by Henry Miller
Moloch had not yet cleared the South Side in his walk. He was making a beeline along Driggs Avenue. His thoughts flew ahead of him like motorcycle police escorting a rubber-tire cavalade. The Novelty Theatre loomed up, full of scars and rhodomontade. He saluted it in the name of Topsy and Denman Thompson. Corse Payton came later in his life, and not at the Novelty. The ten-twenty-thirty god was only a faint image now. The last time he remembered seeing him was at the bar of the Wolcott Hotel, Thirty-first Street near Fifth Avenue (somewhat out of bounds for this matinee idol); he was sipping his hot toddy to stimulate his hepatic cells. Corse Payton always had one unshakable conviction. That was that Shakespeare was the greatest genius who ever lived. To prove it, he would recite at any hour of the day or night Polonius’s advice to Laertes.
Corse Payton, Larry Carroll, Pat McCarren: the best sprig of shamrock that was ever worn in Williamsburg’s frock coat. When any of this trinity ambled along the thoroughfare there was life. It was years later that the North Side and the South Side became moth-eaten. But in that day men like old man Martin flourished. Professor Martin, if you please! Professor of bugology. Roach and rodent exterminator for the best hotels in New York. Worked single-handed, with a pair of ferrets and a concoction of powders invented out of his own head. When the Professor came reeling along Driggs Avenue, scattering coins, his red nose gleaming like the setting sun, you knew that God had found an answer to the Asiatic scourge. Professor Martin was a big man in a world that teemed with rodents. He commanded a high price. A bit of a blowhard, too, but a damned good spender. He threw fortunes across the bar. When he spoke of cigars, he said: “Yesterday I bought thirty-five hundred Havana cigars, at two hundred dollars the thousand.” On Saturday nights he referred to his cigars in carload lots, and less carload. You can bet your bottom dollar there were no pikers in the Fourteenth Ward . . . except a few Dutchmen. And, as everyone admitted with a smile, the only time that the Germans got ahead of the Irish was on St. Patrick’s Day, when the band led the parade.
Moloch hot-footed it from one corner to another. North First Street was simply a broken actor. Not a sign of life. Not even a “Commit No Nuisance” sign, such as Sauer used to have hanging on his property. He stood peering in the basement of Sauer’s old store. The familiar smell of leather came back to him . . . queer, big chunks of leather that used to lie curled up on the counter like slumbering Angoras.
He sat down on the curb in front of Miss O’Melio’s house, drinking in every detail of the red brick house opposite. On the top floor were the windows he used to wash every Friday as soon as school was out. What a job! All the kids could see him from the street... the little pet washing Mamma’s windows. From the top-floor windows he was able, once upon a time, to look down on Miss O’Melio’s low roof, where she fed her army of stray cats. All the cats in Williamsburg were on that roof at feeding time. What ever put that bug in her head? Is that what happens to a woman when she can’t get a man?
And underneath the pussy-cat sanitarium was the veterinary’s. Always something going on at Dr. Kinney’s establishment. Somedays the whole street smelled of iodoform. He had a fresh, clear vision of a horse pegged to the ground just inside the low archway; a man was sitting on the animal’s shoulders, holding a big rag to its nose. When he grew up and went to college he realized that the operations he used to witness in Dr. Kinney’s establishment were for purposes of castration. It dawned on him one day as he sat listening to a lecture on Spinoza. . . . “Now a horse,” he thought, “hasn’t any philosophy to give up. When a horse is gelded his joys and troubles are over. After that his only concern is oats . . . bushels of oats.”
Well, and what was his concern right now? To get to bed, or prepare for eternity? He made a grimace, got up, stretched, and looked up at the roof of Miss O’Melio’s. There wasn’t even the ghost of a cat in evidence. After the Williamsburg Bridge was thrown open, and the Exodus commenced, even the cats were ashamed to remain in the old neighborhood.
He walked along morosely, taking his own sweet time. He didn’t care a hang about sleep. His illusions, speaking figuratively, were wrapped in a neat paper bundle marked “Fragile.” Thoughts about Blanche hovered in the offing; they stood off, these thoughts, at a respectful distance—in the way that mourners behave when they at last comprehend the tremendous grief of those about to witness the body of their loved ones lowered into the deep hole. Down, down, into the slimy pit, down into eternal darkness and worm-eaten corruption.
It wasn’t that he felt he had made a mess of his life. It was rather that life had made a mess of him. . . . “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” .. . The Bible for you! What had baptism to do with it? One might with equal reason ordain: “Only vegetarians admitted.” What about maggots, then? Where would they come off? Or didn’t maggots have souls? What sort of soul would Crazy Willy Maine deliver at the Golden Gate? Perhaps there were compartments in Heaven just as in Continental trains . . . first, second, and third class. “Garlic eaters stand on the platform!”
He was passing the old Presbyterian Church. When, as a child, he had memorized the Twenty-third Psalm (it was a little wornout, that psalm!) he was obliged to recite it to the white-haired minister. The minister used an ear trumpet to catch the words which he knew backwards. . . . “He maketh the lame to walk, the deaf to hear.” (Drunkards and harlots given a thorough cleansing.) The thought of that silly old pfoof cutting up didoes with his fool trumpet made Señor Moloch savage. “Put up that trumpet,” he shouted, hoping that his voice would carry across the valley of death, “and tell me whether the streets are paved with gold.”
Silly stuff, talking that way in the middle of the night, with Williamsburg so silent, Pat McCarren dead and buried, and Larry Carroll’s saloon looking like a morgue. But he had an insane notion to ask that dried-up centenarian with the ear trumpet to tell him what happened to all the dead horses that used to swell up and lie in their own filth in the middle of the street until the wagon came and took their bloated carcasses away. . . . When a horse swelled up, he stank. (Worse than a dead senator!) It didn’t matter whether he was a racehorse once, or attached to a brewery wagon. They all stank at the finish. . . .
There was Teves, the funeral director. Just passed his place a minute ago. A nice, quiet little place next door to the Chinese laundry. Teves was always open for a game of pinochle, always waiting for new cadavers ... for fresh orders, as it were. Sometimes they’d interrupt Teves in the middle of a good hand. It never made Teves sore, though. There were lots of good hands in a pinochle deck. You couldn’t expect him to sit tight and say, like Jesus—“Let the dead bury their dead.” Somebody had to be on hand all the time to shovel them under. Otherwise there’d be a helluva stink.
At the Bridge Plaza, Moloch borrowed a nickel from a newsboy. The boy didn’t ask him for his name and address, nor did Moloch promise to mail him the five cents in penny stamps.
He took a Broadway train, marked “Cypress Hills,” and settled down to chew the cud of reminiscences. It was a long ride, with two changes. The changes were uneventful. At the second change he got into an empty car and had his pick of discarded newspapers. He picked up a Morning World.
It was customary for him to take a squint each morning at the advertising section because sometimes the newspapers omitted to print the Great American Telegraph Company’s want ads. Of course, they always got a rebate for these oversights, what good was a rebate if they had no applicants for “messengers from 16 to 21 on a piecework basis, good earnings, some make as high as $25 a week,” etc.?
He took his usual squint. The ad was in all right. That meant a fine crop in the morning. He’d go through them like a dose of salts. . . . What’s this?
MEN!!!
DO YOU NEED
A FEW THOUSAND DOLLARS?
NOW AND THEN AS THE YEARS ROLL AROUND TOWARD THE HOLIDAY SEASON SOME OF US FEEL AS THOUGH WE’D LIKE TO DO A RIP VAN WINKLE TILL IT’S ALL OVER. THAT’S BECAUSE OF THE SLENDER BANKROLL. TO GIV
E AT CHRISTMAS IS GREAT ... IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO GIVE WITH. IF IT SHOULD HAPPEN THAT YOU NEED A FEW THOUSAND DOLLARS EXTRA THIS YEAR, whether you are
Engineer
Foreman
Shipping clerk
Retired business
Labor union leaders
Superintendents, &c.
or whatever your walk in life, IF YOU WANT TO MAKE A SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT OF MONEY DURING THE NEXT FEW MONTHS WRITE ME A LETTER OR POSTAL CARD FOR AN INTERVIEW.
XYZ, World, Downtown.
“Dear Mr. XYZ,” Moloch dictated in his sleep, “Your ingratiating exhortation in today’s (yesterday’s) World almost leads me to believe that there really is a Santa Claus. Who of us has not suffered from a too slender bankroll at Christmastime? Until I read your pleasing expedient in the morning paper I was much agitated by the problem of just which soporific to resort to in order to induce that hibernating condition which you refer to euphemistically as “The Rip Van Winkle.” Now I am happy to learn that by merely spending the price of a postcard the secret of avoiding this periodical embarrassment can be revealed to me.
“You ask very pertinently (in capital letters) IF I NEED A FEW THOUSAND DOLLARS EXTRA. I not only need it extra, but constantly. In fact, to put it to you plainly—why should we keep anything from one another?—I should say conservatively that a few thousand dollars a year regularly would relieve me of the trying ordeal of writing you for information about some crack-brained scheme or other for peddling Christmas cards or silk hosiery.
“I have never been a retired businessman, or a labor union leader, nor even a shipping clerk, unfortunately. My previous occupational experience is necessarily denominated by that all-embracing caption ‘&c.’ Undoubtedly you are sufficiently astute to gather from this just whether or not I am suited to the proposition of raking in a few thousand shekels in my spare time.
“If so, please let me know when I may be favored with an interview. There is less than ninety days till Christmas, and I don’t like the idea of being stuck at the last minute (on Christmas Eve) with a measly seven or eight hundred in my wad.
“Yours for opulence in this world or the next.
“Dion Moloch, Esquire
or
Mr. Dion Moloch
or
Just Plain Dion Moloch.”
15
THE SERENITY THAT MOLOCH HAD BEGUN TO MANIFEST of late is proving a source of mystery and irritation to his spouse. This poise, this grip on life, as it were, Blanche unfortunately is capable of attributing only to the appearance of a new star in the firmament of his adulterous brain.
How can we best describe the change he felt coming over him? Certainly it was not a moral improvement. Perhaps the simplest way to express it is that his soul made itself known; he no longer thought of it as an intangible entity inhabiting the body, and deserting it at death. This soul of his suddenly began to take on apostolic dimensions. It required attention, like a plant.
The book he had promised himself to write was completed. The manuscript was now reposing in a drawer of Mr. Twilliger’s rolltop desk. It was to remain there for a period until that individual could go through it at his leisure. Neither Twilliger nor Moloch, at this time, had any apprehension of the fact that this simple-looking document would serve, not many days hence, as a pretext for the dismissal of the erstwhile employment manager Dion Moloch. However, our narrative does not carry us that far. We have no concern with Dion Moloch as job-hunter and temporary lodger in the Miravski menage.
Significant of Moloch’s changed attitude is his complete silence about the other sex. It is impossible for Blanche to fathom his motives. If she had consulted him in the matter it might not have proven such a mystery. Valeska had been transferred to a post of importance in Havana as soon as the President of the company got wind of the fact that she was not a pure Caucasian. How the President acquired this delicate piece of information is another story; it is enough to hint that Mr. Twilliger’s chief tailor was still proving his ability to earn his salt. As for Marcelle, well—Moloch began to realize that she had never been anything more than a depraved virgin. Her virginity stank, like Father Zossima’s corpse. Concerning Marcello’s virginity Blanche, of course, affected a complete ignorance. Possibly she never thought of the young lady’s virginity in a purely analytical way. As for such an expression—“depraved virginity”—it is doubtful if Blanche could ever regard it as having anything more than a vague literary connotation.
The sullen bitterness of the woman, her morose defiance, the silent, repressed fury whose malignant potency would heretofore have goaded him into desperation—all this he endured now with a calm, pervasive air. He had acquired the habit recently of referring, in a dark way, to his spiritual state, or condition. Blanche regarded this enigmatic nonsense as a religious travesty. She dosed him with vitriolic shafts of ridicule. It was not, as with some husbands who pose before the world as martyrs, a showcase stoicism that Moloch displayed. Indeed, there was nothing of suffering, or of consciously willed forbearance, in his attitude. He was simply possessed by a fantastic exuberance.
In this condition of exaltation he came home one evening to find his supper on the stove. Blanche was not there. He examined the food that had been left for him with an abstract air. Presently there was a knock at the door, and the woman upstairs poked her head through the door. She came to inform him that Blanche had gone to the theater.
He smiled tenderly at her. Was it so, indeed? He seemed over-joyed at the news. Had Blanche gone to see Androcles and the Lion? No? He mentioned another. Not that either? The woman repeated that she hadn’t the least idea where Blanche had gone. Well, what did it matter? He would go out and purchase a bouquet for her. Perhaps the good woman would sit down a few moments and sip a little port wine with him? It was always well to keep a little port wine about the house for just such occasions as these. He apologized for the absence of anything better than port wine. . . . Ideal weather, wasn’t it? Had she noticed the moon this evening? Why did people insist on mentioning green cheese when they referred to the moon? It was more like a mauve scimitar, if you asked his opinion. Had she ever thought about the moon?—that is, in dactylic hexameters?
The woman listened to him as if he were a broken shutter slapping against a stone wall. She had expected a radically different tune. If a palliative had been necessary she was there with a harmless little fib or two up her sleeve.
“A man’s home is his palace, eh what? God, that supper smells inviting! I should have said ‘an Englishman’s home.’ Come on in. Don’t stick your head in the crack like that. You’re not afraid of me, are you? How about some wine ... or a little marmalade?”
The old harridan wagged her solemn, tousled head.
“Well, as you please,” he mumbled, and fell to.
He finished the meal hastily. The bottle he had dug up stood on the table untouched. “Drink deep,” said the poet, “or taste not of the Pierian spring.” He walked into the living room on pads of velvet. The disorder which greeted him was a philosophic disorder. It reminded him of a chapter from Creative Evolution. He was accustomed to thinking of this room as a birdcage in which his intoxicated guests deposited their cigarette butts, crumbs of Streusselkuchen. But now he thought, “Only a German can be annoyed by untidiness.” He sat down at the piano and crossed his legs. With his left foot on the right-hand pedal he played the opening measures of Stojowski’s “Love Song.” His technique was rusty. He uncrossed his legs and turned to Czerny’s studies in velocity. “Bah!” he muttered disconsolately. “Life is too rich to be squandered in exercises.” Anyway, it was getting too late in the day to ever become a musician. He wished someone had taught him a ruder instrument. Somewhere he had once read of artists returning to their cold garrets in the Latin Quarter and silencing their hunger with an accordion. . . . Probably Delineator artists!
He got up and took a seat in a low-cushioned armless chair. Did Blanche ever think of the associations wrapped up in that chair? he as
ked himself. To tell the truth, he hadn’t thought about that chair for three years himself. It belonged to another period—the period called courtship. Marriage dissolves courtship just as vinegar dissolves pearls. (Cleopatra once dissolved her pearls in an effort to swallow a fortune.) A sentimental song from Laubscher’s Biergarten came to his lips: “Es War So Schön Gewesen.” . . . Try that on your piano when the sands of the desert grow cold.
His fingers were toying with the frazzled edges of an unframed picture. It was done in crayon on a piece of pasteboard. The edges were fat and greasy, like a well-used pack of playing cards. The picture had hung in the one spot so long it had almost lost its meaning. But it seemed a wonderful study now—an eloquent expression of the artist’s joy. The peace that hung in the room made the picture dance. The appearance of the room was, as usual, drab. If anything it was a trifle drabber, filthier. But the peace that was in his heart transformed everything.
The young lady who had made the sketch was dead. She had become so thoroughly saturated with the drunkenness of life that she up and killed herself one day. She up and killed herself out of sheer joy. It’s the fashion nowadays to deride such tales. It is said “people don’t do such things . . . out of joy!” Or some “smart aleck,” as Stanley would say, will mention Dostoevsky ... as though only in Russian literature, among the epileptoid geniuses, do we encounter such . . . such—shall we call it— bravado? But Milka had acted in precisely this manner. He turned the sketch over. On the back she had penciled: “Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.” That was her idea about everything. Wherever she went, she used to affix as her seal and signature this quotation from Augustus Caesar’s prime ballyhoo artist. Perhaps it sounds indelicate to mention this, but it was so—she had even put her signature on the toilet box one day. The sound of gurgling water trickling through the drainpipes—that, too, she had to lend the stamp of her approval ... the “Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.” A great girl, Milka!