Tropic of Capricorn

  And then one day, through the courtesy of an old widow who used to visit her son’s grave every day and was, as my mother would say, “religious” he made the acquaintance of a minister belonging to one of the neighbouring churches. This was a momentous event in the old man’s life. Suddenly he blossomed forth and that little sponge of a soul which had almost atrophied through lack of nourishment took on such astounding proportions that he was almost unrecognizable. The man who was responsible for this extraordinary change in the old man was in no way unusual himself; he was a Congregationalist minister attached to a modest little parish which adjoined our neighbourhood.

  His one virtue was that he kept his religion in the background. The old man quickly fell into a sort of boyish idolatry; he talked of nothing but this minister whom he considered his friend. As he had never looked at the Bible in his life, nor any other book for that matter, it was rather startling, to say the least, to hear him say a little prayer before eating. He performed this little ceremony in a strange way, much the way one takes a tonic, for example. If he recommended me to read a certain chapter of the Bible he would add very seriously – “it will do you good.” It was a new medicine which he had discovered, a sort of quack remedy which was guaranteed to cure all ills and which one might even take if he had no ills, because in any case it could certainly do no harm. He attended all the services, all the functions which were held at the church, and between times, when out for a stroll, for example, he would stop off at the minister’s home and have a little chat with him. If the minister said that the president was a good soul and should be re-elected the old man would repeat to every one exactly what the minister had said and urge them to vote for the president’s re-election. Whatever the minister said was right and just and nobody could gainsay him. There’s no doubt that it was an education for the old man. If the minister had mentioned the pyramids in the course of his sermon the old man immediately began to inform himself about the pyramids. He would talk about the pyramids as though every one owed it to himself to become acquainted with the subject. The minister had said that the pyramids were one of the crowning glories of man, ergo not to know about the pyramids was to be disgracefully ignorant, almost sinful. Fortunately the minister didn’t dwell much on the subject of sin: he was of the modern type of preacher who prevailed on his flock more by arousing their curiosity than by appealing to their conscience. His sermons were more like a night school extension course and for such as the old man, therefore, highly entertaining and stimulating. Every now and then the male members of the congregation were invited to a little blow-out which was intended to demonstrate that the good pastor was just an ordinary man like themselves and could, on occasion, enjoy a hearty meal and even a glass of beer. Moreover it was observed that he even sang – not religious hymns, but jolly little songs of the popular variety. Putting two and two together one might even infer from such jolly behaviour that now and then he enjoyed getting a little piece of tail – always in moderation, to be sure. That was the word that was balsam to the old man’s lacerated soul – “moderation”. It was like discovering a new sign in the zodiac. And though he was still too ill to attempt a return to even a moderate way of living, nevertheless it did his soul good. And so, when Uncle Ned, who was continually going on the water-waggon and continually falling off it again, came round to the house one evening the old man delivered him a little lecture on the virtue of moderation. Uncle Ned was, at that moment, on the water-waggon and so, when the old man, moved by his own words, suddenly went to the sideboard to fetch a decanter of wine every one was shocked. No one had ever dared invite Uncle Ned to drink when he had sworn off; to venture such a thing constituted a serious breach of loyalty. But the old man did it with such conviction that no one could take offence, and the result was that Uncle Ned took a small glass of wine and went home that evening without stopping off at a saloon to quench his thirst. It was an extraordinary happening and there was much talk about it for days after. In fact, Uncle Ned began to act a bit queer from that day on. It seems that he went the next day to the wine store and bought a bottle of Sherry which he emptied into the decanter. He placed the decanter on the sideboard, just as he had seen the old man do, and, instead of polishing it off in one swoop, he contented himself with a glassful at a time – “just a thimbleful”, as he put it. His behaviour was so remarkable that my aunt, who was unable to quite believe her eyes, came one day to the house and held a long conversation with the old man. She asked him, among other things, to invite the minister to the house some evening so that Uncle Ned might have the opportunity of falling under his beneficient influence. The long and short of it was that Ned was soon taken into the fold and, like the old man, seemed to be thriving under the experience. Things went fine until the day of the picnic. That day, unfortunately, was an unusually warm day and, what with the games, the excitement, the hilarity, Uncle Ned developed an extraordinary thirst. It was not until he was three sheets to the wind that some one observed the regularity and the frequency with which he was running to the beer keg. It was then too late. Once in that condition he was unmanageable. Even the minister could do nothing with him. Ned broke away from the picnic quietly and went on a little rampage which lasted for three days and nights. Perhaps it would have lasted longer had he not gotten into a fist fight down at the waterfront where he was found lying unconscious by the night watchman. He was taken to the hospital with a concussion of the brain from which he never recovered. Returning from the funeral the old man said with a dry eye – “Ned didn’t know what it was to be temperate. It was his own fault. Anyway, he’s better off now …”

  And as though to prove to the minister that he was not made of the same stuff as Uncle Ned he became even more assiduous in his churchly duties. He had gotten himself promoted to the position of “elder”, an office of which he was extremely proud and by grace of which he was permitted during the Sunday services to aid in taking up the collection. To think of my old man marching up the aisle of a Congregationalist church with a collection box in his hand; to think of him standing reverently before the altar with this collection box while the minister blessed the offering, seems to me now something so incredible that I scarcely know what to say of it. I like to think, by contrast, of the man he was when I was just a kid and I would meet him at the ferry house of a Saturday noon. Surrounding the entrance to the ferry house there were then three saloons which of a Saturday noon were filled with men who had stopped off for a little bite at the free lunch counter and a schooner of beer. I can see the old man, as he stood in his thirtieth year, a healthy, genial soul with a smile for every one and a pleasant quip to pass the time of day, see him with his arm resting on the bar, his straw hat tipped on the back of his head, his left hand raised to down the foaming suds. My eye was then on about a level with his heavy gold chain which was spread cross-wise over his vest; I remember the shepherd plaid suit which he wore in mid-summer and the distinction it gave him among the other men at the bar who were not lucky enough to have been born tailors. I remember the way he would dip his hand into the big glass bowl on the free lunch counter and hand me a few pretzels, saying at the same time that I ought to go and have a look at the scoreboard in the window of the Brooklyn Times nearby. And, perhaps, as I ran out of the saloon to see who was winning a string of cyclists would pass close to the curb, holding to the little strip of asphalt which had been laid down expressly for them. Perhaps the ferry-boat was just coming into the dock and I would stop a moment to watch the men in uniform as they pulled away at the big wooden wheels to which the chains were attached. As the gates were thrown open and the planks laid down a mob would rush through the shed and make for the saloons which adorned the nearest corners. Those were the days when the old man knew the meaning of “moderation”, when he drank because he was truly thirsty, and to down a schooner of beer by the ferry house was a man’s prerogative. Then it was as Melville has so well said: “Feed all things with food convenient for them – that is, if the food be procura
ble. The food of thy soul is light and space; feed it then on light and space. But the food of the body is champagne and oysters; feed it then on champagne and oysters; and so shall it merit a joyful resurrection, if there is any to be.” Yes, then it seems to me that the old man’s soul had not yet shrivelled up, that it was endlessly bounded by light and space and that his body, heedless of the resurrection, was feeding on all that was convenient and procurable – if not champagne and oysters, at least good lager beer and pretzels. Then his body had not been condemned, nor his way of living, nor his absence of faith. Nor was he yet surrounded by vultures, but only by good comrades, ordinary mortals like himself who looked neither high nor low but straight ahead, the eye always fixed on the horizon and content with the sight thereof.

  And now, as a battered wreck, he has made himself into an elder of the church and he stands before the altar, grey and bent and withered, while the minister gives his blessing to the measly collection which will go to make a new bowling alley. Perhaps it was necessary for him to experience the birth of the soul, to feed this sponge-like growth with that light and space which the Congregational church offered. But what a poor substitute for a man who had known the joys of that food which the body craved and which, without the pangs of conscience, had flooded even his sponge-like soul with a light and space that was ungodly but radiant and terrestrial. I think again of his seemly little “corporation” over which the thick gold chain was strung and I think that with that death of his paunch there was left to survive only the sponge of a soul, a sort of appendix to his own bodily death. I think of the minister who had swallowed him up as a sort of inhuman sponge-eater, the keeper of a wigwam hung with spiritual scalps. I think of what subsequently ensued as a kind of tragedy in sponges, for though he promised light and space, no sooner had he passed out of my father’s life than the whole airy edifice came tumbling down.

  It all came about in the most ordinary lifelike way. One evening, after the customary men’s meeting, the old man came home with a sorrowful countenance. They had been informed that evening that the minister was taking leave of them. He had been offered a more advantageous position in the township of New Rochelle and, despite his great reluctance to desert his flock, he had decided to accept the offer. He had of course accepted it only after much meditation – as a duty, in other words. It would mean a better income, to be sure, but that was nothing compared to the grave responsibilities which he was about to assume. They had need of him in New Rochelle and he was obeying the voice of his conscience. All this the old man related with the same unctuousness that the minister had given to his words. But it was immediately apparent that the old man was hurt. He couldn’t see why New Rochelle could not find another minister. He said it wasn’t fair to tempt the minister with a bigger salary. We need him here, he said ruefully, with such sadness that I almost felt like weeping. He added, that he was going to have a heart to heart talk with the minister that if anybody could persuade him to remain it was he. In the days that followed he certainly did his best, no doubt much to the minister’s discomfiture. It was distressing to see the blank look in his face when he returned from these conferences. He had the expression of a man who was trying to grasp at a straw to keep from drowning. Naturally the minister remained adamant. Even when the old man broke down and wept before him he could not be moved to change his mind. That was the turning point. From that moment on the old man underwent a radical change. He seemed to grow bitter and querulous. He not only forgot to say grace at the table but he abstained from going to church. He resumed his old habit of going to the cemetery and basking on a bench. He became morose, then melancholy, and finally there grew into his face an expression of permanent sadness, a sadness encrusted with disillusionment, with despair, with futility. He never again mentioned the man’s name, nor the church, nor any of the elders with whom he had once associated. If he happened to pass them in the street he bade them the time of day without stopping to shake hands. He read the newspapers diligently, from back to front, without comment. Even the ads he read, every one, as though trying to block up a huge hole which was constantly before his eyes. I never heard him laugh again. At the most he would give us a sort of weary, hopeless smile, a smile which faded instantly and left us with the spectacle of a life extinct. He was dead as a crater, dead beyond all hope of resurrection. And not even had he been given a new stomach, or a tough new intestinal tract, would it have been possible to restore him to life again. He had passed beyond the lure of champagne and oysters, beyond the need of light and space. He was like the dodo which buries its head in the sand and whistles out of its ass-hole. When he went to sleep in the Morris-chair his lower jaw dropped like a hinge that has become unloosened; he had always been a good snorer but now he snored louder than ever, like a man who was in truth dead to the world. His snores, in fact, were very much like the death rattle, except that they were punctuated by an intermittent long-drawn-out whistling of the peanut stand variety. He seemed, when he snored, to be chopping the whole universe to bits so that we who succeeded him would have enough kindling wood to last a lifetime. It was the most horrible and fascinating snoring that I have ever listened to: it was sterterous and stentorian, morbid and grotesque; at times it was like an accordion collapsing, at other times like a frog croaking in the swamps; after a prolonged whistle there sometimes followed a frightful wheeze as if he were giving up the ghost, then it would settle back again into a regular rise and fall, a steady hollow chopping as though he stood stripped to the waist, with axe in hand, before the accumulated madness of all the bric-à-brac of this world. What gave these performances a slightly crazy quality was the mummy-like expression of the face in which the big blubber lips alone came to life; they were like the gills of a shark snoozing on the surface of the still ocean. Blissfully he snored away on the bosom of the deep, never disturbed by a dream or a draught, never fitful, never plagued by an unsatisfied desire; when he closed his eyes and collapsed, the light of the world went out and he was alone as before birth, a cosmos gnashing itself to bits. He sat there in his Morris-chair as Jonah must have sat in the body of the whale, secure in the last refuge of a black hole, expecting nothing, desiring nothing, not dead but buried alive, swallowed whole and unscathed, the big blubber lips gently flapping with the flux and reflux of the white breath of emptiness. He was in the land of Nod searching for Cain and Abel but encountering no living soul, no word, no sign. He dove with the whale and scraped the icy black bottom; he covered furlongs at top speed, guided only by the fleecy manes of undersea beasts. He was the smoke that curled out of the chimney-tops, the heavy layers of cloud that obscured the moon, the thick slime that made the slippery linoleum floor of the ocean depths. He was deader than dead because alive and empty, beyond all hope of resurrection in that he had travelled beyond the limits of light and space and securely nestled himself in the black hole of nothingness. He was more to be envied than pitied, for his sleep was not a lull or an interval but sleep itself which is the deep and hence sleeping ever deepening, deeper and deeper in sleep sleeping, the sleep of the deep in deepest sleep, at the nethermost depth full slept, the deepest and sleepest sleep of sleep’s sweet sleep. He was asleep. He is asleep. He will be asleep. Sleep. Sleep. Father, sleep, I beg you, for we who are awake are boiling in horror …

  With the world fluttering away on the last wings of a hollow snore I see the door opening to admit Grover Watrous. “Christ be with you!” he says, dragging his club foot along. He is quite a young man now and he has found God. There is only one God and Grover Watrous has found Him and so there is nothing more to say except that everything has to be said over again in Grover Watrous’ new God-language. This bright new language which God invented especially for Grover Watrous intrigues me enormously, first because I had always considered Grover to be a hopeless dunce, second because I notice that there are no longer any tobacco stains on his agile fingers. When we were boys Grover lived next door to us. He would visit me from time to time in order to practise a due
t with me. Though he was only fourteen or fifteen he smoked like a trooper. His mother could do nothing against it because Grover was a genius and a genius had to have a little liberty, particularly when he was also unfortunate enough to have been born with a club foot. Grover was the kind of genius who thrives on dirt. He not only had nicotine stains on his fingers but he had filthy black nails which would break under hours of practising, imposing upon young Grover the ravishing obligation of tearing them off with his teeth. Grover used to spit out broken nails along with bits of tobacco which got caught in his teeth. It was delightful and stimulating. The cigarettes burned holes into the piano and, as my mother critically observed, also tarnished the keys. When Grover took leave the parlour stank like the backroom of an undertaker’s establishment. It stank of dead cigarettes, sweat, dirty linen, Grover’s oaths and the dry heat left by the dying notes of Weber, Berlioz, Liszt and Co. It stank too of Grover’s running ear and of his decaying teeth. It stank of his mother’s pampering and whimpering. His own home was a stable divinely suited to his genius, but the parlour of our home was like the waiting room of a mortician’s office and Grover was a lout who didn’t even know enough to wipe his feet. In the winter time his nose ran like a sewer and Grover, being too engrossed in his music to bother wiping his nose, the cold snot was left to trickle down until it reached his lips where it was sucked in by a very long white tongue. To the flatulent music of Weber, Berlioz, Liszt and Co. it added a piquant sauce which made those empty devils palatable. Every other word from Grover’s lips was an oath, his favourite expression being – “I can’t get the fucking thing right!” Sometimes he grew so annoyed that he would take his fists and pound the piano like a madman. It was his genius coming out the wrong way. His mother, in fact, used to attach a great deal of importance to these fits of anger; they convinced her that he had something in him. Other people simply said that Grover was impossible. Much was forgiven, however, because of his club foot. Grover was sly enough to exploit this bad foot; whenever he wanted anything badly he developed pains in the foot. Only the piano seemed to have no respect for this maimed member. The piano therefore was an object to be cursed and kicked and pounded to bits. If he were in good form, on the other hand, Grover would remain at the piano for hours on end; in fact, you couldn’t drag him away. On such occasions his mother would go stand in the grass plot in front of the house and waylay the neighbours in order to squeeze a few words of praise out of them. She would be so carried away by her son’s “divine” playing that she would forget to cook the evening meal. The old man, who worked in the sewers, usually came home grumpy and famished. Sometimes he would march directly upstairs to the parlour and yank Grover off the piano stool. He had a rather foul vocabulary himself and when he let loose on his genius of a son there wasn’t much left for Grover to say. In the old man’s opinion Grover was just a lazy son of a bitch who could make a lot of noise. Now and then he threatened to chuck the fucking piano out of the window – and Grover with it. If the mother were rash enough to interfere during these scenes he would give her a clout and tell her to go piss up the end of a rope. He had his moments of weakness too, of course, and in such a mood he might ask Grover what the hell he was rattling away at, and if the latter said, for example, “why the Sonata Pathétique”, the old buzzard would say – “what the hell does that mean? Why, in Christ’s name don’t they put it down in plain English?” The old man’s ignorance was even harder for Grover to bear than his brutality. He was heartily ashamed of his old man and when the latter was out of sight he would ridicule him unmercifully. When he got a little older he used to insinuate that he wouldn’t have been born with a club foot if the old man hadn’t been such a mean bastard. He said that the old man must have kicked his mother in the belly when she was pregnant. This alleged kick in the belly must have affected Grover in diverse ways, for when he had grown up to be quite a young man, as I was saying, he suddenly took to God with such a passion that there was no blowing your nose before him without first asking God’s permission.