by Jack Kerouac
2
THE VERY SKELETAL of the tale’s beginning– The Paquins lived across on Sarah in a Golden Brown House, a 2-story tenement but with fat owf-porches (piazzas, galleries) and purty gingerbread eaves and Screens on the porches making a dark Within … for long fly-less afternoons with Orange Crush… Paquin brothers were Beef and Robert, Big Beef of the ass-waddling down the street, Robert was a freckled earnest giant good intentioned with all, nothing wrong with Beef, freckled too, goodnatured, my mother says she was sitting on the porch one evening and Beef came out with the moon to talk to her, told her his deepest secrets about how he wanted to just go out and enjoy nature as far as he was concerned–or some such–she my mother sat there reigning over wild conversations, Jean Fourchette the idiot came stompin by with his firecrackers and google giggled in the late sun afternoon streets of Fourth July Lowell 1936 and made monkey ginsy dances for the ladies whose children most likely by this time were all downtown disbanding among crowds of the Fourth July South Common Fireworks and Carnival, great nights —tell you about it–Jean Fourchette saw my mother sitting on the porch in a scrape of eve and asked her if she was lonely would she like to be entertained by some fireworks, she said okay, and old mad Jean set everything-he-had-in his-pocket-off–plop plow, scatter, zing; cross–he entertained the ladies of Sarah Avenue not twenty minutes before the opening bomb gong down at the Common across the soft July rooftops of Lowell clear from white tenemental creameries of Mt. Vernon porch to crazy rick-ass Bloozong Street across the river over by the dye works, over by the tanners, over by your Loo-la, Lowell–over by your long hoo-raws, roar old old rohor–rohor motor clodor closed door–on the pajama leg hanging, ding, with the white hoozahs flangeing right, they made left on a wide swing, beat the time with every wing, the ring, saw nothing in the heaven eyes but silver-star-bells, of all descriptions, saved but never knew it, he tried every means to explain to the odd festival of types gathered around his shoe-horn, “Looka here ladies and genelmen,”—as me and G.J. and Vinny and Scotty are scuffling around at the Carnival—(my mother is smiling at Jean Fourchette) (Boom!) the fireworks are beginning, the whore-caster by the stream is showing you how the horses race in the wild hullah, they had– There were races run with wooden flap-horses leaping ahead on the turn of dice–they spun the dice so fast (in cages) you could see horses leap ahead in their win–a crazy inanimate wild living race like you’d imagine angels run … when they feel–X was the mark where the bing-lights played, in the night mist a top hatted clown presided over the toteboard– Farther on we smelt shit in grass, saw cameras, ate popcorn, blew the string balloons to heaven-Night came shrouding bluely with flap off arms in the hiar-zan– Hanging moss (hke the moss in the Castle hanging as you hear a kid whistle for his balloon) (in the grass the littler kids are wrestling in a Tiny Tim Dim you can hardly see–big souls from little acorns– Wrangling toots on all sides of pipe steams, furt-fut peanuts for sale, furtive hipsters of the time, underfoot shammysoft dusts)— Beef Paquin, now, years later, I see huddled in a football hood coat heading home from the mills in mid December, bending to the wind round Blezan’s corner, advancing homeward to hamburger supper of the upper clime, the golden rich consistency of his mother’s kitchen– Beef is going into Eternity at his end without me–my end is as far from his as eternity– Eternity hears hollow voices in a rock? Eternity hears ordinary voices in the parlor. On a bone the ant descends.
3
THE SCENE IS IN THE CASTLE, in one of the more sumptuous rooms facing the forests of Billerica, as March Hare clouds race to the black,—speaking just then (“Of course that doesn’t indicate that anything is going to come of these attempts”) was (it is evening) Count Condu, impeccably dressed, just-risen from the coff of eve, the Satin Doombox with its Spenglerian metamorphosed scravenings on the lid. The recipient of his speech is the witty, gay ambassador for the Black Cardinal, our good friend Amadeus Baroque —sitting with his legs underneath, on an elegant longue, with a sip drink, titterlipped in listen.
“Yes my dear Count, but you do know don’t you how pre-POSTEROUS it will be for any of these things”- (his slavering glee)—”to have any effect on anyone, Ghod!—it will have to—”
“Second, I show you—”
“—positively—”
“—heretics in the church is what they are–houndmasters of The Francis horn, phantom-grieved, golupally in their shrouds, think they can make everybody dangle–it’s this is up, these Dovists betray the decadence–any organization gets decadent—”
“But my dear, so baroque–I don’t mean to use my name —so gay—”
“Which after all you measure everything by. I wanted strength in the party, blood–no Zounds and arses in their follifications, making pear pillows in the shade–well, poop along they can– I don’t see any reason why, if the Wizard of Nittlingen is willing to– allow it shall we say, I go along, have no preference in the matter—” He turned away, pursed over his key-chain … key to his coffin, gold.
“Dovists are after all mere lovers of–no different than the Brownings of other Romes, groaners of other gabbles —I mean—”
Count Condu stood at the stone window staring severely into the night; in Baroque’s elegant chambers it was possible to relax, so he wore his malagant–hood-like his head loomed over his shoulders as if winged– A knock on the door, Sabatini ushered in young Boaz the son of the Castle Caretaker who was an old mysterious goof always hiding in the cellar– Young Boaz, with his long dark feet and leer, strangely satanically handsome like a clay head stretched, sophisticated son of a hermit, “Oh—!—Baroque is here.”
“I should say, dearie, it’s my room.”
“Your room! I thought it was Count Condu’s. Well may I close the door—?”
“No, flit to an eve,” muttered the Count in his cup.
The wildest news,” said Boaz.
“And now—?” perked Baroque expectantly (he wore his brocaded white silk tunic pajamas a la Cossack with a great bloodclot in red thread over the heart, he smoked from elegant holder, “perfumed of course,” a brilliant wit in the Ark Galleries of the Rack where he’d been for a while before descending (not to take courses in a taxi school) to forfend the later migamies for his mother’s estate and save the day, and find himself a Sugar Daddy at the same time so here he was) (the Wizard’s brother, meek ill-tempered oldqueen Flapsnaw, we never saw him around).
“And now,” provided Boaz, “they have officially denounced the Dovists as underground heretics of the Free Movement—”
“Free movement,” snorted Condu— “some kind of dysentery? Would be rather a joke if the Snake should spew out like a great wet fart watering and be-splattering the earth with a piece of its own good riddance—”
In the window, suddenly, unbeknownst to all of them, Doctor Sax appears, dark, merged with the balcony, shrouded, silent, as they talk.
“Such a notion,” laughed B. “That doves, are kin, to snakes, my dear!”
“They infer it from doves’ and snakes’ proximities.”
“Infer without proof is less than infer without proof for no reason–these people show ignorance without charm.”
“Well foo you too,” said Boaz bowing and slapping his white gloves together. “Maybe they’ll rain you out sometime in a blap, then where will your verdigris be? out in the garden under an onion.”
“Onions show stones”—Baroque threw in.
“It’d be better if fancy iterators re-fancied their anvil on a wit”
“Touché”.
The Doctor Sax vanished–out in the yard it could be heard, a faint triumphant distant ha ha ha ha ha of inside secret sureness in the black–around the bird bath his shroud slanted to a fade–the moon croaked–Blook wandered in the back Garden with a garland of peanut butter twigs in his hair, put there by Semibu the suspicious dwarf, ‘twas to ward away the Onion. Blook had a orror of onion— In the belfry of the castle triumphant leered the panic Bat–a Spider hung from the wall facing th
e river with his silvery moonlight thread all dusty, a stately lion descended the stairs in the cellars where the Zoo was kept, a truckload of Gnomes came flipping through the wire—(in underground tunnels).
Condu, looking out the window, mused.
Baroque read the little booklet of Dovist poem in his bed.
Boaz sat stiffly writing his elegy for the dead, at the table, by the lamp.
“On the Day,” read Baroque, “clouds of Seminal Gray Doves shall issue forth from the Snake’s Mouth and it shall collapse in a Prophetic Camp, they will rejoice and cry in the Golden Air,”Twas but a husk of doves!’“
“It’ll husk them” spoffed Condu splurtering in his laugh-beard hands,—”phnuff–what?”
“I expect,” said Boaz looking up, “the Snake will devour them that deserve it,” but he said it in such a way Condu couldn’t tell if this was an ordinary friendly statement or not–
“Simply– divinel” concluded Baroque closing the book. “It’s so refreshing–we need any kind of revival, my dear, because you know it’s got great yoiky elements of Coney Island Christian in it.” He leaned over and turned on his favorite record … Edith Piaf dying.
Count Condu was gone–he had transformed himself to his bat-form, while no one looked, and into the moon he Flew–Ah me, Lowell in the night.
4
THERE WAS AN ALLEY DOWNTOWN among the soft redbrick of Keith’s Theater and the Bridge Street Warehouse, with a red neoned candy store of antique Saturday nights of funnies still smelling of ink and strawberry ice cream sodas all pink and frothy with a dew on top, in Dana’s–across the street from the alley– In the alley itself there were cinders, leading to the stage door– Something there was so fantastically grad sad about this alley–in it the living W.C. Fields had walked, headed from a rainy afternoon stint in the 6-Act Vod Bill (with gaping masks ha-ha)— twirling that Old Bull Balloon cane, W.C. Fields and the tragic Marx Brothers of early times swaying precariously from immense ladders and goofing in an awful holocaust of Greatstage Sorrow all huge with drapes and jello rippling flop props in the middle of the day, 1927—in 19271 I saw the Marx Brothers, Harpo on the ladder–in 1934 I saw Harpo on the screen, Animal Crackers, in a dark and unbelievably Doctor Sax garden where Neo-Like God-Like the rain and sunshine just mixed for a Cosmic Joke by Chico “Don’t go out that door, it’s raining–try this one”—tweet tweet birds —”see?” and Harpo drops silverware in the dark, God how Joe and I in the dark balcony sat transfixed by this picture of our joint dreams snoring in the dark attics of our boyhood together … brothers of the frantic snazzle in the Wood, at 8, when, with Beauty the immense Shepherd dog of the Fortiers, and little Philip Fortier nicknamed Snorro, we took off on a 20-mile hike to Pelham New Hampshire to shde up and down the hayloft of some dairy farmer–there were dead owls skewered on the pine, gravel pits, apples, distances of green Normandy fields into a mist of New England Inscrutable Space mystery–in the imprint of the trees on the sky in the horizon, I judged I was being torn from my mother’s womb with each step from Home Lowell into the Unknown … a serious lostness that has never repaired itself in my shattered flesh dumb-hanging for the light-
But Joe never had anything to do with that alley of tragedy harpo marx hurrying by greasepaint Variety oldprint brown crackly, with masks on a shiny ballroom in the menu,— Nights of 1922 when I was born, in the glittering unbelievable World of Gold and Rich Darkness of the Lowell of my prime father, he would escort my mother Tilly the Toiler of his weekly theatrical column (with whom he argued in verbose slang about the quality of the shows) (“Boy O boy, next Wednesday we gets to see The Big Parade, with Karl Dane, Dead Hero John Gilbert—”) —escort my mother to the show among the black cardboard throngs of long ago in 1920’s of U.S.A., the grawky sad loop of the City Hall clock illuminating or staring sadly at penyons of real endeavor in another air, another time-different outcries on the street, different feelings, other dusts, other lace–other funnies, other drunk lamp posts– the inconceivable joy that creams up in my soul at the thought of the little kid in the funnies under his blanket quilt at midnight New Year’s when thru the blue sweetness of his window in comes the bells and hom cries and honks and stars and slams of Time and Noises, and the blue fences of the quilt night are dewy in the moon, and strange Italian rooftops of parliament tenements in Courts that are in old funnies–the redbrick alley where my father in big strawhat walked, with B.F. Keith’s circuit ads sticking out of his pocket, smoking a cigar, not a smalltime businessman in a smalltown, a man in a straw hat hurrying in a redbrick alley of Eternity.
Beyond, the back railroad tracks of the Warehouse, some switch tracks to the cotton mills, the Canal, the Post Office to the right across it–rampy lots, box crate heats of afternoon, the dark dank rich redbrick Georgian alley street like a great street in self-interior Chinatown between wholesale offices and printing plants–my father swung his groaning old Plymouth of the Kraw Time around the little corner, tooting–coming to the inky darkness of the warehouse of his plant, where on a Saturday night in a dream-tragic holdups or moldups are taking place and my father’s busy with one of his interminable aides at some huge hassel of the crock, there’s no telling what it is I really see in that dream–into the future really. Dreams are where participants in a drama recognize one another’s death–there is no illusion of lif e in this Dream–
Long long ago before tot-linoleums of Lupine Road and even Burnaby Street there was, and will be, inconceivable rich red softnesses in the consistency of the air on going-to-the-show nights. (One of those nameless little bugs, so small you don’t know what they are, so tiny, flew by my face.)
Some kind of brown tragedy it was, in the plant,—the spectral canal flows by in its own night, brown gloom of midnight cities presses the windows in, dull lamps as of poker games illuminate the loneliness of my father-just as in Centralville he’s completely unavailable in the Lakeview Avenue night of old–O the silence of this–he had a gymnasium there, with boxers, real life fact– When W.C. Fields has boarded the destiny train, for sooty miles to Cincinnati, my father hurries in the B.F. Keith alley opens the door, goes in on lost endeavors wined from the Canal of sperms and oil that flows between the mills, under the bridge– The mystery of the Lowell night extends to the heart of downtown, it lurks in the shadows of the redbrick walls– Something in old musty records in the City Hall–an old, old book in the library files, with prints of Indians–a nameless laugh by the purities of the wave mist on the river bank, at dead of March or April night–and empty winds of winter night under the Moody Bridge, around the corner of Riverside and Moody, sand grit blowing, here comes old Gene Plouffe in the dawn grim cold headed for work in the mills, he’s been sleeping in his shroud and brown night in the old house of Gershom, the moon’s whipped to one side, cold stars gleam, shine down on empty Vinny Bergerac tenement court where now the washlines creak, The Shadow creeps,—the ghosts of W.C. Fields and my father emerge together from the redbrick alley, straw be-hatted, headed for the ht-up blackwalls of the night of the cross eyed cat, as Sax grins…
BOOK FOUR
The Night the Man with the Watermelon Died
1
AND NOW THAT TRAGIC HALO, half gilt, half hidden–the night the Man with the watermelon died–should I tell— (Oh Ya Ya Yoi Yoi)-how he died, and O’Curlicued on the planks of the bridge, pissing death, staring at the dead waves, everybody’s already dead, what a horror to know —the sin of life, of death, he pissed in his pants his last act.
It was a baneful black night anyway, full of shrouds. My mother and I walked Blanche home to Aunt Clementine’s house. This was a dreadful drear brown house in which Uncle Mike was dying these past five, ten, fifteen years, worse— next door to a garage for hearses leased by one of the undertakers around the corner on funereal Pawtucket Street and had a storage room for–coffins-
Gad, I had dreams rickety and strange about that bam garage–hated to go to Mike’s for that reason, it was Godawful the scene of mari
juana-sheeshkabob cigarettes he smoked for his asthma, Cu Babs– The thing that got Proust so all-hung-out–on his frame of greatness– Right Reference Marcel–old Abyssinian Bushy Beard-Uncle Mike bliazasting legal medical tea in his afternoons of gloom-special meditation–brooding by brown window drapes, sadness– He was an extremely intelligent man, remembered whole spates of history, talked at great length with his melancholy rasping breath about the beauties of the poetry of Victor Hugo (Emil his brother always extolled the novels of Victor Hugo), Poet Mike was the saddest Duluoz in the world–that is very sad. I saw him cry countless times– “O mon pauvre Ti Jean si tu sava tout le trouble et toute les larmes epuis les pauvres envoyages de la tite au sein, pour la douleur, la grosse douleur, impossible de cette vie ou ons trouve daumi a la mort–pourquoi pour-quoi pourquoi–seulement pour suffrir, comme ton pere Emil, comme ta tante Marie–lor nothing, my boy, for nothing,— mon enfant pauvre Ti Jean, sais tu mon âme que tu est destinez d’être un homme de grosses douleurs et talent–ca aidra jamais vivre ni mourir, tu va souffrir comme les autres, plus” — (Saying: “Oh my poor Ti Jean if you know all the trouble and all the tears and all the sendings of the head to the breast, for sadness, big sadness, impossible this life where we find ourselves doomed for death–why why why–just to suffer, like your father Emil, like your aunt Marie–for nothing–my child poor Ti Jean, do you know my dear that you are destined to be a man of big sadness and talent–it’ll never help to live or die, you’ll suffer like the others, more”—