by Henry Miller
I got the first shingle set and picked up the hammer to drive the first nail home. I missed it by an inch or two and the shingle went flying homeward like a kite. I was so surprised, so stunned, that the hammer fell out of my hands and the keg of nails tumbled to the ground. Karen, unperturbed, gave orders to remain where I was, the women would gather up the hammer and nails. It was Lotta who ran to the kitchen to get the hammer. When she returned I learned that I had broken the tea pot and a few plates. Mona was scrambling for the nails, picking them up so fast that they fell out of her hand before she could get them in the keg.
Easy, easy! shouted Karen. All right up there, Henry? Steady now!
With this I got the giggles. The situation reminded me all too vividly of those dreadful occasions in the past when my mother and sister would aid me in putting up the awnings—parlor floor front. Nobody except an awning maker has any idea how complicated an awning can be. There are not only the rods and flaps, the bolts and screws, the pulleys and cords, there are a hundred perplexing difficulties which arise after you have mounted the ladder and anchored yourself gingerly on the edge of the double window. Somehow there always seemed to be a gale blowing when my mother decided to put up the awnings. Holding the flapping awning with one hand and the hammer with the other, my mother would then endeavor to pass the various things which were needed and which my sister had handed to her. To keep a tight grip with my legs and not permit the awning to carry me aloft was a feat in itself. My arms would grow tired before I had driven in the first screw. I would have to disentangle the damned contraption and jump down for a breathing spell. All the time my mother would be mumbling and groaning—It’s so simple, I could put them up myself in a few minutes if I didn’t have the rheumatism. Recommencing, she would be obliged to explain to me all over again which part went outside and which inside.
For me it was like doing something backwards. Once in position again, the hammer would fall from my hands, and I would sit there wrestling with the belly of the awning while my sister ran below and fetched it. It would take at least an hour to put up one awning. At this point I would invariably say—Why not leave the other ones till tomorrow? Whereupon my mother would fly into a rage, horrified by the thought of what the neighbors would think seeing only one awning in place. Sometimes, at this point, I would suggest that we call upon a neighbor to finish the job, offering to pay him handsomely out of my own pocket. But this would enrage her even more. It was a sin, in her opinion, to pay out money for work which one could do oneself. By the time we finished I always had a few bruises. Serves you right, my mother would say. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You’re as helpless as your father.
Sitting astride the ridge pole, laughing quietly to myself, I congratulated myself that we were doing something other than dictaphone work. I knew that by evening my back would be so sunburned that I would be unable to work on the morrow. I would have to lie on my belly all day. Fine. It would give me a chance to read something interesting. I was growing stupid listening to nothing but statistical abracadabra. T realized that Karen would try to find something light for me to do while lying on my belly, but I knew how to discourage such attempts.
Well, we began again, slowly and deliberately this time. The way I worked over one nail would have driven any normal person crazy. But Karen was anything but a normal individual. From his Carthaginian tower he continued to shower me with directions and encouragements. Why he didn’t put the shingles up himself and let me pass them to him I couldn’t understand. But he was happy only when directing. Even when it was a simple thing he had to do he could somehow break it up into a multitude of component parts which would necessitate the cooperation of several individuals. It never mattered to him how long it took to complete a job; all that mattered was that it be done his way, i.e., the longest and the most complicated way. This was what he called efficiency. He had learned it in Germany while studying how to make organs. (Why organs? So that he could appreciate music better.)
I had only put up a few shingles when the signal came for lunch. It was a cold lunch made of the odds and ends from yesterday’s banquet. A salad, Lotta called it. Happily there were a few bottles of beer to make it palatable. We even had a few grapes. I ate them slowly, one by one, stretching the minutes out. Already my back looked raw. Mona wanted me to put a shirt on. I assured them that I tanned quickly. Wouldn’t think of donning a shirt. Karen who wasn’t altogether a fool, suggested that we lay off the roof work for the afternoon and tackle something light. He began explaining that he had made some complicated charts which had to be corrected and remade.
No, let’s get on with the roof, I urged. I’m just getting the hang of it.
As this sounded plausible and logical to him, Karen voted to tackle the roof again. Once more we clambered up the ladder, did a little preliminary footwork on the ridge pole, and settled down to hammering nails. In a short time the sweat was pouring off me like rain. The more I perspired the more the flies buzzed and bit. My back felt like a raw steak. I accelerated my rhythm perceptibly.
Good work, Hank! yelled Karen. We ought to be through in a day or two at this rate.
He had no more than got the words out of his mouth when a shingle flew skyward and caught him over the eye. It made a gash from which the blood trickled into his eye.
Oh darling, are you hurt? cried Lotta.
It’s nothing, he said. Carry on, Henry.
I’ll get some iodine, yelled Lotta, trotting off into the house.
Quite unintentionally I let the hammer fall from my hand. It fell through a hole in the sheathing right on Lotta’s skull. She gave a shriek as if a shark had bitten her, and with that Karen scrambled down from his perch.
It was time to call a halt. Lotta had to be put to bed with a cold compress on her head. Karen had a big patch of court plaster over his left eye. He never uttered a word of complaint.
I guess you’ll have to make the dinner again tonight, he said to Mona. It seemed to me that there was a secret note of pleasure in his voice. Mona and I had difficulty restraining our jubilation. We waited a while before broaching the subject of the menu. Fix anything you like, said Karen. How about lamb chops? I put in. Some lamb chops with French peas, some noodles and maybe artichokes too—how does that sound?
Karen thought it would be excellent. You don’t mind, do you? he basked Mona.
Not at all, she said. It’s a pleasure. Then, as if it were quite an afterthought, she added: Didn’t we bring some Riesling yesterday? I think a bottle of Riesling would go well with the chops.
Just the thing, said Karen. I took a shower and got into may pajamas. The prospect of enjoying another good meal revived me. I was ready to sit down and do a bit of dictaphone work to show my appreciation.
I think you’d better rest up, said Karen. You’ll feel a little muscle-bound tomorrow.
What about those charts? I said. I’d really like to do something, you know. I’m sorry I was so damned awkward.
Tut tut, said Karen. ‘You’ve done a good day’s work. Take it easy till dinner time.
All right, if you insist. OX.
I opened a bottle of beer and plunked myself in the easy chair.
Thus it went au bord de la mer. Great sand spits, with an unceasing surf which pounded in one’s ears at night like the hammering of a stupendous toccata. Now and then sand storms. The sand seeped in everywhere, even through the glass panes, it seemed.
We were all good swimmers; we bobbed up and down in the heavy surf like otters. Karen always seeking to improve matters, made use of an inflated rubber mattress. After he had taken a siesta on the bosom of the deep, he would swim out a mile or two and give us all a good fright.
Evenings he enjoyed playing games. He played in dead earnest always, whether it was pinochle, cribbage, checkers, casino, whist, fan-tan, dominoes, euchre or backgammon. I don’t believe there was a game with which he was not conversant. Part of his general education, don’t you know. The rounded individual. He could play
hopscotch or tiddly-winks with the same furious zeal and adroitness. Once, when I went to town with him, I suggested that we drop into a pool parlor and play a game of pool. He asked me if I wanted to shoot first. Without thinking I said, No, you go ahead. He did. He cleaned up the table four times before I had a chance to use the cue. When it finally came my turn I suggested that we go home. Next time you shoot first, he said, intimating that that would be a break for me. It never occurred to him, that just because he was a shark, it would have been sporting to miss a shot occasionally. To play ping pong with him was hopeless; only Bill Tilden could have returned his serves. The only game in which I might have stood a chance to break even was craps, but I never liked rolling dice, it was boring.
One evening, after discussing some books on occultism, I reminded him of the time we had taken a trip up the Hudson on an excursion boat. You remember how we pushed the ouija board around? His face lit up. Of course he did. He would like to try it again if I were willing. He’d improvise a board.
We sat up that night till two in the morning pushing the damned thingamajig around. We must have made a lot of connections in the astral realm, judging by the time which elapsed. As usual it was I who summoned the eccentric figures—Jacob Boehme, Swedenborg, Paracelsus, Nostradamus, Claude Saint-Martin, Ignatius Loyola, the Marquis de Sade and such like. Karen made notes of the messages we received. Said he would dictate them to the dictaphone the next day. To be filed under 1.352-Cz 240.(18), which was the exact index for material derived from the departed spirits by means of the ouija board on such and such an evening in the region of the Rockaways. It was weeks later when I decocted this particular record. I had forgotten all about the incident. Suddenly, in Karen’s serious voice I began getting these crazy messages from the blue … Eating well. Time hangs heavy. Coronary divertissements tomorrow. Paracelsus. I began to shake with laughter. So the idiot really was filing this stuff away! I was curious to know what else he might have tucked away under this classification. I went to the card files first. There were at least fifty cross references indicated. Each one was battier than the previous one. I got out the folders and file boxes in which the papers were stored away. His notes and jottings were scribbled in a minute scrawl on odds and ends, often paper napkins, blotters, menus, tally cards. Sometimes it was nothing more than a phrase which a friend had dropped while conversing in the subway; sometimes it was an embryonic thought which had flitted through his head while taking a crap. Sometimes it was a page torn from a hook—the title, author, publisher and place always carefully noted as well as the date when he had come across it. There were bibliographies in at least a dozen languages, including Chinese and Persian.
One curious chart interested me enormously; I intended to pump him about it one day but never did. As best I could make out, it represented a map of some singular region in limbo, the boundaries of which had been given him in a seance with a medium. It looked like a geodetic survey of a bad dream. The names of the places were written in a language which nobody could possibly understand. But Karen had given a rough translation on separate sheets of paper. Notes, it read: The following translations of place names in the quaternary decan of Devachan were volunteered by de Quincey working through Madame X. Coleridge is said to have verified them before his death but the documents in which the testimony is given are temporarily lost. The singular thing about this shadowy sector of the beyond was this: in its confines, imaginary perhaps, were gathered the shades of such diverse and interesting personalities as Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Longinus, Virgil, Hermes Trismegistus, Apollonius of Tyana, Montezuma, Xenophon, Jan van Ruysbroeck, Nicolaus of Cusa, Meister Eckhart, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Asoka, St. Francois de Sales, Fenelon, Chuang Tzu, Nostradamus, Saladin, the Pope Joanna, St. Vincent de Paul, Paracelsus, Malatesta, Origen, together with, a coterie of women saints. One would like to know what had drawn this conglomeration of souls together. One would like to know what they discussed in the mysterious language of the departed. One would like to know if the great problems which had tormented them on earth had been finally resolved. One would like to know if they consorted together in divine harmony. Warriors, saints, mystics, sages, magicians, martyrs, kings, thaumaturgists … What an assemblage! What would one not give to be with them just for a day!
As I say, for some mysterious reason I never brought this subject to Karen’s attention. There was little, indeed, outside our work which I did discuss with him, first because of his great reserve, second because to introduce even a slight detail meant listening to an inexhaustible harangue, third because I was intimidated by the vast domain of knowledge which appeared to be his. I contented myself with browsing through his books, which embraced an enormous range of subject matter. He read Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Sanskrit with apparent ease, and was fluent in a dozen living tongues, including Russian, Turkish and Arabic. The titles of his books were alone sufficient to set my head spinning. What astounded me, however, was that so little of this vast store of learning seeped into our daily talk. Sometimes I had the feeling that he regarded me as a thorough ignoramus. Other times he embarrassed me by posing questions which only a Thomas Aquinas could cope with. Now and then he gave me the impression that he was just a child with an over-developed brain. He had little humor and almost no imagination. Outwardly he appeared to be a model husband, always ready to cater to his wife’s whims, always alert to serve her, always solicitous and protective, at times positively chivalric. I couldn’t help but wonder at times what it would be like to be married to this human adding machine. With Karen everything proceeded according to schedule. Intercourse too, no doubt. Perhaps he kept a secret file reminding him when intercourse was due, together with notes on the results—spiritual, moral, mental and physical.
One day he caught me unawares reading a volume of Elie Faure which I had dug up. I had just read the paragraph which opens the chapter on The Sources of Greek Art … On condition that we respect ruins, that we do not rebuild them, that, after having asked their secret, we let them be recovered by the ashes of the centuries, the bones of the dead, the rising mass of waste which once was vegetations and races, the eternal drapery of the foliage—their destiny may stir our emotion. It is through them that we touch the depths of our history, just as we are bound to the roots of life by the griefs and sufferings which have formed us. A ruin is painful to behold only for the man who is incapable of participating by his activity in the conquest of the present…
He came on me just as I had finished the paragraph. ‘What! he exclaimed. You’re reading Elie Faure?
Why not? I was at a loss to understand his amazement.
He hesitated a moment, scratched his head, then answered falteringly: I don’t know, Henry … I never thought … Well, I’ll be damned! Do you really find it interesting?
Interesting? I echoed. I’m mad about Elie Faure.
Where are you at? he asked, reaching for the book. Ah, I see. He read the paragraph over, aloud. I wish I had the time to read that sort of books—it’s too much of a luxury for me.
I don’t follow you.
One has to swallow such books early in life, said Karen. It’s sheer poetry, you know. Makes too much of a demand on one. You’re lucky you have time to spare. You’re still an aesthete.
And you?
Just a work-horse, I guess. I’ve put my dreams behind me.
All those books in there … I nodded in the direction of the library. You’ve read them?
Most of them, he answered. Some of them I’m reserving for leisure moments.
I noticed you had several books on Paracelsus. I only glanced at them—but they intrigue me.
I hoped he would snatch at the bait, but no, he dismissed the subject by remarking, as if to himself, that one could spend a life-time struggling to grasp the meaning of Paracelsus’ theories.
And what about Nostradamus? I asked. I was intent on getting some spark from him.
To my surprise his face suddenly lit up. Ah, that’s another story, he replied.
Why do you ask—have you been reading him?
One doesn’t read Nostradamus. I’ve been reading about him. What excites me is the Preface which he addressed to his infant son, Caesar. It’s an extraordinary document, in more ways than one. Can you spare a minute?
He nodded. I got up, brought the book back, and hunted up the page which had inflamed me just a few days before.
Listen to this, I said. I read him a few salient passages, then stopped abruptly. There are two passages in this book which … well, they baffle me. Perhaps you can explain them to me. The first one is this: ‘M le Pelletier (says the author) conceives that the Commun Advenement, or Favenement au regne des gens du corn-mum, which I have rendered The Vulgar Advent, extending from the death of Louis XVI to the reign of Antichrist, is the grand object of Nostradamus.’ I’ll come back to this in a moment. Here’s the second one: ‘As an accepted visionary he (Nostradamus) is perhaps less swayed by the imagination than any man of a hall kindred type that one can mention.’ I paused. What do you make of them, if anything?
Karen took his time before answering. I surmised that he was conducting an inner debate, first, as to whether he could spare the time to make adequate answer to the question, second, whether it would be worth his while to waste his ammunition on a type like myself.
You understand, Henry, he began, that you’re asking me to explain something highly complex. Let me ask you first, have you ever read anything by Evelyn Underbill, or by A. E. Waite? I shook my head. I thought as much, he continued. Naturally you wouldn’t have asked my opinion if you hadn’t sensed the nature of these perplexing statements. I’d like to ask you another question, if you don’t mind. Do you understand the difference between a prophet, a mystic, a visionary and a seer?