The man glanced through a page quickly and skipped most of it because it was about nihilists, atheists, and religion.
‘Amongst other things [he read on], he told me that we are bound to crawl in the dust before the Germans, that there is but one universal and irrefutable way—that of civilisation—and that all attempts to create an independent Russian culture are but folly and pigheadedness. He said he was writing a long article against the Russophiles and Slavophiles. I advised him to order a telescope from Paris for his better convenience. “What do you mean?” he asked. “The distance is somewhat great,” I replied; “direct the telescope on Russia, and then you will be able to observe us; otherwise you can’t really see anything at all.” He flew into a rage. When I saw him so angry, I said with well simulated naïveté: “Really, I should never have supposed that all the articles derogatory to your new novel could have discomposed you to this extent; by God, the thing’s not worth getting so angry about. Come, spit upon it all!” “I’m not in the least discomposed. What are you thinking of?” he answered, getting red. I interrupted him and turned the talk to personal and domestic matters. Before going away, I brought forth, as if quite casually and without any particular object, all the hatred that these three months have accumulated in me against the Germans.’
‘You see,’ the man said to the woman, ‘Dostoevsky had run away from Russia because of his debts and in order to see about improving his health; but he began to gamble and lose, and the more he lost the more he hated the Germans. He never remarks anywhere that if he had won—especially if he had won all that he had wanted to win, that is, enough to pay his debts so he could return to Russia—he might not hate the Germans, might in fact like them very much. It is refreshing of him to just hate them, though.’
‘“Do you know [he read on] what swindlers and rogues they are here? Verily, the common people are much more evil and dishonest here than they are with us; and that they are stupider there can be no doubt. You are always talking of civilisation; with what has your ‘civilisation’ endowed the Germans, and wherein do they surpass us?” He turned pale (it is no exaggeration), and said: “In speaking thus, you insult me personally. You know quite well that I have definitely settled here, that I consider myself a German and not a Russian, and am proud of it.” I answered: “Although I have read your Smoke, and have just talked with you for a whole hour, I could never have imagined that you would say such a thing. Forgive me, therefore, if I have insulted you.” Then we took leave of one another very politely, and I promised myself that I would never again cross Turgenev’s threshold. The next day Turgenev came at exactly ten o’clock in the morning to my abode and left his card with the landlady. But as I had told him the day before that I never saw anyone till noon, and that we usually slept till eleven, I naturally took his ten o’clock call as a hint that he doesn’t wish to see any more of me. During the whole seven weeks, I saw him only once more, at the railway station. We looked at one another, but no greeting passed. The animosity with which I speak of Turgenev, and the insults we offered one another, will perhaps strike you unpleasantly. But, by God, I can no other; he offended me too deeply with his amazing views.’
‘Is that the end?’ the woman said.
‘There’s a little more, but that’s the part I was after.’
He shut off the light and settled down in his bed.
‘Did he have a lot of debts?’
‘It must have been quite a lot. He had to get up and run away. He had to stay away a long time, too. Two or three years. And he was homesick the whole time. The question is, Wouldn’t he be homesick in Russia, too? I mean what good would Russia be if after he got there again—after losing three years in Europe and all the money he could borrow—he still couldn’t get hold of any money, or certainly not as much as he needed? What good would it be if he couldn’t write after he got back to Russia? When he spoke of Russia he obviously meant himself and his writing, and when Turgenev spoke of Germany he meant himself and his writing. One writer felt one region and people was superior to the other because that was the region and people he had had a little luck with in his writing. He was a lousy gambler.’
‘Did he ever win?’
‘He always won a little at first, but then the excitement would get him and he would notice that the other gamblers were betting more and winning more and he’d feel that if they could do it, he could do it, too. He pointed out to himself that they didn’t need the money as badly as he did. But he never seemed to have enough to be able to win very much, and he always ended up with everything lost, writing a very long letter to a friend explaining how it had happened, asking him not to tell a soul, and begging him for a loan, generally a second or a third one, or an advance—a further advance—on a new book.’
‘Were the other gamblers writers, too?’
‘Don’t be smart. As a matter of fact, one or two of them were, but how many writers will you ever see at a gambling casino?’
‘Did the other writer, the one he insulted, gamble?’
‘No. He was rich. And you just heard how uppish he was, at least according to a fellow who was lowish, who’d lost his ass at gambling and thought he was homesick for Russia when what he was really homesick for was a little luck, a little money, a little peace. But of course being who he was he wouldn’t be able to let himself have a little luck, a little money, or a little peace. He’d be true to his writing which was anxious and tortured and absolutely wonderful. He doesn’t ever seem to have written a letter to anybody after having won a little and stopped. Maybe it never happened. He always stayed until he lost, so he could go on being Dostoevsky. It’s funny it never occurred to him, though.’
‘I wish he’d had a lot of money,’ the woman said. ‘I know he was a good writer because we saw Crime and Punishment. Remember? We saw it before we were married. It was a very good movie. Everybody was so tortured. If he’d had a lot of money, would they have been?’
‘He’d have gotten rid of the money. He would have had to. He thought he wanted living not to be a torture, but it wasn’t so. It had to be a torture for him. It didn’t mean anything otherwise. And it didn’t have any beauty, either. That’s one of the problems of writing. A healthy, happy, comfortable writer doesn’t seem to have very much to write about.’
‘He could say, “We was all having fun all the time”, couldn’t he?’
‘Yes, that’s about what it would come to. And that’s what’s the matter with writing, with drama, with the human experience, even. Happiness doesn’t seem to satisfy anybody. It doesn’t seem to be exciting enough. People feel they’re getting dull, losing their chance to live greatly. It’s a lot of shit of course. I mean, it couldn’t possibly be anything else unless we came right out and said that we hate being alive, that living is a swindle, that it’s better to know pain and ugliness and trouble than to know pleasure and beauty and peace. But peace is the worst of all. Nobody knows what to do with it. It’s not dramatic. It’s not fun enough. It’s not exercise enough for the soul. And so on. I don’t get it. I think peace is dramatic, fun, and the best exercise for the soul, but there it is, nobody ever got it into a novel that was any good. It’s a problem.’
‘Why do writers write in the first place? It seems such a problem all the time, and they all hate one another so, like Dostoevsky and Turgenev, and each of them always seems to believe what he believes so positively. What’s there to believe so positively?’
‘It’s necessary for a writer to believe something or other positively. He’s as apt to be mistaken as not, but it’s necessary. It’s necessary for everybody else, too.’
‘I believe in money positively. And boys for girls and girls for boys. What do you believe in?’
‘I believe in trying to find out what I believe in and why.’
‘What do you believe in without needing to know why?’
‘You. Johnny, Rosey, the one coming, if he is coming. I gave it a lot of thought, though, and maybe I even know why I believe in these
things positively without needing to know why, if you follow me. It’s because as far as this life is concerned—and that’s as far as I’m willing or able to go—there just can’t be any argument against these things, and I don’t mean these things at their best, either. I mean, these things the way they happen, the way they are, the way they must be, but I’m glad you’re young and pretty and a good lay and that you have kids without losing your health and beauty and that the kids are healthy.’
‘I’ve never known you to be so sweet.’
‘I’ve told you these things from long before we were married. We’ve talked about them every time we’ve gone for a drive to a far-away city, and every time we’ve been alone this way and not just horny but trying to be people who care for one another and hope to understand one another enough to be helpful to one another when the time comes, as it sure as hell will and must, again and again.’
‘Aren’t I helpful to you when the time comes?’
‘No, and I’m not to you, either. I’d like to be and I try to be, but I know I’m not. Maybe it would be worse, though, if you were married to somebody else. Patience with people was never one of my strong points. I seem to know all I need to know about anybody as soon as I meet him. I’ve tried to be patient, but trying so hard is doing my health no good at all. I’m kind of jittery most of the time, and I’ve got several small muscles and nerves that have been bothering me quite a lot these past few years. They bother me most when I’m trying hardest to be patient. By nature I believe I’m addicted to fun, to health and pleasure and peace, and to an intelligent attitude about intelligence, truth and personal growth, for it is fun to be intelligent, to know truth, and to grow. It is fun to try to be truly decent, it isn’t torture.’
‘If we had a lot of money, things would be different,’ the woman said.
‘A lot of money would help, but only for a start, not as an end. The money would be to pay the debts, so I wouldn’t need to have them nagging at my thinking all the time. After that, I would have the most fun and best health it’s possible for me to have.’
‘You ought to have a little more than just enough to pay the debts. Without money everybody gets tired. I know I do. Just knowing there isn’t very much makes me tired. That’s why I have to sleep so late in the morning, I think.’
‘Yes, you have to sleep late because you go to bed late and need a certain amount of sleep every night, but at the same time you don’t get up earlier because you don’t like your life.’
‘The debts aren’t my fault.’
‘No. They’re mine. I always gambled, but I never before had to think about the consequences if I lost. The result was I never lost much and frequently won. Now if I gamble I know it’s not just me gambling, it’s all of us, and if I lose it affects all of us. That puts apprehension into something that should be nothing if not unapprehensive. A gambler has got to be absolutely unapprehensive. He’s just got to guess and not care very much whether or not he’s guessed right. But the hell with it.’
‘I don’t want you ever to gamble again,’ the woman said. ‘We’ve gone through hell. Promise?’
‘Can you promise that you won’t be miserable if you can’t live as if I had an inexhaustible income? If you can, I can promise not to gamble.’
‘We can’t live in this clerk’s house for ever, can we? I hate this house and always have and always will. I hate San Francisco. What good would it do to pretend that I don’t? I hate the thought of waking up and still being in this lousy house in this lousy city.’
‘O.K. Doesn’t that mean I’ve got to keep thinking of a way to get us somewhere that you like, in a house you like? Doesn’t that mean I’ve got to be patient about everything every day, so patient that it’s unhealthy? And doesn’t that mean I can’t sit down calmly and go about my work one day after another until I’ve got something written that doesn’t make me sick to my stomach? And since this is so, don’t I have to keep thinking of a quicker way of getting money than by writing, and doesn’t this thinking always end in gambling?’
‘Well, I can see you’ve got to put the blame on me again, the way you always do.’
‘No. Why don’t you look at it this way? Put up with everything for a year. Know that after the year is over we’ll be in a position to live a life more to your liking because during the year I will have worked and earned money and not had to think about how unhappy you are, or about gambling.’
‘I want to go to sleep, and I hope I’m not pregnant.’
‘I want to, too, and I hope you are.’
Chapter 26
Much later, many sleepless moments later, long after many remarks of friendship, love, tenderness, animosity, hatred and loathing had gone unuttered one by one, and many kind or bitter questions had gone unasked, each of them listening to the breathing of the other, their hands almost touching accidentally now and then, each of them feeling the nearness and the ceaseless troubling of the other, the woman said, ‘Are you awake?’
‘No, fast asleep.’
‘I’m scared.’
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘If you mean you want to get in my bed, get in.’
The woman scrambled naked and bouncing from her bed into his, backing up into him so that he could hold her the way he always did when she said she was scared.
‘Isn’t it all lies?’ she said when she was snug and warm.
‘I don’t know.’
‘It must be. That’s why all I believe in positively is money, and boys for girls. Money makes the lying boys do to girls and girls to boys so much nicer, so much easier to do.’
‘Lying’s the beginning of everything wrong, deranging and dirty.’
‘Everybody does it, though. You know everybody does it. So if that’s so, it must be necessary, too, and if it’s necessary, isn’t it better to accept it and let it go at that?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe it is. Even so, the idea doesn’t appeal to me. I’ll tell you why, too. It’s impractical. It’s so much simpler to start out by not lying. Why should anybody deceive anybody else? But most of all why should anybody deceive himself? The reason I hope you’re pregnant is that if we have enough kids maybe one or two of them will be all right in this thing.’
‘The two we’ve got are all right in it, aren’t they?’
‘Who knows? Maybe they’re all right until they’re put to the test and then maybe they aren’t all right. But if there are enough of them maybe one of them will be all right even after he’s been put to the test.’
‘The test of growing up and becoming a shit like everybody else, is that what you mean?’
‘Well, yes, if you want to put it delicately.’
‘Anybody will be a shit sooner or later. Anybody who doesn’t die before he’s eleven, at any rate. It’s just that some people are bigger ones than others. And still others become shits without growing up first, like you, for instance.’
The woman turned swiftly with delight to scramble all over the man, spilling laughter and pleasure all over him.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘What I said. It’s so true. I’m so surprised I said it. You are a shit and you never grew up. It’s true. Ask anybody. You don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground and yet you’re always trying to figure out big things, trying to write them and get them straight. You were either born grown up and had to ungrow to become a shit, or you were a born shit and didn’t need to grow up to be one, I don’t know which.’
‘Very clever.’
‘All right. You love the truth. Try to tell me it isn’t the truth.’
‘Only partly. Most of it’s true, but what you’ve left out is that if it’s true of me, it’s much more true of others.’
‘That’s just your lousy ego. Maybe it isn’t much more true of others at all. How do we know? Maybe they don’t even give it a thought.’
‘That’s what I mean. If they gave it a thought, if they were willing or able to expose themselv
es to the risk of giving it a thought, they most certainly would come through in worse shape than I come through.’
‘Well, who’s smartest, they or you? They are, and you know it. Why should they bother? Why should they go to all that trouble just to find out that they’re shits?’
‘Because it’s progress,’ the man said. ‘Modern progress, like cigarettes an inch longer.’
‘Like what an inch longer?’ She giggled and swarmed all over him again. ‘I wish you’d get thoughtful again. What’s a cigarette factory? It’s a penitentiary, isn’t it? What’s a million dollars? It’s a curse, isn’t it? What’s holding up my curse?’
‘Maybe it’s a boy. Wouldn’t you be glad if a boy was holding it up?’
‘That’s better. That’s more like it. More thoughtful. I can just see the inside of your head—all broken bottles and rusty wheels and a few tired weeds trying to act like they’re rose bushes, and you wandering around in there looking things over. I can just see you noticing something that looks like a blossom on a dried old weed and thinking to yourself, “By God, here comes a true thing, a new thing, at last. Here comes beauty at last. Maybe it’s going to be something perfect, whatever it is.”’
‘The inside of my head is an old city on the banks of the Euphrates, and the things growing there are not weeds but olive trees and grape vines. I’ve seen the place many times in my sleep, and I’ve always felt at home there. It’s a deserted place mainly but it is still magnificent, although in ruins.’
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