The Night Ocean

by Paul La Farge

  So this was a new life, he thought. He saw Doris every weekend. He played Candy Land and Uncle Wiggily with Margot; she called him Leo. He built a fence to keep the deer out of Doris’s vegetable garden, and she made him coq au vin and raspberry chiffon pie. He and Doris talked about moving together into an apartment in the city. Spinks could afford it. After the memorable sales speech he’d given, he was promoted to an office in General Electric’s headquarters in Fairfield, where he was supposed to come up with ways to sell stoves in the farthest corners of the world. It was strange, this path by which he had arrived at his ideal life: truly unforeseeable. But he was happy in it, or at least he would have been, if it weren’t for Barlow. Each time Spinks thought about him, he experienced a dull tension, a feeling of there being work to do. Which was appropriate; if Barlow haunted you, it would surely be in the form of a need to work. But what work? Spinks read and reread Barlow’s obituaries, his weird stories, his memoir of Lovecraft. With a certain reluctance, he deciphered Lovecraft’s letters to Barlow, all three hundred–odd pages of them. If you read between their spidery lines, you could hear the story Barlow had told, of a young man in love with an old writer, and an old writer who couldn’t love him back. It was very sad, but not as sad as the stories Barlow had written, which Lovecraft had revised.

  “The Night Ocean” pretends to be a story about how little we matter to a world that will go on without us but in fact I think it is about how without love we must despair. The creature in the ocean is Barlow, and the artist on the shore is HPL, looking bleakly at a world of delight which he fears to enter.

  Spinks wanted to help, but how? Lovecraft was dead and so was Barlow. They could not love; there was nothing for them anymore, except the desolation of the last lines of “The Night Ocean,” which Spinks had intended to quote to me:

  Silent, flabby things will toss and roll along empty shores, their sluggish life extinct. Then all shall be dark, for at last even the white moon on the distant waves shall wink out. Nothing shall be left, neither above nor below the sombre waters. And until that last millennium, as after it, the sea will thunder and toss throughout the dismal night.

  There seemed to be no point in doing anything at all. Then, one Friday evening, Spinks made a strange acquaintance:

  March 23, 1951. On the train to D.’s house, I sit across from a man who looks familiar. Double chin, sad, narrow eyes. Realize with a start that it is Whittaker Chambers: his face was in all the papers two years ago. He sees me looking at him and says sadly, Yes. Tells me he is going to see his mother who lives in Lynbrook. He was just in New York for a press conference. Alger Hiss has gone to prison and the world wants to know what Chambers thinks of that. What does he think? Chambers thinks it is good, if it makes people aware of the character and reality of Communism. But he is afraid it will merely make Hiss into a living martyr. He sighs. If only the world knew, he says, how much he has given up! He had a job with Time magazine that paid thirty thousand a year. But it was his duty to bear witness, he says. He asks: Are you a religious man? Me: My father was a Quaker. Chambers, warmly: As am I. He says secular people can’t fight Communism. Doubt cannot prevail over belief. Only belief can prevail. We get off the train together. D. waiting for me with Margot. Jesus, she says, do you know who that was? She covered the Hiss trial for Transradio Press. I say, I know, we talked on the train. About what? D. asks. I say mostly about Quakerism. D: My, Leo, the company you keep.

  Soon afterward, for reasons not mentioned in his notes, either because he knew them by heart or because he didn’t know them at all, Spinks wrote the Erotonomicon.

  Explain that at first I have no idea of publishing. Writing the diary is a private act, an act of piety. I start in April, finish in June. Am delighted. I feel that I am doing magic: in a small way I am altering the course of history. I show it to nobody, not even D. Whom could I trust with this most forbidden of books? No one, I think. But the story has its own desires; it wants to be known.

  So:

  May 19, 1951. In Loveman’s shop, leafing through an 1855 issue of the Revue Spirite. L. joins me in admiring it. Asks if I am still writing stories. I say I have mostly been reading. Then can’t help myself. I found something you might be interested in, I say. And pull a story from the air: I was in Columbus on GE business, I say, & ran into the collector Charles Barrett. He had me to his house in Logan. Motorboat on the lake, steak in the deep-freezer: an American man of means. Bought from him a bound vol. of Weird Tales which he bought from Robert Barlow’s mother, after B.’s death. And found, bound into it, a plain notebook, a diary, its entries written in a spidery hand . . . Guess whose? L.: Howard’s. Me: Correct. His Polished Loathsomeness, in person. And what a person, Sam! You remember how you told me he didn’t act on his tendencies? Well, I’m here to tell you that he did. In this diary of his, which, by the way, he calls the Erotonomicon, he tells all. If Barrett had thought to open the WT volume, instead of sticking it on his custom-made mahogany bookshelf, all fandom would know by now who Howard really was. Lucky for us it ended up in my hands, huh? L.: Can I see the notebook? Me: Sure, I’ll bring it to you. And now I have to produce it. Fortunately I know a girl named Violet Schmidt, who does handwriting. I go to a stationers’ on East 50th, which does so little business that it has become a de facto museum of stationery. Buy a few old notebooks, & bottles of black Skrip ink.

  June 24. I have the notebook. It’s beautiful. I ring Loveman up in the evening and he says to meet him at his shop. It’s just the two of us sitting there on stools in semi-darkness. L. in bifocals, turning pages and sighing. He doesn’t imagine for a moment that the Erotonomicon might be a fake, even though he knew HPL! I am so impressed by what I’ve accomplished that I keep quiet. Figure at worst L. will tell some of Howard’s friends and they’ll gossip about it for the rest of eternity. Finally L. closes the notebook. Frowns. I had no idea that Howard was so friendly with Hart, he says, but it figures. Howard didn’t tell me the truth about anything. Me: I bet some of Howard’s fans would be interested to know the truth, though. L., slowly: They might. I suggest that the two of us print up the Erotonomicon in a little book. Letterpress, limited run. A collector’s item. Bind it in black leather stamped with seals and sigils. It’s L. who finally says, I have a better idea. Me: What’s that? L.: Can you come back tomorrow? There’s someone I want you to meet.

  Loveman introduced Spinks to Samuel Roth, the infamous booklegger, whose illegal editions of Lady Chatterley and Tropic of Cancer he had been selling under the counter for years.

  Describe Roth. Middle fifties? Balding, thin mustache. Red bow tie and gray pinstriped suit. The look of a certified accountant and the heart of a fanatic. He talks for an hour about the novel he just wrote in prison. It’s about a Jew who is best friends with Yeshea, i.e., Jesus. The Jew is of course Roth under an assumed name. In a way, he reminds me of Luiza. Are you Jewish? he asks. Originally, I say.

  Roth was wary of Spinks’s book. He’d published a novel about homosexuals, A Scarlet Pansy, but those were adult homosexuals. Robert Barlow had been a child. Spinks assured him that Barlow had been very mature for his age,

  and anyway, I say, you can’t libel the dead. R. not convinced. Loveman tells him that the book will sell. He knows two hundred people who will buy it the day it comes out. He talks about how popular HPL is, and how his fans love forbidden books. R. has never heard of HPL and this argument doesn’t move him much. I tell him the Erotonomicon is a love story. Not because it describes sex acts but because it extends the domain of love to include these difficult people. Because it loves the unlovable. R.: You say this Lovecraft is well known? L.: Very well known. R.: OK, we’ll do it, but you have to scholar it up. I go home and add dozens of notes. Takes me a week.

  The Erotonomicon was published in March 1952. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service declared it obscene three months later, and the police raided Roth’s office on Lafayette Street. Spinks was alarmed, but Roth reassured him. He’d been
raided before. He’d been to prison before. “These are the sacrifices we make in the service of a better world,” he told Spinks. “I don’t want to go to jail,” Spinks said. “Chances are, you never will,” Roth said. “Meanwhile, your book is selling like hotcakes! Sam Loveman can’t keep it in stock. Don’t worry, you’re going to come out fine.”

  Doris said the same thing, more or less. (He’d told her the same story about the Erotonomicon as he told Loveman, except that she knew he hadn’t been to Ohio, so he said he’d bought the volume of Weird Tales through the mail.) “Courage, Leo!” she said. “You told the truth, now let the dogs bark.” So Spinks didn’t worry. He didn’t even worry when Violet Schmidt threatened to expose the Erotonomicon as a hoax. He cut her in for ten percent of the royalties, and the problem was taken care of. He didn’t need the money, anyway, and he liked the idea that Violet’s mother would get a new washer. He even told her which one to buy: a Constructa front-loader. It was German, but he figured that with a name like Schmidt, she wouldn’t mind. Then:

  July 22, 1952. Two FBI agents visit my office. One looks like a barber and the other like a quarterback. Am I the author of the Erotonomicon, they want to know. What do I tell them? They’ve already raided Roth. I assume they know everything. The editor, I say, and hold out my wrists. The agents laugh. Let’s take this one step at a time, the barber says. We want to ask you some questions about your book. He pulls a copy from the pocket of his raincoat. There are some words in here that we don’t understand, he says. What’s the Ablo Ritual? I am dumbfounded. The barber asks if it’s a sex act, and I say yes, it probably is. Barber: A sex act between a white man and a Negro boy? Me: Yes, I think so. Still they don’t arrest me. What about this word here, the barber says. Yogge . . . Sothothe, I say. I think it refers to masturbation. Barber: Is that so? What about this here, the Aklo Password? We go through the whole book like that. Thank you, the barber says. Now will you tell us why you wanted to publish this disgusting piece of smut?

  He clearly hopes to catch me off guard, but I’ve had time to think. Me: Gladly. Barber: And? Me: It’s simple. I wanted the world to know who HPL really was. I think history will thank me for it. Children should not read the work of such a man. Barber: Huh. Quarterback (first time he’s spoken): Hm. Barber: Mr. Spinks, are you a homosexual? Me: I am not. Barber: Are you now or have you ever been a Communist? Me: Are you kidding? I work for General Electric. Quarterback: Answer the question. Me: I am not and have never been. Strangely, the agents seem to believe me. Thanks, Mr. Spinks, the barber says. If we need anything else from you, we’ll be back in touch.

  Spinks was terrified. He had been a Communist. Under John Michel’s influence, he’d joined the Young Communist League and got his Party card in the name “Howard P. Fightcraft,” a joke that looked all too transparent, in retrospect. He didn’t know what the FBI knew, or what they could find out; but he did know that under the McCarran Act, any member or former member of a subversive organization could be deported. He didn’t want to go back to Parry Sound. He didn’t want to lose his job or stop seeing Doris. He wished he’d never written the Erotonomicon and thought about admitting that it was a fake, but he couldn’t see how that would help him now. He couldn’t see how anything would help.

  When August Derleth testified before HUAC, in October, and named names, Spinks assumed that he would be deported. He was so dismayed that he didn’t anticipate the obvious result of Derleth’s testimony, which was, that his old friends blamed him:

  November 20. Letter from Elsie Wollheim: Why on earth did I publish HPL’s diary? Do I know that Don has an FBI man sitting in his office at Ace Books? They eat lunch together, and the FBI man asks him to match [Communist] Party names to real people. Don has a lung embolism which she says is my fault. I am the most perfidious person in the history of perfidy, she says. I am worse than Sam Moskowitz, with whom, by the way, Don has become friends.

  All the Futurians were ruined. Pohl and Judy Zissman—now a couple—moved to New Jersey and raised chickens. John Michel fled to a tiny town at the edge of the Catskills, where he made table decorations out of wire and glass. Even Asimov was investigated, and nearly lost his job at Boston University. As for Lowndes, who had never shown Spinks anything but kindness:

  November 22. I run into Doc at the Waldorf Cafeteria. He can’t bring himself to avoid me. Says he is out of Crack Detective. No one will touch him now that he has been questioned by HUAC. He has joined the Episcopalian Church and tells me he is thinking of taking orders. I ask what Dr. Fish thinks of that. Doc says he can’t afford to see Dr. Fish. Why did you do it, Leo? he asks. I say I never would have, if I had known that Derleth would rat us out. I only wanted to tell the truth about HPL. The truth! Doc laughs. He sounds like a bellows with a hole in it. His asthma is back, he says.

  The encounter left Spinks hurt, angry, and still afraid. He had underestimated the madness of his age, he thought. He waited for HUAC’s subpoena to arrive, but it never did, probably because he wasn’t a U.S. citizen. Instead, he got the FBI:

  November 25. Barber and quarterback have more questions for me. Did I know that Robert Barlow was a Communist sympathizer? Am I sure I was never a Communist? Do I know an individual named John Michel?

  It was easy to guess that Michel had told the FBI about him. Spinks wasn’t surprised. All of them—Michel, Wollheim, Pohl, even Doc—had made him out to be the villain all along. He saw no reason to hold back.

  I admit everything. I was a Communist. Of course I knew Michel. We were in the same chapter of the YCL, the Flatbush chapter. But I’ve repented of that folly, and some others, too. Barber: That’s good. Now would you mind telling us who else was in the Flatbush chapter with you?

  Spinks named them. It was the opposite of what he’d once dreamed naming might do; instead of bringing people to life, he was condemning them to poverty and oblivion. To which they’d already been condemned, he told himself. Still, Spinks thought he’d sunk to the lowest depths; but the agents weren’t finished with him yet.

  Barber: What about Doris Baumgardt? Was she a Communist? Me, reluctantly: Don’t you already know? Quarterback: Answer the question. Me: I’m not sure. Barber: You aren’t sure if she is? Or if she was? Me: I think she may have been. She does belong to the Levittown Anti-Segregation League. Barber: Thank you, Mr. Spinks.

  After they left, Spinks wanted to call the FBI and take back what he had said, but he was intelligent enough to know that there was no going back. He would have to fight his way through, which meant thinking of something to tell Doris. He thought about it all night. His best course of action, he decided, was to admit that he had been afraid, but he never got the chance to take it.

  November 26, 1952. 7:05 train to Lynbrook. D. not at the station. I take a cab to her house. D. won’t let me in. Shouts, Go away, you traitor, you creep! Please, I say, let me explain. D.: No! Me: Please! Ad absurdum. Or rather thrice. Then D.: I’m calling Tom! Because she can’t call the police. In her estimation the police are now on my side. I walk back to the station because my cab has already left. The next day—which happens to be U.S. Thanksgiving—I have a cold.

  Spinks wrote her a letter. Michel was the one who had given the FBI her name, he said. He asked her to call him, so they could talk things through. He waited a week, a month. Almost exactly two years after he first asked Doris to run away with him, he wrote again. He’d made a terrible mistake, he said. Could she forgive him? He loved her! He’d only ever wanted to stay in the United States, to be near her. He would retract everything. He’d quit his job and picket GE headquarters. This time he got an answer:

  Dear L. C. Spinks,

  I no longer wish to have anything to do with you. It’s none of your business, but I’ll tell you anyway: no one has ever managed to betray me as viciously as you have just betrayed me, or to wound me more deeply than you have just wounded me. Do not attempt to contact me. If I see you anywhere near my house, or my child, I’ll shoot you myself.
It would be worth the probable consequences.

  Spinks couldn’t help but marvel at the wording. Do not attempt to contact me. Clark Ashton Smith had written almost the same thing to Barlow, fourteen years earlier. Spinks was devastated, but at the same time, he felt that his life was converging with Barlow’s in a way that he didn’t entirely understand.

  General Electric fired Spinks in February 1953. They said he was a danger to the safety of company property—as if he might sabotage one of their indestructible stoves! Spinks wondered what he was supposed to do next. Retreat, like Barlow, to some remote place and study a vanished civilization? He knew how that story ended. No. Spinks would fight. It was too late to save anyone else, but at least he could save himself. He wrote an article for Galaxy, denouncing Lovecraft, and another for the Red-baiting magazine Confidential, which he placed with the help of Whittaker Chambers. He attended a cocktail party at William F. Buckley’s apartment on the Upper East Side, where he met Walter Winchell. He spoke passionately about the things he’d seen in the war and the dangers of anti-Semitism. He had the idea that he was doing what Barlow ought to have done. He felt Barlow’s soul in him, urging him on. Writing the Erotonomicon hadn’t been an exorcism, he realized. It had been an invitation.