by Henry Miller
If there is anything which deserves to be called miraculous, is it not love? What other power, what other mysterious force is there which can invest life with such undeniable splendor?
The Bible is full of miracles, and they have been accepted by thinking and unthinking individuals alike. But the miracle which every one is permitted to experience some time in his life, the miracle which demands no intervention, no intercessor, no supreme exertion of will, the miracle which is open to the fool and the coward as well as the hero and the saint, is love. Born of an instant, it lives eternally. If energy is imperishable, how much more so is love! Like energy, which is still a complete enigma, love is always there, always on tap. Man has never created an ounce of energy, nor did he create love. Love and energy have always been, always will be. Perhaps in essence they are one and the same. Why not? Perhaps this mysterious energy which is identified with the life of the universe, which is God in action, as some one has said, perhaps this secret, all-invasive force is but the manifestation of love. What is even more awesome to consider is that, if there be nothing in our universe which is not informed with this unseizable force, then what of love? What happens when love (seemingly) disappears? For the one is no more indestructible than the other. We know that even the deadest particle of matter is capable of yielding explosive energy. And if a corpse has life, as we know it does, so has the spirit which once made it animate. If Lazarus was raised from the dead, if Jesus rose from his tomb, then whole universes which now cease to exist may be revived, and doubtless will be revived, when the time is ripe. When love, in other words, conquers over wisdom.
How then, if such things be possible, are we to speak, or even to think, of losing love? Succeed though we may for a while in closing the door, love will find the way. Though we become as cold and hard as minerals, we cannot remain forever indifferent and inert. Nothing truly dies. Death is always feigned. Death is simply the closing of a door.
But the Universe has no doors. Certainly none which cannot be opened or penetrated by the power of love. This the fool at heart knows, expressing his wisdom quixotically. And what else can the Knight Errant be, who seeks assault in order to overcome, if not a herald of love? And he who is constantly exposing himself to insult and injury, what is he running away from if not the invasion of love?
In the literature of utter desolation there is always and only one symbol (which may be expressed mathematically as well as spiritually) about which everything turns: minus love. For life can. be lived, and usually is lived, on the minus side rather than the plus. Men may strive forever, and hopelessly, once they have elected to rule love out. That high unfathomable ache of emptiness into which all creation might be poured and still it would be emptiness, this aching for God, as it has been called, what is it if not a description of the soul’s loveless state?
Into something bordering on this condition of being I had now entered fully equipped with rack and wheel. Events piled up of their own accord, but alarmingly so. There was something insane about the momentum with which I now slid downward and backward. What had taken ages to build up was demolished in the twinkling of an eye. Everything crumbled to the touch.
To a thought machine it makes little difference whether a problem is expressed in minus or plus terms. When a human being takes to the toboggan it is virtually the same. Or almost. The machine knows no regret, no remorse, no guilt. It shows signs of disturbance only when it has not been properly fed. But a human being endowed with the dread mind machine is given no quarter. Never, no matter how unbearable the situation, may he throw in the sponge, As long as there is a flicker of life left he will offer himself as victim to whatever demon chooses to possess him. And if there be nothing, no one, to harass, betray, degrade or undermine him, he will harass, betray, degrade or undermine himself.
To live in the vacuum of the mind is to live this side of Paradise, but so thoroughly, so completely, that even the rigor of death seems like a St. Vitus’ Dance. However sombre, dreary and stale every day life may be, never does it approach the aching quality of this endless void through which one drifts and slithers in full, waking consciousness. In the sober reality of everyday there is the sun as well as the moon, the blossom as well as the dead leaf, sleep as well as wakefulness, dream as well as nightmare. But in the vacuum of the mind there is only a dead horse running with motionless feet, a ghost clasping an unfathomable nothingness.
And so, like a dead horse whose master never tires of flogging him, I kept galloping to the farthest corners of the universe and nowhere finding peace, comfort or rest. Strange phantoms I encountered in these headlong flights I Monstrous were the resemblances we presented, yet never the slightest rapport. The thin membrane of skin which separated us served as a magnetic coat of armor through which the mightiest current was powerless to operate.
If there is one supreme difference between the living and the dead it is that the dead have ceased to wonder. But, like the cows in the field, the dead have endless time to ruminate. Standing knee-deep in clover, they continue to ruminate even when the moon goes down. For the dead there are universes upon universes to explore. Universes of nothing but matter. Matter devoid of substance. Matter through which the mind machine ploughs as if it were soft snow.
I recall the night I died to wonder. Kronski had come and given me some innocent white pills to swallow. I swallowed them and, when he had gone, I opened wide the windows, threw off the covers, and lay stark naked. Outside the snow was whirling furiously. The icy wind whistled about the four corners of the room as if in a ventilating machine.
Peaceful as a bedbug I slept. Shortly after dawn I opened my eyes, amazed to discover that I was not in the great beyond. Yet I could hardly say that I was still among the living. What had died I know not. I know only this, that everything which serves to make what is called one’s life had faded away. All that was left me was the machine … the mind machine. Like the soldier who finally gets what he’s been praying for, I was dispatched to the rear. Aux autres de l’autre la guerre!
Unfortunately no particular destination had been pinned to my carcass. Back, back, I moved, often with the speed of a cannon ball.
Familiar though everything appeared to be, there was never a point of entry. When I spoke my voice sounded like a tape played backward. My whole being was out of focus.
ET HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE IUVABIT
I was sufficiently clairvoyant at the time to inscribe this unforgettable line from the Aeneid on the toilet box which was suspended above Stasia’s cot.
Perhaps I have already described the place. No matter. A thousand descriptions could never render the reality of this atmosphere in which we lived and moved. For here, like the prisoner of Chillon, like the divine Marquis, like the mad Strindberg, I lived out my madness. A dead moon which had ceased struggling to present its true face.
It was usually dark, that is what I remember most. The chill dark of the grave. Taking possession during a snowfall, I had the impression that the whole world outside our door would remain forever carpeted with a soft white felt. The sounds which penetrated to my addled brain were always muffled, muffled by the everlasting blanket of snow. It was a Siberia of the mind I inhabited, no doubt about it. For companions I had wolves and jackals, their piteous howling interrupted only by the tinkling of sleigh-bells or the rumble of a milk truck destined for the land of motherless babes.
Towards the wee hours of the morning I could usually count on the two of them appearing arm in arm, fresh as daisies, their cheeks glistening with frost and the excitement of an eventful day. Between whiles a bill collector would appear, rap loud and long, then melt into the snow. Or the madman, Osiecki, who always tapped softly at the window-pane. And always the snow kept falling, sometimes in huge wet flakes, like melting stars, or in whirling gusts choked with stinging hypodermic needles.
While waiting I tightened my belt. I had the patience not of a saint nor even of a tortoise, but rather the cold, calculating patience of a criminal.
Kill time! Kill thought I Kill the pangs of hunger! One long, continuous killing … Sublime!
If, peering through the faded curtain, I recognized the silhouette of a friend I might open the door, more to get a breath of fresh air than to admit a kindred soul.
The opening dialogue was always the same. I became so accustomed to it that I used to play it back to myself when they were gone. Always a Ruy Lopez opening.
What are you doing with yourself?
Nothing.
Me? You’re crazy!
But what do you do all day?
Nothing.
Followed the inevitable grubbing of a few cigarettes and a bit of loose change, then a dash for a cheese cake or a bag of doughnuts. Sometimes I’d propose a game of chess.
Soon the cigarettes would give out, then the candles, then the conversation.
Alone again I would be invaded by the most delicious, the most extraordinary recollections—of persons, places, conversations. Voices, grimaces, gestures, pillars, copings, cornices, meadows, brooks, mountains … they would sweep over me in waves, always desynchronized, disjected … like clots of blood dripping from a clear sky. There they were in extenso, my mad bed-fellows: the most forlorn, whimsical, bizarre collection any man could gather. All displaced, all visitors from weird realms. Outlanders, each and all. Yet how tender and lovable! Like angels temporarily ostracized, their wings discreetly concealed beneath their tattered dominoes.
Often it was in the dark, while rounding a bend, the streets utterly deserted, the wind whistling like mad, that I would happen upon one of these nobodies. He may have hailed me to ask for a light or to bum a dime. How come that instantly we locked arms, instantly we fell into that jargon which only derelicts, angels and outcasts employ?
Often it was a simple, straightforward admission on the stranger’s part which set the wheels in motion. (Murder, theft; rape, desertion—they were dropped like calling cards.)
You understand, I hod to…
Of course!
The ax was lying there, the war was on, the old man always drunk, my sister on the bum … Besides, I always wanted to write … You understand?
Of course!
And then the stars … Autumn stars. And strange, new horizons. A world so new and yet so old. Walking, hiding, foraging. Seeking, searching, praying … shedding one skin after another. Every day a new name, a new calling. Always fleeing from myself. Understand?
Of course!
Above the Equator, under the Equator … no rest, no surcease. Never nothing nowhere. Worlds so bright, so full, so rich, but linked with concrete and barbed wire. Always the next place, and the next. Always the hand stretched forth, begging, imploring, beseeching. Deaf, the world. Stone deaf. Rifles cracking, cannons booming, and men, women and children everywhere lying stiff in their own dark blood. Now and then a flower. A violet, perhaps, and a million rotting corpses to fertilize it. You follow me?
Of course!
I went mad, mad, mad.
Naturally!
So he takes the ax, so sharp, so bright, and he takes to chopping … here a head, there an arm or leg, then fingers and toes. Chop, chop, chop. Like chopping spinach. And of course they’re looking for him. And when they find him they’ll run the juice through him. Justice will be served. For every million slaughtered like pigs one lone wretched monster is executed humanly.
Do I understand? Perfectly.
What is a writer but a fellow criminal, a judge, an executioner? Was I not versed in the art of deception since childhood? Am I not riddled with traumas and complexes? Have. I not been stained with all the guilt and sin of the medieval monk?
What more natural, more understandable, more human and forgivable than these monstrous rampages of the isolated poet?
As inexplicably as they entered my sphere they left, these nomads.
Wandering the streets on an empty belly puts one on the qui vive. One knows instinctively which way to turn, what to look for: one never fails to recognize a fellow traveler.
When all is lost the soul steps forth…
I referred to them as angels in disguise. So they were, but I usually awoke to the fact only after they had departed. Seldom does the angel appear trailing clouds of glory, Now and then, however, the drooling simpleton one stops to gaze at suddenly fits the door like a key. And the door opens.
It was the door called Death which always swung open, and I saw that there was no death, nor were there any judges or executioners save in our imagining. How desperately I strove then to make restitution! And I did make restitution. Full and complete. The rajah stripping himself naked. Only an ego left, but an ego puffed and swollen like a hideous toad. And then the utter insanity of it would overwhelm me. Nothing can be given or taken away; nothing has been added or subtracted; nothing increased or diminished. We stand on the same shore before the same mighty ocean. The ocean of love. There it is—in perpetuum. As much in a broken blossom, the sound of a waterfall, the swoop of a carrion bird as in the thunderous artillery of the prophet. We move with eyes shut and ears stopped; we smash walls where doors are waiting to open to the touch; we grope for ladders, forgetting that we have wings; we pray as if God were dead and blind, as if He were in a space beyond space. No wonder the angels in our midst are unrecognizable.
One day it will be pleasant to remember these things.
4.
And so, moving about in the dark or standing for hours like a hat rack in a corner of the room, I fell deeper and deeper into the pit. Hysteria became the norm. The snow never melted.
While hatching the most diabolical schemes to drive Stasia really mad, and thus do away with her for good, I also dreamed up the most asinine plan of campaign for a second courtship. In every shop window I passed I saw gifts which I wanted to buy her. Women adore gifts, especially costly ones. They also love little nothings, dependent on their moods. Between a pair of antique ear rings, very expensive, and a large black candle, I could spend the whole livelong day debating which to get her. Never would I admit to myself that the expensive object was out of reach. No, were I able to convince myself that the ear rings would please her more, I could also convince myself that I could find the way to purchase them. I could convince myself of this, I say, because in the bottom of my heart I knew I would never decide on either. It was a pastime. True, I might better have passed the time debating higher issues, whether, for example, the soul was corruptible or incorruptible, but to the mind-machine one problem is as good as another. In this same spirit I could work up the urge to walk five or ten miles in order to borrow a dollar, and feel just as triumphant if I succeeded in scrounging a dime or even a nickel. What I might have hoped to do with a dollar was unimportant; it was the effort I was still capable of making which counted. It meant, in my deteriorated view of things, that I still had one foot in the world.
Yes, it was truly important to remind myself of such things occasionally and not carry on like the Akond of Swot. It was also good to give them a jolt once in a while, to say when they came home at three A.M. empty-handed: Don’t let it bother you, I’ll go buy myself a sandwich. Sometimes, to be sure, I ate only an imaginary sandwich. But it did me good to let them think that I was not altogether without resources. Once or twice I actually convinced them that I had eaten a steak. I did it to rile them, of course. (What business had I to eat a steak when they had passed hours away sitting in a cafeteria waiting for some one to offer them a bite?)
Occasionally I would greet them thus: So you did manage to get something to eat?
The question always seemed to disconcert them.
I thought you were starving, I would say.
Whereupon they would inform me that they were not interested in starving. There was no reason for me to starve either, they were sure to add. I did it only to torment them.
If they were in a jovial mood they would enlarge on the subject. What new deviltry was I planning? Had I seen Kronski lately? And then the smoke screen talk would begin—about their new-fou
nd friends, the dives they had discovered, the side trips to Harlem, the studio Stasia was going to rent, and so on and so forth. Oh yes, and they had forgotten to tell me about Barley, Stasia’s poet friend, whom they had run across the other night. He was going to drop in some afternoon. Wanted to meet me.
One evening Stasia took to reminiscing. Truthful reminiscences, as far as I could gather. About the trees she used to rub herself against in the moonlight, about the perverted millionaire who fell in love with her because of her hairy legs, about the Russian girl who tried to make love to her but whom she repulsed because she was too crude. Besides, she was then having an affair with a married woman and, to throw dust in the husband’s eyes, she used to let him fuck her … not that she enjoyed it but because the wife, whom she loved, thought it was the thing to do.
I don’t know why I’m telling you all these things, she said. Unless…
Suddenly she remembered why. It was because of Barley. Barley was an odd sort. What the attraction was between them she couldn’t understand. He was always pretending he wanted to lay her, but nothing ever happened. Anyhow, he was a very good poet, that she was sure of. Now and then, she said, she would compose a poem in his presence. Then she supplied a curious commentary: I could go on writing while he masturbated me.
Titters.
What do you think of that?
Sounds like a page out of Krafft-Ebing, I volunteered.
A long discussion now ensued regarding the relative merits of Krafft-Ebing, Freud, Forel, Stekel, Weininger et alia, ending with Stasia’s remark that they were all old hat.
You know what I’m going to do for you? she exclaimed. I’m going to let your friend Kronski examine me.