Carnaval 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 ice-box 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 match-box.) 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 sun dial…
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.
Mariana.
At table I talk about the work as if I were another Alexandra 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’ll 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 he 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 in-conspicuousness. 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 mardrommen. 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 by 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 lustre 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 instalment 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 lefts 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 my self.
Strange, I said.
Not so very. He knows that I burn 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 business man. 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, that 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. Y
ou 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.