by Henry Miller
It was “one of those days” when a woman with whom I had exchanged some correspondence arrived from Holland. My wife had only reecntly left me and I was alone with my little girl. She was only in the room a few minutes when I sensed that an instantaneous and mutual antipathy had sprung up between the two. I apologized to my visitor for continuing with the chores—I had decided to wash the floor and wax it—and felt most grateful when she offered to do the dishes for me. Meanwhile Val, my daughter, was making things even more difficult than usual; she seemed to take a perverse delight in interrupting our conversation, erratic as it was with all the hopping about I was doing. Then she went to the toilet, only to announce a moment later that it wouldn’t flush. At once I dropped the mop, dashed for the pickaxe, and began removing the dirt which covers the septic tank. I had hardly begun when it started to rain. I continued nevertheless, somewhat annoyed, I confess, by my visitor’s frequent comings and goings, by her hysterical exhortations to abandon the task. Finally I managed to get my arm into the inlet which, as usual, was encrusted with snarled roots. As I pulled the blockage away, out came the water—and with it what had been dropped in the toilet bowl. I was a pretty sight when I came back to the house to clean up. The floor, of course, was a mess, and the furniture still piled on the table and the bed.
My visitor, who had built up a picture of me as a world-famous writer, a man living apart in that sublime place called Big Sur, began to berate me—or perhaps she thought she was consoling me—for trying to do so many things which had nothing to do with my work. Her talk sounded so absurd to me that, somewhat flabbergasted, I asked her curtly who she thought was to do the dirty work … God? She continued in her vague way to dwell on what I ought not to be doing, meaning cleaning, cooking, gardening, taking care of a child, fixing cesspools and so on. I was getting hot under the collar when suddenly I thought I heard a car pull up in the turn around. I stepped outside and, sure enough, there was Varda tripping down the steps, followed by his usual retinue of friends and admirers.
“Well, well! How are you? What a surprise!”
Handshakes, introductions all around. The usual exclamations. “What a marvelous place!” (Even in the rain.)
My visitor from Holland drew me aside. With an imploring look she whispered: “What do we do now?”
“Put a good face on it,” I said, and turned my back on her.
A few minutes later she tugged at my sleeve again to inquire plaintively if I would have to prepare a meal for all these people.
I skip what followed during the next few hours to give you her parting words: “I never dreamed that Big Sur was like this!”
Under my breath I added: “Nor did I!”
And there stands Ralph! Though it’s midsummer he’s wearing a heavy overcoat and fur-lined gloves. He has a book in his hand and, like a Tibetan monk, he’s leisurely pacing back and forth, back and forth. I had been so occupied pulling up weeds that I hadn’t noticed him immediately. It was only when I lifted my head to go in search of a mattock, which I had left near the fence, that I was aware of his presence in the turn around. Realizing that he was a queer one, I thought I might snatch the implement and sneak away without being hooked. I would just pay no attention to him; he might be sensitive and move off in a huff. But as I started toward the fence this queer apparition approached and started speaking to me. He spoke in such a low tone that I was obliged to move in closer. That was the clincher.
“Are you Henry Miller?” he says.
I nodded, though my impulse was to say no.
“I came to see you because I want to have a talk with you.”
(“Christ, here it begins,” I said to myself.)
“I was just driven away”—brutally or insultingly, I believe he added—“by a woman. Maybe it was your wife.”
To this I simply grunted.
He continued by informing me that he too was a writer, that he had run away from it all (meaning job and home) to live his own life.
“I came to join the cult of sex and anarchy,” he said, quietly and evenly, as if he were talking about toast and coffee.
I told him there was no such colony.
“But I read about it in the papers,” he insisted. He started to pull a newspaper out of his pocket.
“That was all an invention,” said I. “You musn’t believe everything you see in the papers.” I gave a forced laugh.
He seemed to doubt my words. Went on to tell me why he thought he would make an eligible member—even if there were no colony. (sic) I cut him short. Told him I had work to do. He would have to excuse me.
Now his feelings were hurt. There followed a brief exchange of question and answer—rather impertinent questions, rather caustic answers—which only seemed to increase his disturbance. Suddenly he opened the book he was holding and, turning the pages rapidly, he found the passage he was looking for. He then proceeded to read it aloud.
It was a passage from the Hamlet letters in which my friend and co-author, Michael Fraenkel, had raked me over the coals. Had excoriated me, in fact.
When he had finished reading he looked at me coldly and accusingly, to say: “I guess that fits, doesn’t it?”
I opened the gate and said: “Ralph, what in hell’s the matter with you? Come on down and talk it over!”
I ushered him into my little den, sat him down, handed him a cigarette and urged him to unbosom himself.
In a few minutes he was in tears. Just a poor, defenseless, brokenhearted boy.
That same evening I dispatched him, with a note, to Emil White at Anderson Creek. He had told me that he would head for Los Angeles, where he had an aunt, now that he knew there was no cult of sex and anarchy. I thought he would spend the night at Emil’s and move on. But, after a good dinner and a good night’s rest, he discovered that Emil owned a typewriter. In the morning, after a good breakfast, he sat down to the machine and, though he had never written a line before, he suddenly took it into his head to write a book. After a few days Emil gently informed him that he couldn’t put him up indefinitely. This didn’t floor Ralph. Not at all. He informed Emil that it was just the sort of place he had always wanted to live in and that, if Emil would help him, he would find a job and earn his keep.
To make it brief, Ralph stayed on at Big Sur about six months, doing odd jobs, floating from one ménage to another, always getting into trouble. In general, behaving like a spoiled child. In the interim I received a letter one day from Ralph’s father, somewhere in the Midwest, telling me how grateful he was to all of us for looking after Ralph. He related the trials and ordeals they had been through at home trying to get Ralph to lead a normal, sensible life. It was the usual story of the problem child, one I was only too familiar with from the old days when I hired and fired for the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company.
One of the strange things about Ralph’s behavior was that he was always turning up minus some necessary part of his apparel. He had shown up on a summer’s day in a heavy overcoat and gloves. Now that it was cold he would show up naked to the waist. What about his shirt and jacket? He had burned them! He didn’t like them any more, or else he had taken a dislike to the person who had given them to him. (We had all supplemented his wardrobe at one time or another.)
On a cold, nasty day in winter, as I was driving along a side street in Monterey, whom should I spy but Ralph, half-naked, shivering, and looking altogether woebegone. Lilik Schatz was with me. We got out and dragged Ralph to a cafeteria. He hadn’t eaten for two days—ever since they had let him out of the clink, it seems. What disturbed him more than the cold was the fear that his father might come to fetch him.
“Why can’t you let me stay with you?” he repeated over and over. “I wouldn’t give you any trouble. You understand me, the others don’t. I want to be a writer—like you.”
We had been over this ground a number of times before. I could only repeat what I had told him, that it was hopeless.
“But I’m different now,” he said. “I know bet
ter.” He kept boring in, determined, like a child, to have his way. Lilik tried to reason with him but got nowhere. “You don’t understand me,” he would say.
Finally I became exasperated. “Ralph,” I said, “you’re just a plain nuisance. Nobody can put up with you. You’re a pest. I’m not taking you home with me and I’m not going to look after you. I’m going to let you starve and freeze—it’s the only way you’ll come to your senses.”
With this I got up and walked to the door. Ralph followed us to the car and, with one foot on the running board, continued to plead his case. I took off my coat, put it around his shoulders, and told Lilik to start the motor.
“You’re on your own, Ralph!” I shouted, as we waved good-bye.
He seemed rooted to the spot, his lips still moving.
A few days later I heard that he had been picked up for being a vagrant and shipped home to his parents. That was the last I heard of him.
There’s a knock at the door. I open it to find a clump of visitors wreathed in smiles. The usual declarations—“Just passing through. Thought we would look you up.”
I don’t know them from Adam. However … “Come on in!”
The usual preliminaries … “Beautiful place you have … How did you find it? … I thought you had children … Not disturbing you, I hope?”
Out of a clear sky one of them, a woman, pipes up: “Do you have any water colors for sale? I’ve always thought I’d like to own a Henry Miller water color.”
I jumped. “Are you serious?”
She was indeed. “Where are they? Where are they?” she cried, hopping about from one corner of the room to the other.
I trot out the few I have on hand and spread them on the couch. As she looks through the pile I busy myself fixing drinks and preparing the dogs’ meals. (First the dogs, then the visitors.)
I can hear them moving about, examining the paintings on the walls, none of them mine. I give no heed.
Finally the woman who expressed a desire to buy takes me by the sleeve and leads me to a door where my wife’s work is tacked up. It’s a carnival scene, blazing with color, full of people and things. A really jolly picture, but not a water color.
“Haven’t you any more like this?” she asks. “It’s just enchanting. A fantasy, isn’t it?”
“No,” I reply, not bothering to explain, “but I have one with a rainbow, did you notice? How about rocks? I’ve just discovered how to make rocks … not easy, you know.” And with this I go into a long discourse as to how each picture represents a theme, or to put it another way, a problem. “A pleasure problem,” I add. “I’d be a fool to give myself torture problems, wouldn’t I?”
Carried away by these glib remarks, I then endeavored to explain that my work was nothing but an attempt to paint my own evolution as a painter. A highly dubious explanation which I scotched by adding: “Most of the time I just make pictures.” Which must have sounded equally foolish and sententious.
Since she showed no signs of wilting or crumpling, I went on to say that only a year or so ago I painted nothing but buildings, crowds of buildings … so many, indeed, that sometimes the paper wasn’t large enough to hold them all.
“I always began with the Potala,” I said.
“The Potala?”
“Yes, in Lhasa. You must have seen it in the movies. The edifice with a thousand rooms—where the Dalai Lama lives. Built long before the Commodore Hotel.”
At this point I am aware that the other visitors are not altogether at ease. Another drink would do the trick, but I’m not getting off my horse yet. Even if I ruin the sale, which is what I usually do, I’ve got to carry on. I take another tack, just as a feeler. A long, utterly irrelevant disquisition on some little-known French painter whose jungle scenes have haunted me for years. (How he could intermingle, interweave, intertwine boughs, leaves, heads, limbs, spears, pieces of sky—even rain, if he chose to—all with perfect clarity. And why not geometric precision? “And with geometric precision,” I throw in.) Once again I feel that everyone is growing restive. Harassed, I make a feeble joke about jungle scenes being so delicious because, if you lose your touch, you can just scramble things. (I meant, of course, that it has always been easier, more instinctive, for me to make scrambled eggs than clear-cut trunks, boughs, leaves, flowers, shrubs.) “In the old days”—making a frantic switch—“I did nothing but portraits. I called them self-portraits because they all turned out like me.” (Nobody laughs.) “Yes, I must have made over a hundred….”
“Excuse me, but could I look at that painting on the door again?” It’s my buyer.
“Certainly, certainly.”
“I like it so much!”
“It’s not mine, you know. My wife did it.”
“I thought so. I mean, I knew it wasn’t yours.” It was said simply, with no malicious overtone.
She takes a good, thirsty look, then walks over to the bed over which the water colors are strewn and, selecting my favorite, one I had hoped to keep, she asks: “Would you let me have this?”
“I’d rather not, to be frank. But if you insist….”
“Is there something wrong with it?” She let it fall on the bed like a dead leaf.
“No, not exactly.” I picked it up, almost tenderly. “It’s merely that I hoped to keep it for myself. It’s the one I like best.”
I made the I prominent to give her a way out. I was convinced that by this time my views on art must have impressed her as being screwy. To make doubly sure, I added that my friend Emil, a painter down the road, didn’t think very much of it. “Too subjective.”
The effect this had, unfortunately, was to make her eager to examine the painting more thoroughly. She bent over it, studied it, as if she had a magnifying glass to her eye. She turned it around several times. Apparently it looked good to her upside down, for suddenly she said: “I’ll take it. That is, if I can afford it.”
I could have doubled my price and scared her off, but I didn’t have the heart for it. My feeling was that she had earned it—by trial and ordeal. So I made an even lower price than I had originally thought to ask and we sealed the bargain. She would have liked a frame to go with it, but unfortunately I had none to offer.
As they were about to leave she asked if I thought my wife would care to sell the one she liked so much. “It’s a possibility,” I replied. Then, impulsively, she stepped inside the doorway, took a quick look around, and said: “Maybe I ought to take another one along. Do you mind if I look through them again?”
I didn’t mind too much. All I thought was—how long?
Fumbling through the pile once again she paused—appreciatively, I thought—to look more closely at one which nobody in his right senses would look at twice.
“What on earth can this be?” she cried, holding the painting aloft and struggling to repress her laughter.
“El Alamein, I call it. Where Rommel tricked the British—wasn’t that it?”
(I had previously given her a windy spiel about another title, “The Battle of Trafalgar,” so named because it was full of battered, capsized boats. I had had trouble making waves, hence the battered, capsized boats.)
“Did you say Rommel?” she asked.
“Yes, Rommel. That’s him there in the foreground.” I indicated where with my index finger.
She smiled benignly. “I thought it was a scarecrow.”
“Cancer—schmanser, what’s the difference?” Might as well put a good face on it.
“And what are those dark spots, those blobs, up near the hills? They are hills, aren’t they?”
“Tombstones. After the battle, you see … I’m going to put inscriptions on them. Yes, I thought to write the inscriptions in white. They’ll be hard to decipher, of course. Besides, they’ll be in Hebrew.”
“In Hebrew?”
“Why not? Who reads inscriptions on tombstones anyway?”
By this time her friends were calling for her. They were hoping to find time to visit another celebrity,
in Watsonville.
“I’d better run,” she said. “Maybe I’ll write and ask you to send me one by mail. One less … less esoteric.” She giggled.
As she flew up the steps she waved her hand. “Ta-ta!” she cried.
“Ta-ta!” I echoed. “If you don’t like the one you bought, just mail it back. It’ll have a good home here.”
After dinner that evening, thinking to empty my mind of images, I took the lantern and, going to a spot in the garden where the poison oak was thick, I hung the lantern to the bough of a tree and fell to. What a pleasure, what a ferocious pleasure, to pull up long, vicious roots of poison oak! (With gloves on.) Better than making water colors, sometimes. Better than selling water colors, certainly. But, as with painting, you can never be sure of the outcome. You may think you have a Rommel, only to find out it is nothing but a scarecrow. And now and then, in your ferocious haste, you pull up pomegranates instead of camphor weed.
Down at Lucia, some time after Norman Mini decamped, a chap named Harvey took over—as chief cook and bottle-washer. He pitched a tent right in the midst of the brush, the poison oak, the rattlesnakes, the fog and the bottle-flies, and there he made his abode with a wife and two small children. In this tent he tried to paint, to practice the violin and to write. He wanted most of all to write.
If ever I spotted a born writer, this fellow Harvey was certainly it. When he talked, and he was a good talker, a wonderful storyteller, it sounded as if he were reading from a book. Everything he related had form, structure, clarity and meaning.
But Harvey wasn’t satisfied with this gift. He wanted to write.