Desolation Angels: A Novel

  But even Heaven’s time-worm eats at Brue’s vitals, as mine, as yours, it’s hard enough to live in a world where you grow old and die, why be dis-harmonious?

  98

  Let’s be like David D’Angeli, let’s pray on our knees in privacy—Let’s say “O Thinker of all this, be kind”—Let’s entreat him, or it, to be kind in those thoughts—All he has to do is think kind thoughts, God, and the world is saved—And every one of us is God—What else? And what else when we’re praying on our knees in privacy?

  I’ve said my peace.

  We’ve been to Mal’s too (Mal the Namer, Mal Damlette), after the session, and there he is with his neat little cloth cap and neat sports shirt and checkered vest—but poor Baby his wife is sick on Milltowns, and all anxious when he comes out with us for a drink—It was I had said to Mal the year before, hearing him argue and fight with Baby, “Kiss her belly, just love her, dont fight”—And it had worked for a year—Mal only working all day as a Western Union telegram deliverer, walking around the streets of San Francisco with quiet eyes—Mal politely walks with me now to where I’ve got a bottle hidden in a Chinese grocery discarded box, and we toast a bit as of yore—He doesnt drink anymore but I tell him “These few shots shouldnt bother you”—Oh Mal was the big drinker! We’d lain on the floor, the radio fullblast, while Baby worked, with Rob Donnelly we’d lain there in the cold foggy day only to wake up to go get another jug—another fifth of Tokay—to drink it on a new outburst of talk, then the three of us falling asleep on the floor again—The worst binge I ever was on—three days of that and you live no more—And there’s no need for that—

  Lord be merciful, Lord be kind, whatever your name is, be kind—bless and watch.

  Watch those thoughts, God!

  We’d ended up like that, drunk, our picture taking, and slept at Simon’s and in the morning it was Irwin and Raphael and me now inseparably entwined in our literary destinies—Taking it to be an important thing—

  I stood on my head in the bathroom to cure my legs, from all the drinking-smoking, and Raphael opes the bathroom window and yells “Look! he’s standing on his head!” and everybody runs over to peek, including Lazarus, and I say “O shit.”

  So Irwin later in the day says to Penny “O go stand on your head on the streetcorner” when she’d asked him “O what can I do in this mad city and you mad guys”—Fair enough answer but children shouldnt fight. Because the world is on fire—the eye is on fire, what it sees is on fire, the very seeing of the eye is on fire—this only means it will all end pure energy and not even that. It will be blissful.

  I promise.

  I know because you know.

  Up to Ehrman’s, up that strange hill, we’d gone, and Raphael played his second sonata for Irwin, who didnt quite understand—But Irwin has to understand so many things about the heart, the sayings of the heart, he has no time to understand harmony—He does understand melody, and climactic Requiems which he conducts for me, like Leonard Bernstein with a beard, in huge arm-raising finales—In fact I say “Irwin, you’d make a good conductor!”—But when Beethoven listened to the light, and the little cross was on the horizon of his town, his bony sorrow-head understood harmony, divine harmonic peace, and there was no need ever to conduct a Beethoven Symphony—Or to conduct his fingers on his sonatas—

  But these are all different forms of the same thing.

  I know it’s inexcusable to interrupt a tale with such talk—but I’ve got to get it off my chest or I will die—I will die hopelessly—

  And tho dying hopelessly is not really dying hopelessly, and it’s only the golden eternity, it’s not kind.

  Poor Ehrman by now is supine with a fever, I go out and call his doctor for him, who says, “There’s nothing we can do—tell him to drink a lot of juices and rest.”

  And Raphael yells “Ehrman you’re gonna have to show me music, how to play the piano!”

  “As soon as I get better”

  It’s a sad afternoon—In the waning wildsun street Levesque the painter does that mad baldheaded dance that scared me, as tho the devil were dancing—How can these painters take it? He yells something derisive it seems—The three, Irwin, Raff, me, wend down that lonesome trail—“I smell a dead cat,” says Irwin—“I smella dead sweet Chinaman,” says Raphael, like before with hands in sleeves striding in the dusk down the steep trail—“I smell a dead rose,” I say—“I smell a sweet tat,” says Irwin—“I smell Power,” says Raphael—“I smell sadness,” I say—“I smell cold rose salmons,” I add—“I smell the lonesome bittersweet,” says Irwin—

  Poor Irwin—I look at him—Fifteen years we’ve known each other and stared at each other worried in the void, now it’s coming to an end—it will be dark—we must have courage—we’ll make it by hook or crook in the happy sun of our thoughts. In a week it’ll be all forgotten. Why die?

  We come sadly to the house with a ticket to the opera, given us by Ehrman who cant go, we tell Lazarus to doll up for his first night at the opera in life—We tie his tie, select his shirt—We comb his hair—“Whatto I do?” he asks—

  “Just dig the people and the music—it will be Verdi, let me tell you all about Verdi!” yells Raphael, and explains, ending up with a long explanation about the Roman Empire—“You gotta know history! You gotta read books! I’ll tell you the books to read!”

  Simon is there, okay, we’ll all take a cab to the opera and drop Lazarus there and go on to see McLear in the bar—Patrick McLear the poet, our “enemy,” has agreed to meet us in a bar—We drop Lazarus among pigeons and people, there are lights inside, opera club, private locker, boxes, drapes, masques, it will be Verdi opera—Lazarus will see it all downed in thunder—Poor kid, he’s afraid to go in alone—He’s worried what people will say about him—“Maybe you’ll meet some girls!” urges Simon, and pushes him. “Go head, enjoy now. Kiss them and pinch them and dream of their love.”

  “Okay,” agrees Lazarus and we see him bouncing into the opera in his put-together suit, his tie flying—a whole lifetime for “Goodlooking” (as his schoolteacher’d called him) of bouncing into operas of death—operas of hope—to wait—to watch—A whole lifetime of dreaming of the lost moon.

  We go on—the cabdriver is a polite Negro who listens with sincere interest as Raphael tells him all about poetry—“You’ve gotta read poetry! You’ve gotta dig beauty and truth! Dont you know about beauty and truth? Keats said it, beauty is truth and truth is beauty and you’re a beautiful man, you should know these things.”

  “Where do I get these books—in the library I suppose …”

  “Shore! Or go down to the bookshops in North Beach, buy the little booklets of poems, read what the tortured and the hungry say about the tortured and the hungry.”

  “It is a tortured and a hungry world,” he admits intelligently. I’m wearing dark glasses, I have my rucksack all packed ready to hop that freight Monday, I listen attentively. It’s good. We fly thru the blue streets talking sincerely, like citizens of Athens. Raphael is Socrates, he will show; the cabdriver is Alcibiades, he will buy. Irwin is Zeus watching. Simon is Achilles grown tender everywhere. I am Priam, lamenting my burned city and my slain son, and the waste of history. I’m not Timon of Athens, I’m Croesus crying the truth on a burning bier.

  “Okay,” the cabdriver agrees, “I’ll read poetry,” and says good night to us pleasantly and counts his change and we run into the bar, to dark tables in the back, like back rooms of Dublin, and here Raphael surprises me by attacking McLear:

  “McLear! you dont know about truth and beauty! You write poems and you’re a sham! You live a cruel heartless life of the bougeois entrepreneur!”

  “What?”

  “It’s as bad as killing Octavian with a broken bench! You’re a mean senator!”

  “Why are you saying all this—”

  “Because you hate me and think I’m a shit!”

  “You’re a no good dago from New York, Raphael,” I yell and smile, to indicate “
Now we know Raphael’s only hurt, stop the argument.”

  But crewcutted McLear wont be insulted, or bested in talk anyway and fights back, and says: “Besides none of you know anything about language—except Jack.”

  Okay then if I know all about language let’s not use it to fight.

  Raphael is delivering his invective Demosthenean speech with those little plicks of fingertips in the air, but every now and then he has to smile to realize—and McLear smiles—it’s all a misunderstanding based on the secret worries of poets in pants, as distinguished from poets in robes, like Homer who blindly chanted and wasn’t interrupted or edited or put down by listeners one and all—Hoodlums at the front of the bar are attracted by the yells and the quality of the conversation, “Potry,” and we almost get in a fight as we leave but I swear to myself “If I have to fight with the cross to defend the cross I’ll fight but O I’d rather go away and let it blow over,” which it does, thank God we go off free in the streets—

  But then Simon disappoints me by pissing right in the street in full sight of whole blocks of people, to the point where a man comes and says “Why do you do a thing like that?”

  “Because I needed a pee,” says Simon—I hurry along with my pack, they follow laughing—In the cafeteria where we go for coffee Raphael instead bursts into a big loud speech to the whole audience and naturally they wont serve us—It’s all about poetry and truth but they think it’s mad anarchy (and to judge from the looks of us)—Me with my cross, my rucksack—Irwin with his beard—Simon with his crazy look—Anything Raphael does, Simon’ll watch with ecstasy—He notices nothing else, the people horrified, “They’ve got to learn about beauty,” says Simon to himself decisively.

  And in the bus Raphael addresses the whole bus, wa, wa, a big speech about politics now, “Vote for Stevenson!” he yells, (for no known reason), “vote for beauty! Vote for truth! Stand up for your rights!”

  When we get off, the bus stops, my beer bottles we’ve drained roll loudly on the floor of the back of the bus, the Negro driver addresses us a speech before opening our door:—“And dont ever drink beer in my bus again … We ordinary people have troubles in this world, and you just add to it,” he says to Raphael, which isnt entirely true except for just now yes, yet no passenger has objected, it’s just a show in a bus—

  “It’s a dead bus going to death!” says Raphael in the street. “And that driver knows it and wont let it change!”

  We rush to meet Cody at the station—Poor Cody, casually entering the station bar to make a phonecall, all attired in uniform, is set upon and backslapped and howled by the gang of crazy poets—Cody looks to me as tho to say: “Cant you quiet them down?”

  “What can I do?” I say. “Except advise kindness.”

  “O kindness be damned!” yells the world. “Let us have order!” Once order comes, the orders come—I say “Let us have forgiveness everywhere—try as hard as you can—forgive—forget—Yes, pray on your knees for the power to forgive and forget—then all will be snowy Heaven.”

  Cody hates the thought of taking Raphael and the gang on the train—Says to me “At least comb your hair, I’ll tell the conductor who you are” (ex-trainman)—So I comb my hair for Cody. For the sense of order. Just as well. I just wanta pass through, Lord, to you—I’d rather be in your arms than the arms of Cleopatra … till the night when those arms are the same.

  So we say goodbye to Simon and Irwin, the train pulls south into the darkness—It’s actually the first leg of my three-thousand-mile trip to Mexico and I’m leaving San Francisco.

  90

  Raphael, at Cody’s instigation, talks all about truth and beauty to a blonde, who gets off at Millbrae leaving us no address, then he sleeps in his seat—We’re chaggling over rails down into the night.

  There goes old brakey Cody with his lamp in the dark—He’s got a special little lantern used by all conductors and trainmen and switchmen a lot of em use em (that’s language, brother), instead of the big cumbersome regular—It fits into the blue coat pocket, but for this move they’re making, which I go out on the ground to watch as Raphael sleeps lostchild in the passenger seat (smoke, yards, it’s like old dreams of when you’re with your father in a railroad train in a big town full of lions)—Cody trots up to the engine and dislocates her air-hoses for her then gives the sign “Go ahead” and they go Dieseling down to the switch pulling the flower car for the morning, Sunday morning—Cody jumps out and throws the switch, in his work I see the furious and believing earnestness of his moves, he wants the men working with him to have complete confidence in him, and that’s because he believes in God (God bless him—)—the engineer and fireman watch as his light jiggles in the dark as he’s jumping off the front footboard and lighting up to the switch, all on little rocks that turn under your shoes, he unlocks and throws the old mainline switch and in they go to the house (—) track—the track has a special name—which is perfectly logical to all the railroad men, and means nothing to anyone else—but that’s their work—and Cody is the Champeen Brakeman on that railroad—I’ve huddled over the Obispo Bump under boards, I know—The trainmen who are all watching anxiously and staring at their watches will know that Cody wont waste time and foul up the main, he sets out his flower car and that will deliver Bodhisattva to Papa in flowers—his little children will turn over and sigh in their cribs—’Cause Cody comes from the land where they let the children cry—“Passing through!” he says waving his big palm—“Stand aside, apricot tree!”—He comes running back to his footboard and we’re off to tie up—I watch, in the cold vaguely fruit-scented night—the stars break your heart, what are they doon there?—Over there is the hill with the bleary lights of sidestreets—

  We tie up, Cody rubs and dries his hands in the toilet of the coach and says to me “Boy dont you know that I’m headed for Innisfree! Yessir boy with those horses I’m finally gonna learn to smile again. Man I’ll just be smilin all the time I’ll be so rich—You dont believe? Didnt you see what happened the other day?”

  “Yeh but that’s not important.”

  “What’s not important, mo-ney?” he shows his teeth yelling at me, mad at his brother for bein so Innisfree—

  “All right, you’ll be a millionaire. Get me no yacht with blondes and champagne, all I want is a shack in the woods. A shack on Desolation Peak.”

  “And a chance” tapping me, leaping forward “to play the system with the money I’ll send you by Western Union soon’s we’re ready to expand our business across the country—You cover the New York tracks, I’ll stick to the rail here and cover these tracks and we’ll set Old Sleepyhead Raphael there a-sailin for them Tropical Park Isles—he can cover Florida—and Irwin New Orleans—”

  “And Marlon Brando Santa Anita,” I say—

  “And Marl that’s right and the whole gang—”

  “Simon at Setabustaposk Park in Sardine Russia”

  “Semopalae Russia for Lazarus so dear m’boy it’s in the bag a dead sure fire headbang cinch” whacking his fist, “except I gotta brush the back a my suit, here’s the brush, get those specks off the back of me willya?”

  And I proudly like an old New Orleans movie porter in old trains, brush his back clean of specks—

  “That’s fine, me boy,” says Cody, placing the Racing Form neatly in the side of his uniform, and now we march on to Sunnyvale—“there’s old Sunnyvale out there” says Cody looking out as we clank into a station, and he goes out calling “Sunny-Vale” to the passengers, twice, and some of em yawn and get up—Sunnyvale where Cody and I’d worked together, and the conductor said he talked too much tho Cody did show me how not to get on a diesel footboard—(If you get on the wrong way you’re ground under, sometimes it isnt noticed in the dark) (You stand there in the dark on a track and wont see nothing because a low flatcar’s sneakin up to ya like a snake)—So Cody is the Conductor of the Heavenly Train, and we’ll all get our tickets pinched by him because we were all good lambs believed in roses and lamps and
eyes of the moon—

  Water from the moon

  Comes all too soon

  100

  But he’s mad at me for bringing Raphael to his house for the weekend, tho he doesnt care, he figures Evelyn wont like him, or it—We get off the train at San Jose, wake up Raphael, and get into his new family car, a Rambler Stationwagon, and off we go, he’s mad, he slams the car around with vicious twists and yet doesnt make a sound with his tires, he’s learned that old trick before—“All right,” he seems to say, “we’ll go to the pad and sleep. And,” he says out loud, “you two guys enjoy yourselves tomorrow watching the big Pro Football game Packers and Lions, I’ll be back bout six, and drive you in Monday dawn to the first train back—that I’m working in, you see, so you dont have to worry about getting on—Now chillun, here’s the pad,” turning into a narrow country road, and another, and into a driveway and a garage—“There’s the Spanish Mansion Pad and first thing is sleep.”

  “Where do I sleep?” says Raphael.

  “You sleep on the sofa in the parlor,” I say, “and I’ll sleep in the grass in my sleepingbag. I’ve got my spot out there in the backyard.”

  Okay, we get out and I go in the back of the huge yard among bushes, and spread out my sack, from the rucksack, on dewy grass, and the stars are cold—But that star air hits me and as I slip into my bag it’s like a prayer—To sleep is like a prayer, but under the stars, if you wake up at night, at 3 A.M., you’ll see what a big beautiful Heavenly Milky Way room you’re sleeping in, cloudy-milk with a hundred thousand myriads of universes, and more, the number is unbelievably milky, no Univac Machine with the brainwash mind can measure that extent of our reward that we can see up there—