by Henry Miller
Now and then, often in the middle of a problem, I wonder if the fellow who was here the day before riffling through my water colors, I wonder if when he paused to look twice at a certain “monstrosity” he had the faintest notion of the circumstances in which it was conceived and executed? Would he believe me, I wonder, if I told him that it was done one-two-three, just like that, and five more to boot, while Gerhart Muench was practicing on my broken-down piano? Would he have the least inkling that it was Ravel who inspired it? Ravel of Gaspard de la nuit? It was while Gerhart was going over and over the “Scarbo” that I suddenly lost all control of myself and began to paint music. It was like a thousand tractors going up and down my spine at high speed, the way Gerhart’s playing affected me. The faster the rhythm, the more thunderous and ominous the music, the better my brushes flew over the paper. I had no time to pause or reflect. On! On! Good Garbo! Sweet Garbo! Good Launcelot Garbo, Scarbo, Barbo! Faster! Faster! Faster! The paper was dripping paint on all sides. I was dripping with perspiration. I wanted to scratch my ass, but there was no time for it. On with it, Scarbo! Dance, you gazabo! Gerhart’s arms are moving like flails. Mine too. If he goes pianissimo, and he can go pianissimo just as beautifully as he can fortissimo, I go pianissimo too. Which means I spray the trees with insecticide, cross my t’s and dot my i’s. I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing. Does it matter? In one hand I have two brushes, in the other three, all of them saturated with pigment. So it goes, from one painting to another, and all the while singing, dancing, rocking, weaving, tottering, mumbling, cursing, shouting. Just for good measure I slide one of them to the floor and grind my heels into it. (Slavic ecstasy.) By the time Gerhart has sandpapered his finger tips I’ve turned out a half-dozen water colors (complete with coda, cadenza and vermiform appendix) that would scare the daylight out of a buzzard, octaroon or tomtit.
So I say, always look twice if you happen to notice a water color signed with my name. It may have been inspired by Ravel, Nijinsky or one of the Nijni Novgorod boys. Don’t toss it away because it looks like a failure. Look for the trade-mark: the iron heel or the well-tempered clavichord. It may have a history behind it. Another day I’ll take you to Hollywood and show you the twenty-five water colors Leon Shamroy was crazy enough to pay money for. Then you’ll see how even a misfire painting, if properly framed, can make your mouth water. Leon paid me a good price for those water colors, bless his heart! He paid an even better price for the frames in which they hang. Two of them he later returned to me, freight prepaid. Wouldn’t stand the test, these two. The test imposed by the magnificent frames, is what I mean. With the paintings I got the frames too. Which was mighty white of Leon, I thought. I tore up the water colors and inserted blank paper in the frames. Imitating Balzac, I wrote on the blank face of the one: “This is a Kandinsky.” And on the other: “This is a piece of paper white on which we write our word or two and then comes night.”
Signing off now. Time to eat.
5.
“Now works the peace and quiet of Scheveningen like a anaesteatic,” as my friend Jacobus Hendrik Dun wrote me, circa 1922 or ’23.
I often think of this quaint line when I’m at the sulphur baths and not a soul around, just sea, sky and seals. A few hours of communion with the elements eliminates all the detritus accumulated at the base of the skull as a result of entertaining visitors, reading boring manuscripts, answering letters from poets, professors and imbeciles of all denominations. It’s amazing how easily and naturally the inner springs resume their functioning once you surrender to sheer idleness.
At the baths I usually run into Oden Wharton, an octogenarian who had the good sense to quit a hundred-thousand-a-year job, as executive of a steel corporation, at the age of forty-five. And do absolutely nothing! Oden has been doing it perfectly for almost forty years now and his conscience doesn’t trouble him in the least. You wonder, when you talk to Oden, would the world really go to pots if we chucked everything and lived like the lilies in the field. He hasn’t a penny now, dear Oden, but God looks after him. Getting rid of the fortune he had accumulated as a man of affairs took him a number of years. Some of them, quite a few, he spent in the Maine woods with a guide, hunting and fishing. Idyllic days, to hear Oden talk about them.
Now that he’s really retired, a couple named Ed and Betty Eames look after Oden. By “look after” I mean—wait patiently until he drops dead of heart failure.* Oden is never ill, neither does time hang heavy on his hands. His days pass much like the butterfly’s. If there’s someone to talk to, he’ll talk; if not, he reads. Twice a day, regular as Immanuel Kant, he strolls over to the baths and back again, a walk of about a mile. That’s just sufficient to keep his muscles from atrophying. The reading matter which is piled up beside his armchair is innocuous enough to put him to sleep by eight o’clock; if it doesn’t, the radio will.
I always enjoy my talks with Oden. But I enjoy still more talking to “Butch.” “Butch,” as we call him, is the Eames’ little boy. He’s about the same age as my Tony and blessed with the disposition of an angel. Now and then I drop Tony off to play with Butch while I go take a bath. They are about as different in temperament as the two faces of a coin.
It’s only a year or so since Butch has been able to walk properly. He was born clubfooted, cross-eyed, and with a growth or protuberance on his nose which threatened to make a Cyrano de Bergerac of him. After numerous operations, with long sieges in the hospital, all these defects have been eradicated. Perhaps I am wrong in attributing his unbelievable good nature to the privations, frustrations and suffering he endured as a child. But that is the impression I have, and whether right or wrong, the fact is that Butch is like no other child in these parts.
He always comes running to greet you, a little wobbly on his feet still, his eyes still threatening to capsize any minute. But what a warmth and sincerity, what a radiance emanates from his shining countenance! He makes you feel as if you were a divine emissary, as if he saw you through a vision.
“I’ve got new shoes, see!” He puts out a foot as if it were made of gold or alabaster. “I can run now. Want to see?” And he runs a few yards, turns abruptly, then fixes you with a heavenly beam.
What can be more wonderful for a boy of seven than to walk, run, skip, jump? When Butch does it, you realize that if we possessed nothing more than this animal endowment we would still be blessed. Butch makes physical exertion seem like divine play. Indeed, every gesture which animates him is like a prayer of thanksgiving, like the rejoicing of an angelic being.
Like every youngster, he appreciates gifts. But with Butch, if you were to hand him an ordinary stone from the field, telling him it was for him, he would accept it and thank you for it with the same grateful exuberance that another lad would display only if handed a gold-plated fire engine. The surgeon’s knife, the long days and nights alone in bed, the absence of playmates, the waiting, the hoping, the yearning he must have known in the very depths of his soul, have all contributed to “tenderize” his nature. He seems utterly incapable of comprehending that anyone would want to do him ill, even a rowdy, insensitive playmate. In his innocence, sublime to witness, he expects of others only goodness and kindness. There isn’t an ounce of malice or envy in him. Nor resentment, nor craving. Sure, he would love to have playmates his own size, his own age, and not too rough and not too nasty, but if he can’t, and usually he can’t, he will make do with the birds, the flowers, a few odd toys and an inexhaustible fund of good nature. When he bursts into talk it’s like a bird that’s suddenly begun to warble in your ear.
Butch never asks for anything, unless it be something you happened to promise him. Even then, he asks in such a way—supposing you had forgotten to keep your promise—that you feel as if he had forgiven you in advance. Butch couldn’t possibly think of anyone as “a stinker.” Nor as a “sucker.” Should he stumble, and really hurt himself, he doesn’t sit and whine until you pick him up. No sir! With tears in his eyes he picks himself up and throws
you one of his golden smiles which, in his language, means: “It was those foolish old feet of mine!”
One day, shortly after the last operation on his eyes, Butch paid us a visit. Tony was away and the old tricycle he had abandoned was standing in the garden. Butch asked if he might ride it. He had never ridden a bike, and to make matters more complicated, he was still not seeing right. He was seeing double, as he told me. He said it, of course, as if it were a delightful sensation. I helped him a bit in learning to steer, to back up, and so on. It took him no time to catch on. His feet were still rather awkward; every time he made a sharp turn he tilted at a dangerous angle. Now and then he toppled off, but was up again in a jiffy, always beaming, always rejoicing.
When it came time to go I knew that Butch had to have that bike. It wasn’t much of anything anymore but it would do to practice on. I explained to him that as soon as Tony came home I would ask him if he would surrender it. (I knew he would because that would mean a new one for him.) I told Butch I would be going to town next day, that I would buy Tony a new bike and bring him the old one.
“Will you be down tomorrow then?” were his last words.
When he had gone I could think of nothing but that look on his face when he heard that he was to inherit Tony’s old bike. Naturally, I was up and off to town early the next day. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a bike Tony’s size immediately at the department store where I had a charge account. And I didn’t have the cash to buy one elsewhere.
(Everything costs a forutne these days. I bought a racing wheel from a six-day bike rider at Madison Square Garden in the old days for the price they now ask for a kid’s bike.)
I should have gone to see Butch that evening and explained the situation to him. But I didn’t. I just hoped that he wouldn’t be too feverish—and that he would forgive me, in his usual way, when I did show up. It was four or five days later when I turned up with the old bike which was concealed in the back of the car. As I drove up there was Butch waiting for me, as if it were the appointed time. I could see that he was on the qui vive. At the same time I couldn’t help but observe that he was holding himself in in case of a disappointment.
“Well, Butch, how are you?” I cried, getting out and giving him a warm hug. As he embraced me he looked furtively over my shoulder, toward the interior of the car.
“I’m just fine,” he said, his face alight, his hands dancing with glee.
Not to keep him in suspense a moment longer than was necessary, I opened the back of the car and yanked the bike out.
“OH!” he exclaimed, quite beside himself now, “So you brought it! I thought maybe you forgot.” Then he told me how he had been looking for me every day, every time a car pulled into their driveway.
I felt wretched, first for having held him up so long, and second for handing him a bike in such condition. The seat was coming off, the handle-bars were twisted, and I think one of the pedals was missing. Butch didn’t seem to mind. He said his grandfather would put it in shape for him.
On the way home I got to speculating on Butch’s future. He had something, I felt, that few American boys possess. If the army didn’t get him and use him for cannon fodder, he might go far. He was already a diminutive Ramakrishna. I mean, one of those rare products of the soil—in any age, any clime—an ecstatic being, a being filled to overflowing with love. A passage from a book came to mind—about the children of Chungking:
“There is so much goodness in these waifs of Chungking that I begin to believe again, as I used to believe many years ago, that it would be much better if the world were given over to children, and anyone reaching the age of twelve should be painlessly executed.”*
Despite all the talk about living for one’s children, despite all that we do for our children—usually too much—the American child is not happy with his parents nor, what is worse, is he happy with himself. He senses that he is in the way, that he is a problem, that he is being bought off. No American educationalist could possibly write about the harmonious relationship between parents and children as Keyserling has written about the Japanese, in his Travel Diary. But then no European, or Oriental, could possibly describe the American woman as Keyserling has the Japanese. Let me quote a paragraph:
“There can only be one opinion about Japanese women on the part of anyone who has a little feeling for style, that is to say, on the part of any man who does not demand the performances of a hippopotamus from a butterfly: the Japanese woman is one of the most perfect, one of the few absolutely accomplished products of this creation. … It is really too delightful to behold women who are nothing but gracefulness; who pretend nothing but what they really are, who do not want to show off anything but what they can really do, whose heart is cultivated to the extreme. At the bottom of their souls there are not too many European girls who want anything more and anything else than their sisters in the Far East—they want to please, they want to be femininely attractive, and everything else, including intellectual interests, is a means to an end for them. How many of those who apparently have only mental aspirations would not breathe a sigh of relief if they could disregard this circuitous means of charm, which it is difficult for them to dispense with in their world, and present themselves as the Japanese women do! But this is just what they would succeed in with difficulty, what those who attempt it fail in. The modern girl is already too conscious to be perfect in a naive form, too knowing for an existence of pure gracefulness, above all, she is too rich in her nature to be easily perfected at all. In lovableness no modern Western beauty can match herself with a well-educated Japanese lady.”*
I mentioned earlier in this book that the new aspect of Big Sur reveals itself through the children who have been added to the population since 1944, when I first arrived. No doubt children played an important role in pioneer days, when the Pfeiffers, the Harlans, the Posts and other early settlers opened up the region. Today most of these children are grandparents. Today there are no longer any families which, like the old Harlan family, was sufficient unto itself. (For several decades the Harlans got along without using money.) No, the old days are gone forever. The new day is for the children who are crowding the country school.
The striking thing, to me, about these youngsters is their individuality. Each one is a personality, with his own well-defined character, his own unique way of behaving. Some, like the Daytons’ boy, whose father is a woodcutter, live quite removed from the community, and are taught at home. Some, too young to attend school, accompany their fathers to work daily, and seem no worse for wear than if they had remained at home with their overburdened mothers. Sometimes the mother, between phases of marriage and divorce, has to take a job; then the child fends for himself most of the day, and because of it, becomes most self-sufficient.
I think of one little playmate of Tony’s whom I am particularly fond of—Mike Hougland, or “Little Mike,” as everyone calls him. Little Mike was already a “character” at the age of four. Once he stayed with us for a week while his mother went on a trip. What a marvelous addition to the family he was! Never have I seen a child so gentle, so contained, and so silent. No matter what you asked him he always said Yes, but in such a wee winnie winkle of a voice as to be almost inaudible. Even when he was offered food which he didn’t like, or wasn’t used to, he would come up with a tiny little Yes. Sometimes, to tease him, to see if he could say No, I would ask him if he would like me to spank him. And he would reply: “Yes.” Sometimes he varied it and said: “Yes, please.”
(The first word Tony learned to say was No. He didn’t say it, he boomed it. NO! It took a year before anyone could make him say Yes.)
Yes, Mike was adorable. And, like that Sparkie on the radio (the program kids love most!), more of an elf than a boy. Sparkie, as everyone knows, talks a blue streak. And his way of speaking is abominable, atrocious, though the kids seem to love it. It took me days to catch on to his “elfin” lingo.
Mike’s charm lies in his silence. It is a most knowing, meaningful s
ilence. There is in it something of the sage and something of the saint. A saint more on the order of Joseph di Cupertino. Those who have read Cendrars’ wonderful pages on him may recall that he was farmed out to the monks because he was such an utterly incapable dullard. In the eyes of God he was one of the blessed ones. It was his ecstatic love which sustained him in his spectacular flights of levitation.
There is nothing of the dullard about Mike, however silent, loving and elflike he may be. On the contrary, he is a constant source of wonder and mystification. He knows just what he wants and he usually gets what he wants, but quietly, unobtrusively, almost selflessly. I once bought Tony an expensive fire engine with the last money I had in the bank; a week later it was in Mike’s possession. They had made a dicker. It was a fair enough trade too, since Tony had had enough of the fire engine three days after he acquired it. (Sounds horrible, but it’s the God’s truth.)
Mike can take a broken toy, any discarded object, indeed, and find it of absorbing interest for months on end. When he wishes to have an airplane—one of those wooden ones that cost only ten cents—he asks for just one, not a dozen at a time. He has a genius for making them perform record flights. And if they break he knows how to mend them. Not Tony. Tony takes after his father, who prefers to abandon a car on the highway and walk to the nearest town rather than lift the hood and soil his fingers. It isn’t even a matter of soiling the fingers, really … it’s that his father knows in advance that he is incapable of fixing anything, particularly mechanical things.