Desolation Angels: A Novel

  We approached the strange pair but they hurried away scared. Irwin had us cruise up and down the street till we bumped into them again. The cops were out of sight. The older kid saw something sympathetic in Irwin’s eyes and stopped to talk, asking for cigarettes first. In Spanish, Irwin gleaned that they were lovers but homeless and the police were persecuting them specially for some bugged reason or one jealous cop. They slept in empty lots in newspapers or sometimes in paper posters torn from signs. The older one was just a swishy kid but with none of your American googly gushiness of such types, he was stern, simple, serious, with a dedicated sort of courtdancer professionalism about his queerness. The poor child of 12 was only an Indian boy with big brown eyes, an orphan probably. He just wanted Pichi to get him an occasional tortilla and show him where to sleep in safety. The older, Pichi, wore makeup, purple eyelids and all and quite gaudy but he kept looking more like a performer in a show than anything else. They hurried away down the blue worm alley as the cops reappeared—we saw them twinkling away, two pairs of feet, towards dark shacks of the closed garbagey market. They made Irwin and Simon look like ordinary people.

  Meanwhile whole gangs of Mexican hipsters mill around, most of them with mustaches, all broke, quite a few of Italian and Cuban descent. Some of them even write poetry, as I found later, and have their regular Master-Disciple relationship just like in America or London: you see the head cat in his topcoat explaining some obscure point about history or philosophy as the others listen smoking. For smoking pot they go into rooms and sit till dawn wondering why they cant sleep. But unlike American hipsters they all have to go to work in the morning. They’re all thieves but they seem to steal eccentric objects that strike their fancy unlike the professional thieves and pickpockets who also mill around Redondas. It’s an awful street, a street of nausea, actually. The music of trumpets everywhere makes’ it even more awful somehow. In spite of the fact that the only definition of a “hipster” is that he is a person who can stand on certain street corners in any foreign big city in the world and connect for pot or junk without knowing the language, it all makes you want to go back to America to Harry Truman’s face.

  18

  Which is what Raphael already painfully wanted to do, agonized more than any of us. “Oh God,” he wept, “it’s like a dirty old rag somebody finally used to wipe up spit in the men’s room! I’m going to fly back to New York, spit on this! I’m going downtown and get me a rich room in a hotel and wait for my money! I aint going to spend my life studying garbanzos in a garbage can! I want a castle with a moat, a velvet hood over my Leonardo head. I want my old Benjamin Franklin rocking chair! I want velvet drapes! I wanta ring for the butler! I want moonlight in my hair! I want Shelley and Chatterton in my chair!”

  We were back at the apartment listening to this as he packed. While we roamed the street he’d come back and chatted with poor old Bull all night and also received a taste of morphine. (“Raphael’s the smartest of you all,” said Old Bull the next day, pleased.) Meanwhile Lazarus had stayed home alone doing God knows what, listening, probably, staring and listening in the room. One look at that poor kid trapped in this crazy dirty world and you wondered what would happen to all of us, all, all thrown to the dogs of eternity in the end—

  “I wanta die a better death than this,” continued Raphael as we listened attentively. “Why aint I in a loft in an old church in Russia composing hymns on organs! Why do I have to be the grocer’s boy? It’s creepy!” He pronounced it New Yorkese almost cweepy. “I aint lost my way! I’m gonna get what I want! When I pee’d in beds when I was a kid and tried to hide the sheets from my mother I knew it was all gonna be creepy! The sheets fell in the creepy street! I looked at my poor sheets way down there over a creepy fire hydrant!” We were all laughing now. He was warming up to his evening’s poem. “I want Moorish ceilings and roastbeefs! We havent even eaten in one fancy restaurant since we came here! Why cant we even go ring the Cathedral bells at Midnight!”

  “All right,” said Irwin, “let’s go tomorrow to the Cathedral on the Zocalo and ask to ring the bells.” (Which they did, the next day, the three of them, they got permission from the porter and grabbed big ropes and swung and dangled off big bonging songs I probably heard on my roof as I read alone the Diamond Sutra in the sun—but I wasnt there and dont know exactly what else happened.)

  Now Raphael begins to write a poem, suddenly he’s stopped talking as Irwin lit a candle and as we all sit relaxing in low tones you can hear the crazy scratchety scratch of Raphael’s pen racing over the page. You can actually hear the poem for the first and last time in the world. The scratchings sound just like Raphael’s yellings, with the same rhythm of expostulation and bombast booms of complaint. But in the scratchety scratch you also hear the somehow miraculous making of words into English from the head of an Italian who never spoke English in the Lower East Side till he was seven. He has a great mellifluous mind, deep, with amazing images that are like a daily shock to all of us when he reads us the daily poem. For instance, a night ago he’d read H. G. Wells’ history and immediately sat down with all the names of a spate of history in mind and strung it off delightfully: something about Parthians and Scythian paws that made you feel history, paw and claw and all, instead of just understanding it. When he scratched out poems in our candlelight silence none of us ever spoke. I realized what a dopey crew we were, by dopey I mean so innocent of the way it’s said by the authorities that life should be lived. Five grown American men and scratchety scratch in a candlelight room. But when he was through I’d say “All right now read what you wrote.”

  “Oh Hawthorne’s baggy trousers, the unmendable hole …” And you see poor Hawthorne, even tho he wears that awkward crown, tailorless in a New England blizzard attic (or something), in any case, tho it may not amaze the reader, it amazed us, even Lazarus, and we did love Raphael. And we were all in the same boat, poor, in a foreign land, our art rejected more or less, crazy, ambitious, finally childlike. (It was only later we became famous and our childlikeness was insulted, but later.)

  Upstairs, clearly down the court, you could hear the pretty hamonizing of the Mexican mad students who’d whistled at us, guitars and all, country campo love songs and then suddenly a dopey attempt at Rock n Roll probably for our benefit. In answer Irwin and I began singing Eli Eli, low soft and slow. Irwin is really a great Jewish cantor with a clear tremulous voice. His real name is Avrum. The Mexican guys were dead quiet listening. In Mexico people sing in big gangs even after midnight with the windows open.

  19

  The next day Raphael made one last effort to cheer himself up by buying a huge roastbeef in the Super Mercado, sticking it full of garlic cloves, and shoving it in the oven. It was delicious. Even Gaines came over and ate with us. But the Mexican students were all suddenly at the door with bottles of mescal (unrefined tequila) and Gaines and Raphael sneaked off while the rest of us bleakly entertained. The head man of the gang though was a stalwart handsome goodnatured Indian in a white shirt who insisted on everything being amenable and fun. He must have made a fine doctor. Some of the others had mustaches from middleclass mestizo homes, and one final student who would certainly never become a doctor, kept passing out on every drink, insisted on taking us to a whorehouse and when we got there they were too expensive and he was thrown out for drunkenness anyway. We stood in the street again, looking everywhichaway.

  So we moved Raphael down to his fancy hotel. It had big vases, rugs, Moorish ceilings and American women tourists writing letters in the lobby. Poor Raphael sat there in a big oaken chair looking around for a benefactress who would take him home to her penthouse in Chicago. We left him musing about the lobby. The next day he got a plane for Washington D.C. where he was invited to stay at the home of the Poetry Consultant of the Library of Congress, where I would see him strangely soon.

  I see that vision of Raphael, the dust is blowing across the street corner, his deep brown eyes inside high cheekbones under a crop of fawn hair,
or like the hair of a satyr, really like the hair of a regular American cornerstone kid of the cities … which way is Shelley? which way Chatterton? how come there are no funeral pyres, no Keats, no Adonaïs, no wreathéd horse & cherubs? God knows what he’s thinking. (“Fried shoes,” he however later told Time Magazine, but wasn’t being serious.)

  20

  Irwin and Simon and I accidentally wound up in a charming afternoon at Lake Xochimilco, the Floating Gardens of Paradise I’d say. A group of Mexicans from the park took us there. First we lunched on turkey molé at the waterside booth. Turkey molé is seasoned chocolate sauce over turkey, very good. But the proprietor was also selling raw pulque (unrefined mescal) and I got drunk. But there’s no better place in the world to get drunk than the Floating Gardens, naturally. We hired a barge and got poled down dreamy canals full of floating flowers and whole little islands moving around—Other barges floated past us poled by the same grave ferrymen with whole families celebrating weddings aboard, so as I sat there crosslegged with the pulque at my shoes suddenly a floating heaven music came and went at my side, complete with pretty girls, children and old handlebar mustaches. Then women in low kyak boats rowed up to sell flowers. You could hardly see the boat for all the flowers. There were areas of dreamy reeds where the women paused to rearrange bouquets. All kinds of mariachi bands passed north and south mingling several tunes at once in the soft sunny air. The boat itself felt like a lotus. When you pole a boat there’s smoothness you dont get with oars. Or motors. I was smashed drunk on the pulque (as I say, unrefined juice of the cactus, like green milk, awful, a penny a glass.) But I waved at passing families. For the most part I sat in ecstasy feeling I was in some Buddhaland of Flowers and Song. Xochimilco is what’s left of the lake that was filled over to build Mexico City on. You could imagine what it was in Aztec times, the barges of courtesans and priests in the moonlight …

  At dusk that day we played piggyback in the yard of a nearby church, tug of war. With Simon on my back we managed to topple over Pancho, who carried Irwin.

  On the way back we watched the fireworks of November 16 at the Zocalo. When the Mexicans have fireworks everybody stands there yelling OOO! being showered finally by huge pieces of falling fire, it’s insane. It’s like war. Nobody cares. I saw a flaming wheel pirouetting down right on the crowd across the square. Men rushed away pushing baby carriages to safety. The Mexicans kept lighting madder and bigger stationary affairs that roared and hissed and exploded all over. Finally they sent up a barrage of final boombooms that were beautiful, ending with the great God finale Bomb, Plow! (& everybody goes home.)

  21

  Arriving at my room on the roof after all these frantic days I’d go to bed with a sigh. “When they leave I’ll get back on the beam again,” quiet cocoas at midnight, long sleeps—Yet also I couldn’t imagine what I was going to do anymore anyway. Irwin sensed it, has always directed me in some ways, said “Jack you’ve had all your peace in Mexico and on the mountain, why dont you come to New York with us now? Everybody’s waiting for you. Your book’ll be published eventually, within a year even, you can see Julien again, get a pad or a room in the Y or anything. It’s time for you to make it!” he yelled. “After all!”

  “Make what?”

  “Get published, meet everybody, make money, become a big international traveling author, sign autographs for old ladies from Ozone Park—”

  “How you going to New York?”

  “We’ll simply check the paper for share the car rides—There’s one in the paper today. Maybe we can even go thru New Orleans—”

  “Who wants to see that dreary old New Orleans.”

  “Oh you’re a fool—I’ve never seen New Orleans!” he yelled. “I wanta see it!”

  “So you can tell people you saw it?”

  “Never mind all that. Ah Jack,” tenderly, putting his head against mine, “poor Jacky, tortured Jacky—all bugged and alone in an old maid’s cell—Come with us to New York and visit museums, we’ll even go back and walk over the Columbia campus and tweak old Schnappe in the ear—We’ll present Van Doren with our plans for a new world literature—We’ll camp on Trilling’s doorstep till he gives us back that quarter.” (Talking about college professors.)

  “All that literary stuff is just a drag.”

  “Yes but it’s also interesting in itself, a big charming camp we can dig—Where’s your old Dostoevsky curiosity? You’ve become so whiney! You’re coming on like an old sick junkey sitting in a room in nowhere. It’s time for you to wear berets and suddenly amaze everybod’ who’s forgotten you’re a big international author even celebrity—We can do anything we want!” he yelled. “Make movies! Go to Paris! Buy islands! Anything!”

  “Raphael.”

  “‘Yes but Raphael doesnt moan like you he’s lost his way, he’s found his way—imagine now he’ll be hosted in Washington and meet Senators at cocktail parties. It’s time for the poets to influence American Civilization!” Garden, like a contemporary American novelist who claimed he was a two-fisted leftwing hipster leader and hired our Carnegie Hall to announce such, in fact like certain Harvard scholars in high places, was a scholar interested in politics eventually tho he made his mystic point about visions of eternity he’d seen—

  “Irwin if you’d really seen a vision of eternity you wouldnt care about influencing American Civilization.”

  “But that’s just the point, it’s where I at least have some authority to speak instead of just stale ideas and sociological hangups out of handbooks—I have a Blakean message for the Iron Hound of America.”

  “Whoopee—and whattaya do next?”

  “I become a big dignified poet people listen to—I spend quiet evenings with my friends in my smoking jacket, perhaps—I go out and buy everything I want in the supermarket—I have a voice in the supermarket!”

  “Okay?”

  “And you can come and have your publications arranged at once, those incompetents are stalling out of just stupid confusion. ‘Road’ is a big mad book that will change America! They can even make money with it. You’ll be dancing naked on your fan mail. You can look Boisvert in the eye. Big Faulkners and Hemingways will grow thoughtful thinking of you. It’s time! See?” He stood holding his arms out like a symphony conductor. His eyes were fixed on me hypnotically mad. (Once he’d said to me seriously, on pot, “I want you to listen to my speeches like across Red Square.”) “The Lamb of America will be raised! How can the East have any respect for a country that has no prophetic Poets! The Lamb must be raised! Big trembling Oklahomas need poetry and nakedness! Airplanes must fly for a reason from one gentle heart to an open heart! Namby pamby dillydallyers in offices have to have somebody give them a rose! Wheat’s got to be sent to India! New hip classical doll scenes can take place in bus stations, or in the Port Authority, or the Seventh Avenue toilet, or in Missus Rocco’s parlor in East Bend or something” shaking his shoulder with his old New York hipster hunch, the neck convulsive …

  “Well, maybe I’ll go with ya.”

  “You might even get yourself a girlfriend in New York like you used to do—Duluoz, the trouble with you is you havent a girl in years. Why do you think that you have grimy black hands that shouldnt go on the white shiny flesh of chicks? They all wanta be loved, they’re all human trembling souls scared of you because you glare at them because you’re afraid of them.”

  “That’s right Jack!” pipes in Simon. “Gotta give those girls a little workout boy, sonny boy, hey sonny boy!” coming over and rocking my knees.

  “Is Lazarus going with us?” I ask.

  “Sure. Lazarus can take big long walks up Second Avenue and look at the pumpernickel breads or help old men into the Library.”

  “He can read papers upsidedown in the Empire State Building” says Simon still laughing.

  “I can gather firewood on the River,” says Lazarus from his bed with the sheet up to his chin.

  “What?” We all turn to hear him again, he hasnt spoken in 24 hour
s.

  “I can gather firewood on the river,” he concludes closing down the word “river” as tho it was a pronouncement that none of us need discuss anymore. But he repeats it one last time … “on the river.” “Firewood,” he adds, and suddenly there he is giving me that humorous side-glance meaning he’s just pulling all our legs but wont say it’s so.

  PART TWO

  PASSING THROUGH NEW YORK

  22

  It was a horrible trip. We contacted, that is Irwin contacted in a perfect businesslike efficient way this Italian from New York who was a language teacher in Mexico but looked exactly like a Las Vegas gambler, a Mott Street hood, in fact I wondered what he was doing in Mexico really. He had an ad in the paper, a car, a Puerto Rican passenger already contracted, and the rest of us could fit all around with all the shebang’s baggage on the roof of the car. Three in front and three in back, knee to knee in horror for three thousand miles! But no other way—

  The morning we left (I forgot to mention that Gaines had been sick several times and sent us downtown on junk errands that were difficult and dangerous …) Gaines was sick the morning we left but we tried to rush away without being noticed. Actually of course I wanted to go in and say goodbye to him but the car was waiting and there was no doubt he wanted me to go downtown get his morphine (he was short again). We could hear him coughing as we passed the street window with the sad pink drape, 8 o’clock in the A.M. I couldn’t resist just sticking my head against the hole in the window saying: “Hey Bull, we’re going now. I’ll see ya—when I come back—I’ll be back soon—”

  “No! No!” he cried in the trembling sick voice he had when he tried to convert his addiction withdrawal pain to barbiturate torpor, which left him a mess of tangled bathrobes and sheets and spilled piss. “No! I want you to go downtown do somethin for me—It wont take long—”