Her words set me back on my heels. I had the uneasy feeling that she had been taken in by her own acting. Was it necessary for me to be put on the grill—at this point? What I really felt like, if I dared to speak my mind, was a scoundrel. An utter scoundrel. To be sure, it had never occurred to me, in making the suggestion, that we would be obliged to carry the farce to such lengths. For Stasia to weaken was one thing, and in keeping with our bargain, but to be exacting solemn promises of me, to be searching my very heart, was something else. Maybe we had never been anything but actors, even when we thought we were sincere. Or the other way round. I was getting confused. It struck me with force, suddenly, that Mona, the actress, was probably the most sincere of all. At least she knew what she wanted.
All this ran through my head like lightning.
My reply, and it was the truth, was—To be honest, I don’t know how I feel. I don’t think I have any feelings left. Anyway, I don’t want to hear any more about love, ever…
Like that it ended, in a fizzle. But Mona was thoroughly content. Stasia too, it seemed.
None of us had been too badly damaged. Veterans, that’s what we were.
And now I’m trotting around like a blood-hound to raise money, presumably so that Stasia may take off. I’ve already visited three hospitals, in an effort to sell my blood. Human blood is at twenty-five dollars the pint now. Not long ago it was fifty dollars, but now there are too many hungry donors.
Useless to waste more time in that direction. Better to borrow the money. But from whom? I could think of no one who would offer me more than a buck or two. She needed at least a hundred dollars. Two hundred would be still better.
If only I knew how to reach that millionaire pervert! I thought of Ludwig, the mad ticket-chopper—another pervert!—but with a heart of gold, so Mona always said, But what to tell him?
I was passing Grand Central Station. Would run down to the sub-basement, where the messengers were herded, and see if any one was there who remembered me. (Costigan, the old reliable, had passed away.) I sneaked down and looked over the crew. Not a soul I could recognize. Climbing the ramp to the street I recalled that Doc Zabriskie was somewhere in the neighborhood. In a jiffy I was leafing the telephone directory. Sure enough, there he was—on West 45th Street. My spirits rose. Here was a guy I could surely count on. Unless he was broke. That was hardly likely, now that he had set up an office in Manhattan. My pace quickened. I didn’t even bother to think what kind of cock and bull story I would trump up … In the past, when I would visit him to have a tooth filled, it was he who would ask me if I wasn’t in need of a little dough. Sometimes I would say No, ashamed of myself for imposing on such good nature. But that was back in the 18 th century.
Hurrying along, I suddenly recalled the location of his old office. It was that three-story red brick building where I once lived with the widow. Carlotta. Every morning I hauled the ash cans and the garbage pails from the cellar and placed them at the kerb. That was one of the reasons he had taken such a fancy to me, Doc Zabriskie—because I wasn’t ashamed to soil my hands. It was so Russian, he thought. Like a page out of Gorky … How he loved to chat with me about his Russian authors! How elated he was when I showed him that prose poem I had written on Jim Londos, Londos the little Hercules, as he was called. He knew them all—Strangler Lewis, Zbysko, Earl Caddock, Farmer what’s his name … all of them. And here I was writing like a poet—he couldn’t get over my style!—about his great favorite, Jim Londos. That afternoon, I remember, he stuffed a ten dollar bill in my hand as I was leaving. As for the manuscript, he insisted on keeping it—in order to show it to a sports writer he knew. He begged me to show him more of my work. Had I written anything on Scriabin? Or on Alekhine, the chess champion? Come again soon, he urged. Come any time, even if your teeth don’t need attention. And I would go back from time to time, not just to chew the fat about chess, wrestlers and pianoforte, but in the hope that he would slip me a fiver, or even a buck, on leaving. I was trying to recall, as I entered the new office, how many years it was since I had last talked to him. There were only two three clients in the waiting room. Not like the old days when there was standing room only, and women with shawls sat red-eyed holding their swollen jaws, some with brats in their arms, and all of them poor, meek, down-trodden, capable of sitting there for hours on end. The new office was different. The furniture looked brand new and luxuriously comfortable, there were paintings on the wall—good ones—and all was noiseless, even (he drill. No samovar though.
I had hardly seated myself when the door of the torture chamber opened to evacuate a client. He came over to me at once, shook hands warmly, and begged me to wait a few minutes. Nothing serious? he hoped. I told him to take his time. A few cavities, nothing more. I sat down again and picked up a magazine. Poring over the illustrations I decided that the best thing to say was that Mona had to undergo an operation. A tumor in the vagina, or something like that.
With Doc Zabriskie a few minutes usually meant an hour or two. Not this time, however. Everything was running smoothly and efficiently now.
I sat down in the big chair and opened wide my mouth. There was only one little cavity; he would fill it immediately. As he drilled away he plied me with questions: how were things going? was I still writing? did I have any children? why hadn’t I looked him up before? how was So-and-So? did I still ride the bike? To all of which I replied with grunts and a roll of the eyes.
Finally it was over. Don’t run away! he said. Have a little drink with me first! He opened a cabinet and got out a bottle of excellent Scotch, then pulled a stool up beside me. Now tell me all about yourself!
I had to make quite a preamble before coming to the issue. That is, where we stood at the present moment, financially and otherwise. At last I blurted it out—the tumor. Immediately he informed me that he had a good friend, an excellent surgeon, who would do the job for nothing. That stumped me. All I could say was that arrangements had already been made, that I had already advanced a hundred dollars toward the cost of the operation.
I see, he said. That’s too bad. He thought a moment, then asked: When must you have it, the balance?
Day after to-morrow.
I tell you what, he said, I’ll give you a post-dated check. Right now my bank balance is low, very low. How much is it you need exactly?
I said two hundred and fifty dollars.
That’s a shame, he said. I could have saved you all this expense.
I was suddenly struck with remorse. Listen, I said, forget about it! I don’t want to take your last penny.
He wouldn’t listen to me. People were slow in paying their bills, that’s all, he explained. He got out a big ledger, began thumbing through it. By the end of the month I should take in over three thousand dollars. You see, he grinned, I’m not exactly poor.
The check safely in my pocket, I lingered a while to save face. When at last he escorted me to the elevator—I already had one foot in—he said: Better ring me up before depositing that check … just to make sure it’s covered. Do that, will you?
I’ll do that, I said, and waved good-bye.
The same good-hearted fellow, thought I to myself, as the elevator descended. Too bad I hadn’t thought to get a little cash too. A coffee and a piece of pie was what I needed now. I felt in my pocket. Just a few pennies short. Same old story.
Approaching the library at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street I found myself weighing the pros and cons of setting up as a bootblack. What ever could have put such a thought in my head, I wondered. Going on forty and thinking about shining other people’s shoes. How the mind wanders!
Abreast of the esplanade guarded by the placid stone lions, the impulse seized me to visit the library. Always pleasant and cosy up in the big reading room. Besides, I had suddenly developed a curiosity to see how it had fared, at my age, with other men of letters. (There was also a possibility of running into an acquaintance and still getting that pie and coffee.) One thing was certain, there was
no need to delve into the private lives of such as Gorky, Dostoievsky, Andreyev or any of their ilk. Nor Dickens either. Jules Verne! There was a writer about whose life I knew absolutely nothing. Might be interesting. Some authors, it seemed, never had a private life; everything went into their books. Others, like Strindberg, Nietzsche, Jack London … their lives I knew almost as well as my own.
What I really hoped for, no doubt, was to come upon one of those lives which begin nowhere, which lead us through marshes and salt flats, trickling away, seemingly, without plan, purpose or goal, and then suddenly emerge, gushing like geysers, and never cease gushing, even in death. What I wanted to lay hold of—as if one could ever come to grips with such impalpables!—was that crucial point in the evolution of a genius when the hard dry rock suddenly yields water. As the heavenly vapors are eventually collected in vast water-sheds and there converted into streams and rivers, so in the mind and soul, I felt, there must ever exist this reservoir waiting to be transformed into words, sentences, books, to be drowned again in the ocean of thought.
Only through trial and tribulation, it is said, are we opened up. Was that what I would find—nothing more?—in scanning the pages of biography? Were the creative ones tormented beings who found salvation only through wrestling with the media of art? In man’s world beauty was linked with suffering and suffering with salvation. Nothing of the sort obtained in Nature.
I took a seat in the reading room with a huge biographical dictionary before me. After reading here and there I fell into a reverie. To pursue my own thoughts proved more exciting than to pry into the lives of successful failures. Could I trace my own meanderings, beneath the roots, perhaps I might stumble on the stream which would lead me into the open. Stasia’s words came to mind—the need to meet a kindred spirit, in order to grow, to give forth fruit. To hold converse (on writing) with the lovers of literature was fruitless. There were many I had already met who could talk more brilliantly on the subject than any writer. (And they would never write a line.) Was there any one, indeed, who could speak discerningly about the secret processes?
The great question was that eternal, seemingly unanswerable one: what have I to tell the world which is so desperately important? What have I to say that has not been said before, and thousands of times, by men infinitely more gifted? Was it sheer ego, this coercive need to be heard? In what way was I unique? For if I was not unique then it would be like adding a cipher to an incalculable astronomic figure.
From one thing to another—a delicious Traumerei!—until I found myself pondering this most absorbing aspect of the writer’s problem: openings. The way in which a book opened—there in itself lay a world. How vastly different, how unique, were the opening pages of the great books! Some authors were like huge birds of prey; they hovered above their creation, casting immense, serrated shadows over their words. Some, like painters, began with delicate, unpremeditated touches, guided by some sure instinct whose purpose would become apparent later in the application of mass and color. Some took you by the hand like dreamers, content to linger at the edges of dream, and only slowly, tantalizingly permitted themselves to reveal what was obviously inexpressible. There were others who, as if perched in signal towers, derived intense enjoyment from pulling switches, blinking lights; with them everything was delineated sharply and boldly, as though their thoughts were so many trains pulling into the station yard. And then there were those who, either demented or hallucinated, began at random with hoarse cries, jeers and curses, stamping their thoughts not upon but through the page, like machines gone wild. Varied as they were, all these methods of breaking the ice were symptomatic of the personality, not expositions of thought out techniques. The way a book opened was the way an author walked or talked, the way he looked at life, the way he took courage or concealed his fears. Some began by seeing clear to the end; others began blindly, each line a silent prayer leading to the next. What an ordeal, this lifting of the veil! What a shuddering risk, this laying bare the mummy! No one, not even the greatest, could be certain what he might be called upon to present to the profane eye. Once engaged, anything could happen. It was as if, by taking pen in hand, the archons were summoned. Yes, the archons! Those mysterious entities, those cosmic enzymes, who are at work in every seed, who engineer the creation, structural and aesthetic, of every flower, every plant, every tree, every universe. The powers within. An everlasting ferment from which stemmed law and order.
And while these invisible ones went about their task the author—what a misnomer!—lived and breathed, performed the duties of a householder, a prisoner, a vagabond, whatever the role, and as the days passed, or the years, the scroll unrolled, the tragedy (his own and his characters’) spelled itself out, his moods varying like the weather from day to day, his energies rising and sinking, his thoughts seething like a maelstrom, the end ever approaching, a heaven which even if he has not earned it he must force, because what is begun must be finished, consummated, even if on the cross.
What need, eh, to read the pages of biography? What need to study the worm or the ant? Think, for just a moment, of such willing victims as Blake, Boehme, Nietzsche, of Holderlin, Sade, Nerval, of Villon, Rimbaud, Strindberg, of Cervantes or Dante, or even of Heine or Oscar Wilde! And I, was I to add my name to this host of illustrious martyrs? To what further depths of degradation had I to sink before acquiring the right to join the ranks of these scapegoats?
As on those interminable walks to and from the tailor shop, I was suddenly seized with a fit of writing. All in the head, to be sure. But what marvelous pages, what magnificent phraseology! My eyes half closed, I slumped deeper into the seat and listened to the music welling up from the depths. What a book this was! If not mine, whose then? I was entranced. Entranced, yet saddened, humbled, chastened. Of what use to summon these invisible workers? For the pleasure of drowning in the ocean of creation? Never, through conscious effort, never, with pen in hand, would I be able to invoke such thoughts! Everything to which I would eventually sign my name would be marginal, peripheral, the maunderings of an idiot striving to record the erratic flight of a butterfly … Yet it was comforting to know that one could be as a butterfly.
To think that all this wealth, this wealth of the primeval chaos, must be infused, to be palatable and potable, with the Homeric minutiae of the daily round, with the repetitious drama of petty humans whose sufferings and aspirations have, even to mortal ears, the monotonous hum of windmills whirring in remorseless space. The petty and the great: separated by inches. Alexander dying of pneumonia in the desolate reaches of Asia; Caesar in all his purple proved mortal by a pack of traitors; Blake singing as he passed away; Damien torn on the wheel and screaming like a thousand twisted eagles … what did it matter and to whom? A Socrates hitched to a nagging wife, a saint plagued with a thousand woes, a prophet tarred and feathered … to what end? All grist for the mill, data for historians and chroniclers, poison to the child, caviar for the schoolmaster. And with this and through this, weaving his way like an inspired drunkard, the writer tells his tale, lives and breathes, is honored or dishonored. What a role! Jesus protect us!
9.
No coffee, no apple pie. It was dark and the avenue deserted when I hit the air. I was famished. With the few cents I had I bought a candy bar and walked home.
A horrendous jaunt, particularly on an empty stomach.
But my head was buzzing like a bee-hive. For company I had the martyrs, those gay self-willed birds who had long since been devoured by the worms.
I dove straight into bed. Why wait up for them, even though there was a promise of food? Anything from their lips would be so much gibberish after the biographical fling I had enjoyed.
I waited a few days before breaking the news to Stasia.
She was dumbfounded when I handed her the check.
Never believed it possible of me. But wasn’t I rushing her at bit? And the check, could she be certain it wouldn’t bounce?
Such questions! I said nothing about Doc
Zabriskie’s request to call him before cashing the check. No use running the risk of hearing something disagreeable. Cash it first, then worry—that was my thought.
It never entered my head to inquire if she had changed her mind about going. I had done my part, it was up to her to fulfill hers. Ask nobody nothing, it’s too risky. Forward, at all costs!
A few days later, however, came the bad news. It was like a double-barreled shot-gun going off. First, as I might have known, the check bounced. Second, Stasia had decided against leaving—for a while anyway. On top of it I got hell from Mona for trying to get rid of Stasia. I had broken my word again. How could they ever trust me? And so on. My hands were tied, or my tongue rather. Impossible to tell her what Stasia and I had agreed upon in private. That would only have made me more of a traitor.
When I asked who had cashed the check I was told it was none of my business. I suspected it was some one who could well afford the loss. (That filthy millionaire most likely.)
What to say to Doc Zabriskie? Nothing. I hadn’t the courage to face him again. Indeed, I never did see him again. One more name to scratch off my list.
While things were simmering down a bizarre episode took place. Knocking softly on the window-pane one evening, looking his same queasy, quirky, disreputable self, stands Osiecki. It’s his birthday, be informs me. The few drinks he had stowed away had not had too baleful an effect. He was slightly out of focus, to be sure, still mumbling in his whiskers, still scratching himself, but, if one could express it thus, in a more winsome fashion than usual.
I had refused his invitation to do a little quiet celebrating with him. I made some weak excuses which failed to penetrate the fog in which he was wrapped. He had such a hang dog look that instead of turning him loose I permitted him to break down my resistance. Why not go along, after all? Did it matter that my shirt was unironed and frayed, my pants wrinkled and my coat full of spots? As he said, Nonsense! It was his idea to go to the Village, have a few friendly drinks, and get back early. Just for old times’ sake. It wasn’t fair to ask a man to celebrate his birthday all by himself. He jiggled the coins in his pocket as if to tell me that he was well heeled. We weren’t going to any fancy joints, he assured me. Maybe you’d like to catch a bite first? he said. He grinned with all his loose teeth.