The Unknown Kerouac

by Jack Kerouac

  It is impossible to view the thing chronologically. There was no time and there was no logic. After the alcohol they drank sufficiently enervated part of their systems, the three days became, as may well be suspected, either eternity or a flashing moment—they couldn’t say.

  They talked to people, they heard people talk to them, they saw faces and eyes, they walked and rode on subways and sat on benches, they drank beer and rum and whiskey and Pernod, they staggered down dark streets, they slept where they could, they saw the sun and the moon, they even saw movies—and they would not tire.

  But the essential picture to be drawn, once more, is the picture of the three of them walking down a street: Phillip scuffling along, fiery and preoccupied; Ramsay Allen lunging beside him faithfully, busily, attentively, with his perpetual anxious search into Phillip’s face, which was always averted from him; and Ryko, a little apart from both of them, eager yet languid, walking with eyes to the pavement, amazed by everything that happened.

  Phillip and Ryko made a great drunken decision. They were going to desert their ship in France in spite of the war and go to Paris, and there live in the Latin Quarter. “At night,” Phillip said, gesticulating with his hand as by an inner unbearable agitation, “we’ll slip off the ship with all our clothes on, layers of it, and hide out in the port until the next night, then start off, traveling in hay carts and such until we get to Paris . . . I’ll be a deaf and dumb French farmboy and you do all the talking.” He worked himself up into a blank-eyed frenzy. “We’ll live from hand to mouth in Montmartre, we’ll beg . . . there’ll be a whole lot of incunabular little Rimbauds to help us out.”

  Suddenly they were certain that this is what they were going to do, come hell or high water, ciel ou enfer! Running across the cobblestones of some Seine quayside in the dawn, after a scrap of bread or meaning . . . Why, they were both so thoroughly American, these two kids, they were absolutely convinced of Paris as the place, the one place where every chip of rubble in the gutter could but be thoroughly saturated with symbol. A veritable sponge of a city, was Paris, that could be squeezed to produce elixirs of atrocious sweetness. “It is a violent Paradise of mad grimaces. I alone hold the key to this savage parade!” You could go there, and after awhile words like that would come natural to you . . .

  All the sad humility of the American landscape left behind you. No more dreary Brooklyns and weary Chicagos, places like Boston and Los Angeles where trolleys clanged in the morning air and people were on their way to work, coughing wretchedly in the damp grayness, and names on buses like Pico and Boylston Square . . . You could lose the words spoken in American railroad stations and cafeterias and find yourself a new set of bitterly agitated cries. “Ca me navre!” “Merde!” “J’men fiche!” All this would no doubt shorten your life, but it would also make you absolutely drunk with it.

  Fortified with this decision, and with alcohol, undaunted by the delay in the union hall—where officials regarded these two prospective seamen with some mistrust—and drunk from sheer energy and elation of change and wild departure, Phillip and Ryko, with Al happily along, scattered themselves all over New York, their emotions strewn in the street like pieces of a puzzle . . .

  Somewhere on the East Side, on one of the nights, in the apartment of a charmed, and charming, person who had picked up these three marvellous people—so he considered them—Phillip and Ryko went into fits of ecstasy over Bach, which was being played on a phonograph . . . There they lay on the floor beside the phonograph, with Ramsay Allen facing them in the Indian-sitting posture, while scotch and soda was plied to them as from a machine. Ryko could only yell some incoherent words . . . “Cathedrals in the snow! Monks! Monks! . . .” There was a woman in the room who was positively disgusted with them. They scattered their way back outside, to the bars again, where there were more faces, more conversations, more drinks.

  Will Dennison was evident at intervals during the three days. He worked all day and came home to rest, only to be set upon by these three drunkards who were eager to spend his hard-earned money. Dennison didn’t mind. His knowledge was by way of being a state of consciousness under the glare of floodlights . . . Everywhere he saw established fact and ruinous retreat from fact. These three friends of his, in their exalted, almost epileptic state, provided him with enormous amusement. They diverted him. He came home and found them waiting on his doorstep, like three street gamins . . .

  They were spontaneous and foolish, and somehow all three of them had a certain amount of character which rendered unto their actions an absurd dignity.

  It is also highly probable that Dennison was well aware of the fact that these people would never again be valuable to him. People are only important as their circumstance—in heaven, without their circumstance, the appurtenances of their running lives, people would be boring, ghostly and of no use in anything. Any way you look at it. And no matter how ineffable and fleeting may be the circumstances of people who flash across our lives, only to disappear after a certain time, it is this ineffableness of them that leads the way to eternity. We shall remember them, we shall remember them . . . but God help us if we meet them in heaven, sitting around doing nothing, with their lives finished, and staring us in the face.

  So swirled these three gin-smelling hurricanes in and out of Dennison’s life for three crazy days.

  Tuesday evening Dennison took them to dinner in Chumley’s . . . He had Helen Varowski, a waitress from the Continental Cafe where he used to work, along with him. There was a kind of pre-arranged seduction involved, but that was quickly squashed by the three drunkards.

  It was the night of Phillip’s acte gratuite. He had had numerous daiquiris and didn’t like the taste of the cutlets he was eating, whereupon he picked up his plate and flung it over his shoulder. It crashed on the floor, making people jump from the sound and bringing waiters scurrying.

  “That’s all right sir, we’ll take care of it,” said the waiter stooping down to pick up the mess. No one had seen Phillip throw the plate except those at table with him.

  “I was reaching for the salt,” explained Phillip.

  “That’s all right sir, I’ll bring you another meal.”

  “Make it lamb this time.”

  And oh how Helen Varowski hated Phillip Tourian anyway. “You won’t get away with it next time.” She was always in a huff in Phillip’s company, like a cat in the presence of a dog. “You’re lucky they didn’t see you.”

  “Oh it doesn’t take much intelligence to talk your way out of these things.” Phillip was always alluding to Helen’s intelligence. “The customer’s always right, you know.”

  “Some customers maybe.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  Here Ramsay Allen leaned over and whispered in Dennison’s ear, “Isn’t he wonderful?”

  Needless to say, after everybody had had their dessert, Helen said she was going home to Queens and said good night. She didn’t want to be seen leaving the restaurant with these people. She liked Dennison, but not when he was with those people . . . She swished off. That girl had fine legs, she had.

  What did Dennison think of the two boys’ plan to jump ship in France and go to Paris? Al nudged Dennison when the question was put to the man by the boys, trying to communicate a significant look . . . he didn’t dare shake his head. With weary perspicacity Dennison understood.

  “What are you going to do for food in France?” began Dennison loyally. “Everything is rationed, you need books for everything. After all there’s a war on over there and Paris isn’t even taken. And anyway why didn’t you guys get your ship today? It all sounds premature to me.”

  Phillip waved his hand casually, dismissing all difficulties. “Ryko’s in trouble with the union because he’s behind in dues but tomorrow he’s going to talk his way into getting a ship. As for Paris, it will be taken by the time we get there. They’re going to break through Caen and St. Lo any day now. As for the ration books we’ll just say we lost our books, we’ll sa
y we’re refugees just back from a concentration camp.”

  “Who’s going to say all this?”

  “Ryko, of course. He’s half French, I’m going to be deaf and dumb.”

  Dennison turned in his chair and peered dubiously at Ryko. Ryko returned an insolent look: he was full of martinis. “That’s right, my mother taught me French and I can speak Finnish too.”

  “Finnish, hey? Oh well, do what you like. It’s no skin off me.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea at all,” Al put in gravely.

  “Caution is no virtue in the young.” Dennison turned his head away, ignoring the furious look he was now getting from Al. “In fact, come to think of it it’s not a bad idea at all.” He gazed calmly at the wall, dreamily, in fact . . . “France—well, give my regards to the place when you gets there . . . if you gets there.”

  All the wheels now seemed to be turning against Al at last. Time had become a speeded-up treadmill and Al, limping, couldn’t keep up with it. He kept losing ground, and there was nothing at the wrong end of the treadmill but a nice deep pit, dark and final.

  During these three drunken days, Al tried to prove that he was as energetic and as creative as Phillip. He was going to show him a thing or two . . . One night they slept in Central Park, on the grass, the three of them. They had been in the Bowery the night before and were about to retire in a grimy doorway when Ryko said, “Let’s not sleep here, it’s too dirty . . . let’s go to Central Park.” Like three perverted Bourgeois comfort-seekers they had then rushed up to Central Park to sleep . . . In the damp dawn air, Al produced a small notebook and began scribbling a sonnet.

  It was as though he were saying, “See? I can write poetry too. I can do all the things you can, just as well as you. I’m really not old . . .”

  In desperation, Al had taken Ryko aside and put it to him this way:

  “Why don’t you try persuading Phillip to let me ship out with you?”

  “It’s perfectly allright with me, you know.”

  “Do you think he might relent?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You two guys wouldn’t know how to get food or money in France. I think the three of us would make a better go of it, don’t you?”

  “You may have something there. The more the merrier’s what I say.”

  “Yes,” said Al nodding his head, “that’s what I think too.”

  “Alone I imagine we’d starve.”

  “Very likely. Both of you are young and impractical. So why don’t you ask Phillip . . . ? Give him all the arguments about food and money.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do that, Mike.”

  “I will.”

  Here, Al put his arm around Ryko and ordered him another hiball.

  Al was also very busy demonstrating how right he was about “getting food and money.” Phillip and Ryko didn’t have a cent in their pockets during the entire three days. It was Al’s duty to see to the expenses of the binge. He borrowed money from countless sources, all of which was never to be paid back; he stole money; he worked for money; he made dates with union hall women who could help the two boys get their ship. He did everything in his really amazing power to show that they couldn’t get along without him. But Phillip refused to be impressed by any of Al’s great coups.

  When Ryko put Al’s proposition up to him, Phillip was adamant.

  “I told you the whole purpose of shipping out is to get away from Al.”

  “But why? He’s not a bad guy and he’s very useful.”

  “Eee, you don’t understand!”

  Al made a date with an employee of the union, a bow-legged girl wearing horn rimmed glasses, a luncheon date. She could help Ryko straighten out his difficulties with the union if she so desired. But first she must be impressed, that was it. She had met Al once at a party. He was always distributing his great charm everywhere . . . now it was going to bear fruit.

  To pay for the luncheon, Al had run down to the Village to borrow money while Phillip and Ryko waited for him at the union hall. When Al got back he went upstairs and came down again with the union girl. They all went to lunch around the corner.

  Al launched things off telling funny stories and being very attentive. This girl, who looked like a frustrated ballet dancer, and who was obviously paranoiac, full of diffuse, sprayish suspicions like a sprinkler on a windy day, had probably decided to cancel her suspicions for just this once. It was too much fun sitting at lunch with these three perfectly mad people. Whatever they wanted of her, she didn’t care, just for now. And they were so charming and attentive . . . except, it must be admitted, for Phillip, who sulked in his own corner and snickered when she spoke of the common man. She was a Communist and things got very merry indeed when Ryko and Ramsay Allen began to recount the radical experiences of their past. Ryko had been arrested on Boston Common as an agitator, Al had been in trouble in England once. No one was overplaying his part.

  All existing forms of sincerity had evidently been exhausted, for here sat these people in full consciousness juggling the forms of sincerity handed down by their forbears like so many red and blue rubber balls. This is what annoyed Phillip, made him sulk: he was trying to divine a new kind of sincerity. The new vision, he called it.

  Finally the girl said, “Well I think I can do something about that trouble of Mike’s. After all it’s no sin to be so eager to ship out in spite of failure to pay dues . . .” That was the way she put it. Sin worked its way in any which way you looked in that great political world of hers.

  True to her word, this pathetic little creature did indeed speak in behalf of Mike Ryko that afternoon, with the result that the union system relented for a moment and handed him the little document he needed. Now it was only a matter of waiting until the next day to get their ship.

  Working like a beaver to prove his indispensability, Al thereupon hurried off to get some money with which to celebrate their success with the union girl. He returned a few hours later with ten dollars and a pawn receipt ticket.

  “Look,” he said, holding out the pawn ticket. “It’s for two small brilliants.”

  “Where did you steal them?”

  “I had tea with Mrs. Burdett.”

  Mrs. Burdett was an old Virginian and a friend of Al’s family who considered it his duty to have tea with her at least once a month. She saw herself as an exile, and Al as a kinsman. She was the typical old maid who lived alone behind drawn blinds, and with cats, two or three of them. She wrote to Al’s mother.

  “While she was out of the room in the john I helped myself to these. I found them behind some old lace in a drawer.”

  “Good work,” said Ryko.

  “Now let’s go out and spend it,” was Phillip’s comment.

  Al stole, connived, bounded around the city borrowing money, wrote sonnets in Central Park, did everything he could think of to move Phillip’s heart . . . Sometimes his zeal took on hilarious proportions.

  Phillip had hit a bus stop sign on Seventh Avenue out of sheer tension and impatience. The sign wobbled back and forth on its heavy base in a repetitious mocking curtsey. It was an effective demonstration, an exteriorizing of symbol which Al felt compelled to emulate, nay exceed. He rushed up to a candy store nearby and jumped up on a wooden shelf for newspapers. The shelf promptly collapsed beneath his not inconsiderable weight, making a great noise like a disaster. Al fell flat on his back. The Greek ran out of the store and grabbed Al by the arm. He was going to make him pay a dollar for the damage, or he would call a cop . . . Al paid the Greek while Phillip giggled.

  This was where Dennison suddenly broke out into laughter. His perpetually wry amusement had collapsed, like the wooden shelf for newspapers, and in its place came this mad laugh the likes of which was rarely heard in anyone. He was laughing just like people ought to laugh, hysterically, with a pained expression, “Ha ha ha ha!” Embarrassed and frightened, Ryko wanted to know what he was laughing about. He watched Dennison with frozen apprehension, and then
began to giggle. Dennison continued to laugh. It was getting worse and worse; it was an irresistable laughter; it would soon choke Dennison to death. He would die before their very eyes of a horrible new kind of hemorrhage, the self-destructive nature of which somehow only he could perish by.

  Things were carrying on in a most impossible way . . . like a horse race, the saddest thing in the world, where there can only be one winner and all the rest are losers.

  Al hadn’t as yet dared ask Phillip outright to let him come along on the voyage. But in many ways, Al expressed his cumulative tension without saying a word, as in the incident of the wooden shelf.

  One night—it is impossible to say which night it was—the three madmen barged into the Beggar’s Bar. The Beggar’s Bar was the perfect place for them. In it was contained the bizarre nourishment they craved, for now all three of them had become so feverish from dissipation that nothing would suit their demands. In the Beggar’s Bar talented and effeminate young men played the Appassionata Sonata for them. The proprietess was a temperamental German pantomimist who had as weird an appearance as could be provoked on any canvas: her face was pasty white, almost green, her hair was jet black and hung over her brow in a grotesque set of bangs designed to make her look young. She wore a red slack suit perpetually. Her eyes flashed green. She had that horrid kind of mouth that is painted on a mask, wide and leering and crimson.

  She would come swishing up to the boys as they entered and lead them ceremoniously to a filthy little table in a corner. Candles were stuck directly on the table tops. It was a cellar bar, you went down some evil-smelling steps to get there. It was gloomy inside, and damp and smoky.