by Henry Miller
ON RISING he went straight to the Caravan. Hildred hadn’t arrived yet—it was much too early for breakfast. He bought a paper and made for Washington Square. A few late ones were hurrying to work. He sat down on a bench. Foolish sitting there at that hour of the morning, cooling his heels in an empty square. He looked about listlessly. All the workers were at work. The drones were still in bed softly snoozing. Much too early for breakfast!
The air was crisp, invigorating. It was free, the air . . . one didn’t have to pay a penny for it . . . not a mill. So Vanya was ill. The idea of that clodhopper taking sick struck him as ludicrous. God knows, women had their troubles, particularly when the moon and tides formed a mystic conjunction. Still. . . . In the Encyclopaedia Britannica it said that there was no such thing as a human hermaphrodite. A hermaphrodite was a creature containing both ovaries and testes. That was that. But Hildred knew a girl at the Caravan who had the stump of a tail. It was so, because someone had seen the young lady with her bloomers down. Some other young lady, most likely. . . .
When he returned to the Caravan there were three people seated at a table: a little boy, a woman of indeterminate age who appeared to be the boy’s mother, and an elderly gentleman with a rapacious look who was engrossed in the task of picking his teeth. He observed that the little boy was unhappy. The idea of misery making its appearance at such an age was preposterous. He couldn’t get it through his head at all.
The waitress came and took his order. Her face was fresh and rested-looking. Red apple cheeks and thick velvet strokes over the eyes. Marvelous to look at an eyebrow made of hair. He inquired if Hildred had arrived yet. No, none of the girls had shown up yet. “I’m the only one,” she said smilingly. “I’m the early bird that catches the worms.”
The worms? The expression struck him as remarkably thoughtless. He looked away and saw the little boy’s mother smiling into the old man’s eyes, smiling as if she had seen the Resurrection. Every now and then she turned to the youngster and pleaded with him to eat, but he merely rolled his eyes pathetically and wagged his little poodle dog’s head. Tony Bring looked at the mother again. Strange, he said to himself, how women like to get themselves up like whores. At bottom they were all whores, every mother’s daughter, even the angels.
The ten-o’clock breakfasters began to appear: nervous, little men, morose, preoccupied, who wiped their plates with crusts of bread; rude, massive women who, like primitive idols dug out of the soil, had grown rotten with the years; flowery dandies with repulsive faces, reminding him uncomfortably of illustrations in medical tracts. Everything he observed with sharp vigilance, with a cruel, remorseless eye. An old roué behind him was imploring the rosy-cheeked waitress to explain what a lamb’s fry was. If only Hildred were here, he thought, she’d tell the horny old gaffer. A lamb’s fry!
One by one the other waitresses dawdled in. They yawned and sneezed before they had so much as touched a plate. One of them sat down and tinkled the yellow keys. The notes dribbled from her fingers like sweat dripping from the wall. She sang in a weird, squeaky voice—“O there’s Egypt in your dreamy eyes.” The melody brought to her bucolic face the rapt expression of plugged nickels.
Eleven o’clock rolled around, and then a quarter after. No sign of Hildred, nor of Vanya. He inquired about her again. “Oh, Hildred—she’s not coming in today,” said the sickly looking bitch at the piano. “No, she’s not coming in today, that’s certain,” she repeated. She smiled feebly as she spoke, like a gas jet filled with dust.
He stumbled out into the yellow light of the street cursing the Bruga woman for a hairy son-of-a-bitch, a gamboge go-devil with a rose-madder bladder. He prayed that all the evils of the Aztec calendar would fall on her coal-black mane. He prayed that her teeth would drop out one by one and the hair on her body grow longer. . . . As he walked away there drifted to his ears the tinkling of the yellow keys. Egypt’s dreamy, seamy, squeamy eyes. He could still see the frail, brittle fingers from which the mildewed notes perspired and her soft spine bent beneath the weight of her addled brains, her teeth rattling like dice in a dice box.
A HALF hour later he was ringing Willie Hyslop’s doorbell. No one answered. He hung around for a while, chatting with the children on the stoop. Then, in despair, he decided upon a thorough canvass of the Village. Cellars, garrets, speakeasies, studios, cafeterias—he hunted everywhere for them. Discouraged, he finally made his way back to the Caravan. It was like returning to the seat of a crime.
He learned that they had been in only a few moments ago. In and out again. He flew back to Willie Hyslop’s dive over the bank on Hudson Street. Again he rang the bell. No answer. He walked across the street and stood gaping at the windows. Finally he sat down on a stoop opposite the house and fixed a blank gaze upon its weather-beaten facade. The street was choked with sewer gas. Concrete factories, shanties falling apart, dirty wash nocturnes. A desolate, crummy, woebegone bohemia. His limbs ached and over his thoughts there spread a thin, nauseous slime. Sewer gas. His brains stank. The whole world stank.
As he was about to make off an old woman approached him. She carried leaflets under her arm.
“Are you a Catholic, my good man?” she asked.
“I am not!” he answered.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said, “but there’s sadness in your face. May it do you good to know that Christ loves you.”
“Christ be damned!” he said, and strode off.
In the subway he picked up a magazine that had been left on the seat. It was in German, and the cover was plastered with nudes. They all had big bottoms, like the women in Munich who spread themselves over the benches in the public gardens. He turned the pages at random. “Guten Tag! Hat meine Kohlrübe heute nacht gut geschlafen?”
The housekeeper met him at the door.
“Any message?” he asked.
The housekeeper was too parsimonious even to open her mouth. Besides, she had a watery blue nose. She was from Nova Scotia. As he bounded up the stairs, half suspecting that he would find Hildred lying in bed, the old witch commenced to scrape her throat. “Yes?” he shouted. “What is it?” He shouted not because she was hard of hearing, but to show his insolence.
She was informing him that the rent was overdue.
“Are you sure there’s been no phone call?” he said.
“No,” she replied. “Were you expecting one?”
3
VANYA OFTEN got out of bed at night and walked the streets. She was frightened by shadows and heavy footsteps. She complained that at night the walls of her room collapsed like an accordion. She would not have flowers around for fear they would poison her. Colors affected her intensely. Faces also. There were periods when she was aware of nothing but noses. The odor of Lysol drove her to desperation. Soft-boiled eggs gave her the jaundice. . . .
Often she would lock herself in her room and, sitting before the mirror, apply the makeup of John Barrymore, Barrymore of The Sea Beast or of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Seeing these gruesome images in the mirror she would begin to rave. “Who am I?” she would say. “What am I?”
The notion that she might be a multiple personality intrigued her. Like an actress, she became weary of playing a single role, the role which fate had decreed her to play. She resembled those who imagine that by changing their address, or their name, they can alter the stupid course of their lives. Despite her age and her limitations, she had tried nearly everything. She had even tried to be a man.
It was difficult to keep track of her movements, her repeated flights. Tony Bring, for example, had been laboring under the impression that he was camping on her doorstep a few nights previously. It is true that she had lived there once, but it is doubtful if Vanya herself would have recollected the place had it not been for an untoward circumstance which rooted it to her memory. This painful incident was a fire which had roused her from a dream wherein she imagined herself bathing in a bed of quicklime. Before she could convince herself that she was not dreaming, the fire had sin
ged her chops. For several weeks thereafter she ate her meals standing up, and went to sleep on her belly.
In time a burn heals, but it is not so easy to get rid of the police. It seems that when the mattress caught fire a half-dozen occupants were driven from Vanya’s room. Unfortunately three of them turned out to be androgynes; the other three were gynanders. Detectives were called in and the vice squad got busy with its slimy rubber gloves. Nobody would believe a word Vanya said. Finally Hildred lined up a politician and the affair was quashed. But Vanya’s name was on the books. After a time she began to boast of the affair. She regretted that it was only “disorderly conduct” they had written beside her name.
Since this episode she had moved a number of times, and her name too she had changed several times. Little though Tony Bring suspected it, she was at present living only two blocks away from him in an old-fashioned brownstone house. The propinquity rendered it pleasant for Hildred to call for her on her way to work. Together they would breakfast at a nearby restaurant, disdaining the gratuitous meal at the Caravan, where they were obliged to eat under a more or less discreet surveillance.
Yet, intimate as these two were, Vanya did not fully share Hildred’s confidence. She was unaware, for example, that her adored Hildred was married. When the fact was divulged to her she pretended not to believe it. Hildred was flattered. It was a delusion of hers that she was unattainable.
This farce, carried to absurd lengths, finally got under Tony Bring’s skin. “If you don’t tell her the truth,” he said one day, “I’ll tell her myself.”
But Hildred succeeded in dissuading him. “You see,” she remarked later, “I thought it would be safer to say that we were just living together. She knows I’m not a virgin. Besides, I can always have a lover, if I like. If I told her the truth, everybody in the Village would know that we’re married.”
And what was wrong with that, Tony Bring wanted to know.
“We can’t afford to have it known—you know that as well as I,” said Hildred testily.
That ended the matter—for the time being.
An hour or so later Tony Bring asked himself a question: How did Vanya know that Hildred wasn’t a virgin?
4
ABOUT TWO o’clock one morning, shortly after this scene, the two of them walked in on him. He was in bed. Awakened by the creaking of the door, he opened his eyes and saw them standing in the doorway giggling. They had brought sandwiches and coffee.
While they ate, Hildred got a tub of hot water and made Vanya soak her feet. She wiped them tenderly and anointed them with cold cream. He looked on in astonishment. Vanya was taking it all as a matter of course.
“Look,” said Hildred, “aren’t they dreadful sores?”
Vanya raised her feet nonchalantly and yawned.
“It’s nothing,” he said, “just a slight irritation.”
Hildred was indignant. With comb and brush she now devoted herself to untangling Vanya’s mane. Vanya slumped down in the easy chair looking as contented as a bitch having her fleas removed. Tony Bring kept his eyes on Hildred, on the pale yellow prongs in her hand wandering lovingly through the blue-black moss. His thoughts followed vindictively. . . .
It had been decided—Hildred had decided it—that Vanya would stay overnight. The lights were extinguished. Vanya lay in one bed, he in the other. They had only to stretch their arms to join hands. Hildred moved about uneasily.
A struggle was going on. They were all struggling together—struggling with each other, struggling with themselves, struggling desperately not to struggle. Presently, like a wave that has traveled from under the rim of the horizon, Hildred flung herself between them. As she leaned over to kiss him goodnight, her body all flowers and moonlight, he felt a sickening desire to strangle her.
Now and again he opened his eyes and stared at the swooning figures huddled in the cloudy mass of bedclothes. Vanya’s head floated in a pool of ink on Hildred’s bosom. Her bare arm hung in a lazy coil over Hildred’s billowy form. It was a strong, massive limb whose weight rested on the body of his wife like an anvil.
In the morning they invited him to have breakfast with them. He yielded as an invalid submits to the attentions of a nurse. The breakfast was an ordeal. He felt that he was in the way. The world was not big enough to contain the three of them. On the way to the subway they talked excitedly about a multitude of disconnected things. They pretended to be calm and unconcerned; they talked without saying anything, they listened to each other without understanding a word.
In the subway Hildred regained her self-possession. She stared about her with insolent defiance, raised her voice immoderately, and shouted things that one usually whispers, provided one has the temerity to mention them at all in public. With a devastating glance she would single out a face and analyze its background of vice or hypocrisy; elderly women especially, on whose features pity and horror were commingled, she challenged with ribald laughter and a malicious glare that made them wince. Vanya carried herself with the dignity of a ridiculous statue.
Emerging from the subway they ran straight into Willie Hyslop and his friends. Tony Bring tried to stand aside, but Vanya took him by the arm and introduced him ceremoniously. The situation reminded him of what a skeptic must endure when he is given extreme unction.
He listened attentively as the two called Toots and Ebba recounted their exploits. They had an alert, bristling air, like a pair of Airedales sniffing each other. They were attractive, too, in a bestial way. The nipples of their breasts pushed through their jerseys like fistulas.
At the door of the Caravan he drew Hildred aside and spoke to her in an undertone. She was out of sorts.
“But why did you do it?” he insisted. “That’s all I’m asking. Can’t you answer me that?”
Hildred was watching Vanya out of the corner of her eye. She explained very lamely that it would have been embarrassing to climb into bed with him in the presence of another woman. That got him. “You call that punk a woman?” he said hoarsely. Her face darkened. She began to brazen it out. Finally she took to calling him names. A look of pain came into his eyes. He felt sorry for her, and for himself, for everyone in the world who had to suffer when it was so unnecessary to suffer.
Suddenly, with a furtive gesture, she pressed his hand. “Can’t we talk it over later?” she begged. So softly she said it, as if she were actually down on her knees before him.
He thought a moment. He wanted to be decent and fair about it. Maybe, as she had said, he was making a mountain out of a molehill. The devil knew, he wasn’t certain anymore of what he was doing.
The others were watching now. She drew her hand away quickly.
“All right,” he said, “we’ll talk about it later. But”—he drew her further aside—“I’ll say this now. . . . It doesn’t matter what you tell me, a thing like that can never happen again . . . never, do you understand?” He turned and walked away quickly.
She stood watching him as he walked off with quick, resentful steps. A deep flush mounted to her cheeks. The glare of the street made her eyes smart. She hated the sunlight . . . hated it . . . hated it.
As he walked away his mind was filled with bitterness and disgust. He recalled how the one called Toots had walked up to Hildred and kissed her on the lips. And only the night before, according to her own words, she and Ebba had staged an exhibition for some old billy goat, some rich, jaded idiot who was curious about curious things. And there was Willie Hyslop’s yellow teeth and the silken mustache which had just begun to sprout, which exaggerated his effeminacy. They had dirty mouths, all of them, mouths which, erroneously or not, the world associates with degenerates. He wondered why he hadn’t walked away from them at once. He rubbed his perspiring hands on his overcoat as though to remove the danger of contamination.
5
RETURNING HOME unexpectedly one afternoon he was astonished to find a pair of sleeping beauties in his bed. They lay like angels exhausted by heavy and incessant flights. He looked
sharply at Vanya; she was struggling to keep her eyes shut. Hildred pretended to be snoring—she was snoring hard enough for a regiment.
Five minutes later he was rolling over the Brooklyn Bridge. White jockeys with spurs of malachite were scudding through the low-hanging clouds that hung like collars of fat about the slender ribs of the skyscrapers. The creaking wharves below plowed the leaping flood like blunt-edged combs. From the Battery to the bridge, like one vast fantasy in stone, the city wavered and trembled, shivered, shuddered, quivered with ecstasy. Between the black crevices, far, far below, moving like intoxicated ants, the city’s millions swarmed.
At Sheridan Square he dismissed the cab. He became part of the throng whose activity at this hour of the day rose to the surface like a creamy, rose-tinted froth. At this very moment, in every part of the world, people were dreaming or talking about New York. New York! What was it made people so damned silly about New York? The swirl and jelly-dance on the sidewalks, the magnificent prisons blotting out the sky, the rancid smells, the razzle-dazzle . . . what? . . . just what? Here he was in the thick of it and not a drop of joy or pride in his heart. The beautiful women of New York . . . where were they? He saw only faces laid out with the monotony of graves, graves smothered with wreaths which had lost their perfume; they walked along like sawdust dolls galvanized by a swig of gin, wax virgins who had no virginity, bargain hunters pricked with the itch of possession, their cool, calculating faces registering a perpetual “To Let” expression.