Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

by Henry Miller

  “I think I understand you,” said I. “It’s too bad it worked out this way. I meant only to do you a good turn.”

  “Oui, je le sais, mon vieux! It’s all my fault. Nevertheless….”

  “What would you have me do? Send you back to Paris? That’s impossible—at least right now.”

  “I know that,” he said.

  What he didn’t know was that I was still struggling to pay back what I had borrowed to bring him to America.

  “I was just wondering,” he said, drumming his fingers on the table top, “how a city like San Francisco might be.”

  “Very good for a while,” I said, “but how manage it? There’s nothing you could work at, and I certainly couldn’t support you there.”

  “Of course not,” he said, “I wouldn’t think of it. My God, you’ve done plenty already. More than enough. I shall never be able to repay you.”

  “Let’s not go into that! The point is that you’re unhappy here. Nobody is to blame. How could either of us have foreseen such an issue? I’m glad you spoke your mind. Perhaps if we put our heads together we can find a solution. It’s true that I haven’t given you or your work much attention, but you see what my life is like. You know how little time I have for my own work. You know, I too would like to walk the streets of Paris once in a while, feel the pavement under my feet, as you say. I too would like to be able to go to a café when I feel like it and meet a few congenial spirits. Of course, I’m in a different position from you. I’m not miserable here. Never. No matter what happens. If I had plenty of money I would get up and travel, I would invite my old friends to come and stay with me…. “I’d do all sorts of things I don’t even dream of now. But one thing is certain in my mind—that this is a paradise. If anything goes wrong, I most certainly will not attribute it to the place…. It’s a beautiful day today, no? It will be beautiful tomorrow when it pours. It’s beautiful too when the fog settles down over everything and blacks us out. It was beautiful to you when you first saw it. It will be beautiful when you have gone …. Do you know what’s wrong? (I tapped my skull.) This up here! A day like today I realize what I’ve told you a hundred different times—that there’s nothing wrong with the world. What’s wrong is our way of looking at it.”

  He gave me a wan smile, as if to say, “Just like Miller to go off on such a tangent. I say I’m suffering and he says everything is perfect.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “Believe me, I feel for you. But you must try to do something for yourself. I did the best I could; if I made a mistake, then you must help me. Legally I’m responsible for you; morally you are responsible only to yourself. Nobody can help you but yourself. You think that I am indifferent to your suffering. You think I treat the itch too lightly. I don’t. All I say is, find out what itches you. You can scratch and scratch, but unless you discover what’s itching you you will never get relief.”

  “C’est assez vrai,” he said. “I’ve reached bottom.”

  He hung his head a few moments, then looked up. An idea had flashed through his mind.

  “Yes,” he said, “I am that desperate that I am willing to try anything.”

  I was wondering what exactly that might mean when he promptly added: “This woman, Madame Wharton, what do you think of her?”

  I smiled. It was a rather big question.

  “I mean, does she really have healing powers?”

  “Yes, she does,” said I.

  “Do you think she could help me?”

  “That depends,” I replied. “Depends greatly on you, on whether you want to be helped or not. You could cure yourself, I believe, if you had enough faith in yourself.”

  He ignored this last. Began pumping me about her views, her methods of operation, her background, and so on.

  “I could tell you a great deal about her,” I said. “I could talk to you all day, in fact. But what would it matter? If you wish to put yourself in someone else’s hands, you must surrender completely. What she believes in is one thing; what she can do for you is another. If I were in your boots, if I were as desperate as you pretend to be, I wouldn’t care how the trick was accomplished. All I would care about would be to get well.”

  He swallowed this as best he could, remarking that Moricand was not Miller and vice versa. He added that he believed her to be highly intelligent, though he confessed he could not always follow her thoughts. There was something of the mystic or the occult about her, he suspected.

  “You’re wrong there,” I said. “She has no use for mysticism or occultism. If she believes in magic, it’s everyday magic … such as Jesus practiced.”

  “I hope she doesn’t want to convert me first,” he sighed. “I have no patience with that humbug, you know.”

  “Maybe that’s what you need,” I said laughingly.

  “Non! Seriously,” he said, “do you think I could put myself in her hands? My God, even if it’s Christianity she’s going to spout, I’m willing to listen. I’ll try anything. Anything to get rid of this horrible, horrible itch. I’ll pray, if she wants me to.”

  “I don’t think she’ll ask you to do anything you don’t want to do, my dear Moricand. She’s not the sort to force her opinions on you. But I do think this. … If you listen to her seriously, if you believe that she can do something for you, you may find that you will think and act in different fashion than you now believe possible. Anyway, don’t think one way and act another—not with her! She’ll see through you immediately. And, after all, you wouldn’t be fooling her, only yourself.”

  “Then she does have definite views … religious views, I mean?”

  “Of course! That is, if you want to put it that way.”

  “What do you mean by that?” He looked slightly alarmed.

  “I mean, old chap, that she has no religious views whatever. She’s religious through and through. She acts out her views or beliefs. She doesn’t think about, she thinks. She thinks things through—and acts them out. What she thinks about life, God, and all that, is very simple, so simple that you may not understand it at first. She’s not a thinker, in your sense of the word. To her, Mind is all. What one thinks, one is. If there’s something wrong with you, it’s because your thinking is wrong. Does that make sense?”

  “C’est bien simple,” he said, nodding his head dolorously. (Too simple! is what he meant.) Obviously he would have been more excited had I made it sound intricate, abstruse, difficult to follow. Anything simple and direct was suspect to him. Besides, in his mind healing powers were magical powers, powers acquired through study, discipline, training, powers based on mastery over secret processes. Furthest from his mind was the thought that anyone could enter into direct communication with the source of all power.

  “There’s a force in her,” he said, “a vitality which is physical and which I know can be communicated. She may not know from where it derives, but she possesses it and radiates it. Some times ignorant people have these powers.”

  “She’s not ignorant, I can tell you that!” I said. “And if it is a physical force you feel in her presence you will never capture it for yourself, unless….”

  “Unless what?” he exclaimed eagerly.

  “I won’t say now. I think we’ve talked enough about her. After all, no matter what I tell you, the result depends on you, not her. Nobody has ever been cured of anything who did not want to be cured. The converse is just as true, only it’s more difficult to swallow. It’s always easier to take a negative view than a positive one. Anyway, whether the itch stops or not, it will be an interesting experiment for you. But think about it before you ask her aid. And you must ask her yourself, compris?”

  “Don’t worry,” he replied. “I’ll ask her. “I’ll ask her today, if I see her. I don’t care what she orders me to do. I’ll get down on my knees and pray, if that’s what she wants. Anything! I’m at my wit’s end.”

  “Good!” said I. “On verra.”

  It was too wonderful a morning to surrender myself
to the machine. I took myself to the forest, alone, and when I had come to the usual halting place beside the pool, I sat down on a log, put my head in my hands and began to laugh. I laughed at myself, then at him, then at fate, then at the wild waves going up and down, because my head was full of nothing but wild waves going up and down. All in all, it was a lucky break. Fortunately, we were not married to one another; there were no children, no complications. Even if he wanted to return to Paris, I believed I could manage it somehow. That is, with a little cooperation on his part.

  But what a lesson he had given me! Never, never again, would I make the mistake of trying to solve someone’s problems for him. How deceptive to think that by means of a little self-sacrifice one can help another overcome his difficulties! How egotistical! And how right he was to say that I had undermined him! Right and yet wrong! Because, making a reproach like that, he should have followed it up with—“I’m leaving. Leaving tomorrow. And this time I won’t even take a toothbrush with me. I’ll strike out on my own, come what may. The worst that can happen to me is to be deported. Even if they ship me back to Hell it’s better than being a burden to someone. At least, I’ll be able to scratch myself in peace!”

  At this point I thought of a strange thing—that I too was suffering from the itch, only it was an itch one couldn’t get at, an itch that didn’t manifest itself bodily. But it was there just the same … there where every itch begins and ends. The unfortunate part about my ailment was that nobody ever caught me scratching. Yet I was at it night and day, feverishly, frantically, without let. Like Paul, I was constantly saying to myself: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” What irony that people should be writing me from all over the world, thanking me for the encouragement and inspiration my work had given them. No doubt they looked upon me as an emancipated being. Yet every day of my life I was fighting a corpse, a ghost, a cancer that had taken possession of my mind and that ravaged me more than any bodily affliction possibly could. Every day I had to meet and battle anew with the person I had chosen as a mate, chosen as one who would appreciate “the good life” and share it with me. And from the very beginning it had been nothing but hell—hell and torment. To make it worse, the neighbors regarded her as a model creature—so spry, so lively, so generous, so warm. Such a good little mother, such an excellent housewife, such a perfect hostess! It’s not easy to live with a man thirty years older, a writer to boot, and especially a writer like Henry Miller. Everyone knew that. Everyone could see that she was doing her utmost. She had courage, that girl!

  And hadn’t I made a failure of it before? Several times, in fact? Could any woman on earth possibly get along with a man like me? That’s how most of our arguments ended, on that note. What to answer? There was no answer. Convicted, sentenced, condemned to rehearse the situation over and over, until one or the other should fall apart, dissolve like a rotting corpse.

  Not a day of peace, not a day of happiness, unless on my own. The moment she opened her mouth—war!

  It sounds so simple: break it up! get a divorce! separate! But what about the child? Where would I stand, in court, claiming the right to keep my daughter? “You? A man with your reputation?” I could just see the judge foaming at the mouth.

  Even to do away with myself would not remedy matters. We had to go on. We had to fight it out. No, that’s not the word. Iron things out. (With what? A flatiron?) Compromise! That’s better. It’s not either! Then surrender! Admit you’re licked. Let her walk over you. Pretend you don’t feel, don’t hear, don’t see. Pretend you’re dead.

  Or—get yourself to believe that all is good, all is God, that there is nothing but good, nothing but God who is all goodness, all light, all love. Get yourself to believe…. Impossible! One has to just believe. Punkt! Nor is that enough. You have to know. More than that…. You have to know that you know.

  And what if, despite everything, you find her standing before you, mocking, jeering, deriding, denigrating, sneering, lying, falsifying, distorting, belittling, calling black white, smiling disdainfully, hissing like a snake, nagging, backbiting, shooting out quills like a porcupine…? What then?

  Why, you say it’s good, it’s God manifesting, it’s love appearing—only in reverse.

  And then?

  You look through the negative … until you see the positive.

  Try it sometime—as a morning exercise. Preferably after standing on your head for five minutes. If it doesn’t work, get down on your knees and pray.

  It will work, it’s got to work!

  That’s where you’re wrong. If you think it’s got to, it won’t.

  But it must, eventually. Otherwise you’ll scratch yourself to death.

  What is it my friend Alan Watts says? “When it is clear beyond all doubt that the itch cannot be scratched, it stops itching by itself.”

  On the way home I stopped at the edge of the clearing, where the huge abandoned horse trough stood, to see if the pots and pans were in order. Tomorrow, the weather permitting, little Val would fix me another make-believe breakfast. And I would probably give her a few make-believe suggestions for improving the bacon and eggs, or the oatmeal, or whatever she might decide to serve me.

  Make believe…. Make believe you’re happy. Make believe you’re free. Make believe you’re God. Make believe it’s all Mind.

  I thought of Moricand. “I’ll get down on my knees and pray, if that’s what she wants.” How idiotic! He might equally well have said: “I’ll dance, I’ll sing, I’ll whistle, I’ll stand on my head … if that’s what she wants.” She wants. As if she wanted anything but his welfare.

  I got to thinking of the Zen masters, one old dog in particular. The one who said, “It’s your mind that’s troubling you, is it? Well then, bring it out, put it down here, let’s have a look at it!” Or words to that effect.

  I wondered how long the poor devil would continue scratching himself if every time he dug his nails into his flesh one of those gay old dogs would appear out of the ether and give him thirty-nine blows with a stout cudgel.

  And yet you know that when you get home she’ll be facing you and you’ll lose your temper!

  Scratch that!

  She need only say: “I thought you were in your studio working.”

  And you’ll say: “Must I work all the time? Can’t I take a walk once in a while?”

  And like that, the fur will fly, and you won’t be able to see through the negative…. You’ll see red, then black, then green, then purple.

  Such a beautiful day! Did you make it? Did she make it?

  Fuck who made it! Let’s go down and see what she wants to fight about. God made it, that’s who.

  So I go down, bristling like a porcupine.

  Fortunately, Jean Wharton’s there. Moricand’s already been to see her. And she’s given her consent.

  How different the atmosphere is when Jean’s around! As if the sun were pouring through all the windows with intensified light and warmth and love. At once I feel normal. Like my real self. One couldn’t possibly bicker and wrangle with a person like Jean Wharton. At least, I couldn’t. I take a look at my wife. Does she look any different? To be honest, she does. For one thing, there’s no fight in her now. She too looks normal. Like any other human being, I’d say.

  I won’t go so far as to say that I can see God in her. No.

  Anyway, there’s a lull.

  “So you’re going to take him on?” I say.

  “Yes,” says Jean, “he seems to be desperately in earnest. Of course, it won’t be easy.”

  I was going to say, “What language will you talk?” but the question answered itself. God’s language, of course!

  With anyone else it was bound to work. With Moricand…?

  God can talk to a stone wall and make it respond. But the human mind can be thicker, harder to penetrate, than even a wall of steel. What is it the Hindus say? “If God wished to hide, He would choose man to hide in.”

  That evening, as I was going u
p the garden steps to have a last look around, I met Jean sailing through the gate. She had a lantern in one hand and what seemed like a book in the other. She seemed to be floating through the air. Her feet were on the ground all right, but her body had no weight. She looked more beautiful, more radiant, than I had ever seen her before. Truly an emissary of light and love, of peace and serenity. In the few years since I first met her, at the Big Sur Post Office, she had gone through a definite transformation. Whatever she believed in, whatever it was that she was practicing, it had altered her physically as well as mentally and spiritually. Had I been Moricand, at that moment, I would have been made whole instantly.

  But it didn’t work out that way. It didn’t work at all, as a matter of fact. A fiasco from start to finish.

  It was the next morning that I got a full report from Moricand. He was not only incensed, he was outraged. “Such nonsense!” he cried. “Am I a child, a fool, an idiot, that I should be treated thus?”

  I let him rave. After he had calmed down I got the details, at least the important one to his way of thinking. The fly in the ointment, what was it but Science and Health! He had done his best, he said, to follow Jean Wharton’s talk—apparently he had understood almost nothing. The talk was difficult enough to swallow but then, in taking leave, she had thrust this Mary Baker Eddy book under his nose, urging him to read a few passages and dwell on them. She had indicated the passages she thought best to concentrate on. To Moricand, of course, the Key to the Scriptures had about as much value as a child’s primer. Less, indeed. He had spent his whole life denying, ridiculing, suppressing this kind of “nonsense.” What he had expected of Jean Wharton was a laying on of hands, a magical rapport which would aid him in exorcising the demon that made him scratch night and day. The last thing on earth he wanted was a spiritual interpretation of the art of healing. Or shall I say what is nearer the truth—that he did not want to be told he could heal himself, that indeed he must heal himself!

  When I met Jean, a little later, and related what he had told me, she explained that she had left the book with him, not with any intention of converting him to Christian Science, but simply to make him forget himself for a while. She had understood him, his French, clearly enough and she had been prepared to wrestle with him anew the next night and for as many nights as might be necessary. She confessed that perhaps it had been a mistake to give him Mary Baker Eddy to read. However, as she well said, had he been sincere, had he been willing to surrender just the least bit, he would not have been so outraged by the book. A man who is desperate can find comfort in anything, sometimes even in that which goes against the grain.