The man gave me one more paper to sign and then I got out of there.
Parker said, “Luck, old man,” as I walked by. “Thanks, baby,” I answered.
I didn’t feel any different. But I knew that soon, like a man lifted quickly out of the deep sea, I would be afflicted—with a particular type of bends. I was like Joyce’s damned parakeets. After living in the cage I had taken the opening and flown out—like a shot into the heavens. Heavens?
9
I went into the bends. I got drunker and stayed drunker than a shit skunk in Purgatory. I even had the butcher knife against my throat one night in the kitchen and then I thought, easy, old boy, your little girl might want you to take her to the zoo. Ice cream bars, chimpanzees, tigers, green and red birds, and the sun coming down on top of her head, the sun coining down and crawling into the hairs of your arms, easy, old boy.
When I came to I was in the front room of my apartment, spitting into the rug, putting cigarettes out against my wrists, laughing. Mad as a March Hare. I looked up and there sat this pre-med student. A human heart sat in a homey fat jar between us on the coffeetable. All around the human heart—which was labeled after its former owner “Francis”—were half empty fifths of whiskey and scotch, clutters of beerbottles, ashtrays, garbage. I’d pick up a bottle and swallow a hellish mixture of beer and ashes. I hadn’t eaten for two weeks. An endless stream of people had come and gone. There had been seven or eight wild parties where I had kept demanding—”More to drink! More to drink! More to drink!” I was flying up to heaven; they were just talking—and fingering each other.
“Yeh,” I said to the pre-med student, “what do you want with me?”
“I am going to be your own personal physician.”
“All right, doctor, the first thing I want you to do is to take that god damned human heart out of here!”
“Uh uh.”
“What?”
“The heart stays here.”
“Look, man, I don’t know your name—”
“Wilbert.”
“Well, Wilbert, I don’t know who you are or how you got here but you take ‘Francis’ with you!”
“No, it stays with you.”
Then he got his little playbag and the rubber wraparound for the arm and he squeezed the ball and the rubber inflated.
“You’ve got the blood pressure of a 19-year-old,” he told me.
“Fuck that. Look, isn’t it against the law to leave human hearts laying around?”
“I’ll be back to get it. Now breathe in!”
“I thought the post office was driving me crazy. Now you come along.”
“Quiet! Breathe in!”
“I need a good young piece of ass, doctor. That’s what’s wrong with me.”
“Your backbone is out of place in 14 areas, Chinaski. That breeds tension, imbecility, and, often, madness.”
“Balls!” I said …
I don’t remember the gentleman leaving. I awakened on my couch at 1:10 p.m., death in the afternoon, and it was hot, the sun ripping through my torn shades to rest on the jar in the center of the coffeetable. “Francis” had stayed with me all night, stewing in alcoholic brine, swimming in the mucous extension of the dead diastole. Sitting there in the jar.
It looked like fried chicken. I mean, before you fried it. Exactly.
I picked it up and put it in my closet and covered it with a torn shirt. Then I went to the bathroom and vomited. I finished, stuck my face against the mirror. There were long black hairs sticking out all over my face. Suddenly I had to sit down and shit. It was a good hot one.
The doorbell rang. I finished wiping my ass, got into some old clothes and went to the door. “Hello?”
There was a young guy out there with long blonde hair hanging down around his face and a black girl who just kept smiling as if she were crazy. “Hank?”
“Yeh. Who you two guys?”
“She is a woman. Don’t you remember us? From the party? We brought a flower.”
“Oh balls, come on in.”
They brought in the flower, some kind of red-orange thing on a green stem. It made a lot more sense than many things, except that it had been murdered. I found a bowl, put the flower in, brought out a jug of wine and put it on the coffeetable.
“You don’t remember her?” the kid asked. “You said you wanted to fuck her.”
She laughed.
“Very nice, but not now.”
“Chinaski, how are you going to make it without the post office?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll fuck you. Or let you fuck me. Hell, I don’t know.”
“You can sleep on our floor anytime.”
“Can I watch while you fuck?”
“Sure.”
We drank. I had forgotten their names. I showed them the heart. I asked them to take the horrible thing with them. I didn’t dare throw it out in case the pre-med student needed it back for an exam or at the expiration of the med-library loan or whatever.
So we went down and saw a nude floor show, drinking and hollering and laughing. I don’t know who had the money but I think he had most of it, which was nice for a change, and I kept laughing and squeezing the girl’s ass and her thighs and kissing her, but nobody cared. As long as the money lasted, you lasted.
They drove rae back and he left with her. I got into the door, said goodbye, turned on the radio, found a half-pint of scotch, drank that, laughing, feeling good, finally relaxed, free, burning my fingers with short cigar butts, then made it to the bed, made it to the edge, tripped, fell down, fell down across the mattress, slept, slept, slept …
• • •
In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.
Maybe I’ll write a novel, I thought.
And then I did.
United States Post Office
Los Angeles, California
Office of Postmaster January 1, 1970
Memo 742
CODE OF ETHICS
The attention of all employees is directed to the Code of Ethics for postal employees as set forth in Part 742 of the Postal Manual, and Conduct of Employees as outlined in Part 744 of the Postal Manual.
Postal employees have, over the years, established a fine tradition of faithful service to the Nation, unsurpassed by other groups. Each employee should take great pride in this tradition of dedicated service. Each of us must strive to make his contribution worthwhile in the continued movement of the Postal Service toward future progress in the public interest.
All postal personnel must act with unwavering integrity and complete devotion to the public interest. Postal personnel are expected to maintain the highest moral principles, and to uphold the laws of the United States and the regulations and policies of the Post Office Department. Not only is ethical conduct required, but officials and employees must be alert to avoid actions which would appear to prevent fulfillment of postal obligations. Assigned duties must be discharged conscientiously and effectively. The Postal Service has the unique privilege of having daily contact with the majority of the citizens of the Nation, and is, in many instances, their most direct contact with the Federal Government. Thus, there is an especial opportunity and responsibility for each postal employee to act with honor and integrity worthy of the public trust; thereby reflecting credit and distinction on the Postal Service and on the entire Federal Government.
All employees are requested to review Part 742, Postal Manual, Basic Standards of Ethical Conduct, Personal Behavior of Employees, Restrictions on Political Activity, etc.
Officer in Charge
About the Author
CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-fou
r and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of-seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).
During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). Among his most recent books are the posthumous editions of What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999), Open All Night: New Poems (2000), Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli 1960-1967 (2001), and The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001).
All of his books have now been published in translation in over a dozen languages and his worldwide popularity remains undiminished. In the years to come, Ecco will publish additional volumes of previously uncollected poetry and letters.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
BY CHARLES BUKOWSKI
AVAILABLE FROM ECCO
The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969)
Post Office (1971)
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (1972)
South of No North (1973)
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems 1955-1973 (1974)
Factotum (1975)
Love Is a Dog from Hell: Poems 1974-1977 (1977)
Women (1978)
Play the Piano Drunk/Like a Percussion Instrument/ Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (1979)
Shakespeare Never Did This (1979)
Dangling in the Tournefortia (1981)
Ham on Rye (1982)
Bring Me Your Love (1983)
Hot Water Music (1983)
There’s No Business (1984)
War All the Time: Poems 1981-1984 (1984)
You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense (1986)
The Movie: “Barfly” (1987)
The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 (1988)
Hollywood (1989)
Septuagenarian Stew: Stories & Poems (1990)
The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)
Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970 (1993)
Pulp (1994)
Living on Luck: Selected Letters 1960s-1970s (Volume 2) (1995)
Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories (1996)
Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems (1997)
The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998)
Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978-1994 (Volume 3) (1999)
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire: New Poems (1999)
Open All Night: New Poems (2000)
The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001)
Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski & Sheri Martinelli 1960-1967 (2001)
Copyright
POST OFFICE. Copyright © 1971 by Charles Bukowski
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-061-84404-1
First Ecco edition 2002
Previously published by Black Sparrow Press
Several of these chapters appeared as short stories in Knight, Adam, and Nola Express.
ISBN 0-87685-086-7 (paper)
ISBN 0-87685-087-5 (cloth)
06 07 08 RRD 20 19 18 17
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Charles Bukowski, Post Office: A Novel
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