1.

Woof! Woof woof! Woof! Woof!

Barking in the night. Barking, barking. I shriek but no one answers. I scream but there’s not even an echo.

Which do you want—the East of Xerxes or the East of Christ?

Alone—with eczema of the brain.

Alone at last. How marvelous! Only it is not what I expected it to be. If only I were alone with God!

Woof! Woof! woof!

Eyes closed, I summon her image. There it is, floating in the dark, a mask emerging from the spindrift: the Tilla Durieux bouche, like a bow; white, even teeth; eyes dark with mascara, the lids a viscous, glistening blue; hair streaming wild, black as ebony. The actress from the Carpathians and the roof-tops of Vienna. Risen like Venus from the flatlands of Brooklyn.

Woof! Woof woof! Woof! Woof!

I shout, but it sounds for all the world like a whisper.

My name is Isaac Dust. I am in Dante’s fifth heaven. Like Strindberg in his delirium, I repeat: What does it matter? Whether one is the only one, or whether one has a rival, what does it matter?

Why do these bizarre names suddenly come to mind? All class-mates from the dear old Alma Mater: Morton Schnadig, William Marvin, Israel Siegel, Bernard Pistner, Louis Schneider, Clarence Donohue, William Overend, John Kurtz, Pat McCaffrey, William Korb, Arthur Convissar, Sally Liebowitz, Frances Glanty … Not one of them has ever raised his head. Stricken from the ledger. Scotched like vipers.

Are you there, comrades?

No answer.

Is that you, dear August, raising your head in the gloom? Yes, it is Strindberg, the Strindberg with two horns protruding from his forehead. Le cocu magnifique.

In some happy time—when? how distant? what planet?—I used to move from wall to wall greeting this one and that, all old friends: Leon Bakst, Whistler, Lovis Corinth, Breughel the Elder, Botticelli, Bosch, Giotto, Cimabue, Piero della Francesca, Grunewald, Holbein, Lucas Cranach, Van Gogh, Utrillo, Gauguin, Piranesi, Utamaro, Hokusai, Hiroshige—and the Wailing Wall. Goya too, and Turner. Each one had something precious to impart. But particularly Tilla Durieux, she with the eloquent, sensual lips dark as rose petals.

The walls are bare now. Even if they were crowded with masterpieces I would recognize nothing. Darkness has closed in. Like Balzac, I live with imaginary paintings. Even the frames are imaginary.

Isaac Dust, born of the dust and returning to dust. Dust to dust. Add a codicil for old times’ sake.

Anastasia, alias Hegoroboru, alias Bertha Filigree of Lake Tahoe-Titicaca and the Imperial Court of the Czars, is temporarily in the Observation Ward. She went there of her own accord, to find out if she were in her right mind or not. Saul barks in his delirium, believing he is Isaac Dust. We are snow-bound-in a hall bedroom with a private sink and twin beds. Lightning flashes intermittently. Count Bruga, that darling of a puppet, reposes on the bureau surrounded by Javanese and Tibetan idols. He has the leer of a madman quaffing a bowl of sterno. His wig, made of purple strings, is surmounted by a miniature hat, a la Boheme, imported from la Galerie Dufayel. His back rests against a few choice volumes deposited with us by Stasia before taking off for the asylum. From left to right they read—

The Imperial Orgy—The Vatican Swindle—A Season in Hell—Death in Venice—Anathema—A Hero of our Time—The Tragic Sense of Life—The Devil’s Dictionary—November Boughs—Beyond the Pleasure Principle—Lysistrata—Marius the Epicurean—The Golden Ass—Jude the Obscure—The Mysterious Stranger—Peter Whiffle—The Little Flowers—Virginibus Puerisque—Queen Mab—The Great God Pan—The Travels of Marco Polo—Songs of Bilitis—The Unknown Life of Jesus—Tristram Shandy—The Crock of Gold—Black Bryony—The Root and the Flower.

Only a single lacuna: Rozanov’s Metaphysics of Sex.

In her own handwriting (on a slip of butcher’s paper) I find the following, a quotation obviously, from one of the volumes: That strange thinker, N. Federov, a Russian of the Russians, will found his own original form of anarchism, one hostile to the State.

Were I to show this to Kronski he would run immediately to the bughouse and offer it as proof. Proof of what? Proof that Stasia is in her right mind.

Yesterday was it? Yes, yesterday, about four in the morning, while walking to the subway station to look for Mona, who should I spy sauntering leisurely through the drifting snow but Mona and her wrestler friend Jim Driscoll. You would think, to see them, that they were looking for violets in a golden meadow. No thought of snow or ice, no concern for the polar blasts from the river, no fear of God or man. Just strolling along, laughing, talking, humming. Free as meadow-larks.

Hark, hark, the lark at heaven’s gate sings!

I followed them a distance, almost infected myself by their utter nonchalance. Suddenly I took an oblique left turn in the direction of Osiecki’s flat. His chambers, I should say. Sure enough, the lights were on and the pianola softly giving out morceaux choisis de Dohnanyi.

Hail to you, sweet lice, I thought, and passed on. A mist was rising over toward Gowanus Canal. Probably a glacier melting.

Arriving home I found her creaming her face.

Where in God’s name have you been? she demands, almost accusingly.

Are you back long? I counter.

Hours ago.

Strange. I could have sworn that I left here only twenty minutes ago. Maybe I’ve been walking in my sleep. It’s funny, but I had a notion I saw you and Jim Driscoll walking arm in arm…

Val, you must be ill.

No, just inebriated. I mean … hallucinated.

She puts a cold hand on my brow, feels my pulse. Everything normal, apparently. It baffles her. Why do I invent such stories? Just to torment her? Isn’t there enough to worry about, with Stasia in the asylum and the rent overdue? I ought to have more consideration.

I walk over to the alarm clock and point to the hands. Six o’clock.

I know, she says.

So it wasn’t you I saw just a few minutes ago?

She looks at me as if I were on the verge of dementia.

Nothing to worry about, dearie, I chirp. I’ve been drinking champagne all night. I’m sure now it wasn’t you I saw—it was your astral body. Pause. Anyway, Stasia’s O.K. I just had a long talk with one of the internes…

You … ?

Yes, for want of anything better to do I thought I’d run over and see how she was getting along. I brought her some Charlotte russe.

You should get to bed, Val, you’re exhausted. Pause. If you want to know why I’m so late I’ll tell you. I just left Stasia. I got her out about three hours ago. She began to chuckle—or was it to cackle? I’ll tell you all about it to-morrow. It’s a long story.

To her amazement I replied: Don’t bother, I heard all about it a little while ago.

We switched out the lights and crawled into bed. I could hear her laughing to herself.

As a good-night fillip I whispered: Bertha Filigree of Lake Titicaca.

Often, after a session with Spengler or Elie Faure, I would throw myself on the bed fully clothed and, instead of musing about ancient cultures, I would find myself groping through a labyrinthian world of fabrications. Neither of them seems capable of telling the truth, even about such a simple matter as going to the toilet. Stasia, an essentially truthful soul, acquired the habit in order to please Mona. Even in that fanciful tale about being a Romanoff bastard there was a grain of truth. With her it’s never a lie out of the whole cloth, as with Mona. Moreover, should one confront her with the truth, she does not throw an hysterical fit or stalk out of the room on stilts. No, she simply breaks into a broad grin which gradually softens into the pleasing smile of an angelic child. There are moments when I believe I can get somewhere with Stasia. But just when I sense that the time is ripe, like an animal protecting her cub, Mona whisks her off.

One of the strangest blanks in our intimate conversations, for now and then we have the most prolonged, seemingly sincere talk-fests, one of these unaccountable gaps, I say, has to do with childhood. How they played, where, with whom, remains a complete mystery. From the cradle, apparently, they sprang into womanhood. Never is there mention of a childhood friend or of a wonderful lark they enjoyed; never do they talk of a street they loved or a park they played in or a game they enjoyed. I’ve asked them point-blank: Do you know how to skate? Can you swim? Did you ever play jacks? Yes indeedy, they can do all these things and more. Why not? Yet they never permit themselves to slip back into the past. Never do they suddenly, as happens in animated conversation, recall some strange or wonderful experience connected with childhood. Now and then one or the other will mention that she once broke an arm or sprained an ankle, but where, when? Again and again I endeavor to lead them back, gently, coaxingly, as one might lead a horse to the stable, but in vain. Details bore them. What matter, they ask, when it happened or where? Very well, then, about face! I switch the talk to Russia or Roumania, hoping to detect a glint or a gleam of recognition. I do it skillfully too, beginning by way of Tasmania or Patagonia and only gradually and obliquely working my way toward Russia, Roumania, Vienna and the flatlands of Brooklyn. As if they hadn’t the slightest suspicion of my game, they too will suddenly begin talking about strange places, Russia and Roumania included, but as though they were recounting something which had been related to them by a stranger or picked up in a travel book. Stasia, a little more artful, may even pretend to give me a clue. She may take it into her head, for example, to relate some spurious incident out of Dostoievsky, trusting that I have a weak memory or that, even if it be a good one, I cannot possibly remember the thousands of incidents which crowd Dostoievsky’s voluminous works. And how can I myself be certain that she is not giving me the genuine Dostoievsky? Because I have an excellent memory for the aura of things read. It is impossible for me not to recognize a false Dostoievskyan touch. However, to draw her out, I pretend to recall the incident she is relating; I nod my head in agreement, laugh, clap my hands, anything she wishes, but I never let on that I know she is falsifying. Now and then, however, I will remind her, in the same spirit of play, of a trifle she has glossed over or a distortion she has created; I will even argue about it at length if she pretends that she has related the incident faithfully. And all the while Mona sits there, listening attentively, aware neither of truth nor falsity, but happy as a bird because we are talking about her idol, her god, Dostoievsky.

What a charming, what a delightful world it can be, this world of lies and of falsification, when there is nothing better to do, nothing at stake. Aren’t we wonderful, we jolly, bloody liars? A pity Dostoievsky himself isn’t with us, Mona will sometimes exclaim. As if he invented all those mad people, all those crazy scenes which flood his novels. I mean, invented them for his own pleasure, or because he was a natural born fool and liar. Never once does it dawn on them that they may be the mad characters in a book which life is, writing with invisible ink.

Not strange therefore that nearly every one, male or female, whom Mona admires is mad, or that every one she detests is a fool. Yet, when she chooses to pay me a compliment she will always call me a fool. You’re such a dear fool, Val. Meaning that I am great enough, complex enough, in her estimation at least, to belong to the world of Dostoievsky. At times, when she gets to raving about my unwritten books, she will even go so far as to say that I am another Dostoievsky. A pity I can’t throw an epileptic fit now and then. That would really give me the necessary standing. What happens, unfortunately, what breaks the spell, is that I all too quickly degenerate into a bourgeois. In other words I become too inquisitive, too picayune, too intolerant. Dostoievsky, according to Mona, never displayed the least interest in facts. (One of those near truths which make one wince sometimes.) No, to believe her, Dostoievsky was always in the clouds—or else buried in the depths. He never bothered to swim on the surface. He took no thought of gloves or muffs or overcoats. Nor did he pry into women’s purses in search of names and addresses. He lived only in the imagination.

Stasia, now, had her own opinion about Dostoievsky, his way of life, his method of working. Despite her vagaries, she was, after all, a little closer to reality. She knew that puppets are made of wood or papier-mache’, not just imagination. And she was not too certain but that Dostoievsky too might have had his bourgeois side. What she relished particularly in Dostoievsky was the diabolical element. To her the Devil was real. Evil was real. Mona, on the other hand, seemed unaffected by the evil in Dostoievsky. To her it was just another element of his imagination. Nothing in books frightened her. Almost nothing in life frightened her either, for that matter. Which is why, perhaps, she walked through fire unharmed. But for Stasia, when visited by a strange mood, even to partake of breakfast could be an ordeal. She had a nose for evil, she could detect its presence even in cold cereals. To Stasia the Devil was an omnipresent Being ever in wait for his victim. She wore amulets to ward off the evil powers; she made certain signs on entering a strange house, or repeated incantations in strange tongues. All of which Mona smiled on indulgently, thinking it delicious of Stasia to be so primitive, so superstitious. It’s the Slav in her, she would say.

Now that the authorities had placed Stasia in Mona’s hands it behooved us to view the situation with greater clarity, and to provide a more certain, a more peaceful mode of life for this complicated creature. According to Mona’s tearful story, it was only with the greatest reluctance that Stasia was released from confinement. What she told them about her friend—as well as about herself—only the Devil may hope to know. Over a period of weeks, and only by the most adroit maneuvering, did I succeed in piecing together the jig-saw puzzle which she had constructed of her interview with the physician in charge. Had I nothing else to go on I would have said that they both belonged in the asylum. Fortunately I had received another version of the interview, and that unexpectedly, from none other than Kronski. Why he had interested himself in the case I don’t know. Mona had no doubt given the authorities his name—as that of family physician. Possibly she had called him up in the middle of the night and, with sobs in her voice, begged him to do something for her beloved friend. What she omitted telling me, at any rate, was that it was Kronski who had secured Stasia’s release, that Stasia was in nobody’s care, and that a word from him (to the authorities) might prove calamitous. This last was pish-posh, and I took it as such. The truth probably was that the wards were full to overflowing. In the back of my head was the resolution to visit the hospital myself one fine day and find out precisely what occurred. (Just for the record.) I was in no great hurry. I felt that the present situation was but a prelude, or a presage, of things to come.

In the interim I took to dashing over to the Village whenever the impulse seized me. I wandered all over the place, like a stray dog. When I came to a lamp post I lifted my hind leg and pissed on it. Woof woof! Woof!

Thus it was that I would often find myself standing outside the Iron Cauldron, at the railing which fenced off the mangy grass-plot now knee-deep with black snow, to observe the comings and goings. The two tables nearest the window were Mona’s. I watched her as she trotted back and forth in the soft candle light, passing out the food, a cigarette always glued to her lips, her face wreathed in smiles as she greeted her clients or accepted their orders. Now and then Stasia would take a seat at the table, her back always to the window, elbows on the table, head in hands. Usually she would continue to sit there after the last client had left. Mona would then join her. Judging from the expression on the latter’s face, it was always an animated conversation they were conducting. Sometimes they laughed so heartily they were doubled up. If, in such a mood, one of their favorites attempted to join them, he or she would be brushed off like a bottle fly.

Now what could these two dear creatures be talking about that was so very, very absorbing? And so excruciatingly humorous? Answer me that and I will write the history of Russia for you in one sitting.

The moment I suspected they were making ready to leave I would take to my heels. Leisurely and wistfully I’d meander, poking my head into one dive after another, until I came to Sheridan Square. At one corner of the Square, and always lit up like an old-fashioned saloon, was Minnie Douchebag’s hangout. Here I knew the two of them would eventually wind up. All I waited for was to make sure they took their seats. Then a glance at the clock, estimating that in two or three hours one of them at least would be returning to the lair. It was comforting, on casting a last glance in their direction, to observe that they were already the center of solicitous attention. Comforting—what a word!—to know that they would receive the protection of the dear creatures who understood them so well and ever rallied to their support. It was amusing also to reflect, on entering the subway, that with a slight rearrangement of clothing even a Bertillon expert might have difficulty deciding which was boy and which girl. The boys were always ready to die for the girls—and vice versa. Weren’t they all in the same rancid piss-pot to which every pure and decent soul is consigned? Such dearies they were, the whole gang. Darlings, really. The drags they could think up, gracious! Every one of them, the boys particularly, was a born artist. Even those shy little creatures who hid in a corner to chew their nails.

Was it from contact with this atmosphere in which love and mutual understanding ruled that Stasia evolved the notion that all was not well between Mona and myself? Or was it due to the sledge-hammer blows I delivered in moments of truth and candor?

You shouldn’t be accusing Mona of deceiving you and lying to you, she says to me one evening. How we happened to be alone I can’t imagine. Possibly she was expecting Mona to appear any moment.

What would you rather have me accuse her of? I replied, wondering what next.

Mona’s not a liar, and you know it. She invents, she distorts, she fabricates … because it’s more interesting. She thinks you like her better when she complicates things. She has too much respect for you to really lie to you.

I made no effort to reply.

Don’t you know that? she said, her voice rising.

Frankly, no! said I.

You mean you swallow all those fantastic tales she hands you?

If you mean that I regard it all as an innocent little game, no.

But why should she want to deceive you when she loves you so dearly? You know you mean everything to her. Yes, everything.

Is that why you’re jealous of me?

Jealous? I’m outraged that you should treat her as you do, that you should be so blind, so cruel, so…

I raised my hand. Just what are you getting at? I demanded. What’s the game?

Game? Game? She drew herself up in the manner of an indignant and thoroughly astounded Czarina. She was utterly unaware that her fly was unbuttoned and her shirt tail hanging out.

Sit down, I said. Here, have another cigarette.

She refused to sit down. Insisted on pacing back and forth, back and forth.

Now which do you prefer to believe, I began. That Mona loves me so much that she has to lie to me night and day? Or that she loves you so much that she hasn’t the courage to tell me? Or that you love her so much that you can’t stand seeing her unhappy? Or, let me ask this first—do you know what love is? Tell me, have you ever been in love with a man? I know you once had a dog you loved, or so you told me, and I know you have made love to trees. I also know that you love more than you hate, but—do you know what love is? If you met two people who were madly in love with one another, would your love for one of them increase that love or destroy it? I’ll put it another way. Perhaps this will make it clearer. If you regarded yourself only as an object of pity and some one showed you real affection, real love, would it make any difference to you whether that person was a he or a she, married or unmarried? I mean, would you, or could you, be content merely to accept that love? Or would you want it exclusively for yourself?

Pause. Heavy pause.

And what, I continued, makes you think you’re worthy of love? Or even that you are loved? Or, if you think you are, that you’re capable of returning it? Sit down, why don’t you? You know, we could really have an interesting talk. We might even get somewhere. We might arrive at truth. I’m willing to try. She gave me a strange, startled look. You say that Mona thinks I like complicated beings. To be very honest with you, I don’t. Take you now, you’re a very simple sort of being … all of a piece, aren’t you? Integrated, as they say. You’re so securely at one with yourself and the whole wide world that, just to make sure of it, you deliver yourself up for observation. Am I too cruel? Go ahead, snicker if you will. Things sound strange when you put them upside down. Besides, you didn’t go to the observation ward on your own, did you? Just another one of Mona’s yarns, what! Of course, I swallowed it hook, line and sinker—because I didn’t want to destroy your friendship for one another. Now that you’re out, thanks to my efforts, you want to show me your gratitude. Is that it? You don’t want to see me unhappy, especially when I’m living with some one near arid dear to you.

She began to giggle despite the fact that she was highly incensed.

Listen, if you had asked me if I were jealous of you, much as I hate to admit it, I would have said yes. I’m not ashamed to confess that it humiliates me to think some one like you can make me jealous. You’re hardly the type I would have chosen for a rival. I don’t like morphodites any more than I like people with double-jointed thumbs. I’m prejudiced. Bourgeois, if you like. I never loved, a dog, but I never hated one either. I’ve met fags who were entertaining, clever, talented, diverting, but I must say I wouldn’t care to live with them. I’m not talking morals, you understand, I’m talking likes and dislikes. Certain things rub me the wrong way. It’s most unfortunate, to put it mildly, that my wife should feel so keenly drawn to you. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Almost literary. It’s a god-damned shame, is what I mean to say, that she couldn’t have chosen a real man, if she had to betray me, even if he were some one I despised. But you … why shit! it leaves me absolutely defenceless. I wince at the mere thought of some one saying to me—What’s wrong with you? Because there must be something wrong with a man—at least, so the world reasons—when his wife is violently attracted to another woman. I’ve tried my damnedest to discover what’s wrong with me, if there is anything wrong, but I can’t lay a finger on it. Besides, if a woman is able to love another woman as well as the man she’s tied to, there’s nothing wrong with that, is there? She’s not to be blamed if she happens to be endowed with an unusual store of affection, isn’t that so? Supposing, however, that as the husband of such an extraordinary creature, one has doubts about his wife’s exceptional ability to love, what then? Supposing the husband has reason to believe that there is a mixture of sham and reality connected with this extraordinary gift for love? That to prepare her husband, to condition him, as it were, she slyly and insidiously struggles to poison his mind, invents or concocts the most fantastic tales, all innocent, of course, about experiences with girl friends prior to her marriage. Never openly admitting that she slept with them, but implying it, insinuating, always insinuating, that it could have been so. And the moment the husband … me, in other words … registers fear or alarm, she violently denies anything of the sort, insists that it must be one’s imagination which invoked the picture … Do you follow me? Or is it getting too complicated?

She sat down, her face suddenly grave. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me searchingly. Suddenly she broke into a smile, a Satanic sort of smile, and exclaimed: So this is your game! Now you want to poison my mind! With this the tears gushed forth and she took to sobbing.

As luck would have it, Mona arrived in the very thick of it.

What are you doing to her? Her very first words. Putting an arm around poor Stasia, she stroked her hair, comforted her with soothing words.

Touching scene. A little too genuine, however, for me to be properly moved.

The upshot—Stasia must not attempt to go home. She must stay and get a good night’s rest.

Stasia looks at me questioningly.

Of course, of course! I say. I wouldn’t turn a dog out on a night like this..

The weirdest part of the scene, as I look back on it, was Stasia’s turn out in a soft, filmy night-gown. If only she had had a pipe in her mouth, it would have been perfect.

To get back to Feodor … They got me itchy sometimes with their everlasting nonsense about Dostoievsky. Myself, I have never pretended to understand Dostoievsky. Not all of him, at any rate. (I know him, as one knows a kindred soul.) Nor have I read all of him, even to this day. It has always been my thought to leave the last few morsels for death-bed reading. I am not sure, for instance, whether I read his Dream of the Ridiculous Man or heard tell about it. Neither am I at all certain that I know who Marcion was, or what Marcionism is. There are many things about Dostoievsky, as about life itself, which I am content to leave a mystery. I like to think of Dostoievsky as one surrounded by an impenetrable aura of mystery. For example, I can never picture him wearing a hat—such as Swedenborg gave his angels to wear. I am, moreover, always fascinated to learn what others have to say about him, even when their views make no sense to me. Only the other day I ran across a note I had jotted down in a notebook. Probably from Berdyaev. Here it is: After Dostoievsky man was no longer what he had been before. Cheering thought for an ailing humanity.

As for the following, certainly no one but Berdyaev could have written this: In Dostoievsky there was a complex attitude to evil. To a large extent it may look as though he was led astray. On the one hand, evil is evil, and ought to be exposed and must be burned away. On the other hand, evil is a spiritual experience of man. It is man’s part. As he goes on his way man may be enriched by the experience of evil, but it is necessary to understand this in the right way. It is not the evil itself that enriches him; he is enriched by that spiritual strength which is aroused in him for the overcoming of evil. The man who says I will give myself up to evil for the sake of the enrichment never is enriched; he perishes. But it is evil that puts man’s freedom to the test…

And now one more citation (from Berdyaev again) since it brings us one step nearer to Heaven…

The Church is not the Kingdom of God; the Church has appeared in history and it has acted in history; it does not mean the transfiguration of the world, the appearance of a new heaven and a new earth. The Kingdom of God is the transfiguration of the world, not only the transfiguration of the individual man, but also the transfiguration of the social and the cosmic; and that is the end of this world, of the world of wrong and ugliness, and it is the principle of a new world, a world of right and beauty. When Dostoievsky said that beauty would save the world he had in mind the transfiguration of the world and the coming of the Kingdom of God, and this is the eschatalogical hope … Speaking for myself, I must say that had I ever had any hopes, eschatalogical or otherwise, it was Dostoievsky who annihilated them. Or perhaps I should modify this by saying that he rendered nugatory those cultural aspirations engendered by my Western upbringing. The Asiatic part, in a word, the Mongolian in me, has remained intact and will always remain intact. This Mongolian side of me has nothing to do with culture or personality; it represents the root being whose sap runs back to some ageless ancestral limb of the genealogical tree. In this unfathomable reservoir all the chaotic elements of my own nature and of the American heritage have been swallowed up as the ocean swallows the rivers which empty into it. Oddly enough, I have understood Dostoievsky, or rather his characters and the problems which tormented them, better, being American-born, than had I been a European. The English language, it seems to me, is better suited to render Dostoievsky (if one has to read him in translation) than French, German, Italian, or any other non-Slavic tongue. And American life, from the gangster level to the intellectual level, has paradoxically tremendous affinities with Dostoievsky’s multilateral everyday Russian life. What better proving grounds can one ask for than metropolitan New York, in whose conglomerate soil every wanton, ignoble, crack-brained idea flourishes like a weed? One has only to think of winter there, of what it means to be hungry, lonely, desperate in that labyrinth of monotonous streets lined with monotonous homes crowded with monotonous individuals crammed with monotonous thoughts. Monotonous and at the same time unlimited!

Though millions among us have never read Dostoievsky nor would even recognize the name were it pronounced, they are nevertheless, millions of them, straight out of Dostoievsky, leading the same weird lunatical life here in America which Dostoievsky’s creatures lived in the Russia of his imagining. If yesterday they might still have been regarded as having a human existence, tomorrow their world will possess a character and lineament more fantastically bedeviled than any or all of Bosch’s creations. To-day they move beside us elbow to elbow, startling no one, apparently, by their antediluvian aspect. Some indeed continue to pursue their calling—preaching the Gospel, dressing corpses, ministering to the insane—quite as if nothing of any moment had taken place. They have not the slightest inkling of the fact that man is no longer what he had been before.

2.

Ah, the monotonous thrill that comes of walking the streets on a winter’s morn, when iron girders are frozen to the ground and the milk in the bottle rises like the stem of a mushroom. A septentrional day, let us say, when the most-stupid animal would not dare poke a nose out of his hole. To accost a stranger on such a day and ask him for alms would be unthinkable. In that biting, gnawing cold, the icy wind whistling through the glum, canyoned streets, no one in his right mind would stop long enough to reach into his pocket in search of a coin. On a morning like this, which a comfortable banker would describe as clear and brisk, a beggar has no right to be hungry or in need of carfare. Beggars are for warm, sunny days, when even the sadist at heart stops to throw crumbs to the birds.

It was on a day such as this that I would deliberately gather together a batch of samples in order to sally forth and call on one of my father’s customers, knowing in advance that I would get no order but driven by an all consuming hunger for conversation.

There was one individual in particular I always elected to visit on such occasions, because with him the day might end, and usually did end, in most unexpected fashion. It was seldom, I should add, that this individual ever ordered a suit of clothes, and when he did it took him years to settle the bill. Still, he was a customer. To the old man I used to pretend that I was calling on John Stymer in order to make him buy the full dress suit which we always assumed he would eventually need. (He was forever telling us that he would become a judge one day, this Stymer.)

What I never divulged to the old man was the nature of the un-sartorial conversations I usually had with the man.

Hello! What do you want to see me for?

That’s how he usually greeted me.

You must be mad if you think I need more clothes. I haven’t paid you for the last suit I bought, have I? When was that—five years ago?

He had barely lifted his head from the mass of papers in which his nose was buried. A foul smell pervaded the office, due to his inveterate habit of farting—even in the presence of his stenographer. He was always picking his nose too. Otherwise—outwardly, I mean—he might pass for Mr. Anybody. A lawyer, like any other lawyer.

His head still buried in a maze of legal documents, he chirps: What are you reading these days? Before I can reply he adds: Could you wait outside a few minutes? I’m in a tangle. But don’t run away … I want to have a chat with you. So saying he dives into his pocket and pulls out a dollar bill. Here, get ourself a coffee while you wait. And come back in an hour or so … we’ll have lunch together, what!

In the ante-room a half-dozen clients are waiting to get his ear. He begs each one to wait just a little longer. Sometimes they sit there all day.

On the way to the cafeteria I break the bill to buy a paper. Scanning the news always gives me that extrasensory feeling of belonging to another planet. Besides, I need to get screwed up in order to grapple with John Stymer.

Scanning the paper I get to reflecting on Stymer’s great problem. Masturbation. For years now he’s been trying to break the vicious habit. Scraps of our last conversation come to mind. I recall how I recommended his trying a good whorehouse—and the wry face he made when I voiced the suggestion. What! Me, a married man, take up with a bunch of filthy whores? And all I could think to say was: They’re not all filthy!

But what was pathetic, now that I mention the matter, was the earnest, imploring way he begged me, on parting, to let him know if I thought of anything that would help … anything at all. Cut if off! I wanted to say.

An hour rolled away. To him an hour was like five minutes. Finally I got up and made for the door. It was that icy outdoors I wanted to gallop.

To my surprise he was waiting for me. There he sat with clasped hands resting on the desk top, his eyes fixed on some pin point in eternity. The package of samples which I had left on his desk was open. He had decided to order a suit, he informed me.

I’m in no hurry for it, he said. I don’t need any new clothes.

Don’t buy one, then. You know I didn’t come here to sell you a suit.

You know, he said, you’re about the only person I ever manage to have a real conversation with. Every time I see you I expand … What have you got to recommend this time? I mean in the way of literature. That last one, Oblomov, was it? didn’t make much of an impression on me.

He paused, not to hear what I might have to say in reply, but to gather momentum.

Since you were here last I’ve been having an affair. Does that surprise you? Yes, a young girl, very young, and a nymphomaniac to boot. Drains me dry. But that isn’t what bothers me—it’s my wife. It’s excruciating the way she works over me. I want to jump out of my skin.

Observing the grin on my face he adds: It’s not a bit funny, let me tell you.

The telephone rang. He listens attentively. Then, having said nothing but Yes, No, I think so, he suddenly shouts into the mouthpiece: I want none of your filthy money. Let him get some one else to defend him.

Imagine trying to bribe me, he says, slamming up the receiver. And a judge, no less. A big shot, too. He blew his nose vigorously. Well, where were we? He rose. What about a bite to eat? Could talk better over food and wine, don’t you think?

We hailed a taxi and made for an Italian joint he frequented. It was a cosy place, smelling strongly of wine, sawdust and cheese. Virtually deserted too.

After we had ordered he said: You don’t mind if I talk about myself, do you? That’s my weakness, I guess. Even when I’m reading, even if it’s a good book, I can’t help but think about myself, my problems. Not that I think I’m so important, you understand. Obsessed, that’s all.

You’re obsessed too, he continued, but in a healthier way. You see, I’m engrossed with myself and I hate myself. A real loathing, mind you. I couldn’t possibly feel that way about another human being. I know myself through and through, and the thought of what I am, what I must look like to others, appals me. I’ve got only one good quality: I’m honest. I take no credit for it either … it’s a purely instinctive trait. Yes, I’m homiest with my clients—and I’m honest with my self.

I broke in. You may be honest with yourself, as you say, but it would be better for you if you were more generous. I mean, with yourself. If you can’t treat yourself decently how do you expect others to?

It’s not in my nature to think such thoughts, he answered promptly. I’m a Puritan from way back. A degenerate one, to be sure. The trouble is, I’m not degenerate enough. You remember asking me once if I had ever read the Marquis de Sade? Well, I tried, but he bores me stiff. Maybe he’s too French for my taste. I don’t know why they call him the divine Marquis, do you?

By now we had sampled the Chianti and were up to our ears in spaghetti. The wine had a limbering effect. He could drink a lot without losing his head. In fact, that was another one of his troubles—his inability to lose himself, even under the influence of drink.

As if he had divined my thoughts, he began by remarking that he was an out and out mentalist. A mentalist who can even make his prick think. You’re laughing again. But it’s tragic. The young girl I spoke of—she thinks I’m a grand fucker. I’m not. But she is. She’s a real fuckaree. Me, I fuck with my brain. It’s like I was conducting a cross-examination, only with my prick instead of my mind. Sounds screwy, doesn’t it? It is too. Because the more I fuck the more I concentrate on myself. Now and then—with her, that is—I sort of come to and ask myself who’s on the other end. Must be a hang-over from the masturbating business. You follow me, don’t you? Instead of doing it to myself some one does it for me. It’s better than masturbating, because you become even more detached. The girl, of course, has a grand time. She can do anything she likes with me. That’s what tickles her … excites her. What she doesn’t know—maybe it would frighten her if I told her—is that I’m not there. You know the expression—to be all ears. Well, I’m all mind. A mind with a prick attached to it, if you can put it that way … By the way, sometime I want to ask you about yourself. How you feel when you do it … your reactions … and all that. Not that it would help much. Just curious.

Suddenly he switched. Wanted to know if I had done any writing yet. When I said no, he replied: You’re writing right now, only you’re not aware of it. You’re writing all the time, don’t you realize that?

Astonished by this strange observation, I exclaimed:

You mean me—or everybody?

Of course I don’t mean everybody! I mean you, you. His voice grew shrill and petulant. You told me once that you would like to write. Well, when do you expect to begin? He paused to take a heaping mouthful of food. Still gulping, he continued: Why do you think I talk to you the way I do? Because you’re a good listener? Not at all! I can blab my heart out to you because I know that you’re vitally uninterested. It’s not me, John Stymer, that interests you, it’s what I tell you, or the way I tell it to you. But I am interested in you, definitely. Quite a difference.

He masticated in silence for a moment.

You’re almost as complicated as I am, he went on. You know that, don’t you? I’m curious to know what makes people tick, especially a type like you. Don’t worry, I’ll never probe you because I know in advance you won’t give me the right answers. You’re a shadow-boxer. And me, I’m a lawyer. It’s my business to handle cases. But you, I can’t imagine what you deal in, unless it’s air.

Here he closed up like a clam, content to swallow and chew for a while. Presently he said: I’ve a good mind to invite you to come along with me this afternoon. I’m not going back to the office. I’m going to see this gal I’ve been telling you about. Why don’t you come along? She’s easy to look at, easy to talk to. I’d like to observe your reactions. He paused a moment to see how I might take the proposal, then added: She lives out on Long Island. It’s a bit of a drive, but it may be worth it. We’ll bring some wine along and some Strega. She likes liqueurs. What say?

I agreed. We walked to the garage where he kept his car. It took a while to defrost it. We had only gone a little ways when one thing after another gave out. With the stops we made at garages and repair shops it must have taken almost three hours to get out of the city limits. By that time we were thoroughly frozen. We had a run of sixty miles to make and it was already dark as pitch.

Once on the highway we made several stops to warm up. He seemed to be known everywhere we stopped, and was always treated with deference. He explained, as we drove along, how he had befriended this one and that. I never take a case, he said, unless I’m sure I can win., I tried to draw him out about the girl, but his mind was on other things. Curiously, the subject uppermost in his mind at present was immortality. What was the sense in an hereafter, he wanted to know, if one lost his personality at death? He was convinced that a single lifetime was too short a period in which to solve one’s problems. I haven’t started living my own life, he said, and I’m already nearing fifty. One should live to be a hundred and fifty or two hundred, then one might get somewhere. The real problems don’t commence until you’ve done with sex and all material difficulties. At twenty-five I thought I knew all the answers. Now I feel that I know nothing about anything. Here we are, going to meet a young nymphomaniac. What sense does it make? He lit a cigarette, took a puff or two, then threw it away. The next moment he extracted a fat cigar from his breast pocket.

You’d like to know something about her. I’ll tell you this first off—if only I had the necessary courage I’d snatch her up and head for Mexico. What to do there I don’t know. Begin all over again, I suppose. But that’s what gets me … I haven’t the guts for it. I’m a moral coward, that’s the truth. Besides, I know she’s pulling my leg. Every time I leave her I wonder who she’ll be in bed with soon as I’m out of sight. Not that I’m jealous—I hate to be made a fool of, that’s all. I am a chump, of course. In everything except the law I’m an utter fool.

He traveled on in this vein for some time. He certainly loved to run himself down. I sat back and drank it in.

Now it was a new tack. Do you know why I never became a writer?

No, I replied, amazed that he had ever entertained the thought.

Because I found out almost immediately that I had nothing to say. I’ve never lived, that’s the long and short of it. Risk nothing, gain nothing. What’s that Oriental saying? ‘To fear is not to sow because of the birds.’ That says it. Those crazy Russians you give me to read, they all had experience of life, even if they never budged from the spot they were born in. For things to happen there must be a suitable climate. And if the climate is lacking, you create one. That is, if you have genius. I never created a thing. I play the game, and I play it according to the rules. The answer to that, in case you don’t know it, is death. Yep, I’m as good as dead already. But crack this now: it’s when I’m deadest that I fuck the best. Figure it out, if you can! The last time I slept with her, just to give you an illustration, I didn’t bother to take my clothes off. I climbed in—coat, shoes, and all. It seemed perfectly natural, considering the state of mind I was in. Nor did it bother her in the least. As I say, I climbed into bed with her fully dressed and I said:Why don’t we just lie here and fuck ourselves to death? A strange idea, what? Especially coming from a respected lawyer with a family and all that. Anyway, the words had hardly left my mouth when I said to myself: ‘You dope! You’re dead already. Why pretend?)—How do you like that? With that I gave myself up to it … to the fucking, I mean.

Here I threw in a teaser. Had he ever pictured himself, I asked, possessing a prick … and using ill … in the hereafter?

Have I? he exclaimed. That’s just what bothers me, that very thought. An immortal life with an extension prick hooked to my brain is something I don’t fancy in the least. Not that I want to lead the life of an angel either. I want to be myself, John Stymer, with all the bloody problems that are mine. I want time to think things out … a thousand years or more. Sounds goofy, doesn’t it? But that’s how I’m built. The Marquis de Sade, he had loads of time on his hands. He thought out a lot of things, I must admit, but I can’t agree with his conclusions. Anyway, what I want to say is—it’s not so terrible to spend your life in prison … if you have an active mind. What is terrible is to make a prisoner of yourself. And that’s what most of us are—self-made prisoners. There are scarcely a dozen men in a generation who break out. Once you see life with a clear eye it’s all a farce. A grand farce. Imagine a man wasting his life defending or convicting others! The business of law is thoroughly insane. Nobody is a whit better off because we have laws. No, it’s a fool’s game, dignified by giving it a pompous name. To-morrow I may find myself sitting on the bench. A judge, no less. Will I think any more of myself because I’m called a judge? Will I be able to change anything? Not on your life. I’ll play the game again … the judges’ game. That’s why I say we’re licked from the start. I’m aware of the fact that we all have a part to play and that all any one can do, supposedly, is to play his part to the best of his ability. Well, I don’t like my part. The idea of playing a part doesn’t appeal to me. Not even if the parts be interchangeable. You get me? I believe it’s time we had a new deal, a new set-up. The courts have to go, the laws have to go, the police have to go, the prisons have to go. It’s insane, the whole business. That’s why I fuck my head off.. You would too, if you could see it as I do. He broke off, sputtering like a Bre-cracker.

After a brief silence he informed me that we were soon there. Remember, make yourself at home. Do anything, say anything you please. Nobody will stop you. If you Want to take a crack at her, it’s O.K. with me. Only don’t make a habit of it!

The house was shrouded in darkness as we pulled into the driveway. A note was pinned to the dining room table. From Belle, the great fuckaree. She had grown tired of waiting for us, didn’t believe we would make it, and so on.

Where is she, then? I asked.

Probably gone to the city to stay the night with a friend.

He didn’t seem greatly upset, I must say. After a few grunts … the bitch this and the bitch that … he went to the refrigerator to see what there was in the way of leftovers.

We might as well stay the night here, he said. She’s left us some baked beans and cold ham, I see. Will that hold you?

As we were polishing off the remnants he informed me that there was a comfortable room upstairs with twin beds. Now we can have a good talk, he said.

I was ready enough for bed but not for a heart to heart talk. As for Stymer, nothing seemed capable of slowing down the machinery of his mind, neither frost nor drink nor fatigue itself.

I would have dropped off immediately on hitting the pillow had Stymer not opened fire in the way he did. Suddenly I was as wide awake as if I had taken a double dose of benzadrine. His first words, delivered in a steady, even tone, electrified me.

There’s nothing surprises you very much, I notice. Well, get a load of this…

That’s how be began.

One of the reasons I’m such a good lawyer is because I’m also something of a criminal. You’d hardly think me capable of plotting another person’s death, would you? Well, I am. I’ve decided to do away with my wife. Just how, I don’t know yet. It’s not because of Belle, either. It’s just that she bores me to death. I can’t stand it any longer. For twenty years now I haven’t had an intelligent word from her. She’s driven me to the last ditch, and she knows it. She knows all about Belle; there’s never been any secret about that. All she cares about is that it shouldn’t leak out. It’s my wife, God damn her! who turned me into a masturbator, I was that sick of her, almost from the beginning, that the thought of sleeping with her made me ill. True, we might have arranged a divorce. But why support a lump of clay for the rest of my life? Since I fell in with Belle I’ve had a chance to do a little thinking and planning. My one aim is to get out of the country, far away, and start all over again. At what I don’t know. Not the law, certainly. I want isolation and I want to do as little work as possible.

He took a breath. I made no comments. He expected none.

To be frank with you, I was wondering if I could tempt you to join me. I’d take care of you as long as the money held out, that’s understood. I was thinking it out as we drove here. That note from Belle—I dictated the message, I had no thought of switching things when we started, please believe me. But the more we talked the more I felt that you were just the person I’d like to have around, if I made the jump.

He hesitated a second, then added: I had to tell you about my wife because … because to live in close quarters with some one and keep a secret of that sort would be too much of a strain.

But I’ve got a wife too! I found myself exclaiming.

Though I haven’t much use for her, I don’t see myself doing her in just to run off somewhere with you.

I understand, said Stymer calmly, I’ve given thought to that too.

So?

I could get you a divorce easily enough and see to it that you don’t have to pay alimony. What do you say to that?

Not interested, I replied. Not even if you could provide another woman for me. I have my own plans.

You don’t think I’m a queer, do you?

No, not at all. You’re queer, all right, but not in that way. To be honest with you, you’re not the sort of person I’d want to be around for long. Besides, it’s all too damned vague. It’s more like a bad dream.

He took this with his habitual unruffled calm. Whereupon, impelled to say something more, I demanded to know what it was that he expected of me, what did he hope to obtain from such a relationship?

I hadn’t the slightest fear of being tempted into such a crazy adventure, naturally, but I thought it only decent to pretend to draw him out. Besides, I was curious as to what he thought my role might be.

It’s hard to know where to begin, he drawled. Supposing … just suppose, I say … that we found a good place to hide away. A place like Costa Rica, for example, or Nicaragua, where life is easy and the climate agreeable. And suppose you found a girl you liked … that isn’t too hard to imagine, is it? Well then … You’ve told me that you like … that you intend … to write one day. I know that I can’t. But I’ve got ideas, plenty of them, I can tell you. I’ve not been a criminal lawyer for nothing. As for you, you haven’t read Dostoievsky and all those other mad Russians for nothing either. Do you begin to get the drift? Look, Dostoievsky is dead, finished with. And that’s where we start. From Dostoievsky. He dealt with the soul; we’ll deal with the mind.

He was about to pause again. Go on, I said, it sounds interesting.

Well, he resumed, whether you know it or not, there is no longer anything left in the world that might be called soul. Which partly explains why you find it so hard to get started, as a writer. How can one write about people who have no souls? I can, however. I’ve been living with just such people, working for them, studying them, analyzing them. I don’t mean my clients alone. It’s easy enough to look upon criminals as soulless. But what if I tell you that there are nothing but criminals everywhere, no matter where you look? One doesn’t have to be guilty of a crime to be a criminal. But anyway, here’s what I had in mind … I know you can write. Furthermore, I don’t mind in the least if some one else writes my books. For you to come by the material that I’ve accumulated would take several lifetimes. Why waste more time? Oh yes, there’s something I forgot to mention … it may frighten you off. It’s this … whether the books are ever published or not is all one to me. I want to get them out of my system, nothing more. Ideas are universal: I don’t consider them my property…

He took a drink of ice water from the jug beside the bed.

All this probably strikes you as fantastic. Don’t try to come to a decision immediately. Think it over I Look at it from every angle. I wouldn’t want you to accept and then get cold feet in a month or two. But let me call your attention to something. If you continue in the same groove much longer you’ll never have the courage to make the break. You have no excuse for prolonging your present way of life. You’re obeying the law of inertia, nothing more.

He cleared his throat, as if embarrassed by his own remarks. Then clearly and swiftly he proceeded.

I’m not the ideal companion for you, agreed. I have every fault imaginable and I’m thoroughly self-centered, as I’ve said many times. But I’m not envious or jealous, or even ambitious, in the usual sense. Aside from working hours—and I don’t intend to run myself into the ground—you’d be alone most of the time, free to do as you please. With me you’d be alone, even if we shared the same room. I don’t care where we live, so long as it’s in a foreign land. From now on it’s the moon for me. I’m divorcing myself from my fellow-man. Nothing could possibly tempt me to participate in the game. Nothing of value, in my eyes at least, can possibly be accomplished at present. I may not accomplish anything either, to be truthful. But at least I’ll have the satisfaction of doing what I believe in … Look, maybe I haven’t expressed too clearly what I mean by this Dostoievsky business. It’s worth going into a little further, if you can bear with me. As I see it, with Dostoievsky’s death the world entered upon a complete new phase of existence. Dostoievsky summed up the modern age much as Dante did the Middle Ages. The modern age—a misnomer, by the way—was just a transition period, a breathing spell, in which man could adjust himself to the death of the soul. Already we’re leading a sort of grotesque lunar life. The beliefs, hopes, principles, convictions that sustained our civilization are gone. And they won’t be resuscitated. Take that on faith for the time being. No, henceforth and for a long time to come we’re going to live in the mind. That means destruction … self-destruction. If you ask why I can only say—because man was not made to live by mind alone. Man was meant to live with his whole being. But the nature of this being is lost, forgotten, buried. The purpose of life on earth is to discover one’s true being—and to live up to it! But we won’t go into that. That’s for the distant future. The problem is—meanwhile. And that’s where I come in. Let me put it to you as briefly as possible … All that we have stifled, you, me, all of us, ever since civilization began, has got to be lived out. We’ve got to recognize ourselves for what we are. And what are we but the end product of a tree that is no longer capable of bearing fruit. We’ve got to go underground, therefore, like seed, so that something new, something different, may come forth. It isn’t time that’s required, it’s a new way of looking at things. A new appetite for life, in other words. As it is, we have but a semblance of life. We’re alive only in dream. It’s the mind in us that refuses to be killed off. The mind is tough—and far more mysterious than the wildest dreams of theologians. It may well be that there is nothing but mind … not the little mind we know, to be sure, but the great Mind in which we swim, the Mind which permeates the whole universe. Dostoievsky, let me remind you, had amazing insight not only into the soul of man but into the mind and spirit of the universe. That’s why it’s impossible to shake him off, even though, as I said, what he represents is done for.

Here I had to interrupt. Excuse me, I said, but what did Dostoievsky represent, in your opinion?

I can’t answer that in a few words. Nobody can. He gave us a revelation, and it’s up to each one of us to make what he can of it. Some lose themselves in Christ. One can lose himself in Dostoievsky too. He takes you to the end of the road … Does that mean anything to you?

Yes and no.

To me, said Stymer, it means that there are no possibilities to-day such as men imagine. It means that we are thoroughly deluded—about everything. Dostoievsky explored the field in advance, and he found the road blocked at every turn. He was a frontier man, in the profound sense of the word. He took up one position after another, at every dangerous, promising point, and he found that there was no issue for us, such as we are. He took refuge finally in the Supreme Being.

That doesn’t sound exactly like the Dostoievsky I know, said I. It has a hopeless ring to it.

No, it’s not hopeless at all. It’s realistic—in a superhuman sense. The last thing Dostoievsky could possibly have believed in is a hereafter such as the clergy give us.

All religions give us a sugar-coated pill to swallow. They want us to swallow what we never can or will swallow—death. Man will never accept the idea of death, never reconcile himself to it … But I’m getting off the track. You speak of man’s fate. Better than any one, Dostoievsky understood that man will never accept life un-questioningly until he is threatened with extinction. It was his belief, his deep conviction, I would say, that man may have everlasting life if he desires it with his whole heart and being. There is no reason to die, none whatever. We die because we lack faith in life, because we refuse to surrender to life completely … And that brings me to the present, to life as we know it to-day. Isn’t it obvious that our whole way of life is a dedication to death? In our desperate efforts to preserve ourselves, preserve what we have created, we bring about our own death. We do not surrender to life, we struggle to avoid dying. Which means not that we have lost faith in God but that we have lost faith in life itself. To live dangerously, as Nietzsche put it, is to live naked and unashamed. It means putting one’s trust in the life force and ceasing to battle with a phantom called death, a phantom called disease, a phantom called sin, a phantom called fear, and so on. The phantom world! That’s the world which we have created for ourselves. Think of the military, with their perpetual talk of the enemy. Think of the clergy, with their perpetual talk of sin and damnation. Think of the legal fraternity, with their perpetual talk of fine and imprisonment. Think of the medical profession, with their perpetual talk of disease and death. And our educators, the greatest fools ever, with their parrot-like rote and their innate inability to accept any idea unless it be a hundred or a thousand years old. As for those who govern the world, there you have the most dishonest, the most hypocritical, the most deluded and the most unimaginative beings imaginable. You pretend to be concerned about man’s fate. The miracle is that man has sustained even the illusion of freedom.

No, the road is blocked, whichever way you turn. Every wall, every barrier, every obstacle that hems us in is our own doing. No need to drag in God, the Devil or Chance. The Lord of all Creation is taking a cat nap while we work out the puzzle. He’s permitted us to deprive ourselves of everything but mind. It’s in the mind that the life force has taken refuge. Everything has been analyzed to the point of nullity. Perhaps now the very emptiness of life will take on meaning, will provide the clue.

He came to a dead stop, remained absolutely immobile for a space, then raised himself on one elbow.

The criminal aspect of the mind! I don’t know how or where I got hold of that phrase, but it enthralls me absolutely. It might well be the over all title for the books I have in mind to write. The very word criminal shakes me to the foundations. It’s such a meaningless word today, yet it’s the most—what shall I say?—the most serious word in man’s vocabulary. The very notion of crime is an awesome one. It has such deep, tangled roots. Once the great word, for me, was rebel. When I say criminal, however, I find myself utterly baffled. Sometimes, I confess, I don’t know what the word means. Or, if I think I do, then I am forced to look upon the whole human race as one indescribable hydro-headed monster whose name is CRIMINAL. I sometimes put it another way to myself—man his own criminal. Which is almost meaningless. What I’m trying to say, though perhaps it’s trite, banal, over-simplified, is this … if there is such a thing as a criminal, then the whole race is tainted. You can’t remove the criminal element in man by performing a surgical operation on society. What’s criminal is cancerous, and what’s cancerous is unclean. Crime isn’t merely coeval with law and order, crime is pre-natal, so to speak. It’s in the very consciousness of man, and it won’t be dislodged, it won’t be extirpated, until a new consciousness is born. Do I make it clear? The question I ask myself over and over is—how did man ever come to look upon himself, or his fellow-man, as a criminal? What caused him to harbor guilt feelings? To make even the animals feel guilty? How did he ever come to poison life at the source, in other words? It’s very convenient to blame it on the priesthood. But I can’t credit them with having that much power over us. If we are victims, they are too. But what are we the victims of? What is it that tortures us, young and old alike, the wise as well as the innocent? It’s my belief that that is what we are going to discover, now that we’ve been driven underground. Rendered naked and destitute, we will be able to give ourselves up to the grand problem unhindered. For an eternity, if need be. Nothing else is of importance, don’t you see? Maybe you don’t. Maybe I see it so clearly that I can’t express it adequately in words. Anyway, that’s our world perspective…

At this point he got out of bed to fix himself a drink, asking as he did so if I could stand any more of his drivel. I nodded affirmatively.

I’m thoroughly wound up, as you see, he continued. As a matter of fact, I’m beginning to see it all so clearly again, now that I’ve unlimbered to you, that I almost feel I could write the books myself. If I haven’t lived for myself I certainly have lived other people’s lives. Perhaps I’ll begin to live my own when I begin writing. You know, I already feel kindlier toward the world, just getting this much off my chest. Maybe you were right about being more generous with myself. It’s certainly a relaxing thought. Inside I’m all steel girders. I’ve got to melt, grow fibre, cartilage, lymph and muscle. To think that any one could let himself grow so rigid … ridiculous, what! That’s what comes from battling all one’s life.

He paused long enough to take a good slug, then raced on.

You know, there isn’t a thing in the world worth fighting for except peace of mind. The more you triumph in this world the more you defeat yourself. Jesus was right. One has to triumph over the world. Overcome the world, I think was the expression. To do that, of course, means acquiring a new consciousness, a new view of things. And that’s the only meaning one can put on freedom. No man can attain freedom who is of the world. Die to the world and you find life everlasting. You know, I suppose, that the advent of Christ was of the greatest importance to Dostoievsky. Dostoievsky only succeeded in embracing the idea of God through conceiving of a man-god. He humanized the conception of God, brought Him nearer to us, made him more comprehensible, and finally, strange as it may sound, even more God-like … Once again I must come back to the criminal. The only sin, or crime, that man could commit, in the eyes of Jesus, was to sin against the Holy Ghost. To deny the spirit, or the life force, if you will. Christ recognized no such thing as a criminal. He ignored all this nonsense, this confusion, this rank superstition with which man has saddled himself for millenia. He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone! Which doesn’t mean that Christ regarded all men as sinners. No, but that we are all imbued, dyed, tainted with the notion of sin. As I understand his words, it is out of a sense of guilt that we created sin and evil. Not that sin and evil have any reality of their own. Which brings me back again to the present impasse. Despite all the truths that Christ enunciated, the world is now riddled and saturated with sinfulness. Every one behaves like a criminal toward his fellow-man. And so, unless we set about killing one another off—world-wide massacre—we’ve got to come to grips with the demonic power which rules us. We’ve got to convert it into a healthy, dynamic force which will liberate not us alone—we are not so important!—but the life force which is damned up in us. Only then will we begin to live. And to live means eternal life, nothing less. It was man who created death, not God. Death is the sign of our vulnerability, nothing more.

He went on and on and on. I didn’t get a wink of sleep until near dawn. When I awoke he was gone. On the table I found a five dollar bill and a brief note saying that I should forget everything we had talked about, that it was of no importance. I’m ordering a new suit just the same, he added. You can choose the material for me.

Naturally I couldn’t forget it, as he suggested. In fact, I couldn’t think of anything else for weeks but man the criminal, or, as Stymer had put it, man his own criminal.

One of the many expressions he had dropped plagued me interminably, the one about man taking refuge in the mind. It was the first time, I do believe, that I ever questioned the existence of mind as something apart. The thought that possibly all was mind fascinated me. It sounded more revolutionary than anything I had heard hitherto.

It was certainly curious, to say the least, that a man of Stymer’s calibre should have been obsessed by this idea of going underground, of taking refuge in the mind. The more I thought about the subject the more I felt that he was trying to make of the cosmos one grand, stupefying rat-trap. When, a few months later, upon sending him a notice to call for a fitting, I learned that he had died of a haemorrhage of the brain, I wasn’t in the least surprised. His mind had evidently rejected the conclusions he had imposed upon it. He had mentally masturbated himself to death. With that I stopped worrying about the mind as a refuge. Mind is all. God is all. So what?

3.

When a situation gets so bad that no solution seems possible there is left only murder or suicide. Or both. These failing, one becomes a buffoon.

Amazing how active one can become when there is nothing to contend with but one’s own desperation. Events pile up of their own accord. Everything is converted to drama … to melodrama.

The ground began to give way under my feet with the slow realization that no show of anger, no threats, no display of grief, tenderness or remorse, nothing I said or did, made the least difference to her. What is called a man would no doubt have swallowed his pride or grief and walked out on the show. Not this little Beelzebub!

I was no longer a man; I was a creature returned to the wild state. Perpetual panic, that was my normal state. The more unwanted I was, the closer I stuck. The more I was wounded and humiliated, the more I craved punishment. Always praying for a miracle to occur, I did nothing to bring one about. What’s more, I was powerless to blame her, or Stasia, or anyone, even myself, though I often pretended to. Nor could I, despite natural inclination, bring myself to believe that it had just happened. I had enough understanding left to realize that a condition such as we were in doesn’t just happen. No, I had to admit to myself that it had been preparing for quite a long while. I had, moreover, retraced the path so often that I knew it step by step. But when one is frustrated to the point of utter despair what good does it do to know where or when the first fatal misstep occurred? What matters—and how it matters, O God!—is only now.

How to squirm out of a vise?

Again and again I banged my head against the wall trying to crack that question. Could I have done so, I would have taken my brains out and put them through the wringer. No matter what I did, what I thought, what I tried, I could not wriggle out of the strait-jacket.

Was it love that kept me chained?

How answer that? My emotions were so confused, so kaleidoscopic. As well ask a dying man if he is hungry.

Perhaps the question might be put differently. For example: Can one ever regain that which is lost?

The man of reason, the man with common sense, will say no. The fool, however, says yes.

And what is the fool but a believer, a gambler against all odds.

Nothing was ever lost that cannot be redeemed.

Who says that? The God within us. Adam who survived fire and flood. And all the angels.

Think a moment, scoffers! If redemption were impossible, would not love itself disappear? Even self-love?

Perhaps this Paradise I sought so desperately to recover would not be the same … Once outside the magic circle the leaven of time works with disastrous rapidity.

What was it, this Paradise I had lost? Of what was it fashioned? Was it merely the ability to summon a moment of bliss now and then? Was it the faith with which she inspired me? (The faith in myself, I mean.) Or was it that we were joined like Siamese twins?

How simple and clear it all seems now! A few words tell the whole story: I had lost the power to love. A cloud of darkness enveloped me. The fear of losing her made me blind. I could easier have accepted her death.

Lost and confused, I roamed the darkness which I had created as if pursued by a demon. In my bewilderment I sometimes got down on all fours and with bare hands strangled, maimed, crushed whatever threatened to menace our lair. Sometimes it was the puppet I clutched in a frenzy, sometimes only a dead rat. Once it was nothing more than a piece of stale cheese. Day and night I murdered. The more I murdered, the more my enemies and assailants increased.

How vast is the phantom world! How inexhaustible!

Why didn’t I murder myself? I tried, but it proved a fiasco. More effective, I found, was to reduce life to a vacuum.

To live in the mind, solely in the mind … that is the surest way of making life a vacuum. To become the victim of a machine which never ceases to spin and grate and grind.

The mind machine,

Loving and loathing; accepting and rejecting; grasping and disdaining; longing and spurning: this is the disease of the mind.

Solomon himself could not have stated it better.

If you give up both victory and defeat, so it reads in the Dhammapada, you sleep at night without fear.

The coward, and such I was, prefers the ceaseless whir of the mind. He knows, as does the cunning master he serves, that the machine has but to stop for an instant and he will explode like a dead star. Not death … annihilation!

Describing the Knight Errant, Cervantes says: The Knight Errant searches all the corners of the world, enters the most complicated labyrinths, accomplishes at every step the impossible, endures the fierce rays of the sun in uninhabited deserts, the inclemency of wind and ice in winter; lions cannot daunt him nor demons affright, nor dragons, for to seek assault, and overcome, such is the whole business of his life and true office.

Strange how much the fool and the coward have in Common with the Knight Errant. The fool believes despite everything; he believes in face of the impossible. The coward braves all dangers, runs every risk, fears nothing, absolutely nothing, except the loss of that which he strives impotently to retain.

It is a great temptation to say that love never made a coward of any one. Perhaps true love, no. But who among us has known true love? Who is so loving, trusting and believing that he would not sell himself to the Devil rather than see his loved one tortured, slain or disgraced? Who is so secure and mighty that he would not step down from his throne to claim his love? True, there have been great figures who have accepted their lot, who have sat apart in silence and solitude, and eaten out their hearts. Are they to be admired or pitied? Even the greatest of the love-lorn was never able to walk about jubilantly and shout—All’s well with the world!

In pure love (which no doubt does not exist at all except in our imagination,) says one I admire, the giver is not aware that he gives nor of what he gives, nor to whom he gives, still less of whether it is appreciated by the recipient or not.

With all my heart I say D’accord! But I have never met a being capable of expressing such love. Perhaps only those who no longer have need of love may aspire to such a role.

To be free of the bondage of love, to burn down like a candle, to melt in love, melt with love—what bliss! Is it possible for creatures like us who are weak, proud, vain, possessive, envious, jealous, unyielding, unforgiving? Obviously not. For us the rat race—in the vacuum of the mind. For us doom, unending doom. Believing that we need love, we cease to give love, cease to be love.

But even we, despicably weak though we be, experience something of this true, unselfish love occasionally. Which of us has not said to himself in his blind adoration of one beyond his reach—What matter if she be never mine! All that matters is that she be, that I may worship and adore her forever! And even though it be untenable, such an exalted view, the lover who reasons thus is on firm ground. He has known a moment of pure love. No other love, no matter how serene, how enduring, can compare with it.

Fleeting though such a love may be, can we say that there had been a loss? The only possible loss—and how well the true lover knows it!—is the lack of that undying affection which the other inspired. What a drab, dismal, fateful day that is when the lover suddenly realizes that he is no longer possessed, that he is cured, so to speak, of his great love! When he refers to it, even unconsciously, as a madness. The feeling of relief engendered by such an awakening may lead one to believe in all sincerity that he has regained his freedom. But at what a price! What a poverty-stricken sort of freedom! Is it not a calamity to gaze once again upon the world with every day sight, every day wisdom? Is it not heartbreaking to find oneself surrounded by beings who are familiar and commonplace? Is it not frightening to think that one must carry on, as they say, but with stones in one’s belly and gravel in one’s mouth? To find ashes, nothing but ashes, where once were blazing suns, wonders, glories, wonders upon wonders, glory beyond glory, and all freely created as from some magic fount?

If there is anything which deserves to be called miraculous, is it not love? What other power, what other mysterious force is there which can invest life with such undeniable splendor?

The Bible is full of miracles, and they have been accepted by thinking and unthinking individuals alike. But the miracle which every one is permitted to experience some time in his life, the miracle which demands no intervention, no intercessor, no supreme exertion of will, the miracle which is open to the fool and the coward as well as the hero and the saint, is love. Born of an instant, it lives eternally. If energy is imperishable, how much more so is love! Like energy, which is still a complete enigma, love is always there, always on tap. Man has never created an ounce of energy, nor did he create love. Love and energy have always been, always will be. Perhaps in essence they are one and the same. Why not? Perhaps this mysterious energy which is identified with the life of the universe, which is God in action, as some one has said, perhaps this secret, all-invasive force is but the manifestation of love. What is even more awesome to consider is that, if there be nothing in our universe which is not informed with this unseizable force, then what of love? What happens when love (seemingly) disappears? For the one is no more indestructible than the other. We know that even the deadest particle of matter is capable of yielding explosive energy. And if a corpse has life, as we know it does, so has the spirit which once made it animate. If Lazarus was raised from the dead, if Jesus rose from his tomb, then whole universes which now cease to exist may be revived, and doubtless will be revived, when the time is ripe. When love, in other words, conquers over wisdom.

How then, if such things be possible, are we to speak, or even to think, of losing love? Succeed though we may for a while in closing the door, love will find the way. Though we become as cold and hard as minerals, we cannot remain forever indifferent and inert. Nothing truly dies. Death is always feigned. Death is simply the closing of a door.

But the Universe has no doors. Certainly none which cannot be opened or penetrated by the power of love. This the fool at heart knows, expressing his wisdom quixotically. And what else can the Knight Errant be, who seeks assault in order to overcome, if not a herald of love? And he who is constantly exposing himself to insult and injury, what is he running away from if not the invasion of love?

In the literature of utter desolation there is always and only one symbol (which may be expressed mathematically as well as spiritually) about which everything turns: minus love. For life can. be lived, and usually is lived, on the minus side rather than the plus. Men may strive forever, and hopelessly, once they have elected to rule love out. That high unfathomable ache of emptiness into which all creation might be poured and still it would be emptiness, this aching for God, as it has been called, what is it if not a description of the soul’s loveless state?

Into something bordering on this condition of being I had now entered fully equipped with rack and wheel. Events piled up of their own accord, but alarmingly so. There was something insane about the momentum with which I now slid downward and backward. What had taken ages to build up was demolished in the twinkling of an eye. Everything crumbled to the touch.

To a thought machine it makes little difference whether a problem is expressed in minus or plus terms. When a human being takes to the toboggan it is virtually the same. Or almost. The machine knows no regret, no remorse, no guilt. It shows signs of disturbance only when it has not been properly fed. But a human being endowed with the dread mind machine is given no quarter. Never, no matter how unbearable the situation, may he throw in the sponge, As long as there is a flicker of life left he will offer himself as victim to whatever demon chooses to possess him. And if there be nothing, no one, to harass, betray, degrade or undermine him, he will harass, betray, degrade or undermine himself.

To live in the vacuum of the mind is to live this side of Paradise, but so thoroughly, so completely, that even the rigor of death seems like a St. Vitus’ Dance. However sombre, dreary and stale every day life may be, never does it approach the aching quality of this endless void through which one drifts and slithers in full, waking consciousness. In the sober reality of everyday there is the sun as well as the moon, the blossom as well as the dead leaf, sleep as well as wakefulness, dream as well as nightmare. But in the vacuum of the mind there is only a dead horse running with motionless feet, a ghost clasping an unfathomable nothingness.

And so, like a dead horse whose master never tires of flogging him, I kept galloping to the farthest corners of the universe and nowhere finding peace, comfort or rest. Strange phantoms I encountered in these headlong flights I Monstrous were the resemblances we presented, yet never the slightest rapport. The thin membrane of skin which separated us served as a magnetic coat of armor through which the mightiest current was powerless to operate.

If there is one supreme difference between the living and the dead it is that the dead have ceased to wonder. But, like the cows in the field, the dead have endless time to ruminate. Standing knee-deep in clover, they continue to ruminate even when the moon goes down. For the dead there are universes upon universes to explore. Universes of nothing but matter. Matter devoid of substance. Matter through which the mind machine ploughs as if it were soft snow.

I recall the night I died to wonder. Kronski had come and given me some innocent white pills to swallow. I swallowed them and, when he had gone, I opened wide the windows, threw off the covers, and lay stark naked. Outside the snow was whirling furiously. The icy wind whistled about the four corners of the room as if in a ventilating machine.

Peaceful as a bedbug I slept. Shortly after dawn I opened my eyes, amazed to discover that I was not in the great beyond. Yet I could hardly say that I was still among the living. What had died I know not. I know only this, that everything which serves to make what is called one’s life had faded away. All that was left me was the machine … the mind machine. Like the soldier who finally gets what he’s been praying for, I was dispatched to the rear. Aux autres de l’autre la guerre!

Unfortunately no particular destination had been pinned to my carcass. Back, back, I moved, often with the speed of a cannon ball.

Familiar though everything appeared to be, there was never a point of entry. When I spoke my voice sounded like a tape played backward. My whole being was out of focus.

ET HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE IUVABIT

I was sufficiently clairvoyant at the time to inscribe this unforgettable line from the Aeneid on the toilet box which was suspended above Stasia’s cot.

Perhaps I have already described the place. No matter. A thousand descriptions could never render the reality of this atmosphere in which we lived and moved. For here, like the prisoner of Chillon, like the divine Marquis, like the mad Strindberg, I lived out my madness. A dead moon which had ceased struggling to present its true face.

It was usually dark, that is what I remember most. The chill dark of the grave. Taking possession during a snowfall, I had the impression that the whole world outside our door would remain forever carpeted with a soft white felt. The sounds which penetrated to my addled brain were always muffled, muffled by the everlasting blanket of snow. It was a Siberia of the mind I inhabited, no doubt about it. For companions I had wolves and jackals, their piteous howling interrupted only by the tinkling of sleigh-bells or the rumble of a milk truck destined for the land of motherless babes.

Towards the wee hours of the morning I could usually count on the two of them appearing arm in arm, fresh as daisies, their cheeks glistening with frost and the excitement of an eventful day. Between whiles a bill collector would appear, rap loud and long, then melt into the snow. Or the madman, Osiecki, who always tapped softly at the window-pane. And always the snow kept falling, sometimes in huge wet flakes, like melting stars, or in whirling gusts choked with stinging hypodermic needles.

While waiting I tightened my belt. I had the patience not of a saint nor even of a tortoise, but rather the cold, calculating patience of a criminal.

Kill time! Kill thought I Kill the pangs of hunger! One long, continuous killing … Sublime!

If, peering through the faded curtain, I recognized the silhouette of a friend I might open the door, more to get a breath of fresh air than to admit a kindred soul.

The opening dialogue was always the same. I became so accustomed to it that I used to play it back to myself when they were gone. Always a Ruy Lopez opening.

What are you doing with yourself?

Nothing.

Me? You’re crazy!

But what do you do all day?

Nothing.

Followed the inevitable grubbing of a few cigarettes and a bit of loose change, then a dash for a cheese cake or a bag of doughnuts. Sometimes I’d propose a game of chess.

Soon the cigarettes would give out, then the candles, then the conversation.

Alone again I would be invaded by the most delicious, the most extraordinary recollections—of persons, places, conversations. Voices, grimaces, gestures, pillars, copings, cornices, meadows, brooks, mountains … they would sweep over me in waves, always desynchronized, disjected … like clots of blood dripping from a clear sky. There they were in extenso, my mad bed-fellows: the most forlorn, whimsical, bizarre collection any man could gather. All displaced, all visitors from weird realms. Outlanders, each and all. Yet how tender and lovable! Like angels temporarily ostracized, their wings discreetly concealed beneath their tattered dominoes.

Often it was in the dark, while rounding a bend, the streets utterly deserted, the wind whistling like mad, that I would happen upon one of these nobodies. He may have hailed me to ask for a light or to bum a dime. How come that instantly we locked arms, instantly we fell into that jargon which only derelicts, angels and outcasts employ?

Often it was a simple, straightforward admission on the stranger’s part which set the wheels in motion. (Murder, theft; rape, desertion—they were dropped like calling cards.)

You understand, I hod to…

Of course!

The ax was lying there, the war was on, the old man always drunk, my sister on the bum … Besides, I always wanted to write … You understand?

Of course!

And then the stars … Autumn stars. And strange, new horizons. A world so new and yet so old. Walking, hiding, foraging. Seeking, searching, praying … shedding one skin after another. Every day a new name, a new calling. Always fleeing from myself. Understand?

Of course!

Above the Equator, under the Equator … no rest, no surcease. Never nothing nowhere. Worlds so bright, so full, so rich, but linked with concrete and barbed wire. Always the next place, and the next. Always the hand stretched forth, begging, imploring, beseeching. Deaf, the world. Stone deaf. Rifles cracking, cannons booming, and men, women and children everywhere lying stiff in their own dark blood. Now and then a flower. A violet, perhaps, and a million rotting corpses to fertilize it. You follow me?

Of course!

I went mad, mad, mad.

Naturally!

So he takes the ax, so sharp, so bright, and he takes to chopping … here a head, there an arm or leg, then fingers and toes. Chop, chop, chop. Like chopping spinach. And of course they’re looking for him. And when they find him they’ll run the juice through him. Justice will be served. For every million slaughtered like pigs one lone wretched monster is executed humanly.

Do I understand? Perfectly.

What is a writer but a fellow criminal, a judge, an executioner? Was I not versed in the art of deception since childhood? Am I not riddled with traumas and complexes? Have. I not been stained with all the guilt and sin of the medieval monk?

What more natural, more understandable, more human and forgivable than these monstrous rampages of the isolated poet?

As inexplicably as they entered my sphere they left, these nomads.

Wandering the streets on an empty belly puts one on the qui vive. One knows instinctively which way to turn, what to look for: one never fails to recognize a fellow traveler.

When all is lost the soul steps forth…

I referred to them as angels in disguise. So they were, but I usually awoke to the fact only after they had departed. Seldom does the angel appear trailing clouds of glory, Now and then, however, the drooling simpleton one stops to gaze at suddenly fits the door like a key. And the door opens.

It was the door called Death which always swung open, and I saw that there was no death, nor were there any judges or executioners save in our imagining. How desperately I strove then to make restitution! And I did make restitution. Full and complete. The rajah stripping himself naked. Only an ego left, but an ego puffed and swollen like a hideous toad. And then the utter insanity of it would overwhelm me. Nothing can be given or taken away; nothing has been added or subtracted; nothing increased or diminished. We stand on the same shore before the same mighty ocean. The ocean of love. There it is—in perpetuum. As much in a broken blossom, the sound of a waterfall, the swoop of a carrion bird as in the thunderous artillery of the prophet. We move with eyes shut and ears stopped; we smash walls where doors are waiting to open to the touch; we grope for ladders, forgetting that we have wings; we pray as if God were dead and blind, as if He were in a space beyond space. No wonder the angels in our midst are unrecognizable.

One day it will be pleasant to remember these things.

4.

And so, moving about in the dark or standing for hours like a hat rack in a corner of the room, I fell deeper and deeper into the pit. Hysteria became the norm. The snow never melted.

While hatching the most diabolical schemes to drive Stasia really mad, and thus do away with her for good, I also dreamed up the most asinine plan of campaign for a second courtship. In every shop window I passed I saw gifts which I wanted to buy her. Women adore gifts, especially costly ones. They also love little nothings, dependent on their moods. Between a pair of antique ear rings, very expensive, and a large black candle, I could spend the whole livelong day debating which to get her. Never would I admit to myself that the expensive object was out of reach. No, were I able to convince myself that the ear rings would please her more, I could also convince myself that I could find the way to purchase them. I could convince myself of this, I say, because in the bottom of my heart I knew I would never decide on either. It was a pastime. True, I might better have passed the time debating higher issues, whether, for example, the soul was corruptible or incorruptible, but to the mind-machine one problem is as good as another. In this same spirit I could work up the urge to walk five or ten miles in order to borrow a dollar, and feel just as triumphant if I succeeded in scrounging a dime or even a nickel. What I might have hoped to do with a dollar was unimportant; it was the effort I was still capable of making which counted. It meant, in my deteriorated view of things, that I still had one foot in the world.

Yes, it was truly important to remind myself of such things occasionally and not carry on like the Akond of Swot. It was also good to give them a jolt once in a while, to say when they came home at three A.M. empty-handed: Don’t let it bother you, I’ll go buy myself a sandwich. Sometimes, to be sure, I ate only an imaginary sandwich. But it did me good to let them think that I was not altogether without resources. Once or twice I actually convinced them that I had eaten a steak. I did it to rile them, of course. (What business had I to eat a steak when they had passed hours away sitting in a cafeteria waiting for some one to offer them a bite?)

Occasionally I would greet them thus: So you did manage to get something to eat?

The question always seemed to disconcert them.

I thought you were starving, I would say.

Whereupon they would inform me that they were not interested in starving. There was no reason for me to starve either, they were sure to add. I did it only to torment them.

If they were in a jovial mood they would enlarge on the subject. What new deviltry was I planning? Had I seen Kronski lately? And then the smoke screen talk would begin—about their new-found friends, the dives they had discovered, the side trips to Harlem, the studio Stasia was going to rent, and so on and so forth. Oh yes, and they had forgotten to tell me about Barley, Stasia’s poet friend, whom they had run across the other night. He was going to drop in some afternoon. Wanted to meet me.

One evening Stasia took to reminiscing. Truthful reminiscences, as far as I could gather. About the trees she used to rub herself against in the moonlight, about the perverted millionaire who fell in love with her because of her hairy legs, about the Russian girl who tried to make love to her but whom she repulsed because she was too crude. Besides, she was then having an affair with a married woman and, to throw dust in the husband’s eyes, she used to let him fuck her … not that she enjoyed it but because the wife, whom she loved, thought it was the thing to do.

I don’t know why I’m telling you all these things, she said. Unless…

Suddenly she remembered why. It was because of Barley. Barley was an odd sort. What the attraction was between them she couldn’t understand. He was always pretending he wanted to lay her, but nothing ever happened. Anyhow, he was a very good poet, that she was sure of. Now and then, she said, she would compose a poem in his presence. Then she supplied a curious commentary: I could go on writing while he masturbated me.

Titters.

What do you think of that?

Sounds like a page out of Krafft-Ebing, I volunteered.

A long discussion now ensued regarding the relative merits of Krafft-Ebing, Freud, Forel, Stekel, Weininger et alia, ending with Stasia’s remark that they were all old hat.

You know what I’m going to do for you? she exclaimed. I’m going to let your friend Kronski examine me.

How do you mean—examine you?

Explore my anatomy.

I thought you meant your head.

He can do that too, she said, cool as a cucumber.

And if he finds nothing wrong with you, you’re just polymorph perverse, is that it?

The expression, borrowed from Freud, tickled them no end. Stasia liked it so much, indeed, that she swore she would write a poem by that title.

True to her word, Kronski was summoned to come and make due examination. He arrived in good humor, rubbing his hands and cracking his knuckles.

What’s it this time, Mister Miller? Any vaseline handy? A tight job, if I know my business. Not a bad idea, though. At least we’ll know if she’s a hermaphrodite or not. Maybe we’ll discover a rudimentary tail…

Stasia had already removed her blouse and was displaying her lovely coral-tipped breasts.

Nothing wrong with them, said Kronski, cupping them. Now oft with your pants!

At this she balked. Not here! she cried.

Wherever you like, said Kronski. How about the toilet?

Why don’t you conduct your examination in her room? said Mona. This isn’t an exhibition performance.

Oh no? said Kronski, giving them a dirty leer. I thought that was the idea.

He went to the next room to fetch his black bag.

To make it more official I brought my instruments along.

You’re not going to hurt her? cried Mona.

Not unless she resists, he replied. Did you find the vaseline? If you haven’t any, olive oil will do … or butter.

Stasia made a wry face. Is all that necessary? she demanded.

It’s up to you, said Kronski. Depends on how touchy you are. If you lie still and behave yourself there’ll be no difficulty. If it feels good I may stick something else in.

Oh no you don’t! cried Mona.

What’s the matter, are you jealous?

We invited you here as a doctor. This isn’t a bordel.

You’d be better off it were a fancy house, said Kronski sneeringly. She would, at least … Come on, let’s get it over with.

With this he took Stasia by the hand and led her into the little room next to the toilet. Mona wanted to go along, to be certain that no harm came to Stasia. But Kronski wouldn’t hear of it.

This is a professional visit, he said. He rubbed his hands gleefully. As for you, Mister Miller, and he gave me a knowing look, if I were you I’d take a little walk.

No, stay! begged Mona. I don’t trust him.

So we remained, Mona and I, pacing up and down the long room with never a word exchanged.

Fives minutes passed, then ten. Suddenly from the adjoining room there came a piercing scream. Help! Help! He’s raping me!

We burst into the room. Sure enough, there was Kronski with his pants down, his face red as a beet. Trying to mount her. Like a tigress, Mona pounced on him and pulled him off the bed. Then Stasia bounded out of bed and threw herself on him, straddling him. With all her might she clawed and pummeled him. The poor devil was so bewildered by the onslaught that he was scarcely able to defend himself. If I hadn’t intervened they would have scratched his eyes out.

You bastard! screamed Stasia.

Sadist! screamed Mona.

They made such a din I thought the landlady would be down with a cleaver.

Staggering to his feet, his pants still down around his ankles, Kronski finally managed to splutter: What’s all the fuss about? She’s normal, just as I thought. In fact, she’s too normal. That’s what got me excited. What’s wrong with that!

Yeah, what’s wrong with that! I chimed in, looking from one to the other.

Shoo him out of here! they yelled.

Easy now! Take it easy! said Kronski, putting a little soothing syrup into his voice, You asked me to examine her, and you knew as well as I that there’s nothing wrong with her physically. It’s her belfry that needs looking into, not her private parts. I can do that too, but it takes time. And what would you have me prove? Answer that, if you can I Do you want to know something? I could have the three of you locked up. He snapped his fingers in our faces. Like that! he said, snapping his fingers again. For what? Moral turpitude, that’s what. You wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, none of you.

He paused a full moment to let this sink in.

I’m not mean enough, however, to do a thing like that. I’m too good a friend, aren’t I, Mister Miller? But don’t try to throw me out for doing you a good turn.

Stasia was standing there stark naked, her pants slung over her arm. Finally she became self-conscious and started slipping into her trousers. In doing so she slipped and fell. Mona immediately rushed to her aid, only to be vigorously pushed aside.

Leave me alone! cried Stasia. I can help myself. I’m not a child. So saying, she picked herself up. She stood upright a moment, then bending her head forward, she looked at herself, at the very center of her anatomy. With that she burst into a laugh, a demented sort of laugh.

So I’m normal, she said, laughing still harder. What a joke! Normal, because there’s a hole here big enough to stick something into. Here, give me a candle! I’ll show you how normal I am.

With this she began making the most obscene gestures, contorting her pelvis, writhing as if in the throes of an orgasm.

A candle! she screamed. Get a big, fat black one! I’ll show you how normal I am!

Please, Stasia, stop it, I beg you! cried Mona.

Yes, cut it! said Kronski sternly. You don’t need to give us an exhibition.

The word exhibition seemed only to incense her more.

This is my exhibition, she screamed. And it’s gratis this time. Usually I get paid for making an ass of myself, don’t I? She turned on Mona. Don’t I? she hissed. Or haven’t you told them how we raise the rent money?

Please, Stasia, please! begged Mona. She had tears in her eyes.

But nothing could halt Stasia now. Grabbing a candle from the bureau top, she stuck it up her crotch, and as she did so she rolled her pelvis frantically.

Isn’t that worth fifty dollars? she cried. What’s his name would pay even more, but then I would have to let him suck me off, and I don’t like being sucked off. Not by a pervert, any way.

Stop it! Stop it, or I’ll run away! From Mona.

She quieted down. The candle fell to the floor. A new expression now came over her countenance. As she slipped into her blouse she said very quietly, addressing her words to me:

You see, Val, if any one must be injured or humiliated, it’s me, not your dear wife. I have no moral sense. I have only love. If money is needed, I’m always ready to put on an act. Since I’m crazy, it doesn’t matter. She paused, then turned to the dresser in the other corner of the room. Opening a drawer, she pulled out an envelope. See this? she said, waving the envelope in the air. There’s a check in this sent by my guardians. Enough to pay next month’s rent. But—and she calmly proceeded to tear the envelope to bits—we don’t want that kind of money, do we? We know how to make our own way … giving exhibitions … pretending that we’re Lesbians., pretending that we’re make-believe Lesbians. Pretending, pretending … I’m sick of it. Why don’t we pretend that we’re just human beings?

It was Kronski who now spoke up.

Of course you’re a human being, and a most unusual one. Somewhere along the line you got bitched up—how, I don’t know. What’s more, I don’t want to know. If I thought you would listen to me I’d urge you to get out of here, leave these two. He threw a contemptuous look at Mona and myself. Yes, leave them to solve their own problems. They don’t need you, and you certainly don’t need them. You don’t belong in a place like New York. Frankly, you don’t fit anywhere … But what I want to say is this … I came here as a friend. You need a friend. As for these two, they don’t know the meaning of the word. Of the three you’re probably the healthiest. And you have genius as well…

I thought he would continue indefinitely. Suddenly, however, he recalled aloud that he had an urgent visit to make and made an abrupt departure.

Later that evening—they had decided not to go out—a curious thing happened. It was just after dinner, in the midst of a pleasant conversation. The cigarettes had given out, and Mona had asked me to look in her bag. Usually there was a stray one to be found in the bottom of the bag. I rose, went to the dresser where the bag lay and, as I opened the bag, I noticed an envelope addressed to Mona in Stasia’s hand. In a second Mona was at my side. If she hadn’t shown such panic I might have ignored the presence of the envelope. Unable to restrain herself, she made a grab for the envelope. I snatched it out of her hand. She made another grab for it and a tussle ensued in which the envelope, now torn, fell to the floor. Stasia fastened on it, then handed it back to Mona.

Why all the fuss? I said, unconsciously repeating Kronski’s words.

The two of them replied at once: wit’s none of your business.

I said nothing more. But my curiosity was thoroughly aroused. I had a hunch the letter would turn up again. Better to pretend complete lack of interest.

Later that same evening, on going to the toilet, I discovered bits of the envelope floating in the bowl. I chuckled. What a flimsy way of telling me that the letter had been destroyed! I wasn’t being taken in that easily. Fishing the pieces of envelope out of the bowl I examined them carefully. No part of the letter adhered to any of the pieces. I was certain now that the letter itself had been preserved, that it had been stashed away somewhere, some place I would never think to look.

A few days later I picked up a curious piece of information. It fell out during the course of a heated argument between the two of them. They were in Stasia’s little room, where they usually repaired to discuss secret affairs. Unaware of my presence in the house, or perhaps too excited to keep their voices down, words were bandied about that should never have reached my ears.

Mona was raising hell with Stasia, I gathered, because the latter had been throwing her money around like a fool. What money? I wondered. Had she come into a fortune? What made Mona furious, apparently, was that Stasia had given some worthless idiot—I couldn’t catch the name—a thousand dollars. She was urging her to make some effort to recover part of the money at least. And Stasia kept repeating that she wouldn’t think of it, that she didn’t care what the fool did with her money.

Then I heard Mona say: If you don’t watch out you’ll be waylaid some night.

And Stasia innocently: They’ll be out of luck. I don’t have any more.

You don’t have any more?

Of course not! Not a red cent.

You’re mad!

I know I am. But what’s money good for if not to throw away?

I had heard enough. I decided to take a walk. When I returned Mona was not there.

Where did she go? I asked, not alarmed but curious.

For reply I received a grunt.

Was she angry?

Another grunt, followed by—I suppose so. Don’t worry, she’ll be back.

Her manner indicated that she was secretly pleased.

Ordinarily she would have been upset, or else gone in search of Mona.

Can I make you some coffee? she asked. It was the first time she had ever made such a suggestion.

Why not? said I, affable as could be.

I sat down at the table, facing her. She had decided to drink her coffee standing up.

A strange woman, isn’t she? said Stasia, skipping all preliminaries. What do you really know about her?, Have you ever met her brothers or her mother or her sister? She claims her sister is far more beautiful than she is. Do you believe that? But she hates her. Why? She tells you so much, then leaves you dangling. Everything has to be turned into a mystery, have you noticed?

She paused a moment to sip her coffee.

We have a lot to talk about, if, we ever get the chance. Maybe between us we could piece things together.

I was just about to remark that it was useless even to try when she resumed her monologue.

You’ve seen her on the stage, I suppose?

I nodded.

Know why I ask? Because she doesn’t strike me as an actress. Nor a writer either. Nothing fits with anything. Everything’s part of a huge fabrication, herself included. The only thing that’s real about her is her make believe. And—her love for you.

The last gave me a jolt. You really believe that, do you?

Believe it? she echoed. If she didn’t have you there would be no reason for her to exist. You’re her life…

And you? Where do you fit in?

She gave me a weird smile. Me? I’m just another piece of the unreality she creates around her. Or a mirror perhaps in which she catches a glimpse of her true self now and then. Distorted, of course.

Then, veering to more familiar ground, she said: Why don’t you make her stop this gold-digging? There’s no need for it. Besides, it’s disgusting the way she goes at it. What makes her do it I don’t know. It’s not money she’s after. Money is only the pretext for something else. It’s as though she digs at some one just to awaken interest in herself. And the moment one shows a sign of real interest she humiliates him. Even poor Ricardo had to be tortured; she had him squirming like an eel … We’ve got to do something, you and I. This has to stop.

If you were to take a job, she continued, she wouldn’t have to go to that horrible place every night and listen to all those filthy-mouthed creatures who fawn on her. What’s stopping you? Are you afraid she would be unhappy leading a humdrum existence? Or perhaps you think I’m the one who’s leading her astray? Do you? Do you think I like this sort of life? No matter what you think of me you must surely realize that I have nothing to do with all this.

She stopped dead.

Why don’t you speak Say something!

Just as I was about to open my trap in walks Mona—with a bunch of violets. A peace offering.

Soon the atmosphere became so peaceful, so harmonious, that they were almost beside themselves. Mona got out her mending and Stasia her paint box. I took it all in as if it were happening on the stage.

In less than no time Stasia had made a recognizable portrait of me—on the wall which I was facing. It was the in the image of a Chinese mandarin, garbed in a Chinese blue jacket, which emphasized the austere, sage-like expression I had evidently assumed.

Mona thought it ravishing. She also commended me in a motherly way for sitting so still and for being so sweet to Stasia. She had always known we would one day get to know one another, become firm friends. And so on.

She was so happy that in her excitement she inadvertently spilled the contents of her purse on the table—looking for a cigarette—and out fell the letter. To her astonishment I picked it up and handed it to her, without the slightest attempt to scan a line or two.

Why don’t you let him read it? said Stasia.

I will, she said, but not now. I don’t want to spoil this moment.

Said Stasia: There’s nothing in it to be ashamed of.

I know that, said Mona.

Forget about it, said I. Fm no longer curious.

You’re wonderful, the two of you! How could any one help loving you? I love you both, dearly.

To this outburst Stasia, now in a slightly Satanic mood, replied: Tell us, whom do you love more?

Without the slightest hesitation came the reply. I couldn’t possibly love either of you more. I love you both. My love for one has nothing to do with my love for the other. The more I love you, Val, the more I love Stasia.

There’s an answer for you, said Stasia, picking up her brush to resume work on the portrait.

There was silence for a few moments, then Mona spoke up. What on earth were you two talking about while I was gone?

About you, of course, said Stasia. Weren’t we, Val?

Yes, we were saying what a wonderful creature you are. Only we couldn’t understand why you try to keep things from us.

She bristled immediately. What things? What do you mean?

Let’s not go into it now, said Stasia, plying the brush. But soon we ought to sit down, the three of us, and get things straight, don’t you think? With this she turned round and looked Mona full in the face.

I have no objection, was Mona’s cold response. See, she’s peeved, said Stasia. She doesn’t understand, said I.

Again a flare up. What don’t I understand? What is this? What are you driving at, the two of you?

We really didn’t have much to say while you were gone, I put in. We were talking about truth and truthfulness mostly … Stasia, as you know, is a very truthful person.

A faint smile spread over Mona’s lips. She was about to say something, but I cut in.

It’s nothing to worry about. We’re not going to put you through a cross-examination.

We only want to see how honest you can be, said Stasia.

You talk as if I were playing a game with you.

Exactly, said Stasia.

So that’s it! I leave the two of you alone for a few minutes and you rip me up the back. What have I done to deserve such treatment?

At this point I lost track of the conversation. All I could think of was that last remark—what have I done to deserve such treatment! It was my mother’s favorite phrase when in distress. Usually she accompanied it with a backward tilt of the head, as if addressing her words to the Almighty. The first time I heard it—I was only a child—it filled me with terror and disgust. It was the tone of voice more than the words which roused my resentment. Such self-righteousness! Such self-pity! As if God had singled her out, her, a model of a creature, for wanton punishment.

Hearing it now, from Mona’s lips, I felt as if the ground had opened beneath my feet. Then you are guilty, I said to myself. Guilty of what I made no effort to define. Guilty, that was all.

Now and then Barley dropped in of an afternoon, closeted himself with Stasia in her little room, laid a few eggs (poems), then fled precipitously. Each time he called strange sounds emanated from the hall bedroom. Animal cries, in which fear and ecstasy were combined. As if we had been visited by a stray alley cat.

Once Ulric called, but found the atmosphere so depressing I knew he would never repeat the visit. He spoke as of I were going through another phase. His attitude was—when you emerge from the tunnel, look me up! He was too discreet to make any comment on Stasia. All he dropped was: A rum one, that!

To further the courtship I decided one day to get tickets for the theatre It was agreed that we would meet outside the theatre. The evening came. I waited patiently a half-hour after the curtain had risen, but no Mona. Like a school-boy, I had bought a bunch of violets to present her. Catching a reflection of myself in a shop window, the violets in my mitt, I suddenly felt so foolish that I dropped the violets and walked away. Nearing the corner, I turned round just in time to catch sight of a young girl in the act of recovering the violets. She raised them to her nostrils, took a deep whiff, then threw them away.

On reaching the house I noticed that the lights were on full blast. I stood outside a few minutes, bewildered by the burst of song from within. For a moment I wondered if there were visitors. But no, it was just the two of them. They were certainly in high spirits.

The song which they were singing at the top of their lungs was—Let Me Call You Sweetheart.

Let’s sing it again! said I, as I walked in.

And we did, all three of us.

Let me call you sweetheart, I’m in love with you…

Again we sang it, and again. The third time around I put up my hand.

Where were you? I bawled.

Where was I? said Mona. Why, right here.

And our date?

I didn’t think you were serious.

You didn’t? With that I gave her a sound slap in the puss. A real clout.

Next time, my lady, I’ll drag you there by the tail.

I sat down at the gut table and took a good look at them. My anger fell away.

I didn’t mean to hit you so hard, said I, removing my hat. You’re unusually gay this evening. What’s happened?

They took me by the arm and escorted me to the rear of the place, where the laundry tubs used to stand.

That’s what, said Mona, pointing to a pile of groceries. I had to be here when they arrived. There was no way to let you know in time. That’s why I didn’t meet you.

She dove into the pile and extracted a bottle of Benedictine. Stasia had already selected some black caviar and biscuits.

I didn’t bother to ask how they had come by the loot. That would leak out of itself, later.

Isn’t there any wine? I asked.

Wine? Of course there was. What would I like—Bordeaux, Rhine wine, Moselle, Chianti, Burgundy … ?

We opened a bottle of Rhine wine, a jar of lachs, and a tin of English biscuits—the finest. Resumed our places around the gut table.

Stasia’s pregnant, said Mona. Like she might have said—Stasia’s got a new dress.

Is that what you were celebrating?

Of course not.

I turned to Stasia. Tell us about it, I said, I’m all ears.

She turned red and looked helplessly at Mona. Let her tell you, she said.

I turned to Mona. Well?

It’s a long story, Val, but I’ll make it short. She was attacked by a bunch of gangsters in the Village. They raped her.

They? How many?

Four, said Mona. Do you remember the night we didn’t come home? That was the night.

Then you don’t know who the father is?

The father is, they echoed. We’re not worrying about the father.

I’d be glad to take care of the brat, said I. All I need to learn is how to produce milk.

We’ve spoken to Kronski, said Mona. He’s promised to take care of things. But first he wants to examine her.

Again?

He’s got to be certain.

Are you certain?

Stasia is. She’s stopped menstruating.

That means nothing, said I. You’ve got to have better evidence than that.

Stasia now spoke up. My breasts are getting heavy. She unbuttoned her blouse and took one out. See! She squeezed it gently. A drop or two of what looked like yellow pus appeared. That’s milk, she said.

How do you know?

I tasted it.

I asked Mona to squeeze her breasts and see what would happen, but she refused. Said it was embarrassing.

Embarrassing? You sit with your legs crossed and show us everything you’ve got, but you won’t take your boobies out. That’s not embarrassing, that’s perverse.

Stasia burst out laughing. It’s true, she said. What’s wrong with showing us your breasts?

You’re the one who’s pregnant, not I, said Mona.

When is Kronski coming?

To-morrow.

I poured myself another glass of wine and raised it on high. To the unborn! I said. Then lowering my voice, I inquired if they had notified the police.

They ignored this. As if to tell me the subject was closed, they announced that they were planning to go to the theatre shortly. They’d be glad to have me come along, if I wished.

To see what? I asked.

The Captive, said Stasia. It’s a French play. Everybody’s talking about it.

During the conversation Stasia had been trying to cut her toe nails. She was so awkward that I begged her to let me do it for her. When I had finished the job I suggested that she let me comb her hair. She was delighted.

As I combed her hair she read aloud from The Drunken Boat. Since I had listened with evident pleasure she jumped up and went to her room to fetch a biography of Rimbaud. It was Carry’s Season in Hell. Had events not conspired to thwart it, I would have become a devotee of Rimbaud then and there.

It wasn’t often, I must say, that we passed an evening together in this manner, or ended it on such a good note.

With Kronski’s arrival next day and the results of the examination negative, things commenced to go awry in earnest. Sometimes I had to vacate the premises while they entertained a very special friend, usually a benefactor who brought a supply of groceries or who left a check on the table. Conversing before me they often indulged in double talk, or exchanged notes which they wrote before my eyes. Or they would lock themselves in Stasia’s room and there keep up a whispered conversation for an ungodly while. Even the poems Stasia wrote were becoming more and more unintelligible. At least, those she deigned to show me. Rimbaud’s influence, she said. Or the toilet-box, which never ceased gurgling.

By way of relief there were occasional visits from Osiecki who had discovered a nice speak-easy, over a funeral parlor, a few blocks away. I’d have a few beers with him—until he got glassy-eyed and started scratching himself. Sometimes I’d take it into my head to go to Hoboken and, while wandering about forlornly, I’d try to convince myself that it was an interesting burg. Weehawken was another God-forsaken place I’d go to occasionally, usually to see a burlesque show. Anything to escape the loony atmosphere of the basement, the continual chanting of love songs—they had taken to singing in Russian, German, even Yiddish!—the mysterious confabs in Stasia’s rooms, the barefaced lies, the dreary talk of drugs, the wrestling matches…

Yes, now and then they would stage a wrestling match for my benefit. Were they wrestling matches? Hard to tell. Sometimes, just to vary the monotony, I would borrow brush and paints and do a caricature of Stasia.

Always on the walls. She would answer in kind. One day I painted a skull and cross-bones on her door. The next day I found a carving knife hanging over the skull and bones.

One day she produced a pearl-handled revolver. Just in case, she said.

They were accusing me now of sneaking into her room and going through her things.

One evening, wandering by my lonesome through the Polish section of Manhattan, I stumbled into a pool room where, to my great surprise, I found Curley and a friend of his shooting pool. He was a strange youngster, this friend, and only recently released from prison. Highly excitable and full of imagination. They insisted on returning to the house with me and having a gab fest.

In the subway I gave Curley an earful about Stasia. He reacted as if the situation were thoroughly familiar to him.

Something’s got to be done, he remarked laconically.

His friend seemed to be of the same mind.

They jumped when I turned on the lights.

She must be crazy! said Curley.

His friend pretended to be frightened by the paintings. He couldn’t take his eyes off them.

I’ve seen them before, he said, meaning in the booby hatch.

Where does she sleep? said Curley.

I showed them her room. It was in a state of complete disorder—books, towels, panties, pieces of bread scattered over the bed and on the floor.

Nuts! Plain nuts! said Curley’s friend.

Curley meanwhile had begun to poke around. He busied himself opening one drawer after another, pulling the contents out, then shoving them back in.

What is it you’re looking for? I asked.

He looked at me and grinned. You never know, he said.

Presently he fixed his eyes on the big trunk in the corner under the toilet box.

What’s in there?

I shrugged my shoulders.

Let’s find out, he said. He unfastened the hasps, but the lid was locked. Turning to his friend, he said: Where’s that gimmick of yours? Get busy! I’ve got a hunch we’re going to find something interesting.

In a moment his friend had pried open the lock. With a jerk they threw back the lid of the trunk. The first object that greeted our eyes was a little iron casket, a jewelry box, no doubt. It wouldn’t open. The friend again produced his gimmick. It was the work of a moment to unlock the casket.

Amidst a heap of billets-doux—from friends unknown—we discovered the note which had supposedly been flushed down the toilet. It was in Mona’s handwriting, sure enough. It began thus: Desperate, my lover…

Hold on to it, said Curley, you may need it later on. He began stuffing the other letters back into the casket. Then he turned to his friend and advised him to make the Jock look as it should. See that the trunk lock works right too, he added. They mustn’t suspect anything.

Then, like a pair of stage hands, they proceeded to restore the room to its original state of disorder, even down to the distribution of the bread crumbs. They argued a few minutes as to whether a certain book had been lying on the floor open or unopened.

As we were leaving the room the young man insisted that the door had been ajar, not closed.

Fuck it! said Curley. They wouldn’t remember that.

Intrigued by this observation, I said: What makes you so sure?

It’s just a hunch, he replied. You wouldn’t remember, would you, unless you had a reason for leaving the door partly open. What reason could she have had? None. It’s simple.

It’s too simple, I said. One remembers trivial things without reason sometimes.

His answer was that any one who lived in a state of filth and discorder couldn’t possibly have a good memory. Take a thief, he said, he knows what he’s doing, even when he makes a mistake. He keeps track of things. He has to or he’d be shit out of luck. Ask this guy!

He’s right, said his friend. The mistake I made was in being too careful. He wanted to tell me his story, but I urged them to go. Save it for next time, I said.

Sailing into the street, Curley turned to inform me that I could count on his aid any time. We’ll fix her, he said.

5.

It was getting to be like sequences in a coke dream, what with the reading of entrails, the unraveling of lies, the bouts with Osiecki, the solo ramblings along the waterfront at night, the encounters with the masters at the public library, the wall paintings, the dialogues in the dark with my other self, and so on. Nothing could surprise me any more, not even the arrival of an ambulance. Some one, Curley most likely, had thought up that idea to rid me of Stasia. Fortunately I was alone when the ambulance pulled up. There was no crazy person at this address, I informed the driver. He seemed disappointed. Some one had telephoned to come and get her. A mistake, I said.

Now and then the two Dutch sisters who owned the building would drop in to see if all was well. Never stayed but a minute or two. I never saw them except unkempt and bedraggled. The one sister wore blue stockings and the other pink and white striped stockings. The stripes ran spirally, like on a barber’s pole.

But about The Captive … I went to see the play on my own, without letting them know. A week later they went to see it, returning with violets and full of song. This time it was—(Just a Kiss in the Dark.

Then one evening—how did it ever happen?—the three of us went to eat in a Greek restaurant. There they spilled the beans, about The Captive, what a wonderful play it was and how I ought to see it some time, maybe it would enlarge my ideas. But I have seen it! I said. I saw it a week ago. Whereupon a discussion began as to the merits of the play, capped by a battle royal because I failed to see eye to eye with them, because I interpreted everything in a prosaic, vulgar way. In the midst of the argument I produced the letter filched from the little casket. Far from being crestfallen or humiliated, they sailed into me with such venom, raised such a howl and stink, that soon the whole restaurant was in an uproar and we were asked, none too politely, to leave.

As if to make amends, the following day Mona suggested that I take her out some night, without Stasia. I demurred at first but she kept insisting. I thought probably she had a reason of her own, one which would be disclosed at the proper time, and, so I agreed. We were to do it the night after next.

The evening came but, just as we were about to leave she grew irresolute. True, I had been ragging her about her appearance—the lip rouge, the green eyelids, the white powdered cheeks, the cape that trailed the ground, the skirt that came just to her knees, and above all, the puppet, that leering, degenerate-looking Count Bruga, which she was hugging to her bosom and which she meant to take along.

No, I said, not that, by God!

Why?

Because … God-damn it, no!

She handed the Count to Stasia, removed her cape, and sat down to think it over. Experience told me that that was the end of our evening. To my surprise, however, Stasia now came over, put both arms around us—just like a great big sister—and begged us not to quarrel. Go! she said. Go and enjoy yourselves! I’ll clean house while you’re gone. She fairly pushed us out, and as we marched off she kept shouting—Have a good time! Enjoy yourselves!

It was a lame start but we had decided to go through with it. As we hastened our steps—why? where were we rushing?—I felt as if I would explode. But I couldn’t get a word out, I was tongue-tied. Here we were, rushing along arm in arm to enjoy ourselves, but nothing definite had been planned. Were we just taking the air?

Presently I realized that we were headed for the subway. We entered, waited for a train, got in, sat down. Not a word as yet had passed between us. At Times Square we rose, like robots tuned to the same wave length, and tripped up the stairs. Broadway. Same old Broadway, same old Neon hell’s a-fire. Instinctively we headed north. People stopped in their tracks to stare at us. We pretended not to notice.

Finally we arrived in front of Chin Lee’s. Shall we go up? she asked. I nodded. She walks straight to the booth we had occupied that first night—a thousand years ago.

The moment the food is served her tongue loosens. Everything floods back: the food we ate, the way we faced each other, the airs we listened to, the things we said to one another … Not a detail overlooked.

As one recollection followed another we grew more and more sentimental. Falling in love again … never wanted to … what am I to do…? It was as if nothing had happened in between—no Stasia, no cellar life, no misunderstandings. Just we two, a pair of shoulder birds, with life everlasting.

A full dress rehearsal, that’s what it was. To-morrow we would play our parts—to a packed house.

Were I asked which was the true reality, this dream of love, this lullaby, or the copper-plated drama which inspired it, I would have said—This. This is it!

Dream and reality—are they not interchangeable?

Beyond ourselves, we gave our tongues free rein, looked at one another with new eyes, more hungry, greedy eyes than ever before, believing, promising, as if it were our last hour on earth. We had found one another at last, we understood one another, and we would love one another forever and ever.

Still dewy, still reeling from the fumes of bliss, we left arm in arm and started wandering through the streets. No one stopped to look at us.

In a Brazilian coffee house we sat down again and resumed the duologue. Here the current showed signs of fluctuating. Now came halting admissions tinged with guilt and remorse. All that she had done, and she had done worse things than I imagined, had been done through fear of losing my love. Simpleton that I was, I insisted that she was exaggerating, I begged her to forget the past, declared it was of no importance whether true or false, real or imagined. I swore that there could never be any one but her.

The table at which we were seated was shaped like a heart. It was to this onyx heart that we addressed our vows of everlasting fealty.

Finally I could stand no more of it. I had heard too much. Let’s go, I begged.

We rolled home in a cab, too exhausted to exchange another word.

We walked in on a scene transformed. Everything was in order, polished, gleaming. The table was laid for three. In the very center of the table stood a huge vase from which an enormous bouquet of violets sprouted.

All would have been perfect had it not been for the violets. Their presence seemed to outweigh all the words which had passed between us. Eloquent and irrefutable was their silent language. Without so much as parting their lips they made it clear to us that love is something which must be shared. Love me as I love you. That was the message.

Christmas was drawing nigh and in deference to the spirit of the season, they decided to invite Ricardo for a visit. He had been begging permission for this privilege for months; how they had managed to put off such a persistent suitor so long was beyond me.

Since they had often mentioned my name to Ricardo—I was their eccentric writer friend, perhaps a genius!—it was arranged that I should pop in soon after he arrived. There was a double purpose in this strategy, but the principal idea was to make sure that Ricardo left when they left.

I arrived to find Ricardo mending a skirt. The atmosphere was that of a Vermeer. Or a Saturday Evening Post cover depicting the activity of the Ladies’ Home Auxiliary.

I liked Ricardo immediately. He was all they said of him plus something beyond reach of their antennae. We began talking at once as if we had been friends all our lives. Or brothers. They had said he was Cuban, but I soon discovered that he was a Catalonian who had emigrated to Cuba as a young man. Like others of his race, he was grave, almost sombre, in appearance. But the moment he smiled one detected the child-like heart. His thick guttural accent made his words thrum. Physically he bore a strong resemblance to Casals. He was profoundly serious, but not deadly serious, as they had given me to believe.

Observing him bent over his sewing, I recalled the speech Mona had once made about him. Particularly those words he had spoken so quietly: I will kill you one day.

He was indeed a man capable of doing such a thing. Strangely enough, my feeling was that anything Ricardo might decide to do would be entirely justifiable. To kill, in his case, could not be called a crime; it would be an act of justice. The man was incapable of doing an impure thing. He was a man of heart, all heart, indeed.

At intervals he sipped the tea which they had poured for him. Had it been firewater he would have sipped it in the same calm, tranquil way, I thought. It was a ritual he was observing. Even his way of talking gave the impression of being part of a ritual.

In Spain he had been a musician and a poet; in Cuba he had become a cobbler. Here he was nobody. However, to be a nobody suited him perfectly. He was nobody and everybody. Nothing to prove, nothing to achieve. Fully accomplished, like a rock.

Homely as sin he was, but from every pore of his being there radiated only kindness, mercy and forbearance. And this was the man to whom they imagined they were doing a great favor! How little they suspected the man’s keen understanding! Impossible for them to believe that, knowing all, he could still give nothing but affection. Or, that he expected nothing more of Mona than the privilege of further inflaming his mad passion.

One day, he says quietly, I will marry you. Then all this will be like a dream.

Slowly he raises his eyes, first to Mona, then to Stasia, then to me. As if to say—You have heard me.

What a lucky man, he says, fixing me with his steady, kindly gaze. ‘What a lucky man you are to enjoy the friendship of these two. I have not yet been admitted to the inner circle.

Then, veering to Mona, he says: You will soon tire of being forever mysterious. It is like standing before the mirror all day. I see you from behind the mirror. The mystery is not in what you do but in what you are. When I take you out of this morbid life you will be naked as a statue. Now your beauty is all furniture. It has been moved around too much. We must put it back where it belongs—on the rubbish pile. Once upon a time I thought that everything had to be expressed poetically, or musically. I did not realize that there was a place, and a reason, for ugly things. For me the worst was vulgarity. But vulgarity can be honest, even pleasing, as I discovered. We do not need to raise everything to the level of the stars. Everything has its foundation of clay. Even Helen of Troy. No one, not even the most beautiful of women, should hide behind her own beauty…

While speaking thus, in his quiet, even way, he continued with his mending. Here is the true sage, I thought to myself. Male and female equally divided; passionate, yet calm and patient; detached, yet giving fully of himself; seeing clearly into the very soul of his beloved, steadfast, devoted, almost idolatrous, yet aware of even her slightest defects. A truly gentle soul, as Dostoievsky would say.

And they had thought I would enjoy meeting this individual because I had a weakness for fools!

Instead of talking to him they plied him with questions, silly questions which were intended to reveal the absurd innocence of his nature. To all their queries he replied in the same vein. He answered them as if he were replying to the senseless remarks of children. While thoroughly aware of their abysmal indifference to his explanations, which he purposely drew out, he spoke as the wise man so often does when dealing with a child: he planted in their minds the seeds which later would sprout and, in sprouting, would remind them of their cruelty, their wilful ignorance, and the healing quality of truth.

In effect they were not quite as callous as their conduct might have led one to believe. They were drawn to him, one might even say they loved him, in a way which to them was unique. No one else they knew could have elicited such sincere affection, such deep regard. They did not ridicule this love if such it was. They were baffled by it. It was the sort of love which usually only an animal is capable of evoking. For only animals, it would seem, are capable of manifesting that total acceptance of human kind which brings about a surrender of the whole being—an unquestioning surrender, moreover, such as is seldom rendered by one human to another.

To me it was more than strange that such a scene should occur around a table where so much talk of love was constantly bandied. It was because of these continual eruptions indeed that we had come to refer to it as the gut table. In what other dwelling, I often wondered, could there be this incessant disturbance, this inferno of emotion, this devastating talk of love resolved always on a note of discord? Only now, in Ricardo’s presence, did the reality of love show forth. Curiously enough, the word was scarcely mentioned. But it was love, nothing else, that shone through all his gestures, poured through all his utterrances.

Love, I say. It might also have been God.

This same Ricardo, I had been given to understand, was a confirmed atheist. They might as well have said—a confirmed criminal. Perhaps the greatest lovers of God and of man have been confirmed atheists, confirmed criminals. The lunatics of love, so to say.

What one took him to be mattered not at all to Ricardo. He could give the illusion of being whatever one desired him to be. Yet he was forever himself.

If I am never to meet him again, thought I, neither shall I ever forget him. Though it may be given us only once in a lifetime to come into the presence of a complete and thoroughly genuine being, it is enough. More than enough. It was not difficult to understand why a Christ or a Buddha could, by a single word, a glance, or a gesture, profoundly affect the nature and the destiny of the twisted souls who moved within their spheres. I could also understand why some should remain impervious.

In the midst of these reflections it occurred to me that perhaps I had played a similar role, though in a far lesser degree, in those unforgettable days when, begging for an ounce of understanding, a sign of forgiveness, a touch of grace, there poured into my office a steady stream of hapless men, women and youngsters of all descriptions. From where I sat, as employment manager, I must have appeared to them either as a beneficent deity or a stern judge, perhaps even an executioner. I had power not only over their own lives but over their loved ones. Power over their very souls, it seemed. Seeking me out after hours, as they did, they often gave me the impression of convicts sneaking into the confessional through the rear door of the church. Little did they know that in begging for mercy they disarmed me, robbed me of my power and authority. It was not I who aided them at such moments, it was they who aided me. They humbled me, made me compassionate, taught me how to give of myself.

How often, after a heartrending scene, I felt obliged to walk over the Bridge—to collect myself. How unnerving, how shattering it was, to be regarded as an all-powerful being! How ironic and absurd too that, in the performance of my routine duties, I should be obliged to play the role of a little Christ! Half-way across the span I would stop and lean over the rail. The sight of the dark, oily waters below comforted me. Into the rushing stream I emptied my turbulent thoughts and emotions.

Still more soothing and fascinating to my spirit were the colored reflections which danced over the surface of the waters below. They danced like festive lanterns swaying in the wind; they mocked my sombre thoughts and illuminated the deep chasms of misery which yawned within me. Suspended high above the river’s flow, I had the feeling of being detached from all problems, relieved of all cares and responsibilities. Never once did the river stop to ponder or question, never once did it seek to alter its course. Always onward, onward, full and steady. Looking back toward the shore, how like toy blocks appeared the skyscrapers which overshadowed the river’s bank I How ephemeral, how puny, how vain and arrogant! Into these grandiose tombs men and women muscled their way day in and day out, killing their souls to earn their bread, selling themselves, selling one another, even selling God, some of them, and toward night they poured out again, like ants, choked the gutters, dove into the underground, or scampered homeward pitter-patter to bury themselves again, not in grandiose tombs now but, like the worn, haggard, defeated wretches they were, in shacks and rabbit warrens which they called home. By day the graveyard of senseless sweat and toil; by night the cemetery of love and despair. And these creatures who had so faithfully learned to run, to beg, to sell themselves and their fellow-men, to dance like bears or perform like trained poodles, ever and always belying their own nature, these same wretched creatures broke down now and then, wept like fountains of misery, crawled like snakes, uttered sounds which only wounded animals are thought to emit. What they meant to convey by these horrible antics was that they had come to the end of their rope, that the powers above had deserted them, that unless some one spoke to them who understood their language of distress they were forever lost, broken, betrayed. Some one had to respond, some one recognizable, some one so utterly inconspicuous that even a worm would not hesitate to lick his hoots.

And I was that kind of worm. The perfect worm. Defeated in the place of love, equipped not to do battle but to suffer insult and injury, it was I who had been chosen to act as Comforter. What a mockery that I who had been condemned and cast out, I who was unfit and altogether devoid of ambition, should be allotted the judge’s seat, made to punish and reward, to act the father, the priest, the benefactor—or the executioner! I who had trotted up and down the land always under the sting of the lash, I who could take the Wool worth stairs at a gallop—if it was to bum a free lunch—I who had learned to dance to any tune, to pretend all abilities, all capabilities, I who had taken so many kicks in the pants only to return for more, I who understood nothing of the crazy set-up except that it was wrong, sinful, insane, I now of all men was summoned to dispense wisdom, love and understanding. God himself could not have picked a better goat. Only a despised and lonely member of society could have qualified for this delicate role. Ambition did I say a moment ago? At last it came to me, the ambition to save what I could from the wreck. To do for these miserable wretches what had not been done for me. To breathe an ounce of spirit into their deflated souls. To set them free from bondage, honor them as human beings, make them my friends.

And while these thoughts (as of another life) were crowding my head, I could not help but compare that situation, so difficult as it then seemed, with the present one. Then my words had weight, my counsels were listened to; now nothing I said or did carried the least weight. I had become the fool incarnate. Whatever I attempted, whatever I proposed, fell to dust. Even were I to writhe on the floor protestingly, or foam at the mouth like an epileptic, it would be to no avail. I was but a dog baying at the moon.

Why had I not learned to surrender utterly, like Ricardo? Why had I failed to reach a state of complete humility? What was I holding out for in this lost battle?

As I sat watching this farce which the two of them were enacting for Ricardo’s benefit, I became more and more aware of the fact that he was not the least taken in. My own attitude I made clear each time I addressed him. It was hardly necessary, indeed, for I could sense that he knew I had no desire to deceive him. How little she suspected, Mona, that it was our mutual love for her which united us and which made this game ridiculously absurd.

The hero of love, I thought to myself, can never be deceived or betrayed by his bosom friend. What have they to fear, two brotherly spirits? It is the woman’s own fear, her own self-doubt, which alone can jeopardize such a relation. What the loved one fails to comprehend is that there can be no taint of treachery or disloyalty on the part of her lovers. She fails to realize that it is her own feminine urge to betray which unites her lovers so firmly, which holds their possessive egos in check, and permits them to share what they never would share were they not swayed by a passion greater than the passion of love. In the grip of such a passion the man knows only total surrender. As for the woman who is the object of such love, to uphold this love she must exercise nothing short of spiritual legerdemain. It is her inmost soul which is called upon to respond. And it grows, her soul, in the measure that it is inspired.

But if the object of this sublime adoration be not worthy! Seldom is it the man who is afflicted by such doubts. Usually it is the one who inspired this rare and overpowering love who falls victim to doubt. Nor is it her feminine nature which is solely at fault, but rather some spiritual lack which, until subjected to the test, had never been in evidence. With such creatures, particularly when endowed with surpassing beauty, their real powers of attraction remain unknown: they are blind to all but the lure of the flesh. The tragedy, for the hero of love, resides in the awakening, often a brutal one, to the fact that beauty, though an attribute of the soul, may be absent in everything but the lines and lineaments of the loved one.

6.

For days the after effects of Ricardo’s visit hung over me. To add to my distress, Christmas was almost upon us. It was the season of the year I not only loathed but dreaded. Since attaining manhood I had never known a good Christmas. No matter how I fought against it, Christmas day always found me in the bosom of the family—the melancholy knight wrapped in his black armor, forced like every other idiot in Christendom to stuff his belly and listen to the utterly empty babble of his kin.

Though I had said nothing as yet about the coming event—if only it were the celebration of the birth of a free spirit!—I kept wondering under what circumstances, in what condition of mind and heart, the two of us would find ourselves on that festive doomsday.

A most unexpected visit from Stanley, who had discovered our whereabouts by accident, only increased my distress, my inner uneasiness. True, he hadn’t stayed long. Just long enough, however, to leave a few lacerating barbs in my side.

It was almost as if he had come to corroborate the picture of failure which I always presented to his eyes. He didn’t even bother to inquire what I was doing, how we were getting on, Mona and I, or whether I was writing or not writing. A glance about the place was sufficient to tell him the whole story. Quite a come down! was the way he summed it up.

I made no attempt to keep the conversation alive. I merely prayed that he would leave as quickly as possible, leave before the two of them arrived in one of their pseudo-ecstatic moods.

As I say, he made no attempt to linger. Just as he was about to leave, his attention was suddenly arrested by a large sheet of wrapping paper which I had tacked on the wall near the door. The light was so dim that it was impossible to read what was written.

What’s that? he said, moving closer to the wall and sniffing the paper like a dog.

That? Nothing, I said. A few random ideas.

He struck a match to see for himself. He lit another and then another. Finally he backed away.

So now you’re writing plays. Hmmm.

I thought he was going to spit.

I haven’t even begun, I said shamefacedly. I’m just toying with the idea. I’ll probably never write it.

My thought exactly, he said, assuming that ever ready look of the grave-digger. You’ll never write a play or anything else worth talking about. You’ll write and write and never get anywhere.

I ought to have been furious but I wasn’t. I was crushed. I expected him to throw a little fat on the fire—a remark or two about the new romance he was writing. But no, nothing of the sort. Instead he said: I’ve given up writing. I don’t even read any more. What’s the use? He shook a leg and started for the door. Hand on the knob, he said solemnly and pompously: If I were in your boots I’d never give up, not if everything was against me. I don’t say you’re a writer, but … He hesitated a second, to frame it just right. But Fortune’s in your favor.

There was a pause, just enough to fill the phial with vitriol. Then he added: And you’ve never done a thing to invite it.

So long now, he said, slamming the gate to.

So long, said I.

And that was that.

If he had knocked me down I couldn’t have felt more flattened. I was ready to bury myself then and there. What little armature had been left me melted away. I was a grease spot, nothing more. A stain on the face of the earth.

Reentering the gloom I automatically lit a candle and, like a sleepwalker, planted myself in front of my idea of a play. It was to be in three acts and for three players only. Needless to say who they were, these strolling players.

I scanned the project I had drawn up for scenes, climaxes, background and what not. I knew it all by heart. But this time I read as if I had already written the play out. I saw what could be done with the material. (I even heard the applause which followed each curtain fall.) It was all so clear now. Clear as the ace of spades. What I could not see, however, was myself writing it. I could never write it in words. It had to be written in blood.

When I hit bottom, as I now had, I spoke in monosyllables, or not at all. I moved even less. I could remain in one spot, one position, whether seated, bending or standing, for an incredible length of time.

It was in this inert condition they found me when they arrived. I was standing against the wall, my head against the sheet of wrapping paper. Only a tiny candle was guttering on the table. They hadn’t noticed me there glued to the wall when they burst in. For several minutes they bustled about in silence. Suddenly Stasia spied me. She let out a shriek.

Look! she cried. What’s the matter with him?

Only my eyes moved. Otherwise I might have been a statue. Worse, a stiff!

She shook my arm which was hanging limp. It quivered and twitched a little. Still not a peep out of me.

Come here! she called, and Mona came on the gallop.

Look at him!

It was time to stir myself. Without moving from the spot or changing my position, I unhinged my jaw and said—but like the man in the iron mask—: There’s nothing wrong, dearies. Don’t be alarmed. I was just … just thinking.

Thinking? they shrieked.

Yes, little cherubs, thinking. What’s so strange about that?

Sit down! begged Mona, and she quickly drew up a chair. I sank into the chair as if into a pool of warm water. How good to make that little move! Yet I didn’t want to feel good. I wanted to enjoy my depression.

Was it from standing there glued to the wall that I had become so beautifully stilled? Though my mind was still active, it was quietly active. It was no longer running away with me. Thoughts came and went, slowly, lingeringly, allowing me time to cuddle them, fondle them. It was in this delicious slow drift that I had reached the point, a moment before their arrival, of dwelling with clarity on the final act of the play. It had begun to write itself out in my head, without the least effort on my part.

Seated now, with my back half-turned to them, as were my thoughts, I began to speak in the manner of an automaton. I was not conversing, merely speaking my lines, as it were. Like an actor in his dressing room, who continues to go through the motions though the curtain has fallen.

They had grown strangely quiet, I sensed. Usually they were fussing with their hair or their nails. Now they were so still that my words echoed back from the walls.

I was able to speak and to listen to myself at the same time. Delicious. Pleasantly hallucinated, so to speak.

I realized that if I stopped talking for one moment the spell would be broken. But it gave me no anxiety to think this thought. I would continue, as I told myself, until I gave out. Or until it gave out.

Thus, through the slit in the mask, I continued on and on, always in the same even, measured, hollow tone. As one does with mouth closed on finishing a book which is too unbelievably good.

Reduced to ashes by Stanley’s heartless words, I had come face to face with the source, with authorship itself, one might say. And how utterly different this was, this quiet flow from the source, than the strident act of creation which is writing! Dive deep and never come up! should be the motto for all who hunger to create in words. For only in the tranquil depths is it granted us to see and hear, to move and be. What a boon to sink to the very bottom of one’s being and never stir again!

In coming to I wheeled slowly around like a great lazy cod and fastened them with my motionless eyes. I felt exactly like some monster of the deep who has never known the world of humans, the warmth of the sun, the fragrance of flowers, the sound of birds, beasts or men. I peered at them with huge veiled orbs accustomed only to looking inward. How strangely wondrous was the world in this instant! I saw them and the room in which they were seated with eyes unsated: I saw them in their everlastingness, the room too, as if it were the only room in the whole wide world; I saw the walls of the room recede and the city beyond it melt to nothingness; I saw fields ploughed to infinity, lakes, seas, oceans melt into space, a space studded with fiery orbs, and in the pure unfading limitless light there whirred before my eyes radiant hosts of godlike creatures, angels, arch-angels, seraphim, cherubim.

As if a mist were suddenly blown away by a strong wind, I came to with both feet and with this absolutely irrelevant thought uppermost in my mind—that Christmas was on us.

What are we going to do? I groaned.

Just go on talking, said Stasia. I’ve never seen you this way before.

Christmas! I said. What are we going to do about Christmas?

Christmas? she yelled. For a moment she thought I was speaking symbolically. When she realized that I was no longer the person who had enchanted her she said: Christ! I don’t want to hear another word.

Good, said I, as she ducked into her room. Now we can talk.

Wait, Val, wait! cried Mona, her eyes misty. Don’t spoil it, I beg you.

It’s over, I replied. Over and done with. There is no more. Curtain.

Oh, but there is, there must be! she pleaded. Look, just be quiet … sit there … let me get you a drink.

Good, get me a drink! And some food! I’m famished. Where’s that Stasia? Come on, let’s eat and drink and talk our heads off. Fuck Christmas! Fuck Santa Claus! Let Stasia be Santa Claus for a change.

The two of them now hustled about to do me pleasure. They were so terribly eager to satisfy my least whim … it was almost as if an Elijah had appeared to them from out of the sky.

Is there any of that Rhine wine left? I yelled. Trot it out!

I was extraordinarily hungry and thirsty. I could scarcely wait for them to set something before me.

That damned Polak! I muttered.

What? said Stasia.

What was I talking about anyway? It’s all like a dream now … What I was thinking—is that what you wanted to know?—is that … is how wonderful it would be … if…

If what?

Never mind … I’ll tell you later. Hurry up and sit down!

Now I was electrified. Fish, was I? An electric eel, rather. All a-sparkle. And famished. Perhaps that’s why I glittered and sparkled so. I had a body again. Oh how good it was to be back in the flesh! How good to be eating and drinking, breathing, shouting!

It’s a strange thing, I began, after I had wolfed some victuals, how little we reveal of our true selves even when at our best. You’d like me to carry on where I left off, I suppose? Must have been exciting, all that stuff I dredged up from the bottom. Only the aura of it remains now. But one thing I’m sure of—I know that I wasn’t out of myself. I was in, in deeper than I’ve ever, ever been … I was spouting like a fish, did you notice? Not an ordinary fish, either, but the sort that lives on the ocean floor.

I took a good gulp of wine. Marvelous wine, Rhine wine.

The strange thing is that it all came about because of that skeleton of a play on the wall over there. I saw and heard the whole thing. Why try to write it, eh? There was only one reason why I ever thought of doing it, and that was to relieve my misery. You know how miserable I am, don’t you?

We looked at one other. Static.

It’s funny, but in that state I was in everything seemed entirely as it should be. I didn’t have to make the least effort to understand: everything was meaningful, justifiable and everlastingly real. Nor were you the devils I sometimes take you for. You weren’t angels either, because I had a glimpse of real ones. They were something else again. I can’t say as I’d want to see things that way all the time. Only statues…

Stasia broke in. What way? she wanted to know.

Everything at once, I said. Past, present, future; earth, air, fire and water. A motionless wheel. A wheel of light, I feel like saying. And the light revolving, not the wheel.

She reached for a pencil, as if to make a note.

Don’t! I said. Words can’t render the reality of it. What I’m telling you is nothing. I’m talking because I can’t help it, but it’s only a talking about. What happened I couldn’t possibly tell you … It’s like that play again. The play I saw and heard no man could write. What one writes is what one wants to happen. Take us, we didn’t happen, did we? No one thought us up. We are, that’s all. We always were. There’s a difference, what?

I turned directly to Mona. I’m really going to look for a job soon. You don’t suppose I’m ever going to write living this kind of life, do you? Let’s whore it, that’s my idea now.

A murmur escaped her lips, as if she were about to protest, but it died immediately.

Yes, as soon as the holidays are over I’ll strike out. Tomorrow I’ll telephone the folks to let them know we’ll be there for Christmas. Don’t let me down, I beg you. I can’t go there alone. I won’t. And try to look natural for once, will you? No make-up … no drag. Christ, it’s hard enough to face them under the best of conditions.

You come too, said Mona to Stasia.

Jesus, no! said Stasia.

You’ve got to! said Mona. I couldn’t go through with it without you.

Yes, I chimed in, do come along! With you around we won’t be in danger of falling asleep. Only, do wear a dress or a skirt, will you? And put your hair up in a bun, if you can.

This made them mildly hysterical. What, Stasia acting like a lady? Preposterous!

You’re trying to make a clown of her, said Mona.

I just ain’t a lady, groaned Stasia.

I don’t want you to be anything but your own sweet self, said I. But don’t get yourself up like a horse and buggy, that’s all.

Just as I expected, about three in the morning Christmas day the two of them staggered in dead drunk. The puppet, which they had dragged about with them, looked as if he had taken a beating. I had to undress them and tuck them between the sheets. When I thought they were sound asleep, what must they do but make pipi. Reeling and staggering, they groped their way to the John. In doing so they bumped into tables and chairs, fell down, picked themselves up again, screamed, groaned, grunted, wheezed, all in true dipsomaniac style. There was even a bit of vomiting, for good measure. As they piled into bed again I warned them to hurry and catch what sleep they could. The alarm was set for 9,80, I informed them.

I hardly got a wink of sleep myself; I tossed and fumed the whole night long.

Promptly at 9.80 the alarm went off. It went off extra loud, it seemed to me. At once I was on my feet. There they lay, the two of them, like dead. I pushed and prodded and pulled; I ran from one to the other, slapping them, pulling off the bed clothes, cursing them royally, threatening to belt them if they didn’t stir.

It took almost half an hour to get them on their feet and sufficiently roused not to collapse on my hands.

Take a shower! I yelled. Hurry! I’ll make the coffee.

How can you be so cruel? said Stasia.

Why don’t you telephone and say we’ll come this evening, for supper? said Mona.

I can’t! I yelled back. And I won’t! They expect us at noon, at one sharp, not to-night.

Tell them I’m ill, begged Mona.

I won’t do it. You’re going through with it if it kills you, do you understand?

Over the coffee they told me what they had bought for gifts. It was the gifts that caused them to get drunk, they explained. How was that? Well, in order to raise the money with which to buy the gifts they had had to tag around with some benevolent slob who was on a three day bender. Like that they got stinko. Not that they wanted to. No, they had hoped to duck him soon as the gifts were purchased, but he was a sly old bastard and he wasn’t to be hoodwinked that easy. They were lucky to get home at all, they confessed.

A good yarn and probably half-true. I washed it down with the coffee.

And now, I said, what is Stasia going to wear?

She gave me such a helpless, bewildered look that I was on the point of saying Wear any damned thing you please!

I’ll attend to her, said Mona. Don’t worry. Leave us in peace for a few minutes, won’t you?

O.K. I replied. But one o’clock sharp, remember!

The best thing for me to do, I decided, was to take a walk. I knew it would take a good hour, at least, to get Stasia into presentable shape. Besides, I needed a breath of fresh air.

Remember, I said, as I opened the door to go, you have just one hour, no more. If you’re not ready then we’ll leave as you are.

It was clear and crisp outdoors. A light snow had fallen during the night, sufficient to make it a clean, white Christmas. The streets were almost deserted. Good Christians and bad, they were all gathered about the evergreen tree, unwrapping their gift packages, kissing and hugging one another, struggling with hangovers and pretending that everything was just ducky. (Thank God, it’s over with!)

I strolled leisurely down to the docks to have a look at the ocean going vessels ranged side by side like chained dogs. All quiet as the grave here. The snow, sparkling like mica in the sunlight, clung to the rigging like so much cotton wool. There was something ghostly about the scene.

Heading up toward the Heights, I made for the foreign quarter. Here it was not only ghostly but ghastly. Even the Yuletide spirit had failed to give these shacks and hovels the look of human habitations. Who cared? They were heathens, most of them: dirty Arabs, slit-faced Chinks, Hindus, greasers, niggers … The guy coming toward me, an Arab most likely. Dressed in light dungarees, a battered skull cap and a pair of worn out carpet strippers. Allah be praised! I murmur in passing. A bit farther and I come upon a pair of brawling Mexicans, drunk, much too drunk, to get a blow in. A group of ragged children surround them, egging them on. Sock him! Bust his puss in! And now out of the side door of an old-fashioned saloon a pair of the filthiest looking bitches imaginable stragger into the bright clear sunlight of a clean white Christmas day. The one bends over to pull up her stockings and falls flat on her face; the other looks at her, as if it couldn’t be and stumbles on, one shoe on, one shoe off. Serene in her cock-eyed way, she hums a ditty as she ambles on.

A glorious day, really. So clear, so crisp, so bracing! If only it weren’t Christmas! Are they dressed yet, I wonder. My spirits are reviving. I can face it, I tell myself, if only they don’t make utter fools of themselves. All sorts of fibs are running through my head—yarns I’ll have to spin to put the folks at ease, always worried as they are about what’s happening to us. Like when they ask—Are you writing these days? and I’ll say: Certainly. I’ve turned out dozens of stories. Ask Mona. And Mona, how does she like her job? (I forget. Do they know where she’s working? What did I say last time? ) As for Stasia, I don’t know what the hell I’ll trump up there. An old friend of Mona’s, maybe. Some one she knew at school. An artist.

I walk in, and there’s Stasia with tears in her eyes, trying to squeeze into a pair of high-heeled shoes. Naked to the waist, a white petticoat from Christ knows where, garters dangling, hair a mess.

I’ll never make it, she groans. Why do I have to go?

Mona seems to think it uproariously funny. Clothes are lying all over the floor, and combs and hair pins.

You won’t have to walk, she keeps saying. We’ll take a taxi.

Must I wear a hat too?

We’ll see, dear.

I try to help them but I only make things worse.

Leave us alone, they beg.

So I sit in a corner and watch the proceedings. One eye on the clock. (It’s going on twelve already.)

Listen, I say, don’t try too hard. Just get her hair done up and throw a skirt over her.

They’re trying on ear rings and bracelets. Stop it! I yell. She looks like a Christmas tree.

It’s about twelve-thirty when we saunter out to hail a taxi. None in sight, naturally. Start walking. Stasia is limping. She’s discarded the hat for a beret. Looks almost legitimate now. Rather pathetic too. It’s an ordeal for her.

Finally we manage to run down a cab. Thank God, we’ll be only a few minutes late, I murmur to myself.

In the cab Stasia flicks off her shoes. They get to giggling. Mona wants Stasia to use a dash of lipstick, to make her look more feminine.

If she looks any more feminine, I warn, they’ll think she’s a fake.

How long must we stay? asks Stasia.

I can’t say. We’ll get away just as soon as we can. By seven or eight, I hope.

This evening!

Yes, this evening. Not to-morrow morning.

Jesus! she whistles. I’ll never be able to hold out.

Approaching our destination I tell the cabby to stop at the corner, not in front of the house.

Why? From Mona.

Because.

The cab pulls up and we pile out. Stasia is in her stocking feet, carrying her shoes.

Put them on! I yell.

There’s a large pine box outside the undertaker’s at the corner. Sit on that and put them on, I command. She obeys like a child. Her feet are wet, of course, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Struggling to get the shoes on, her beret tumbles off and her hair comes undone. Mona frantically endeavors to get it back in shape but the hair pins are nowhere to be found.

Let it go! What’s the difference? I groan.

Stasia gives her head a good shake, like a sportive filly, and her long hair falls down over her shoulders. She tries to adjust the beret but it looks ridiculous now no matter at what angle it’s cocked.

Come on, let’s get going. Carry it!

Is it far? she asks, limping again.

Just half-way down the block. Steady, now.

Thus we march three abreast down The Street of Early Sorrows. A rum trio, as Ulric would say. I can feel the piercing eyes of the neighbors staring at us from behind their stiff, starched curtains. The Millers’ son. That must be his wife. Which one?

My father is standing outside to greet us. A little late, as usual, he says, but in a cheery voice.

Yes, how are you? Merry Christmas! I lean forward to kiss him on the cheek, as I always did.

I present Stasia as an old friend of Mona’s. Couldn’t leave her by herself, I explain.

He gives Stasia a warm greeting and leads us into the house. In the vestibule, her eyes already filled with tears, stands my sister.

Merry Christmas, Lorette! Lorette, this is Stasia.

Lorette kisses Stasia affectionately. Mona! she cries, and how are you.? We thought you’d never come.

Where’s mother? I ask.

In the kitchen.

Presently she appears, my mother, smiling her sad, wistful smile. It’s crystal clear what’s running through her head: Just like always. Always late. Always something unexpected.

She embraces each of us in turn. Sit down, the turkey’s ready. Then, with one of her mocking, malicious smiles, she says: You’ve had breakfast, I suppose?

Of course, mother. Hours ago.

She gives me a look which says—I know you’re lying—and turns on her heel.

Mona meanwhile is handing out the gifts.

You shouldn’t have done it, says Lorette. It’s a phrase she’s picked up from my mother. It’s a fourteen pound turkey, she adds. Then to me: The minister wants to be remembered to you, Henry.

I cast a quick glance at Stasia to see how she’s taking it. There’s only the faintest trace of a good-natured smile on her face She seems genuinely touched.

Wouldn’t you like a glass of Port first? asks my father. He pours out three full glasses and hands them to us.

How about yourself? says Stasia.

I gave it up long ago, he replies. Then, raising an empty glass, he says—Prosit!

Thus it began, the Christmas dinner. Merry, merry Christmas, everybody, horses, mules, Turks, alcoholics, deaf, dumb, blind, crippled, heathen and converted. Merry Christmas! Hosanna in the highest! Hosanna to the Highest! Peace on earth—and may ye bugger and slaughter one another until Kingdom Come!