CW: Honestly, I’m amazed that you remember all of this so well.
RHB: There are things you don’t forget.
CW: When did you see Howard next?
RHB: That winter, in New York. He came down every year, for Belknap’s parents’ New Year’s Eve party, which had become a kind of reunion of Howard’s New York friends. Belknap’s parents lived in an apartment on West End Avenue, and they did it up for the occasion, with tinsel and white and red streamers. A crowd of people stood around the big silver punch bowl in their dining room, shouting at each other in what seemed to be a foreign language, and breaking away now and then to grab a handful of cold cuts from one of the platters Mrs. Long had put out. The air reeked of cheap cigars and cigarettes. I didn’t see Howard, and I didn’t recognize anyone else. I was about to leave when Belknap came up and said, You must be the illustrious Robert Barlow! He seized my elbow and pulled me into the crowd. Fellows, he said, here’s Barlow, emerged from the swamps of Florida. I tried to explain that I lived in a wooded area, but no one cared. Belknap poured me a glass of punch. Howard came up out of the crowd and beamed at me. Hail, Barlovius, he said, welcome to the frozen plateau of Leng!* [Laughs.] I had found my people. Before I knew it, this black-haired goldfish of a boy, who turned out to be Don Wollheim,* had led me to a corner of the living room, where he tried to recruit me for the Communist Party, which he had just joined. Every superior person ought to be a member, he said, looking over my shoulder, as if for a superior person who might be coming up behind me. I said that my artistic pursuits left me no time for politics, and Wollheim began to explain in a very superior way that politics was art, but then Sam Loveman came to tell me that Howard was looking for me. As he led me back toward the refreshments, he said Howard had told him all about me, and that he, Loveman, had expected me to be some kind of mad pygmy dressed in animal skins. He was pleased to see that I looked civilized. How old are you? he asked. Sixteen, I said. Oh, Loveman said, well, of course, Howard has many young friends. I found his tone insufferable. It was easy to guess that Loveman was gay, and that he was jealous. Howard told me about you, too, I said. Loveman stiffened. What did he say? he asked. I didn’t answer. What did Howard say? Loveman asked again. His face was flushed. Nothing important, I said. We’d just found Howard. Were you looking for me? I asked him. I was, he said. In a low voice he went on, You have to be careful, Barlovius. These New York Jews will eat you alive if you don’t stop ’em. They’re like encyclopedias with teeth. What’s that? Loveman asked. I was just saying that Belknap’s mother knows the importance of cheese, Howard said, pointing to the cubes heaped on a blue-and-white china platter. Stick close to me, Barlovius, he went on, we stand a better chance of getting at the eats if we go together. Loveman followed us to the cheese plate, and we talked for a while with an athletic young man who turned out to be the illustrator Hannes Bok.* Like Belknap, he had a wispy mustache, which made him look like Douglas Fairbanks with mange. Hannes was also clearly a homosexual, or not clearly, but obscurely, behind the tight-lipped gentlemanliness which was the pose we all adopted in those days. But there was no mistaking the way he looked at me. I couldn’t believe my good luck. Not only to be with Howard, but to have found out that nearly all his friends were gay! Belknap wasn’t, it’s true, and I wasn’t sure about Wollheim. But the others were. It was wonderful. To be among my kind . . . [Laughs.] Loveman’s roommate Pat had spiked the punch, and Howard got drunk, only he didn’t know it, because he’d never before had a drink, and no one told him. Meanwhile, Loveman and Pat and Hannes were talking about Lady Chatterley’s Lover. They were making fun of the sex, the twining of flowers in Lady Chatterley’s pubic hair and so on, and Pat said, louder than he meant to, For sure, that was scarier than anything in Weird Tales! Howard was outraged. Clearly, you don’t know much about horror, he said. Horror is premised on the experience of what we do not and cannot understand, whereas what you’re talking about is mere low-class smut, which every schoolboy has encountered before he’s in long pants. The room fell silent. Your presence here, Howard said, pointing at Pat, is evidence that even the least intelligent of human beings can produce offspring, but that’s no reason our reproductive biology should show up in literature. You’re dead wrong, Pat said loudly, sex is human, and novels can’t just ignore it. Why not? Howard asked. Shouting is human, too, but if you raise your voice in a library, you’ll be shown out, or you ought to be. As for humanity, I get enough of it just taking the streetcar. What I want, when I sit down to read a novel, is wonder. I’d never heard Howard speak like that before, from the seat of his power, so to speak. It was majestic. Belknap whispered something to Pat, and Pat said, When you put it that way, I see your point. I like wonder, too. You probably mean the Wonder Wheel, down on Coney Island, Howard grumbled, but Belknap was already leading him back to the punch bowl. A quarter of an hour later, at Belknap’s urging, Howard sang a comical song he’d composed earlier that day, which I don’t remember, except that he rhymed Cthulhu with toodle-oo. It surprised some people who didn’t know how the name was pronounced.* Then, suddenly, Howard sat down. Are you all right? I asked. Short of breath, he said. I ought to go out and get some air. I’ll go with you, I said. We retrieved our coats and went out. It was a fiercely cold night, and the wind blowing from the Hudson made it even colder. Knots of people were marching up Broadway, laughing and singing “Auld Lang Syne.” People threw firecrackers from their cars. The cold air refreshed Howard, and in a minute he was laughing at his dizzy spell. It must have been overindulgence in cheese, he said. I had no idea I had a limit! We all do, I said. Barlovius, you are wise beyond your years, Howard said. But honestly, what kind of idiot would call Chatterley honest, or frank? All that nonsense with the gamekeeper reeks of violets. You’ve read it? I asked, astounded. Of course, Howard said. When you lead a life like mine, you tend to read everything. We were walking downtown, with the vague idea of reaching Times Square. When we came to the triangle where Verdi’s statue stands,* I made a clever remark about Lawrence and the operatic side of life, but Howard was no longer listening. Pegāna, I’m completely frozen, he mumbled. His blue lips could hardly form the words. Where are you staying? I asked. With Belknap, he said. You should have stayed there, too, you would have saved yourself three dollars a night. Belknap lived on One Hundredth Street; walking him back there was out of the question. My hotel is just up the street, I said. Does it have heat? Howard asked. Excessively, I said. Then point me toward it, Howard said. It was New Year’s Eve, and no one wondered at all about two coated, hatted men staggering upstairs together. And my room was, in fact, very warm. I filled water glasses from the tap, and Howard sat on the bed in his coat, staring dully at the wall. Mark this night, he said, after a while, for I have cheated death! You don’t even have frostbite, I said. Not where you can see it, Howard said. Take off your coat, I said, I’ll warm you up. Without thinking, I leaned forward and kissed his nose. Howard blinked. Bobby? he said. Yes, I said, and kissed his mouth.
CW: I thought the two of you were revising a manuscript.
RHB: Not that night.
CW: Did you . . . ?
RHB: I’ll tell you in a minute. I have to use the washroom, and I see Xictli is hungry. Have you met him? Here, Xictli. Come. [Gestures.] No? Well, he’s shy.
4.
CW: So, what happened?
RHB: Happened?
CW: That night. In New York.
RHB: Howard fell asleep, and so did I. When I woke up, he was gone, and I didn’t see him until the next summer, when he came back to Florida.
CW: Your father was home that summer.
RHB: Yes.
CW: What was that like?
RHB: It made my work easier. My father distracted Bernice, and she didn’t play hostess so much. [Laughs.] Or wonder what Howard and I could be doing.
CW: What did your father think of Lovecraft?
RHB: The Colonel identified Howard as an ally in the on
going war between himself and Spain.
CW: Oh.
RHB: Also, they both loved Gilbert and Sullivan. I didn’t make that up. My father wanted them to perform H.M.S. Pinafore at the community theater in DeLand, with Howard as Buttercup. [Sings.] Buy of your Buttercup—poor little Buttercup . . . Can you imagine?
CW: Not really, no. What was your work?
RHB: What?
CW: You said, the Colonel made your work easier.
RHB: Oh. Perhaps work isn’t the right word. I wanted Howard to stay with us. That was the purpose of the cabin we built on the far side of the lake, so he would have a private place to write. And so we would have a private place to make love, or at least that was what I hoped.
CW: Did you? Make love, I mean.
RHB: We built the cabin. It was an enormous amount of work, because all the materials had to go around the lake, or else across the lake, in the rowboat. Charles Johnston helped with the framing, and left us to do the siding and the interior. I don’t think he expected we’d ever get it done, but we did. Howard was surprisingly handy.
CW: Was there ever anything between you and Johnston, or between him and Howard?
RHB: [Laughs.] No. Charles was as straight as they come. His idea of fun was picking up blond girls at Daytona Beach. He couldn’t have cared less whether I had sex with Howard or with a water buffalo. Really, he was a very agreeable person.
CW: Ah.
RHB: And . . . there we were. I kept waiting for something to happen, and it didn’t. [Laughs.] The cabin was a disaster in that regard. Howard would row across the lake after dinner, and stay there all night, and I hardly saw him at all. I asked what he was doing, but he wouldn’t tell me. Barlovius, he said stiffly, there are matters that belong to a gentleman’s privacy. What, I said, it’s not like I’m asking you about going to the toilet. Bobby! he said. From hints he dropped, I had the idea that he was working on a new story. He asked me to drive him to the library at Stetson, so he could consult some psychology textbooks. He went for long walks by himself in the forest. Meanwhile, I dropped hints to my parents that I wasn’t prepared for college. I needed a tutor, I said, an educated person. Well. At the end of July, my father took Howard aside for a talk, man to man. What, exactly, were his prospects in Providence? Wouldn’t he be glad to trade his revision work* for a steady job as a tutor? With some light singing duties on the side? The salary wouldn’t be much, but the position came with room and board. When Howard told me about the offer, later that evening, I could have clapped.
CW: But he didn’t stay.
RHB: A few days later, we went back to De Leon Springs. Seeing the sugar mill for the second time was very much like seeing it for the first. Howard lingered by the millstone, running his hands over its rough, pocked surface as if to draw the sweetness of the past out of it. After half an hour of this, he said something about how picturesque it was, and I said, Not if you were a slave who had to work there. Howard said that of course slavery had been a lamentable institution, but on the other hand, it was responsible for some great works. The Cyclopean pyramids of Egypt, not to mention the even more Cyclopean pyramids of the Aztecs . . . I said I had nothing against pyramids, but the people who made them should have been paid. You sound like Belknap, Howard said. Free lunch for everyone, and equality all around! Well, I said, I don’t think some people should be the property of others on account of the color of their skin. I won’t argue the case with you, my dear Barlovius, Howard said, but I do think you ought to distinguish your moral sentiments from your aesthetic ones. The lower levels of society may have fascinating customs, but that doesn’t make ’em intelligent, or good. What do you mean, the lower levels? I asked. Well, Howard said, blushing with irritation, the lesser races. The Egyptians used African slaves—Nubians and such. I imagine the Aztecs relied on the subject races of their area. I don’t know any Nubians, I said, indignantly, but the Negroes I do know are just as intelligent as white people, and every bit as good. I’m sorry to use that word but it was what we said at the time.
CW: No worries.
RHB: Howard told me to keep my voice down. Of course there are individual exceptions, he said, but if you were to visit New York, and see the masses of ’em there, you’d understand what I mean. The best thing that could happen would be for a kindly gust of cyanogen from the tail of some passing comet to wipe ’em out. You ought to distinguish being dramatic from being human, I said, and I’ve been to New York, in case you don’t remember. I stormed out and went into the forest to brood. It was impossible, I thought, I couldn’t be in love with Howard. He was a loathsome old man who didn’t understand people. How could he? He’d spent his whole life with his aunts. But how could he have so little curiosity? I didn’t understand, then, that Howard’s prejudices were rooted in pain. His father went mad when he was just a little boy . . .
CW: I know.
RHB: . . . and his mother went mad, too, somewhat later. One by one, Howard had lost the people he loved, until all he had was his famous sense of himself as an eighteenth-century gentleman, with all the good and bad qualities that entails. He needed to believe that he was a superior being, or at least that he belonged to a superior race, because, in his heart, Howard was terrified that he was nothing at all. His prejudice was like a child making a wall out of sand, to keep the ocean out. The child keeps putting more sand on the wall, and the ocean keeps pulling it down, and the child knows that, in the end, the ocean will level the wall, but what can he do? All he has are his hands, and maybe a shovel or a pail.
CW: It’s like your story.
RHB: My story?
CW: “The Night Ocean.”
RHB: Ah, yes. Well, I suppose that was a story about Howard. He looks at the ocean, day after day, and he knows he’ll never understand it, let alone master it, but there it is. The horrible ocean.
CW: That’s funny. I always thought of the story as being about you. I thought you were the artist, and he was the ocean, the thing you would never understand.
RHB: Oh? Oh, well, yes, that also.
CW: Because the main character is a muralist, which was something you wanted to do, too.
RHB: Indeed. [Laughs.] It’s funny how many ways you can read a single story. But I suppose that’s the mark of a good work of art, isn’t it?
CW: So they say.
RHB: I was still furious when Howard found me. I’m sorry, he said. I’ve become damnably insensitive in my old age. You’re right, of course. When you consider humanity from a cosmic point of view, we’re all equally insignificant. To a visitor from Betelgeuse, I imagine, we’d all seem like ants. Some black and some red, but ants just the same. I didn’t say anything. Howard looked around, to see if there was anyone nearby, but of course there wasn’t. Bobby, he said, I’ve been thinking about the evening we spent together in New York. Oh? I said. Well, he said, as you know, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with any human behavior, so long as it isn’t dishonest, and doesn’t cause harm. The problem is, and always has been, how it’s looked on. In ancient Greece . . . Howard turned bright red. I can’t stop thinking about you, he said. Pegāna, Bobby, what am I becoming? He made a strange sound, like a frightened rabbit. I can’t stand it, he said, it’s like some other entity has possession of my mind . . . He looked at me anxiously. I remember that you expressed some feelings in this place, last summer, he said. Do you still . . . ? Yes, I said. Howard sighed. He picked a blue flower from a jacaranda tree and handed it to me solemnly. I have it still. Would you like to see it?
CW: OK.
Sound of footsteps. Silence. Footsteps, then rustling of pages.
The Night Ocean Page 9