by Henry Miller
The gleam of a carving knife which Blanche was brandishing lifted him out of the past. Blanche went at him full tilt.
“I’ll tell you why they don’t believe me,” she hissed. “It’s because you’re always making me out to be a liar.”
He took the knife from her hands. She looked at it blankly. She had the expression of one who has been victimized by an obsession, and suddenly finds himself released.
“For God’s sake, Blanche, don’t carry on so. If you must say these things, say them later, when ...”
“When your friend leaves ... I know.”
“No, I wasn’t thinking of that at all, Blanche. I was thinking of Edda. It isn’t right, you know, to talk this way in her hearing.”
“Oh, it isn’t? You’re funny! How careful you are not to let her hear anything bad about you. Do you ever think of her when you’re tramping around nights with your women friends?”
“Stop it!” He went up to her threateningly. “I won’t have it! You’re an insane fool, do you know that?”
“Am I, huh? Go and look at yourself. See what a maniac you can be.”
He slunk down in a chair beside her and buried his head in his fists.
“What’s the matter, Mamma?” Edda cried from the next room, where she had been playing with her toys.
“Go in and play with her for a while,” said Blanche quickly. She regretted her sharp words.
He went in to the child with a crestfallen air, like a penitent approaching the altar.
“Why do you fight so, Daddy?” Edda put her arms about his neck and kissed him.
He held her with one arm, his other hand brushing a tear away. “We weren’t fighting,” he said soothingly. “I was just playing with Mother. We were acting.”
“Were you? That’s funny, Daddy. Act with me, too.”
He put her down gently and sat on the floor. “Come, dear, let’s make believe Daddy’s a pony.” He crouched low so that she could climb upon his back. He felt her little arms around his neck, choking him. He wished to Christ someone would choke him.
“You ought to come home every night, Daddy, and play with me. Mamma says so, too.”
“I will, dear, I will,” he mumbled. He couldn’t stop them, the tears were streaming down his face. He put his head on the floor and jiggled her up and down with slight body twists as he choked down the sobs that rose to his lips.
“That’s the way, Daddy! Keep it up, keep it up!” The child was delighted with the attention she was receiving. . . . “How little she asks of me,” he thought.
In the midst of their romping Prigozi returned.
“Where’s the old man?” he asked.
“Inside, playing with Edda.”
If Prigozi had put his hand on a live wire he couldn’t have expressed the shock more effectively.
“Well! So that’s what he’s up to?” He was rubbing his hands again in the old way. “Playing the fond parent, now, eh?”
Blanche gave him an indignant glance and turned her face away. Prigozi strode inside and tried to join in the romping. But Edda would have none of him.
“Go away,” she cried. “I don’t want you.”
The child’s outburst stopped his impetuosity. He tried insinuating himself. His attempts were ineffectual.
“I don’t like you,” she persisted. “Go away.”
Moloch tried to chide her. “That isn’t the way to talk to the man, Edda.” But she was obdurate. It was obvious that her hostility was genuine and not the ordinary whimsical petulance of a child.
“There’s no use,” said Prigozi falteringly. “She doesn’t like me; I wouldn’t try to force her, if I were you.”
Puzzled by the child’s frank dislike, he returned to the kitchen dejectedly. “Is it because I’m a Jew?” he wondered. He dismissed the idea immediately. “Why, she’s a mere tot.” His mind rambled from one thing to another. “Children are easily frightened by ugliness,” he said to himself, and the next moment he found himself reviewing the tragic end which came to the dwarf when he looked for the first time in the mirror upon the occasion of the Infanta’s birthday. Possibly his thoughts were thus directed by the sight of a mirror hanging on the kitchen wall. It was one of those imperishable, yet wholly dilapidated articles which often outlive the owner. It was pockmarked with blemishes, and gave back a thoroughly distorted image.
Prigozi got up, nevertheless, drawn to it no doubt by its very hideousness, and gazed into it as if it were the mouth of a crater. He rubbed his beard reflectively. It was impossible to conceal the fact, even to himself, that this which he beheld was not the face of an Apollo. It was more like a pile of refuse.
He sat down again, with a lugubrious air, and allowed himself to be absorbed watching Blanche stir about. She made a great deal of fuss but seemed to get nowhere. Nor was there any attempt on her part to engage him in conversation. For a while he pretended to be interested in drumming nervously with his ungainly fingers, but soon even that pretense was removed by the increasing despondency of his mood, and he simply went slack all over, his big, tousled head slumping forward on his chest and rolling about disconsolately.
Blanche cast a glance in his direction now and then, but her interest was more like that of a detective keeping an eye on his prisoner. “A dirty kike,” she repeated to herself, over and over.
Could she have read his mind, she would have found the man Prigozi in strange agreement with these sentiments.
He had hoped so earnestly to be a real friend. He had hoped, I say; but his hopes were lost in the discovery of something he had always known—the fact that he was nothing more than a freak, a morose, flyblown creature with Semitic blood in its veins.
9
DURING THE COURSE OF THE MEAL, WHICH PROgressed with glacial smoothness, the bell rang. It was Stanley Miravski. He greeted them with one word: “Hullo.”
“Throw your cap inside,” said Moloch.
Stanley grunted, and held himself stiffly erect on a high-backed chair against the wall. He didn’t care to pull up his chair, thanks. . . he’d stay right where he was. “I’m satisfied here,” he drawled in his brusque way. His manner conveyed that possibly the others had not been so successful in putting themselves at ease.
Despite the severity of his face, the extreme homeliness, there was something eloquent and arresting about the man. Stanley was a Pole. It didn’t take one long to discover that. It was not his accent—he had none. His language was a rude American, with a pronounced Brooklyn twang. One might localize it still further, and call it the “Fourteenth Ward.” To some it sounded droll, titivating. Blanche thought it quite unique. Prigozi was annoyed by it. The sluggishness of it awakened in him the sensation of holding intercourse with a torpid mind.
“I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately,” Stanley commenced. He employed no preliminary flourishes. To put it in his own language, he didn’t believe in fiddling around the bush. As nobody attempted to contradict a statement of such a highly personal character, he placed his cap on the table and continued. . . . Somehow, it’s rather hard to describe what it was precisely about this individual that created the impression, but he had the air of a Spanish grandee. An enlivening contrast: the brusque, military pose, with the left hand firmly grasping the knee as he leaned (almost deferentially) toward them, and those queer Brooklyn solecisms leaking from the pencil line of his lips. Semi-profile, his head was a fine replica of the Duke of Alva’s. Seven generations of cruelty and arid intellectuality had gone to mold the sallow mask whose single touch of color was a thin smear of black beneath the nose.
Stanley was infected by his own enthusiasm. It was unusual for him to talk at any length, unless his scorn was aroused; then he hammered the piercing edges of his words with a mallet of gold. But it was apparent, as he went on, that Prigozi’s mere presence was sufficient incitement. He seldom glanced in that direction, but when he did, his face would lift into a frozen sneer. His ancestors, handy with the cleaver, ever busy with pogroms, had perpe
tuated this characteristic in him.
“You hafter read this here writer, Swift,” he was telling Moloch, in his inimitable drawl. “If you’re looking for irony or scalding invective—” He paused here in imitation of Dr. Munyan, to raise a lean forefinger.... “He knows how to call a spade a spade. And when Jonathan Swift gets through with the human race there’s nothin’ left but dandruff.”
“Dandruff?” roared Prigozi. He laughed so heartily his fork dropped in the milk pitcher.
“Yes, DANDRUFF,’” repeated Stanley.
Prigozi ignored the belligerent tone and continued to laugh. It was a relief for him to break the ice.
“Say, what’s the matter with this gazebo?” asked Stanley, as Prigozi’s merriment increased instead of subsiding. “You’re sure he’s not laughing at me? Otherwise I’d lam him in the puss.”
Hearing this, Prigozi sobered up.
The telephone rang in the hall upstairs. Moloch jumped. “If it’s for me,” he said, as Blanche was about to answer, “remember—I’m ill. I can’t be disturbed. ... No matter how important they say it is.”
Blanche came down in a minute.
“It’s for you. They said it was important.”
“Damn it! Didn’t I just tell you . . .?”
“I can’t help it. Whoever it was said the message couldn’t be entrusted to anyone but you. It was strictly personal”.
He marched off at once. Perhaps it was important. Perhaps there was something of the feminine gender involved. He fully expected to hear a woman’s voice when he picked up the receiver.
“What’s up?” said Prigozi, remarking the solemn expression Moloch brought back with him.
The effect of this inquiry was to cause the other to flop into his seat. The three of them looked up expectantly. A sigh, neither heavy nor affected, broke from him.
“You act as though you lost your best friend,” came from Prigozi.
“He’s thinking up a lie,” Blanche stated bitterly.
The last remark brought about a response.
“Our good friend Hari Das has kicked the bucket!”
Exclamations, astonishment, a nervous exhilaration.
“Yep! That’s the news. Telegram from Atlantic City. Forwarding remains of Hari Das, unable locate relatives or countrymen, signed Reverend somebody or other.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Me? Nothing.”
“Can’t you get in touch with his friends ... his Hindu friends?”
“I don’t know that he has any,” said Moloch.
“You don’t seem to care very much,” Blanche observed.
“Care? What do you mean? He’s dead now.”
“Well, aren’t you going to look after his body?”
“I certainly am not. With death my interest in Hari Das ceases.”
“Do you hear that?” says Blanche, addressing the others. “He means it, too. Now you can see what his friendship means. A short time ago he was ready to kick me out in order to make room for his friend, Hari.”
“It does seem rather cold-blooded, Dion,” came from Prigozi.
Stanley felt called upon to throw in a word or two.
“That’s like him, sure enough. He’s all for himself.”
To Moloch the situation was becoming amusing. Why the sudden interest . . . in a corpse?
“Have you all had your say? Don’t hesitate to relieve your feelings. Before you become prostrated, however, let me get a word in edgeways.... Who looked after him when he was alive? Who fed him and put a roof over his head? None of you weeping willows! You hadn’t much use for him, then. . . . You, Prigozi ... you talked a lot about letting them shift for themselves, these Hindu bastards. My sympathetic little wife here treated him like a scavenger . . . she was afraid that the neighbors would catch sight of him blowing his nose in the gutter. He was a boor . . . he laughed too noisily. And he didn’t bathe often enough to suit her royal highness.” He looked at them scornfully. . . . “Suddenly he’s converted to a cadaver. Immediately tears, lamentations, eulogies. Can’t do too much for him . . . for the corpse. Listen, you fatheads. . . I’ll give you the corpse. Have a good time with it! I don’t like dead bodies . . . they stink! I don’t even intend to buy a floral piece, what do you know about that? And by the way”—he bent his gaze on Blanche—“how did you expect me to finance his burial?”
Blanche was confused. “Why . . . er, I didn’t know,” she stammered. “I thought you might borrow ...”
“You wouldn’t need to do that,” Prigozi threw in. “We could get up a collection. You wouldn’t want him to be buried in Potter’s Field, would you?”
“Why not?” Moloch exclaimed. “What does it matter how he’s buried? He’s more of an encumbrance now than he was before. But society shows more ingenuity when it comes to getting rid of stiffs.” He turned to Blanche again. “If you have some money around here that’s not in use, I’d like to borrow it to get some of my suits out of hock. Hari has one of my best suits on his back ... or did have. I suppose they left it on him. . . . Well, that’s a gift to the worms.”
The sudden demise of Hari Das served to remind Stanley of the reason for his visit. He had come to borrow a suit.
“I want to hock this for a few days,” he said, touching the sleeve of his coat. “We’ve got a big mock for a landlord, and he wants to throw us out. If I can lay hands on a few berries we can stave him off for a week or so.”
It was natural for Moloch to assume that Stanley was out of work again. Stanley had a propensity for changing jobs.
“No, it ain’t that,” came his glib reassurance. “I’ve been taking days off lately, and we fell behind. That’s all.” Then, as a supplement—“I felt like writin’, do you see.” This information was vouchsafed in a manner calculated to excuse any dilemna.
Moloch had a mental image of Stanley engaged in this toil. His romances—that was the label Stanley affixed to his efforts—were usually labored over in the kitchen. The washtub was his desk. It was necessary for him to nurse his creative instincts under these conditions for the very practical reason that the rest of the ménage was too noisy. He had five children, and they were uncontrollable unless he threw a shoe at them, which was always sure to occasion a row with the wife. He had therefore learned through bitter experience that it was more expedient to retreat to the sanctuary mentioned.
Gazing at the snot-green walls of the Miravski demesne, Moloch had often told himself that Stanley must indeed possess a strong poetic gift to concern himself with “romances.”
Similar thoughts evidently occupied the others.
Prigozi, in his gauche way, was endeavoring to efface the poor impression he had made a few moments ago. “What are you writing?” he asked, sympathetic yet not craven.
“Nothing you’d be interested in.”
“How do you know?”
“Well... I’ll be brief with you. You like this here guy Dreiser, don’t you?” Stanley wore the polite inquisitorial frown of a Torquemada.
Prigozi was obliged to say yes. But he proceeded at once to qualify his admission. “I think some of Dreiser’s stuff is mere journalism, but then, you take a thing like Jennie Gerhardt—now that was superb!”
“Superb! I guess you mean cheesy. Now it just happens that I read about fifteen pages of that book once. You want to know what I think about your Theodore Dreiser? I chucked that piece of superb literature down the sewer . . . yeah! What have you to say to that?”
Prigozi’s answer was a barnyard cackle.
“Talk about your superb writers,” Stanley continued, “say . . . did you ever hear of Pierre Loti?” The emphasis he put on the name should have been a warning to Prigozi that Stanley was offering him a god to worship. Stanley had a bad habit of asking people if they had ever heard of so-and-so (like Pliny, Juvenal, Petrarch, etc.) when he really meant, what do you think of them?
Prigozi was not unfamiliar with Loti. He started to give an account of his reading. “Well, I thought Th
e Icelandic Fisherman a very beautiful tale. . . .”
“Never mind telling me what you thought. I’m goin’ to tell you what I believe.”
“Where his favorites are concerned Stanley regards himself as an authority.” Moloch put in diplomatically. He threw Prigozi a horse wink.
But Stanley was implacable.
“You pipe down!” he commanded. “I’m gonna tell this egg something about literature. Not about journalism—get that?” He fixed Prigozi with a look of severity. “And when I say a thing, I don’t modify it. I don’t say some of his work is good. With me a man’s work is either good or bad, and that settles it. If he’s rotten, I drop him. If he’s good, he’s good all the way through. I don’t believe in this half-and-half business. . . . Now this here Loti, mind you, he’s a chap I admire. He don’t go in for a lot of petty details, with a Kodak under his arm. He ain’t tryin’ to be another Zola. And I wouldn’t compare him with that boilerplate, Theodore Dreiser ... or that smart aleck from Main Street, Mr. what’s-his-name . . . Lewis, yeah, Sinclair Lewis. Who the hell wants to read his junk, anyway? Where does he come off to hand us these long-winded spiels? Does he think he’s another Tolstoy? He takes himself too damned seriously, that guy! Anyhow, America’s no country to write about. There’s no romance here. What’s a man to do—sit down and write about the eight-hour day? Now this chap, Loti—he didn’t break his back turning out a best-seller every year. He took his own sweet time. He breezed along with the French navy, saw the world, made love here and there. ... I tell you, he was a regular guy. Nowadays, to be literary, a fellow thinks he must be either a hobo or a homo. Loti was a man of the world, and a gentleman! He wasn’t obliged to go to the library and do research work before he sat down to write a book. Take that book of his called Jerusalem. Could Mr. Sinclair Lewis or Theodore Dreiser ever write anything like that? Why, it ain’t in ‘em! If they can’t write about dirty underwear and weak-kneed factory hands they’re lost.”
As Stanley paused here the others exchanged glances. There was in these glances a sort of silent understanding, such as sometimes takes place among the members of a jury, which did no discredit to Stanley.