THEY WERE running up the steps, stumbling in their haste. He remarked the astonishment on their faces when they saw him standing there, fully dressed, the letter crumpled in his fist. The next moment he heard a heavy thumping on the stairs and then a burly fellow appeared in the doorway sliding a trunk over the thick carpet.
He looked from one to the other frowningly.
“It’s my trunk,” said Vanya, giggling.
He went up to Hildred, his voice quivering with rage. “What did I say about that trunk?”
Says Hildred: “Oh, this is no time to . . .”
“Get that goddamned thing out of here!”
“But Tony . . .”
“Don’t Tony me! Get it out . . . quick!”
Says Vanya: “But we haven’t any money left, we can’t take it back.”
“Oh, you can’t? Well, I’ll show you.” He dragged it to the hallway, balanced it a moment at the top of the stairs, then gave it a push. There was a splintering crash. A door was flung open and a woman rushed out screaming.
“He’s going mad!” cried Hildred, and she rushed down the stairs pulling Vanya after her.
Part 4
1
THE NEW home was large and gloomy. It had been a laundry once. From the crude fixtures in the ceiling hung pieces of twine which brushed against one’s brow. A pale, wan light trickled in through the burlap curtains. Hildred hated the sunlight.
In the outhouse was a huge iron sink where the dirty dishes accumulated. The only source of heat was an open fireplace which was out of order. No one had thought to inquire about a gas range or to observe whether there were clothes closets, etc. Despite the drawbacks, Hildred and Vanya declared it to be a jolly place. It was the sort of den that appealed to their bohemian natures.
As soon as they had received permission they commenced redecorating the rooms. The green walls were converted to pitchblende, the ceiling ripened into a violet shudder, the electric bulbs were tinted a Venetian pink and etched with obscene designs. Then came the frescoes. Vanya began with her own room first. It was a little cell separated from the lavatory by a barred window. Directly above her cot a toilet box was suspended. The faint, gurgling tinkle of the drains soothed her nerves.
While she worked the two Danish sisters who owned the house looked on with prurient eyes. They would bring down liverwurst sandwiches and beer, and when they got better acquainted, they finally produced long black cigars which they smoked leisurely and with deep contentment. Vanya was not long in acquiring the habit. Hildred was the only one to demur; she said the cigars were vile. They probably were.
One day Vanya plucked up courage to ask the sisters to pose for her. They were flattered at first, but when it dawned on them that they were to pose in the nude, they reneged. After a little persuasion, however, they consented—not in the altogether, but in chemise and hose. And so, day after day, they stood shivering with cigars in their mouths, their bodies composed in the suggestive order of a bacchanal. Just as a Chinese artist will faithfully reproduce a broken plate, so Vanya reproduced these hungry madonnas—she verified every wrinkle, every crease, every wart.
The walls of the ménage soon began to heave, to scream and dance. Vanya’s inventiveness was inexhaustible. At the far end, adjacent to the outhouse, a circus of toppling skyscrapers opened the legend; in the open spaces, on velvet greenswards, the weary megalopolitans could be seen pursuing their degenerate practices. From this Sodom it was but a jump to the Gomorrah of Paris—Paris with its kiosks and urinals, its quays and bridges, its fizzing boulevards and zinc bars. Looking at a narrow panel beneath the word “Montparnasse,” one had the sensation of standing inside a urinoir plastered with municipal proclamations. A tableau of figures, one below the other, presented vividly to the imagination the dire effects of venereal infection. To make the circuit of the rooms was to receive a painful crosscut of our civilization: there was the machine, the ghetto, the palatial lobbies of the money-grubbers, the speakeasy, the funny paper, the dance halls, the insane asylums—all fused into a maelstrom of color and rhythm. And, as if this were not enough, a special area was given over to the fantastique. Here Vanya permitted herself the liberty of painting her unconscious. Here flowers grew with stupendous human organs; here monsters rose up out of the deep, their jaws dripping with slime, and united shamelessly; from the facades of cathedrals huge teats, bursting with milk, swelled out; children instructed the aged, their belts slung with Korans and Talmuds; words unprintable floated in a sky drunk with blood through which zeppelins sailed upside down, piloted by such queer fellows as Pythagoras and Walther von der Vogelweide; sea cows mooched along side by side with amberjacks, and painted sunsets with their tails.
Tony Bring looked on incredulously, applauded, or put in a suggestion now and then, marveling all the while at the fecundity of this genius with the dirty fingernails.
Alone, he fell into his usual vegetal ruminations, or wandered moodily from one room to another, surveying the walls absentmindedly. When Hildred returned (she was still at the Caravan) he would sit before her like a frozen clam. He was like a cipher which they erased or not, as they pleased. If he got in the way they bumped him, set him going like a pendulum. A pendulum! Something that ticked off their comings and goings. Every day the situation grew more and more cockeyed. Especially when Hildred was around. She would commence in the middle of a sentence or ask him to set the alarm when he picked up a book. She wanted them to argue with her, to gush, to rhapsodize. She wanted to sparkle, not to chew. Words . . . words . . . words. . . . She gobbled them up, spewed them out again, added them up, juggled them, nursed them along, carried them to bed and put them under the pillow like soiled pajamas, slept on them, snored over them. Words. . . . When every other memory of her had fled there would remain—HER WORDS.
HOURS AHEAD of time, like a clock that’s been advanced, he would commence to remind them that it was time to go to bed. Toward five o’clock, when the trucks began to rumble by and there came the familiar clip-clop of the milkman’s horse, they would at last make preparations to retire. And then, when he had gotten into bed with Hildred, just as they were dozing off, Vanya would start prowling through the hall, muttering to herself. Sometimes she would knock at their door and get Hildred out of bed in order to hold a whispered conversation in the zenana.
And what did they talk about in there? Always the same rigmarole: Vanya was morbid. . . . Vanya had received bad news from home. . . . Vanya had been thinking again about the insane asylum. Sometimes it was nothing more than a fit of depression due to a bad start she had made with a canvas.
“Look here,” he said one night, as they lay fondling each other, “am I never to have an evening with you alone? Must I always share you with her?”
“But you’re not sharing me,” said Hildred, cuddling up to him affectionately.
He suggested that they go somewhere together the next evening, to which Hildred immediately replied that it was out of the question. For one thing, she couldn’t afford to take a night off.
“But when you’re through . . . ?”
“I’ll see,” said Hildred. “But not tomorrow, at any rate. Tomorrow I have an appointment with someone.”
These appointments meant money. No way of rebutting that argument.
Oddly enough, the appointment didn’t prove important enough to keep. Something else, something of a more important nature, had intervened. Quite spontaneously . . . quite unexpectedly, of course. One of her old customers had dropped in at the dinner hour and offered Hildred a couple of theater tickets which would otherwise have gone to waste.
It was remarkable, moreover, how everyone remembered to bring her violets. At the appropriate moment he brought up the subject of the violets. But he was mistaken again—as he usually was. The man hadn’t brought her the violets—he hadn’t even taken her to the theater. It was Vanya who went to the theater with her.
“But who gave you the violets then?”
“Someone else.”
>
“To be sure, but who?”
“Who? Why, the Spaniard.” She said it as if he knew all about the Spaniard, whereas he had never heard of him before. But he must have been mistaken about that, too, because most of the time he didn’t pay any attention to what she was telling him.
The story of the violets had an almost plausible ring. There were always plenty of boobs dropping in to hand her flowers. One day, however, after an unusual to-do about the subject (it was one of his bad habits to open up old sores), he decided to have a little chat with the florist whose shop was just around the corner from the Caravan.
It was a Greek who ran the shop. Tony Bring dropped in and asked quite casually to see the violets which the two young ladies usually ordered of him. The Greek shrugged his shoulders. Which two young ladies? There were lots of young ladies who bought violets.
Tony Bring described them—the long mane, the bare legs, the green face.
“Oh, those two! Sure . . . sure. Here, thees is eet!”
A few hours later he went back and bought a bunch. He felt foolish walking along with a bouquet in his hand. He felt still more ridiculous when he stepped into the Caravan and presented them. It was the dinner hour and the place was jammed. Hildred had spotted him immediately; she had rushed up to him and squeezed his hand. She took him by the arm and ushered him outside. They stood in the little yard fenced in by the iron railing.
He had two seats in his pocket for Potemkin. She was going to make an effort to get away, to give him an evening, as he had requested. He walked around the block a few times, as she had suggested. When she came out again he was met with a sorrowful look. “I can’t get away,” she said. “We’re short of girls tonight.”
“But can’t you take sick suddenly?”
Nope. They were on to that game.
He walked off dejectedly. At the corner he turned around. She was waving to him. She seemed to be genuinely disappointed, and yet she was smiling, too.
He stood outside the lobby of the theater and watched the crowds pouring in. It was like a Zionist reunion. No one seemed to come alone. He saw a young couple, shabbily dressed, advancing eagerly toward the box office. He went up to them and offered them his tickets. As they were mumbling their thanks he turned his back and made off. He was swallowed up by the crowd and borne along at a ridiculous pace. They moved like an army of ants pushing through a crack in the sidewalk. As he drifted with the current, shunted here and there, rudderless, will-less, like a straw riding a whirlpool, he suddenly made up his mind to go back to the Caravan—no particular reason, just a blind impulse.
Anchoring himself at the railing he gazed through the window. He saw the girls weaving in and out among the tables with the huge trays balanced in midair, stopping now and then to chat with some fresh Alec who knew how to put his arm around a girl’s waist or pinch her buttocks. But there was no sign of Hildred. He went inside and inquired for her. They said she had gone off.
It was a strange coincidence, as things turned out. Hildred did go to see Potemkin after all. That very night. The Spaniard had hopped in—at the last minute—just when one of the girls who had been away ill returned for duty. And, strange as it may seem, he too had tickets for Potemkin. Extraordinary it was. Perfectly extraordinary. That’s how things happened in life. And, of course, there was no sense in refusing him. Besides, hadn’t she gone with the hope of seeing him somewhere in the audience?
But when he admitted that he didn’t go she seemed amazed. “You didn’t go?” she repeated. She couldn’t understand. “Why, it was a marvelous picture! Marvelous! The way those Cossacks descended the stairs leading to the quay, the way they halted, like automatons, and fired into the mob. And the way that mob melted!” She described most vividly how a baby carriage had rolled down the long, white steps, how they dropped, the women and children, how they were trampled on. It was magnificent. What gorgeous beasts those Cossacks were!
She left off abruptly, lit herself a cigarette, and sat on the edge of the table, swinging her leg.
“Do you know what a real pogrom is like?” she asked suddenly.
He knew that the answer to this was no. He said no.
She thought as much. He ought to hear Vanya talk. Vanya had taken part in more than one pogrom. . . .
“Where?” he demanded.
In Russia, to be sure. Where did he suppose?
“She’s a Russian, then?”
She was not only a Russian, he learned, but she was a princess, a Romanoff, a bastard Romanoff. So that’s how it was! Not only a genius, but a princess to boot. He couldn’t help but think of another Romanoff who had once given him a bad check for three dollars. He was a genius, too, in a way . . . and a bastard, to boot. He wagged his head, like a Jew who has just been informed of a fresh calamity. No wonder he was not romantic enough for them; he was neither a genius, nor a Romanoff, nor a bastard.
The scene came to a termination on the bed. It was marvelous the way Hildred could pour out her love. The man who could doubt such a love was an idiot. Body and soul she gave herself. A complete surrender. Not like those half-women in the Village, whom Willie Hyslop consorted with, but like a real woman with all her organs intact, all her senses unstrung, all her heart on fire and her passions burning to cinder . . . a veritable pogrom of love.
At the very climax Vanya had to return.
“Oh, you’re there!” she cried. She could smell them in the dark, like a dog.
No sooner than she heard her voice Hildred jumped out of bed. The princess had arrived. Time to sing another tune.
Tony Bring slipped out the back door into the outhouse. The dirty dishes were lying in the sink. He moved about aimlessly, glancing through the window now and then to see if they took any notice of his absence. No, they seemed not to notice anything. Hildred was cold-creaming her face while the princess sang to her. They sang in English, in German, in French, in Russian. Vanya went to her room and came back with her Barrymore makeup. Swagger and strut. Hildred sitting by, like an empress of emotion, doling out applause.
The roof of the outhouse was supported by three iron poles. Tony Bring raced around the poles like an electrified rabbit. Each time he passed the window he glanced inside. They were still singing . . . caroling away like a couple of drunken molls. “Let me call you sweetheart, I’m in love with you-ou-ou . . .” Over and over they sang it. George Washington should have been there—and Abraham Lincoln and Jean Cocteau and Puvis de Chavannes and Moholy-Nagy and Tristan Tzara. . . . He was there and he was not there. He was like a ghost at a banquet, like a hero without a medal, like an uninvited guest at a wake, like a slack-wire walker without a bamboo pole or an umbrella. He was a lunatic at large with a chronometer hidden in his socks. There was a transparent window but he was invisible to them. If they couldn’t see him they could at least hear him thrashing about like a maniac, or couldn’t they? Were they deaf, too? Yes, they were deaf. They were deafening themselves with song and laughter. The world was empty but for them. Their song filled the world, filled the starry space beyond, made the stars and planets hum and the moon drunk and the heavens to sing.
“You bloody devils!” he groaned. “If I only knew the way to sink my hooks into you! If I could only teach you to dance a few steps!”
This night, sure as hellfire, there will be a poem—a poem about the veils of night, about the hours grinding and hacking away at space with their sandy arms. O earth! thou art a breathing tomb, a chamber to torture these living dead with their widespread guts and their hidebound hands gaping to heaven for succor. In that frowsy cubicle where the Danish sisters bulge from the wall the pen will soon be scratching feverishly. Through the drunken verses they will reel and totter and the room will be split with grunts and squeals. While the music gurgles from the drains and spiders crawl over their black stockings the pen will dance. . . . Take away these cadavers that are growing in my brain! Give me back my soul and the sockets of my eyes!
2
THE CARAVAN has adde
d another hostess to its staff: one of the Romanoff family! God, if people only realized that they were being served by a princess! The way she poured the soup! The way she balanced the tray!
Princesses have a way of being disappointing, but this one . . . ! Not a full-blooded princess, of course. Somewhere there had been a little slip. Somebody had hitched his horse to the wrong post—during a pogrom or a snowstorm.
Hildred felt like another person. She jerked Vanya out of bed more tenderly. A princess was such a delicate thing. Arm in arm they left the house each day. They returned when it suited them.
When they are gone Tony Bring closets himself in the sanctuary left vacant by the princess. He reviews what her alter ego has lucubrated during the night, for between two and six in the morning it is not a Romanoff but a Madame Villon who inhabits the holy of holies. Madame Villon writes in a childish scrawl, as if she had been mesmerized. Not having a slate she writes on matchboxes, on menus and blotters; sometimes nothing will do but toilet paper. Having written, she tosses her poems on the floor. Walks off in the morning like a dog leaving its dung.
This morning, fresh from the griddle, Tony Bring finds a hymn to ammonia. “You held yourself like a fallen queen . . . your eyes, three eyes, spirits of ammonia.” It was written on the back of a menu from Lenox Avenue. “Swaying chalk arms blacked with life passed over my eyes. . . . I looked to you, Hildred, through the weaving green lights, and I wondered. . . . You were drunk last night, Hildred.”
Last night! That was the night Vanya came home raving about the Spaniard’s wasted skull floating in a sea of navels, glossy brown navels smudged with lip rouge. That was the night they were to raise the rent money and there were violets again and the Spaniard had said jokingly, “Someday I weel keel her!” He read on. . . . “Thick gold chains clinked in my brain, the music roared in a trickling flood over my ginger ale. The floor is rocking, the ice water is freezing my ankles.”