by Henry Miller
I arrived to find Ricardo mending a skirt. The atmosphere was that of a Vermeer. Or a Saturday Evening Post cover depicting the activity of the Ladies’ Home Auxiliary.
I liked Ricardo immediately. He was all they said of him plus something beyond reach of their antennae. We began talking at once as if we had been friends all our lives. Or brothers. They had said he was Cuban, but I soon discovered that he was a Catalonian who had emigrated to Cuba as a young man. Like others of his race, he was grave, almost sombre, in appearance. But the moment he smiled one detected the child-like heart. His thick guttural accent made his words thrum. Physically he bore a strong resemblance to Casals. He was profoundly serious, but not deadly serious, as they had given me to believe.
Observing him bent over his sewing, I recalled the speech Mona had once made about him. Particularly those words he had spoken so quietly: I will kill you one day.
He was indeed a man capable of doing such a thing. Strangely enough, my feeling was that anything Ricardo might decide to do would be entirely justifiable. To kill, in his case, could not be called a crime; it would be an act of justice. The man was incapable of doing an impure thing. He was a man of heart, all heart, indeed.
At intervals he sipped the tea which they had poured for him. Had it been firewater he would have sipped it in the same calm, tranquil way, I thought. It was a ritual he was observing. Even his way of talking gave the impression of being part of a ritual.
In Spain he had been a musician and a poet; in Cuba he had become a cobbler. Here he was nobody. However, to be a nobody suited him perfectly. He was nobody and everybody. Nothing to prove, nothing to achieve. Fully accomplished, like a rock.
Homely as sin he was, but from every pore of his being there radiated only kindness, mercy and forbearance. And this was the man to whom they imagined they were doing a great favor! How little they suspected the man’s keen understanding! Impossible for them to believe that, knowing all, he could still give nothing but affection. Or, that he expected nothing more of Mona than the privilege of further inflaming his mad passion.
One day, he says quietly, I will marry you. Then all this will be like a dream.
Slowly he raises his eyes, first to Mona, then to Stasia, then to me. As if to say—You have heard me.
What a lucky man, he says, fixing me with his steady, kindly gaze. ‘What a lucky man you are to enjoy the friendship of these two. I have not yet been admitted to the inner circle.
Then, veering to Mona, he says: You will soon tire of being forever mysterious. It is like standing before the mirror all day. I see you from behind the mirror. The mystery is not in what you do but in what you are. When I take you out of this morbid life you will be naked as a statue. Now your beauty is all furniture. It has been moved around too much. We must put it back where it belongs—on the rubbish pile. Once upon a time I thought that everything had to be expressed poetically, or musically. I did not realize that there was a place, and a reason, for ugly things. For me the worst was vulgarity. But vulgarity can be honest, even pleasing, as I discovered. We do not need to raise everything to the level of the stars. Everything has its foundation of clay. Even Helen of Troy. No one, not even the most beautiful of women, should hide behind her own beauty…
While speaking thus, in his quiet, even way, he continued with his mending. Here is the true sage, I thought to myself. Male and female equally divided; passionate, yet calm and patient; detached, yet giving fully of himself; seeing clearly into the very soul of his beloved, steadfast, devoted, almost idolatrous, yet aware of even her slightest defects. A truly gentle soul, as Dostoievsky would say.
And they had thought I would enjoy meeting this individual because I had a weakness for fools!
Instead of talking to him they plied him with questions, silly questions which were intended to reveal the absurd innocence of his nature. To all their queries he replied in the same vein. He answered them as if he were replying to the senseless remarks of children. While thoroughly aware of their abysmal indifference to his explanations, which he purposely drew out, he spoke as the wise man so often does when dealing with a child: he planted in their minds the seeds which later would sprout and, in sprouting, would remind them of their cruelty, their wilful ignorance, and the healing quality of truth.
In effect they were not quite as callous as their conduct might have led one to believe. They were drawn to him, one might even say they loved him, in a way which to them was unique. No one else they knew could have elicited such sincere affection, such deep regard. They did not ridicule this love if such it was. They were baffled by it. It was the sort of love which usually only an animal is capable of evoking. For only animals, it would seem, are capable of manifesting that total acceptance of human kind which brings about a surrender of the whole being—an unquestioning surrender, moreover, such as is seldom rendered by one human to another.
To me it was more than strange that such a scene should occur around a table where so much talk of love was constantly bandied. It was because of these continual eruptions indeed that we had come to refer to it as the gut table. In what other dwelling, I often wondered, could there be this incessant disturbance, this inferno of emotion, this devastating talk of love resolved always on a note of discord? Only now, in Ricardo’s presence, did the reality of love show forth. Curiously enough, the word was scarcely mentioned. But it was love, nothing else, that shone through all his gestures, poured through all his utterrances.
Love, I say. It might also have been God.
This same Ricardo, I had been given to understand, was a confirmed atheist. They might as well have said—a confirmed criminal. Perhaps the greatest lovers of God and of man have been confirmed atheists, confirmed criminals. The lunatics of love, so to say.
What one took him to be mattered not at all to Ricardo. He could give the illusion of being whatever one desired him to be. Yet he was forever himself.
If I am never to meet him again, thought I, neither shall I ever forget him. Though it may be given us only once in a lifetime to come into the presence of a complete and thoroughly genuine being, it is enough. More than enough. It was not difficult to understand why a Christ or a Buddha could, by a single word, a glance, or a gesture, profoundly affect the nature and the destiny of the twisted souls who moved within their spheres. I could also understand why some should remain impervious.
In the midst of these reflections it occurred to me that perhaps I had played a similar role, though in a far lesser degree, in those unforgettable days when, begging for an ounce of understanding, a sign of forgiveness, a touch of grace, there poured into my office a steady stream of hapless men, women and youngsters of all descriptions. From where I sat, as employment manager, I must have appeared to them either as a beneficent deity or a stern judge, perhaps even an executioner. I had power not only over their own lives but over their loved ones. Power over their very souls, it seemed. Seeking me out after hours, as they did, they often gave me the impression of convicts sneaking into the confessional through the rear door of the church. Little did they know that in begging for mercy they disarmed me, robbed me of my power and authority. It was not I who aided them at such moments, it was they who aided me. They humbled me, made me compassionate, taught me how to give of myself.
How often, after a heartrending scene, I felt obliged to walk over the Bridge—to collect myself. How unnerving, how shattering it was, to be regarded as an all-powerful being! How ironic and absurd too that, in the performance of my routine duties, I should be obliged to play the role of a little Christ! Half-way across the span I would stop and lean over the rail. The sight of the dark, oily waters below comforted me. Into the rushing stream I emptied my turbulent thoughts and emotions.
Still more soothing and fascinating to my spirit were the colored reflections which danced over the surface of the waters below. They danced like festive lanterns swaying in the wind; they mocked my sombre thoughts and illuminated the deep chasms of misery which yawned within me.
Suspended high above the river’s flow, I had the feeling of being detached from all problems, relieved of all cares and responsibilities. Never once did the river stop to ponder or question, never once did it seek to alter its course. Always onward, onward, full and steady. Looking back toward the shore, how like toy blocks appeared the skyscrapers which overshadowed the river’s bank I How ephemeral, how puny, how vain and arrogant! Into these grandiose tombs men and women muscled their way day in and day out, killing their souls to earn their bread, selling themselves, selling one another, even selling God, some of them, and toward night they poured out again, like ants, choked the gutters, dove into the underground, or scampered homeward pitter-patter to bury themselves again, not in grandiose tombs now but, like the worn, haggard, defeated wretches they were, in shacks and rabbit warrens which they called home. By day the graveyard of senseless sweat and toil; by night the cemetery of love and despair. And these creatures who had so faithfully learned to run, to beg, to sell themselves and their fellow-men, to dance like bears or perform like trained poodles, ever and always belying their own nature, these same wretched creatures broke down now and then, wept like fountains of misery, crawled like snakes, uttered sounds which only wounded animals are thought to emit. What they meant to convey by these horrible antics was that they had come to the end of their rope, that the powers above had deserted them, that unless some one spoke to them who understood their language of distress they were forever lost, broken, betrayed. Some one had to respond, some one recognizable, some one so utterly inconspicuous that even a worm would not hesitate to lick his hoots.
And I was that kind of worm. The perfect worm. Defeated in the place of love, equipped not to do battle but to suffer insult and injury, it was I who had been chosen to act as Comforter. What a mockery that I who had been condemned and cast out, I who was unfit and altogether devoid of ambition, should be allotted the judge’s seat, made to punish and reward, to act the father, the priest, the benefactor—or the executioner! I who had trotted up and down the land always under the sting of the lash, I who could take the Wool worth stairs at a gallop—if it was to bum a free lunch—I who had learned to dance to any tune, to pretend all abilities, all capabilities, I who had taken so many kicks in the pants only to return for more, I who understood nothing of the crazy set-up except that it was wrong, sinful, insane, I now of all men was summoned to dispense wisdom, love and understanding. God himself could not have picked a better goat. Only a despised and lonely member of society could have qualified for this delicate role. Ambition did I say a moment ago? At last it came to me, the ambition to save what I could from the wreck. To do for these miserable wretches what had not been done for me. To breathe an ounce of spirit into their deflated souls. To set them free from bondage, honor them as human beings, make them my friends.
And while these thoughts (as of another life) were crowding my head, I could not help but compare that situation, so difficult as it then seemed, with the present one. Then my words had weight, my counsels were listened to; now nothing I said or did carried the least weight. I had become the fool incarnate. Whatever I attempted, whatever I proposed, fell to dust. Even were I to writhe on the floor protestingly, or foam at the mouth like an epileptic, it would be to no avail. I was but a dog baying at the moon.
Why had I not learned to surrender utterly, like Ricardo? Why had I failed to reach a state of complete humility? What was I holding out for in this lost battle?
As I sat watching this farce which the two of them were enacting for Ricardo’s benefit, I became more and more aware of the fact that he was not the least taken in. My own attitude I made clear each time I addressed him. It was hardly necessary, indeed, for I could sense that he knew I had no desire to deceive him. How little she suspected, Mona, that it was our mutual love for her which united us and which made this game ridiculously absurd.
The hero of love, I thought to myself, can never be deceived or betrayed by his bosom friend. What have they to fear, two brotherly spirits? It is the woman’s own fear, her own self-doubt, which alone can jeopardize such a relation. What the loved one fails to comprehend is that there can be no taint of treachery or disloyalty on the part of her lovers. She fails to realize that it is her own feminine urge to betray which unites her lovers so firmly, which holds their possessive egos in check, and permits them to share what they never would share were they not swayed by a passion greater than the passion of love. In the grip of such a passion the man knows only total surrender. As for the woman who is the object of such love, to uphold this love she must exercise nothing short of spiritual legerdemain. It is her inmost soul which is called upon to respond. And it grows, her soul, in the measure that it is inspired.
But if the object of this sublime adoration be not worthy! Seldom is it the man who is afflicted by such doubts. Usually it is the one who inspired this rare and overpowering love who falls victim to doubt. Nor is it her feminine nature which is solely at fault, but rather some spiritual lack which, until subjected to the test, had never been in evidence. With such creatures, particularly when endowed with surpassing beauty, their real powers of attraction remain unknown: they are blind to all but the lure of the flesh. The tragedy, for the hero of love, resides in the awakening, often a brutal one, to the fact that beauty, though an attribute of the soul, may be absent in everything but the lines and lineaments of the loved one.
6.
For days the after effects of Ricardo’s visit hung over me. To add to my distress, Christmas was almost upon us. It was the season of the year I not only loathed but dreaded. Since attaining manhood I had never known a good Christmas. No matter how I fought against it, Christmas day always found me in the bosom of the family—the melancholy knight wrapped in his black armor, forced like every other idiot in Christendom to stuff his belly and listen to the utterly empty babble of his kin.
Though I had said nothing as yet about the coming event—if only it were the celebration of the birth of a free spirit!—I kept wondering under what circumstances, in what condition of mind and heart, the two of us would find ourselves on that festive doomsday.
A most unexpected visit from Stanley, who had discovered our whereabouts by accident, only increased my distress, my inner uneasiness. True, he hadn’t stayed long. Just long enough, however, to leave a few lacerating barbs in my side.
It was almost as if he had come to corroborate the picture of failure which I always presented to his eyes. He didn’t even bother to inquire what I was doing, how we were getting on, Mona and I, or whether I was writing or not writing. A glance about the place was sufficient to tell him the whole story. Quite a come down! was the way he summed it up.
I made no attempt to keep the conversation alive. I merely prayed that he would leave as quickly as possible, leave before the two of them arrived in one of their pseudo-ecstatic moods.
As I say, he made no attempt to linger. Just as he was about to leave, his attention was suddenly arrested by a large sheet of wrapping paper which I had tacked on the wall near the door. The light was so dim that it was impossible to read what was written.
What’s that? he said, moving closer to the wall and sniffing the paper like a dog.
That? Nothing, I said. A few random ideas.
He struck a match to see for himself. He lit another and then another. Finally he backed away.
So now you’re writing plays. Hmmm.
I thought he was going to spit.
I haven’t even begun, I said shamefacedly. I’m just toying with the idea. I’ll probably never write it.
My thought exactly, he said, assuming that ever ready look of the grave-digger. You’ll never write a play or anything else worth talking about. You’ll write and write and never get anywhere.
I ought to have been furious but I wasn’t. I was crushed. I expected him to throw a little fat on the fire—a remark or two about the new romance he was writing. But no, nothing of the sort. Instead he said: I’ve given up writing. I don’t even read any
more. What’s the use? He shook a leg and started for the door. Hand on the knob, he said solemnly and pompously: If I were in your boots I’d never give up, not if everything was against me. I don’t say you’re a writer, but … He hesitated a second, to frame it just right. But Fortune’s in your favor.
There was a pause, just enough to fill the phial with vitriol. Then he added: And you’ve never done a thing to invite it.
So long now, he said, slamming the gate to.
So long, said I.
And that was that.
If he had knocked me down I couldn’t have felt more flattened. I was ready to bury myself then and there. What little armature had been left me melted away. I was a grease spot, nothing more. A stain on the face of the earth.
Reentering the gloom I automatically lit a candle and, like a sleepwalker, planted myself in front of my idea of a play. It was to be in three acts and for three players only. Needless to say who they were, these strolling players.
I scanned the project I had drawn up for scenes, climaxes, background and what not. I knew it all by heart. But this time I read as if I had already written the play out. I saw what could be done with the material. (I even heard the applause which followed each curtain fall.) It was all so clear now. Clear as the ace of spades. What I could not see, however, was myself writing it. I could never write it in words. It had to be written in blood.
When I hit bottom, as I now had, I spoke in monosyllables, or not at all. I moved even less. I could remain in one spot, one position, whether seated, bending or standing, for an incredible length of time.
It was in this inert condition they found me when they arrived. I was standing against the wall, my head against the sheet of wrapping paper. Only a tiny candle was guttering on the table. They hadn’t noticed me there glued to the wall when they burst in. For several minutes they bustled about in silence. Suddenly Stasia spied me. She let out a shriek.