“I wonder now,” said I, “what people would think—people like Kronski, O’Mara, Ulric, for example—if they heard you talking this way.”
“It doesn’t matter what other people think, Val. I know you. I know you better than any of your friends, no matter how long they’ve known you. I know how sensitive you are. You’re the tenderest creature alive.”
“I’m beginning to feel frail and delicate, with all this.”
“You’re not delicate,” said she feelingly. “You’re tough—like all artists. But when it comes to the world, I mean dealing with the world, you’re just an infant. The world is vicious through and through. You’re in it, all right, but you’re not of it. You lead a charmed life. If you meet with a sordid experience you convert it into something beautiful.”
“You talk as if you knew me like a book.”
“I’m telling you the truth, am I not? Can you deny it?”
She put her arm around me lovingly and brushed her cheek against mine.
“Oh Val, maybe I’m not the woman you deserve, but I do know you. And the more I know you the better I love you. I’ve missed you so much lately. That’s why it means so much to me to have a friend. I was really getting desperate—without you.”
“O.K. But we were beginning to behave like two spoiled children, do you realize that? We expected everything to be handed to us on a platter.”
“I didn’t!” she exclaimed. “But I wanted you to have the things you craved. I wanted you to have a good life—so that you could do all the things you dream about. You can’t be spoiled! You take only what you need, no more.”
“That’s true,” I said, moved by this unexpected observation. “Not many people realize that. I remember how angry my folks got when I came home from Church one Sunday morning and told them enthusiastically that I was a Christian Socialist. I had heard a coal miner speak from the pulpit that morning and his words had struck home. He called himself a Christian Socialist. I immediately became one too. Anyway, it ended up with the usual nonsense… the folks saying that Socialists were concerned only with giving away other people’s money. “And what’s wrong with that?” I demanded. The answer was: “Wait till you’ve earned your own money, then talk!” That seemed to me a silly argument. What did it matter, I asked myself, whether I earned money or didn’t earn money? The point was that the good things of life were unjustly distributed. I was quite willing to eat less, to have less of everything, if those who had little might be better off. Then and there it occurred to me how little one really needs. If you’re content you don’t need material treasures.… Well, I don’t know why I got off on that! Oh yes! About taking only what I need.… I admit, my desires are great. But I also can do without. Though I talk a lot about food, as you know, I really don’t require much. I want just enough to be able to forget about food, that’s what I mean. That’s normal, don’t you think?”
“Of course, of course!”
“And that’s why I don’t want all the things you seem to think would make me happy, or make me work better. We don’t need to live the way we were. I gave in to please you. It was wonderful while it lasted, sure. So is Christmas. What I dislike more than anything is this perpetual borrowing and begging, this using people for suckers. You don’t enjoy it either, I’m sure of it. Why should we deceive each other about it, then? Why not put an end to it?”
“But I have!”
“You stopped doing it for me, but now you’re doing it for your friend Anastasia. Don’t lie to me. I know what I’m saying.”
“It’s different in her case, Val. She doesn’t know how to earn money. She’s even more of a child than you.”
“But you’re only helping her to remain a child—by aiding her the way you do. I don’t say that she’s a leech. I say this—you’re robbing her of something. Why doesn’t she sell her puppets, or her paintings, or her sculpture?”
“Why?” She laughed outright at this. “For the same reason that you can’t sell your stories. She’s too good an artist, that’s why.”
“But she doesn’t have to sell her work to art dealers—let her sell direct to individuals. Sell them for a song! Anything to keep afloat. It would do her good. She’d really feel better for it.”
“There you go again! Shows how little you know the world. Val, you couldn’t even give her work away, that’s how things are. If you ever get a book published you’ll have to beg people to accept copies gratis. People don’t want what’s good, I tell you. People like you and Anastasia—or Ricardo—you have to be protected.”
“To hell with writing, if that’s how it is.… But I can’t believe it! I’m no writer yet, I’m nothing but a tyro. I may be better than editors think I am, but I’ve a long way to go yet. When I really know how to express myself people will read me. I don’t care how bad the world is. They will, I tell you. They won’t be able to ignore me.”
“And until then?”
“Until then I’ll find some other way of making a living.”
“Selling encyclopaedias? Is that a way?”
“Not much of a one, I admit, but it’s better than begging and borrowing. Better than having your wife prostitute herself.”
“Every penny I make I earn,” said Mona heatedly. “Waiting on tables is no cinch.”
“All the more reason why I should do my share. You don’t like to see me selling books. I don’t like to see you waiting on tables. If we had more sense we’d be doing other things. Surely there must be some kind of work that isn’t degrading.”
“Not for us! We weren’t cut out to do the work of the world.”
“Then we ought to learn.” I was getting carried away with my own righteous attitude.
“Val, this is all talk. You know you’ll never hold down an honest-to-God job. Never. And I don’t want you to. I’d rather see you dead.”
“All right, you win. But Jesus, isn’t there something a man like me can do without feeling like a fool or a dolt?” Here a thought which was forming itself on my lips caused me to laugh. I laughed good and hard before I got it out. “Listen,” I managed to say, “do you know what I was just thinking? I was thinking that I might make a wonderful diplomat. I ought to be an ambassador to a foreign country—how does that strike you? No, seriously. Why not? I’ve got brains, and I know how to deal with people. What I don’t know I’d make up for with my imagination. Can you see me as ambassador to China?”
Oddly, she didn’t think the idea so absurd. Not in the abstract, at any rate.
“Certainly you would make a good ambassador, Val. Why not, as you say? But you’ll never get the chance. There are certain doors that will never be opened to you. If men like you were directing the world’s affairs we wouldn’t be worrying about the next meal—or how to get stories published. That’s why I say you don’t know the world!”
“Damn it, I do know the world. I know it only too well. But I refuse to make terms with it.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“No it isn’t! It’s the difference between ignorance—or blindness—and aloofness. Something like that. If I didn’t know the world how could I be a writer?”
“A writer has his own world.”
“I’ll be damned! I never expected you to say that! Now you’ve got me stumped.…” I was silenced for a moment.
“It’s dead true what you say,” I continued. “But it doesn’t obviate what I just said. Maybe I can’t explain it to you, but I know I’m right. To have your own world, and to live in it, doesn’t mean that you are necessarily blind to the real world, so-called. If a writer weren’t familiar with the everyday world, if he hadn’t been so steeped in it that he revolted against it, he wouldn’t have what you call his own world. An artist carries all worlds within him. And he’s just as vital a part of this world as anyone else. In fact, he’s more thoroughly of it and in it than other people for the simple reason that he’s creative. The world is his medium. Other men are content with their little corner of the world—their own lit
tle job, their own little tribe, their own little philosophy, and so on. Damn it, the reason why I’m not a great writer, if you want to know, is because I haven’t taken the whole wide world unto me yet. It isn’t that I don’t know about evil. It isn’t that I’m blind to people’s viciousness, as you seem to think. It’s something other than that. What it is I don’t know myself. But I will know, eventually. And then I’ll become a torch. I’ll light up the world. I’ll expose it down to its very marrow.… But I won’t condemn it! I won’t because I know too well that I am part and parcel of it, a significant cog in the machinery.” I paused. “We haven’t touched bottom yet, you know. What we’ve suffered is nothing. Fleabites, that’s all. There are worse things to endure than lack of food and such things. I suffered much more when I was sixteen, when I was only reading about life. Or else I’m deceiving myself.”
“No, I know what you mean.” She nodded thoughtfully.
“You do? Good. Then you realize that, without participating in life, you can suffer the pangs of the martyrs.… To suffer for others—that’s a wonderful kind of suffering. When you suffer because of your own ego, because of lack or because of misdeeds, you experience a kind of humiliation. I loathe that sort of suffering. To suffer with others, or for others, to be all in the same boat, that’s different. Then one feels enriched. What I dislike about our way of life is that it’s so restricted. We ought to be up and about, getting bruised and battered for reasons that matter.”
I went on and on in this vein, sliding from one subject to another, often contradicting myself, uttering the most extravagant statements, then brushing them aside, struggling to get back to terra firma.
It was beginning to happen more and more frequently now, these monologues, these harangues. Perhaps it was because I was no longer writing. Perhaps because I was alone most of the day. Perhaps, too, because I had a feeling that she was slipping out of my hands. There was something desperate about these explosions. I was reaching out for something, something which I could never pin down in words. Though I seemed to be censuring her I was really upbraiding myself. The worst of it was that I could never come to any concrete resolution. I saw clearly what we ought not to do, but I could not see what we should do. Secretly, I relished the thought of being “protected.” Secretly I had to admit that she was right—I would never fit in, never make the groove. And so I let it out in talk. I rambled backwards and forwards, rehearsing the glorious days of childhood, the miserable days of adolescence, the clownish adventures of youth. It was all fascinating, every iota. If only that man McFarland had been present, with his stenographer! What a story for his magazine! (Later it occurred to me how strange it was that I could talk my life out but could never get it down on paper. The moment I sat down before the machine I became self-conscious. It hadn’t occurred to me at that time to use the pronoun I. Why, I wonder? What inhibited me? Perhaps I hadn’t yet become the “I of my I.”
I not only intoxicated her with these talks, I intoxicated myself. It would be almost dawn before we would fall asleep. Dozing off I had the feeling that I had accomplished something. I had gotten it off my chest. It! What was that it? I couldn’t say myself. I knew only this, and from it I seemed to derive an unholy satisfaction: I had assumed my true role.
Perhaps, too, these scenes were just to prove that I could be as exciting and “different” as that Anastasia whom I was getting tired of hearing about. Perhaps. Possibly I was a wee bit jealous already. Though she had known Anastasia only a few days, you might say, the room was already full of her friend’s things. All the latter needed to do now was to move in. Over the beds were two stunning Japanese prints, a Utamaro and a Hiroshige. On the trunk was a puppet which Anastasia had made expressly for Mona. On the chiffonier was a Russian ikon, another gift from Anastasia. To say nothing of the barbaric bracelets, the amulets, the embroidered moccasins, and so on. Even the perfume she was using—a most pungent one!—Anastasia had given her. (Probably out of Mona’s own money.) With Anastasia you never could tell what was what. While Mona was worrying about the clothes her friend needed, the cigarettes, the art materials, et cetera, Anastasia was getting money from home and doling it out to her hangers-on. Mona saw nothing incongruous in this. Whatever her friend did was right and natural, even if she stole from her purse. Anastasia did steal now and then. Why not? She stole not for herself but to aid those in distress. She had no scruples or compunctions about such matters. She wasn’t a bourgeoise, oh no! This word “bourgeois” began to pop up frequently now that Anastasia was on the scene. Whatever was no good was “bourgeois.” Even caca could be “bourgeois,” according to Anastasia’s way of looking at things. She had such a wonderful sense of humor, when you got to know her. Of course, some people couldn’t see it. Some people are just devoid of humor. To wear two different shoes, which Anastasia sometimes did absent-mindedly—or did she do it absent-mindedly?—that was screamingly funny. Or to carry a douche-bag through the streets. Why wrap such things up? Besides, Anastasia never used one herself—it was always for a friend who was in trouble.
The books that were lying around… all loaned her by Anastasia. One of them was called Down There—by some “decadent” French writer. It was one of Anastasia’s favorites, not because it was “decadent” but because it told of that extraordinary figure in French history—Gilles de Rais. He had been a follower of Jeanne d’Arc. He had murdered more children—he had depopulated whole villages, in fact. One of the most enigmatic figures in French history. She begged me to glance at it sometime. Anastasia had read it in the original. She could read not only French and Italian but German, Portuguese and Russian. Yes, in the convent school she had also learned to play the piano divinely. And the harp.
“Can she blow the trumpet?” I asked derisively.
She gave me the horse laugh. Then followed this revelation:
“She can play the drums, too. But she has to be a little high first.”
“You mean drunk?”
“No, hopped up. Marijuana. There’s no harm in it. It’s not habit-forming.”
Whenever this subject came up—drugs—I was sure to get an earful. In Mona’s opinion (probably Anastasia’s) everyone ought to become acquainted with the effects of different drugs. Drugs weren’t half as dangerous as liquor. And the effects were more interesting. Yes, she was going to try them someday. There were lots of people in the Village—respectable people, too—who used drugs. She couldn’t see why people were so afraid of drugs. There was that Mexican drug which exalted the sense of color, for example. Perfectly harmless. We ought to try it sometime. She’d see if she couldn’t get some from that phoney poet what’s-his-name. She loathed him, he was filthy, and so on, but Anastasia maintained that he was a good poet. And Anastasia ought to know.…
“I’m going to borrow one of her poems one day and read it aloud to you. You’ve never heard anything like it, Val.”
“O.K.,” I said, “but if it stinks I’m going to tell you so.” “Don’t worry! She couldn’t write a bad poem if she tried.”
“I know—she’s a genius.”
“She is indeed, and I’m not joking. She’s a real genius.”
I couldn’t resist remarking that it was too bad geniuses always had to be freaks.
“There you go! Now you’re talking just like everyone else. I’ve explained to you again and again that she’s not like the other freaks in the Village.”
“No, she’s a genuine freak!”
“She’s mad maybe, but like Strindberg, like Dostoevski, like Blake.…”
“That’s putting her rather high, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t say she had their talent. All I mean is that if she’s queer she’s queer in the same way they were. She’s not insane—and she’s not a fraud. Whatever she is, it’s real. I’ll stake my life on it.”
“The only thing I have against her,” I blurted out, “is that she needs so damned much looking after.”
“That’s cruel!”
“Is it? Look?
?? she got along all right until you came along, didn’t she?”
“I told you what a condition she was in when I met her.”
“I know you did, but that doesn’t impress me. Maybe if you hadn’t nursed her along she would have picked herself up and stood on her own two legs.”
“We’re back where we started. How many times must I explain to you that she simply doesn’t know how to take care of herself?”
“Then let her learn!”
“How about yourself? Have you learned yet?”
“I was getting along all right until you came along. I not only took care of myself, I took care of a wife and child.”
“That’s unfair of you. Maybe you did take care of them, but at what a price! You wouldn’t want to live that way forever, would you?”
“Of course not! But I’d have found a way out—eventually.”
“Eventually! Val, you haven’t got too much time! You’re in your thirties now—and you have yet to make a name for yourself. Anastasia’s just a girl, but see what she’s accomplished already.”
“I know. But then she’s a genius.…”
“Oh, stop it! We won’t get anywhere talking this way. Why don’t you quit thinking about her? She doesn’t interfere with your life—why should you interfere with hers? Can’t I have one friend? Why must you be jealous of her? Be just, won’t you?”