When I think now of the ruse by which I was liberated, when I think that I was released from this prison because the one I loved wanted to get rid of me, what a sad, baffled, mystifying smile comes over my features. How confused and intricate everything is! We are grateful to those who stab us in the back; we run away from those who would help us; we congratulate ourselves on our good luck, never dreaming that our good luck may be a quagmire from which it will be impossible to extricate ourselves. We run forward with head turned; we rush blindly into the trap. We never escape, except into a cul-de-sac.
I am walking through the Bronx, five or six blocks, just time and space enough to twist myself into a corkscrew. Mona will be there waiting for me. She will embrace me warmly, as if we had never embraced before. We will have only a couple of hours together and then she will leave—to go to the dance hall where she still works as a taxi girl. I will be sound asleep when she returns at three or four in the morning. She will pout and fret if I don’t awaken, if I don’t throw my arms around her passionately and tell her I love her. She has so much to tell me each night and there is no time to tell it. Mornings, when I leave, she is sound asleep. We come and go like railroad trains. This is the beginning of our life together.
I love her, heart and soul. She is everything to me. And yet she is nothing like the women I dreamed of, like those ideal creatures whom I worshiped as a boy. She corresponds to nothing I had conceived out of my own depths. She is a totally new image, something foreign, something which Fate whirled across my path from some unknown sphere. As I look at her, as I get to love her morsel by morsel, I find that the totality of her escapes me. My love adds up like a sum, but she, the one I am seeking with desperate, hungry love, escapes like an elixir. She is completely mine, almost slavishly so, but I do not possess her. It is I who am possessed. I am possessed by a love such as was never offered me before—an engulfing love, a total love, a love of my very toenails and the dirt beneath them—and yet my hands are forever fluttering, forever grasping and clutching, seizing nothing.
Coming home one evening, I observed out of the corner of my eye one of those soft, sensuous creatures of the ghetto who seem to emerge from the pages of the Old Testament. She was one of the Jewesses whose name must be Ruth or Esther. Or perhaps Miriam.
Miriam, yes! That was the name I was searching for. Why was that name so wonderful to me? How could such a simple appellation evoke such powerful emotions? I kept asking myself this question.
Miriam is the name of names. If I could mold all women into the perfect ideal, if I could give this ideal all the qualities I seek in woman, her name would be Miriam.
I had forgotten completely the lovely creature who inspired these reflections. I was on the track of something, and as my pace quickened, as my heart thumped more madly, I suddenly recalled the face, the voice, the figure, the gestures of the Miriam I knew as a boy of twelve. Miriam Painter, she called herself. Only fifteen or sixteen, but full-blown, radiantly alive, fragrant as a flower and—untouchable. She was not a Jewess, nor did she even remotely suggest the memory of those legendary creatures of the Old Testament. (Or perhaps I had not then read the Old Testament.) She was the young woman with long chestnut hair, with frank, open eyes and rather generous mouth who greeted me cordially whenever we met on the street. Always at ease, always giving herself, always radiant with health and good nature; withal wise, sympathetic, full of understanding. With her it was unnecessary to make awkward overtures: she always came towards me beaming with this secret inner joy, always welling over. She swallowed me up and carried me along; she enfolded me like a mother, warmed me like a mistress, dispatched me like a fairy. I never had an impure thought about her: never desired her, never craved for a caress. I loved her so deeply, so completely, that each time I met her it was like being born again. All I demanded was that she should remain alive, be of this earth, be somewhere, anywhere, in this world, and never die. I hoped for nothing, I wanted nothing of her. Her mere existence was all-sufficing. Yes, I used to run into the house, hide myself away, and thank God aloud for having sent Miriam to this earth of ours. What a miracle! And what a blessed thing to love like this!
I don’t know how long this went on. I haven’t the slightest idea whether she was aware of my adoration or not. What matter? I was in love, with love. To love! To surrender absolutely, to prostrate oneself before the divine image, to die a thousand imaginary deaths, to annihilate every trace of self, to find the whole universe embodied and enshrined in the living image of another! Adolescent, we say. Rot! This is the germ of the future life, the seed which we hide away, which we bury deep within us, which we smother and stifle and do our utmost to destroy as we advance from one experience to another and flutter and flounder and lose our way.
By the time I meet the second ideal—Una Gifford—I am already diseased. Only fifteen years of age and the canker is gnawing at my vitals. How explain it? Miriam had dropped out of my life, not dramatically, but quietly, unostentatiously. She simply disappeared, was seen no more. I didn’t even realize what it meant. I didn’t think about it. People came and went; objects appeared and disappeared. I was in the flux, like the others, and it was all natural even if inexplicable. I was beginning to read, to read too much. I was turning inward, closing in on myself, as flowers close up in the night.
Una Gifford brings nothing but pain and anguish. I want her, I need her, I can’t live without her. She says neither Yes or No, for the simple reason that I have not the courage to put the question to her. I will be sixteen shortly and we are both still in school—we are only going to graduate next year. How can a girl your own age, to whom you only nod, or stare at, be the woman without whom life is impossible? How can you dream of marriage before you have crossed the threshold of life? But if I had eloped with Una Gifford then, at the age of fifteen, if I had married her and had ten children by her, it would have been right, dead right. What matter if I became something utterly different, if I sank down to the bottom rung? What matter if it meant premature old age? I had a need for her which was never answered, and that need was like a wound which grew and grew until it became a gaping hole. As life went on, as that desperate need grew more intense, I dragged everything into the hole and murdered it.
I was not aware, when I first knew Mona, how much she needed me. Nor did I realize how great a transformation she had made of her life, her habits, her background, her antecedents, in order to offer me that ideal image of herself which she all too quickly suspected that I had created. She had changed everything—her name, her birthplace, her mother, her upbringing, her friends, her tastes, even her desires. It was characteristic of her that she should want to change my name too, which she did. I was now Val, the diminutive of Valentine, which I had always been ashamed of—it seemed like a sissy’s name—but now that it issued from her lips it sounded like the name which suited me. Nobody else called me Val, though they heard Mona repeat it endlessly. To my friends I was what I always had been; they were not hypnotized by a mere change of name.
Of transformations. . . . I remember vividly the first night we passed at Dr. Onirifick’s place. We had taken a shower together, shuddering at the sight of the myriad of roaches which infested the bathroom. We got into bed beneath the eiderdown quilt. We had had an ecstatic fuck in this strange public room filled with bizarre objects. We were drawn very close together that night. I had separated from my wife and she had separated from her parents. We hardly knew why we had accepted to live in this outlandish house; in our proper senses neither of us would have dreamed of choosing such a setting. But we were not in our right senses. We were feverish to begin a new life, and we felt guilty, both of us, for the crimes we had committed in order to embark on the great adventure. Mona felt it more than I, in the beginning. She felt that she had been responsible for the break. It was the child which I had left behind, not my wife, whom she felt sorry for. It preyed on her mind. With it was the fear, no doubt, that I would wake up one day and realize that I had made a mistak
e. She struggled to make herself indispensable, to love me with such devotion, such complete self-sacrifice, that the past would be annihilated. She didn’t do it deliberately. She wasn’t even aware of what she was doing. But she clung to me desperately, so desperately that when I think of it now the tears come to my eyes. Because it was unnecessary: I needed her even more than she needed me.
And so, as we were falling off to sleep that night, as she rolled over to turn her back on me, the cover slipped off and I became aware, from the animal-like crouch she had assumed, of the massive quality of her back. I ran my two hands over her flesh, caressed her back as one would caress the flanks of a lioness. It was curious that I had never been aware of her superb back. We had slept together many times and we had fallen asleep in all sorts of postures, but I had noticed nothing. Now, in this huge bed which seemed to float in the wan light of the big room, her back became engraved in my memory. I had no definite thoughts about it—just vague pleasure sensations of the strength and the vitality that was in her. One who could support the world on her back! I didn’t formulate anything so definite as that, but it was there, the thought, in some vague, obscure region of my consciousness. In my fingertips more likely.
Under the shower I had teased her about her tummy, which was growing rather generous, and I realized at once that she was extremely sensitive about her figure. But I was not critical of her opulent flesh—I was delighted to discover it. It carried a promise, I thought. And then, under my very eyes, this body which had been so generously endowed began to shrink. The inner torture was beginning to take its toll. At the same time the fire that was in her began to burn more brightly. Her flesh was consumed by the passion that ravaged her. Her strong, columnar neck, the part of her body which I most admired, grew slenderer and slenderer, until the head seemed like a giant peony swaying on its fragile stem.
“You’re not ill?” I would ask, alarmed by this swift transformation.
“Of course not!” she would say. “I’m reducing.”
“But you’re carrying it too far, Mona.”
“I was like this as a girl,” she would answer. “It’s natural for me to be thin.”
“But I don’t want you to grow thin. I don’t want you to change. Look at your neck—do you want to have a scrawny neck?”
“My neck isn’t scrawny,” she would say, jumping up to look at herself in the mirror.
“I didn’t say it was, Mona . . . but it may get that way if you keep on in this reckless fashion.”
“Please Val, don’t talk about it. You don’t understand . . .”
“Mona, don’t talk that way. I’m not criticizing you. I only want to protect you.”
“You don’t like me this way . . . is that it?”
“Mona, I like you any way. I love you. I adore you. But please be reasonable. I’m afraid you’re going to fade away, evaporate in thin air. I don’t want you to get ill. . .”
“Don’t be silly, Val. I never felt better in my life.”
“By the way,” she added, “are you going to see the little one this Saturday?” She would never mention either my wife or the child by name. Also, she preferred to think that I was visiting only the child on these weekly expeditions to Brooklyn.
I said I thought I would go . . . why, was there any reason not to?
“No, no!” she said, jerking her head strangely and turning away to look for something in the bureau drawer.
I stood behind her, as she was leaning over, and clasped my arms around her waist.
“Mona, tell me something. . . . Does it hurt you very much when I go over there? Tell me honestly. Because if it does, I’ll stop going. It has to come to an end someday anyway.”
“You know I don’t want you to stop. Have I ever said anything against it?”
“No-o-o,” I said, lowering my head and gazing intently at the carpet. “No-o-o, you never say anything. But sometimes I wish you would . . .”
“Why do you say that?” she cried sharply. She looked almost indignant. “Haven’t you a right to see your own daughter? I would do it, if I were in your place.” She paused a moment and then, unable to control herself, she blurted out: “I would never have left her if she had been mine. I wouldn’t have given her up, not for anything!”
“Mona! What are you saying? What does this mean?”
“Just that. I don’t know how you can do it. I’m not worth such a sacrifice. Nobody is.”
“Let’s drop it,” I said. “We’re going to say things we don’t mean. I tell you, I don’t regret anything. It was no sacrifice, understand that. I wanted you and I got you. I’m happy. I could forget everybody if it were necessary. You’re the whole world to me, and you know it.”
I seized her and pulled her to me. A tear rolled down her cheek.
“Listen, Val, I don’t ask you to give up anything, but. . .”
“But what?”
“Couldn’t you meet me once in a while at night when I quit work?”
“At two in the morning?”
“I know . . . it is an ungodly hour . . . but I feel terribly lonely when I leave the dance hall. Especially after dancing with all those men, all those stupid, horrible creatures who mean nothing to me. I come home and you’re asleep. What have I got?”
“Don’t say that, please. Yes, of course I’ll meet you—now and then.”
“Couldn’t you take a nap after dinner and. . .”
“Sure I could. Why didn’t you tell me sooner? It was selfish of me not to think of that.”
“You’re not selfish, Val.”
“I am too. . . . Listen, supposing I ride down with you this evening? I’ll come back, take a snooze, and meet you at closing time.”
“You’re sure it won’t be too tiring?”
“No, Mona, it’ll be wonderful.”
On the way home, however, I began to realize what it would mean to arrange my hours thus. At two o’clock we would catch a bite somewhere. An hour’s ride on the elevated. In bed Mona would chat awhile before going to sleep. It would be almost five o’clock by that time and by seven I would have to be up again ready for work.
I got into the habit of changing my clothes every evening, in preparation for the rendezvous at the dance hall. Not that I went every evening—no, but I went as often as possible. Changing into old clothes—a khaki shirt, a pair of moccasins, sporting one of the canes which Mona had filched from Carruthers—my romantic self asserted itself. I led two lives: one at the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company and another with Mona. Sometimes Florrie joined us at the restaurant. She had found a new lover, a German doctor who, from all accounts, must have possessed an enormous tool. He was the only man who could satisfy her, that she made clear. This frail-looking creature with a typical Irish mug, the Broadway type par excellence, who would have suspected that between her legs there was a gash big enough to hide a sledge hammer—or that she liked women as well as men? She liked anything that had to do with sex. The gash was now rooted in her mind. It kept spreading and spreading until there was no room, in mind or gash, for anything but a superhuman prick.
One evening, after I had taken Mona to work, I started wandering through the side streets. I thought perhaps I would go to a cinema and meet Mona after the performance. As I passed a doorway I heard someone call my name. I turned round and in the hallway, as though hiding from someone, stood Florrie and Hannah Bell. We went across the street to have a drink. The girls acted nervous and fidgety. They said they would have to leave in a few minutes—they were just having a drink to be sociable. I had never been alone with them before and they were uneasy, as if afraid of revealing things I ought not to know. Quite innocently I took Florrie’s hand which was lying in her lap and squeezed it, to reassure her—of what I don’t know. To my amazement she squeezed it warmly and then, bending forward as if to say something confidential to Hannah, she unloosed her grip and fumbled in my fly. At that moment a man walked in whom they greeted effusively. I was introduced as a friend. Monahan was the man’s
name. “He’s a detective,” said Florrie, giving me a melting look. The man had hardly taken a seat when Florrie jumped up and seizing Hannah’s arm whisked her out of the place. At the door she waved goodbye. They ran across the street, in the direction of the doorway where they had been hiding.
“A strange way to act,” said Monahan. “What’ll you have?” he asked, calling the waiter over. I ordered another whisky and looked at him blankly. I didn’t relish the idea of being left with a detective on my hands. Monahan however was in a different frame of mind; he seemed happy to have found someone to talk to. Observing the cane and the sloppy attire he at once came to the conclusion that I was an artist of some sort.
“You’re dressed like an artist”—meaning a painter—“but you’re not an artist. Your hands are too delicate.” He seized my hands and examined them quickly. “You’re not a musician either,” he added. “Well, there’s only one thing left—you’re a writer!”
I nodded, half amused, half irritated. He was the type of Irishman whose directness antagonizes me. I could foresee the inevitable challenging Why? Why not? How come? What do you mean? As always, I began by being bland and indulgent. I agreed with him. But he didn’t want me to agree with him—he wanted to argue.
I had hardly said a word and yet in the space of a few minutes he was insulting me and at the same time telling me how much he liked me.
“You’re just the sort of chap I wanted to meet,” he said, ordering more drinks. “You know more than I do, but you won’t talk. I’m not good enough for you, I’m a low-brow. That’s where you’re wrong! Maybe I know a lot of things you don’t suspect. Maybe I can tell you a few things. Why don’t you ask me something?”