If she had only said to me: “Listen, you can’t ask me to do a thing like that! It’s mad, don’t you see? How would we get along, the three of us? I know you’d like to help her—so would I. . . but———”
If she had spoken that way I would have gone to the mirror, taken a long cool look at myself, laughed like a broken hinge and agreed that it was utterly mad. Not that only, but more . . . I would have given her credit for really desiring to do something which I knew her meager spirit was incapable of imagining. Yes, I’d have chalked up a white mark for her and topped it off with a quiet insane fuck à la Huysmans. I’d have taken her on my lap, as her father in heaven used to do, and cooing and billing, and pretending that 986 plus 2 makes minus 69 I’d have delicately lifted her organdy cover-all, and put the fire out with an ethereal fire extinguisher.
However, and instead of which, pissing in vain against a wall of fireproofed sheet metal, I got so infuriated that I burst out of the house in the middle of the night and started walking to Coney Island. The weather was mild and when I got to the boardwalk I sat down on a ramp and began to laugh. I got to thinking of Stanley, of the night I met him after his release from Fort Oglethorpe, of the open barouche we hired and the beer bottles piled up on the seat opposite. After four years in the cavalry Stanley was a man of iron. He was tough inside and out, as only a Pole can be. He would have bitten my ear off, if I had dared him to, and perhaps spat it in my face. He had a couple of hundred dollars in his pocket and he wanted to spend it all that night. And before the night was over I remember that we had just enough between us to share a room together in some broken-down hotel near Borough Hall. I remember too that he was so stinking drunk that he wouldn’t get out of bed to relieve his bladder—just turned over and pissed a steady stream against the wall.
The next day I was still furious. And the following day and the day after. That NO! was eating me up. It would take a thousand Yeses to bury it. Nothing vital occupied me at the time. I was making a pretense of earning a living by selling a shelf of books which were supposed to contain “the world’s best literature.” I hadn’t yet sunk to the encyclopedia stage. The rat who had put me on to the game had hypnotized me. I had sold everything in a posthypnotic trance. Sometimes I awoke with bright ideas, that’s to say, slightly criminal or definitely hallucinatory. Anyway, still hopping mad, still furious, I awoke one day with that NO! still reverberating in my ears. I was eating breakfast when I suddenly recalled that I had never canvassed cousin Julie. Maude’s cousin Julie. Julie was married now, just long enough, I figured, to want a change of rhythm. Julie would be my first call. I’d take it easy, pop in just a little before lunch, sell her a set of books, have a good meal, get my end in and then go to a movie.
Julie lived at the upper end of Manhattan in a wallpapered incubator. Her husband was a dope, as near as I could make out. That’s to say he was a perfectly normal specimen who earned an honest living and voted the Republican or Democratic ticket according to mood. Julie was a good-natured slob who never read anything more disturbing than the Saturday Evening Post. She was just a piece of ass, with about enough intelligence to realize that after a fuck you have to take a douche and if that doesn’t work then a darning needle. She had done it so often, the darning-needle stunt, that she was an adept at it. She could bring on a hemorrhage even if it had been an immaculate conception. Her main idea was to enjoy herself like a drunken weasel and get it out of her system as quick as possible. She wouldn’t flinch at using a chisel or a monkey wrench, if she thought either would do the trick.
I was a bit flabbergasted when she came to the door. I hadn’t thought of the change a year or so can work in a female, nor had I thought how most females look at eleven in the morning when they are not expecting visitors. To be cruelly exact, she looked like a cold meat loaf that had been spattered with catsup and put back in the icebox. The Julie I had last seen was a dream by comparison. I had to make some rapid transpositions to adjust myself to the situation.
Naturally I was more in the mood to sell than to fuck. Before very long, however, I realized that to sell, I would have to fuck. Julie just couldn’t understand what the hell had come over me—to walk in on her and try to dump a load of books on her. I couldn’t tell her it would improve her mind because she had no mind, and she knew it and wasn’t the least embarrassed to admit it.
She left me alone for a few minutes in order to primp herself up. I began reading the prospectus. I found it so interesting that I almost sold myself a set of books. I was reading a fragment about Coleridge, what a wonderful mind he had (and I had always thought him a bag of shit!), when I felt her coming towards me. It was so interesting, the passage, that I excused myself without looking up and continued reading. She knelt behind me, on the couch, and began reading over my shoulder. I felt her sloshy boobs joggling me but I was too intent on pursuing the ramifications of Coleridge’s amazing mind to let her vegetable appendages disturb me.
Suddenly the beautifully bound prospectus went flying out of my hand.
“What are you reading that crap for?” she cried, swinging me around and holding me by the elbows. “I don’t understand a word of it, and neither do you, I’ll bet. What’s the matter with you—can’t you find yourself a job?”
A witless-shitless sort of grin slowly spread over her face. She looked like a Teutonic angel doing a real think. I got up, recovered the prospectus, and asked what about lunch.
“Jesus I like your crust,” said she. “What the hell do you think I am anyway?”
Here I had to pretend that I was only joking, but after putting my hand down her bosom and twiddling the nipple of of her right teat a while, I deftly brought the conversation back to the subject of food.
“Listen, you’ve changed,” she said. “I don’t like the way you talk—or act.” Here she firmly stuck her teat back, as if it were a ball of wet socks going into a laundry bag. “Listen, I’m a married woman, do you realize that? Do you know what Mike would do to you if he caught you acting this way?”
“You’re a bit changed yourself,” said I, rising to my feet and sniffing the air in search of provender. All I wanted now was food. I don’t know why, but I had made up my mind that she would dish me up a good meal—that was the least she could do for me, lopsided moron that she was.
The only way to get anything out of her was to handle her. I had to pretend to get passionate mauling the cheeks of her tumorous ass. And yet not too passionate, because that would mean a quick fuck and maybe no lunch. If the meal were good I might do a hit-and-run job—that’s what I was thinking to myself as I foozled around.
“Jesus Christ, all right, I’ll get you a meal,” she blurted out, reading my thoughts like a blind bookworm.
“Fine,” I almost shouted. “What have you got?”
“Come and see for yourself,” she answered, dragging me to the kitchen and opening the icebox.
I saw ham, potato salad, sardines, cold beets, rice pudding, apple sauce, frankfurters, pickles, celery stalks, cream cheese and a special dish of puke with mayonnaise on it which I knew I didn’t want.
“Let’s bring it all out”, I suggested. “And have you any beer?”
“Yeah, and I got mustard too,” she snarled.
“Any bread?”
She gave me a look of clean disgust. I quickly yanked the things out of the icebox and set them on the table.
“Better make some coffee too,” I said.
“I suppose you’d like some whipped cream with it, wouldn’t you? You know, I feel like poisoning you. Jesus, if you’re hard up you could ask me to lend you some money . . . you oughtn’t to come here and try to sell me a lot of crap. If you’d been a little nicer I’d have asked you out to lunch. I’ve got tickets for the theater. We could have had a good time. . . . I might even have bought the fool books. Mike isn’t a bad guy. He’d have bought the books even if we had no intention of reading them. If he thought you needed help. . . . You walk in and treat me as if I were dirt. What d
id I ever do to you? I don’t get it. Don’t laugh! I’m serious. I don’t know why I should take this from you. Who the hell do you think you are?”
She slammed a dish down in front of me. Then she turned on her heel and went to the kitchen. I was left there with all the food heaped up in front of me.
“Come, come, don’t take it like that!” I said, shoveling a forkful into my mouth. “You know I didn’t mean anything personal.” (The word personal struck me as being highly incongruous, but I knew she’d like it.)
“Personal or not, I’m not joining you,” she retorted. “You can eat your fill and get out. I’ll make you some coffee. I don’t want to ever see you again. You’re disgusting.”
I put the knife and fork down and went into the kitchen. The things were cold anyway, so it wouldn’t matter if I did spend a few minutes soothing her feelings.
“I’m sorry, Julie,” I said, trying to put my arm around her. She brushed me away angrily. “You see,” and I began to put some feeling into my words, “Maude and I don’t get along very well. We had a bad quarrel this morning. I must be out of sorts . . .”
“Is that any reason to take it out on me?”
“No, it isn’t. I don’t know, I was desperate this morning. That’s why I came to see you. And then, when I started in to work on you . . . to sell you the books . . . I felt ashamed of myself. I wouldn’t have let you take the books even if you had pretended you wanted them . . .”
“I know what’s the matter with you,” she said. “You were disappointed in my looks. I’ve changed, that’s what’s the matter. And you’re a bad loser. You want to take it out on me—but it’s your own fault. You’ve got a good-looking wife . . . why don’t you stick to her? Everybody has quarrels—you’re not the only two in the world. Do I run off to somebody else’s husband when things go wrong? Where the hell would that get us? Mike’s no angel to live with . . . nobody is, I guess. You act like a spoiled child. What do you think life is, a wet dream?”
This speech couldn’t be laughed off. I had to beg her to sit down and eat with me, give me a chance to explain myself. Reluctantly she consented.
It was a long-drawn-out story I unfolded, as I polished off one plate after another. She seemed so impressed by my sincerity that I began to toy with the idea of reintroducing the world’s best literature. I had to skate very delicately because this time it would have to look as if I were doing her a favor. I was trying to jockey myself into the position of letting her help me. At the same time I was wondering if it were worth it, if perhaps it wouldn’t be more pleasant to go to the matinee.
She was just getting back to normal, getting friendly and trusting. The coffee was excellent, and I had just finished the second cup when I felt a bowel movement coming on. I excused myself and went to the bathroom. There I enjoyed the luxury of a thorough evacuation. I pulled the chain and sat there a few moments, a bit dreamy and a bit lecherous too, when suddenly I realized that I was getting a sitz bath. I pulled the chain again. The water started to overflow between my legs on to the floor. I jumped up, dried my ass with a towel, buttoned my trousers and looked frantically up at the toilet box. I tried everything I could think of but the water kept rising and flowing over—and with it came one or two healthy turds and a mess of toilet paper.
In a panic I called Julie. Through a crack in the door I begged her to tell me what to do.
“Let me in, I’ll fix it,” said she.
“Tell me,”I begged. “I’ll do it. You can’t come in yet.”
“I can’t explain,” said Julie. “You’ll have to let me in.”
There was no help for it, I had to open the door. I was never more embarrassed in my life. The floor was one ungodly mess. Julie, however, went to work with dispatch, as though it were an everyday affair. In a jiffy the water had stopped running; it only remained to clean up the mess.
“Listen, you get out now,” I begged. “Let me handle this. Have you got a dustpan—and a mop?”
“You get out!” said she. “I’ll take care of it.” And with that she pushed me out and closed the door.
I waited on pins and needles for her to come out. Then a real funk took hold of me. There was only one thing to do—escape as fast as possible.
I fidgeted a few moments, listening first on one foot, then the other, not daring to make a peep. I knew I’d never be able to face her. I looked around, measured the distance to the door, listened intently for just a second, then grabbed my things and tiptoed out.
It was an elevator apartment, but I didn’t wait for the elevator. I skipped down the stairs, three steps at a time, as though the devil himself were pursuing me.
The first thing I did was to go to a restaurant and wash my hands thoroughly. There was a machine which—by inserting a coin—squirted perfume over you. I helped myself to a few squirts and sallied out into the bright sunshine. I walked aimlessly for a while, contrasting the beautiful weather with my uncomfortable state of mind.
Soon I found myself walking near the river. A few yards ahead was a little park, or at least a strip of grass and some benches. I took a seat and began to ruminate. In less than no time my thoughts had reverted to Coleridge. It was a relief to let the mind dwell on problems purely aesthetic.
Absent-mindedly I opened the prospectus and began rereading the fragment which had so absorbed me—prior to the horrible fiasco at Julie’s. I skipped from one item to another. At the back of the prospectus there were maps and charts and reproductions of ancient writings found on tablets and monuments in various parts of the world. I came upon “the mysterious writing” of the Uigurs who had once overrun Europe from the overflowing well of Central Asia. I read of cities which had been lifted heavenward twelve and thirteen thousand feet when the mountain ranges began to form; I read about Solon’s discourse with Plato and about the seventy-thousand-year-old glyphs found in Tibet which hinted all too clearly of the existence of now unknown continents. I came upon the sources of Pythagoras’ conceptions and read with sadness of the destruction of the great library at Alexandria. Certain Mayan tablets reminded me vividly of the canvases of Paul Klee. The writings of the ancients, their symbols, their patterns, their compositions, were strikingly like the things children invent in kindergartens. The insane, on the other hand, produced the most intellectual sort of compositions. I read about Laotse and Albertus Magnus and Cagliostro and Cornelius Agrippa and Iamblichus, each one a universe, each one a link in an invisible chain of now exploded worlds. I came to a chart arranged like parallel strips of banjo frets, telling off laterally the centuries “since the dawn of civilization” and vertically listing the literary figures of the epochs, their names and their works. The Dark Ages stood out like blind windows in the side of a skyscraper; here and there in the great blank wall there was a beam of light shed by the spirit of some intellectual giant who had managed to make his voice heard above the croaking of the submerged and dispirited denizens of the marshes. When it was dark in Europe it had been bright elsewhere: the spirit of man was like a veritable switchboard, revealing itself in signals and flashes, often across oceans of darkness. One thing stood out clearly—on that switchboard certain great spirits were still plugged in, still standing by for a call. When the epoch which had called them forth was drowned out they emerged from the darkness like the towering snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas. And there was reason to believe, it seemed to me, that not until another unspeakable catastrophe occurred would the light they shed be extinguished. As I shut off the current of reverie into which I had fallen a Sphinx-like image registered itself on the fallen curtain: it was the hoary visage of one of Europe’s magi: Leonardo da Vinci. The mask which he wore to conceal his identity is one of the most baffling disguises ever assumed by an emissary from the depths. It made me shudder to think what those eyes which stare unflinchingly into the future had perceived. . . .
I looked across the river to the Jersey shore. It looked desolate to me, more desolate even than the boulder bed of a dried-up river. Noth
ing of any importance to the human race had ever happened here. Nothing would happen for thousands of years perhaps. The Pygmies were vastly more interesting, vastly more illuminating to study, than the inhabitants of New Jersey. I looked up and down the Hudson River, a river I have always detested, even from the time when I first read of Henry Hudson and his bloody Half Moon. I hated both sides of the river equally. I hated the legends woven about its name. The whole valley was like the empty dream of a beer-logged Dutchman. I never did give a fuck about Powhatan or Manhattan. I loathed Father Knickerbocker. I wished that there were ten thousand black-powder plants scattered on both sides of the river and that they might all blow up simultaneously. . . .
14
A sudden decision to clear out of Cockroach Hall. Why? Because I had met Rebecca. . . .
Rebecca was the second wife of my old friend Arthur Raymond. The two were now living in an enormous apartment on Riverside Drive; they wanted to let out rooms. It was Kronski who told me about it; he said he was going to take one of the rooms.
“Why don’t you come up and meet his wife—you’ll like her. She could be Mona’s sister.”
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Rebecca. Rebecca Valentine.”
The name Rebecca excited me. I had always wanted to meet a woman called Rebecca—and not Becky.
(Rebecca, Ruth, Roxane, Rosalind, Frederika, Ursula, Sheila, Norma, Guinevere, Leonora, Sabina, Malvina, Solange, Deirdre. What wonderful names women had! Like flowers, stars, constellations. . .)
Mona wasn’t so keen about the move, but when we got to Arthur Raymond’s place and she heard him practicing, she changed her tune.
It was Renée, the younger sister of Arthur Raymond, who opened the door. She was about nineteen, a spitfire with heavy curly locks full of vitality. Her voice was like a nightingale’s—no matter what she said you felt like agreeing.