nothing but a mass of sores. There was no need to dwell further on the subject.

  Now if he could only get a little codeine, he explained, it would help to calm his nerves, allow him to get some sleep at least, even though it could not cure the itch. Wouldn’t I try to get some for him, perhaps tomorrow when I went to town? I said I would.

  I had never used codeine or any drug that puts one to sleep or wakes one up. I had no idea that codeine could only be had by doctor’s prescription. It was the druggist who informed me of this. Not wishing to disappoint Moricand, I called on two doctors I knew to ask if they would furnish me with the necessary prescription. They refused.

  When I informed Moricand of the situation he was almost beside himself. He acted as if there were a conspiracy on the part of American physicians to keep him in misery. “How absurd!” he cried. “Even in Switzerland it’s sold openly. I would have more chance, I suppose, if I asked for cocaine or opium.”

  Another day or two passed, during which time he got no sleep at all. Then another consultation. This time to inform me that he had thought of a way out. Very simple, too. He would write to his druggist in Switzerland and ask him to mail him the codeine in very small particles. I explained to him that such importation would be illegal, no matter how small the quantity. I explained further that he would be incriminating me too should he do such a thing.

  “What a country! What a country!” he exclaimed, raising his hands heavenward.

  “Why don’t you try the baths again?” I suggested. He promised he would. He said it as if I had requested him to swallow a dose of castor oil.

  As I was about to leave he showed me a letter which he had just received from his landlady. It was about the bill he owed and my failure to keep my promise. I had completely forgotten about her and her bloody bill.

  We never had any money in the bank, but I did have a few bills in my pocket. I fished them out. “Maybe this will quiet her for a while,” I said, laying them on his table.

  About a week later he called me to his room again. He was holding an envelope in his hand which he had just opened. He wanted me to look at the contents. It was a letter from his Swiss druggist say that he was happy to be of service. I looked up and saw the tiny pellets which he was holding in the palm of his hand.

  “You see,” he said, “there is always a way.”

  I was furious but tongue-tied. I could not deny that, were the situation reversed, I would probably have done the same. He was desperate, that was obvious. Besides, the baths had been no help. They had aggravated his condition, if I was to believe him. At any rate, he was through with the baths: they were poison to his system.

  Now that he had what he needed he took to roaming the forest regularly. Good, thought I, he needs the exercise. But he overdid it; the excessive walking made his blood boil. From another standpoint these excursions did him good. The forest bequeathed something which his Swiss spirit demanded. He always returned from his walks elated and physically exhausted. “Tonight,” he would say, “I should be able to sleep without taking any pills.”

  He deceived himself. The itching grew worse. He continued to scratch himself furiously, even in deep slumber. The itch had traveled too. Now it had attacked his arms. Soon it would devastate his whole body, all but his genitals.

  There were remissions, of course. If guests arrived, particularly French-speaking guests, his morale improved overnight. Or if he received a letter from a dear friend who was still doing a stretch in prison because of his activities during the Occupation. Sometimes an exceptionally good dinner was sufficient to change his mood for a day or two. The itching never ceased, apparently, but the scratching might be halted for a while.

  As the days passed, he became more and more aware that I was a person upon whom it gave people pleasure to shower gifts. With the mail there came packages containing all manner of things. What astounded Moricand was that they were usually the very things we were in need of. If we ran out of wine a friend was sure to turn up with an armful of excellent bottles; if I needed wood, a neighbor would appear with the gift of a load of wood, enough to last several months. Books and magazines, of course, poured in steadily. Now and then I would receive postage stamps, whole sheets of them. Only money failed to pour in. That always came in a trickle, a trickle which often dried up altogether.

  I
t was with a falcon’s eye that Moricand eyed this steady influx of gifts. As for the steady flow of visitors, even the bores, the time wasters, he observed, were instrumental in lightening our burdens. “It’s altogether natural,” he would say. “It’s there in your horoscope. Even when Jupiter deserts you at times you are never left unprotected. Besides, with you misfortune only works to your ultimate advantage. You can’t possibly lose!”

  I never dreamed of responding to such remarks by pointing out the struggles and the sacrifices I had made throughout my life. But to myself I would say: “It’s one thing for ‘it’ to be in your horoscope; it’s another to make it manifest.”

  One thing seemed to escape his notice entirely—the favors, the services which my friends were constantly rendering him. He had not the slightest notion how much everyone was concerned for his welfare. He behaved as if it were all a matter of course, now that he was in the land of plenty. Americans were like that, naturally kind and generous, don’t you know. They had no grave problems to worry about They were born lucky, the gods looked after them. A shade of contempt always crept into his voice when he referred to the benevolence of the American. He lumped us with the huge cauliflowers, carrots, squash and other monstrous-looking vegetables and fruits we produce in inexhaustible quantity.

  I had asked only one little favor of Moricand when I invited him to stay with us for the rest of his days. That was to teach my daughter French, if possible. I had asked it more to relieve him of an undue sense of gratitude than for any deep concern about the child’s acquisition of French. All she ever learned during his stay with us was Oui and Non, and Bon jour, Monsieur Moricand! He seemed to have no use for children; they annoyed him, unless they were extremely well behaved. As with most people who stress behavior, being well behaved meant keeping out of sight and reach. He was utterly at a loss to understand my preoccupation with the child, the daily walks we took, the efforts I made to amuse, entertain and instruct her, the patience with which I listened to her idiotic questions, her excessive demands. He had no idea, naturally, of the joy she gave me. It was obvious, but perhaps he did not wish to recognize it, that she was my only joy. Val always came first. It irritated everyone, not only Moricand. And particularly my wife. The opinion roundabout was that I was an aging dolt who was spoiling his only child. Outwardly it did indeed seem so. The reality which underlay the situation, or the relationship, I hesitated to reveal even to my intimate friends. It was ironic, to be sure, that the very ones who levelled these reproaches were guilty of doing the same silly things, of showing the same exaggerated affection, for their pets. As for Val, she was my own flesh and blood, the apple of my eye; my only regret was that I could not give her more time and attention.