Money? shouted Kronski. Money? Why, what’s the matter with its? I’m sure Dr. Marx and I can take care of her needs. He seemed amazed to hear that Mona might be in need of money. A little hurt, in fact.

Poor Cromwell felt that he had made a faux-pas. He assured us that it was only an impression he had gathered. But, to get back to the subject, he would like us to glance at those columns and give him our honest opinion of them. He said he was no judge himself. If they were really good he was certain he could get her the assignment. He mentioned nothing, of course, about shelling out a hundred a week.

We had another drink on this and then diverted him to other subjects. It was easy enough to sidetrack him. He had only one thought in mind—when would she arrive? Every now and then be begged us to let him dash out and make a telephone call to Washington. In one way or another we always managed to frustrate these attempts. We knew that Mona would not arrive, not at least until we had gotten him out of the way. She had given us until one in the morning to get rid of him. Our only hope therefore was to get him so potted that we could put him in a taxi and pack him off.

I had tried several times to find out where he was staying but got nowhere. Kronski thought it of slight importance—any old hotel would do. In the midst of the goings-on I asked myself why this fool business had been arranged. It made no sense. Later I was told that Mona had thought it important to let Cromwell see that she was really living alone. There was another side to it, of course, and that was to find out if Cromwell really hoped to sell the column to the syndicate. It was Mona’s belief that he would be more frank with us than with her. But we had dropped this subject early in the evening, thanks to Kronski. For some queer reason of his own, Kronski was obsessed with the notion of filling Cromwell with hair-raising stories about the operating ward. I of course had to chime in with him. No one in his right senses would have given the least credence to these yarns he kept inventing. They were so sensational, so utterly fantastic, and so gory and gruesome withal, that I wondered that Cromwell, dead drunk though he was, didn’t see through them. Of course the more horrible and unbelievable the tale, the more we laughed, Kronski and I. Our hilarity puzzled Cromwell somewhat, but finally he accepted it as professional callousness.

To believe Kronski, nine out of ten operations were pure criminal experiments. Except for a rare handful, all surgeons were born sadists. Not content with diabolical fantasies about the mistreatment of human beings, he went into long dissertations on the subject of our cruelty to animals. One of these, a harrowing story, which he told amidst gales of laughter, concerned a poor little rabbit which,—after numerous injections, electric shocks, and all manner of miraculous resuscitations, was brutally butchered. To cap it all, he elaborated on how he, Kronski, had gathered the remnants of the poor little creature and made a stew of it, oblivious, until after he had swallowed a few portions, that arsenic had been injected into the poor rabbit. Over this he laughed inordinately. Cromwell, slightly sobered by the bloody tale, remarked that it was too bad Kronski hadn’t died, then laughed so heartily over this thought that absentmindedly he swallowed a full glass of cognac neat. Whereupon he had such a fit of coughing that we had to stretch him out on the floor and work over him like a drowned man.

It was at this point that we found Cromwell becoming unmanageable. To give him a working-over we had stripped off his coat, vest, shirt and undershirt. Kronski, to be sure, was doing the major work; I merely pummeled Cromwell now and then, or slapped his chest. Now that he was stretched out comfortably, Cromwell didn’t feel like putting on his things. He said he felt too good to budge. Wanted to take a snooze, if only for a few minutes. He reached out vaguely for the divan, wondering, I suppose, if he could transfer himself to a still more comfortable position without rousing himself.

The thought that he might go to sleep on us was alarming. We began to cut up like real jackanapes now, standing poor Cromwell on his head, dancing around him (to his utter bewilderment, of course), making grimaces, scratching ourselves like apes … anything to make him laugh, anything to prevent his heavy lids from closing. The harder we worked—and by now we had become positively frenetic—the more insistent he became about having his little snooze. He had reached the point now of crawling on all fours towards the coveted divan. Once there, God himself would be powerless to wake him up.

Let’s lay him out, I said, indicating by gestures and grimaces that we could then dress him and bundle him out.

It took us almost a half hour to get his things on. Cromwell drunk and sleepy though he was refused with might and main to permit us to unbutton his trousers, which we had to do to tuck his shirt in. We were obliged to leave his fly open and his shirt sticking out. When it came time we would cover his shirt with the overcoat.

Cromwell passed out immediately. A heavy trance, punctuated by obscene snores. Kronski was radiant. Hadn’t had such a good time in ages, he assured me. Then, without dropping his voice, he blandly suggested that we go through Cromwell’s pockets. We ought at least to get back what we laid out for food and drink, he insisted. I don’t know why I suddenly became so scrupulous but I refused to entertain the notion. He’d never miss the money, said Kronski. What’s fifty or a hundred bucks to him? Just to reassure himself he extracted Cromwell’s wallet. To his utter amazement there wasn’t a bill in it.

Well I’ll be damned! he mumbled. That’s the rich for you. Never carry cash. Pfui!

We’d better get him out of here soon, I urged.

Try and do it! said Kronski, grinning like a billy-goat. What’s wrong with letting him stay here?

Are you mad? I shouted.

He laughed. Then he calmly proceeded to tell us how wonderful he thought it would be if we would play the farce out to the end, that is, to wake up, all five of us (next morning) and continue to enact our respective roles. That would give Mona a chance to do some real acting, he thought. Kronski’s wife wasn’t at all enthusiastic over this suggestion—it was all too complicated to suit her.

After much palaver we decided to rouse Cromwell, drag him out by the heels, if necessary, and dispatch him to a hotel. We had to tussle with him for a good quarter of an hour before we succeeded in getting him to a semi-standing position. His knees simply refused to straighten out; his hat was over his eyes and his shirt-tails were sticking out from under the overcoat which we were unable to button. He looked for all the world like Snuffy the Cabman. We were laughing so hysterically that it was all we could do to descend the steps without rolling over one another. Poor Cromwell kept protesting that he didn’t want to go yet, that he wanted to wait for Mona.

She’s gone to Washington to meet you, said Kronski maliciously. We got a telegram while you were asleep.

Cromwell was too stupefied to get the full import of this. Every now and then he sagged, threatening to collapse in the street. Our idea was to give him a bit of air, brace him up a bit, and then bundle him into a cab. To find a cab we had to walk several blocks. Our way led towards the river, a roundabout way, but we thought the walk would do him good. When we got near the docks we all sat down on the railroad tracks and took a breather. Cromwell simply stretched out between the tracks, laughing and hiccoughing, quite as if he were a babe in the cradle. At intervals he begged for something to eat. He wanted ham-and-eggs. The nearest open restaurant was almost a mile away. I suggested that I would run back to the house and get some sandwiches. Cromwell said he couldn’t wait that long, wanted his ham-and-eggs right away. We yanked him to his feet again, a job which demanded our combined strength, and started pushing and dragging him towards the bright lights of Borough Hall. A night watchman came along and demanded to know what we were doing there at that hour of the night. Cromwell collapsed at our feet. Whatcha got there? demanded the watchman, prodding Cromwell with his feet as if he were a corpse. It’s nothing, he’s just drunk, I said. The watchman bent over him to smell his breath.

Get him out of here, he said, or I’ll fan the whole bunch of you.

Yes sir, yes sir, we said, dragging Cromwell by the arm-pits, his feet scraping the ground. A few seconds later the watchman came running up with Cromwell’s hat in his hand. We put it on him but it fell off again. Here, I said, opening my mouth, put it between my teeth. We were panting and sweating now from the exertion of dragging him. The watchman observed us a few moments in disgust, then he said: Let go of him! Here, sling him over my back … you guys are dubs. Like this we reached the end of the street where the elevated line swung overhead. Now one of you guys fetch a cab, said the night watchman. Don’t pull him around any more, you’ll wrench his arms out. Kronski skedaddled up the street in search of a cab. We sat down on the curb and waited.

The cab arrived in a few minutes and we bundled him in. His shirt tails were still hanging out.

Where to? asked the driver.

The Hotel Astor! I said.

The Waldorf-Astoria! shouted Kronski.

Well, make up your minds! said the cabby.

The Commodore, shouted Cromwell.

Are you sure? said the driver. This ain’t a wild-goose chase, is it?

It’s the Commodore all right, isn’t it? I said, sticking my head inside the cab.

Sure, said Cromwell thickly, anywhere suits me.

Has he got any money on him? asked the cabby.

He’s got loads of money, said Kronski. He’s a banker.

I think one of you guys better go along with him, said the driver.

O. K., said Kronski and promptly hopped in with his wife.

Hey! shouted Cromwell, what about Dr. Marx?

He’ll come in the next cab, said Kronski. He’s got to make a telephone call.

Hey I he shouted to me, what about your wife?

She’s all right, I said, and waved good-bye. When I got back to the house I discovered Cromwell’s brief case and some small change which had dropped out of his pockets. I opened the brief case and found a mass of papers and some telegrams. The most recent telegram was from the Treasury Department, urging Cromwell to telephone some one at midnight without fail, extremely urgent. I ate a sandwich, while glancing over the legal documents, took a glass of wine, and decided to call Washington for him. I had a devil of a job getting the man at the other end; when I did he answered in a sleepy voice, gruff and irritated. I explained that Cromwell had met with a little accident but would telephone him in the morning. But who are you … who is this, he kept repeating. He’ll telephone you in the morning, I repeated, ignoring his frantic questions. Then I hung up. Outside I ran as quickly as I could. I knew he’d call back. I was afraid he might get the police after me. I made quite a detour to reach the telegraph office; there I sent a message to Cromwell, to the Commodore Hotel. I hoped to Christ Kronski had delivered him there. As I left the telegraph office I realized that Cromwell might not get the message until the next afternoon. The clerk would probably hold it until Cromwell woke up. I went to another cafeteria and called the Commodore, urging the night clerk to be sure to rouse Cromwell when he got the telegram. Pour a pitcher of cold water over him if necessary, I said, but be sure he reads my telegram … it’s life and death.

When I got back to the house Mona was there cleaning up the mess.

You must have had quite a party, she said. That we did, I said.

I saw the brief case lying there. He would need that when telephoning Washington. Look, I said, we’d better get a cab and deliver this to him right away. I’ve been reading over those papers. They’re dynamite. Better not be caught with them in our possession.

You go, said Mona, I’m exhausted.

There I was, in the street again, and just as Kronski had predicted, following in a cab. When I got to the hotel I found that Cromwell had already gone to his room. I insisted that the clerk take me to his room. Cromwell was lying fully clothed on the bedspread, flat on his back, his hat beside him. I put the brief case on his chest and tip-toed out. Then I made the clerk accompany me to the manager’s office, explained the situation to that individual, and made the clerk testify that he had seen me deposit the brief-case on Cromwell’s chest.

And may I have your name? asked the manager, somewhat perturbed by these unusual tactics.

Certainly, I said, Dr. Karl Marx of the Poly-technique Institute. You can call me in the morning if there is any irregularity. Mr. Cromwell is a friend of mine, an F. B. I. agent. He had a little too much to drink. You’ll look after him, I hope.

I certainly will, said the night manager, looking rather alarmed. Can we reach you at your office any time, Dr. Marx?

I’ll be there all day, certainly, I said. If I should be out, ask for my secretary—Miss Rabinovitch—she’ll know where to reach me. I’ve got to get some sleep now … must be in the operating room at nine. Thank you so much. Good-night!

The bell-hop escorted me to the revolving door. He was visibly impressed by the rigmarole. Cab, sir? he said. Yes, I said, and gave him the change which I had gathered from the floor. Thank you very very much, Doctor, he said, bowing and scraping, as he showed me to the cab.

I told the cabby to drive to Times Square. There I got out and headed for the subway. Just as I was reaching the change booth I realized I hadn’t a damned cent left over. The cab driver had gotten my last quarter. I climbed up the steps and stood at the curb, wondering where and how I would raise the necessary nickel. As I was standing there a night messenger came along. I looked twice to see if I knew him. Then I bethought me of the telegraph office at Grand Central. I was sure to know some one there. I walked back to Grand Central, swung down the ramp and sure enough, there at the desk, large as life, was my old friend Driggs. Driggs, would you lend me a nickel? I said. A nickel? said Driggs. Here, take a dollar! We chatted a few moments and then I ducked back to the subway.

A phrase Cromwell had let drop a number of times during the early part of the evening kept recurring to mind: my friend William Randolph Hearst. I didn’t doubt in the least that they were good friends, though Cromwell was still a pretty young man to be a bosom friend of the newspaper Czar. The more I thought of Cromwell the better I liked him. I was determined to see him again soon, on my own next time. I prayed that he wouldn’t forget to make that telephone call. I wondered what he would think of me when he realized I had gone through his brief case.

It was only a few nights later that we met again. This time at Papa Moskowitz’s. Just Cromwell, Mona and myself. It was Cromwell who had suggested the rendezvous. He was leaving for Washington the next day.

Any uneasiness I might have felt on meeting him the second time was quickly dispelled by his warm smile and hearty handshake. At once he informed me how grateful he was for what I had done, not specifying what I had done, but giving me a look which made it clear he knew everything. I always make an ass of myself when I drink, he said, blushing slightly. He looked more boyish now than he had the first night I met him. He shouldn’t have been more than thirty, it seemed to me. Now that I knew what his real job was I was more than ever amazed by his easy, carefree deportment. He acted like a man without any responsibilities. Just a bright young banker of good family—that was the impression he created.

Mona and he had been talking literature, it seemed. He pretended, as before, to be out of touch with literary events. Nothing but a plain business man with a slight knowledge of finance. Politics? Completely beyond his ken. No, the banking business kept him busy enough. Except for an occasional tear, he was a home-loving body. Hardly ever saw anything but Washington and New York. Europe? Yes, most eager to see Europe. But that would have to wait until he could afford a real vacation.

He pretended to be rather ashamed of the fact that the only language he knew was English. But he supposed one could get by if one had the right connections.

I enjoyed hearing him hand out this line. Never by word or gesture did I betray his confidence. Not even to Mona would I have dared reveal what I knew about Cromwell. He seemed to understand that I could be trusted.

And so we talked and talked, listening to Moskowitz now and then, and drinking moderately. I gathered that he had already made it clear to Mona that the column was no go. Everybody had praised her work, but the big boss, whoever that was, had concluded it was not for the Hearst papers.

What about Hearst himself? I ventured to ask. Did he say no to it?

Cromwell explained that Hearst usually abided by the decisions of his underlings. It was all very complicated, he assured me. However, he thought that something else might turn up, something even more promising. He would know after he got back to Washington.

I of course was able to interpret this as a mere politeness, knowing full well now that Cromwell would not be in Washington for at least two months, that in seven or eight days, as a matter of fact, he would be in Bucharest, conversing in the language of that country with great fluency.

I may be seeing Hearst when I go to California next month, he said, never batting an eyelash. I’ve got to go there on a business trip.

Oh, by the way, he added, as if it had just occurred to him at that moment, isn’t your friend Doctor Kronski a rather strange person … I mean, for a surgeon?

What do you mean? I said.

Oh, I don’t know … I would have taken him for a pawn-broker, or something like that. Perhaps he was only putting on to amuse me.

You mean his talk? He’s always that way when he drinks. No, he’s really a remarkable individual—and an excellent surgeon.

I must look him up when I get back here again, said Cromwell. My little boy has a club foot. Perhaps Dr. Kronski would know what to do for him?

I’m sure he would, I said, forgetting that I was supposed to be a surgeon too.

As if divining my oversight, and just to be a bit playful, Cromwell added: Perhaps you could tell me something about such matters yourself, Dr. Marx. Or isn’t that your field?

No, it isn’t really, I said, though I can tell you this much, however We have cured some cases. It all depends. To explain why would be rather complicated…

Here he smiled broadly. I understand, he said. But it’s good to know that you think there is some hope.

Indeed there is, I said warmly. Now in Bucharest at the present time there’s a celebrated surgeon who is reputed to have cured ninety percent of his cases. He hag some special treatment of his own which we over here are not yet familiar with. I believe it’s an electrical treatment.

In Bucharest, you say? That’s far away.

Yes, it is, I agreed.

Supposing we have another bottle of Rhine wine? suggested Cromwell.

If you insist, I replied. I’ll have just a wee drop, then I must be going.

Do stay, he begged, I really enjoy talking with you. You know, sometimes you strike me as more of a literary man than a surgeon.’

I used to write, I said. But that was years ago. In our profession one doesn’t have much time for literature.

It’s like the banking business, isn’t it? said Cromwell.

Quite. We smiled good-naturedly at one another.

But there have been physicians who wrote books, haven’t there? said Cromwell. I mean novels, plays, and such like.

To be sure, I said, plenty of them. Schnitzler, Mann, Somerset Maugham…

Don’t overlook Elie Faure, said Cromwell. Mona here has been telling me a great deal about him. Wrote a history of art, or something like that … wasn’t that it? He looked to Mona for confirmation. I’ve never seen his work, of course. I wouldn’t know a good painting from a bad one.

I’m not so sure of that, said I. I think you’d know a spurious one if you saw it.

Why do you say that?

Oh, it’s just a hunch. I think you’re quick to detect whatever is counterfeit.

You’re probably crediting me with too much acumen, Dr. Marx. Of course, in our business, one does get accustomed to being on the alert for bad money. But that’s really not my department. We have specialists for that sort of thing.

Naturally, I said. But seriously, Mona is right … one day you’ve got to read Elie Faure. Imagine a man writing a colossal History of Art in his spare time! Used to make notes on his cuff while visiting his patients. Now and then he would fly to some far off place, like Yucatan or Siam or Easter Island. I doubt if any of his neighbors knew that he made such flights. Led a humdrum life, outwardly. He was an excellent physician. But his passion was art. I can’t tell you how much I admire the man.

You speak about him exactly like Mona, said Cromwell. And you tell me you have no time for other pursuits!

Here Mona put in her oar. According to her, I was a man of many facets, a man who seemed to have time for everything.

Would he have suspected, for instance, that Dr. Marx was also a skilled musician, an expert at chess, a stamp collector … ?

Cromwell here averred that he suspected I was capable of many things I was too modest to reveal. He was convinced, for one thing, that I was a man of great imagination. Quite casually he reminded us that he had noticed my hands the other night. In his humble opinion they revealed much more than the mere ability to wield the scalpel.

Interpreting this remark in her own fashion, Mona at once demanded if he could read palms.

Not really, said Cromwell, looking as if abashed. Enough, perhaps, to tell a criminal from a butcher, a violinist from a pharmacist. Most any one can do that much, even without a knowledge of palmistry.

At this point I had an impulse to leave.

Do stay! begged Cromwell.

No, really, I must be off, said I, grasping his hand.

We’ll meet again soon, I hope, said Cromwell. Do bring your wife next time. A charming little creature. I took quite a fancy to her.

That she is, said I, reddening to the ears. Well, good-bye! And bon voyage!

To this Cromwell raised his glass over the brim of which I detected a slightly mocking glance of the eyes. At the door I encountered Papa Moskowitz.

Who is that man at your table? he asked in a low voice.

Frankly, I don’t know, I answered. Better ask Mona.

He’s not a friend of yours then?

That’s hard to answer too, I replied. Well, good-bye! and I shook myself loose.

That night I had a very disturbing dream. It started off, as dreams often do, as a pursuit. I was chasing a small thin man down a dark street, towards the river. Behind me was a man chasing me. It was important for me to catch up with the man I was pursuing before the other man got me. The thin little man was none other than Spivak. I had been trailing him all night from place to place, and finally I had him on the run. Who the man behind me was I had no idea. Whoever he was he had good wind and was fleet of foot. He gave me the uneasy feeling that he could catch up with me whenever he had a mind to. As for Spivak, though I wanted nothing better than to see him drown himself, it was most urgent that I collar him first: he had on him some papers which were of vital importance to me.

Just as we were nearing the jetty which projected into the river I caught up with him, collared him firmly, and swung him around. To my utter amazement it wasn’t Spivak at all—it was crazy Sheldon. He didn’t seem to recognize me, perhaps because of the darkness. He slid to his knees and begged me not to cut his throat, I’m not a Polak! I said, and yanked him to his feet. At that moment my pursuer caught up with us. It was Alan Cromwell. He put a gun in my hand and commanded me to shoot Sheldon. Here, I’ll show you how, he said, and giving Sheldon’s arm a vicious twist he brought him to his knees. Then he placed the muzzle of the gun against the back of Sheldon’s head. Sheldon was now whimpering like a dog. I took the gun and placed it against Sheldon’s skull. Shoot! commanded Cromwell. I pulled the trigger automatically and Sheldon gave a little spring, like a jack-in-the-box, and fell face forward. Good work! said Cromwell. Now, let’s hurry. We’re due in Washington tomorrow morning early.

On the train Cromwell changed personality completely. He now resembled to a T my old friend and double, George Marshall. He even talked exactly like him, although his talk at the moment was rather disconnected. He was reminding me of the old days when we used to act the clown for the other members—of the celebrated Xerxes Society. Giving me a wink, he flashed the button on the underside of his lapel, the very one we all religiously wore, the one on which was engraved in letters of gold—Fratres Semper. Then he gave me the old handclasp, tickling my palm, as we used to do, with his forefinger. Is that enough for you? he said, giving me another slippery horse-wink.

His eyes, incidentally, had expanded to formidable proportions: they were huge goiterous eyes which swam in his round face like bloated oysters. This only when he winked, however. When he resumed his other identity, alias Cromwell, his eyes were quite normal.

Who are you? I begged. Are you Cromwell or Marshall?

He put his finger to his lips, in the manner of Sheldon, and went SHHHHHHHH!

Then, in the voice of a ventriloquist, and talking out of the side of his mouth, he informed me rapidly, almost inaudibly, and with more and more celerity—it made me dizzy trying to follow him!—that he had been tipped off in the nick of time, that they were proud of me at headquarters, and that I was to be given a very special assignment, yes, to go to Tokio. I was to impersonate one of the Mikado’s right-hand men—in order to track down the stolen prints. You know, and he lowered his voice still more, training those horrible floating oysters on me again, flipping back the lapel of his coat, clasping my hand, tickling my palm, you know, the one we use for the thousand dollar bills. Here he began talking Japanese which, to my amazement, I discovered I could follow as easily as English. It was the art commissioner, he explained in chop-stick language, who had caught on to the racket. He was an expert, this guy, on pornographic prints. I would be meeting him in Yokohama, disguised as a physician. He’d be wearing an admiral’s uniform with one of those funny three-cornered hats. Here he gave me a prodigious nudge with his elbow and tittered—just like a Jap. I’m sorry to say, Hen, he continued, relapsing into Brooklynese, that they’ve got the goods on your wife. Yep, she’s in the ring. Caught her red-handed with a big package of coke. He nudged me again, more viciously this time. Remember that last meeting we staged—at Grimmy’s? You know, the time they fell asleep on us? I’ve done that rope-and-ladder trick many times since. Here he grasped my hand and gave me the sign once more. Now listen, Hen, get it straight … When we get off the train you walk leisurely down Pennsylvania Avenue, as if you were taking a stroll. You’ll meet up with three dogs. The first two,’ they’ll be fake dogs. The third one will run up to you to be patted. That’s the clue. Pat him on the head with one hand and with the other slip your fingers under his tongue. You’ll find a pellet about the size of an oat. Take the dog by the collar and let him lead you. Should any one stop you, just say Ohio! You know what that means. They’ve got spies posted everywhere, even in the White House … Now get this, Hen—and he began talking like a sewing machine, faster, faster, faster—when you meet the President give him the old handclasp. There’s a little surprise in store for you, but I’ll skip that. Just bear this in mind, Hen, that he’s the President. Don’t ever forget that! He’ll tell you this and that … he doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground … but never mind, just listen. Don’t let on that you know a thing. Obsipresieckswizi will make his appearance at the critical moment. You know him … he’s been with us for years … I wanted to ask him to repeat the name for me but he couldn’t be stopped, not for a moment. We’ll be pulling in in three minutes, he murmured, and I haven’t told you half yet. This is the most important, Hen, now get this, and he gave me another painful poke in the ribs. But there his voice had dropped to such a pitch that I could only catch fragments of his speech. I was writhing in agony. How would I ever carry on if the most important details were lost? I would remember the three dogs, of course. The message was in code, but I would be able to decipher that on the boat. I was also to brush up on my Japanese during the boat trip, my accent was a little off, especially for the Court. You’ve got it now? he was saying, waving his lapel again and clasping ray hand. Wait, wait a minute, I begged. That last part … But he had already descended the steps and was lost in the crowd.

As I walked along Pennsylvania Avenue, trying to give the appearance of a stroller, I realized with a sinking heart that I was really completely befuddled. For a moment I wondered if I were dreaming. But no, it was Pennsylvania Avenue all right, no mistaking it. And then suddenly there was a big dog standing at the curb. I knew he was an imitation one because he was fastened to a hitching block. That reassured me even more that I was in possession of my waking mind. I kept my eyes open to spot the second dog. I didn’t even turn around, though I was certain some one was on my heels, so anxious was I not to miss that second dog. Cromwell, or was it George Marshall—the two had become inextricably confused—hadn’t mentioned anything about being followed. Maybe, though, he had said something—when he was talking under his breath. I was getting more and more panicky. I tried to think back, to recall just how I had gotten involved in this ugly business, but my brain was too fatigued.

Suddenly I almost jumped out of my skin. At! the corner, standing under an arc light, was Mona. She was holding a bunch of Mezzotints in her hand, distributing them to passers-by. When I got abreast of her she handed me one, giving me a look which meant—Be careful!—I sauntered leisurely across the street. For a while I carried the Mezzotint without glancing at it, flapping it against my leg as if it were a newspaper. Then, pretending that I had to blow my nose, I switched it to the other hand, and as I wiped my nose I read on the slant these words: The end is round like the beginning. Fratres Semper. I was sorely baffled. Maybe that was another little detail I had missed when he was talking under his breath. Anyway, I had the presence of mind to tear the message into tiny little bits. I dropped the bits one by one at intervals of a hundred yards or so, listening intently each time to make sure my pursuer was not stopping to pick them up.

I came to the second dog. It was a little toy dog on wheels. Looked like a plaything abandoned by a child. Just to make sure it wasn’t a real dog I gave it a little kick with my toe. It crumbled to dust immediately. I pretended, of course, that this was most natural, and resumed my leisurely pace.

I was only a few yards from the entrance to the White House when I perceived the third and real dog. The man shadowing me was no longer dogging my steps, unless he had changed to sneakers without my knowing it. Anyway, I had reached the last dog. He was a huge Newfoundland, playful as a cub. He came running up to me with big bounds and almost knocked me over trying to lick my face. I stood a moment or two patting his big warm head; then I circumspectly stooped down and inserted a hand under his tongue. Sure enough there was the pellet, wrapped in silver leaf. As Marshall or Cromwell had said, it was about the size of an oat.

I has holding the dog by the collar as we ascended the steps to the White House. All the guards gave the same sign—a big wink and a little flutter of the lapel. As I wiped my feet on the mat outside I noticed the words Fratres Semper in big red letters. The President was coming towards me. He had on a cutaway and striped trousers; a carnation was in his button hole. He was holding out both hands to greet me. Why, Charlie! I cried, how on earth did you get here? I thought I was to meet … Suddenly I remembered George Marshall’s words. Mr. President, I said, making a low bow, it is indeed a privilege…

Come right in, come right in, said Charlie, grasping my hand and tickling the palm with his forefinger. We’ve been expecting you.

If he was indeed the President he hadn’t changed an iota since the old days.

Charlie was known as the silent member of our club. Because his silence lent him an air of wisdom we had mockingly elected him president of the club. Charlie was one of the boys from the flats across the way. We adored Charlie but could never get very close ix, him—because of his inscrutable silence. One day he disappeared. Months passed but no word from him. The months rolled into years. Not one of us had ever received a communication from him. He seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth.

And now he was ushering me into his sanctum. The President of these United States!

Sit down, said Charlie. Make yourself comfortable. He proffered a box of cigars.

I could only stare and stare. He looked exactly as he always had, except, to be sure, for the cutaway and striped trousers. His thick auburn hair was parted in the middle, as always. His fingernails were beautifully manicured, as always. The same old Charlie. At the bottom of his vest, as always, he was wearing the old button of the Xerxes Society. Fratres Semper.

You realise, Hen, he began, in that soft, modulated voice of his, why I have had to keep my identity secret. He bent forward and lowered his voice. She’s still on my trail, you know. (She, I knew, referred to his wife whom he couldn’t divorce because he was a Catholic.) It’s she who’s behind all this. You know … He gave me one of those big slippery horse-winks such as George Marshall had employed.

Here be began to twiddle with his fingers, as if rolling a little ball. At first I didn’t catch on, but after he had repeated the gesture a number of times I realized what he was hinting at.

Oh, the pel…

Here he raised a finger, placed it to his lips, and almost inaudibly, went Shhhhhhhhh.

I extracted the pellet from my vest pocket and unrolled it. Charlie kept nodding his head gravely, but making not a sound. I handed him the message to read; he handed it back to me and I read it attentively. Then I passed it back to him and he quickly burned it. The message was in Japanese. Translated, it meant: We are now inexorably united in brotherhood. The end is the same as the beginning. Observe strict etiquette.

There was a telephone call which Charlie answered in a low, grave voice. At the end he said: Show him in in a few minutes.

Obsipresieckswizi will be here shortly. He will go with you as far as Yokohama.

I was just about to ask if he wouldn’t be kind enough to be a little more explicit when suddenly he swung round in his swivel chair and thrust a photograph under my nose.

You recognize her, of course? Again he put his finger to his lips.

The next time you see her she’ll be in Tokio, probably in the inner court. Here he reached down into the lower drawer of his desk and brought forth a candy box labelled Hopjes, the kind that Mona and I had been peddling. He opened it gingerly and showed me the contents: a Valentine greeting, a strand of what looked like Mona’s hair, a miniature dagger with an ivory handle and a wedding ring. I examined them intently, without touching them. Charlie closed the box and put it back in the drawer. Then he gave me a wink, flipped his vest flap and said Ohio! I repeated it after him: Ohio!

Suddenly he whirled around again and thrust the photograph under my nose. It was a different face this time. Not Mona, but some one who resembled her, some one of indeterminate sex, with long hair which fell over the shoulders, like an Indian’s. A striking and mysterious face, reminiscent of that fallen angel, Rimbaud. I had an uneasy feeling. As I gazed, Charlie turned it over; on the other side was a photograph of Mona dressed like a Japanese woman, her hair done up m Japanese fashion, her eyes slanted upwards, the lids heavy, giving the eyes the appearance of two dark slits. He turned the photos back and forth several times. In awesome silence. I was unable to figure out what significance to give to this performance.

At this point an attendant came in to announce the arrival of Obsipresieckswizi. He pronounced the name as if it were Obsequy. A tall, gaunt man entered swiftly, went straight up to Charlie, whom he addressed as Mr. President, and began a voluble speech in Polish. He hadn’t noticed me at all. It was lucky he hadn’t because I might have made a grave slip and called him by his right name. I was just reflecting how smoothly things were going when my old friend Stasu, for it was none other than he, stopped talking as abruptly as he had begun.

Who is this? he demanded in his curt, insolent way, motioning to me.

Take a good look, said Charlie. He gave a wink, first at me, then at Stasu.

Oh, it’s you, said Stasu, extending his hand grudgingly. How does he fit into the picture? he said, addressing the President.

That’s for you to determine, said Charlie blandly.

Hmm, mumbled Statu. He’s never been good at anything. He’s a failure through and through.

We know all that, said Charlie, thoroughly unruffled, but just the same. He pressed a button and another attendant appeared. See that these men get to the airport safely, Griswold. Use my car. He rose and shook hands with us. His behavior was exactly that of one holding such a high office. I felt that he was indeed the President of our great Republic, and a very shrewd, capable President to boot. As we reached the threshold he shouted: Fratres Semper! We wheeled around, saluted in military fashion, and repeated:

Fratres Semper!

There were no lights on the plane, not even inside. Neither of us spoke for some time. Finally Stasu broke into a torrent of Polish. It sounded strangely familiar to me yet I was unable to make out a word except Pan and Pani.

Talk English, I begged. You know I don’t speak Polish.

Make an effort, he said, it will come back to you. You spoke it once, don’t act dumb. Polish is the easiest language in the world. Here, do this … and he began making sibilant, hissing sounds like a serpent in rut. Now sneeze! Good. Now gargle! Good. Now roll your tongue back like a carpet and swallow! Good. You see … there’s nothing to it. The rudiments are the six vowels, twelve consonants and five diphthongs. If you’re dubious, spit or whistle. Never open your mouth wide. Suck the air in and push your tongue against your closed lips. Like this. Speak fast. The faster the better. Raise your voice a little, as if you were going to sing. That’s it. Now close your palate and gargle. Fine! You’re getting it. Now say after me, and don’t stutter: ‘Ochizkishyi seiecsuhy piaifuejticko eicjcyciu!’ Excellent! You know what that means—’Breakfast is ready!’

I was overjoyed with my own fluency. We rehearsed a number of stock phrases, such as: Dinner is served, the water is hot, there’s a strong breeze blowing, keep the fire going, and so on. It was all coming back to me readily. Stasu was right. I had only to make a little effort and the words were there on the tip of my tongue.

Where are we headed for now? I asked in Polish, just to vary the rigmarole.

Izn Yotzxkiueoeumasysi, he replied.

Even that long word I seemed to remember. A strange language, this Polish. It made sense, even if one did have to perform acrobatics with one’s tongue. It was good exercise, it limbered up the tongue. After an hour or two of Polish I would be more than fit to resume my study of Japanese.

What will you do when we get there? In Polish, of course.

Drnzybyisi uttituhy kidjeueycmayi, said Stasu. Which meant, in our own vernacular, Take it easy.

Then he added, with a few oaths which I had forgotten, Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. Wait for orders.

In all this time he hadn’t said a word about the past, about our boyhood days on Driggs Avenue, about his good-natured old aunt who used to feed us from the ice-box. She was such a lovable creature, his aunt. Always spoke—in Polish, that is—as if she were singing. Stasu hadn’t changed a bit. As sullen, defiant, morose and disdainful as ever. I recalled the fear and dread with which he inspired me as a boy—when he lost his temper. He was a veritable demon then. Would grab a knife or a hatchet and make for me like lightning. The only time he ever seemed sweet and gracious was when his aunt sent him to buy sauerkraut. We used to filch a bit on the way home. It was good, that raw sauerkraut. The Poles were extraordinarily fond of it. That and fried bananas. Bananas that were soft and over-sweet.

We were landing now. Must be Yokohama. I couldn’t make out a blessed thing, the whole airport was enveloped in darkness.

Suddenly I realized that I was alone in the plane. I felt around in the darkness but no Stasu. I called to him softly, but no answer. A mild panic seized me. I began to perspire profusely.

Getting off the plane two Japs came running forward to meet me. Ohio! Ohio! they exclaimed.

Ohio! I repeated. We tumbled into rickshaws and began moving towards the city proper. There was no electricity, evidently—nothing but paper lanterns, as if for a festival. The houses were all made of bamboo, neat and trim, the sidewalks were paved with wooden blocks. Now and then we crossed a tiny wooden bridge, such as one sees in old prints.

It was just beginning to dawn as we entered the precincts of the Mikado’s palace.

I should have been trembling now but instead I was serene, perfectly composed, prepared for any eventuality. The Mikado will turn out to be another old friend, I said to myself, pleased with my sagacity.

We dismounted before a huge portal painted in fiery colors, changed into wooden clogs and kimonos, prostrated ourselves a few times, and then waited for the portal to swing open.

Noiselessly, almost imperceptibly, the big portal finally swung open. We were in the midst of a small circular court, the flagging of which was inlaid with mother of pearl and precious gems. An enormous statue of the Buddha stood in the center of the court. The expression on the Buddha’s face was grave and seraphic at once. There emanated from him a feeling of tranquillity such as I had never known before. I felt drawn into the circle of his blessedness. The whole universe seemed to have come to an ecstatic hush.

A woman was coming forward from one of the hidden archways. She was clothed in ceremonial garb and carrying a sacred vessel. As she approached the Buddha everything became transformed. She advanced now with the gait of a dancer, to the sound of weird cacophonous music, sharp staccato sounds made by wood, stone and iron. From every doorway dancers now came forth with terrifying banners, their faces concealed by hideous masks. As they circled about the statue of the Buddha they blew into huge conch shells which gave forth unearthly sounds. Suddenly they fell away and I was alone in the court, facing a huge animal which resembled a bull. The animal was curled up on an iron altar that looked somewhat like a frying pan. I could see now that it was not a bull but the Minotaur. One eye was closed peacefully, the other was staring at me, quite friendily however. Of a sudden this enormous eye began to wink at me, coyly, flirtatiously, like a woman under a street lamp in some low quarter of the city. And as it winked it curled itself up more, as if making ready to be roasted. Then it closed the enormous eye and pretended to be snoozing. Now and then it fluttered the lids of that monstrous orb which had winked so jocosely.

Stealthily, on tip-toes, and with painful slowness, I approached the dread monster. When I got within a few feet of the altar, which was shaped distinctly like a saucepan I now realized, I perceived with horror that little flames were licking it from below. The Minotaur seemed to be stirring in his own juice, pleasurably. Again he was opening and shutting that big eye. The expression was one of sheer drollery.

Approaching more closely I felt the heat given off by those little flames. I could also smell the stench of the animal’s scorched hide. I was hypnotized with terror. I stood where I was, rooted, the perspiration streaming down my face in rivulets.

With one bound the monster suddenly sprang upright, balancing himself on his hind legs. I perceived with a retching horror that he had three heads. All six eyes were wide open and leering at me. Transfixed, I stared glumly as the burnt hide fell away, revealing an underlayer of skin which was pure white and smooth as ivory. Now the heads began to turn white also, except for the three noses and muzzles which were of bright vermilion. Around the eyes were circles of blue, the blue of cobalt. In each forehead there was a black star; they twinkled like real stars.

Still balancing itself on its hind legs the monster now began to sing, rearing its head still higher, tossing its mane, rolling all of its six horrible leering eyes.

Mother of God! I mumbled in Polish, ready to faint momentarily.

The song, which had sounded at first like some Equatorial chant, was becoming more and more recognizable. With a skill which was supernatural, the monster subtly and rapidly changed from one register to another, one key to another, until finally with a clear and unmistakable voice it was hymning the Star Spangled Banner. As the anthem progressed, the beautiful white skin of the Minotaur changed from white to red and then to blue. The black stars in the foreheads became golden; they flashed like semaphores.

My mind, unable to follow these bewildering changes, seemed to go blank. Or perhaps a real blackout had occurred. At any rate, the next thing I knew the Minotaur had disappeared, the altar with it. On the beautiful mauve, flagging, mauve and pale rose really, on which the precious inlaid gems sparkled like fiery stars, a nude woman of voluptuous proportions and with a mouth like a fresh wound was dancing the belly dance. Her navel, enlarged to the size of a silver dollar, was painted a vivid carmine; she wore a tiara and her wrists and ankles were studded with bracelets. I would have recognized her anywhere, nude or swaddled in cotton wool. Her long golden hair, her wild eyes of the nymphomaniac, her super-sensual mouth told me unmistakably that she was none other than Helen Reilly. If she had not been so fiercely possessive she would now be sitting in the White House with Charlie who had deserted her. She would have been The First Lady in the Land.

I had hardly time to reflect, however. She was being bundled into a plane with me, stark naked and reeking of sweat and perfume. We were off again—back to Washington, no doubt. I offered her my kimono but she waved it aside. She felt comfortable just as she was, thank you. There she sat opposite me, her knees drawn up almost to her chin, her legs brazenly parted, puffing a cigarette. I wondered what the President—Charlie, that is—would say when he laid eyes on her. He had always referred to her as a lascivious, no-good bitch. Well, anyway, I had made good. I was bringing her back, that was the all important. No doubt he, Charlie, intended to obtain one of those divorces which only the Pope himself could grant.

Throughout the flight she continued to smoke cigarette after cigarette, maintaining her brazen posture, leering at me, making goo-goo eyes, heaving her big boobies, even playing with herself now and then. It was almost too much for me: I had to close my eyes.

When I opened them we were ascending the steps of the White House, hemmed in by a cordon of guards who screened the naked figure of the President’s wife. I followed behind her, watching in utter fascination the way she joggled her low-slung buttocks. Had I not known who she was I might well have taken her for one of Minsky’s belly dancers … for Cleo herself.

As the door of the White House opened I got the surprise of my life. It was no longer the room I had been received in by the President of our grand republic. It was the interior of George Marshall’s home. A table of staggering proportions took up almost the entire length of the room. At each end stood a massive candelabra. Eleven men were seated round it, each one holding a glass in his hand: they reminded me of the wax figures at Madame Tussaud’s. Needless to say, they were the eleven members of the original Deep-thinkers, as we once called ourselves. The vacant chair was obviously for me.

At one end of the table sat our old President, Charlie Reilly; at the other end sat our real President, George Marshall. At a given signal they all rose solemnly, glasses upraised, and broke into a deafening cheer. Bravo, Hen! Bravo! they shouted. And with this they swooped down on us, gathered Helen by the arms and legs, and tossed her on to the Communion table. Charlie grasped my hand and repeated warmly, Well done, Hen! Well done! I now shook hands with each one in turn, and with each gave the old sign—tickling the palm with the forefinger. They were all exceedingly well preserved—I say preserved because, despite the warmth and the cordiality of their greeting there was something artificial, something wax-like about them. It was good, nevertheless, to see them all. Like old times, I thought to myself. Becker, with his worn fiddle-case; George Gifford, pinched and shrunk, as always, and talking through his-nose; Steve Hill, big and blustering, trying to make himself look even more important than ever; Woodruff, MacGregor, Al Burger, Grimmy, Otto Kunst, and Frank Carroll. I was so immensely pleased to see Frank Carroll. He had lavender-colored eyes with enormous lashes, like a girl’s. He spoke softly and gently, more with his eyes than his mouth. A cross between a priest and a gigolo.

It was George Marshall who brought us back to reality. He was rapping the table with his gavel. Meeting called to order! He rapped again vigorously and we all filed to our respective places at the table. The circle was complete, the end like the beginning. United in brotherhood, inexorably. How clear it all was! Every one was wearing his button on which was inscribed in letters of gold Fratres Semper. It was all just as it had always been, even to George Marshall’s mother who was trotting back and forth from the kitchen, her arms laden with tempting viands. Unconsciously I stared intently at her broad backside. Had he not said once, George Marshall, that the sun rose and set in her ass?

There was only one disturbing note about this gathering, and that was the presence (in the nude) of Charlie Reilly’s wife. There she stood in the middle of the long table, as brazen and impudent as ever, a cigarette between her lips, waiting for her cue. However, and this was even more strange, more disturbing to me, no one seemed to give her a tumble. I looked in Charlie’s direction to see how he was taking it; he seemed unperturbed, unruffled, comporting himself in much the same way as he had when impersonating the President of these United States.

George Marshall’s voice now made itself heard. Before we go on with the reading of the minutes, said he, I want to present to you fellows a new member of the club. She’s our first and only female member. A real lady, if I must lie like a dog. Some of you may recognize her. I’m sure Charlie will, anyhow. He gave us a slippery grimace, intended for a smile, then hurried on. This is an important meeting, I want you fellows to understand. Hen here has just been to Tokio and back—I won’t say what for just now. At the conclusion of this session, which is a secret one, by the way, I want you guys to present Hen with the little testimonial which we prepared for him. His was a dangerous mission and he followed it to the letter … And now, before we get on with the business in hand, which is about the beer party to be held at Gifford’s home next Saturday night, I’m going to ask the little lady (a leer and a smirk here) to do one of her specialties. This number, I guess T don’t have to tell you, will be the well-known hoochee-koochee. She did it for the Mikado—no reason why she can’t do it for us. Anyway, you’ll notice she’s got nothing on, not even a fig-leaf. As an uproar threatened to break loose, he rapped sternly with his gavel. Before she begins her number let me say this to you fellows—I expect you to observe the performance in strict decorum. We’ve arranged this stunt, Hen and I, in order to arouse more interest in the activities of the club. The last few meetings were thoroughly disheartening. The real club spirit seems to have oozed away. This is a special meeting to bring out the old spirit of fellowship…

Here he gave three quick raps with the gavel, whereupon a phonograph in the kitchen started playing the St. Louis Blues. Is everybody happy? he cooed. O.K. Helen, do your stuff! And remember, shake those ashes clean!

The candelabras were removed to a sideboard against the wall; all but two of the candles had been snuffed out. Helen began writhing and twisting in the grand manner of the ancients. On the other wall her shadow repeated her movements in exaggerated style. It was a Japanese version of the belly dance which she was giving. One would have said she had been trained to it since childhood. Every muscle of her body was under control. Even her facial muscles she used with extraordinary skill, especially when simulating the convulsive movements of the orgasm. Not one of us twelve members budged from his rigid upright position. We sat there like trained seals, our hands motionless, our eyes following every little movement, which, as we knew, had a meaning all its own. As the last note died away George Gifford fell off his chair in a dead faint. Helen sprang from the table and ran into the kitchen. George Marshall rapped savagely with his gavel. Drag him out to the porch, he ordered, and douse his head in the bucket! Quick! We’ve got to get on with the minutes. This precipitated some grumbling and growling. Back to your places! shouted George Marshall. This is just the preliminary. Keep your shirts on and you’ll get a real treat. By the way, any one who feels like jerking off can excuse himself and go to the can.

All but George Marshall and myself rose in a body and exeunted.

You see what we’re up against, said George Marshall in a tone of utter despair. No matter what we cook up for them it’s hopeless. I’m going to make a move to dissolve the club. I want it read into the minutes in the regular way.

Jesus, I begged, don’t do that! After all, they’re only human.

That’s where you’re wrong, said George Marshall. They’re all picked men, they should know better. Last time we didn’t even have a quorum.

What do you mean, they should know better,’

Etiquette demands that you show no emotion. Nine of them are jerking off out there. The tenth one fainted. What are we coming to?

Aren’t you just a bit severe?

Have to be, Hen. We can’t coddle them forever.

Just the same, I think…

Listen, Hen, and he began to speak more rapidly, lowering his voice more and more. Nobody knows, except Charlie and me, what you went to Tokio for. You did a good job. They know all about it up above. This is just a little racket I thought up to throw dust in their eyes. After the meeting breaks up you, Charlie and me we’re gonna take Helen and go on a little bust. I didn’t want them to lose control or they might have pawed her to death. She’s fixing herself up in there … He gave me a slippery wink … Douching herself … A little alum, some Spanish fly. You know … My mother’s giving her a massage now. Look! He bent down to get something hidden under the table. See this? It was an enormous rubber penis filled with water. He gave a little squirt. Get the idea? That’s for Charlie. Don’t say a word about it, it’s a surprise. Being President’s no fun. He hasn’t had his end in for over a year now. There’s enough water in this—he shook the rubber penis lewdly—enough to make her piss from ears, eyes and nose.

This is gonna be fun, Hen. All on the q.t., of course. My mother’s in on it, but she won’t squawk. I told you once, remember, that the sun rises and sets in her ass.

Then he added something which completely dumbfounded me, so unlike George Marshall it was. Get this, Hen, he said, it’s right up your street: The man of India loves to see the waist bend under the weight of the breasts and the haunches; he likes long tapering forms and the single wave of the muscles as a movement surges through the whole body. Heroism and obscenity appear no more important in the life of the universe than the fighting or mating of a pair of insects in the woods. Everything is on the same plane.

He gave me again that enormous, slippery horse-wink which had so terrified me. Do you get it, Hen? As I was saying a moment ago, the old urge is spent; we’ve got to find new blood. You and I are getting along in years; we can’t do these old tricks with the same verve and gusto. When the war comes I’m going to join the artillery.

What war, George?

He replied: No more of that trapeze business for me.

The other members were now trooping back from the can. Never in my life had I seen such haggard, spent, dilapidated looking buggers. He’s right, thought I to myself, we’ve got to look for new blood.

Quietly they resumed their places at the table, their heads wilting like dead flowers. Some of them looked as if they were in a deep trance. Georgie Gifford was munching a stalk of celery—the very picture, saving the beard, of a silly old he-goat. The whole damned bunch were a disgrace for sore eyes.

A few raps of the gavel and the meeting was called to order. Those who are awake give heed! George Marshall began in a stern, peremptory voice. Once you called yourselves The Deepthinkers. You banded together to form an enclave, the famous Xerxes Society. You are no longer worthy of membership in this secret society. You have degenerated. Some of you have atrophied. In a moment I am going to call for a vote in order to dissolve the organization. But first I have something to say to our old president, Charlie Reilly. Here he gave the table a few vicious raps with the gavel. Are you awake, you miserable toad? I’m talking to you. Sit up straight! Button your fly! Now listen … In consideration of services rendered, I’m sending you back to the White House where you will serve another four years, if you’re re-elected. As soon as the meeting is over I want you to get into your cutaway and striped trousers and beat it. You have just about enough wits left to meet the demands of the War Office. By holding your tongue nobody will be the wiser. You’re demoted, dissolved, discredited. Here he turned his head and fixed my attention; How was that, Hen? All according to Hoyle. what? He lowered his voice and, speaking with terrifying rapidity again, he whispered out of the corner of his mouth: This is for you, a special … Man will change nothing of his final destiny, which is to return sooner or later to the unconscious and the formless.

With this he rose and, pulling me along, we rushed to the kitchen. A pall of smoke greeted us. As I was saying, Hen, we prepared a little surprise for you. With this he blew the smoke away. On either side of the kitchen table sat Mona and that mysterious creature with the long black hair whom I had seen a photograph of.

What’s this? I exclaimed.

Your wife and her friend. A couple of bull-dykers.

Where’s Helen?

Gone back to Tokio. We’re using these as substitutes. He gave me a terrific nudge and a slippery wink.

Cromwell will be here in a minute, he said. It’s him you’ve got to thank for this.

Mona and her lover were too busy playing euchre to even glance at us. They seemed hilarious. The strange creature will) the long hair was double-jointed; she had a fine moustache, firm breasts, and wore velvet trousers with gold braid down the sides. Exotic to the finger-tips. Every now and then they jabbed each other with the needle.

A fine pair, I remarked. They belong in the Haymarket.

Leave it to Cromwell, said George Marshall, he’s got it all arranged.

He had no more than uttered the name when there was a rap at the door.

That’s him, said George Marshall. Always on the dot.

The door opened quietly, as if responding to a hidden spring. A man entered with a huge gory bandage wrapped around his skull. It was not Cromwell at all, it was Crazy Sheldon. I gave a shriek and fainted away.

When I came to, Sheldon was seated at the table dealing out the cards. He had removed the bandage. From the tiny black hole in the back of his skull the blood trickled steadily, running over his white collar and down his back.

Again I felt that I would faint. But George Marshall, sensing my discomfiture, quickly produced a little glass stopper from his vest pocket, inserted it in the bullet wound, and the blood stopped running. Sheldon now began to whistle gaily. It was a Polish lullaby. Now and then he broke the melody by spitting on the floor, whereupon he would hum a few bars, so softly, so tenderly, as though he were a mother with an infant at the breast. After he had hummed and whistled, after he had spat in every direction, he took to chanting in Hebrew, moving his head back and forth, wailing doing the tremolo in a high falsetto, sobbing, moaning, praying. He sang in a powerful bass voice with a volume that was staggering. This went on for quite a time. He was like a man possessed. Suddenly he moved into another register, which gave his voice a peculiar metallic timbre, as though his lungs were made of sheet metal. He was singing in Yiddish now, a drunken tune filled with bloody oaths and filthy imprecations. Die Hutzulies, farbrent soln sei wern … Die Merder, gehargeil soln sei wern … Die Gozlonem, unzinden soln sei sich … His voice rose to a piercing screech. Fonie-ganef, a miese meshine of sei! With this, still screaming, the foam dribbling from his mouth, he rose to his feet and began whirling like a dervish. Cossaken! Cossaken! he repeated over and over, stamping his foot and emitting a stream of blood from his pursed lips. He slowed down a little, put his hand to his back trousers pocket and brought out the miniature knife with the pearl handle. Now he whirled faster and faster, and as he shrieked Cossaken! Hutzulies! Gozlonem! Merder! Fonie-Ganef! he stabbed himself over and over, in the arms, in the legs, in the stomach, eyes, nose, ears, mouth, until he was nothing but a mass of wounds. Suddenly he stopped, grabbed the two women by the throat and knocked their heads together—again and again, as if they were two cocoa-nuts. Then he unbuttoned his shirt, raised the police whistle to his lips, and gave a blast which made the walls shiver. With this the ten members of the Xerxes Society rushed to the door; as they stepped across the threshold Sheldon, who had drawn his automatic, shot them down one by one, yelling A miese meshine of sei … Hutzulies, Gozlonem, Merder, Cossaken!

Only George Marshall and I were alive and breathing. We were too paralyzed to move. We stood with backs to the wall, waiting our turn. Walking over the bodies of the dead as if they were so much fallen timber, Sheldon slowly approached us with levelled gun, unbuttoning his fly with the left hand. Shitty dogs! he said in Polish, this is your last chance to pray. Pray while I piss on you, and may my bloody piss scald your rotten hearts! Call on your Pope now, and your Virgin Mary! Call on that faker, Jesus Christ! The assassins will be geschiessen. How you stink, uhitty Goyim! Fart your last fart! And he poured over us his steaming red piss which ate into our skins like acid. Hardly had he finished when he fired point blank at George Marshall; the body fell to the floor like a sack of manure.

I put up my hand to yell Stop! but Sheldon was already firing. As I sank to the ground I began to whinny like a horse. I saw him raise his foot and then I got it in the face. I rolled over on my side. I knew it was the end.

7

It was days before I could shake off the after effects of the dream. In some mysterious way it had affected Mona too, though I had told her nothing of it. We were unaccountably listless and dispirited. Having dreamed so violently about him, I looked forward to seeing Sheldon pop up, but neither hide nor hair of him did we lay eyes on. Instead we received a post-card from O’Mara informing us that he was in the vicinity of Asheville where there was a boom on. Said he would notify us to join him as soon as things were properly under way.

Out of sheer boredom Mona took another job in the Village, this time at a shady joint called The Blue Parrot. From Tony Maurer, a new admirer, she learned that the Milwaukee millionaire was due in town any day.

And who is Tony Maurer? I asked.

A cartoonist, she replied. He was once a German cavalry officer. He’s a real wit.

Never mind the rest, I said. I was still in the doldrums. To summon even a flickering interest in one of her new admirers was beyond me. I was low, and I would stay that way until I hit bottom. Even Elie Faure was too much for me. I shouldn’t bring myself to concentrate on anything more important than a bowel movement.

As for looking up my friends, out of the question. When depressed I rarely ever visited any one, even a close friend.

The few attempts I had made to do a little gold-digging on my own had contributed to lower my morale. Luther Goering, the last man I had hit up—for a mere five-spot—had taken the wind out of my sails. It wasn’t my intention to lay siege to him, seeing how he was almost one of the family, but running into him in the subway, as I did, I thought I might as well profit by the occasion. The mistake I made was to interrupt him in the middle of one of his interminable harangues. He had been telling me of the huge success he was enjoying (as an insurance salesman) through the application of Christ’s teachings. Having always looked upon me as an atheist, he was now delighted to be able to overwhelm me with proofs of the practical aspect of Christian ethics. Bored absolutely stiff, I listened for a while in cold silence, sorely tempted at moments to laugh in his face. Nearing our station I interrupted the monologue to ask it he would lend me five dollars. The request must have struck him as outrageously irrelevant for he flew into a tantrum. This time I could no longer control myself—I laughed in his face. For a moment I thought he would slap me in the face; he was livid with rage, his lips trembling, his fingers twitching uncontrollably. What was the matter with me, he demanded to know. Had I supposed that because he had at last succeeded in earning a good living I was at liberty to regard him as a charitable institution? True, the Bible did say: Ask and it shall be given, knock and it shall be opened unto you, but one was not to infer from these words that one was to give up work and become a panhandler. God looks after me, he said, because I look after myself. I put in fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I don’t pray to God to put money in my pockets, I beg him to bless my work! At this point he softened somewhat. You don’t seem to understand, he said. Let me try to explain it to you. It’s really very simple…

I told him I didn’t give a hoot for his explanations, that all I cared to know was—would he lend me the five dollars or not?

Of course I won’t, Henry, if you put it that way. You have to learn first to put yourself in God’s good graces.

Fuck that! I said.

Henry, you’re steeped in sin and ignorance! In an effort to placate me he grasped my arm. I brushed it away. We walked down the street in silence. After a time, speaking as softly as he could, he said: I know it’s hard to repent. I’ve been a sinner myself. But I wrestled with might and main. And finally, Henry, God showed me the way. God taught me how to pray. And I prayed, Henry, night and day. I prayed even when talking to a client. And God has answered my prayers. Yes, out of the bounteous goodness of His heart He forgave, He brought me back to the fold. Look, Henry … last year I earned a scant $1500.00. This year—and the year is not over—I’ve earned well over ten thousand dollars. That’s the proof, Henry. Even an atheist can’t contest such logic!

In spite of myself I was amused. I’ll listen, thought I to myself. I’ll let him try to convert me. Maybe then I can make it ten bucks instead of five.

You’re not starved, are you, Henry? he suddenly inquired. Because if you are we’ll stop off somewhere and have a bite to eat. Perhaps this is God’s way of bringing us together.

I told him that I wasn’t at the point of dropping in the street. The way I said it, however, implied that it was a possibility.

That’s good, said Luther, with his customary insensitiveness. What you need more than earthly food is spiritual sustenance. If one has that, one can do without ordinary food. Remember this—God always provides sufficient for the day, even to sinners. He watches over the sparrows … You haven’t altogether forgotten the good teachings, have you?—I know your parents sent you to Sunday School … and they also provided you with a good education. God was looking after you all the time, Henry…

Jesus, I asked myself, how long will this continue?

Perhaps you remember the Epistles of St. Paul? he continued. Since I gave him a blank look he dove into his breast pocket and exhumed a worn-looking New Testament. He stopped dead and began thumbing the pages.

Don’t bother, I said, give it to me from memory. I’ve got to get home soon.

That’s all right, he said, we’re on God’s time now. Nothing can be more important than the precious words of the Bible. God is our Comforter, remember that, Henry.

But what if God doesn’t answer one’s prayers? I said, more to discourage him from looking up the Epistles of St. Paul than to know the answer.

God always answers him who seeks Him, said Luther. Perhaps not the first time or the second time, but eventually. Sometimes God sees fit to try us first. He wants to be sure of our love, our loyalty, our faith. It would be too simple if we could just ask for something and have it fall into our laps, wouldn’t it now?

I don’t know, I said, why not? God can do anything, can’t He?

Always within reason, Henry. Always according to our merits. It’s not God who punishes us, but we ourselves. God’s heart is always open to him who seeks Him out. But it must be a real need. One must be desperate before God gives of his kindness.

Well, I’m pretty desperate right now, I said. Honest, Luther, I need that money bad. We’re going to be evicted in a day or two if something doesn’t happen.

Luther was strangely unmoved by this last piece of information. He was so well attuned to God’s ways, it seemed, that a little matter like eviction meant nothing to him. Perhaps God wanted it that way. Perhaps it was a preparation for something better. What does it matter, Henry, he said fervidly, what does it matter where you are living if only you can find God? You can find Him in the street just as easily as at home. God will shelter you with His blessed wings. He watches over the homeless just as much as He does over others. His eye is on us always. No, Henry, if I were you, I would go home and pray, pray that He show you the way. Sometimes a change does us good. Sometimes we get too comfortable and we forget whence all our blessings flow. Pray to Him tonight, on your knees, and with a full heart. Ask Him to give you work for your hands. Ask to serve Him, remember that. Serve the Lord, it is said, and keep His commandments. That is what I am constantly doing—now that I have found the light. And God rewards me abundantly, as I explained to you before…

But look, Luther, if God is really taking care of you so handsomely, as you say, couldn’t you share just a little of your blessed reward with me? After all, five dollars isn’t a fortune.

I could do that, Henry, most certainly—if I thought it were the right thing to do. But you’re in God’s hands now: He will look after you.

In what way would it interfere with God’s plans if you were to lend me that five bucks? I insisted. I was getting fed up.

The ways of the Lord are beyond our knowing, said Luther solemnly. Perhaps he will have a job for you to go to in the morning.

But I don’t want a job, damn it! I have my own work to do. What I need is five bucks, that’s all.

That will probably be provided, too, said Luther. Only you must have faith. Without faith, even the little you have will be taken from you.

But I haven’t anything, I protested. Not a God-damned thing, don’t you understand? God can’t take anything away from me because I have nothing. Figure that out!

He can take away your health, he can take your wife from you, he can take from you the power to move your limbs, do you realize that?

He’d be one big louse to do that!

God afflicted Job sorely, surely you haven’t forgotten that? He also raised Lazarus from the dead. God giveth and God taketh away.

Sounds like a swindle game.

Because you are still beclouded with ignorance and folly, said Luther. For each one of us God has a special lesson to teach. You will have to learn humility.

If I only got a bit of a break, I said, I might be ready to learn my lesson. How can a man learn humility when his back is already broken?

Luther disregarded this last completely. In restoring the New Testament to his breast pocket he came upon some forms from the insurance company which he flourished in my face.

What? I fairly shrieked, you don’t mean to say you want to sell me a policy?

Not now, to be sure, said Luther, grasping my arm again to quell my agitation, not now, Henry, but perhaps in a month or so. God works His wonders in mysterious ways. Who knows but that a month from now you may be sitting on top of the world? If you had one of these in your possession you could borrow from the insurance company. It would save you a lot of embarrassment.

Here I abruptly took leave of him. He was still standing with hand outstretched, as if immobilized, when I got to the other side of the street. I gave him one parting glance and spat out a gob of juicy disgust. You prick! I said to myself. Yon and your fucking Comforter! For a pair of heartless shits I’ve never seen the like of you. Pray? You bet I’ll pray. I’ll pray that you have to crawl on hands and knees to scratch for a penny. I’ll pray that your wrists and knees give out, that you have to crawl on your belly, that your eyes will become bleary, and filled with scum.

The house was dark when I got back. No Mona. I sank into the big chair and gave myself up to moody reflections. In the soft light of my table lamp the room looked better than ever. Even the table, which was in a state of huge disorder, affected me pleasantly. It was obvious that there had been a long interruption. Manuscripts were lying about everywhere, books lay open at the pages where I had left off reading. The dictionary too was lying open on top of the book-case.

As I sat there ‘I realized that the room was impregnated with my spirit. I belonged here, nowhere else. It was foolish of me to stir out in the manner of a householder. I should be home writing. I should do nothing but write. Providence had taken care of me thus far, why not forever? The less I did about practical matters the more smoothly things went. These forays into the world only alienated me from mankind.

Since that fantastic evening with Cromwell I hadn’t written a line. I moved over to the writing table and began fiddling with the papers. The last column I had written—the very day that Cromwell had visited us—lay before me. I read it over quickly. It sounded good to me, extraordinarily good. Too good, in fact, for the newspaper. I pushed it aside and began slowly perusing a novelette which was unfinished, that Diary of a Futurist, of which I had read fragments to Ulric once. I was not only favorably impressed, I was deeply moved by my own words. I must have been in good spirits to have written that well.

I glanced at one manuscript after another, reading only a few lines at a time. Finally I came to my notes. They were as fresh and inspiring as when I had jotted them down. Some of them, which I had already made use of, were so provocative that I wanted to write the stories all over again, write them from a fresh, new angle. The more I unearthed, the more feverish I became. It was as though a huge wheel inside me had begun to revolve.

I pushed everything aside and lit a cigarette. I gave myself up to a delicious reverie. All that I had wanted to write these past fall months was now writing; itself out. It oozed out like milk from a cocoanut. I had nothing to do with it. Someone else was in charge. I was merely the receiving station transmitting it to the blue.

Just the other day, some twenty years since this occurrence, I came upon the words of one Jean-Paul Richter, which described exactly how I felt at that moment. What a pity I did not know them then! Here is what he wrote:

Rien ne m’a jamais emu davantage que le sieur Jean-Paul. II s’est assis a sa table et, par ses livres, il m’a corrompu el transforms. Maintenant, je m’enflamme de moi-meme.

My reverie was broken by a gentle knock at the door. Come in, I said, not moving from the spot. To my surprise Mr. Taliaferro, our landlord, entered.

Good evening, Mr. Miller, he said, in his quiet, easy Southern way. I hope I am not disturbing you?

Not at all, I replied, I was just dreaming. I motioned to him to take a seat and after a due pause I asked what I might do for him.

At this he smiled benevolently, drawing his chair a little closer. You look as though you were deep in work, he said, with sincere kindliness. It’s unfortunate that I should have disturbed you at such a moment.

I assure you I wasn’t working, Mr. Taliaferro. I’m glad indeed to see you. I’ve been intending to call on you for some time. You must have wondered…

Mr. Miller, he interrupted, I thought it was time we had a little chat together. I know you have lots of preoccupations, besides your work. Perhaps you are not even aware that it some months now since you last paid your rent. I know how it is with writers … The man was so truly gentle and considerate that I simply couldn’t stand on pretense with him. I had no idea how many months we were in arrears. What I admired in Mr. Taliaferro was that he had never in any way made us feel uncomfortable. Only once before had he ventured to knock at our door and that was to inquire if we needed anything. It was with a feeling of great relief, therefore, that I surrendered myself to him.

Just how it happened I don’t know, but in a few moments I was sitting beside him on the cot we had bought for O’Mara. He had his arm around my shoulders and was explaining to me, quite as if I were a younger brother, and in a voice so gentle, so soothing, that he knew I was a good individual, knew I had never intended to put him off so long (it was five months, I discovered) but that sooner or later I would have to come to terms with the world.

But Mr. Taliaferro, I think if you gave us just a little time…

Son, he said, pressing my shoulder ever so lightly, it’s not time you need, it’s an awakening. Now if I were you, I would talk it over with Mrs. Miller this evening and see if you couldn’t find a place more suited to your income. I am not going to hurry you unduly. Look around … take your time … find the place you like, and then move. What do you think?

I was almost in tears. You’re too kind, I said. Of course you’re right. Certainly we shall find another place, and quickly too. I don’t know how to thank you for your delicacy and consideration. I guess I am a dreamer. I never realized that it was so long since we last paid you.

Of course you didn’t, said Mr. Taliaferro. You’re an honest man, I know that. But don’t worry about…

But I do worry about it, I said. Even though we may have to move without paying you the back rent, I want you to know that I will definitely pay it back later, probably in driblets.

Mr. Miller, if you were situated differently, I would be glad to accept your promise, but it’s too much to ask of you now. If you can find another place before the first of next month I shall be quite content. Let’s forget about the back rent, yes?

What could I say? I looked at him with moist eyes, shook his hand warmly and gave him my word that we would be out on time.

As he rose to take leave of me he said: Don’t be too discouraged about this. I know how much you like this place. I hope you were able to do good work here. Some day I expect to read your books. Pause. I hope you’ll always think of us as friends.

We shook hands once more, then I closed the door softly after him. I stood a few minutes with my back to the door, surveying the room. I felt good. As though I had just come through a successful operation. Just a little dizziness from the anaesthetic. How Mona would take it I didn’t know. Already I was breathing easier. Already I had visions of living among poor people, my own sort. Down to earth again. Excellent. I walked to and fro, threw open the rolling doors and strutted about in the vacant apartment in the rear. A last taste of refinement. I took a good look at the stained glass window, rubbed my hand over the rose silk tapestry, slid a few feet on the highly polished floor, looked at myself in the huge mirror. I grinned at myself and said again and again, Good! Good!

In a few minutes I had made myself a pot of tea and fixed a thick, juicy sandwich. I sat down at my work table, put my feet up on a hassock, and picked up a volume of Elie Faure, opening it at random … When this people is not cutting throats or burning buildings, when it is not decimated by famine and butchery, it has only one function—to build and decorate palaces whose vertical walls shall be thick enough to protect the Sar, his wives, his guard, and his slaves—twenty or thirty thousand persons—against the sun, invasion, or perhaps revolt. Around the great central courts are the apartments covered with terraces or with domes, with cupolas, images of the absolute vault of the deserts, which the Oriental soul will rediscover when Islam shall have reawakened it. Higher than these, observatories which are at the same time temples, the ziggurats, the pyramidal towers whose stages painted with red, white, blue, brown, black, silver and gold, shine afar through the veils of dust which the winds whirl in spiral. Especially at the approach of evening, the warring hordes and the nomadic pillagers, who see the sombre confines of the desert streaked with this motionless lightning, must recoil in fear. It is the dwelling of the god, and resembles those steps of the plateau of Iran leading to the roof of the world, which are striped with violent colors by subterranean fire and by the blaze of the sun. The gates are guarded by terrific brutes, bulls and lions with human heads, marching…

A few blocks away, in a quiet street largely taken over by the Syrians, we found a modest furnished room situated in the rear of the house on the ground floor.

The woman who rented the place was a blue-nose from Nova Scotia, a harridan who gave me the shudders every time I looked at her. Everything imaginable had been crammed into our quarters: wash tubs, cooking store, heater, huge sideboard, old-fashioned wardrobe, extra couch, a battered rocker, a still more battered armchair, a sewing machine, a horsehair sofa, a what-not filled with five-and-ten-cent store knick-knacks, and an empty bird cage. I suspected that it was this room the old witch herself had inhabited prior to our arrival.

To put it pleasantly, an atmosphere of dementia reigned.

The saving thing was the garden outside our back door. It was a long rectangular garden enclosed by high brick walls, reminding me for some unaccountable reason of the garden in Peter Ibbetson. At any rate, it was a place in which to dream. Summer had just begun and in the late afternoons I would drag out a big armchair and read. I had just discovered Arthur Weigall’s books and was devouring them one after another. After reading a few pages I would fall into a reverie. Here in the garden everything was conducive to dream and reverie—the soft, fragrant air, the humming of insects, the lazy flight of the birds, the swishing of foliage, the murmur of foreign voices in the gardens adjoining.

An interlude of peace and privacy.

It was during this period that purely by chance I ran into my old friend Stanley one day. Forthwith Stanley began to visit us at frequent intervals, usually accompanied by his two boys, one five, the other seven. He had grown very fond of his youngsters and took great pride in their appearance, their manners, their speech. From Stanley I learned that my daughter was now attending a private school. His elder son, also named Stanley, had quite a crush on her, he informed me. This last he imparted with great relish, adding that Maude viewed the situation with alarm.

As to how they were getting along, that I had to drag out of him. It was nothing to worry about, he assured me, but the tone in which he said it conveyed that their circumstances were none too good. Poor old Melanie was still slaving away at the hospital, hobbling to work now with a cane; her nights she spent coddling her varicose veins. She and Maude were more than ever at odds. Maude, of course, was still giving piano lessons.

It was just as well I didn’t’ visit them any more, was Stanley’s summing up. They had given me up as hopeless and irresponsible. Only Melanie, apparently, had a good word to say for me but then Melanie was just a doddering idiot. (Always subtle and tactful, Stanley.)

Can’t you sneak me in there some time when no one’s home? I begged. I want to see how the place looks. I’d like to see the child’s toys, if nothing more.

Stanley couldn’t see the wisdom of this but promised to think it over.

Then he added quickly: You’d better forget about them. You’ve made a new life for yourself, stick to it!

He must have sensed that we didn’t have enough to eat, for every time he came he brought food, usually the remnants of some Polish concoction his wife had made—soups, stews, puddings, jam. Good gruel, the sort we needed. In fact, we began to look forward to these visits.

There wasn’t much change in Stanley, I noticed, except that his nose was now pressed closer to the grindstone. He was working nights in a big printing establishment in lower New York, he told me. Now and then, standing up over the kitchen tubs, he would try to write. He found it almost impossible to concentrate—too many domestic worries. Usually they were broke before the week was up. Anyway, he was more interested in his children now than in writing. He wanted them to have a good life. Soon as they were old enough he would send them to college. And more of the same…

Though he found it impossible to write, he did read. Now and then he brought along one of the books which entranced him. It was always the work of a romantic writer, usually of the 19th century. Somehow, no matter what book we were discussing, no matter what the world situation, no matter even if a revolution were impending, our talks always ended on Joseph Conrad. Or if not Conrad, then Anatole France. I had long ceased to be interested in either of these writers. Conrad bored me. But when Stanley began to sing his praise I would become intrigued despite myself. Stanley was no critic, to be sure, but, just as in the old days when we used to sit by the glowing stove in the kitchen and while the hours away, so now Stanley had a way of talking about the men he adored which infected me. He was full of yarns, usually about trivial episodes. These yarns were always humorous and spiced with malice and irony. The undercurrent, however, was freighted with tenderness, an immense, throbbing tenderness, which was almost suffocating. This tenderness of his, which he always smothered, redeemed his rancor, his cruelty, his vindictiveness. It was an aspect of his nature, however, which he rarely betrayed to others. In general he was brusque, mordant, acidulous. With a few words and gestures he could destroy any ambiance. Even when silent there emanated from him a fluid which was corrosive.

In talking to me, however, he always melted. For some strange reason he saw in me an alter ego. Nothing gave him more delight, nothing could make him more charming and solicitous, than the fact I felt miserable or defeated. Then we were brothers. Then he could relax, expand, sun himself. He liked to think that we were accursed. Had he not prophesied time on end that all my efforts would be of no avail? Had he not predicted that I would never make a good husband, nor a father, nor ever become a writer? Why did I persist? Why didn’t I settle down, as he had, take some humdrum job and accept my lot? It was patent that it did his heart good to gloat thus. Ever and always he went out of his way to remind me that I was just a Brooklyn boy, a lad from the 14 th Ward—like himself, like Louis Pirossa, like Harry Martin, like Eddie Goeller, like Alfie Betcha. (All failures.) No, none of us would ever come to aught. We were condemned in advance. I ought to be grateful, he thought, that I wasn’t sitting in the penitentiary or that I hadn’t become a drug addict. Lucky for me that I came of a solid, respectable family.

Just the same, I was doomed.

As he continued to rant, however, his voice became more and more soothing. There was now a wistful quality in it, a nostalgic tinge. It was so very clear that, despite all he said, he could think of no better heritage than the life we once led, the companions we once had, in the good old 14th Ward. He spoke of our mutual friends of long ago as if he had made a life’s study of each separate one. They were all so diverse in character and temperament, yet each and every one had been circumscribed by his limitations, held in a vise of his own making. For Stanley there was no hope of egress, never had been, for any of them. Nor for us, to be sure. For other individuals there might be loopholes, but not for the men of the 14th Ward. We were in jeopardy, forever. It was this very fact, this deliciously ineluctable fact, which endeared the memory of our bygone friends. Most certainly, he admitted, they possessed as great talent as men elsewhere in the world. Undisputably they possessed all the qualities which made of other men poets, kings, diplomats, scholars. And they had proved themselves capable of revealing these qualities, each on his own level, each in his own unique way. Wast not Johnny Paul the very soul of a king? Was he not a potential Charlemagne? His chivalry, his magnanimity, his faith and tolerance, were they not the very attributes of a Saladin? Stanley could always wax most eloquent when it came to Johnny Paul whom neither of us had seen since we were nine or ten. What became of him, we used to ask each other. What? No one knew. By choice or by fate he had remained anonymous. He was there, somewhere, in the great mass of humanity, leavening it with the fervor of his truly regal spirit. That was sufficient for Stanley. For me too, indeed. Strange that the very mention of the name Johnny Paul could bring tears to our eyes. Was he really so near and dear to us—or had we magnified his importance with the passing years? In any case, there he stood—in the hall of memory—the incarnation of all that was good, all that was promising. One of the grand Untouchables. Whatever it was he possessed, whatever it was he purveyed, it was imperishable. We had been aware of it as boys, we were convinced of it now as men…

Mona, at first rather distrustful of Stanley, rather uneasy in his presence, warmed to him more and more with each succeeding visit. Our talk of the old neighborhood, of our wonderful playmates, our curious and brutal games, our fantastic notions (as children) of the world we inhabited, revealed to her a side of life she had never known. Occasionally she would remind Stanley of her Polish origin, or her Roumanian origin, or her Viennese origin, or telescope them all into the heart of the Carpathian mountains. To these overtures Stanley always gave a lame ear, or as the Greeks say—koutsaftis. In his mind the fact that she couldn’t speak a word of Polish was sufficient to put her in the same category as all the other outlanders of this world. Besides, for Stanley’s taste she was a little too glib. Out of deference to me he never contradicted her, but the devastating expressions which flitted over his features spoke volumes. Doubt and disdain were the expressions Stanley most easily summoned. More than anything else Stanley was disdainful. This disdain which never quite left his features, which at most he subdued or repressed, was concentrated in his nose. He had the rather long, fine nose with flaring nostrils which is often noticeable among the Poles. Whatever was suspect, whatever was distasteful or antipathetic, manifested itself at once through this organ. The mouth expressed bitterness, the eyes a steadfast cruelty. They were small eyes, the color of agate; they were set wide apart and the look they gave bored clean through one. When he was merely ironical they twinkled, like cold, remote stars; when he was angry they burned like arrows dipped in poison.

What made him particularly awkward and ill at ease in Mona’s presence was her fluency, her agility, her quick intelligence. They were not qualities he admired in the other sex. It was not altogether by accident that he had chosen for wife a dolt, a half-wit, who, to hide her ignorance or embarrassment, would grin fatuously or titter in a most disconcerting way. True to form, he treated her like an object. She was the vassal. Perhaps he did love her once, but if so it must have been in another incarnation. Nevertheless he felt at home with her. He knew how to cope with her faults and transgressions.

He was such a queer, queer fellow, Stanley. Such a mixture of rasping contradictions. But there was one thing he seldom did, queer gazabo that he was—he seldom asked questions. When he did, they were direct questions and they had to be answered directly. It was, of course, not tact but pride which made him act in this seemingly discreet way. He took it for granted that I would inform him of anything important which came to pass. He preferred to have me volunteer the information than to pump it out of me. Knowing him as I did, I regarded it as hopeless to explain to him our manner of life. Had I told him simply that I had taken to thieving he would have swallowed it unquestioningly. Had I told him I had become a counterfeiter he might have arched his eyebrows in quizzical approbation. But to tell him of the devious nature of our operations would have baffled and repelled him.

A rum bird, this Polski. The only trace of suavity he ever displayed was in narrating one of his quaint yarns. At table, if he asked for a piece of bread, it was like a slap in the face. He was deliberately rude and insulting. It made him feel good to see others squirm.

At the same time he had a shyness which was quixotic. If Mona were to seat herself opposite him and cross her legs he would avert his eyes. If she put her make-up on in his presence he would pretend not to be aware of it. Her beauty itself made him self-conscious. It also made him suspicious. A woman as beautiful and intelligent as Mona marrying a guy like me—there was something louche about it in his eyes. He knew of course where and how I had met her. Now and then he referred to it casually, but always tellingly. When she spoke of her childhood in Poland or Vienna he would watch me attentively, hoping, I suppose, that I would embellish the story, fill in the long missing details. There was a gap somewhere and it bothered him. Once he went so far as to remark that he doubted she was ever born in Poland. But that she was a Jewess, that he never suspected. She was American through and through, that was his private belief. But an unusual American, for a female, that is. He couldn’t get over her diction, which was without the slightest trace of accent or locale. How did she ever learn to speak such a pure English? he would ask. How could I be sure of anything concerning her? I know you, he would say, you’re a Romantic … you prefer to have it a mystery. Which was quite true. Me, he said, I want to know what’s what. I want things above board. No hide-and-seek games for me. Yet it was he, Stanley, who was so enamoured of Herr Nagel, the hero of Mysteries. What discussions we had by the kitchen fire a propos this enigmatic figure of Hamsun’s! He would have given his right arm, Stanley, to have created such a character. It was not only that Herr Nagel enveloped himself in a shroud of mystery, it was also his sense of humor, his pranks, his voile-faces which appealed to Stanley. But what he adored above all was the contradictory nature of the man. Herr Nagel’s helplessness in the presence of the woman he loved, his masochism, his diabolism, his sentimentality, his extreme vulnerability—these qualities made him extraordinarily precious. I tell you, Henry, that Hamsun is a master, Stanley would say. He had said the same of Conrad, of Balzac, of Anatole France, of de Maupassant, of Loti. He had said the same of Reymont when he finished The Peasants. (For quite different reasons, to be sure.) Of one thing I could be certain, he would never say it of me, even if the whole world were unanimous about it. A master of literature, from Stanley’s viewpoint, had to be a type like the above-mentioned. He had first of all to be of the Old World; he had to be suave, he had to have finesse, subtlety, velleity. He had to have a style which was finished; he had to be adept with plot, characters, situations; he had to command a broad knowledge of the world and of human affairs. In his opinion I would never, never be able to spin a good yarn. Even in Sherwood Anderson, whom he grudgingly admitted now and then to be an excellent story-teller, he found grave faults. His style was too fresh, too raw, too new for Stanley’s taste. Yet he laughed until the tears came to his eyes when he read The Triumph of the Egg. He admitted it resentfully. He had laughed in spite of himself, as it were. And then he took on about Jerome K. Jerome, certainly a strange bird for a Polski to mention. In Stanley’s opinion nothing funnier had ever been written than Three Men in a Boat. Even the Polish writers had no one to equal him. But then the Poles were seldom funny. If a Pole calls something funny, said Stanley, it means that he finds it bizarre. He’s too sombre, too tragic, to appreciate horseplay. Speaking thus, the word droll would inevitably cross his lips. Droll was his favorite word, and it expressed a multitude of dissimilar things. To be droll implied a certain vein of excellence, of uniqueness, which Stanley prized exceedingly. If he said of an author—He’s a droll chap—he meant thereby to pay him a weighty compliment. Gogol, for instance, was one of these droll chaps. On the other hand he could refer to Bernard Shaw as a droll chap too. Or Strindberg. Or even Maeterlinck.

A rum bird, Stanley. Droll, what!

As I say, these sessions often took place in the garden. If we had the money I would get a few bottles of beer for him. He liked only beer and vodka. Now and then we held conversation with a Syrian neighbor leaning out of a second storey window. They were friendly people and the women were ravishingly beautiful. Mona with her heavy dark tresses they had taken at first to be one of them. Our landlady, we soon learned, was violently prejudiced against the Syrians. For her they represented the scum of the earth—first, because they were dark-skinned, second, because they spoke a language which no one else understood. She made it clear to us in no uncertain terms that she was horrified by the attention we gave them. She trusted we would have sense enough not to invite them to our quarters. After all, she put it tersely, she was running a respectable rooming house.

I swallowed her remarks as best I could, always bearing in mind that we might one day need a stay-of-grace. I dismissed her as an eccentric old witch about whom the less said the better. I took the precaution to warn Mona never to leave our door unlocked when we were absent. One look at my manuscripts and we would be done for.

It was after we were here a few weeks that Mona informed me one day that she had run into Tony Maurer again. He and the Milwaukee millionaire were gadding about together. Apparently, Tony Maurer was sincerely desirous of helping Mona. He had confided that he was working on his friend to get him to write out a sizeable check—perhaps for a thousand dollars.

This was precisely the sort of break we had been praying for. With a sum like that we would be able to break out and see something of the world. Or we might join O’Mara. The latter was constantly sending us post-cards from the sunny South telling us how smooth and easy things were down there. At any rate, we were through with little ole New York.

It was Mona who kept urging a change of scene. It disturbed her profoundly that I no longer made any effort to write. To be sure, I had half convinced her that it was all her fault, that so long as she continued to lead a double life I could do nothing. (Not that I distrusted her, I emphasized, but that she caused me too much worry.) As I say, she was only partially convinced. She knew that the trouble went deeper. In her simple, naive way she concluded that the only way to alter the situation was to alter the scene.

Then one day there came a telephone call from Tony Maurer, apprising her that everything was set for the kill. She was to meet the two of them at Times Square where a limousine would be waiting to take them up the Hudson. A good meal at an inn and the check would be forthcoming. (It would be for seven hundred and fifty, not a thousand.)

After she had gone I picked up a book. It was Wisdom and Destiny. I hadn’t read a line of Maeterlinck for years: it was like getting back to a raw diet. Towards midnight, feeling somewhat restless and uneasy, I went for a stroll. Passing a department store I noticed a window crammed with camping and porting outfits. That gave me the idea of tramping through the South.

With knapsacks over our backs we could hitch-hike to the Virginia border and then foot it the rest of the way. I saw just the outfit I intended to don, including a magnificent pair of brogans. The idea so fascinated me that I suddenly grew hungry, hungry as a bear. I headed for Joe’s restaurant at Borough Hall where I treated myself to a porterhouse steak smothered in onions. As I ate I dreamed. In a day or two we would be out of the filthy city, sleeping under the stars, fording streams, climbing mountains, sweating, panting, singing at the top of our lungs. I prolonged the reverie while putting away a huge piece of home-made apple pie (deep-dish fashion) together with a strong cup of coffee. I was about ready now to pick my teeth and saunter homeward. At the cash register I noticed the array of choice cigars. I selected a Romeo and Juliet and, with a feeling of peace and good-will toward the whole world, I bit off the tip of the cigar and spat it out.

It must have been two o’clock when I got home. I undressed and got into bed; I lay there with eyes wide open, expecting any minute to hear her footsteps. Towards dawn I dozed off.

It was eight-thirty when she came tripping in. Not the least bit tired either. Couldn’t think of going to bed. Instead, she began making breakfast—bacon and eggs, coffee, hot rolls which she had picked up on the way. Insisted that I remain in bed until the last minute.

But where in hell have you been all this time? I did my best to growl. I knew everything must have passed off well—she was too radiant for it to have been otherwise.

Let’s eat first, she begged. It’s a long story.

Did you get the check—that’s all I want to know.

She waved it before my eyes.

That same afternoon we ordered a slew of things at the department store; they were to be delivered the next day, by which time we hoped to cash the check. The morrow came and still we hadn’t cashed the check. The clothes, of course, went back to the department store. In despair we put the check through a bank, which meant a delay of several days at least.

Meanwhile a serious altercation had broken out between Mona and the blue-nosed harridan of a landlady. It seems that in the midst of a conversation with the beautiful Syrian woman next door the landlady bad erupted into the garden and begun hurling names at the Syrian woman. Outraged, Mona had insulted the old bitch, whereupon the latter took to abusing her in fantastic terms, saying that she was a Syrian too, and a whore, and this and that. The fracas almost ended in a hair-pulling match.

The upshot of it all was that we were given a week’s notice to get out. Since we intended to leave anyway we were not unhappy about it. There was one thought, however, which rankled in me: how to get even with the old bitch?

It was Stanley who showed me the way. Since we were clearing out for good, why not pay her back in regal style? Fine, I said, but how? In his mind it was simple. He would bring the kids along, as usual, on the last day; he would hand them the ketchup bottle, the mustard, the fly paper, the ink, the flour, everything with which to do the devil’s work. Let them do whatever comes into their heads,’ he said. How’s that? He added: Kids love to do whatever is destructive.

Myself I thought it a marvelous idea. I’ll give them a hand, I said. When it comes to dirty work. I’m a bit of a vandal myself.

The day after we planned this campaign of despoliation we received word from the bank that our check was no good. Frantic telephone calls to Tony Maurer—and to Milwaukee. Our millionaire had disappeared—as if the earth had swallowed him. For a change, we were the victims of a hoax. I had a good laugh at myself, despite my chagrin.

But what to do now?

We broached the news to Stanley. He took it philosophically. Why not move into his flat? He would take the mattress off his bed and put it on the floor in the parlor—for us. They never used the parlor. As for food, he guaranteed that we wouldn’t starve.

But where will you sleep? Or how, rather? I asked.

On the springs, he said.

But your wife?

She won’t mind. We’ve often slept on the bare floor.

Then he added: After all, it’s only temporary. You can look for a job, and when you get one you can find a place of your own.

O.K. I said, and clasped his hand.

Get your things packed, said Stanley. What have you got to take with you?

Two valises and a typewriter, that’s all.

Get busy then. I’ll put the kids to work. And with this he moved the big horsehair sofa over against the door, so that no one could enter.

While Mona packed the valises I ransacked the cupboard. The kids had been looking forward to his event. They went to it with a vengeance. In ten minutes the place was a wreck. Everything that could be smeared was smeared with ketchup, vinegar, mustard, flour, broken eggs. On the chairs they pasted the fly paper. The garbage they strewed over the floor, grinding it in with their heels. Best of all was the ink work. This they splattered over the walls, the rugs and the mirrors. The toilet paper they made garlands of to festoon the bespattered furniture.

Stanley and I, for our part, stood on the table and decorated the ceiling with ketchup and mustard, with flour and cereals which we had made into a thick paste. The sheets and covers we ripped with knives and scissors. With the big bread knife we gouged out huge chunks of the horse hair sofa. Around the toilet-seat we spread some mouldy marmalade and honey. Everything which could be turned upside-down, dismantled, disconnected or torn apart we turned upside-down, dismantled, disconnected and ripped apart. Everything was done with quiet commotion. The last bit of destruction I left for the children to perform. It was the mutilation of the sacred Bible. First they doused it in the bath tub, then smeared it with filthy unguents, then tore out handfuls of pages and scattered them about the room. The woeful-looking remnants of the Holy Book we then put in the bird cage which we suspended from the chandelier. The chandeliers themselves we bent and twisted into an unrecognizable shape. We hadn’t time to wash the kids; we wiped them as best we could with the torn sheets. They were radiant with joy. What a job! Never again would they have a chance like this … The last operation finished, we took counsel. Seating the kids on his knees, Stanley gravely instructed them what to do. They were to leave first, by the back exit. They were to walk quietly and leisurely to the front gate, quicken their steps as they moved down the street, then run as fast as they could and wait for us around the corner. As for us, if we encountered the old blue-nosed bitch, we would hand her the keys and bid her good-bye pleasantly. She would have a job to push the door open, assuming that she suspected anything amiss. By that time we would have joined the kids and hopped a taxi.

Everything went as planned. The old lady never made an appearance. I had one valise, Stanley the other, and Mona carried the typewriter. At the corner the children were waiting for us, merry as could be. We caught a taxi and drove to Stanley’s home.

I thought his wife might be a bit put out when she learned what the children had done, but no, she thought it was a wonderful prank. She was delighted that they had had such a holiday. Her only complaint was that they had soiled their clothes. Lunch was waiting for us—cold meats, boloney, cheese, beer and crackers. We laughed our guts out rehearsing the morning’s work.

You see what the Poles are capable of, said Stanley. When it comes to destruction we know no limits. The Poles are brutes at bottom; they’re even worse than the Russians. When they kill they laugh, when they torture they get hysterical with glee. That’s Polish humor for you.

And when they’re sentimental, I added, they give you their last shirt—or the mattress from their bed.

Luckily it was Summertime, for the only covering we had was a sheet and Stanley’s winter overcoat. The place was clean, fortunately, even though poverty-stricken. No two dishes were alike; the knives, forks and spoons, all odd pieces, had been collected from junk heaps. There were three rooms, one after another, all of them dark—the typical railroad flat. There was no hot water, no bath-tub, not even a shower. We bathed in turn at the kitchen sink. Mona wanted to assist with the cooking but Sophie, his wife, wouldn’t hear of it. All we had to do was to roll up our mattress each day and sweep the floor. Now and then we washed the dishes.

It wasn’t bad at all, not for a temporary flop. The neighborhood was depressing, to be sure—we were living in the dumps, only a few doors from the elevated line. The worst thing about the situation was that Stanley slept in the day time. However, he slept only about five hours. He ate sparingly, I noticed. The one thing he couldn’t do without was cigarettes. He rolled his own, incidentally; it was a habit which he had retained from the old days at Fort Oglethorpe.

The one thing we couldn’t demand of Stanley was cash. His wife doled him out ten cents each day for carfare. When he left for work he took a couple of sandwiches with him wrapped in newspaper. From Tuesday on everything was bought on credit. A depressing routine, but Stanley had been following it for years. I don’t think he ever expected things to be otherwise. So long as they ate every day, so long as the children were nourished and clothed…

Every day Mona and I disappeared towards noon, went our respective ways, and returned in time for dinner. We gave the impression that we were busy scouting for jobs. Mona concentrated on raising little sums to tide us over; I floated about aimlessly, visiting the library, the art museums, or taking in a movie when I could afford it. Neither of us had the least intention of looking for work. We never even mentioned the subject to one another.

At first they were pleased to see Mona returning each day with something for the children. Mona made it a point to return with arms loaded. Besides the food we sorely needed she often brought rare delicacies which Stanley and his wife had never tasted. The children always got candy or pastry. They lay in wait for her each evening at the front door. It was quite jolly for a while. Plenty of cigarettes, wonderful cakes and pies, all kinds of Jewish and Russian bread, pickles, sardines, tuna fish, olives, mayonnaise, smoked oysters, smoked salmon, caviar, herrings, pineapples, strawberries, crab meat, charlotte russe, God knows what all. Mona pretended that they were gifts from friends. She didn’t dare admit that she had squandered money on these luxuries. Sophie, of course, was dazzled. She had never seen such an array of food as now graced the cupboard. It was obvious that she could support such a diet indefinitely. The children likewise.

Not Stanley however. He could think only in terms of privation. What would they do when we left? The children were being spoiled. His wife would expect miracles which it was beyond his power to perform. He began to resent our luxurious ways. One day he opened the cupboard, took down some tins and jars of the finest delicacies, and said he was going to exchange them for money. There was a gas bill to pay, long overdue. The next day he took me aside and informed me bluntly that that wife of mine was to cut out bringing candies and cakes for the children. He was getting to look more and more glum. Perhaps the restless days on the bare springs were wearing him down. Perhaps he surmised that we were making no effort to get work.

The situation was definitely Hamsunesque, but Stanley was in no mood to appreciate this quality. At table we scarcely spoke. The children acted as if they were cowed. Sophie spoke only when her Lord and Master approved. Now and then even the carfare was lacking. It was always Mona who handed out the dough, I expected to be asked point blank one day how she happened to always have ready cash on hand. Sophie, of course, never asked questions. Mona had her enchanted. Sophie followed her constantly with her eyes, observing every movement, every gesture. It was apparent that to her Mona was a sort of goddess.

I used to wonder, when I lay awake nights, how Sophie would react if she were permitted to follow Mona in her eccentric course for just one day. Let us suppose a day when Mona is keeping an appointment with the one-legged veteran from Weehawken. Rothermel, that was his name, would of course be drunk as usual. He would be waiting in the back of a beer parlor in one of those lugubrious side streets of Weehawken. He would already be drooling in his beer. As Mona enters he endeavors to rise from his seat and make a ceremonious bow, but his artificial leg hinders him. He flutters helplessly, like a big bird whose leg is caught in a trap. He sputters and curses, wiping the spittle from his vest with a dirty napkin.

You’re only two hours late this time, he grumbles. How much? and he reaches inside his breast pocket for his fat wallet.

Mona of course—it is a scene they enact frequently—pretends to be insulted. Put that thing away! Do you think that’s all I come for?

He: I’m damned if I can think of any other reason. Certainly it’s not on my account.

That’s how it begins. A duet which they have rehearsed a hundred times.

He: Well, what’s the story this time? Even if I’m a dope, I must say I admire your invention.

She: Must I always give you a reason? When will you learn to put confidence in other human beings?

He: A nice question, that. If you would stay for a half-hour sometime maybe I could answer it. When must you be going? He looks at his watch. It’s just a quarter to three.

She: You know that I have to be back by six.

He: Your mother’s still an invalid, then?

She: What do you suppose—that a miracle occurred?

He: I thought maybe it was your father this time.

She: Oh, stop it! You’re drunk again.

He: Fortunately for you. Otherwise I might forget to bring my wallet along. How much? Let’s get that over with, then perhaps we can chat a bit. It’s an education to talk with you.

She: You’d better make it fifty to-day…

He: Fifty? Listen, sister, I know I’m a fool, but I’m not a gold mine.

She: Must we go through this all over again?

Rothermel pulls out his wallet ruefully. He lays it on the table. What are you going to have?

She: I told you.

He: I mean what will you have to drink? You’re not going to rush off without a drink, are you?

She: Oh well … make it a champagne cocktail.

He: You never drink beer, do you? He toys with the wallet.

She: What are you fiddling with that for? Are you trying to humiliate me?

He: That would be rather difficult, it seems to me. A pause. You know, sitting here waiting for you, I was thinking of how I might give you a real thrill. You don’t deserve it, but shit! if I had any sense I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you. Pause. Do you want to know what I was thinking of? How to make you happy. You know, for a beautiful girl you’re about the most unhappy creature I ever met. I’m not a bundle of optimism myself, and I’m not much to look at, and I’m getting more decrepit every day, but I can’t say I’m thoroughly miserable. I still have one leg. I can hop around. I laugh now and then, even if it’s at my own expense. Bui, do you know something—I’ve never once heard you laugh. That’s terrible. In fact it’s painful. I give you all you ask for but you never change. You’re always set for a touch. It ain’t right. You’re doing yourself harm, that’s what I mean…

She (cutting him short): Everything would be different if I married you, is that what you mean to say?

He: Not exactly. Christ knows, it wouldn’t be a bed of roses. But at least I could provide for you. I could put an end to this begging and borrowing.

She: If you really wanted to free me you wouldn’t put a price on it.

He: It’s just like you to put it that way. You never suppose for an instant…

She: That we could lead separate lives?

The waiter arrives with the champagne cocktail.

He: Better fix another one—the lady is thirsty.

She: Do we have to go through this farce every time we meet? Don’t you think it’s a bit boring?

He: To me it isn’t. I haven’t any illusions left. But it’s a way of talking to you. I prefer this subject to hospitals and invalids.

She: You don’t believe my stories, is that it?

He: I believe every word you tell me—because I want to believe. I have to believe in something, even if it’s only you.

She: Only me?

He: Come, you know what I mean.

She: You mean that I treat you like a sucker.

He: I couldn’t express it more accurately myself. Thank you.

She: What time is it now, please?

Rothermel looks at his watch. He lies: It’s three twenty exactly. Then, with an air of consternation: You got to have another drink. I told him to fix one for you.

She: You drink it, I won’t have time.

He (frantically): Hey, waiter, where’s that cocktail I ordered an hour ago? He forgets himself and attempts to rise from his seat. Stumbles and sinks back again, as if exhausted. Damn that leg! I’d be better off with a wooden stump. Damn the bloody, fucking war! Excuse me, I’m forgetting myself…

To humor him Mona takes a sip of the cocktail, then rises abruptly. I must be going, she says. She starts walking towards the door.

Wait a minute, wait a minute! shouts Rothermel. I’ll call a taxi for you. He pockets his wallet and hobbles after her.

In the taxi he puts the wallet in her hand. Help yourself, he says, you know I was only joking before.

Mona cooly helps herself to a few bills and stuffs the wallet in his side pocket.

When will I see you again?

When I need more money, no doubt.

Don’t you ever need anything but money? Silence. They ride through the crazy streets of Weehawken which is in the New World, according to the atlas, but which might just as well be a wart on the planet Uranus. There are cities one never visits except in moments of desperation—or at the turn of the moon when the whole endocrine system goes haywire. There are cities which were planned aeons ago by men of the antediluvian world who had the consolation of knowing they would never inhabit them. Nothing is amiss in this anachronistic scheme of things except the fauna and flora of a lost geological age. Everything is familiar yet strange. At every corner one is disoriented. Every street spells micmac.

Rothermel, sunk in despair, is dreaming of the variegated life of the trenches. He remains a lawyer even though he has but one leg. He not only hates the Boches who took his leg away, he hates his own countrymen equally. Above all, he hates the town he was born in. He hates himself for drinking like a sot. He hates all mankind as well as birds, animals, trees and sunlight. All he has left of an empty past is money. He hates that too. He rises each day from a sodden sleep to pass into a world of quicksilver. He deals in crime as if it were a commodity, like barley, wheat, oats. Where once he gamboled, caroling like a lark, now he hobbles furtively, coughing, groaning, wheezing. On the morning of the fatal battle he was young, virile, jubilant. He had cleaned out a nest of Boches with his machine gun, wiped out two lieutenants of his own brigade, and was about to rifle the canteen. That same evening he was lying in his own blood and sobbing like a child. The world of two-legged men had passed him by; he would never be able to rejoin them. In vain he howled like a beast. In vain he prayed. In vain he called for his mother. The war was over for him—he was one of its relics.

When he saw Weehawken again he wanted to crawl into his mother’s bed and die. He asked to see the room where he played as a child. He looked at the garden from the window upstairs and in utter despair he spat into it. He shut the door on his old friends and took to the bottle. Ages pass during which he shuttles back and forth on the loom of memory. He has only one security—his wealth. It is like telling a blind man he may have a white cane.

And then one evening, seated alone at a table in a village dive, a woman approaches and hands him a Mezzotint to read. He invites her to sit down. He orders a meal for her. He listens to her stories. He forgets that he has an artificial limb, forgets that there ever was a war He knows suddenly that he loves this woman. She does not need to love him, she needs only to be. If she will consent to see him occasionally, for just a few minutes, life will have meaning again.

Thus Rothermel dreams. He forgets all the heart-rending scenes which have sullied this beautiful picture. He would do anything for her, even now.

And now let us leave Rothermel for a while. Let him dream in his taxicab as the ferryboat gently cradles him on the bosom of the Hudson. We will meet him again, on the shores of Manhattan.

At Forty-Second Street Mona dives into the subway to emerge in a few minutes at Sheridan Square. Here her course becomes truly erratic. Sophie, if she were still on her heels, would indeed have difficulty following her. The Village is a network of labyrinths modelled upon the corrugated reveries of the early Dutch settlers. One is constantly coming face-to-face with himself at the end of a tortuous street. There are alleys, lanes, cellars and garrets, squares, triangles, courts, everything anomalous, incongruous and bewildering: all that lacks are the bridges of Milwaukee. Certain doll’s houses, squeezed between sombre tenements and morbid factories, have been dozing in a vacuum of time which could be described only in terms of decans. The dreamy, somnolent past exudes from the facades, from the curious names of the streets, from the miniature scale imparted by the Dutch. The present announces itself in the strident cries of the street urchins, in the muffled roar of traffic which shakes not only the chandeliers but the very foundations of the underground. Dominating everything is the confusion of races, tongues, habits. The Americans who have muscled in are off-center, whether they be bankers, politicians, magistrates, Bohemians, or genuine artists. Everything is cheap, tawdry, vulgar and phony. Minnie Douchebag is on the same level as the prison warden round the corner. The fraternization, such as it is, takes place at the bottom of the melting pot. Every one is trying to pretend that it is the most interesting locale in the city. It is a quarter full of characters; they collide like protons and electrons, always in a five-dimensional world whose fundament is chaos.

It is in a world like this that Mona is at home and thoroughly herself. Every few paces she runs into some one she knows. These encounters resemble to a remarkable degree the collisions of ants in the throes of work. Conversation is conducted through antennae which are manipulated frenetically. Has some devastating upheaval just occurred which vitally concerns the entire ant-hill? The running up and down stairs, the salutations, the hand-shaking, the rubbing of noses, the phantom gesticulations, the pourparlers, the gurgitations and regurgitations, the aerial transmissions, the dressing and undressing, the whispering, the warnings, the threats, the entreaties, the masquerades—all goes on in insect fashion and with a speed such as only insects seem capable of mustering. Even when snowbound the Village is in constant commotion and effervescence. Yet nothing of the slightest importance ever ensues. In the morning there are headaches, that is all.

Sometimes, however, in one of those houses which one notices only in dream, there lives a pale, timid creature, usually of dubious sex, who belongs to the world of du Maurier, Chekov or Alain Fournier. The name may be Alma, Frederika, Ursula, Malvina, a name consonant with the auburn tresses, the pre-Raphaelite figure, the Gaelic eyes. A creature, who rarely stirs from the house, and then only in the Wee hours of the morning.

Towards such types Mona is fatally drawn. A secret friendship veils all their intercourse in mystery. Those breathless errands which drive her through the runnelled streets may have for objective nothing more than the purchase of a dozen white goose eggs. No other eggs will do. En passant she may take it into her head to surprise her seraphic friend by buying her an old-fashioned cameo smothered in violets, or a rocking-chair from the hills of Dakota, or a snuff-box scented with sandalwood. The gifts first and then a few bills fresh from the mint. She arrives breathlessly and departs breathlessly, as if between thunder claps. Even Rothermel would be powerless to suspect how quickly and for what ends his money goes. All we know, who greet her at the end of a feverish day, is that she has managed to buy a few groceries and can dispense a little cash. On the Brooklyn side we talk in terms of coppers, which in China is cash. Like children we play with nickels, dimes and pennies. The dollar is an abstract conception employed only in high finance-Only once during our stay with the Poles did Stanley and I venture abroad together. It was to see a Western picture in which there were some extraordinary wild horses. Stanley, reminded of his days in the cavalry, became so excited that he decided not to go to work that evening. All through the meal he told yarns, with each yarn growing more tender, more sympathetic, more romantic. Suddenly he recalled the voluminous correspondence which we had exchanged when we were in our teens.

It all began the day after I saw him. coming down the street of early sorrows, seated atop the hearse beside the driver. (After his uncle’s death Stanley’s aunt had married an undertaker, a Pole again. Stanley always had to accompany him on the burial expeditions.)

I was in the middle of the street, playing cat, when the funeral procession came along. I was certain it was Stanley who had waved to me, yet I could not believe my eyes. Had it not been a funeral procession I would have trotted alongside the vehicle and exchanged greetings. As it was, I stood rooted to the spot, watching the cortege slowly disappear round the corner.

It was the first time I had seen Stanley in six years. It made an impression on me. The following day I sat down and wrote him a letter—to the old address.

Stanley now brought out that first letter—and all the others which had followed. I was ashamed to tell him that I had long since lost his. But I could still remember the flavor of them, all written on long sheets of yellow paper, in pencil, with a flourishing hand. The hand of an autocrat. I recalled the perennial salutation he employed: My charming fellow! This to a boy in short pants! They were letters, to speak of style, such as Theophile Gautier might have written to an unknown sycophant. Doped with literary borrowings. But they put me in a fever, always.

What my own letters were like I had never once thought of. They belonged to a distant past, a forgotten past. Now I held them in my hand, and my hand trembled as I read. So this was me in my teens? What a pity no one had made a movie of us! Droll figures we were. Little jackanapes, bantams, cocks-o’-the-walk. Discussing such ponderous things as death and eternity, reincarnation, metempsychosis, libertinism, suicide. Pretending that the books we read were nothing to the ones we would write ourselves one day. Talking of life as if we had experienced it to the core.

But even in these pretentious exercises of youth I detected to my amazement the seeds of an imaginative faculty which was to ripen with time. Even in these fly-blown missives there were those abrupt breaks and rushes which indicate the presence of hidden fires, of unsuspected conflicts. I was moved to observe that even at this period I could lose myself, I who was hardly aware that I had a self. Stanley, I recalled, never lost himself. He had a style and in it he was fixed, as if constricted by a corset. I remember that at that period I thought of him as being so much more mature, so much more sophisticated. He would be the brilliant writer; I would be the plodding ink-slinger. As a Pole he had an illustrious heritage; I was merely an American, with an ancestry which was vague and dubious. Stanley wrote as if he had stepped off the boat only the day before. I wrote as if I had just learned to use the language, my real language being the language of the street, which was no language at all. Back of Stanley I always visualized a line of warriors, diplomats, poets, musicians. Myself, I had no ancestry whatever. I had to invent one.

Curious, but any feelings of lineage or of ephemeral connections with the past which might arise in me were usually evoked by one of three curiously disparate phenomena: one, narrow, olden streets with miniature houses: two, certain unreal types of human beings, generally dreamers or fanatics; three, photographs of Tibet, of the Tibetan landscape particularly. I could be disoriented in a jiffy, and was then marvelously at home, one with the world and with myself. Only in such rare moments did I know or pretend to understand myself. My connections were, so to speak, with man and not with men. Only when I was shunted back to the grand trunk line did I become aware of my real rhythm, my real being. Individuality expressed itself for me as a life with roots. Efflorescence meant culture—in short, the world of cyclical development. In my eyes the great figures were always identified with the trunk of the tree, not with the boughs and leaves. And the great figures were capable of losing their identity easily: they were all variations of the one man, Adam Cadmus, or whatever he be called. My lineage stemmed from him, not from my ancestors. When I became aware I was super-conscious; I could make the leap back at one bound.

Stanley, like all chauvinists, traced his arboreal descent only to the beginnings of the Polish nation, that’s to say, to the Pripet marshes. There he lay bogged, like a weasel. His antennae reached only to the frontiers which were limitrophe to Poland. He never became an American, in the true sense. For him America was merely a condition or state of trance which permitted him to transmit his Polish genes to his heredity. Any differentiations from the norm, that is, from the Polish type, were to be attributed to the rigors of adjustment and adaptation. Whatever was American in him was merely an alloy which would be dissolved in the generation that was to spring from his loins.

Preoccupations of this sort Stanley never divulged overtly, but they were there and they manifested themselves in the form of insinuations. The emphasis he gave to a word or phrase always provided the clue to his real feelings. He was thoroughly antipathetic to the new world in which he found himself. He made only enough effort to keep alive. He went through the motions, as we say, nothing more. Though his experience of life was purely negative it was none the less potent. It was a matter of charging the battery: his children would make the necessary connections with life. Through them the racial energy of the Poles, their dreams, their longings, their aspirations, would be revived. Stanley was content to inhabit an in-between world.

All this admitted, it was nevertheless a luxury for me to bathe in the effluvium of the Polish spirit. Polonesia, I called it. An inland sea, like the Caspian, surrounded by the steppes. Over the troubled, stagnant waters, over treacherous shoals and invisible sources, flew huge migratory birds, heralds of past and future—of a Polish past and future. All that surrounded this sea was inimical and poisonous. From the language alone came the much needed sustenance.

What are the riches of English, I used to say to myself, compared to the melodious verdure of this Babel? When a Pole employs his native tongue he speaks not only to his friend but to his compatriots everywhere in the world. To the ear of a foreigner like myself, who was privileged to assist at these sacred performances, the speeches of my Polish friends seemed like interminable monologues addressed to the innumerable ghosts of the Diaspora within and without. Every Pole regards himself as the secret custodian of the fabulous repositories of the race; with his death some secret part of the accumulated intangibles, unfathomable to aliens, dies with him. But in the language nothing is lost: so long as one Pole is left to articulate, Poland will live.

When he spoke Polish he was another man, Stanley. Even when he spoke to one as insignificant as his wife Sophie. He might have been talking of milk and crackers, but to my ears it sounded as if we were back in the Age of Chivalry. Nothing is better suited to describe the modulations, dissonances and distillations of this language than the word alchemy. Like a strong dissolvent, the Polish language converts the image, concept, symbol or metaphor into a mysterious transparent liquid of camphorous odor which, by its mellifluous resonances, suggests the perpetual alternation and interchange of idea and impulse. Issuing like a hot geyser from the crater of the human mouth, Polish music—for it is hardly a language—consumes everything with which it conies into contact, intoxicating the brain with the pungent, acrid fumes of its metallic source. A man employing this medium is no longer a mere man—he has appropriated the powers of a sorcerer. The Book of Demonology could only have been written in this language. To say that this is a quality of the Slavs explains nothing. To be a Slav does not mean to be a Pole. The Pole is unique and untouchable; he is the prime mover, the original impetus personified, and his realm is the dread realm of doom. For him the sun was extinguished long ago. For him all horizons are limited and circumscribed. He is the desperado of the race, self-accursed and self-acquitted.

Make the world over? He would rather drag it down to the bottomless pit.

Reflections of this order always rose to the surface when I would leave the house to stretch my legs. A short distance from Stanley’s home lay a world akin in many respects to the one I had known as a child. Through it ran a canal black as ink whose stagnant waters stank like ten thousand dead horses. But all about the canal were winding lanes, eddying streets, still paved with cobblestones, the worn sidewalks flanked by diminutive shanties cluttered with shutters dislocated from their hinges, creating the impression, from a distance, of being enormous Hebrew letters. Furniture, bric-a-brac, utensils, implements and materials of all kinds littered the streets. The fringe of the societal world.

Each time I approached the confines of this Lilliputian world I changed back to a boy of ten. My senses became more acute, my memory more alive, my hunger more sharp. I could hold conversation with the self which I once was and with the self I had become. Who I was that walked and sniffed and explored, I knew not. An interlocutory I, doubtless. An I suborned by a superior court of justice … In this supraliminal arena Stanley always figured tenderly. He was the invisible comrade to whom I imparted those larval thoughts which elude speech. Immigrant, orphan, derelict—of these three ingredients he was composed. We understood one another because we were complete opposites. What he envied I gave him regally; what I craved he fed me from his carrion beak. We swam like Siamese fish on the glaucous surface of the lake of childhood. We knew not out Protector. We rejoiced in our imagined freedom.

What intrigued me as a child, what intrigues me to this day, is the glory and the wonder of eclosion. There are balmy days in childhood when, perhaps because of the great retardation of time, one steps outdoors into a world which is dozing. It is not the world of humans, nor is it the world of nature which is drowsing—it is the inanimate world of stones, minerals, objects. The inanimate world in bud … With the slow-motion eyes of childhood one watches breathlessly as this latent realm of life slowly reveals its pulse-beat. One becomes aware of the existence of those invisible rays which emanate perpetually from the most remote parts of the cosmos and which radiate from the microcosm as well as from the macrocosm. As above, so below. In the twinkle of an eye one is divorced from the illusory world of material reality; with every step one places himself anew at the carrefour of these concentric radiations which are the true substance of an all-encompassing and all-pervading reality. Death has no meaning. All is change, vibration, creation and re-creation. The song of the world, registered in every particle of that specious substance called matter, issues forth in a ineffable harmony which filters through the angelic being lying dormant in the shell of the physical creature called man. Once the angel assumes dominion, the physical being flowers. Throughout all realms a quiet, persistent blossoming takes place.

Why is it that angels, whom we foolishly associate with the vast interstellar spaces, love everything which is mignon?

As soon as I reach the banks of the canal, where my world in miniature lies waiting, the angel takes over. I no longer scrutinize the world—the world is inside me. I see it as clearly with eyes closed as with eyes wide open. Enchantment, not sorcelry. Surrender, and the bliss which accompanies surrender. What was dilapidation, decay, sordidness, is transmuted. The microscopic eye of the angel sees the infinite parts which compose the divine whole; the telescopic eye of the angel sees nothing but totality, which is perfect. In the wake of the angel there are only universes to behold—size means nothing.

When man, with his pitiful sense of relativity, looks through the telescope and marvels at the immensity of creation, he means to confess that he has succeeded in reducing the limitless to the limited. He acquires, as it were, an optic lease on the boundless grandeur of a creation which is unfathomable to him. What matter if he succeed in putting a thousand universes within the focus of his microscopic telescope? The process of enlargement merely enhances the sense of the miniature. But man feels more at home in his little universe, or pretends he does, when he has uncovered what lies beyond its bounds. The thought that his universe may be no bigger than a tiny blood corpuscle entrances him, lulls his desperate anguish. But the use of the artificial eye, no matter to what monstrous proportions it be magnified, never brings him joys. The greater his physical vision, the more awed he becomes. He understands, though he refuses to believe, that with this eye he will never penetrate, still less partake of, the mystery of creation. To re-enter the mysterious world from which he sprang he realizes, in a vague, dim way, that other eyes are needed.

It is with the angelic eye that man beholds the world of his true substance.

These miniature realms, where all is sunken, muted and transformed, emerge often as not in books. A page of Hamsun frequently yielded the same mysterious harmonies of enchantment as a walk by the canal. For a brief moment one experiences the same sort of vertigo as when the motorman deserts his post with the trolley in full flight. After that it is pure volupte. Surrender again. »Surrender to the spell which has rendered the author superfluous. Immediately one’s rhythm is retarded. One lingers before the verbal structures which palpitate like living houses. One knows that some one never encountered before, and never to be encountered again, will emerge and take possession of one. It may be a personage as innocuous as Sophie. It may be a question of large white goose eggs which will dominate the whole passage. No governing the cosmic fluid in which the events and situations are now bathed. The dialogue may become pure nonsense, astral in its implications. The author has made it clear that he is absent. The reader is face to face with an angelic sport. He will live this scene, this protracted moment, over and over again, and with a sharpened sense of reality verging on the hallucinatory. Only a little street—perhaps not a block long. Diminutive gardens tended by trolls. Perpetual sunshine. And remembered music, toned down to blend with the hum of insects and the rustle of leaves. Joy, joy, joy. The intimate presence of flowers, of birds, of stones which have preserved the record of similar magical days.

I think of Hamsun because it was with Stanley that I shared so often these extraordinary experiences. Our grotesque life in the street, as boys, had prepared us for these mysterious encounters. In some unknown way we had undergone the proper initiation. We were, without knowing it, members of that traditional underground which vomits forth at suitable intervals those writers who will later be called Romantics, mystics, visionaries or diabolists. It was for such as us—then mere embryonic beings—that certain outlandish passages were written. It is we who keep alive these books which are constantly threatening to fall back into oblivion. We lie in wait, like beasts of prey, for moments of reality which will not only match but confirm and corroborate these literary extravaganzas. We grow like corkscrews, we become lop-sided, we squint and stammer in a vain endeavor to fit our world into the existent one. In us the angel sleeps lightly, ready at the slightest tremor to assume command. Only solitary vigils restore us. Only when we are cruelly separated do we really communicate with each other.

Often it is in dreams that we communicate … I am on a familiar street searching for a particular house. The moment I set foot in this street my heart beats wildly. Though I have never seen the street it is more familiar to me, more intimate, more significant, than any street I have known. It is the street by which I return to the past. Every house, every porch, every gate, every lawn, every stone, stick, twig or leaf speaks eloquently. The sense of recognition, compounded of myriad layers of memory, is so powerful that I am almost dissolved.

The street has no beginning nor end: it is a detached segment swimming in a fuzzy aura and complete in itself. A vibrant portion of the infinite whole. Though there is never any activity in this street it is not empty or deserted. Indeed, it is the most alive street I can think of. It is alive with memories, like an arcane grove which pullulates with its swarms of invisible hosts. I can’t say that I walk down this street, nor can I say either that I glide through it. The street invests me. I am devoured by it. Perhaps only in the insect world are these sensations to match this harrowing form of bliss. To eat is wonderful, but to be eaten is a treat beyond description. Perhaps it is another, more extravagant, kind of union with the external world. An inverted sort of communion.

The end of this ritual is always the same. Suddenly I am aware that Stanley is waiting for me. He stands not at the end of the street, for there is no end … he stands at that fuzzy edge where light and substance fuse. His summons is always curt and brusque: Come on, let’s go! Immediately I adapt my pace to his. Forward march! The beloved street wheels softly around, like a turn-table operated by an unseen switchman, and as we reach the corner it joins neatly and inexorably with the intersecting streets which form the pattern of our childhood precincts. From here on it is an exploration of the past, but a different past from that of the memorial street. This past is an active one, cluttered with souvenirs, but souvenirs only skin deep. The other past, so profound, so fluid, so sparkling, made no separation between itself, present and future. It was timeless, and if I speak of it as a past it is only to suggest a return which is not really a return but a restoration. The fish swimming back to the source of its own being.

When the inaudible music begins, one knows for a certainty that he is alive.

Stanley’s part in the second half of the dream is to rekindle the flame. I will take leave of him when he has set all the mnemonic filaments a-quiver. This function, which he performs with instinctive adroitness, might be likened to the quivering oscillations of a compass needle. He holds me to the path, a tortuous, zigzag path, but saturated with reminiscences. We buzz from flower to flower, like bees. When we have extracted our fill of nectar we return to the honeycomb. At the entrance I take leave of him, plunging into the very hub of transformation. My ears resound with the oceanic hum. All memory is stifled. I am deep in the labyrinthian shell, as secure and alive as a particle of energy adrift in the stellar sea of light. This is the deep sleep which restores the soul. When I awake I am new-born. The day stretches before me like a velvet meadow. I had no recollection of anything. I am a freshly-minted coin ready to fall into the palm of the first-comer.

It is on such a day that I am apt to make one of those haphazard encounters which will alter the course of my life. The stranger coming toward me greets me like an old friend. We have merely to exchange a few words and the intimate stenographic language of ancient brothers replaces the current jargon. Communication is cryptic and seraphic, accomplished with the ease and rapidity of born deaf-mutes. For me it has only one purport—to bring about a re-orientation. Altering the course of my life, as I put it before, means simply—correcting my sidereal position. The stranger, fresh from the other world, tips me off. Given my true bearings, I cut a fresh swathe through the chartered realms of destiny. Just as the dream street swung softly into position, so I now wheel into vital alignment. The panorama against which I move is awesome and majestic. A landscape truly Tibetan beckons me onward. I know not whether it is a creation of the inner eye or some cataclysmic disturbance of the outer reality attuning itself to the profound re-orientation I have just made. I know only that I am more solitary than ever. Everything that occurs now will have the quality of shock and discovery. I am not alone. I am in the midst of other solitaries. And each and every one of us speaks his own unique language! It is like the coming together of distant gods, each one wrapped in the aura of his own incomprehensible world. It is the first day of the week in the new cycle of consciousness. A cycle, need I say, which may last a week or a lifetime. En avant, je me dis. Allons-y! Nous sommes la.

8

It was Maxie Schnadig who had introduced me, some years ago, to Karen Lundgren. Whatever brought these two together I can’t possibly imagine. They had nothing whatever in common, nothing.

Karen Lundgren was a Swede who had been educated at Oxford, where he had made something of a stir due to his athletic prowess and his rare scholarship. He was a giant with curly blond hair, soft-spoken and excessively polite. He possessed the combined instincts of the ant, the bee and the beaver. Thorough, systematic, tenacious as a bull-dog, whatever he engaged in he pursued to the limit. He played just as hard as he worked. Work, however, was his passion. He could work standing up, sitting down, or lying in bed. And, like all hard workers, at bottom he was lazy as sin. Whenever he set out to do something he had first to devise ways and means of doing it with the least effort. Needless to say, these short cuts of his entailed much time and labor. But it made him feel good to sweat his balls off devising short cuts. Efficiency, moreover, was his middle name. He was nothing but a walking, talking, labor-saving device.

No matter how simple a project might be, Karen could make it complicated. I had had a good dose of his eccentricity while serving as his apprentice in a bureau of anthropological research some years previously. He had initiated me into the absurd complexities of a decimal system for filing which made our Dewey system seem like child’s play. With Karen’s system we were able to index anything under the sun, from a pair of white wool socks to haemorrhoids.

As I say, it was some years since I last saw Karen. I had always regarded him as a freak, haying respect neither for his vaunted intelligence nor for his athletic prowess. Dull and laborious, those were his chief characteristics. Now and then, to be sure, he indulged in a hearty laugh. He laughed too heartily, I might say, and always at the wrong time or for the wrong reason. This ability to laugh he cultivated, just as he had once cultivated his muscles. He had a mania to be all things to all men. He had the mania, but no flair.

I give this thumb-nail sketch because it happens that once again I’m working with him, working for him. Mona too. We’re all living together on the beach at Far Rockaway, in a shack which he has erected himself. To be exact, the house isn’t quite finished. Hence our presence in it. We work without compensation, content to room and board with Karen and his wife. There’s much yet to be done. Too much. Work begins from the moment I open my eyes until I drop from fatigue.

To go back a pace … Running into Karen on the street was something of a God-send for us. We were literally without a cent when he happened along. Stanley, you see, had told us one evening, just as he was setting forth to work, that he was fed up with us. We were to pack our things and get out immediately. He would help us pack and see us to the subway. No words. Of course I had been expecting something of the sort to happen any day. I wasn’t the least bit angry with him. On the contrary, I was rather amused.

At the subway entrance he handed over the valises, put a dime in my hand for carfare, and without shaking hands turned abruptly and stalked off. Not even a good-bye. We of course got into the subway, not knowing what else to do, and began riding. We rode back and forth two or three times trying to decide what the next step would be. Finally we got out at Sheridan Square. We had hardly walked a few steps when, to my astonishment, I saw Karen Lundgren approaching. He seemed unusually pleased to have found me again. What was I doing? Had we had dinner yet? And so on.

We accompanied him to his town flat, as he called it, and while his wife prepared the meal we unburdened ourselves. He was even more delighted to hear of our circumstances. I’ve got just the thing for you, Henry, he said, with his insensitive cheerfulness. And he began at once to explain the nature of his work, which sounded like higher mathematics to me, meanwhile plying us with cocktails and caviar sandwiches. He had taken it for granted, when he began his discourse, that I would give assent to his project. To make things more interesting I pretended that I would have to think it over, that I had other things in mind. That of course only stimulated him more.

Stay with us overnight, he begged, and let me know what you think in the morning.

He had explained, to be sure, that in addition to acting as his secretary and amanuensis, I might have to give him a hand with the house-building. I had warned him frankly that I wasn’t much good with my hands, but he had waved this aside as unimportant. It would be fun, after working with one’s brain, to devote a few hours to more menial tasks. Recreation, he called it. And then there was the beach: we would be able to swim, toss the ball around, perhaps even do a bit of canoeing. In passing he made mention of his library, his collection of records, his chess set, as if to say that we would have all the luxuries of a first class club.

In the morning I said yes, naturally. Mona was enthusiastic. She was not only willing, but eager, to help Karen’s wife do the dirty work. O.K. I said, no harm in trying it.

We went by train to Far Rockaway. All during the ride Karen talked incessantly about his work. I gathered that he was engaged in writing a book on statistics. According to him, it was a unique contribution to the subject. The data he had amassed was enormous, so enormous in fact that I was terrified before I had even moved a finger. In his customary way he had equipped himself with all manner of devices, machines which he assured me I would catch on to in no time. One of them was the dictaphone. He had found it more convenient, he explained, to dictate to the machine, which was impersonal, than to a secretary. There would be times, of course, when he might feel impelled to dictate direct, in which case I could take it down on the typewriter. You needn’t worry about the spelling, he added. My spirits dropped, I must say, when I learned of the dictaphone. However, I said nothing, just smiled and let him roll on from one thing to another.

What he had omitted to tell us about was the mosquitoes.

There was a little storeroom, just big enough to accommodate a creaky bed, which he indicated as our sleeping quarters. The moment I saw the netting over the bed I knew what we were in for. It began at once, the first night. Neither of us slept a wink. Karen tried to laugh it off by urging us to loaf for a day or two until we got adjusted. Fine, I thought. Mighty decent of him, I thought. An Oxford gentleman, what! But we didn’t sleep the second night either, even though protected by the netting, even though we had greased ourselves all over, like Channel swimmers. The third night we burned Chinese punk and incense. Towards dawn, utterly worn out, our nerves frazzled, we dozed off. As soon as the sun came up we plunged into the surf.

It was after we had breakfast that morning that Karen intimated we ought to begin work in earnest. His wife took Mona aside to explain her duties. It took Karen almost the whole morning to explain the mechanism of the various machines he found invaluable for his work. There was a veritable mountain of records piled up which I was to transcribe on the typewriter. As for the charts and diagrams, the rulers, compasses and triangles, the slide rules, the filing system, and the thousand and one details which I was to familiarize myself with, that could wait a few days. I was to make a dent in the heap of records and then, if there were still enough light, I was to assist him on the roof.

I’ll never forget that first day with the bloody dictaphone. I thought I would go mad. It was like operating a sewing machine, a switchboard and a victrola all at once. I had to use simultaneously hands, feet, ears and eyes. If I had been just a bit more versatile I could have swept out the room at the same time. Of course the first ten pages made absolutely no sense. I not only wrote the wrong things, I missed whole sentences and began others in the middle or near the end. I wish I had preserved a copy of that first day’s work—it would have been something to put beside the cold-blooded nonsense of Gertrude Stein. Even if I had transcribed correctly, the words would have made little sense to me. The whole terminology, not to speak of his plodding, wooden style, was foreign to me. I might just as well have written down telephone numbers.

Karen, like a man who is accustomed to training animals, a man of infinite patience and perseverance, pretended that I hadn’t done bad at all. He even tried to joke a bit, reading over some of the screwy sentences. It will take a little time, he said, but you’ll get on to it. And then, to add a little sauce: I’m really ashamed of myself for asking you to do this kind of work, Henry. You don’t know how much I appreciate your assistance. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along. He would have talked much the same way if he were giving me lessons in ju-jitsu, of which he was supposedly a master. I could well visualize him picking me up, after spinning me twenty feet through the air, and saying solicitously: Sorry, old man, but you’ll get the hang of it after a few days. Just couldn’t help it, you know. Are you hurt much?

What I wanted more than anything was a good drink. But Karen rarely drank. When he wanted relaxation he employed his energies at a different kind of work. To work was his passion. He worked while he slept. I mean it seriously. On falling off he would set himself a problem which his unconscious was to solve during the night.

The best I could wheedle out of him was a coke. Even this I couldn’t enjoy in peace, for while I leisurely sipped it he was busy explaining to me the next day’s problems. What bothered me more than anything was his way of explaining things. He was one of those idiots who believe that diagrams make things easier to comprehend. For me, anything in the way of a chart or a diagram means hopeless confusion. I have to stand on my head to read the simplest plans. I tried to tell him this but he insisted that I had been miseducated, that if I would just be patient I would soon learn to read charts and diagrams with ease—and enjoyment. It’s like mathematics, he told me.

But I detest mathematics, I protested.

One shouldn’t say a thing like that, Henry. How can one detest something useful? Mathematics is only another instrument to serve us. And here he expatiated ad nauseam on the wonders and the benefits of a science in which I had not the slightest interest. But I was always a good listener. And I had discovered already, in the space of just a few days, that one way of reducing the working time was to involve him in just such lengthy discussions. The fact that I listened so good-naturedly made him feel that he was really seducing me. Now and then I would throw in a question, in order to put off for a few more minutes the inevitable return to the grind-stone. Of course, nothing he told me about mathematics made the least impression on me. It went in one ear and out the other.

You see, he would say, with all the seriousness of the fatuous ones, it’s not nearly as complicated as you imagined. I’ll make a mathematician of you in no time.

Meanwhile Mona was getting her education in the kitchen. All day long I heard the dishes rattling. I wondered what in hell they were up to in there. It sounded like a Spring cleaning. When we got to bed I learned that Lotta, Karen’s wife, had allowed the dirty dishes to accumulate for a week. She didn’t like housework, apparently. She was an artist. Karen never complained. He wanted her to be an artist—that is, after she had done the chores and assisted him in every possible way. He himself never set foot in the kitchen. He never noticed the condition of the plates or the cutlery, no more than he noticed what sort of food was being served him. He ate without relish, to stoke the furnace, and when he was through he pushed the dishes aside and began figuring on the table-is; cloth, or if there were no tablecloth, on the bare boards. He did everything leisurely, and with painful deliberation, which in itself was enough to drive me frantic. Wherever he worked there was dirt, disorder and a clutter of non-essentials. If he reached for something he had first to remove a dozen obstructions. If the knife he grabbed were dirty he would slowly and deliberately wipe it clean with the tablecloth, or with his handkerchief. Always without fuss or emotion. Always bearing down, pressing onward, like a glacier in its relentless advance. Sometimes there were three cigarettes burning at once at his elbow. He never stopped smoking, not even in bed. The butts piled up like sheep droppings. His wife was also an inveterate smoker, a chain smoker.

Cigarette was one thing we had a plentiful supply of. Food, that was another matter. Food was doled out scantily and in the most unappetizing fashion. Mona, of course, had offered to relieve Lotta of the burden of cooking, but Lotta had refused to hear of it. We soon discovered why. She was stingy. She feared that Mona might prepare succulent, bounteous repasts. She was damned right about that! To take over the kitchen and stage a feast was the one thought uppermost in our mind. We kept praying that they would go to town for a few days and let us take over. Then at last we would enjoy a good meal.

What I would like, Mona would say, is a good roast of beef.

Give me chicken—or a fine roast duck.

I’d like to have sweet potatoes for a change.

Suits me, honey, only make some rich gravy to go with them.

Like Badminton it was. We shuffled the phantom food back and fort like two starved peacocks. If only they would breeze! God, but we were sick of looking at sardine tins, cans of sliced pineapple, bags of potato chips. The two of them nibbled away like mice the whole damned day. Never a hint of wine, never a drop of whiskey. Nothing but coke and sarsaparilla.

I can’t say that Karen was stingy. No, he was insensitive, unobservant. When I informed him one day that we were not getting enough to eat he professed to be appalled. What would you like? he asked. And at once he got up from his work, borrowed a car from a neighbor, and whisked us off to town where we went from one store to another ordering provisions. It was typical of him to react in this way. Always to extremes. By going to extremes he intended, quite unconsciously, I believe, to make you slightly disgusted with yourself. Food? Is that all you want? he seemed to say. That’s easy, we’ll buy heaps of it, enough to choke a horse. There was a further implication in his exaggerated willingness to please you. Food? Why that’s a mere trifle. Of course we can get you food I thought you had deeper worries.

His wife, of course, was dismayed when she saw the load of provisions we brought back with us. I had asked Karen not to say anything to his wife about our hunger. He pretended, therefore, that he was laying in a supply against a rainy day. The larder was getting low, he explained. But when he added that Mona would like to fix a meal for us at dinner time her face dropped. For an instant there passed over her countenance that horrified look of the miser whose hoard is menaced. Once again Karen stepped into the breach. I thought, darling, that you would enjoy having some one else cook the meal for a change. Mona is an excellent cook, it appears. We’re going to have filet mignon this evening—how does that sound to you? Lotta, of course, had to feign delight.

We made the dinner an event. In addition to fried onions and mashed potatoes we had succotash, beets and brussels sprouts, with celery, stuffed olives and radishes on the side. We washed this down with red and white wine, the best obtainable. There were three kinds of cheese, followed by strawberries and rich cream. For a change we had some excellent coffee, which I prepared myself. Good, strong coffee with a bit of chicory in it. All that lacked was a good liqueur and Havana cigars.

Karen enjoyed the meal immensely. He acted like a different man. He joked, told stories, laughed until his sides ached, and never once referred to his work. Toward the end of the meal he even tried to sing.

Not bad, eh? I said.

Henry, we ought to do this oftener, he responded. He looked to Lotta for approval. She gave a thin, bleak smile which caused her face to crack. It was obvious that she was desperately trying to reckon the cost of the spread.

Suddenly Karen pushed his chair back and rose from the table. I thought he was going to bring his charts and diagrams to the table. Instead he went into the next room and returned in a jiffy with a book. He waved it before my eyes.

Ever read this, Henry? he demanded.

I looked at the title. No, I said, Never heard of it.

Karen passed the book to his wife and begged her to read us a morsel. I expected something dismal, and instinctively poured out some more wine.

Lotta solemnly turned the pages, looking for one of her favorite passages.

Read anywhere, said Karen. It’s good through and through.

Lotta stopped fumbling with the pages and looked up. Her expression changed suddenly. For the first time I saw her countenance illuminated. Even her voice had altered. She had become a disease.

It’s chapter three, she began, from The Crock of Gold, by James Stephens.

And a darling of a book it is! Karen broke in gleefully. With this he pushed his chair back a bit and put his big feet on the arm of the easy chair near by. Now you’re going to hear something, you two.

Lotta began: It’s a dialogue between the Philosopher and a farmer called Meehawl MacMurrachu. The two have just greeted one another. She begins reading.

Where is the other one? said he (the farmer).

Ah! said the Philosopher.

He might be outside, maybe?

He might indeed, said the Philosopher gravely.

Well, it doesn’t matter, said the visitor, for . you have enough knowledge by yourself to stock a shop. The reason I came here to-day was ask your honoured advice about my wife’s washing board. She only has it a couple of years, and the last time she used it was when she washed out my Sunday shirt and her black shirt with the red things on it—you know the one?

I do not, said the Philosopher.

Well, anyhow, the washboard is gone, and my wife says it was either taken by the fairies or by Bessie Hannigan—you know Bessie Hannigan? She has whiskers like a goat and a lame leg!…

I do not, said the Philosopher.

No matter, said Meehawl MacMurrachu. She didn’t take it, because my wife got her out yesterday and kept her talking for two hours while I went through everything in her bit of a house—the washboard wasn’t there.

It wouldn’t be, said the Philosopher.

Maybe your honour could tell a body where it is then?

Maybe I could, said the Philosopher; are you listening?

I am, said Meehawl MacMurrachu.

The Philosopher drew his chair closer to the visitor until their knees were jammed together. He laid both his hands on Meehawl MacMurrachu’s knees…

Washing is an extraordinary custom, said he. We are washed both on coming into the world and on going out of it, and we take no pleasure from the first washing nor any profit from the last.

True for you, sir, said Meehawl MacMurrachu.

Many people consider that scourings supplementary to these are only due to habit. Now, habit is continuity of action, it is a most detestable thing and is very difficult to get away from. A proverb will run where a writ will not, and the follies of our forefathers are of greater importance to us than is the well-being of our posterity.

At this point Karen interrupted his wife to ask if we liked the passage.

I do indeed, I said. Let her continue!

Continue! said Karen, settling still deeper into his chair.

Lotta read on. She had an excellent voice and could handle the brogue expertly. The dialogue got funnier and funnier. Karen began to titter and then to laugh like a hyena. The tears were rolling down his face.

Do be careful, Karen, begged his wife, putting the book down a moment. I’m afraid you’ll get the hiccoughs.

I don’t care, said Karen, it’s worth getting the hiccoughs.

But you remember, the last time it happened we had to call a doctor.

Just the same, said Karen. I’d like to hear the end of it. And again he exploded into peals of laughter. It was frightening to hear him laugh. He had no control whatever. I wondered to myself if he could weep just as bravely. It would be something to unnerve one.

Lotta waited for him to subside, then resumed her reading.

Did you ever hear, sir, about the fish that Paudeen MacLaughlin caught in the policeman’s hat?

I did not, said the Philosopher. The first person who washed was possibly a person seeking a cheap notoriety. Any fool can wash himself, but every wise man knows that it is an unnecessary labour, for nature will quickly reduce him to a natural and healthy dirtiness again. We should seek, therefore, not how to make ourselves clean, but how to attain a more unique and splendid dirtiness, and perhaps the accumulated layers of matter might, by ordinary geologic compulsion, become incorporated with the human cuticle and so render clothing unnecessary…

About that washboard, said Meehawl, I was just going to say…