Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

by Henry Miller

  I put the letter down to ruminate on it, and then I noticed that a postscript had been scrawled on the back of the last page. It said that now that he had touched bottom he was going to stay there … and write. If I could do it, he could do it too. He had no use for the world, no desire to ever make money again. Though miserable, he was glad things had turned out the way they did. Anyway, I had restored his faith in human kind. It was now his turn to prove that he was a man….

  I can’t say that I felt flattered, reading these words. Nor did I have much faith in his becoming a writer overnight. No, but what did interest me, and vitally, was the admission he made that only when he had reached the end of his rope, when he had come to the last among men, did he get a response. For many, many years now I have known and acted on the belief that when truly desperate you must turn to the least of your fellow-men. You must address yourself to the one who seems least likely to have what you are in need of. If we realized what we were doing, in acting thus, we would know that we were taking ourselves to a magician. The man with no resources is the one who possesses most resources. Or shall I say, who possesses real resources? Such a man is never frightened by an unexpected demand. Nor is he appalled or dismayed because you are in a state of penury. For him it is a matter of rejoicing. Now he can demonstrate what it means to be a friend. He behaves as if a privilege had been conferred upon him. He literally leaps to the bait.

  “A hundred dollars, you say?” (A fabulous sum to a man who hasn’t a pot to piss in.) He scratches his head. “Let me think a moment!”

  He does a think, then a smile lights up his face. Eureka! And he dismisses the problem with a flourish, as if to say: “A mere hundred? I thought you were going to say a thousand!”

  With this he gives you a bite to eat, stuffs a few shekels in your pocket, and tells you to go home and rest easy.

  “You’ll have it in the morning. Ta-ta!”

  During the night … let me say it in French, it sounds more concrete … le mirâcle se produit.

  Now to act with delicacy! To refrain from asking where the money came from, how it happened, when must it be returned, etc., etc., etc. Take the money, bless the Lord, embrace your friend who performed the miracle, shed a tear or two, and be off!

  This is a homeopathic prescription for which no charge is made….

  Money isn’t all…. The day Raoul Bertrand turned up was a red-letter day in my life. Not because he unlocked the door to my dwindled “fortune,” though that was a timely performance, not because he made it a point to bring friends whom I enjoyed meeting as well as rare victuals which his old French housekeeper prepared especially for these occasions, not because he talked of things which were close to my heart and in a language I love to hear, but because he was that rare sort of individual who knows how to create just the right ambiance, an ambiance in which everything flourishes, sprouts, burgeons and promises never to fade. Whenever he appeared, ce cher Raoul Bertrand, somewhere deep inside me the music started up. Everything I had learned to appreciate in connection with the French way of life he seemed to exemplify; every-thing I had cherished as a result of my ten-year sojourn in France he resuscitated, as if with a magic wand. It mattered little whether we began with the bike races at the Vel d’Hiv, the dog cemetery at St. Ouen, Napoleon’s last days at St. Helena, the mystery of the Basque tongue or the tragic history of the Albigeois … it was always a symphonic journey which brought us nearer to the heart and core of France.

  I believe it was through Raoul Bertrand that Monsieur de Carmoy, of the Office d’Echanges, Paris, came to visit me one day. It is through this bureau that payments to foreign authors are controlled and regulated. Monsieur de Carmoy’s visit, though altogether unofficial, made a deep impression on me: it was like receiving a visit from the government itself. As he handed me his card, on leaving, this kind and gracious emissary of the Republic of France informed me that if I ever encountered any difficulties in obtaining royalties due me, I was to drop him a line. He said it as if it would give him great pleasure to jump a plane and bring the money to me in person.

  A few months later I had to take him at his word. The response was immediate, almost electrical.

  Merci encore une fois, cher Monsieur de Carmoy!

  But to come back to Raoul Bertrand. The day he paid me that first visit he was accompanied by a French journalist whom I had known in the Villa Seurat. Little more than a boy at the time, he was now a roving correspondent for a big Paris newspaper. When they were getting ready to leave, the journalist, who was flying back to Paris, asked if there was anything he could do for me when he got back. Without a moment’s hestitation, I said: “Yes, there is.” It was something which had popped into my head unbidden and which gushed out like a jet of water. It had to do with that nest egg which was getting addled, that “fortune” which had become a joke. It formulated itself in the shape of a question. The Pachoutinsky brothers: Eugene, Anatol and Leon: what had become of them? had they survived the war? were they in want? All one big question mark in my mind. The next thought, a corollary, was simple: Why not give them the key to the vault?

  “Look,” I said, “there’s a little service you could render me. Put a small ad in a few of the Paris newspapers saying that Henry Miller, author of the Tropic of Cancer, wishes to locate his old friends, the Pachoutinsky brothers. Run it until there is an answer.”

  I then explained to him what these three brothers once meant to me, what they had done for me in my hour of need.

  Hardly a month elapsed before I received an airmail letter from Eugene, with whom I had been the closest, telling me that they were all alive, in good spirits, and not in dire need. As for himself, all he was praying for was that the government—always the bloody government!—would give him the pension which he was entitled to for his services during the war. He had a touch of tuberculosis, among other things, but after a year or two in a “sana” he hoped to be his old self again.

  I will skip the story of how he eventually received his pension—it sounds too incredible—but will give the epilogue.

  In Versailles he made the acquaintance of an elderly gentleman who wanted to sell his home and remove to the provinces. Should Eugene succeed in finding a buyer, he promised to give Eugene sufficient with which to buy himself a home in the country. Eugene already had his eye on a village in the Midi called Rocquecor (Tarn-et-Garonne). By some incredible fluke, Eugene, who knew nothing about real estate, netted a buyer for the house in Versailles. The next thing I knew, he had purchased an abandoned schoolhouse in the village of Rocquecor. It was a building with thirteen rooms and looked somewhat like an ancient fortress converted into an insane asylum. On the picture postcard showing the schoolhouse, which was jauntily perched on an eminence, he indicated the two rooms which he said he was remodelling and setting aside for the use of my wife and self. They were to be ours exclusively—and forever. A way of saying that thus we would always have a second home—in our beloved France.

  A “pleurnicheur,” as my friend Alf dubs me, I could not resist shedding a few warm tears looking at the site of our new home. Again I thought of that day when first I came upon Eugene outside the Cinema de Vanves: he was standing on top of a tall ladder pasting up a billboard announcing the coming of a film starring Olga Tchekova. Again I beheld the wretched piece of cardboard, properly timbré as even the most humble, wretched “annonce” must be in France, staring at me from the window of the bistrot opposite the cinema, where Eugene and I frequently repaired for a “java” and a game of chess. The announcement, which he had written in his own hand, informed the passer-by that Henri Miller, of the Hotel Alba (a few doors away) was available to teach English for the modest sum of ten francs an hour. Those who have read the Tropic of Cancer will recall this good friend Eugene and his “old world garden.” What a euphemism, his garden! It was a dump somewhere near the Impasse du Thermopyle which they occupied, if I remember rightly. What connection there could be between that celebrated battleground and the narr
ow, smelly, dingy alley named after it baffles me. As for that “old world garden,” it was in Eugene’s heart, not outdoors anywhere.

  As I sat there shedding a few warm tears, I thought how natural, logical and inevitable it was that Eugene, who never had a sou except when I needed a coffee, should be the man to make me such a royal gift….

  And now let us pass on to The Thirteen Crucified Saviours and The Keys to the Apocalypse. Such are the titles of two works I have been unable to lay hands on, though I have been promised them again and again by friends who claimed they could obtain them for me.

  The first named is by Sir Godfrey Higgins, author of the celebrated Anacalpysis. Copies exist, I am told, but are difficult to find and exorbitant in price. I no longer want it, thank God.

  As for the other, by the extraordinary Lithuanian poet, Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz (Milasius, in Lithuanian), there hangs a curious tale. What little I had read of and about Milosz intrigued me enormously.* I never spoke of my interest in him to anyone; indeed, there was no one I knew to whom I might speak of him.

  About five years ago, while trying to collect certain books which were necessary for the work in hand,† I received a telegram signed Czeslaw Milosz, who turned out to be the nephew of the deceased poet. The letter which followed had nothing to do with the writer I was interested in; it was about the proposed visit of the director of the Warsaw Museum of Art. There followed an exchange of two or three letters which threw cold water on my enthusiasm for the poet’s work. Czeslaw Milosz, then an attaché of the Polish Legation at Washington, was probably already at work upon the great novel which has since earned him fame.

  Time passed. While on a vacation in Europe (1953), my wife Eve and I stopped off at the Guilde du Livre in Lausanne to meet the director, Albert Mermoud, with whom I had been corresponding for several years. During a pause in the midst of a protracted conversation, Monsieur Mermoud, exactly like that friend of Raoul Bertrand, suddenly asked me if there was anything he could do for me while we were in Lausanne. And, just as in the other instance, I replied without a moment’s hesitation and without previous thought—“Yes! Find me a book called Les Clefs de l’Apocalypse by Milosz!” I explained that I had been told by various friends that a definitive edition of Milosz’s works had been published in Switzerland.

  Mermoud gave me a strange smile and replied at once: “Nothing easier. I’ll telephone the publisher immediately. He’s a friend of mine, he lives here in Lausanne.”

  He picked up the receiver, got his friend whose name I failed to catch, and launched into an explanation for making his strange request. I heard him repeat my name several times—“Yes, he’s sitting right here in my office!”—then he looked at me grinningly as if to say, “He knows you!” and went on talking. It was a lengthy conversation. Not to embarrass him, I turned to the friends who had come with us and began conversing with them in low tones.

  After a time I became aware that the conversation over the telephone was unusually drawn out. Mermoud had ceased to talk; he was merely nodding and grunting now. He seemed to be listening most intently.

  Finally he hung up, turned to me, and said: “I’m sorry. I can get you any of Milosz’ books except the one you want.”

  He sat back in his chair and began giving me a lengthy account of the publisher’s life, a most unusual one, and of the latter’s relations with the poet. It appeared that the publisher had been not only a great friend but a genuine benefactor. If I am not mistaken, he himself had begun writing poetry as a result of reading Milosz. Yes, he had printed everything Milosz had ever written, including the book in question. But of this work—The Keys to the Apocalypse—he had printed only one copy, which was exclusively for himself. He would not even let anyone borrow it. He did not want anyone to read it. Not even Henry Miller, whom he adored (sic). Why this attitude? Because he regarded the book as unworthy of the author. I had the impression, from Mermoud’s words, that there had been a disagreement between the two regarding the religious aspect of the work. I could be mistaken about this, because there was so much he rattled off and with such speed that I was left somewhat dazed.

  A few months later, seated in a modest restaurant near the Senate (Paris), a man came up to our table and introduced himself as Czeslaw Milosz, the same who had written me from Washington. How he recognized me I can’t explain; perhaps he had overheard my name. At any rate, after making apologies for something of no consequence which he had written in one of his letters, he sat down and engaged us in conversation. The Lausanne incident still fresh in my mind, I proceeded to relate what had occurred at the office of the Guilde du Livre. He seemed thoroughly nonplussed, shook his head several times as if it were beyond all comprehension, then exclaimed: “Why, it’s ridiculous! I can get you the book. But I doubt that you will want to read it.”

  “Why?” said I.

  “Because it’s not really a book … it’s only a page and a half long!”

  You might have pushed me over with a feather. All this folderol over a page and a half! I was stunned.

  “Do get it for me,” I begged. “Now I want more than ever to read it.”

  He sssured me that he would, at the very first opportunity. To date it has not shown up. Will it ever? And what will that page and a half contain?

  Restif de la Bretonne is a horse of quite another color! For years the name had been familiar to me, largely because of references made to his work by the French Surrealists, André Breton in particular. Why I never made an effort to read him I cannot say. The name itself was so intriguing, perhaps I feared to be deceived. Every now and then his name would crop up in a review of my own work. (At various times the critics have bracketed my name with such as Petronius, Rabelais, Swift, Sade, Whitman, Dostoevsky—and Restif de la Bretonne.)

  One day I received a letter from our then minister to Ethiopia, J. Rives Childs. It informed me that the writer had read everything of mine that was available and thought that there were great affinities between my writings and those of the famous Restif. Had I ever read Restif? He felt certain I must have. I replied that I had never read a line of his. Whereupon I received a second letter, urging me to do so by all means. If I couldn’t lay hands on the books I was to notify him and he would see to it that I received copies. He then informed me that he had given considerable time to the study of his life and work and was now busy compiling a bibliography of Restif.

  In this letter he had urged me to make a point of reading Monsieur Nicolas and Les Nuits de Paris. He omitted telling me the size of these works. When I discovered that Monsieur Nicolas alone comprised some fourteen volumes my enthusiasm quickly abated. Meanwhile, from Cairo, N. Y., a Dante Zaccagnini, a scholar and voracious reader, also began to bombard me with eulogies of Restif de la Bretonne. To sharpen my appetite, he sent me a much abridged one-volume edition, by an English publisher, of Les Nuits de Paris. I read it with interest but was not fired. Moreover, from this brief taste I found only a frail connection between Restif’s literary ways and my own. I decided, rather foolishly, that I had had enough of Restif for the time being.

  Then one day the huge work on which our ambassador to Ethiopia had been working for so long arrived in the mail. A monumental work, indeed, for which all lovers of Restif must feel indebted. The vast range which it covered appalled me. “It’s not up my alley,” said I to myself. Besides, I had just put myself on record as saying that my purpose was to read less and less, not more and more.

  It may be of interest, at this point, to know that Childs himself, as he relates in the Introduction to his vast compendium,* was almost discouraged in pursuing his task to the end when he discovered that the complete works of his beloved Restif numbered over fifty titles comprising some 200 volumes! The reading of Restif’s entire output, however, represented only a fraction of the immense labor involved in the production of this massive tome.

  To indicate the prodigious nature of this extraordinary creature, Restif, let me quote a few lines from Childs’ Intr
oduction:

  “Pour moi, malgré toutes ses faiblesses—et il en avait beaucoup—Restif est un caractère sympathique pour de nombreuses raisons. Et tout d’abord une essentielle bonté de coeur, une large humanité accompagnée d’un sens toujours présent de l’inhumanité de l’homme envers son semblable, un désir passionné d’améliorer le sort de l’humanité, une grande vision du monde, un but absorbant d’ètre utile à ses contemporains et, plus encore, à la posterité, enfin une franchise foncière dans l’aveu de ses fautes. Il convient de souligner que, dans une époque où, du moins en France, il était de mode de mépriser Shakespeare et Jeanne d’Arc, Restif vantait leurs mérites. Il pensait élargir les horizons intellectuels des hommes et, dans ce but, il agissait sans prudence. Son oeuvre présente d’innombrables aspects, d’infinis méandres, de sorte qu’une seule vie suffirait à peine à en suivre tous les contours. Imparfait comme tous les hommes, il n’a jamais eu la prétention d’être ce qu’il n’était pas. Il était humain, peut-être trop humain, et par là nous lui sommes redevables de grandes dettes qui deviendront de plus en plus apparentes dans les années à venir.” (Djeddah, Arabie Saoudite, le 27 février, 1948.)

  Just when I thought the subject to be closed came a letter from Cairo saying that he, Dante, had now finished reading the fourteen volumes comprising the complete and unexpurgated French edition of Monsieur Nicolas—and that he was shipping them to me that same day. In a week or so the books arrived. I felt as if I had been shipped a coffin containing the remains of the incredible Restif!

  What to do? First of all, put them in order, which I did. Then I scanned a page or two here and there, choosing volumes at random. Then I hoisted them up to the top shelf of my bookcase and ranged them beside the slim, unobtrusive volume called The Round, by Edward Santiago, saying to myself: “I’ll dip into them some day when I’m stricken with paralysis.” And so saying, I gathered the books which had been displaced by this new addition to my library, threw them into a carton and, hitching the horse to the buggy, I drove to the garbage dump which lies along the scenic route from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and tossed them into the ocean.