by Henry Miller
Not much of a one, I admit, but it’s better than begging and borrowing. Better than having your wife prostitute herself.
Every penny I make I earn, said Mona heatedly. Waiting on tables is no cinch.
All the more reason why I should do my share. You don’t like to see me selling books. I don’t like to see you waiting on tables. If we had more sense we’d be doing other things. Surely there must be some kind of work that isn’t degrading.
Not for us! We weren’t cut out to do the work of the world.
Then we ought to learn. I was getting carried away with my own righteous attitude.
Val, this is all talk. You know you’ll never hold down an honest-to-God job. Never. And I don’t want you to. I’d rather see you dead.
All right, you win. But Jesus, isn’t there something a man like me can do without feeling like a fool or a dolt? Here a thought which was forming itself on my lips caused me to laugh. I laughed good and hard before I got it out. Listen, I managed to say, do you know what I was just thinking? I was thinking that I might make a wonderful diplomat. I ought to be an ambassador to a foreign country—how does that strike you? No, seriously. Why not? I’ve got brains, and I know how to deal with people. What I don’t know I’d make up for with my imagination. Can you see me as ambassador to China?
Oddly, she didn’t think the idea so absurd. Not in the abstract, at any rate.
Certainly you would make a good ambassador, Val. Why not, as you say? But you’ll never get the chance. There are certain doors that will never be opened to you. If men like you were directing the world’s affairs we wouldn’t be worrying about the next meal—or how to get stories published. That’s why I say you don’t know the world!
Damn it, I do know the world. I know it only too well. But I refuse to make terms with it.
It’s the same thing.
No it isn’t! It’s the difference between ignorance—or blindness—and aloofness. Something like that. If I didn’t know the world how could I be a writer?
A writer has his own world.
I’ll be damned! I never expected you to say that! Now you’ve got me stumped … I was silenced for a moment.
It’s dead true what you say, I continued. But it doesn’t obviate what I just said. Maybe I can’t explain it to you, but I know I’m right. To have your own world, and to live in it, doesn’t mean that you are necessarily blind to the real world, so-called. If a writer weren’t familiar with the every-day world, if he hadn’t been so steeped in it that he revolted against it, he wouldn’t have what you call his own world. An artist carries all worlds within him. An he’s just as vital a part of this world as anyone else. In fact, he’s more thoroughly of it and in it than other people for the simple reason that he’s creative. The world is his medium. Other men are content with their little corner of the world—their own little job, their own little tribe, their own little philosophy, and so on. Damn it, the reason why I’m not a great writer, if you want to know, is because I haven’t taken the whole wide world unto me yet. It isn’t that I don’t know about evil. It isn’t that I’m blind to people’s viciousness, as you seem to think. It’s something other than that. What it is I don’t know myself. But I will know, eventually. And then I’ll become a torch. I’ll light up the world. I’ll expose it down to its very marrow … But I won’t condemn it! I won’t because I know too well that I am part and parcel of it, a significant cog in the machinery. I paused. We haven’t touched bottom yet, you know. What we’ve suffered is nothing. Flea-bites, that’s all. There are worse things to endure than lack of food and such things. I suffered much more when I was sixteen, when I was only reading about life. Or else I’m deceiving myself.
No, I know what you mean. She nodded thoughtfully.
You do? Good. Then you realize that, without participating in life, you can suffer the pangs of the martyrs … To suffer for others—that’s’ a wonderful kind of suffering. When you suffer because of your own ego, because of lack or because of misdeeds, you experience a kind of humiliation. I loathe that sort of suffering. To suffer with others, or for others, to be all in the same boat, that’s different. Then one feels enriched. What I dislike about our way of life is that it’s so restricted. We ought to be up and about, getting bruised and battered for reasons that matter.
I went on and on in this vein, sliding from one subject to another, often contradicting myself, uttering the most extravagant statements, then brushing them aside, struggling to get back to terra firma.
It was beginning to happen more and more frequently now, these monologues, these harangues. Perhaps it was because I was no longer writing. Perhaps because I was alone most of the day. Perhaps, too, because I had a feeling that she was slipping out of my hands. There was something desperate about these explosions. I was reaching out for something, something which I could never pin down in words. Though I seemed to be censuring her I was really upbraiding myself. The worst of it was that I could never come to any concrete resolution. I saw clearly what we ought not to do, but I could not see what we should do. Secretly, I relished the thought of being protected. Secretly I had to admit that she, was right—I would never fit in, never make’ the groove. And so I let it out in talk. I rambled backwards and forwards, rehearsing the glorious days of childhood, the miserable days of adolescence, the clownish adventures of youth. It was all fascinating, every iota. If only that man McFarland had been present, with his stenographer! What a story for his magazine! (Later it occurred to me how strange it was that I could talk my life out but could never get it down on paper. The moment I sat down before the machine I became self-conscious. It hadn’t occurred to me at that time to use the pronoun I. Why, I wonder? What inhibited me? Perhaps I hadn’t yet become the I of my I.)
I not only intoxicated her with these talks, I intoxicated myself. It would be almost dawn before we would fall asleep. Dozing off I had the feeling that I had accomplished something. I had gotten it off my chest. It! What was that it? I couldn’t say myself. I knew only this, and from it I seemed to derive an unholy satisfaction: I had assumed my true role.
Perhaps, too, these scenes were just to prove that I could be as exciting and different as that Anastasia whom I was getting tired of hearing about. Perhaps. Possibly I was a wee bit jealous already. Though she had known Anastasia only a few days, you might say, the room was already full of her friend’s things. All the latter needed to do now was to move in. Over the beds were two stunning Japanese prints, a Utamaro and a Hiroshige. On the trunk was a puppet which Anastasia had made expressly for Mona. On the chiffonier was a Russian ikon, another gift from Anastasia. To say nothing of the barbaric bracelets, the amulets, the embroidered moccasins, and so on. Even the perfume she was using—a most pungent one!—Anastasia had given her. (Probably out of Mona’s own money.) With Anastasia you never could tell what was what. While Mona was worrying about the clothes her friend needed, the cigarettes, the art materials, et cetera, Anastasia was getting money from home and doling it out to her hangers on. Mona saw nothing incongruous in this. Whatever her friend did was right and natural, even if she stole from her purse. Anastasia did steal now and then. Why not? She stole not for herself but to aid those in distress. She had no scruples or compunctions about such matters. She wasn’t a bourgeoise, oh no! This word bourgeois began to pop up frequently now that Anastasia was on the scene. Whatever was no good was bourgeois. Even caca could be bourgeois, according to Anastasia’s way of looking at things. She had such a wonderful sense of humor, when you got to know her. Of course, some people couldn’t see it. Some people are just devoid of humor. To wear two different shoes, which Anastasia sometimes did absent-mindedly—or did she do it absent-mindedly?—that was screamingly funny. Or to carry a douche-bag through the streets. Why wrap such things up? Besides, Anastasia never used one herself—it was always for a friend who was in trouble.
The books that were lying around … all loaned her by Anastasia. One of them was called Down There—by some decadent French
writer. It was one of Anastasia’s favorites, not because it was decadent but because it told of that extraordinary figure in French history—Gilles de Rais. He had been a follower of Jeanne d’Arc. He had murdered more children—he had depopulated whole villages, in fact. One of the most enigmatic figures in French history. She begged me to glance at it sometime. Anastasia had read it in the original. She could read not only French and Italian but German, Portuguese and Russian. Yes, in the convent school she had also learned to play the piano divinely. And the harp.
Can she blow the trumpet? I asked derisively.
She gave me the horse laugh. Then followed this revelation:
She can play the drums, too. But she has to be a little high first.
You mean drunk?
No, hopped up. Marijuana. There’s no harm in it. It’s not habit forming.
Whenever this subject came up—drugs—I was sure to get an earful. In Mona’s opinion (probably Anastasia’s) everyone ought to become acquainted with the effects of different drugs. Drugs weren’t half as dangerous as liquor. And the effects were more interest ing. Yes, she was going to try them someday. There were lots of people in the Village—respectable people, too—who used drugs. She couldn’t see why people were so afraid of drugs. There was that Mexican drug which exalted the sense of color, for example. Perfectly harmless. We ought to try it sometime. She’d see if she couldn’t get some from that phoney poet what’s-his-name. She loathed him, he was filthy, and so on, but Anastasia maintained that he was a good poet. And Anastasia ought to know…
I’m going to borrow one of her poems one day and read it aloud to you. You’ve never heard anything like it, Val.
O.K. I said, but if it stinks I’m going to tell you so:
Don’t worry! She couldn’t write a bad poem if she tried.
I know—she’s a genius.
She is indeed, and I’m not joking. She’s a real genius.
I couldn’t resist remarking that it was too bad geniuses always had to be freaks.
There you go! Now you’re talking just like everyone else. I’ve explained to you again and again that she’s not like the other freaks’ in the Village.
No, she’s a genuine freak!
She’s made maybe, but like Strindberg, like Dostoievsky, like Blake…
That’s putting her rather high, isn’t it?
I didn’t say she had their talent. All I mean is that if she’s queer she’s queer in the same way they were. She’s not insane—and she’s not a fraud. Whatever she is, it’s real. I’ll stake my life on it.
The only thing I have against her, I blurted out, is that she needs so damned much looking after.
That’s cruel!
Is it? Look … she got along all right until you came along, didn’t she?
I told you what a condition she was in when I met her.
I know you did, but that doesn’t impress me. Maybe if you hadn’t nursed her along she would have picked herself up and stood on her own two legs.
We’re back where we started. How many times must I explain to you that she simply doesn’t know how to take care of herself?
Then let her learn!
How about yourself? Have you learned yet?
I was getting along all right until you came along. I not only took care of myself, I took care of a wife and child.
That’s unfair of you. Maybe you did take care of them, but at what a price! You wouldn’t want to live that way forever, would you?
Of course not! But I’d have found a way out—eventually.
Eventually! Val, you haven’t got too much time! You’re in your thirties now—and you have yet to make a name for yourself. Anastasia’s just a girl, but see what she’s accomplished already.
I know. But then she’s a genius…
Oh, stop it! We won’t get anywhere talking this way. Why don’t you quit thinking about her? She doesn’t interfere with your life—why should you interfere with hers? Can’t I have one friend? Why must you be jealous of her? Be just, won’t you?
All right, let’s drop it. But stop talking about her, will you? Then I won’t say anything to hurt you.
Though she hadn’t explicitly asked me not to visit The Iron Cauldron I kept away out of consideration for her wishes. I suspected that Anastasia spent much of her time there daily, that during Mona’s swings the two were always together somewhere. In roundabout ways I would hear of their visits to the museums and art galleries, to the studios of Village artists, of their expeditions to the waterfront, where Anastasia made sketches of boats and sky-line, of the hours they spent at the library doing research. In a way the change was good for Mona. Gave her something new to think about. She had little knowledge of painting, and Anastasia apparently was delighted to act as her mentor. There were veiled references occasionally to the portrait Anastasia intended to make of Mona.
She had never done a realistic portrait of anyone, it seems, and she was especially reluctant to do a resemblance of Mona.
There were days when Anastasia was incapable of doing a thing, when she was prostrate and had to be nursed like an infant. Any trifling event could bring them on, these fits of malaise. Sometimes they occurred because Mona had spoken foolishly or irreverently of one of Anastasia’s beloved idols. Modigliani and El Greco, for example, were painters about whom she would allow no one, not even Mona, to say the wrong thing. She was very fond of Utrillo, too, but she did not venerate him. He was a lost soul, like herself: still on the human level. Whereas Giotto, Grunewald, the Chinese and the Japanese masters, these were on a different level, represented a higher order. (Not so bad, her taste!) She had no respect whatever for American artists, I gathered. Except for John Marin, whom she described as limited but profound. What almost endeared her to me was the discovery that she always carried with her Alice in Wonderland and the Too Teh Ching. Later she was to include a volume of Rimbaud. But of that later…
I was still making the rounds, or going through the motions. Now and then I sold a set of books without trying. I worked at it only four or five hours a day, always ready to knock off when dinner time came. Usually I would look over the cards and choose a prospect who lived a good distance away, in some run-down suburb, some bleak and barren hole in New Jersey or out on Long Island. I did this partly to kill time and partly to get completely off the track. Always, when heading for some dingy spot (which only a dotty book salesman would think of visiting!), I found that I would be assailed by the most unexpected memories of dear, beloved places I had known as a boy. It was a sort of inverse law of association at work. The more drab and commonplace the milieu, the more bizarre and wonderful were these unbidden associations. I could almost wager that if I headed of a morning for Hackensack or Canarsie, or some rabbit hole on Staten Island, by evening I would find myself at Sheepshead Bay, or Bluepoint, or Lake Pocotopaug. If I didn’t have the carfare to make a long haul I would hitch hike, trusting to luck that I would run into someone—some friendly face—who would stake me to a meal and the fare back. I rode with the tide. It didn’t matter where I ended up nor when I got home, because Mona would be sure to arrive after me. I was writing things down in my head again, not feverishly as before but calmly, evenly, like a reporter or correspondent who had oodles of time and a generous expense account. It was wonderful to let things happen as they would. Now and then sailing along on even keel, I would blow into some outlandish town, pick a shop at random—plumber or undertaker, it made no difference—and launch into my sales talk. I hadn’t the least thought of making a sale, nor even of keeping my hand in, as they say. No, I was merely curious to see the effect my words would have on a complete nobody. I had the feeling that I was a man descended from another planet. If the poor victim felt disinclined to discuss the merits of our loose-leaf encyclopaedia I would talk his language, whatever it was, even if it were nothing but cold corpses. Like that I often found myself lunching with a congenial soul with whom I hadn’t a thing in common. The farther away from myself I got the more certa
in I was to have an inspiration. Suddenly, perhaps in the midst of a sentence, the decision would be made and off I’d scoot. Off searching for that spot which I had known in the past, a very definite, a very marvelous past. The trick was to get back to that precious spot and see if I could reconstitute the being I once was. A queer game—and full of surprises. Sometimes I returned to our room as a little boy dressed in men’s clothes. Yes, sometimes I was. little Henry through and through, thinking like him, feeling like him, acting like him.
Often, talking to utter strangers out there on the fringe of the world, there would suddenly leap to mind an image of the two of them, Mona and ‘Stasia, parading through the Village or swinging through the revolving door of a museum with those crazy puppets in their arms. And then I would say a curious thing to myself—sotto voce, of course. I would say, and smile wanly as I did so: And where do I come, in? Moving around on the bleak periphery, among zombies and dodoes, I had gotten the idea that I was cut off. Always, in closing a door, I had the impression that the door was locked behind me, that I would have to find another way to get back. Get back where?
There was something ridiculous and grotesque about this double image which obtruded at the most unexpected moments. I saw the two of them garbed in outlandish fashion—’Stasia in her overalls and hobnailed boots and Lady Precious Stream in her fluttering cape, her hair streaming loose like a mane. They were always talking simultaneously, and about utterly different things; they made strange grimaces and wild gesticulations; they walked with o two utterly different rhythms, one like an auk, the other like a panther.
Whenever I went deep enough into my childhood I was no longer outside, on the fringe, but snugly inside, like a pit in the fleshy heart of a ripe piece of fruit. I might be standing in front of Annie Meinken’s candy shop, in the old 14th Ward, my nose pressed against the window-pane, by eyes a-glitter at the sight of some chocolate-covered soldiers. That abstract noun, the world, hadn’t yet penetrated my consciousness. Everything was real, concrete, individuated, but neither fully named nor wholly delineated. I was and things were-. Space was limitless, time was not yet. Annie Meinken was a person who always leaned far over the counter to put things in my hand, who patted me on the head, who smiled at me, who said I was such a good little fellow, and sometimes ran out into the street to kiss me good-bye, though we lived only a few doors away.