by Jack Kerouac
know what a spectacle you all make of your-
selves? You and that Julius…”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
Marie inquired.
“You know damned well what I’m talking
about, but that’s beside the point I suppose
in that damned pattern of yours!”
“Pattern?”
“Ha ha ha!” shouted Paul again from his
chair.
Michael gave him a seething look. Paul
put in quickly, “I know what you’re thinking!
Traitor! Traitor! Oh, what a joke that one is!
By the way, did you know that I stole your
poetry today?”
Michael didn’t seem to have heard, or if
he had, he didn’t seem to care.
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 174
Paul took out some papers and waved them
at Michael. “Shall I read you some excerpts,
hey?”
“To hell with all of you!” Michael said grim-
ly. “I’m wasting my time here.” And suddenly
he had hurried to the door, and they heard it
open and slam hard.
“Don’t get lost in your corridor!” Paul yelled
after him, jumping up from his chair and going
to the door. A moment later he was back, and
sat down in his chair and started to laugh.
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 175
Marie walked towards him and stopped
to look down at him.
“You can be very mean,” she said. “Do
you know that?”
“I’m talented,” Paul said.
“Hmm.”
Arthur was standing indecisively. It had
begun to rain steadily outside, and the win-
dow drummed and rattled in the wind.
“It seems super-
fluous to have
to be mean to a
person who does-
n’t know how to
be happy,” Marie
went on.
Paul looked up at her, surprised. “You think
that of Michael, that he can’t be happy?”
“He doesn’t know how. We were miser-
able in the Quarter.”
“And as for myself? Do I know how to be
happy?”
“Yes.”
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 176
“It’s interesting that you should know
that,” Paul said quickly.
“Just why?”
“That is the main point about Michael,”
Paul rushed on. “He himself thinks other-
wise, I mean as to the point: he’s always
preoccupied with his so-called amorality,
and just because of that simple fact, he’s not
amoral—but he doesn’t know that, does he?
No, the point about Michael is rather that he
doesn’t know how to be happy.”
“Well,” Arthur ventured, as he moved
towards the door. “I think I’ll be going now,
to dinner. Is anyone going to dinner?”
“Not now,” Marie said.
“Well, good night,” said Arthur, and went
out.
“Arthur’s a nice fellow,” Paul said dreami-
ly, “but he takes Michael much too seriously.”
They were silent as the rain and wind
beleaguered the windowpane.
“Did you enjoy your escapade?” Paul
inquired at length as he lit himself a ciga-
rette.
“Not too much.”
“Does Michael’s inferiority complex
annoy you?”
“It did.”
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 177
“Would you do it
again?”
“Perhaps—but not
with him. It was
somewhat pleasant,
though.”
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 178
“You’re a strange girl, Marie; way beyond
my comprehension, too.”
Marie laughed scornfully and turned on
the radio.
“Good-bye,” said Paul, getting up from
the chair. “I wish you could meet Helen
when she comes here some day. You’re the
nearest thing to Helen I’ve seen in my life.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“It’s by way of being a compliment from
both Michael and myself.”
“Oh?”
Paul laughed nervously. “I’ll bet you’re
thinking of me as a little fool. Well enough,
I don’t care: it doesn’t bother me. Good-bye,
Marie.”
Marie nodded and Paul went out.
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 179
VI
MICHAEL, ON
THE STREET
outside of Marie’s apartment, huddled
up in his coat and turned up the collar to
the rain. He started to walk, hardly car-
ing in what directions his footsteps took
him. But a vague idea was forming in
the back of his mind, and he began to
hurry towards the Boulevard Bar.
Three men were coming down the
sidewalk in Michael’s direction. They
wore raincoats and were shouting and
singing in a carefree manner. As they
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 181
approached Michael, they formed a wedge
in the center of the sidewalk and were quiet.
Michael, intent on his destination, and with
his head lowered against the driving rain,
walked straight up to them expecting in any
event that they would make room for him,
since they occupied the entire sidewalk.
But they did not separate, and one of them
suddenly waved his arms and began yelling,
“Out of my way! Out of my way, everybody!”
And saying this, he bumped directly into
Michael, pushed him aside violently with
his elbow, and paused to stare at him ques-
tioningly, with a look of stupefaction on his
face. The other two men began to laugh.
Michael registered only mild astonishment,
since he was so preoccupied with his anger
against Marie and Paul, and it hardly
occurred to him that his person was being
insulted—at least, for the moment.
The three men laughed as Michael shuf-
fled on in the rain.
And just as Michael reached the top of
the street and was turning into the boule-
vard, he heard the men shouting, followed
by the shattering of glass.
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 182
He turned in
time to see the
three men,
laughing uproar-
iously, run away
from the street
level window of
an apartment
house that they
had just broken
with a volley of
rocks.
Michael stopped, stunned and fright-
ened. Then he hurried on up the boulevard
towards the bar and walked in quickly. It
was warm and cheery in the bar, and the
place was already filling up despite the din-
ner hour. Michael sat at a table in the cor-
ner, flapped off the rain from his coat collar,
and ordered pernod and water. He l
ooked
at his hand and it was trembling violently.
When his drinks came, he drank up quickly
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 183
and began to shiver and tremble all over.
The seaman who had bought Anthony
drinks a week ago was standing at the bar
talking to two men. He was very drunk
again, and occasionally he would totter and
almost fall on his back.
“Someday,” he was crying thickly—and so
loudly that the bartenders were looking at each
other with significance—“someday I’m going to
walk into a rich man’s house, with my dirty boots
covered with mud, and with a gun, I’ll shoot
everything down, the rich man, the paintings on
the wall, the expensive vases, the draperies…
Gentlemen,” he went on ponderously, reeling
back against another man who was just then
crossing the room, “I shall bring his house down
upon his head.”
The man into whom the drunken sea-
man had reeled now gave a violent push, for
he too was drunk, and was annoyed that
someone should reel against him. The sea-
man went hurtling against the bar, and like
a rubber ball, with his crossed eyes gleam-
ing at two divergent points in space, he
bounded back into the annoyed drunkard
and knocked him to the floor. The drunkard
got to his feet immediately and floundered
wildly towards the seaman. There was a
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 184
flurry of waving arms, and suddenly the
seaman went down under the impact of an
elbow in his face and smashed his head
against the brass rail running along the
base of the bar. Blood was spewing from the
drunkard’s nose as he panted, and he now
jumped down upon the prostrate seaman
and began to pummel his head with his
forearms. The two bartenders had by now
vaulted over the bar, and in doing so, had
overturned a bottle of beer which went
crashing to the floor and precipitated a
scream from a drunken woman at the cor-
ner of the bar.
In a moment, after much violent hauling
and pushing, the bartenders had directed
the two combatants to the door of the bar
and hurled them out into the rain. The
patrons of the bar now assembled at the
plate glass window, in one excited group,
and watched the resumption of the battle
outside. There was much shouting, and
cries of amazement on the part of the spec-
tators.
“Look at that! Look!”
“He’s going to kill him!” a woman cried
anxiously, dropping her glass to the floor.
“He’s beating his head on the pavement!”
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 185
Michael lowered his head and quickly
gulped his pernod. It burned violently in
his throat, and he took water. The specta-
tors were still yelling. Michael buried his
face in his hands, and suddenly, not to his
very great surprise, began to shake vio-
lently and even to sob a little. Then he
began to feel dizzy and sick; he rose
waveringly from the table and rushed to
the lavatory. He was there for what
seemed an eternity.
When he got back to his table, quiet
reigned again in the barroom. They were
saying that some policemen had come
along and broken up the fight with their
billy clubs, and carried the combatants
away in their police cars. The spectators
were back at their stations along the bar,
ordering more drinks. One bartender, with
a gleam in his eye as he shook the mixer,
was shouting down the bar to the other bar-
tender, “Well! That’s it for tonight!”
Michael ordered another pernod and
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 186
water and drank it as soon as it came. Now
he no longer felt like weeping; he felt only
bitterness, and there was a fuzz before his
eyes. His hands were still trembling and lit-
tle drops of sweat were running down into
his collar.
After drinking down the third pernod, Leo
was suddenly standing beside his table, car-
rying a load of books and looking contented.
“Michael!” he greeted. “It’s good to see
you again!” He sat down and placed his
books on the table. “I’m going to drink a
glass of beer.”
“How are you?” Michael inquired
gloomily.
“Fine. But you don’t look so well. You’re
pale, and there’s sweat all over your face.
Did you know that Paul was back also? I
thought you were all gone for good; I was
getting lonesome.”
Michael smiled wanly.
“I heard a man was just killed,” Leo went
on, beckoning to the waiter.
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 187
“What?”
“Weren’t you around ten minutes ago?
You missed it. Two men were fighting in
here and then out on the sidewalk, and some
policemen came along to break it up, and
killed one of the men with their billy clubs.”
“Are you sure?”
“That’s what they’re all saying. I saw
them carry the dead man into the police car
as I came down the boulevard. Tell me,
where’s Paul?”
Michael was running his hand over his
face in great agitation. Looking up quickly,
he asked, “Paul?”
“Yes, where is he?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Leo smiled reassuringly. “You’re in a
nervous mood, I see. Is it because of the
repercussions of the Marie affair?”
“How did you find out? And I don’t care,
anyway.”
“They’re saying that Maureen has cast
you out, and that Anthony almost died of
grief and neglect and alcohol, and all kinds
of things.”
“Well, what of it?”
“And,” Leo went on garrulously, “you’d
better ask Paul for your poetry. I was with
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 188
him today when he stole it, and he threat-
ened to burn it.”
“I don’t care,” Michael said. “God,” he
added, “I don’t care about anything any
more. This is the end. Pah!”
Leo laughed loudly. The waiter set the
glass of beer before him and Leo took a
quick sip.
“I’m going to end my life soon,” Michael
added suddenly.
Leo laughed more loudly than before.
“Now, now,” he mocked indulgently. “None
of that, and besides, people never mean it
when they come out with it that way! Oh,
no—remember Ippolit in Dostoyevsky?”
“Ippolit meant what he said,” Michael
droned, staring into his empty glass. “It
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 189
wasn’t his fault that the gun didn’t go off.
That part was the biggest tragedy of the
book, not what came later.”
Leo laughed again; he was in a happy
mood, and the rain had brightened up his
usually dour complexion. “I don’t take you
seriously, at any rate. There’s a lot to live
for, and you must know that…”
Michael didn’t answer. He waved to the
waiter and ordered another pernod. Then
he turned to Leo: “And you say that one of
the men was killed?”
“Yes.”
Michael sighed heavily, shakily. “Look at
my hands,” he said at length, holding them
out for Leo to see. “See them shake violent-
ly? I’m on the verge of a nervous break-
down. I think I’m going crazy. I’ve got to
put an end to it.”
Leo laughed again and squeezed
Michael’s arm. “Don’t be ridiculous. You
dramatize everything. A little misery is
good for the poet. You yourself wrote this
line, I remember it: ‘Pain is the law of the
artist’s life.’ Ha ha! Aren’t I right?”
Michael shrugged gloomily.
“Pain is the substance of your life. That’s
what Goethe said. Remember that. Bear it
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 190
out with fortitude.”
“Fortitude!” sneered Michael. “What a
dull word! — I’m sick of hearing it. I don’t
want to be courageous, my emotions are
against it; I want to be happy.”
“Well—” began Leo.
“Shut up!” yelled Michael. The bar-
tenders had begun to look over to their
table. “Not so much noise,” one of them
called, waving his finger.
Michael glowered at the tabletop.
Another Pernod came and he threw a large
bill on the table.
“You’d better not drink much more per-
nod,” Leo warned. “You’ll be very drunk in
a matter of minutes.”
“Well? That’s pre-
cisely what I want.
I’m going to oblit-
erate myself, like
Anthony did, but
I’m going to do it
first with pernod,
and then—”
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ORPHEUS EMERGED 191
Michael left off and drank down a whole
glassful of pernod.
Leo grimaced good-naturedly. Suddenly