Desolation Angels: A Novel

  “Well I’m going to sleep good tonight,” I say. “Had a great day—Raphael and I just saw the thrashing doves”—and I tell him the whole day.

  “Also I’ve been a little envious of you being a cloud,” says Irwin seriously.

  “Envious? Wow!—A giant cloud, that’s all I am, a giant cloud, leaning on its side, all vapors—yep.”

  “I wish I was a giant cloud,” sighs Irwin utterly seriously and yet tho he poke fun at me he wont laugh about it, he’s too serious and concerned about the outcome of everything, if it’s gonna be giant clouds he just wants to know it, that’s all.

  “Have you been telling Lazarus about the green faces in your window?” I ask, but I dont know what they’ve been discussing and go to bed, and wake up in the middle of night briefly to see Raphael come in and sleep on the floor, and I turn over and sleep on.

  Sweet rest!

  In the morning Raphael’s on the bed and Irwin’s gone but Simon’s there, his day off, “Jack I’ll go with you today to the Buddhist Academy.” I’ve been planning to go there for days, have mentioned it to Simon.

  “Yah but it might bore you. I’ll go alone.”

  “Na, I’ll stay with you—I wanta add to the beauty of the world”—

  “How will that happen?”

  “Just by I do the things you do, to help you, and I learn all about beauty and I grow strong in beauty.” Perfectly serious.

  “That’s wonderful, Simon. Okay, good, we’ll go—We’ll walk—”

  “No! No! There’s a bus! See?” pointing away, jumping, dancing, trying to imitate Cody.

  “Okay okay we’ll take the bus.”

  Raphael has to go somewhere else, so we eat and comb (and take off) but before I stand on my head in the bathroom three minutes to ease my nerves and heal my sorrow veins and I keep worrying someone’ll crash into the bathroom and knock me over on the sink … in the bathtub Lazarus’ got big shirts soaking.

  90

  It often happens I follow up with a fit of ecstasy such as I’d had walking home on Third Street, with a day of despair, owing to which fact I cannot appreciate the really great new day that has broken, also sunny with blue skies, with goodhearted Simon all eager to make me glad, I fail to appreciate it till much later in reflection—We take a bus to Polk and walk up Broadway hill among flowers and fresh air and Simon is dancing along talking all his ideas—I see every point he makes but I keep gloomily reminding him it doesnt matter—Finally I end up snapping “I’m too old for young idealisms like that, I ben through all that!—all over again I gotta go through all that?”

  “But it’s real, it’s truth!” yells Simon. “The world is a place of infinite charm! Give everybody love and they’ll give it right back! I seen it!”

  “I know it’s true but I’m bored”

  “But you cant be bored, if you get bored we all get bored, if we all get bored and tired we all give it up, then the world falls down and dies!”

  “And it’s as it should be!”

  “No! it should be life!”

  “That’s no difference!”

  “Ah, Jacky-boy dont give me that, life is life and blood and pulling and ticking” (and he starts tickling my ribs to prove it) “See? you jump away, you tickle, you life, you have living beauty in your brain and living joy in your hort and living orgasm in your body, all you gotta do is do it! Do it! Everybody loves to join arm-in-arms in the walk,” and I can see he’s been talking to Irwin—

  “Ah lousy me I’hse tired,” I have to admit—

  “Dont! Wake up! Be happy! Where are we going now?”

  “Right up this hill to the big Buddhist Academy, we’ll go in Paul’s cellar—”

  Paul is a big blond Buddhist who is janitor of the Academy, he grins in the basement, in the Cellar nightclub when there’s jazz he’ll stand there eyes closed laughing and bouncing on both feet so glad to hear the jazz and crazytalk—Then he’ll slowly light a big serious pipe and raise big serious eyes through the smoke and look right at you and smile around his pipe, a great guy—Many’s the time he’d come to the shack on the horse-hill and slept in the old abandoned room in back, on a sleeping-bag, and when big gangs of us would bring him wine in the morning he’d sit up and take a slug anyway then go walking among the flowers, thinking, and come back to us with a new idea—“Just as you say, Jack, it takes a long tail to make a kite reach the infinite, I just thought now, I’m a fish—I go swimming through the trackless sea—just water, no ways, no directions and avenues—by flapping my tail however I move right along—but my head seems to have nothing to do with my tail—s’long as I can” (he squats to demonstrate) “flap those backfins, aimless like, I can just go on ahead without worryin—It’s all in my tail and my head’s just thoughts—my head’s flounderin in thoughts but my tail’s wigglin me right along”—Long explanations—a strange silent serious cat—I was coming to see about a lost manuscript, that might be in his room, as I’d left it in crates for anybody, in fact with the instructions: If you dont understand this Scripture, throw it away. If you do understand this Scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom—and now I realize Paul might have done just that, and I laugh to think and that’s right—Paul had been a physicist, a student of mathematics, an engineering student, then a philosopher, now a Buddhist with no philosophy, “Just my fish-tail.”

  “See?” says Simon. “How great a day it is? The sun shining everywhere, pretty girls on the street, what more do you want? Old Jack!”

  “Okay Simon, let’s be angel birds.”

  “Be just angel birds here step aside m’boy angel birds.”

  We come into the basement entrance of the gloomy building and come to Paul’s room, the door is ajar—Nobody in—We go in the kitchen, there’s a big colored girl who says she’s from Ceylon, real svelte and pretty, tho a little plump—

  “Are you a Buddhist?” says Simon.

  “Well I wouldnt be here—I’m goin back to Ceylon next week.”

  “Isnt that wonderful!” Simon keeps looking at me to appreciate her—He wants to make her, go to one of the upstairs bedrooms of this religious university and bang in beds—I think she senses that to some extent and cuts out politely—We go down the hall and look in a room and there’s a Hindu young woman lying on a mattress on the floor with her baby and big shawls and books—She doesnt even rise as we talk to her—

  “Paul’s gone to Chicago,” she says—“Look in his room for thee manuscript, it may be there.”

  “Wow,” says Simon staring at her—

  “And then you can go ask Mr. Aums in his office upstairs.”

  We tiptoe back down the hall, almost giggling, run up to use the toilet, comb, talk, come down to Paul’s bedroom and search around his things—He has left a gallon jug of burgundy which we pour drinks from into delicate Japanese tea cups thin as wafers—

  “Dont break these cups”

  I sit leisurely at Paul’s desk and spin him a note—I try to think up little funny Zen jokes and mysterious haikus—

  “There’s Paul’s meditation mat—on rainy nights after he’s stoked the furnace and et he sits there in the dark thinking.”

  “What does he think about?”

  “Nothing”

  “Let’s go upstairs see what they’re doon up there. Come on, Jack, dont give up, go on!”

  “Go on where?”

  “Go on with it, dont stop—”

  Simon goes dancing his crazy play-act of the “Simon-in-the-World” routine with hands shushing and tiptoeing and Oops and exploration of the wonders ahead in the Forest of Arden—Just like I used to do myself—

  A surly secretarial woman wants to know who wants to see Mr. Aums which enrages me, I just want to talk to him in the door, I start downstairs angrily, Simon calls me back, the woman is perplexed, Simon is dancing around and it’s all as if his hands are held out supporting the woman and me in an elaborate play—Finally the door opens and out comes Alex Aums in a sharp blue suit, like a hepcat, cig
arette in mouth, squinting at us narrow-eyed, “O there you are,” to me, “how’ve you been? Wont you come in?” indicating the office.

  “No, no, I just want to know, did Paul leave a manuscript with you, of mine, to hold or do you know of—”

  Simon is looking back and forth at the two of us with perplexity—

  “No. Not at all. Nothing. It might be in his room. By the way,” he says extremely friendly, “did you happen to see the article in the New York Times about Irwin Garden—it doesnt mention you in it but it’s all about—”

  “Oh yes I saw that.”

  “Well it’s been nice seeing you again,” finally, he says, and sees, and Simon nods approvingly, and I say “Same here, see you later Alex,” and run down the stairs and out on the street Simon cries:—

  “But why didnt you go up to him and shake hands and pat him on the back and be friends—why were you talking to each other across the hall and running away?”

  “Well there was nothing to talk about?”

  “But there was everything to talk about, the flowers, the trees—”

  We hurry down the street arguing about it and finally sit down on a stone wall under a park tree, on the sidewalk, and here comes a gentleman with a bag of groceries. “Let’s tell the whole world, beginning with him!—Hey Mister! See here! look this man is a Buddhist and can tell you all about the paradise of the love and the trees …” The man takes one quick glance and hurries on—“Here we are sitting under the blue sky—and nobody will listen to us!”

  “That’s awright Simon, they all know.”

  “You should have sat in Alex Aums’ office and touched knees sitting in laughin chairs and talked about old times but all you did was be scared—”

  I can see now if I’m going to know Simon for the next five years I’ll have to go all this again, as I had done his age, but I see I’d better go through than not—Words that we have to use to describe words—Besides I wouldnt want to disappoint Simon or cast a pall on his young idealisms—Simon is sustained by a definite belief in the brotherhood of man but how long that will last before other issues cloud it out … or never … I feel sheepish anyway not being able to keep up with him.

  “Fruit! That’s what we need!” he calls out seeing a fruit store—We buy cantaloupes and grapes and split and walk down across the Broadway Tunnel yelling in loud voices to make the echo, munching on grapes and slobbering at cantaloupes and throwing them away—We come right out on North Beach and head up to the Bagel Shop to see if we can find Cody.

  “Keep it up! Keep it up!” yells Simon behind me pushing me as we walk fast down the narrow-walk-lane—I dont waste a grape, I eat every one of em.

  91

  Pretty soon, after coffee, it’s already time and almost late, to go to Rose Wise Lazuli’s dinner party where Irwin and Raphael and Lazarus will meet us—

  We’re late, get involved in long walks up hills, laughing I am because of the crazy comments Simon makes, like “Look over there that dog—he has a bite up his tail—he’s been in a fight and the gnashing mad teeth got im”—“that’ll teach him a good lesson—that’ll show him respect not to fight.” And to ask directions, of a couple in an MG sports car, “How do we get to t-la t-la what’s the name Tebsterton?”

  “Oh Hepperston! Yes. Right up four blocks to the right.”

  I never know what right up four blocks to the right ever means, I’m like Rainey, who walked along with a map in his hands, drawn by his boss in the bakery, “walk to so and so street,” Rainey wearing the uniform of the firm simply walks off from the job altogether because he doesnt know where they want him to go anyway—(a whole book about Rainey, Mr. Caritas, as David D’Angeli says, whom we’re destined to meet tonight at the wild party in the rich house after the poetry reading—)

  There’s the house, we go in, the lady opens the door, such a sweet face, I like those serious woman eyes that get all liquid and bedroom eyes even in middle age, it denotes a lover-soul—Here I go, Simon’s corrupted me or proselytized, one—Cody the Preacher’s losing ground—Such a sweet woman with her elegant glasses, I think with a thin ribbon depending somewhere on her head-makeup, I think ear-rings, I cant remember—Very elegant lady in a splendid old house in San Francisco’s svelte district, on thick-rubbery-foliage hills, among wild hedges of red flowers and granite walls leading up to parks of abandoned Barbary Coast mansions, turned into ruinous old-coat clubs at last, where the topers of Montgomery Street’s leading firms warm their behinds to cracking fires in big fireplaces and drinks are rolled up to em on wheels, over rugs—Fog blows in, Mrs. Rose must shiver in the silence of her house sometimes—Oh, and what must she do night-a-times, in her “bright nightgown,” as W. C. Fields’d say, and sits up a-bed to listen to a strange noise downstairs then falls off to plotting her fate her brooding plan of defeat every day—“Singing to while away the mattick hay,” is all I can hear—So sweet, and so sad that she has to get up in the morning to her canary in the bright yellow kitchen and know that he will die.—Reminds me of my Aunt Clementine but not like her at all—“Who does she remind me of?” I keep asking myself—she reminds me of an ancient lover I had in some other place—We’d had pleasant evenings together already, escorting them elaborately (she and her poetess friend Bernice Whalen) down the stairs of The Place, on a particularly mad night in there when a mad fool lay on the piano on his back, on top, blowing the trumpet loud and clear silly New Orleans riffs—which I had to admit were rather good, as brocaded popoffs to hear down a street—Then we’d (Simon and Irwin and I) taken the ladies to a wild jazz joint with red and white tablecloths, and beer, great, the wild little cats who were swingin in there that night (and had peyotl with me) and one new cat from Las Vegas dressed loose and perfect, with shoes like perfect elaborate sandals for Las Vegas wear, for gambling places, and gets on the drums and washes up a mad beat with a ruff of his sticks on cymbals and the bass booms and falls in and so amazes the drummer he leans far back almost falling and drumming that beat with his head at the bass fiddler’s heart—Rose Wise Lazuli had dug all these things with me, and there’d been elegant conversations in cabs (clop clop the Washington Square James), and I’d done one final thing probably Rose, who is 56, never forgot:—at a cocktail party, in her house, escorting her best friend out into the night and to her bus 2½ blocks down (Raphael’s Sonya’s house is right near), the old lady finally taking a cab—“Why Jack,” back at the party, “how nice of you to be so kind to Mrs. James. She is utterly the finest person you’ll ever know!”

  And here at the door now she greets:—“I’m so glad you could come!”

  “I’m sorry we’re late—we took the wrong bus—”

  “I’m so glad you could come,” she repeats, closing the door, so I realize she feels I’ll hold up an impossible situation going on in the dining room, or, irony—“So glad you came,” she says even once more and I realize it’s just simple littlegirl logic, just keep repeating the kind amenities and your graciousness will not fall down—She in fact inspires an innocent atmosphere in a party otherwise bristling with antagonistic vibrations. I can see Geoffrey Donald laughing charmed, so I know all’s okay, I go in and sit down and okay. Simon sits down at his place, with a “oo” of sincere respect on his lips. Lazarus is there, grinning like Mona Lisa just about, hands on each side of his plate to denote etiquette, a big napkin on his lap. Raphael is lounging low in his chair occasionally snapping at a piece of ham on his fork, with elegant lazy hands hanging, shouting, sometimes completely silent. Irwin is bearded and serious but laughing inside (from charmed happiness) so his eyes cant help twinkling. His eyes swivel from face to face, big serious brown eyes that if you choose to stare at them he’ll stare right back and one time we challenged each other to a stare and stared for 20 minutes, or 10, I forget, and his eyes kept getting more crazy to come out, mine got tired—The Prophet of the Eyes—

  Donald is delicate in a gray suit, laughing, beside a girl with expensive clothes and talks about Venice a
nd what to see. Beside me is a pretty young girl who has just come to live in one of Rose’s extra rooms, to study in San Francisco, aye, and then I think: “Did Rose invite me to meet her? Or did she know all the poets and Lazarusses would follow me anyway?” The girl gets up and does the serving, for Rose, which I like, but she puts on an apron, a kind of servant’s apron which for awhile confuses me, in my crudeness.

  Ah how elegant and wonderful is Donald, Fife of Fain, sitting next to Rose, making appropriate remarks not one of which I remember they were so idly perfect, like, “Not as red as a tomato, I hope,” or, the crashing way he laughed suddenly when everyone else did same as I made my boner faux pas, which went recognized as a joke, starting out: “I always ride freight trains.”

  “Who wants to ride freight trains!”—Gregory—“I dont dig all this crap where you ride freight trains and have to exchange butts with bums—Why do you go to all that, Duluoz?”—“Really no kiddin!”

  “But this is a first-class freight train,” and everybody guffaws and I look to Irwin under the laughter and tell him: “It really is, the Midnight Ghost is a first-class train, no stops on that right-o-way,” which Irwin knows from knowing about the railroad from Cody and myself—But the laughter is genuine, and I console myself with the reminder, embodied in the Tao of my rememberance. “The Sage who provokes laughter is more valuable than a well.” So I well at the wink of that brimming wine welkin glass and pour out decanters of wine (red burgundy) in my glass. It’s almost unmannerly the way I wail at that wine—but everybody else starts imitating me—in fact I keep refilling the hostess’s glass then my own—When in Rome, I always say—

  The perfect devolvement of the party runs around the theme how we gonna run the revolution. I supply my little bit by saying to Rose: “I read about you in the New York Times being the vital moving spirit behind the San Francisco poetry movement—That’s what you are, hey?” and she winks at me. I feel like adding “You naughty girl” but I’m not out to be witty, it’s one of my fine relaxed nights, I like good food and good wine and good talk, as what beggar doesnt.