by Henry Miller
I was almost in tears. You’re too kind, I said. Of course you’re right. Certainly we shall find another place, and quickly too. I don’t know how to thank you for your delicacy and consideration. I guess I am a dreamer. I never realized that it was so long since we last paid you.
Of course you didn’t, said Mr. Taliaferro. You’re an honest man, I know that. But don’t worry about…
But I do worry about it, I said. Even though we may have to move without paying you the back rent, I want you to know that I will definitely pay it back later, probably in driblets.
Mr. Miller, if you were situated differently, I would be glad to accept your promise, but it’s too much to ask of you now. If you can find another place before the first of next month I shall be quite content. Let’s forget about the back rent, yes?
What could I say? I looked at him with moist eyes, shook his hand warmly and gave him my word that we would be out on time.
As he rose to take leave of me he said: Don’t be too discouraged about this. I know how much you like this place. I hope you were able to do good work here. Some day I expect to read your books. Pause. I hope you’ll always think of us as friends.
We shook hands once more, then I closed the door softly after him. I stood a few minutes with my back to the door, surveying the room. I felt good. As though I had just come through a successful operation. Just a little dizziness from the anaesthetic. How Mona would take it I didn’t know. Already I was breathing easier. Already I had visions of living among poor people, my own sort. Down to earth again. Excellent. I walked to and fro, threw open the rolling doors and strutted about in the vacant apartment in the rear. A last taste of refinement. I took a good look at the stained glass window, rubbed my hand over the rose silk tapestry, slid a few feet on the highly polished floor, looked at myself in the huge mirror. I grinned at myself and said again and again, Good! Good!
In a few minutes I had made myself a pot of tea and fixed a thick, juicy sandwich. I sat down at my work table, put my feet up on a hassock, and picked up a volume of Elie Faure, opening it at random … When this people is not cutting throats or burning buildings, when it is not decimated by famine and butchery, it has only one function—to build and decorate palaces whose vertical walls shall be thick enough to protect the Sar, his wives, his guard, and his slaves—twenty or thirty thousand persons—against the sun, invasion, or perhaps revolt. Around the great central courts are the apartments covered with terraces or with domes, with cupolas, images of the absolute vault of the deserts, which the Oriental soul will rediscover when Islam shall have reawakened it. Higher than these, observatories which are at the same time temples, the ziggurats, the pyramidal towers whose stages painted with red, white, blue, brown, black, silver and gold, shine afar through the veils of dust which the winds whirl in spiral. Especially at the approach of evening, the warring hordes and the nomadic pillagers, who see the sombre confines of the desert streaked with this motionless lightning, must recoil in fear. It is the dwelling of the god, and resembles those steps of the plateau of Iran leading to the roof of the world, which are striped with violent colors by subterranean fire and by the blaze of the sun. The gates are guarded by terrific brutes, bulls and lions with human heads, marching…
A few blocks away, in a quiet street largely taken over by the Syrians, we found a modest furnished room situated in the rear of the house on the ground floor.
The woman who rented the place was a blue-nose from Nova Scotia, a harridan who gave me the shudders every time I looked at her. Everything imaginable had been crammed into our quarters: wash tubs, cooking store, heater, huge sideboard, old-fashioned wardrobe, extra couch, a battered rocker, a still more battered armchair, a sewing machine, a horsehair sofa, a what-not filled with five-and-ten-cent store knick-knacks, and an empty bird cage. I suspected that it was this room the old witch herself had inhabited prior to our arrival.
To put it pleasantly, an atmosphere of dementia reigned.
The saving thing was the garden outside our back door. It was a long rectangular garden enclosed by high brick walls, reminding me for some unaccountable reason of the garden in Peter Ibbetson. At any rate, it was a place in which to dream. Summer had just begun and in the late afternoons I would drag out a big armchair and read. I had just discovered Arthur Weigall’s books and was devouring them one after another. After reading a few pages I would fall into a reverie. Here in the garden everything was conducive to dream and reverie—the soft, fragrant air, the humming of insects, the lazy flight of the birds, the swishing of foliage, the murmur of foreign voices in the gardens adjoining.
An interlude of peace and privacy.
It was during this period that purely by chance I ran into my old friend Stanley one day. Forthwith Stanley began to visit us at frequent intervals, usually accompanied by his two boys, one five, the other seven. He had grown very fond of his youngsters and took great pride in their appearance, their manners, their speech. From Stanley I learned that my daughter was now attending a private school. His elder son, also named Stanley, had quite a crush on her, he informed me. This last he imparted with great relish, adding that Maude viewed the situation with alarm.
As to how they were getting along, that I had to drag out of him. It was nothing to worry about, he assured me, but the tone in which he said it conveyed that their circumstances were none too good. Poor old Melanie was still slaving away at the hospital, hobbling to work now with a cane; her nights she spent coddling her varicose veins. She and Maude were more than ever at odds. Maude, of course, was still giving piano lessons.
It was just as well I didn’t’ visit them any more, was Stanley’s summing up. They had given me up as hopeless and irresponsible. Only Melanie, apparently, had a good word to say for me but then Melanie was just a doddering idiot. (Always subtle and tactful, Stanley.)
Can’t you sneak me in there some time when no one’s home? I begged. I want to see how the place looks. I’d like to see the child’s toys, if nothing more.
Stanley couldn’t see the wisdom of this but promised to think it over.
Then he added quickly: You’d better forget about them. You’ve made a new life for yourself, stick to it!
He must have sensed that we didn’t have enough to eat, for every time he came he brought food, usually the remnants of some Polish concoction his wife had made—soups, stews, puddings, jam. Good gruel, the sort we needed. In fact, we began to look forward to these visits.
There wasn’t much change in Stanley, I noticed, except that his nose was now pressed closer to the grindstone. He was working nights in a big printing establishment in lower New York, he told me. Now and then, standing up over the kitchen tubs, he would try to write. He found it almost impossible to concentrate—too many domestic worries. Usually they were broke before the week was up. Anyway, he was more interested in his children now than in writing. He wanted them to have a good life. Soon as they were old enough he would send them to college. And more of the same…
Though he found it impossible to write, he did read. Now and then he brought along one of the books which entranced him. It was always the work of a romantic writer, usually of the 19th century. Somehow, no matter what book we were discussing, no matter what the world situation, no matter even if a revolution were impending, our talks always ended on Joseph Conrad. Or if not Conrad, then Anatole France. I had long ceased to be interested in either of these writers. Conrad bored me. But when Stanley began to sing his praise I would become intrigued despite myself. Stanley was no critic, to be sure, but, just as in the old days when we used to sit by the glowing stove in the kitchen and while the hours away, so now Stanley had a way of talking about the men he adored which infected me. He was full of yarns, usually about trivial episodes. These yarns were always humorous and spiced with malice and irony. The undercurrent, however, was freighted with tenderness, an immense, throbbing tenderness, which was almost suffocating. This tenderness of his, which he always smothered, redeemed his rancor, hi
s cruelty, his vindictiveness. It was an aspect of his nature, however, which he rarely betrayed to others. In general he was brusque, mordant, acidulous. With a few words and gestures he could destroy any ambiance. Even when silent there emanated from him a fluid which was corrosive.
In talking to me, however, he always melted. For some strange reason he saw in me an alter ego. Nothing gave him more delight, nothing could make him more charming and solicitous, than the fact I felt miserable or defeated. Then we were brothers. Then he could relax, expand, sun himself. He liked to think that we were accursed. Had he not prophesied time on end that all my efforts would be of no avail? Had he not predicted that I would never make a good husband, nor a father, nor ever become a writer? Why did I persist? Why didn’t I settle down, as he had, take some humdrum job and accept my lot? It was patent that it did his heart good to gloat thus. Ever and always he went out of his way to remind me that I was just a Brooklyn boy, a lad from the 14 th Ward—like himself, like Louis Pirossa, like Harry Martin, like Eddie Goeller, like Alfie Betcha. (All failures.) No, none of us would ever come to aught. We were condemned in advance. I ought to be grateful, he thought, that I wasn’t sitting in the penitentiary or that I hadn’t become a drug addict. Lucky for me that I came of a solid, respectable family.
Just the same, I was doomed.
As he continued to rant, however, his voice became more and more soothing. There was now a wistful quality in it, a nostalgic tinge. It was so very clear that, despite all he said, he could think of no better heritage than the life we once led, the companions we once had, in the good old 14th Ward. He spoke of our mutual friends of long ago as if he had made a life’s study of each separate one. They were all so diverse in character and temperament, yet each and every one had been circumscribed by his limitations, held in a vise of his own making. For Stanley there was no hope of egress, never had been, for any of them. Nor for us, to be sure. For other individuals there might be loopholes, but not for the men of the 14th Ward. We were in jeopardy, forever. It was this very fact, this deliciously ineluctable fact, which endeared the memory of our bygone friends. Most certainly, he admitted, they possessed as great talent as men elsewhere in the world. Undisputably they possessed all the qualities which made of other men poets, kings, diplomats, scholars. And they had proved themselves capable of revealing these qualities, each on his own level, each in his own unique way. Wast not Johnny Paul the very soul of a king? Was he not a potential Charlemagne? His chivalry, his magnanimity, his faith and tolerance, were they not the very attributes of a Saladin? Stanley could always wax most eloquent when it came to Johnny Paul whom neither of us had seen since we were nine or ten. What became of him, we used to ask each other. What? No one knew. By choice or by fate he had remained anonymous. He was there, somewhere, in the great mass of humanity, leavening it with the fervor of his truly regal spirit. That was sufficient for Stanley. For me too, indeed. Strange that the very mention of the name Johnny Paul could bring tears to our eyes. Was he really so near and dear to us—or had we magnified his importance with the passing years? In any case, there he stood—in the hall of memory—the incarnation of all that was good, all that was promising. One of the grand Untouchables. Whatever it was he possessed, whatever it was he purveyed, it was imperishable. We had been aware of it as boys, we were convinced of it now as men…
Mona, at first rather distrustful of Stanley, rather uneasy in his presence, warmed to him more and more with each succeeding visit. Our talk of the old neighborhood, of our wonderful playmates, our curious and brutal games, our fantastic notions (as children) of the world we inhabited, revealed to her a side of life she had never known. Occasionally she would remind Stanley of her Polish origin, or her Roumanian origin, or her Viennese origin, or telescope them all into the heart of the Carpathian mountains. To these overtures Stanley always gave a lame ear, or as the Greeks say—koutsaftis. In his mind the fact that she couldn’t speak a word of Polish was sufficient to put her in the same category as all the other outlanders of this world. Besides, for Stanley’s taste she was a little too glib. Out of deference to me he never contradicted her, but the devastating expressions which flitted over his features spoke volumes. Doubt and disdain were the expressions Stanley most easily summoned. More than anything else Stanley was disdainful. This disdain which never quite left his features, which at most he subdued or repressed, was concentrated in his nose. He had the rather long, fine nose with flaring nostrils which is often noticeable among the Poles. Whatever was suspect, whatever was distasteful or antipathetic, manifested itself at once through this organ. The mouth expressed bitterness, the eyes a steadfast cruelty. They were small eyes, the color of agate; they were set wide apart and the look they gave bored clean through one. When he was merely ironical they twinkled, like cold, remote stars; when he was angry they burned like arrows dipped in poison.
What made him particularly awkward and ill at ease in Mona’s presence was her fluency, her agility, her quick intelligence. They were not qualities he admired in the other sex. It was not altogether by accident that he had chosen for wife a dolt, a half-wit, who, to hide her ignorance or embarrassment, would grin fatuously or titter in a most disconcerting way. True to form, he treated her like an object. She was the vassal. Perhaps he did love her once, but if so it must have been in another incarnation. Nevertheless he felt at home with her. He knew how to cope with her faults and transgressions.
He was such a queer, queer fellow, Stanley. Such a mixture of rasping contradictions. But there was one thing he seldom did, queer gazabo that he was—he seldom asked questions. When he did, they were direct questions and they had to be answered directly. It was, of course, not tact but pride which made him act in this seemingly discreet way. He took it for granted that I would inform him of anything important which came to pass. He preferred to have me volunteer the information than to pump it out of me. Knowing him as I did, I regarded it as hopeless to explain to him our manner of life. Had I told him simply that I had taken to thieving he would have swallowed it unquestioningly. Had I told him I had become a counterfeiter he might have arched his eyebrows in quizzical approbation. But to tell him of the devious nature of our operations would have baffled and repelled him.
A rum bird, this Polski. The only trace of suavity he ever displayed was in narrating one of his quaint yarns. At table, if he asked for a piece of bread, it was like a slap in the face. He was deliberately rude and insulting. It made him feel good to see others squirm.
At the same time he had a shyness which was quixotic. If Mona were to seat herself opposite him and cross her legs he would avert his eyes. If she put her make-up on in his presence he would pretend not to be aware of it. Her beauty itself made him self-conscious. It also made him suspicious. A woman as beautiful and intelligent as Mona marrying a guy like me—there was something louche about it in his eyes. He knew of course where and how I had met her. Now and then he referred to it casually, but always tellingly. When she spoke of her childhood in Poland or Vienna he would watch me attentively, hoping, I suppose, that I would embellish the story, fill in the long missing details. There was a gap somewhere and it bothered him. Once he went so far as to remark that he doubted she was ever born in Poland. But that she was a Jewess, that he never suspected. She was American through and through, that was his private belief. But an unusual American, for a female, that is. He couldn’t get over her diction, which was without the slightest trace of accent or locale. How did she ever learn to speak such a pure English? he would ask. How could I be sure of anything concerning her? I know you, he would say, you’re a Romantic … you prefer to have it a mystery. Which was quite true. Me, he said, I want to know what’s what. I want things above board. No hide-and-seek games for me. Yet it was he, Stanley, who was so enamoured of Herr Nagel, the hero of Mysteries. What discussions we had by the kitchen fire a propos this enigmatic figure of Hamsun’s! He would have given his right arm, Stanley, to have created such a character. It was not only that Herr Nag
el enveloped himself in a shroud of mystery, it was also his sense of humor, his pranks, his voile-faces which appealed to Stanley. But what he adored above all was the contradictory nature of the man. Herr Nagel’s helplessness in the presence of the woman he loved, his masochism, his diabolism, his sentimentality, his extreme vulnerability—these qualities made him extraordinarily precious. I tell you, Henry, that Hamsun is a master, Stanley would say. He had said the same of Conrad, of Balzac, of Anatole France, of de Maupassant, of Loti. He had said the same of Reymont when he finished The Peasants. (For quite different reasons, to be sure.) Of one thing I could be certain, he would never say it of me, even if the whole world were unanimous about it. A master of literature, from Stanley’s viewpoint, had to be a type like the above-mentioned. He had first of all to be of the Old World; he had to be suave, he had to have finesse, subtlety, velleity. He had to have a style which was finished; he had to be adept with plot, characters, situations; he had to command a broad knowledge of the world and of human affairs. In his opinion I would never, never be able to spin a good yarn. Even in Sherwood Anderson, whom he grudgingly admitted now and then to be an excellent story-teller, he found grave faults. His style was too fresh, too raw, too new for Stanley’s taste. Yet he laughed until the tears came to his eyes when he read The Triumph of the Egg. He admitted it resentfully. He had laughed in spite of himself, as it were. And then he took on about Jerome K. Jerome, certainly a strange bird for a Polski to mention. In Stanley’s opinion nothing funnier had ever been written than Three Men in a Boat. Even the Polish writers had no one to equal him. But then the Poles were seldom funny. If a Pole calls something funny, said Stanley, it means that he finds it bizarre. He’s too sombre, too tragic, to appreciate horseplay. Speaking thus, the word droll would inevitably cross his lips. Droll was his favorite word, and it expressed a multitude of dissimilar things. To be droll implied a certain vein of excellence, of uniqueness, which Stanley prized exceedingly. If he said of an author—He’s a droll chap—he meant thereby to pay him a weighty compliment. Gogol, for instance, was one of these droll chaps. On the other hand he could refer to Bernard Shaw as a droll chap too. Or Strindberg. Or even Maeterlinck.