The Dream Life of Balso Snell

by Nathanael West

  I start where I left off in my last letter:

  As Janey’s half-naked body crashed into the street, the usual crowds were hurrying to lunch from the Academies Colorossa and Grande Chaumiere; the concierge was coming out of the hotel’s side door. In order to avoid running over her body, the driver of a cab coming from the Rue Notre Dame des Champs and going toward the Square de la Grande Chaumiere, brought his machine to a stop with screaming brakes. The concierge, on seeing the cab stop suddenly, one wheel over the body of a tenant of his, ran up, caught the chauffeur by the arm, and called loudly for the police. No one had seen her fall but the driver of the cab; he, bursting with rage, called the concierge an idiot, and pointed to the open window from which she had jumped. A crowd gathered around the chauffeur and shouted at him angrily. A policeman arrived. He, too, refused to believe the cab-driver, although he noticed that the dead girl was in her pajamas. “What would she be doing in the street in her night-clothes if she hadn’t fallen from the window?” He shrugged his shoulders: “These American art students.”

  Beagle, on his way to the Café Carcas for a drink, turned to see where so many people were running. He saw the gesticulating group around the cab and went back, grateful for any diversion on what had been such a dull morning. As he joined them he kept thinking of Janey’s announcement. “I’m pregnant.” It reminded him of another announcement of hers. “It’s about time I took a lover.” “I’m pregnant” demanded for an answer, Life, just as “It’s about time I took a lover” had been worthy of no less a reply than Love. She made a habit of these startling declarations: a few words, but freighted with meaning.

  He knew what “I’m pregnant” meant; it meant canvassing his friends for the whereabouts of a doctor willing to perform the operation and writing frantic letters to the States for the necessary money. Through it all, Janey, having thrown the responsibility on him, would sit in one corner of the room: “Do with me what you will”—the groaning, patient, all-suffering, all-knowing, what has to be will be, beast of many burdens.

  As he pushed into the crowd, someone told him a girl had been killed. He looked where the chauffeur was pointing and saw the open window of their room. Then he saw Janey under the cab; he could not see her face, but he recognized her pajamas.

  This was indeed a solution. The problem had been solved for him with a vengeance. He turned away and hurried up the street, afraid of being recognized. It had become impossible for him to take his drink at the Carcas. If he went there some friend would surely come to him with the news, “Beagle! Beagle! Janey has killed herself.” He wanted to go somewhere and prepare a reply. “Here today and gone tomorrow” would never do, even at the Carcas.

  He went past the Carcas up the Rue Delambre to the Avenue de Maine. On this street he went into a café hardly ever visited by Americans and sat down at a table in the corner of an inside room. He called for some cognac and asked himself:

  Of what assistance could I have been? Should I have gone down on my knees in the street and wept over her dead body? Torn my hair? Called on the Deity? Or should I gave gone calmly up to the policeman and said: “I’m her husband. Allow me to accompany you to the morgue.”

  He ordered another cognac—Beagle Darwin the Destroyer. He pulled his hat down over his eyes and tossed off his drink.

  She did it because she was pregnant. I would have married her, the fool. I hurt her when I made believe I didn’t understand her French. “Je suis enceinte.” My “what” was one of the astonishment, not the “what” of interrogation. No, it was not. You said “what” in order to humiliate her. What is the purpose of all your harping on petty affectations? Why this continual irritation at the sight of other peoples’ stupidities? What of your own stupidities and affectations? Why is it impossible for you to understand, except in terms of art, her action? She killed herself because she was afraid to face her troubles—an abortion or the birth of a bastard. Absurd; she never asked you to marry her. You do not understand.

  He crouched over his drink, Tiger Darwin, his eyes half shut—desperate.

  I wonder if she was able to avoid generalizing before she killed herself. I am sure it was not trouble, that was uppermost in her mind, but the rag-tag of some “philosophy.” Although I did my best to laugh away finita la comedia, I am certain that some such catch-word of disillusion was in her mouth when she turned the trick. She probably decided that Love, Life, Death, all could be contained in an epigram: “The things which are of value in Life are empty and rotten and trifling; Love is but a flitting shadow, a lure, a gimcrack, a kickshaw. And Death?—bah! What, then, is there still detaining you in this vale of tears?” Can it be that the only thing that bothers me in a statement of this sort is the wording? Or is it because there is something arty about suicide? Suicide: Werther, the Cosmic Urge, the Soul, the Quest, and Otto Greenbaum, Phil Beta Kappa, Age seventeen—Life is unworthy of him; and Haldington Knape, Oxford, author, man-about-town, big game hunter—Life is too tiresome; and Terry Kornflower, poet, no hat, shirt open to the navel—Life is too crude; and Janey Davenport, pregnant, unmarried, jumps from a studio window in Paris—Life is too difficult. 0. Greenbaum, H. Knape, T. Kornflower, J. Davenport, all would agree that “Life is but the span from womb to tomb; a sigh, a smile; a chill, a fever; a throe of pain, a spasm of volupty: then a gasping for breath, and the comedy is over, the song is ended, ring down the curtain, the clown is dead.”

  The clown is dead; the curtain is down. And when I say clown, I mean you. After all, aren’t we all…aren’t we all clowns? Of course, I know it’s old stuff; but what difference does that make? Life is a stage; and we are clowns. What is more tragic than the role of clown? What more filled with all the essentials of great art?—pity and irony. Get it? The thousands of sweating, laughing, grimacing, jeering animals out front—you have just set them in the aisles, when in comes a messenger. Your wife has run away with the boarder, your son has killed a man, the baby has cancer. Or maybe you ain’t married. Coming from the bathroom, you discover that you have gonorrhoea, or you get a telegram that your mother is dead, or your father, or your sister, or your brother. Now get the picture. Outside, after your turn, the customers are hollering and screaming: “Do your stuff, kid! We want Beagle! Let’s have Beagle! He’s a wow!” The clowns down front are laughing, whistling, belching, crying, sweating, and eating peanuts. And you—you are back-stage, hiding in the shadow of an old prop. Clutching your bursting head with both hands, you hear nothing but the dull roar of your misfortunes. Slowly there filters through your clenched fingers the cries of your brother clowns. Your first thought is to rush out there and cut your throat before their faces with a last terrific laugh. But soon you are out front again doing your stuff, the same superb Beagle: dancing, laughing, singing—acting. Finally the curtain comes down, and, in your dressing room before the mirror, you make the faces that won’t come off with the grease paint—the faces you will never make down front.

  Beagle ordered another cognac and washed it down with a small beer. The saucers had begun to pile up before him on the table.

  Well, Janey’s death is a joke. A young, unmarried woman on discovering herself to be pregnant commits suicide. A very old and well-known way out of a very old and stale predicament. The moth and the candle, the fly and the spider, the butterfly and the rain, the clown and the curtain, all could be cited as having prepared one [oh how tediously!] for her suicide.

  Another cognac! After this cognac, he would go to the Café Carcas and wait for a friend to bring him news of Janey’s death.

  How shall I receive the devastating news? In order to arouse no adverse criticism, it will be necessary for me to bear in mind that I come of an English-speaking race and therefore am cold, calm, collected, almost stolid, in the face of calamity. And, as the death is that of a very intimate friend, it is important that I show, in some subtle way, that I am hard hit for all my pretence of coldness. Or perhaps because the Carcas is full of artists, I can refuse to stop dreaming, refuse to
leave my ivory tower, refuse to disturb that brooding white bird, my spirit. A wave of the hand: “Yes, really. You don’t say so?—quite dead.” Or I can play one of my favorite roles, be the “Buffoon of the New Eternities” and cry: “Death, what is it? Life, what is it? Life is of course the absence of Death; and Death merely the absence of Life.” But I might get into an argument unbecoming one who is lamenting the loss of a loved one. For the sake of the waiters, I will be a quiet, sober, gentle, umbrella-carrying Mr. B. Darwin, and out of a great sadness sob: “Oh, my darling, why did you do it? Oh why?” Or, best of all, like Hamlet, I will feign madness; for if they discover what lies in my heart they will lynch me.

  MESSENGER

  “Beagle! Beagle! Janey has fallen from the window and is no more.”

  PATRONS, WAITERS, ETC., AT THE CAFE CARCAS

  “The girl you lived with is dead.”

  “Poor Janey. Poor Beagle. Terrible, terrible death.” “And so young she was, and so beautiful…in the cold street she lay.”

  B. HAMLET DARWIN

  “Bromius! Iacchus! Son of Zeus!”

  PATRONS, WAITERS, ETC.

  “Don’t you understand, man? The girl you lived with is dead. Your sweetheart is dead. She has killed herself. She is dead!”

  B. HAMLET DARWIN

  “Bromius! Iacchus! Son of Zeus!”

  PATRONS, WAITERS, ETC.

  “He’s drunk.”

  “Greek gods!—does he think we don’t know he’s a Methodist?”

  “This is no time for blasphemy!”

  “A little learning goes to the heads of fools.”

  “Yes, drink deep of the Pierian spring or…”

  “Very picturesque though, ‘Bromius! Iacchus!’ very picturesque.”

  B. HAMLET DARWIN

  “‘0 esca vermium! 0 massa pulveris!’ Where is the rich Dives? He who was always eating? He is no longer even eaten.”

  PATRONS, WAITERS, ETC.

  “A riddle! A riddle!”

  “He is looking for a friend.”

  “He has lost something. Tell him to look under the table.”

  MESSENGER

  “He means the worms have eaten Dives; and that, in their turn dead, the worms have been eaten by other worms.”

  B. HAMLET DARWIN

  “Or quick tell me where has gone Samson?—strongest of men. He is no longer even weak. And where, oh tell me, where is the beautiful Appollon? He is no longer even ugly. And where are the snows of yesteryear? And where is Tom Giles? Bill Taylor? Jake Holtz? In other words, `Here today and gone tomorrow.’”

  MESSENGER

  “Yes, what he says is but too true. An incident such as the sad demise we are now considering makes one stop ‘midst the hustle-bustle of our work-a-day world to ponder the words of the poet who says we are ‘nourriture des vers!’ Continue, dear brother in sorrow, we attend your every word.”

  B. HAMLET DARWIN

  “I shall begin all over again, folks.

  “While I sit laughing with my friends, a messenger stalks into the café. He cries: ‘Beagle! Beagle! Janey has killed herself!’ I jump up, white as a sheet of paper, let us say, and shriek in anguish: ‘Bromius! Iacchus! Son of Zeus!’ You then demand why I call so loudly on Dionysius. I go into my routine.

  “Dionysius! Dionysius! I call on the wine-god because his begetting and birth were so different from Janey’s, so different from yours, so different from mine. I call on Dionysius in order to explain the tragedy. A tragedy that is not alone Janey’s, but one that is the tragedy of all of us.

  “Who among us can boast that he was born three times, as was Dionysius?—once from the womb of ‘hapless Semele,’ once from the thigh of Zeus, and once from the flames. Or who can say, like Christ, that he was born of a virgin? Or who can even claim to have been born as was Gargantua? Alas! none of us. Yet it is necessary for us to compete—as it was necessary for Janey to compete—with Dionysius the thrice born, Christ son of God, Gargantua born ‘midst a torrent of tripe at a most memorable party. You hear the thunder, you see the lightning, you smell the forests, you drink wine—and you attempt to be as was Christ, Dionysius, Gargantua! You who were born from the womb, covered with slime and foul blood, ‘midst cries of anguish and suffering.

  “At your birth, instead of the Three Kings, the Dove, the Star of Bethlehem, there was only old Doctor Haasenschweitz who wore rubber gloves and carried a towel over his arm like a waiter.

  “And how did the lover, your father, come to his beloved? [After a warm day, in the office he had seen two dogs in the street.] Did he come in the shape of a swan, a bull, or a shower of gold? No!’ But with his pants unsupported by braces, came he from the bathroom.”…

  B. Hamlet Darwin towered over his glass of cognac, and, in the theatre of his mind, over a cringing audience—tempestuous, gallant, headstrong, lovable Beagle Dionysius Hamlet Darwin. Up into his giant heart there welled a profound feeling of love for humanity. He choked with emotion as he realized the truth of his observations. Terrible indeed was the competition in which his hearers spent their lives; a competition that demanded their being more than animals.

  He raised his hand as though to bless them, and the customers and waiters were silent. Gently, yet with a sense of mighty love, he murmured, “Ah my children.” Then, sweeping the Café Carcas with tear-dimmed, eagle’s eyes, he cried: “Yet, ah yet, are you expected to compete with Christ whose father is God, with Dionysius whose father is God; you who were Janey Davenport, or one conceived in an offhand manner on a rainy afternoon.”

  “Cognac! Cognac!”

  After building up his tear-jerker routine for a repeat, he blacked out and went into his juggling for the curtain. He climaxed the finale by keeping in the air an Ivory Tower, a Still White Bird, the Holy Grail, the Nails, the Scourge, the Thorns, and a piece of the True Cross.

  Yours,

  Beagle

  “Well, what do you think of them?”

  Balso awoke and saw Miss McGeeney, the biographer of Samuel Perkins, sitting beside him at the café table. “Think of what?”

  “The two letters you just read,” Miss McGeeney said impatiently. “They form part of a novel I’m writing in the manner of Richardson. Give me your candid opinion: do you think the epistolary style too old-fashioned?”

  Refreshed by the nap he had taken, Balso examined his interrogator with interest. She was a fine figure of a woman. He wanted to please her and said:

  “A stormy wind blows through your pages, sweeping the reader breathless…witchery and madness. Comparable to George Bernard Shaw. It is a drama of passion that has all the appeal of wild living and the open road. Comparable to George Bernard Shaw. There’s magic in its pages, and warm strong sympathy for an alien race.”

  “Thank you,” she said with precision.

  How gracious is a woman grateful, thought Balso. He felt young again: the heel of a loaf, a piece of cheese, a bottle of wine and an apple. Clear speakers, naked in the sun. Young students: and the days are very full, and the nights burst with excitement, and life is a torrent roaring.

  “Oh!” Balso exclaimed, carried away by these memories of his youth. “Oh!” His mouth formed an 0 with lips torn angry in laying duck’s eggs from a chicken’s rectum.

  “Oh, what?” Miss McGeeney was obviously annoyed.

  “Oh, I loved a girl once. All day she did nothing but place bits of meat on the petals of flowers. She choked the rose with butter and cake crumbs, soiling the crispness of its dainty petals with gravy and cheese. She wanted the rose to attract flies, not butterflies or bees. She wanted to make of her garden a…”

  “Balso! Balso! Is it you?” cried Miss McGeeney, spilling what was left of his beer, much to the disgust of the waiter who hovered near.

  “Balso! Balso! Is it you?” she cried again before he could answer. “Don’t you recognize me? I’m Mary. Mary McGeeney, your old sweetheart.”

  Balso realized that she was indeed Mary. Changed, alas! but with much of the old
Mary left, particularly about the eyes. No longer was she dry and stick-like, but a woman, warmly moist.

  They sat and devoured each other with looks until the waiter suggested that they leave as he wanted to close the place and go home.

  They left arm-in-arm, walking as in a dream. Balso did the steering and they soon found themselves behind a thick clump of bushes. Miss McGeeney lay down on her back with her hands behind her head and her knees wide apart. Balso stood over her and began a speech the intent of which was obvious.

  “First,” he said, “let us consider the political aspect. You who talk of Liberty and cling to the protection of Dogma in the face of Life and the Army of Unutterable Physical Law, cast, I say, cast free the anchors, let go the moorings of your desires! Let to the breezes flap the standard of your revolt!

  “Also we must consider the philosophical aspects of the proposed act. Nature has lent you for a brief time a few organs capable of giving pleasure. Among these are to be listed the sexual ones. The organs of sex offer in reward for their intelligent use a very intense type of pleasure. Pleasure, it is necessary to admit, is the only good. It is only reasonable to say that if pleasure is desirable—and who besides a few fanatics say it is not?—one should get all the pleasure possible. First it is important to dissociate certain commonplace ideas. As a thinking person, as an individualist—and you are both of these, are you not, love?—it is necessary to dissociate the idea of pleasure from that of generation. Furthermore, it is necessary to disregard one’s unreasonable moral training. Sex, not marriage, is a sacrament. You admit it? Then why allow an ancient, inherited code to foist on you, a thinking being, the old, outmoded strictures? Sexual acts are not sins, errors, faults, weaknesses. The sexual acts give pleasure, and pleasure is desirable. So come, Mary, let us have some fun.