The damned have always a table to sit at, whereon they rest their elbows and support the leaden weight of their brains. The damned are always sightless, gazing out at the world with blank orbs. The damned are always petrified, and in the center of their petrification is immeasurable emptiness. The damned have always the same excuse—the loss of the beloved.
It is night and I am sitting in a cellar. This is our home. I wait for her night after night, like a prisoner chained to the floor of his cell. There is a woman with her whom she calls her friend. They have conspired to betray me and defeat me. They leave me without food, without heat, without light. They tell me to amuse myself until they return.
Through months of shame and humiliation I have come to hug my solitude. I no longer seek help from the outside world. I no longer answer the doorbell. I live by myself, in the turmoil of my own fears. Trapped in my own phantasms, I wait for the flood to rise and drown me out.
When they return to torture me I behave like the animal which I have become. I pounce on the food with ravenous hunger. I eat with my fingers. And as I devour the food I grin at them mercilessly, as though I were a mad, jealous Czar. I pretend that I am angry: I hurl vile insults at them, I threaten them with my fists, I growl and spit and rage.
I do this night after night, in order to stimulate my almost extinct emotions. I have lost the power to feel. To conceal this defect I simulate every passion. There are nights when I amuse them no end by roaring like a wounded lion. At times I knock them down with a velvet-thudded paw. I have even peed on them when they rolled about on the floor convulsed with hysterical laughter.
They say I have the makings of a clown. They say they will bring some friends down one night and have me perform for them. I grind my teeth and move my scalp back and forth to signify approval. I am learning all the tricks of the zoo.
My greatest stunt is to pretend jealousy. Jealousy over little things, particularly. Never to inquire whether she slept with this one or that, but only to know if he kissed her hand. I can become furious over a little gesture like that. I can pick up the knife and threaten to slit her throat. On occasion I go so far as to give her inseparable friend a tender jab in the buttocks. I bring iodine and court plaster and kiss her inseparable friend’s ass.
Let us say that they come home of an evening and find the fire out. Let us say that this evening I am in an excellent mood, having conquered the pangs of hunger with an iron will, having defied the onslaught of insanity alone in the dark, having almost convinced myself that only egotism can produce sorrow and misery. Let us say further that, entering the prison cell, they seem insensitive to the victory which I have won. They sense nothing more than the dangerous chill of the room. They do not inquire if I am cold, they simply say—it is cold here.
Cold, my little queens? Then you shall have a roaring fire. I take the chair and smash it against the stone wall. I jump on it and break it into tiny pieces. I kindle a little flame at the hearth with papers and splinters. I roast the chair piece by piece.
A charming gesture, they think. So far so good. A little food now, a bottle of cold beer. So you have had a good evening this evening? It was cold outdoors, was it? You collected a little money? Fine, deposit it in the Dime Savings Bank tomorrow! You, Hegoroboru, run out and buy a flask of rum! I am leaving tomorrow . . . I am setting out on a journey.
The fire is getting low. I take the vacant chair and beat its brains out against the wall. The flames leap up. Hegoroboru returns with a grin and holds the bottle out. The work of a minute to uncork it, guzzle a deep draught. Flames leap up in my gizzard. Stand up! I yell. Give me that other chair! Protests, howls, screams. This is pushing things too far. But it’s cold outdoors, you say? Then we need more heat. Get away! I shove the dishes onto the floor with one swipe and tackle the table. They try to pull me away. I go outside to the dustbin and I find the ax. I begin hacking away. I break the table into tiny pieces, then the commode, spilling everything onto the floor. I will break everything to pieces, I warn them, even the crockery. We will warm ourselves as we have never warmed ourselves before.
A night on the floor, the three of us tossing like burning corks. Taunts and gibes passing back and forth.
“He’ll never go away . . . he’s just acting.”
A voice whispering in my ear: “Are you really going away?”
“Yes, I promise you I am.”
“But I don’t want you to go.”
“I don’t care what you want any longer.”
“But I love you.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“But you must believe me.”
“I believe nobody, nothing.”
“You’re ill. You don’t know what you’re doing. I won’t let you go.”
“How will you stop me?”
“Please, please, Val, don’t talk that way . . . you worry me.”
Silence.
A timid whisper: “How are you going to live without me?”
“I don’t know, I don’t care.”
“But you need me. You don’t know how to take care of yourself.”
“I need nobody.”
“I’m afraid, Val. I’m afraid something will happen to you.”
In the morning I leave stealthily while they slumber blissfully. By stealing a few pennies from a blind newsman I get to the Jersey shore and set out for the highway. I feel fantastically light and free. In Philadelphia I stroll about as if I were a tourist. I get hungry. I ask for a dime from a passerby and I get it. I try another and another—just for the fun of it. I go into a saloon, eat a free lunch with a schooner of beer, and set out for the highway again.
I get a lift in the direction of Pittsburgh. The driver is uncommunicative. So am I. It’s as though I had a private chauffeur. After a while I wonder where I’m going. Do I want a job? No. Do I want to begin life all over again? No. Do I want a vacation? No. I want nothing.
Then what do you want? I say to myself. The answer is always the same: Nothing.
Well, that’s exactly what you have: Nothing.
The duologue dies down. I become interested in the cigarette lighter which is plugged into the dashboard. The word “cleat” enters my mind. I play with it for a long time, then dismiss it peremptorily, as one would dismiss a child who wants to play ball with you all day.
Roads and arteries branching out in every direction. What would the earth be without roads? A trackless ocean. A jungle. The first road through the wilderness must have seemed like a grand accomplishment. Direction, orientation, communication. Then two roads, three roads . . . Then millions of roads. A spider web and in the center of it man, the creator, caught like a fly.
We are traveling seventy miles an hour, or perhaps I imagine it. Not a word exchanged between us. He may be afraid to hear me say that I am hungry or that I have no place to sleep. He may be thinking where to dump me out if I begin to act suspiciously. Now and then he lights a cigarette on the electric grill. The gadget fascinates me. It’s like a little electric chair.
“I’m turning off here,” says the driver suddenly. “Where are you going?”
“You can leave me out here . . . thanks.”
I step out into a fine drizzle. It’s darkling. Roads leading to everywhere. I must decide where I want to go. I must have an objective.
I stand so deep in trance that I let a hundred cars go by without looking up. I haven’t even an extra handkerchief, I discover. I was going to wipe my glasses but then, what’s the use? I don’t have to see too well or feel too well or think too well. I’m not going anywhere. When I get tired I can drop down and go to sleep. Animals sleep in the rain, why not man? If I could become an animal I would be getting somewhere.
A truck pulls up beside me; the driver is looking for a match.
“Can I give you a lift?” he asks.
I hop in without asking where to. The rain comes down harder, it has become pitch black suddenly. I have no idea where we’re bound and I don’t want to know. I feel content
to be out of the rain sitting next to a warm body.
This guy is more convivial. He talks a lot about matches, how important they are when you need them, how easy it is to lose them, and so on. He makes conversation out of anything. It seems strange to talk so earnestly about nothing at all when really there are the most tremendous problems to be solved. Except for the fact that we are talking about material trifles this is the sort of conversation that might be carried on in a French salon. The roads have connected everything up so marvelously that even emptiness can be transported with ease.
As we pull into the outskirts of a big town I ask him where we are.
“Why this is Philly,” he says. “Where did you think you were?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I had no idea. . . . You’re going to New York, I suppose?”
He grunted. Then he added: “You don’t seem to care very much one way or another. You act like you were just riding around in the dark.”
“You said it. That’s just what I’m doing . . . riding around in the dark.”
I sank back and listened to him tell about guys walking around in the dark looking for a place to flop. He talked about them very much as a horticulturist would talk about certain species of shrubs. He was a “space-binder,” as Korzybski puts it, a guy riding the highways and byways all by his lonesome. What lay to either side of the traffic lanes was the veldt, and the creatures inhabiting that void were vagrants hungrily bumming a ride.
The more he talked the more wistfully I thought of the meaning of shelter. After all, the cellar hadn’t been too bad. Out in the world people were just as poorly off. The only difference between them and me was that they went out and got what they needed; they sweated for it, they tricked one another, they fought one another tooth and nail. I had none of those problems. My only problem was how to live with myself day in and day out.
I was thinking how ridiculous and pathetic it would be to sneak back into the cellar and find a little corner all to myself where I could curl up and pull the roof down over my ears. I could crawl in like a dog with his tail between his legs. I wouldn’t bother them any more with jealous scenes. I would be grateful for any crumbs that were handed me. If she wanted to bring her lovers in and make love to them in my presence it would be all right too. One doesn’t bite the hand that feeds one. Now that I had seen the world I wouldn’t ever complain again. Anything was better than to be left standing in the rain and not know where you want to go. After all, I still had a mind. I could lie in the dark and think, think as much as I chose, or as little. The people outside would be running to and fro, moving things about, buying, selling, putting money in the bank and taking it out again. That was horrible. I wouldn’t ever want to do that. I would much prefer to pretend that I was an animal, say a dog, and have a bone thrown to me now and then. If I behaved decently I would be petted and stroked. I might find a good master who would take me out on a leash and let me make peepee everywhere. I might meet another dog, one of the opposite sex, and pull off a quick one now and then. Oh, I knew how to be quiet now and obedient. I had learned my little lesson. I would curl up in a corner near the hearth, just as quiet and gentle as you please. They would have to be terribly mean to kick me out. Besides, if I showed that I didn’t need anything, didn’t ask any favors, if I let them carry on just as if they were by themselves, what harm would come by giving me a little place in the corner?
The thing was to sneak in while they were out, so that they couldn’t shut the gate in my face.
At this point in my reverie the most disquieting thought took hold of me. What if they had fled? What if the house were deserted?
Somewhere near Elizabeth we came to a halt. There was something wrong with the engine. It seemed wiser to get out and hail another car than to wait around all night. I walked to the nearest gas station and hung around for a car to take me into New York. I waited over an hour and then got impatient and lit off down the gloomy lane on my own two legs. The rain had abated; it was just a thin drizzle. Now and then, thinking how lovely it would be to crawl into the dog kennel, I broke into a trot. Elizabeth was about fifteen miles off.
Once I got so overjoyed that I broke into song. Louder and louder I sang, as if to let them know I was coming. Of course I wouldn’t enter the house singing—that would frighten them to death.
The singing made me hungry. I bought a Hershey Almond Bar at a little stand beside the road. It was delicious. See, you’re not so badly off, I said to myself. You’re not eating bones or refuse yet. You may get some good dishes before you die. What are you thinking of—lamb stew? You mustn’t think about palatable things . . . think only of bones and refuse. From now on it’s a dog’s life.
I was sitting on a big rock somewhere this side of Elizabeth when I saw a big truck approaching. It was the fellow I had left farther back. I hopped in. He started talking about engines, what ails them, what makes them go, and so on. “We’ll soon be there,” he said suddenly, apropos of nothing.
“Where?” I asked.
“New York, of course . . . where do you think?”
“Oh, New York, yeah. I forgot.”
“Say, what the hell are you going to do in New York, if I ain’t getting too personal?”
“I’m going to rejoin my family.”
“You been away long?”
“About ten years,” I said, drawing the words out meditatively.
“Ten years! That’s a hell of a long time. What were you doing, just bumming around?”
“Yeah, just bumming around.”
“I guess they’ll be glad to see you . . . your folks.”
“I guess they will.”
“You don’t seem to be so sure of it,” he said, giving me a quizzical look.
“That’s true. Well, you know how it is.”
“I guess so,” he answered. “I meet lots of guys like you. Always come back to the roost some time or other.”
He said roost, I said kennel—under my breath, to be sure. I liked kennel better. Roost was for roosters, pigeons, birds of feather that lay eggs. I wasn’t going to lay no eggs. Bones and refuse, bones and refuse, bones and refuse. I repeated it over and over, to give myself the moral strength to crawl back like a beaten dog.
I borrowed a nickel from him on leaving and ducked into the subway. I felt tired, hungry, weather-beaten. The passengers looked sick to me. As though someone had just let them out of the hoosegow or the almshouse. I had been out in the world, far, far away. For ten years I had been knocking about and now I was coming home. Welcome home, prodigal son! Welcome home! My goodness, what stories I had heard, what cities I had seen! What marvelous adventures! Ten years of life, just from morn to midnight. Would the folks still be there?
I tiptoed into the areaway and looked for a gleam of light. Not a sign of life. Well, they never came home very early. I would go in upstairs by way of the stoop. Perhaps they were in the back of the house. Sometimes they sat in Hegoroboru’s little bedroom off the hall where the toilet box trickled night and day.
I opened the door softly, walked to the head of the stairs, which were enclosed, and quietly, very quietly, lowered myself step by step. There was a door at the bottom of the steps. I was in total darkness.
Near the bottom I heard muffled sounds of speech. They were home! I felt terrifically happy, exultant. I wanted to dash in wagging my little tail and throw myself at their feet. But that wasn’t the program I had planned to adhere to.
After I had stood with my ear to the panel for some minutes I put my hand on the doorknob and very slowly and noiselessly I turned it. The voices came much more distinctly now that I had opened the door an inch or so. The big one, Hegoroboru, was talking. She sounded maudlin, hysterical, as though she had been drinking. The other voice was low-pitched, more soothing and caressing than I had ever heard it. She seemed to be pleading with the big one. There were strange pauses, too, as if they were embracing. Now and then I could swear the big one gave a grunt, as though she were rubbing the skin o
ff the other one. Then suddenly she let out a howl of delight, but a vengeful one. Suddenly she shrieked.
“Then you do love him still? You were lying to me!”
“No, no! I swear I don’t. You must believe me, please. I never loved him.”
“That’s a lie!”
“I swear to you . . . I swear I never loved him. He was just a child to me.”
This was followed by a shrieking gale of laughter. Then a slight commotion, as if they were scuffling. Then a dead silence, as if their lips were glued together. Then it seemed as if they were undressing one another, licking one another all over, like calves in the meadow. The bed squeaked. Fouling the nest, that was it. They had gotten rid of me as if I were a leper and now they were trying to do the man-and-wife act. It was good I hadn’t been lying in the corner watching this with my head between my paws. I would have barked angrily, perhaps bitten them. And then they would have kicked me around like a dirty cur.
I didn’t want to hear any more. I closed the door gently and sat on the steps in total darkness. The fatigue and hunger had passed. I was extraordinarily awake. I could have walked to San Francisco in three hours.
Now I must go somewhere! I must get very definite—or I will go mad. I know I am not just a child. I don’t know if I want to be a man—I feel too bruised and battered—but I certainly am not a child!
Then a curious physiological comedy took place. I began to menstruate. I menstruated from every hole in my body.
When a man menstruates it’s all over in a few minutes. He doesn’t leave any mess behind either.
I crept upstairs on all fours and left the house as silently as I had entered it. The rain was over, the stars were out in full splendor. A light wind was blowing. The Lutheran church across the way, which in the daylight was the color of baby shit, had now taken on a soft ochrous hue which blended serenely with the black of the asphalt. I was still not very definite in my mind about the future. At the corner I stood a few minutes, looking up and down the street as if I were taking it in for the first time.