Tropic of Capricorn

by Henry Miller

  We were among the first families to move away, following the invasion. Two or three times a year I came back to the old neighbourhood, for a birthday or for Christmas or Thanksgiving. With each visit I marked the loss of something I had loved and cherished. It was like a bad dream. It got worse and worse. The house in which my relatives still lived was like an old fortress going to ruin; they were stranded in one of the wings of the fortress, maintaining a forlorn, island life, beginning themselves to look sheepish, hunted, degraded. They even began to make distinctions between their Jewish neighbours, finding some of them quite human, quite decent, clean, kind, sympathetic, charitable, etc. etc. To me it was heartrending. I could have taken a machine gun and mowed the whole neighbourhood down, Jew and Gentile together.

  It was about the time of the invasion that the authorities decided to change the name of North Second Street to Metropolitan Avenue. This highway, which to the Gentiles had been the road to the cemeteries, now became what is called an artery of traffic, a link between two ghettoes. On the New York side the riverfront was rapidly being transformed owing to the erection of the skyscrapers. On our side, the Brooklyn side, the warehouses were piling up and the approaches to the various new bridges created plazas, comfort stations, pool rooms, stationery shops, ice cream parlours, restaurants, clothing stores, hock shops, etc. In short everything was becoming metropolitan, in the odious sense of the word.

  As long as we lived in the old neighbourhood we never referred to Metropolitan Avenue: it was always North Second Street, despite the official change of name. Perhaps it was eight or ten years later, when I stood one winter’s day at the corner of the street facing the river and noticed for the first time the great tower of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, that I realized that North Second Street was no more. The imaginary boundary of my world had changed. My lance travelled now far beyond the cemeteries, far beyond the rivers, far beyond the city of New York or the State of New York, beyond the whole United States indeed. At Point Loma, California, I had looked out upon the broad Pacific and I had felt something there which kept my face permanently screwed in another direction. I came back to the old neighbourhood, I remember, one night with my old friend Stanley who had just come out of the army, and we walked the streets sadly and wistfully. A European can scarcely know what this feeling is like. Even when a town becomes modernized, in Europe, there are still vestiges of the old. In America, though there are vestiges, they are effaced, wiped out of the consciousness, trampled upon, obliterated, nullified by the new. The new is, from day to day, a moth which eats into the fabric of life, leaving nothing finally but a great hole. Stanley and I, we were walking through this terrifying hole. Even a war does not bring this kind of desolation and destruction. Through war a town may be reduced to ashes and the entire population wiped out, but what springs up again resembles the old. Death is fecundating, for the soil as well as for the spirit. In America the destruction is completely annihilating. There is no rebirth only a cancerous growth, layer upon layer of new, poisonous tissue, each one uglier than the previous one.

  We were walking through this enormous hole, as I say, and it was a winter’s night, clear, frosty, sparkling, and as we came through the south side towards the boundary line we saluted all the old relics or the spots where things had once stood and where there had been once something of ourselves. And as we approached North Second Street, between Fillmore Place and North Second Street – a distance of only a few yards and yet such a rich, full area of the globe – before Mrs. O’Melio’s shanty I stopped and looked up at the house where I had known what it was to really have a being. Everything had shrunk now to diminutive proportions, including the world which lay beyond the boundary line, the world which had been so mysterious to me and so terrifyingly grand, so delimited. Standing there in a trance I suddenly recalled a dream which I have had over and over, which I still dream now and then, and which I hope to dream as long as I live. It was the dream of passing the boundary line. As in all dreams the remarkable thing is the vividness of the reality, the fact that one is in reality and not dreaming. Across the line I am unknown and absolutely alone. Even the language has changed. In fact, I am always regarded as a stranger, a foreigner. I have unlimited time on my hands and I am absolutely content in sauntering through the streets. There is only one street, I must say – the continuation of the street on which I lived. I come finally to an iron bridge over the railroad yards. It is always nightfall when I reach the bridge, though it is only a short distance from the boundary line. Here I look down upon the webbed tracks, the freight stations, the tenders, the storage sheds, and as I gaze down upon this cluster of strange moving substances a process of metamorphosis takes place, just as in a dream. With the transformation and deformation I become aware that this is the old dream which I have dreamed so often. I have a wild fear that I shall wake up, and indeed I know that I will wake up shortly, just at the moment when in the midst of a great open space I am about to walk into the house which contains something of the greatest importance for me. Just as I go towards this house the lot on which I am standing begins to grow vague at the edges, to dissolve, to vanish. Space rolls in on me like a carpet and swallows me up, and with it of course the house which I never succeed in entering.

  There is absolutely no transition from this, the most pleasurable dream I know to the heart of a book called Creative Evolution. In this book by Henri Bergson, which I came to as naturally as to the dream of the land beyond the boundary, I am again quite alone, again a foreigner, again a man of indeterminate age standing on an iron bridge observing a peculiar metamorphosis without and within. If this book had not fallen into my hands at the precise moment it did, perhaps I would have gone mad. It came at a moment when another huge world was crumbling on my hands. If I had never understood a thing which was written in this book, if I had preserved only the memory of one word, creative, it is quite sufficient. This word was my talisman. With it I was able to defy the whole world, and especially my friends.

  There are times when one must break with one’s friends in order to understand the meaning of friendship. It may seem strange to say so, but the discovery of this book was equivalent to the discovery of a weapon, an implement, wherewith I might lop off all the friends who surrounded me and who no longer meant anything to me. This book became my friend because it taught me that I had no need of friends. It gave me the courage to stand alone, and it enabled me to appreciate loneliness. I have never understood the book; at times I thought I was on the point of understanding, but I never really did understand. It was more important for me not to understand. With this book in my hands, reading aloud to my friends, questioning them, explaining to them, I was made clearly to understand that I had no friends, that I was alone in the world. Because in not understanding the meaning of the words, neither I nor my friends, one thing became very clear and that was that there were ways of not understanding and that the difference between the non-understanding of one individual and the non-understanding of another created a world of terra firma even more solid than differences of understanding. Everything which before I thought I had understood crumbled, and I was left with a clean slate. My friends, on the other hand, entrenched themselves more solidly in the little ditch of understanding which they had dug for themselves. They died comfortably in their little bed of understanding, to become useful citizens of the world. I pitied them, and in short order. I deserted them one by one, without the slightest regret.

  What was there then in this book which could mean so much to me and yet remain obscure? I come back to the word creative. I am sure that the whole mystery lies in the realization of the meaning of this word. When I think of the book now, and the way I approached it, I think of a man going through the rites of initiation. The disorientation and reorientation which comes with the initiation into any mystery is the most wonderful experience which it is possible to have. Everything which the brain has laboured for a lifetime to assimilate, categorize and synthesize has to be taken a
part and reordered. Moving day for the soul! And of course it’s not for a day, but for weeks and months that this goes on. You meet a friend on the street by chance, one whom you haven’t seen for several weeks, and he has become an absolute stranger to you. You give him a few signals from your new perch and if he doesn’t cotton you pass him up – for good. It’s exactly like mopping up a battlefield: all those who are hopelessly disabled and agonizing you dispatch with one swift blow of your club. You move on, to new fields of battle, to new triumphs or defeats. But you move! And as you move the world moves with you, with terrifying exactitude. You seek out new fields of operation, new specimens of the human race whom you patiently instruct and equip with the new symbols. You choose sometimes those you would never have looked at before. You try everybody and everything within range, provided they are ignorant of the revelation.

  It was in this fashion that I found myself sitting in the busheling room of my father’s establishment, reading aloud to the Jews who were working there. Reading to them from this new Bible in the way that Paul must have talked to the disciples. With the added disadvantage, to be sure, that these poor Jew bastards could not read the English language. Primarily I was directing myself towards Bunchek the cutter, who had a rabbinical mind. Opening the book I would pick a passage at random and read it to them in a transposed English almost as primitive as pidgin English. Then I would attempt to explain, choosing for example and analogy the things they were familiar with. It was amazing to me how well they understood, how much better they understood, let me say, than a college professor or a literary man or any educated man. Naturally what they understood had nothing to do finally with Bergson’s book, as a book, but was not that the purpose of such a book as this? My understanding of the meaning of a book is that the book itself disappears from sight, that it is chewed alive, digested and incorporated into the system as flesh and blood which in turn creates new spirit and reshapes the world. It was a great communion feast which we shared in the reading of this book and the outstanding feature of it was the chapter on Disorder which, having penetrated me through and through, has endowed me with such a marvellous sense of order that if a comet suddenly struck the earth and jarred everything out of place, stood everything upside down, turned everything inside out, I could orient myself to the new order in the twinkling of an eye. I have no fear or illusions about disorder any more than I have of death. The labyrinth is my happy hunting ground and the deeper I burrow into the maze the more oriented I become.

  With Creative Evolution under my arm I board the elevated line at the Brooklyn Bridge after work and I commence the journey homeward towards the cemetery. Sometimes I get on at Delancey Street, the very heart of the ghetto, after a long walk through the crowded streets. I enter the elevated line below the ground, like a worm being pushed through the intestines. I know each time I take my place in the crowd which mills about the platform that I am the most unique individual down there. I look upon everything which is happening about me like a spectator from another planet. My language, my world, is under my arm. I am the guardian of a great secret; if I were to open my mouth and talk I would tie up traffic. What I have to say, and what I am holding in every night of my life on this journey to and from the office, is absolute dynamite. I am not ready yet to throw my stick of dynamite. I nibble at it meditatively, ruminatively, cogently. Five more years, ten more years perhaps, and I will wipe these people out utterly. If the train in making a curve gives a violent lurch I say to myself fine! jump the track, annihilate them! I never think of myself as being endangered should the train jump the track. We’re wedged in like sardines and all the hot flesh pressed against me diverts my thoughts. I become conscious of a pair of legs wrapped around mine. I look down at the girl sitting in front of me, I look her right in the eye, and I press my knees still further into her crotch. She grows uneasy, fidgets about in her seat, and finally she turns to the girl next to her and complains that I am molesting her. The people about look at me hostilely. I look out of the window blandly and pretend I have heard nothing. Even if I wished to I can’t remove my legs. Little by little though, the girl, by a violent pushing and squiggling, manages to unwrap her legs from mine. I find myself almost in the same situation with the girl next to her, the one she was addressing her complaints to. Almost at once I feel a sympathetic touch and then, to my surprise, I hear her tell the other girl that one can’t help these things, that it is really not the man’s fault but the fault of the company for packing us in like sheep. And again I feel the quiver of her legs against mine, a warm, human pressure, like squeezing one’s hand. With my one free hand I manage to open my book. My object is twofold: first I want her to see the kind of book I read, second, I want to be able to carry on the leg language without attracting attention. It works beautifully. By the time the train empties a bit I am able to take a seat beside her and converse with her – about the book, naturally. She’s a voluptuous Jewess with enormous liquid eyes and the frankness which come from sensuality. When it comes time to get off we walk arm in arm through the streets, towards her home. I am almost on the confines of the old neighbourhood. Everything is familiar to me and yet repulsively strange. I have not walked these streets for years and now I am walking with a Jew girl from the ghetto, a beautiful girl with a strong Jewish accent. I look incongruous walking beside her. I can sense that people are staring at us behind our backs. I am the intruder, the Goy who has come down into the neighbourhood to pick off a nice ripe cunt. She on the other hand seems to be proud of her conquest; she’s showing me off to her friends. This is what I picked up in the train, an educated Goy, a refined Goy! I can almost hear her think it. Walking slowly I’m getting the lay of the land, all the practical details which will decide whether I call for her after dinner or not. There’s no thought of asking her to dinner. It’s a question of what time and where to meet and how will we go about it, because as she lets drop just before we reach the door, she’s got a husband who’s a travelling salesman and she’s got to be careful. I agree to come back and to meet her at the corner in front of the candy store at a certain hour. If I want to bring a friend along she’ll bring her girl friend. No, I decide to see her alone. It’s agreed. She squeezes my hand and darts off into a dirty hallway. I beat it quickly back to the elevated station and hasten home to gulp down the meal.

  It’s a Summer’s night and everything flung wide open. Riding back to meet her the whole past rushes up kaleidoscopically. This time I’ve left the book at home. It’s cunt I’m out for now and no thought of the book is in my head. I am back again this side of the boundary line, each station whizzing past making my world grow more diminutive. I am almost a child by the time I reach the destination. I am a child who is horrified by the metamorphosis which has taken place. What has happened to me, a man of the 14th Ward, to be jumping off at this station in search of a Jewish cunt? Supposing I do give her a fuck, what then? What have I got to say to a girl like that? What’s a fuck when what I want is love? Yes, suddenly it comes over me like a tornado … Una, the girl I loved, the girl who lived here in this neighbourhood, Una with big blue eyes and flaxen hair, Una who made me tremble just to look at her, Una whom I was afraid to kiss or even to touch her hand. Where is Una? Yes, suddenly, that’s the burning question: where is Una? In two seconds I am completely unnerved, completely lost, desolate, in the most horrible anguish and despair. How did I ever let her go? Why? What happened? When did it happen? I thought of her like a maniac night and day, year in and year out, and then, without even noticing it, she drops out of my mind, like that, like a penny falling through a hole in your pocket. Incredible, monstrous, mad. Why all I had to do was to ask her to marry me, ask her hand – that’s all. If I had done that she would have said yes immediately. She loved me, she loved me desperately. Why yes, I remember now, I remember how she looked at me the last time we met. I was saying good-bye because I was leaving that night for California, leaving everybody to begin a new life. And I never had any intention of leading a new li
fe. I intended to ask her to marry me, but the story I had framed like a dope came out of my lips so naturally that I believed it myself, and so I said good-bye and I walked off, and she stood there looking after me and I felt her eyes pierce me through and through. I heard her howling inside, but like an automaton I kept on walking and finally I turned the corner and that was the end of it. Good-bye! Like that. Like in a coma. And I meant to say come to me! Come to me because I can’t live any more without you!

  I am so weak, so rocky, that I can scarcely climb down the L steps. Now I know what’s happened – I’ve crossed the boundary line! This Bible that I’ve been carrying around with me is to instruct me, initiate me into a new way of life. The world I knew is no more, it is dead, finished, cleaned up. And everything that I was is cleaned up with it. I am a carcass getting an injection of new life. I am bright and glittery, rabid with new discoveries, but in the centre it is still leaden, still slag. I begin to weep – right there on the L stairs. I sob aloud, like a child. Now it dawns on me with full clarity: you are alone in the world! You are alone … alone … alone. It is bitter to be alone … bitter, bitter, bitter, bitter. There is no end to it, it is unfathomable, and it is the lot of every man on earth, but especially mine … especially mine. Again the metamorphosis. Again everything totters and careens. I am in the dream again, the painful, delirious, pleasurable, maddening dream of beyond the boundary. I am standing in the centre of the vacant lot, but my home I do not see. I have no home. The dream was a mirage. There never was a house in the midst of the vacant lot. That’s why I was never able to enter it. My home is not in this world, nor in the next. I am a man without a home, without a friend, without a wife. I am a monster who belongs to a reality which does not exist yet. Ah, but it does exist, it will exist, I am sure of it. I walk now rapidly, head down, muttering to myself. I’ve forgotten about my rendezvous so completely that I never even noticed whether I walked past her or not. Probably I did. Probably I looked right at her and didn’t recognize her. Probably she didn’t recognize me either. I am mad, mad with pain, mad with anguish. I am desperate. But I am not lost. No, there is a reality to which I belong. It’s far away, very far away. I may walk from now till doomsday with head down and never find her. But it is there, I am sure of it. I look at people murderously. If I could throw a bomb and blow the whole neighbourhood to smithereens I would do it. I would be happy seeing them fly in the air, mangled, shrieking, torn apart, annihilated. I want to annihilate the whole earth. I am not a part of it. It’s mad from start to finish. The whole shooting match. It’s a huge piece of stale cheese with maggots festering inside it. Fuck it! Blow it to hell! Kill, kill, kill: Kill them all, Jews and Gentiles, young and old, good and bad …